Chopra on the Workplace: Business Must Redefine Itself
Published: Saturday, September 01, 2001
Natural Business spoke with Chopra recently about the role of spirituality in the workplace.
Natural Business: What is the current state of spirituality in the workplace in the United States?
Chopra: It’s emerging. It’s in puberty, you might say. It’s trying to find its place.
I recently spoke at a conference, sponsored by Business Week magazine, about spirituality, leadership and business. There were CEOs in attendance from almost 100 major, multinational companies, and there seems to be a very real interest in spirituality in the workplace.
NB: Did the executives there grasp the concept of spirituality in the workplace? Did they get it?
Chopra: Yes, they did. Because they were very high-level CEOs, and what I do is, when I talk about spirituality, I do it in a way that is very practical for them. So I talk about spiritual principles of intuition or creativity or management or leadership or communication skills, and so it’s very practical. I also talk about synchronicity and how to take advantage of that. And anybody in a top position, they know that they didn’t get there through sheer hard work. They relate to the coincidences and they relate to the intuition; they relate to the gut decisions that they made that were critical for them. So, you know, when you’re talking to people who are really top leaders, they are very responsive because they accidentally bumped into the spirit in order to get to where they are.
NB: What is the single greatest pitfall that businesses face in the area of personal development?
Chopra: I think the answer is defining business itself. You know, when you go to business school, the first talk is the purpose of a business, and the talk is that the purpose of business is to make money. So the definition of the purpose of business is wrong. I think that’s the biggest issue—you have to redefine what the purpose of business is, and I think the true purpose of a business, as we move from an information-based society into a knowledge-based society, and ultimately a wisdom-based society, the true purpose of business is to nurture the ecosystem, to nurture the web of life and nurture the needs of the ecosystem. And then you must think of nurturing people— people are part of the ecosystem— and then making money, which is a by-product of it [the nurturing]. And it will be a good by-product of it, you know.
In the age of agriculture, the sources of wealth were animal products and animal husbandry. If you read the Old Testament, it was all camels and sheep. In the age of the hunter-gatherer, it was weapons to hunt.
In the age of industry, the sources of wealth were minerals and the machines to extract the minerals. Today, the hunter-gatherer nations
sell arms. That’s how they make money. In the age of information, the source of wealth is the microchip. As we go into a knowledge-based society, our sources of wealth will become knowledge that nurtures. Knowledge that nurtures is wisdom.
So I see a progression: hunter-gatherer. Agriculture. Industry. Information. Knowledge. A wisdom-based society. It doesn’t mean the others disappear. We still have the predator nations dealing in arms. We’ll still have industry, agriculture— there’s a source of overlap. But the dominant source of wealth will be anybody who understands the eco-system and how to nurture it, because it’s going to become a major issue for us in the next few decades and especially in the next two generations. Are we going to survive or not? And so anybody who can create a business out of nurturing the ecosystem is going to make a lot of money, and not only that, somehow, information technologies are going to play a major role in that—where you can have somebody from Bangladesh getting the right kind of information from Buenos Aires. It doesn’t make any difference anymore. That’s the truth, I think.
NB: The Chopra Wellness Center has programs that address the issue of spirituality and the workplace. Are there one or two key things that employers can do to help their employees grow?
Chopra: Well, actually it’s very simple. Let me use an acronym. It’s called LEADERS. L stands for look and listen, with heart, with the mind, with the soul, with the flesh. Be a good observer, be unbiased. Create a vision and share your vision with enthusiasm and inspiration, and declare your personal investment in terms of energy and time and resources and recoup the investment in terms of energy, time and resources.
E stands for empowerment. Empower yourself and empower your people. That comes from being self-referred. It means being immune to criticism and also to flattery, but responsive to feedback.
A stands for awareness. You have to know: what do I want, what is my purpose, who am I as a business? Who are we, and what is our purpose? What are we doing other than making money? What do we want? Who are our customers? What do they want? What is their purpose in coming to us? It’s all awareness oriented.
D is for doing. Being action and reaction oriented. Be a role model for action, be responsive to feedback, be persistent in your action and your perception, have the ability to celebrate.
E is for entering expanded states of creativity and intuition, and learning how to do that. We teach that. You know, creativity and intuition are things that women are said to have, and they do, because women are very body focused. Men are not in touch with their bodies. So, we give them techniques for intuition and creativity, and for entering states of intuition and creativity.
R stands for responsibility. That means taking initiative and taking risks, but with sobriety. Walking your talk, that’s part of responsibility. Maintaining good health, which means emotional health—a lot of studies show that emotionally the average CEO is an idiot. They are grown-ups, and they like to compare their golf scores, how much money they are making and what cars they drive; that’s how they see themselves. They are 8 year olds emotionally, in an adult’s body. So, responsibility means you need to be emotionally in good health and not just create your own little temper tantrum.
And the last is S, which stands for synchronicity and taking advantage of synchronicity to create your own good luck. So it ends up being a very spiritual seminar.
NB: What challenges do you face as a business leader within your own organizations to implement personal development for your employees?
Chopra: Well, we have a very effective COO, Nancy Johnson. She’s very grounded in spirituality. But the thing is, in so-called spiritual organizations, sometimes you can have a lot of consciousness and no competence. It’s all consciousness, but there’s no competence. Then you see the really hard businesses, and they are all competence and no consciousness. You’ve got to somehow blend consciousness with competence, and that’s what we’ve found in our COO. She’s very effective in terms of making business decisions. But then, there’s this whole other aspect—she’ll sit with every employee, ask for feedback and ask for feedback about her performance as his or her leader. It’s a very important issue. She’ll ask, “Am I doing what I said I was going to do?” So, we have been doing that for a while now. We have retreats. We had a retreat just two weeks ago for the middle-to-senior executives; we have 60 to 65 people working there, so they just got together and took the day off and just redefined and refreshed the vision, the purpose. We have a very clearly defined vision and purpose.
NB: What is your vision for the role of business in society?
Chopra: You know, I think that if business goes the way it should go, with wisdom-based business, you have two things possible for the future, which would be wonderful. No.1, you would really restore the eco-system—heal the ecosystem, make it a sustainable culture and civilization. No. 2, which people don’t see yet, is to eliminate poverty. There is no reason why there should be poverty in the world. It is nothing but the impoverishment of soul and spirit.
NB: Are you hopeful that this will happen in a certain period of time?
Chopra: It has to happen in the academic world, and it has to happen in the business schools, for us to see a level of progress. However, it is happening. I am in negotiations to teach a course on spirituality in business at the Kellogg Business school, or I may teach at another business school in California.
So it is happening. That’s where it needs to happen. In the past in the medical world, the American Medical Association never approved our courses. But now one can get Continuing Medical Education credits. So it’s happening. Hopefully it will happen in our lifetime.
For more information about Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Center for Well Being, visit www.chopra.com.