Leadership Biography

FREEDOM IN EXILE

The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama

By Tenzin Gyatso , The Fourteeth Dalai Lama of Tibet

Published by Harper Collins , 1990

How would this person define leadership

Although he never sets out to explicitly discuss a definition of leadership , we are quite able to see his point of view by considering the two places in the text where the Dalai Lama specifically praises a person as a good leader . The first of these is his own sister . In the course of his discussion of the many difficulties managing the

groups of destitute refugees who had fled into India , her contribution was invaluable . As an explanation of why , he tells us that , She had an enormous capacity for hard work . This , coupled with her rather fierce nature , made her an excellent leader ' By itself , this does not quite bring out the focus of his compliment but that focus is made somewhat more clear when he tells us , a few pages later , about Mr Luthi , a worker with the Swiss Red Cross . He was , a man of tremendous zeal and energy , a real leader , who drove the people under him extremely hard

For the Dalai Lama , then , there seem to be two elements to leadership one is the ability to bring a tremendous amount of effort to the task in question , and the second is an ability to get a similar effort out of the people you are leading . At first glance , this appears to be somewhat at odds with this holy man 's compassionate , peaceful nature However , such an appearance is mitigated when we consider the numerous places throughout the book where we see that he holds himself to exactly the same rigorous standard . A particularly good example of this is when his observation of the struggles of his people made his responsibility fully tangible , even given his relative youth . One thing my journey down had convinced me of was the need to study hard and learn as much as I could . I owed it to the faith of my people to be the best person I could be

What was /is their leadership philosophy

As we might expect from the discussion above , the core of the Dalai Lama 's leadership philosophy is to lead by example . In addition to the passages above , this idea also runs throughout the course of the text in the form of his consistent focus on creating opportunities for personal one-on-one contact with the people he is trying to lead and /or persuade - whether the citizens of Tibet , or the political leaders of China and India

In talking about the positive changes he was able to bring about in government , for instance , we learn that he was , determined to be entirely open , to show everything and not to hide behind etiquette . In this way I hoped that people would relate to me as one human being to another ' Even more telling is his narrative account concerning the fighting by Tibetan guerilla forces...