Manifesting Compassion in Leadership Development
Bapu Trust builds leadership in the people who choose to join us.
Soon after inception in 1999, we learnt that personal motivation, effective team collaboration, aptitude for creativity and innovation and leadership are not ‘natural instincts’ that staff bring when they join. No doubt the recruitment process should be mindful and strong. However, such desirable staff potential has to be diligently cultivated, refreshed and nurtured on a continuing basis. The backbone of the organization is a system that allows for staff reflection, mentoring, growth and harvesting potential of self and other together. Values that inspire this system are:
– Being leadership driven
– Respect for the human condition and diversity at every level
– Self-determination, independence and motivation at all levels
– Collaboration and partnerships within and between teams
– Team effectiveness and optimizing usefulness to oneself, to one’s team, the organization and to communities
Bapu Trust, over the years, has maintained an OD culture throughout. We have created spaces and processes for positive and proactive exchange between team members, people and organizational values, harm reduction in working together, non-violent communications, filling out roles while maintaining boundaries, ‘letting go’, ‘leadership’ over ‘management’, etc.
The Performance Guide tool and process is well entrenched within the Bapu Trust. It helps to structure people’s aspirations, work and outputs in congruence with objects of the organization and it’s projects. A strong “self-care practice” culture is in place, evident in the review meetings and in daily routines of work.
Having Seher and it’s live exchange with people and communities, having persons with psychosocial disabilities within the staff, and leadership based on “lived experience” brought a certain quality of “heart melting” within the work culture. Use of arts and artistic expression made the organization and its work more colourful, lighter, more contemplative, and centered within aspirations of each person. Words like “Partnerships”, “Networks”, “Ripple effects”, etc. became more frequently used within the team establishing our interdependence. We continued to be wonder-struck by the large wave-like, expansive effects that small gestures of generosity and support giving can have. So, BT people partnered more closely together with tens and hundreds of people in a way to build collective aspirations for a world free of barriers to inclusion. As an organization, we became more and more expansive in our wish to be useful and in our collective actions. The process of ‘scaling up’ began!
Will we be able to safeguard our people centric work culture, our compassion, our sense of justice, our wish to be useful, and our strong ethical value base?
The ‘Leadership’ language has been very handy, continues to be useful, especially the tools and the techniques. However, it does not go deep into people, touching their very existence and transforming them from within. It does not give moral questions for everyday life. Working in mental health, with a vast diversity of people this is what we need.
To address this, several efforts were made to bring new additional elements into HR, for example, in the last 2 years, “Pragnya Smriti” (“Recalling the Wisdom of the Buddha”). We rechristened our HR program as “Manifesting Compassion in Leadership Development”. The objectives of this program are:
- To value and practice appreciation of the condition of life (impermanence, multiple realities, interconnection and support).
- To articulate everyday moral questions in all areas of work and to create a shared value base revisited from time to time.
- To break ‘binaries’ (senior/junior; old/new; literate/illiterate; etc.) and being more respectful, tolerant, accepting and interdependent BT community.
- To cultivate personal fitness and mind training at all levels in the organization.
- To see staff as the first Bapu Trust “community”, and to build programs that will empower them and their families.
Through the year, several such actions relating to the performance guide, going over and beyond mere administrative rendering of OD, are done. Meticulous planning of continuing training, continuing education, mentoring each staff for moving to the next level, trust and active listening when people face barriers, being attentive to personal barriers to growth, rejoicing, encouragement and appreciation when people experience successes are done. The presence of senior BT mentors in the organization has ensured that the value conduit is clean, aired and flowing even with many new staff being added on during the scaling process.
For more details, contact
bt.admfin09@gmail.com
Tel: 0091-20-26441989
