So, I’m curious. What descriptors do you use to describe a leader? And also, what personality traits do you feel are important for a leader to have? And while we’re at it, who in your own world (work, home, play) do you consider a “leader” and why? How are they a leader? Why do you follow their lead? Are you a leader as well? If so, what are your leader-qualities?

Last night I was privileged to see Deepak Chopra speak to a rather small group of technology experts in Austin, Texas. He spoke about the “Soul of Leadership”. Deepak is an M.D., a Quantum Physicist, a philosopher, a theologian and a spiritualist. He began his hour and a half talk with an introduction to his life, how he grew up, his experience when he first came to the U.S. and so on through his connecting with neurobiologists and scientists as they explored how the human body at the cellular level works.

Believe me, listening to the first half hour of Deepak as he explains the exploration of consciousness was to my brain, much like how I experienced watching “What the Bleep Do We Know?” for the first time. I knew there was probably no possible way that my brain was going to be able to take in and synthesize what I was being told all in one fell swoop. So I sat back and enjoyed Deepak’s talk instead.

What he did talk alot about was the discontinuance (I need to go to his website to see if this is really a word he used or me just creating a word that sounds similar!) of the cells when they communicate. They go off and on and off and on and it is in the “off” time that they believe is where consciousness is found.

There we are as an audience, bound from one mind blowing explanation to the next and so when he ended up tying it all into leadership; well, let me say that I cannot tell you how we arrived there.

I can tell you though that I was left with the following:

1.) we are all connected

2.) we can either go to hell in a handbasket, alltogether or;

3.) make some global shifts in consciousness for the better

And all of these major changes can and most likely, will occur within the next 10 -1 5 years. So then the tie-in with leadership was the quality of the leaders that are needed as we go into the future. We really are being called as a species to get it that we need to grow up and mature in our way of treating each other as well as our planet. We need to find ways to work together for our survival.

One of the examples that Deepak gave was that technologically speaking, we are within 10 years of having the technology at our disposal to be able to reprogram an hand held computer device that could bring down a plane, or reprogram a computer system or bring down the telephones or shut down electrical plants. Without the maturity and WISDOM in place to understand how we impact things and how they impact us, where are we?

What if all the old rules that we grew up understanding such as choosing to go to war with a country that wronged us, imparting embargoes on countries, setting up border crossings, what if all of these did not fit us anymore as we go into this next phase of our development as humans?

And so what is your responsibility as a leader?

I believe first and foremost it is the leader’s responsibility to recognize and understand any needs and wants that they may have that have either gotten in the way of them being able to be fully present or could get in the way of them being fully present and get those suckers met. First get that if you don’t take responsibility for yourselves, no one else is going too.

Secondly, I am attracted to leaders who are willing to be real and human. Who understand that they are right here down on this planet like the rest of us, trying to find their way through life and maybe, just maybe, they’ve been given the gift to recognize more of their own gifts than most of us see in ourselves.

Thirdly, the leader for the next shift in mankind needs to be a collaborator. Needs to be someone who sees the unique gifts in other people and causes people to recognize their gifts so that they can use them to help humankind for the better.

I believe that everything in life has an answer. And the answers are all around us from the micro through to the macro. We keep seeing it over and over and over again.

My prayer for this Earth right now is that enough of us “wake up” to what we are here to do as spiritual human beings, that we see the road blocks, traps, hazards from time after historical time that we can recognize them NOW and not be doomed to repeat them.

I believe all of us can be leaders. But this kind of “leader” is not the leader of old. This kind of a leader is someone who is willing to stand up on their own two feet and walk ahead and take responsibility for the space they occupy on this Earth and ask, “What can I do now?” “How can I be of service?”