Principle 49 :

Leadership can be understood in a couple of sentences.Firstly, the ability to think out of the box.This ability does not come naturally.It comes from an alert and knowledgeable mind and can be cultivated.Secondly,a leader should have crystal clear views of the issues that he is up against.Without this vision,he will groping in the dark like most of us.Leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi come to mind.Both knew what the issues were in great clarity;-the former on the issue of slavery even at the cost of civil war and the latter on the misery of the Indian situation due to colonialism. Gandhiji thought outside the box with his Satyagraha movement and Lincoln meant to preserve the Union,whatever the cost.

Principle 48 :

To lead from the soul means that evolution is your top priority.   You never act in such a way that you lower the self-esteem of others. You examine your underlying beliefs and modify them as new opportunities for growth reveal themselves. Because evolution is an unstoppable force in the universe, you draw upon invisible powers. Therefore, being responsible is no longer a burden.  It rests lightly on you as long as you continue to grow

Principle 47 :

All of this took place within a larger trend of income inequality, the deterioration of worker's benefits, lost pensions, and pressure to show a rising profit to shareholders.  

Leading from the soul means that you take responsibility for more than the group’s needs. You have a concern for everyone’s person growth. This responsibility begins with your own evolution.  In eight areas of your life you have the power to be guided by your soul: thoughts, emotions, perception, personal relationships, social role, environment, speech, and the body.  In all of these areas your behavior affects the people you lead.  If you evolve, so will they. 

Principle 46 :

If you follow these principles, you will succeed on many levels, engendering an atmosphere of trust and loyalty.  Working in such an atmosphere, the group will feel secure at a basic level that is very necessary. Insecurity creates massive stress and all the problems that attend it.

But we have to be realistic, too. Today more than ever, it takes consciousness to keep on the responsible track. For many in business, responsibility has become an old-fashioned value to be shrugged off in favour of profitability.  The financial crash of 2008 was engineered through a flagrant lack of responsibility, combined with risk-taking far out of bounds with sensible practice. Yet the lesson that the financial sector took away was the opposite of responsible. With record profits and huge bonuses in the offing, they went back to a slightly modified version of their worst practices.

Principle 45 :

In practice, there is a hierarchy of steps that you can climb, beginning with a lack of recklessness and rising to the top, where you are responsible for imparting the highest values of your vision. All of us fall somewhere on this path.

You earn your credentials for being a responsible leader through the following behaviors, which are noted and imitated by the rest of the group:

1. You show that actions have consequences.
2. You don't say one thing and do another.
3. You don't shirk the hard choices or delegate them to others so that you are covered no matter what happens.
4. You don't have henchmen who do the dirty work so that your hands look clean.
5. If you back someone up, you establish a bond that they can depend on.
6. You treat people decently, putting everyone on an equal plane.
7. You are cautious with other people's money, taking seriously your fiduciary responsibility.

Principle 44 :

Being responsible is the mark of a mature, conscious person. But success also requires risk-taking, intuitive leaps, innovation, and thinking outside the box. Those values will be quashed if leadership is totally conservative and cautious.  You don't have to view "responsible" as synonymous with caution and a policy of no risks. Being responsible, seen in the wider context, means showing initiative, taking mature risks rather than reckless ones, walking the talk, having integrity, and living up to your inner values. Seen from the level of the soul, a leader’s greatest responsibility is to lead the group on the path of higher consciousness.

Principle 43 :

Teach yourselves, teach everyone his real nature, call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

Swami Vivekananda