21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (36 page)

During one of Gandhi’s frequent stays in the guest accommodations of the colonial prison, he invented a portable spinning wheel. The December 1931 issue of
Popular Science
featured a photo of Gandhi with his invention.
¹⁰

The taxation of salt by Great Britain had been a sore point for decades. On March 12, 1930, as a symbolic protest against taxes on salt, Gandhi began his march from Ahmedabad to the seacoast village of Dandi. Many Indians joined the march along the way. It was a violation of British law for anyone to go to the seashore and make their own salt without paying the tax. After traveling on foot for twenty-four days, Gandhi reached the sea on April 5, 1930, and began making salt.

He planned another act of civil disobedience at the Dharasana saltworks, south of Dandi, but the British arrested him on May 4. Gandhi’s followers continued the Salt Satyagraha for a year. During that time, the colonial government imprisoned more than sixty thousand Indians. These arrests did not surprise Gandhi. He expected Britain to overplay its hand. By arresting so many peaceful demonstrators for simply making salt, the British government looked thuggish and ridiculous. These heavy-handed actions won sympathy and support for the people of India.

Finally, the British colonial government, represented by Lord Edward Irwin, the viceroy of India, negotiated with Gandhi. The result was an agreement, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, signed in March 1931. Under terms of the agreement, the British government would free all political prisoners—and Gandhi would suspend his civil disobedience movement. The British government invited Gandhi to attend the Round Table Conference in London, leading him to believe that Indian independence would be on the agenda—but the subject never came up.

One month after the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed, Lord Irwin was replaced by Lord Willingdon, a hardliner who steadfastly opposed Indian independence. Soon after Gandhi returned to India from England, he was arrested once more.

Gandhi’s vision for India was an independent India in which Hindus and Muslims would live together in peace. He was committed to a unified India based on religious pluralism and religious unity. During the war years, however, a new Muslim identity began to assert itself, demanding a separate Islamic homeland.

World War II came to an end in the summer of 1945. Two years later, on August 15, 1947, Great Britain granted independence to India—but not as Mahatma Gandhi envisioned it. India was partitioned into two separate countries, a Hindu nation called India, and a Muslim nation called Pakistan. This created a crisis for people in the border regions. Many Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the border line. The result was religious violence, hordes of refugees flowing in both directions, and as many as a half million killed in riots.

This was not Gandhi’s dream. This was Gandhi’s nightmare. Historian Stanley Wolpert, in his book
Gandhi’s Passion
, gives us a glimpse of Indian independence as it must have appeared through Gandhi’s eyes:

In many ways, Gandhi had achieved a remarkable success. Together, he and the Indian people had thrown off British colonial rule without a bloody revolution. His principles of satyagraha had been amazingly effective. Gandhi had succeeded magnificently—but he went to his grave believing he had failed.

On the evening of January 30, 1948, Gandhi walked through the garden of the Birla House in New Delhi, accompanied by a number of followers and family members. Gandhi had lived at Birla House for nearly half a year, ever since India had won its independence from Great Britain. He was on his way to deliver an invocation at a prayer meeting.

At 5:17 p.m., a man named Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist, stepped forward. He pointed a Beretta 9 mm pistol at Gandhi’s chest and fired three times at point-blank range. Gandhi cried out as he fell, “
H? Ram
,” which means, “O God!”—not an oath, but a prayer. Gandhi died at age seventy-eight.

The gunman killed Gandhi in the mistaken belief that the Indian leader favored Muslims over Hindus. It was an irrational view, but then, so much of the violence in this world is perpetrated by people with irrational views.

As George Orwell points out, Gandhi was a man who could have done anything with his life. “Inside the saint, or near-saint,” he wrote, “there was a very shrewd, able person who could, if he had chosen, have been a brilliant success” in business or politics.
¹²
Instead, Gandhi chose to be a servant. By leading, he served. By serving, he led. Some of his simplest and humblest acts, such as stooping to make his own salt, were among his greatest acts of leadership. Putting on a homespun loincloth was his version of the Declaration of Independence.

Leadership takes many forms and is expressed many ways. Let’s look at some of the surprising leadership lessons that are woven into his life:

1.
Make serving others your first inclination
. Practice serving others until servanthood is your default switch, your instinctive reaction. When Gandhi lost his shoe while boarding the train, he didn’t take time to think about what he should do. His reaction was instinctive. He removed his shoe and threw it away, preserving the pair for someone else’s use.

If you’re in a meeting and there aren’t enough chairs, should you send someone for chairs—or get them yourself? Imagine the example you’ll set for your people if you go and get chairs and set them up yourself. The leader sets the tone for the organization. If you build an organization where everybody pitches in and nobody says, “This job is beneath me,” you build a winning organization. Set an example of serving, and you’ll build an organization that serves.

2.
Spread epic stories of servanthood
. As a boy, Gandhi was influenced by the epic tales of Shravana and King Harishchandra. Stories inspire us and teach us. We measure ourselves against the heroes of our stories. If you want to inspire servanthood in your organization, tell stories that highlight serving acts. Tell about people in your organization who do great acts of service. Tell stories of servanthood you read in
Fortune
or
Fast Company
. Share these stories in your newsletter or public speaking. Use stories to create a culture of serving.

3.
Practice the spirit of satyagraha
. Some people mistakenly define satyagraha as “passive resistance.” There’s nothing passive about it. Satyagraha is warfare. It’s nonviolent, but it’s warfare. The person practicing satyagraha will engage in acts of disobedience, acts that may entail consequences and suffering, acts of absorbing violence without hitting back. Your goal is to win without harming your opponent. Your goal is to defeat your enemy by serving.

Practicing satyagraha means you refuse to participate in unjust systems. Satyagraha requires you to align yourself with the truth. If you are a leader in the government, then satyagraha demands that you take a stand against corruption, deception, and the waste of taxpayer money. If you are a leader in business, satyagraha demands that you treat your employees, customers, suppliers, and even the government according to the truth—no cheating, no cutting ethical corners, no lies, no excuses. Satyagraha is “truth force,” it is absolute truth implemented as policy in every aspect of your leadership life.

4.
Trademark yourself as a serving leader
. Gandhi’s loincloth was his trademark. I suggest you find a
different
trademark, but find some visual way of letting your people know you are ready to serve them. Let them know your door is always open by taking the door off its hinges. Wear a T-shirt or ball cap with an “At Your Service” logo. Find an unforgettable image or a catchphrase that sticks in the mind and make that your personal theme. Let your people know you are a leader with a serving heart.

Another Gandhi trademark was the spinning wheel. The next time you see the flag of India, take note. In the middle of the flag’s white center stripe is a navy blue twenty-four-spoke wheel. By law, the flag must be manufactured out of hand-spun cloth.

The wheel represents the spinning wheel, Gandhi’s invention that he designed to set his people free of foreign domination. The very cloth the flag is made of is the hand-spun cloth Gandhi urged his people to make and wear. The Indian flag is a symbol of independence from foreign domination. Symbols are powerful. In your leadership life, find meaningful symbols that will convey your serving heart to the people you lead.

5.
Don’t trust your emotions
. After the partition of India, Gandhi was despondent. He felt he had failed. His utopian dream of the Indian nation at peace with itself had become a nightmare of riots and fleeing refugees. Gandhi ended his life in disillusionment.

Though India still has far to go, it would be wonderful if Gandhi could see how far India has come. Much of the credit for India’s progress can be traced to the self-sacrificing leadership of the Mahatma, the Great Soul.

There will be times in your leadership life when you have served and sacrificed, and you’ll feel it was all for nothing. You’ll feel depressed and disillusioned. Don’t trust your feelings. Give yourself time to gain a clear perspective on your leadership life.

Keep serving. Keep leading. Keep living out the truth force in your life as a leader.

M
OTHER
T
ERESA

In Service to God’s Holy Poor

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person
.

M
OTHER
T
ERESA

S
hortly before Christmas 1985, Mother Teresa visited Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, New York. There she met three prisoners with AIDS. They were young men ages twenty-seven to thirty-six, all serving sentences for robbery. These young AIDS sufferers reminded her of the lepers of Calcutta.

She went to the office of Mayor Ed Koch and asked his help in creating a hospice for AIDS patients at St. Veronica’s Church in the West Village. She would start with the three prisoners. Mayor Koch enlisted the help of Governor Mario Cuomo, who told her, “We have forty-three AIDS cases in the state prison system—I’d like to release them all to you.”

Mother Teresa replied that, for now, she’d better start with three. Then she described the eventual size of the hospice facility she envisioned. “Would you like to pay for it?”

“Okay,” Governor Cuomo found himself saying.

Then Mother Teresa turned to Mayor Koch and said, “Today is Monday. I’d like to open the hospice on Wednesday. We’ll need some permits cleared. Can you arrange that?”

Amazed at her chutzpah, he said, “As long as you don’t make me wash the floors.”
¹

She probably weighed all of ninety-eight pounds, yet to these two men, she was a steamroller. They couldn’t say no. This little Albanian-born servant was quite a leader.

Mother Teresa was born Anjezë (Agnes) Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia (then part of the Ottoman Empire). From her earliest years, she was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries. By age twelve, she had decided to devote her life to the service of God and others. At age eighteen, she joined the Sisters of Loreto, answering the call to become a missionary.

She arrived in India in 1929 and underwent her novitiate training in Darjeeling, taking her vows as a nun in 1931. She took the name “Sister Teresa” after Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (1873–97), the patron saint of missionaries. For nearly two decades, she taught at Saint Mary’s, the Loreto convent school in Calcutta (Kolkata), becoming headmistress in 1944.

On September 10, 1946, Sister Teresa was traveling by train from Calcutta to the Loreto convent in Darjeeling for her annual spiritual retreat. During the journey, she experienced a series of inward conversations. She believes she heard the voice of Jesus speaking directly to her soul. Jesus revealed his heart to her—his compassion for those who suffer the most. She sensed that Jesus was calling her to carry his love to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. “Come,” he told her, “be my light.”