  What aggravates me more than anything these days is people who let their own personal ambitions for glory write their management philosophy. I don't visualise management as an "I'm the boss, and you're not" thing. I view it as service, and a responsibility to provide advocacy, establish trust, promote learning and foster teamwork.
Yeah, I know this sounds like a big hooey United Way commercial or something. But I really believe it. People who suck up a management party line and trash their peers to get ahead themselves really torque my tail. We learn in Vedic scriptures that we are all in the position of eternal servant to Krsna. We all want to be God, but in reality, there's only one God, Krsna, and we, in reality, whether we like the idea or not, are His servants. So the greatest leader is the one who serves the most devotedly, and we strive always to be humble and to give all respect to others. We say, 'dasanudasa'-the servant of the servant. This is our real position-to be the servant of the servant of Krsna. This capacity of wanting to lord it over others is because we are infintesimally qualitatively equal with Krsna, and since He is the Lord and Master of all, we also have that propensity in minute quantity.
But through the scriptures, we can understand that this is delusion. Jesus said the same thing-that we should be servants of each other, and servants of God. He often said that 'he who is last shall be first' and other statements that show the value of humility and loving service. This tendency towards tyranny over others is something that we have to recognize and eradicate in ourselves. Leadership is a privelege, not a right. It's a responsibility, not a higher social stratum. I feel responsible to my staff to help them become better nurses, to help them find fulfillment in their careers, to educate them, to advocate for them and to help them advocate for themselves. This kind of mentality means I'm often at odds with high-level management. That's the risk I have to run to be true to my vision of what my role is.
I am not out to show people that I'm their boss or make them feel stupid or ensure that they spend every minute of every day in acute awareness of my educational and positional superiority over them. That's just a big nonsense. It's also bad karma, and promotes nothing but hate. When we can understand humility and service, we naturally attract people. The qualities of spiritual life are equally applicable in the world. When we understand that we are eternally Krsna's servants, and that we are ALL Krsna's servants, where is the question of someone being better than another, or lording it over another?
It's not there. How can I lord it over someone else? I too am simply trying to be a servant of my guru, who works hard to serve his guru, Srila Prabhupada, who works hard to serve Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur Maharaj, and so on, a hundred times the servant of the servant. This is our real position, and only in this position can we ever find a taste of what real happiness is. Hare Krishna. All glories to Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu's sankirtan movement! urlLink ');"> postCount(' '); 
