Doing the Right Thing -- The Leader's Way, Chapter 2

"A leader will only be respected, when he acts according to the principles in which he said he believes."

Leaders and Their Roles


If the leader does not follow the principles, his followers will not follow the principles, but will follow the leaders’ whimsical will.

The roles of leaders include making decision and taking actions for the organization and people working for them. Leader should practice right conduct, which is achieved when acting according to right view.

 "If the leader listens to you, it makes you feel valued and important."

Right conduct is an offspring of two following concepts: Right intention and wholesome actions.


Right Intention

Right intention refers to the care of well-being of the majority of people, not of everyone. This is because a benefit for a group of people can harm the others. It is quite impossible to make a decision which benefit everyone.

Wholesome decision

The decisions and actions must be wholesome. Wholesome refers to the following 6 perfections:

1. Generosity: Do not take all the credits. Give some to others.
2. Ethical discipline: Reach your goal ethically.
3. Patience: Suppress your negative emotion.
4. Enthusiastic effort: Be diligent.
5. Concentration: Focus. Do not let your attention shift while working on a certain thing.
6. Wisdom

"Worry is a waste of energy. It does not solve anything."

Apart from the above 6 perfections, the followings are considered wholesome as well

• Humility: Be humble, listen, and admit mistakes.
• Self-confidence
• Consideration: Concern about well-being of others.
• Equanimity: Be calm. Do not attach to bias or craving.
• Having sense of shame.
• Vigor
• Receptivity and openminded.
• Kindness

"Nothing can be gained by being unfriendly."

Source: THE Leader's Way: Business, Buddhism and happiness in an interconnected world by His Holyiness The Dalai Lama and Laurens Van Den Muyzenberg, Chapter 2 [Read the Book Review] [Read the Next Part].
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Book or Audiobooks?

Personally, I prefer audiobooks. It's fun, and I can listen when I'm doing something else. It also makes other activities (e.g., jogging) a lot more fun. For more detail about audiobooks, please read [this post].

There is one more reason that may encourage you to go for the audiobook version. You can get it now for FREE. Audible offers you a free trial for 14 days. Even if you get the book and cancel the subscription right away (so that you don't have to pay), you can keep the book. And, don't worry if you lost the audiobook file. Just log into audible.com. You can keep downloading the over and over again.


About the summary: It takes time to finish up a book. And, when you do, sometimes, you want to review what you learn from the book. If you do not make notes as you read, you might have to go through the book once again. This can be time-consuming when you are dealing with a book. But you can still flip through the book and locate what you are looking for

However, when the material is an audiobook, it is extremely hard to locate a specific part of content. Most likely you will have to listen to the entire audiobook once again.

This book summary will help solve the pain of having to go through the book all over again.

I am leaving out the details of the books. Most books have interesting examples and case studies, not included here. Reading the original book would be much more entertaining and enlightening. If you like the summary, you may want to get the original from the source below.