On Leadership.

As the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair prepares to release his book On Leadership next year, I want to offer an alternative perspective as an Indian woman born and raised under Britain's imperial shadow.

For those of us who do not want history to keep repeating itself, colonialism provides a very important lesson in the power of impact and consequence. In many ways, it still provides the blueprint for the most dysfunctional leadership systems of our modern times, fuelled by white supremacy, greed and the abuse of power through control and domination. 

I’m here to explore this further, as well as the many alternative forms of leadership which contribute to a more harmonious, decolonized and liberated world.

I’ll start by saying this.

I am still learning what healthy leadership is. And I believe I always will be, as leadership is an entity that is ever-changing, adapting itself to the needs of the situation, the current social climate, and how conscious we are becoming at any given time. It reflects and mirrors the cycles of earth and of life itself.

So even though I work with leaders, have over a decade of leadership experience and have experienced the leadership of others, I am no expert. The idea of knowing it all and having an answer for everything not only creates stagnation and a lack of openness to new ideas, but it also feels very colonial in its presumption of dominance over knowledge, most often incomplete. It also denies space for complexity; the idea that what is considered healthy leadership in one group of people would possibly be considered unhealthy in another, and that a diverse range of leadership is ultimately required for the myriad of human collectives on this planet, each with their own cultural backgrounds, traditions and knowledge and each working towards their own goals.

And yet, in many ways - in the most important of ways - it ultimately boils down to this one notion. That all of life is sacred.

It is both beautifully simple and wildly complex at the same time. 

Through my experience, I certainly know of many factors that greatly improve the quality of leadership, but not all. One thing I am certain of, however, are the non-negotiables. Ones which violate life itself, across all cultures. Domination, manipulation, deceit, abuse of power, cruelty, serving oneself at the expense of others. And this, I have learned the hard way. The painful way. Through abusive family dynamics and in most workplaces. In experiencing the governance of the land I’ve been born and raised on; England. In hearing the workplace horror stories of my friends and peers. Through my travels. In watching global politics unfold. In learning about - and in being a consequential symbol of - colonialism. In watching human lives being needlessly harmed by greed, dominance and cruelty through genocides like the one currently destroying Palestine.

Transforming leadership, I have learned, is one of the quickest and most impactful ways to evoke large-scale change. One person’s action, or inaction, can affect multitudes of people all at once. Even the slightest shift in their perspective or behaviour can bring about huge change in a very short space of time, be it for better or for worse. The power dynamics of our current hierarchical systems make it so.

Just as unconscious leadership causes detrimental harm to our health, our communities, our ecosystem and our planet, conscious leadership creates positive change on multiple levels, both measurable and immeasurable, seen and unseen. It generates life where there once was only death. It heals and nurtures. It glues fragments back together. It makes the chaotic, harmonic. It births new and better worlds into being.

We are living in unprecedented times. The systems of oppression which currently underpin our society are falling all around us, while we witness their final death-throes before their inevitable demise.

And as modern and advanced as they consider themselves to be, all ‘western’ countries are prey to the slow burn of this anti-life energy, even if it’s subtly disguised under liberal policies and systems of health and wellbeing. The illusion that many of our political leaders are actually concerned about our wellbeing is now being exposed on a global scale. Wellbeing itself has been swallowed by the corporate capitalist machine and now serves as a huge industry in itself, out to make profit through distorted, self-serving ideas stolen from colonized indigenous spiritualities.

This lack of care is felt when we watch our governments fund genocide with our money. It’s ingested through the chemicals in the food we eat, the neglect of our burned-out public healthcare systems (if we even have them), our unstable economic systems, our unjust policing and prison systems. The legacy of these larger systems inevitably drip down into our everyday lives, where unconscious leadership allows racial discrimination, misogyny and all types of power abuses to run amok in our workplaces, religious institutions, families, cultural centres, spiritual groups and - quite frankly - most organizations.

We then bring it home with us. It seeps into everything we do. How we feel about ourselves. How we treat each other. How we value our lives.

It is inevitable that unjust hierarchical systems which benefit the few at the expense of the many, are crumbling. It is inevitable that, in general, our collective consciousness is rising as we continue to become aware of the various injustices which impact our lives and those of our human and more-than-human kin across the world. And so it is also inevitable that we, and those who we work with, carry this awareness and these energies into the organization. We are not separate from what's going on out there, as much as capitalism tries to convince us that it's ‘business as usual’. We are a part of life’s ecosystem.

There are many out here creating beautiful life-honouring systems as we speak. For the majority of organizations, however, the hierarchical structure not only remains but is causing a huge amount of collective pain through unhealthy leadership. Abolishing all hierarchy at this stage would lead to huge instability, as these new systems are yet to become integrated into the mainstream collective. At this point, it would only invite a vacuum where the same unhealthy dynamics would recreate themselves again.

The question is, how do we transition from the old systems into the new, as smoothly - and as realistically - as we can? 

My exploration, and my work, is to help bridge the gap between the old and the new. To support leaders still working within these old structures to transition into a more conscious level of leadership.

I also want to add a note on spirituality. In the western world, ‘spirituality’ has become a term to denote that spirit exists outside of us, rather than inherently residing within us, whether we know it or not. In indigenous and traditional non-western cultures - like mine, as a Gujarati woman whose family is Hindu - there is no such concept. It is a given. It does not need to be said. Reverence for the sacred is deeply embedded into our language, our food, our ritual, our connections, our daily lives. It’s not a separate entity in any way. And so, neither is it separate from my work.

For me, the sacred and the practical are intertwined. 

In my writing, podcast and consultancy work, I explore leadership through my own belief systems, which include astrology, myth, archetypal and energetic dynamics. I also explore emergent strategy, communication and conflict management tools. 

I’ll be exploring topics like

Micromanagement as a colonial legacy, and what we can do about it

Developing diverse leadership styles which honour our full humanity

Discerning the subtle energetics behind abusive or cult-like power dynamics

Why DEI training is not actually healing the root of our issues with race

What life-honouring team leadership looks like on a day-to-day basis

Why energetic boundaries are important for leaders who are helping to birth new worlds

Bringing grief and rage into leadership in a healthy way

and much more.

I’ll be diving deep into the underworld of our shadow, of grief, of rage, of racism and misogyny, and it might be uncomfortable sometimes. It will be vulnerable oftentimes. And above all, it will be human.

Primarily, this podcast is for leaders. And leaders are everywhere, whether they know it or not. 

They are the heads of families, the ones others turn to for advice, the elders. And in a more professional context, they can be managers, CEO’s, teachers, politicians, heads of religious institutions, doctors, spiritual leaders and any position where they are perceived to be an authority figure by others. 

Even if we’re not all leaders of groups, we still experience the leadership of others every day, whether that's political, in our workplace or otherwise. This work can hopefully serve as a benchmark for healthy leadership so we can compare what we're currently experiencing to what leadership could be.

So I invite anyone who is interested in progressing the idea of healthy leadership to join me in this ongoing exploration, particularly if you resonate with the themes of collective healing, liberation, justice and harmony. If that sounds like you, I invite you to subscribe to this podcast. You can also find me on Substack under how we lead. Until then, take care of yourselves and see you soon.