In Hindu tradition the Goddess Lakshmi is celebrated on several days each year. These days are considered auspicious festivals in veneration of the Goddess who represents the divine power that transforms dreams into reality. In addition to these specific days, the Goddess is generally honoured on Fridays. Women fast and make offerings in thanks for Her blessings to family and home, and for Her other abundant boons of prosperity, wealth, beauty, pleasure and power.
Core to Eastern wisdom is the notion of universal forces that influence human existence and experience; what the psychologist Carl Jung termed archetypes. Jung described archetypes as patterns that are common across a culture or several cultures, and that exist largely as empty vessels which are filled in through our individual and collective expressions of them. The pattern of queen for example is archetypal since it exists as a construct across many cultures. The construct is the vessel as there is a common structure, meaning and purpose to it. However, the expression of queen – the contents of the vessel – varies greatly depending on the individuals occupying the role and the cultures in which they are located.
From this perspective the Goddess Lakshmi is a powerful archetypal pattern that we can learn much from as leaders. I will consider two key attributes in this article.
Lakshmi is the Goddess who protects and blesses family and home. For a long time I have thought that the people development and coaching model of Head, Heart and Hands (Thinking, Feeling and Doing) is good, but incomplete. A critical component which I call Home is missing as core rather than implied. Organisationally home would translate into the environment and culture that the individual is located in. The conventional approach of Head, Heart and Hands, places the individual at the centre of the organisational universe. In an Eastern worldview there is a core understanding of the importance of the environment and community in which the individual is located, thus placing the individual-environment at the centre of the organisational universe. This is a crucial re-orientation because from this perspective the individual is not seen as separate from her environment but instead – and more generatively – she is understood to be a function of, and contributor toward, her environment. Her responses to the environment contribute to its shape and the environment itself is then a product of the responses of those within it. Head, Heart, Hands, Home: An extremely important invitation for leaders to look at our teams and organisations in this way, and indeed to look at ourselves in this way.
Many of have us use the term ‘enabling environment’; the Goddess Lakshmi archetype in an organisational context is expressing this need, this wisdom that a healthy, enabling home is required for healthy heads, hearts and hands. Several years ago I led a training module in strategy development and strategic thinking at a multi-national organisation with a large training campus. People from several African countries participated, some of whom had arrived from another province in South Africa or another African country the day before or the morning of the training. The training room’s walls were messy, the pens and flipchart paper left in the room were unusable, there was no milk as approval had not been obtained in time, the room was still being cleaned when training was supposed to have commenced, and these were just some of the issues. I complained in the hope of a better experience for this organisation’s own employees and the stakeholder at the time threatened to terminate my engagement. Needless to say the experience as a whole was not the most inspiring. We were located in a home that communicated that people were not that valued while being expected to be leading edge strategic thinkers acting in the best interests of the organisation. This is just one example. An environment lacking the resources, the care and the quality that enables people to show up effectively will always yield sub-optimal results. It is our role as leaders to create environments that steward healthy Heads, Hands, Hearts and Homes.
A second aspect of the Goddess Lakshmi is that she sits or stands in a lotus flower and also holds them in her hands. The lotus is a beautiful, fragrant flower that is rooted in mud, stems through the water of the lake or pond and often blossoms above the water line. The symbolism of the lotus is rich and layered. Mud we could say is symbolic of ongoing challenges in a team or organisation. It is normal for issues and problems to exist, for things to go wrong, it is normal for life’s mud to be present in our day-to-day experiences. Jung said that for a tree to grow into heaven, its roots must reach into hell.
In organisations I have worked with to support the design of healthy leadership and cultures, the struggle to stay rooted in the mud whilst reaching for positive, lasting change is always difficult. We function in a working world that has little time for the mud; it wants our time to be focused on drive, delivery and dominance, reaching for the goal without the transformation. This approach yields results for sure, but it does not generate positive, lasting impact. For outcomes that are expansive and that potentiate life, we must cultivate capacity ongoingly for engaging with what is uncomfortable, even painful, we must create safe spaces to connect with our emotions and feelings and we must trust that what will grow will be beautiful. Is this not Heart ?
In my therapeutic-coaching practice, a motif I often encounter is the individual or team in the aftermath of a failed project, a traumatic restructure, noxious leadership left unchecked for too long, or some other situation that has left people feeling injured on some level. The organisational decision more often than not is to get over it and get on with it, to move on regardless of the effects on people. The dark shadow of this decision is stuck pain that can manifest in all kinds of unhealthy ways individually and culturally.
The organisation that stays stuck in the mud is also true, especially in the NGO and NPO sectors in my experience. In these contexts, people get so attached to the painful histories that as collectives they do not lead the work of transforming and re-generating. Sadly this often means a lacklustre meeting of their noble theories of change.
I have experienced the courageous people who work to transform these feelings ultimately as the healthier leaders, the lotuses rooted in their painful experiences, engaged with their vulnerability and feelings, and blossoming in their humanity. As leaders, creating healthy organisations requires that we are doing our personal work to heal and strengthen so that we might cultivate environments that enable others to do the same.
So, on one day a week, perhaps even every Friday on the day that the Goddess Lakshmi is honoured, we might invite her wisdom and blessing by taking the time to listen, to connect and to be deliberate about shaping more integrated, positive organisations.
About the author:
Vasintha Pather is an Expressive Arts Therapist and systemic leadership coach based in Johannesburg. She has over 25 years of experience internationally as an organisational and systemic leadership development consultant partnering with leaders to design healthy, innovative organisational cultures. She specialises in creativity, archetypal wisdom and trauma-informed leading.