Moral Authority

The world’s no. #1 authority in mentoring Steven R Covey preaches that each one of us has four basic dimensions in our life.

• Body

• Mind

• Heart and

• Spirit

In order to achieve anything worthwhile, we need to set balance in this four dimensions of our life. Since this article's intervention is nothing but to share some information to improve the quality of our professional life. I would prefer to relate this dimensions obviously to our work life.

As per Steven Covey, we need to have four basic qualities to do something exceptional in our vocation. The qualities are

Discipline – that's for the Body

Vision – that's for the Mind

Passion – that's for the Heart

Conscience – that's for the Spirit

In fact, if our intention is to make a positive remark we need to really give greater importance to the fourth paradigm. If we neglect 'Conscience' then even if we are passionate, visionary and disciplined the result may not be a positive one. For example,

We could be regularly irregular to reach office – Disciplined! :)

We could have vision but which is against/misleading from Company's vision. - Visionary!

We could engage passionately in something

which we are not suppose to do for the Company - Passionate!

End result of the above doings would definitely bring negative undesired results.

So Conscience is very important and should go hand in hand with the other #3. ie, - Discipline, Vision and Passion.

Look back to History and consider Gandhiji and Hitler; what separates the two?. Both were visionaries, both were passionate about their people and both were disciplined. But conscience is the one thing that separates Ghandhiji from Hitler. Ghandhiji fought for Indian independence and his weapon was non-violence. He stood for us and led the independence struggle and never forgot to respect our opponents also.

He was the real leader. Ghandhiji's leadership was moral. Even then he took a very vital role in Indian independence he never held a position. He was never elected to any assembly. By considering Ghandhiji's insightful life we can compare Management and Leadership.

That is “Management is formal authority”, “Management is a position”

But “Leadership is moral authority” “Leadership is a choice”.

The point is, when we are disciplined, visionaries, passionate and most importantly we drive by conscience we will definitely make progress. We all could make a positive choice now, to satisfy our spirit – ie, do only those things which we may not feel guilt about. This choice can change our destiny and in turn our organization's to a very positive one.

Some one once said “Service is the rent that we pay for the privilege of living upon this earth”. In fact if we need to have that service mentality we need to drive each day with conscience. Yeah, I know many of us may think about the practicality. I would say if you could read the article this long, you are passionate in learning from anywhere or from anything :). To prove the practicality of these dimensions I suggest you to just stop reading for a moment and think about your life still now.

Think about the above four dimensions in your Life.

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Have you really thought on it?

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If you had really made a thought on my above request. I am sure you must have realized that whatever you have achieved were unaware/aware application of these four qualities.

So it is really possible for each one of us to lead with moral authority. Interestingly, if you have really stopped a while and thought about the things I had requested for. You have got another proof that you are living with conscience.

This article is simply meant to reaffirm yourself or to make you realize your greatness inside you. Let us contribute together our full potential to our organization. But remember to do things with conscience, with passion, with discipline and with a long term vision.

Always passionate in helping you.

Thank you, Jerin Jacob.