PTA Principle 02

hi christian everyone welcome to the principles of temple administration course today we're going to cover the principle called leadership leadership we all know it's not necessarily an easy service but if you have the propensity and the nature to be a leader then it has to be engaged in the service of krishna leadership basically means that we need to establish unity of purpose and a clear direction of the organization the temple or center leaders have to create and maintain the internal environment in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organization's objectives brief overview of

the content of this course is we're going to look at the consideration of needs for different persons in your community as a leader we're also going to look at creating clear vision establishing vision mission and objectives values trust and fear and inspiration encouragement and recognition by the end of this course we expect you to be able to identify the key benefits of leadership understand various dimensions of leadership and identify the methodologies by which this principle can be implemented on the pages of the bhagavatam there are a number of amazing leaders from pritu maharaj to ambarish

maharaja pariksit maharaj and of course we know our srila prabhupada was an amazing example of a leader someone who was able to follow the scripture and the principles of dharma and inspire so many others lord rama yudhisthira maharaj it's truly it's unlimited examples of good leadership so some of the key benefits that we expect from this principle of leadership is that people are going to understand and be motivated towards organizations goals and objectives activities will be evaluated and aligned and implemented in a unified way and miscommunication between all levels of an organization will hopefully be

minimized so an important aspect for a leader is that we need to understand the needs of our community as a whole and that's not an easy thing because often within our society our communities are made up of such a variety of people so we're going to try to look at just a few of the needs for different aspects of our community so we have existing congregation management which might mean gbc or temple management full-time devotees employees newcomers financiers local communities around the temple government and ultimately the iscon society so what are some of the needs

of our existing congregation or community personally i prefer the word community as opposed to congregation but what are the general needs we saw in principle one that in a devotee-focused community through the process of feedback forms we can find out what are the spiritual the physical the mental and the social needs of our community so the leadership uh try to know what the spiritual needs are the physical needs and the mental needs and so on in the community and then they try to fulfill those needs as much as possible according to the capacity of the

center so what does it mean like with the needs of management then it just means that as a leader you're going to have to also please your authorities and make sure that you're present in meetings you're fulfilling the desires of of the seniors and also that you're able to implement the policies that are passed in those meetings so what are the needs of full-time devotees so that means uh you know you might have full-time devotees who are brahmacaris or brahmacharini's you may have full-time devotees who are actual congregation members so leadership is always updated with

the needs of the full-time devotees that they feel enthusiastic to be part of the center leadership understands the importance of these members as these people are basically running the center on the ground level and leadership understands how it's not so easy to get a dedicated full-time person to to be part of your temple really we need to give a lot of respect and appreciation of these persons so what are the needs of the employees well leadership understands the different levels of employees in the temple and their needs leadership understands that for a quality service by

employees they must be given all the required facilities and proper remuneration which they would have received in any other organization it means that if someone has to be an employee you need to look after them you need to give them the facility you need to give them to la the lakshmi that they required in order to maintain themselves and their families what are some of the needs of newcomers well as a leader you need to understand the changing current of time and the expectation also the needs of newcomers or a potential devotee who visits the

center anyone who's brand new who walks through the door they could be a potential devotee and the way that you interact and deal with their needs is going to help to shape them in order to become a devotee and leadership understands that newcomers and visitors are getting their very first opportunity to interact with devotees so it's really important the quality and the attention that we give to newcomers what are the needs of the financiers well leadership understands how much importance there should be on these people who are actually funding the different projects and leadership needs

to understand their immediate and their family needs financier must receive the confidence of honesty and transparency from their donations so that means that the leadership really has to be very clear they have to spend the lakshmi on what they said they're going to spend the lakshmi on and they have to be accountable for that and they have to be able to present that in a very transparent way so what are some of the needs of the local community around the templer center so we have to be very sensitive towards the neighbors and understand what are

their needs and what can create a problem uh this may mean that you know you have may have your temple right next door to a another house let's say you have a small center and if you're doing 24-hour care time all night then you know you're keeping up the neighbors on every side of the building this may eventually cause a problem so we have to be very conscientious of what are the actual needs of our community around us if we have a healthy relationship with the local community around us then the hearts of the the

leadership for sustainable future is maintained within the center because these persons are going to be more willing to help and assist us in any way that they can it makes a huge difference if you have a good relationship a quick example is just recently this year around christmas our neighbors who are a big marketing not big marketing company but let's say medium-sized marketing company they became so inspired by our daily harry now processions that for christmas they invited us to record an album where we chant hare krishna to different christmas melodies then they made a

video uh they actually produced the cd they printed the cd they sent they uploaded it to itunes they sent it out to all of their companies and clients and they basically promoted the temple simply because they were so inspired by the daily herring processions and then they gave all the proceeds and to the temple as a donation so this is the benefit of developing nice relationships with the local community what are the needs of the government so the leadership obviously has to follow the rules of the government whatever the statutory or regulatory requirements are you

should also try to keep good relations with government officials as much as possible it makes things very awkward and difficult if we have bad relationships with local authorities so we should always try to be spotless about our financial dealings tax immigration employment law all of these things best that we are above board on everything of course we have the needs of the ascon society so as leaders we have to understand that the community is at the center and also represents the iscon community of the whole world any blemish or wrongdoing may affect the image of

our whole society globally so as we act on a micro level that also affects either positively or in a detrimental way iskgan on a global scale so leadership understands the expectations from the global iscon society of cooperation and unity for service to srila prabhupada so this is vital and very important so creating a clear vision for the future of the center i mean this is a huge responsibility as a leader and it's something that we have to take very seriously so the ability to think about or plan the future with wisdom means that we have

to be able to see the unseen future and also see the unfolding future so these are some terms you may need to look into a little bit more but it means we have to be able to see what's coming and kind of be able to assess or ascertain what might be coming that we're not really sure is out there so it's good if we can create a vision statement and this will def define the optimal desired future state creates a mental picture of what we want to achieve over a certain period of time it's also

going to help to provide guidance for us and inspiration as to what an organization is focused on achieving in the next say 5 10 15 20 years it's going to function as a kind of north star or a guiding light for us in whatever we do in the short term decisions leading to the long term and it should be written very succinctly in an inspirational manner that makes it easy for everyone to repeat it at any given time of course the leaders can change but a clearly established vision encourages people to focus on what's important

and better to understand the organization of the temple or center wide the change and alignment of different resources so even if the leaders go but the vision and the mission should remain like that north pole or north star that doesn't change so what is a mission statement mission statement clearly defines the present state or purpose of an organization it more or less it answers three questions what do what the temple or center does who it does it for and how it does what it does chiller propped gave us the seven purposes of miscon so you

should be very very familiar with these seven purposes if you're not i would like to encourage you to please look in the uh resource material that we've given you because we've listed out these seven purposes that shiloh prophet set out initially in new york almost 50 years ago when he when he actually established iskcon so there are a few of examples of shiloh prabhupada's vision for different iscon branches few quotes here prabhupad said i wish that each and every branch should keep their independent identity and cooperate keeping the acharya in the center on this principle

we can open any number of branches all around the world sushila prabhupada's vision was that as long as we kept him in the center as the founder acharya we can open so many branches that function independently but work together cooperatively so there are a number of different quotes one once the center is open it must be maintained a responsible man for each center must be found out before opening the center so prabhupad was very clear that before you open something or start something new make sure you have someone who's going to take responsibility the likelihood

is that if you're watching this video and doing this training course that means you so you're the person that's been chosen and shirla prophet is depending on counting on you to look after and help make things possible within the templar center that you're responsible for so leadership could co-create and implement the vision established by srila prabhupada in the community according to time place and circumstance as i just said we're responsible to srila prabhupada to make sure that we fulfill his vision in our temple or center so objectives so it's really important that we set clear

objectives once we know what our vision and mission is so these objectives refer to specific measurable results for the initiative's broad goals and an organization's objectives generally lay out how much of what will be accomplished and by when for example one of several objectives for a temple might be that by next year to increase book distribution by 10 or 20 percent so this is an example of objectives different types of objectives are that we're going to give here are based around three behavioral objectives community level outcome objectives and process objectives so what are behavioral behavioral

objectives so these objectives specifically look at changing the behaviors of people means what they're doing and saying and the products or the results of their behaviors for example a neighborhood improvement department of the temple might develop an objective around having an increase of presonum serving for the improved relations of the local community so this is a behavioral objective community level outcome objectives they're more or less related to the behavioral outcome objectives but are more focused on the greater community level instead of just an individual level for example the same group might suggest preaching along with

prasad to the to a certain community in the neighborhood as a community level outcome objective process objectives so these are the objectives that refer to the implementation of activities necessary to achieve other objectives for example the group might adopt a comprehensive plan for improving neighborhood housing so these are all different types of objectives so really the leadership should also try to introduce challenging roles and projects along with targets you've got to use objectives as these roles give sense of accomplishment to the devotees who's serving in your temples so we need to look at the values

and what kind of attitude are we going to need to have to achieve the above targets and how are we going to behave with one another in order to achieve the goals leadership has to ensure that we're a templar center and not a corporate entity now what does that mean it means that our values are vaishnav sadachar our work is called seva the money that we bring in is called lakshmi and we're representing the lord and his family so our behavior with each other and everyone will determine and let people know who we are and

it will help them to appreciate our movement or not so other values are immediately visible in our interactions behavior and words so leadership should also value these values humility tolerance forgiveness respect selflessness servitude vaisnav etiquette in their own personal lives and also ensure that it should be spread in all the different sections of our templar center communities so as a leader it's really important that you establish trust and try to eliminate fear within your community an example is that every citizen in ayodhya they trusted lord rama with all their heart and soul there was no

fear in the kingdom of lord rama and these are two very important ingredients for leadership so we should try to create trust and all the different sections of devotees especially that we discussed earlier about the decisions of the leadership and for this to happen it means that the leadership has to really become selfless and leadership must value every single devotee in the community we have to try to eliminate the fears of the devotees the fears they may have to come forward and share any issue or concern that might be there for them and facing them

so we want to create this mood within our communities that devotees can reveal their hearts and minds to us because there's so much trust so much love and it's not some sort of dictatorship program so there's an example that like a father we need to look after the devotees so much and protect them that they don't have any fear and like a mother generally everyone trusts their mother so leadership needs to understand that these different needs are there so that we can accomplish the tasks that are given to any of the devotees so the needs

in short may be proper training providing manpower providing adequate funds proper systems of reporting of you know not micromanaging people and you know responsibility and accounting and different things like that so good example of this is in the area of book distribution if someone wants to take up responsibility and book distribution and you're the leader you need to help them they might need training to understand how to manage the the the warehouse or the the place where you keep all the books to go down resources may be required providing required manpower to assist or helping

them or they may need funding to purchase the books we need to be able to give them the freedom to not micromanage them give them space let them get on with it let them make some mistakes you know of course not major mistakes but let them let them stumble around a little bit sometimes the struggle is what needs to happen for people so that they can grow and learn and give them responsibility and account and keep the accountability intact so there are three very important uh principles in this this uh let's say values of leader

being a good leader we need to be able to inspire we need to be able to encourage and we need to be able to recognize the contribution of the devotees so in this way we have to understand that this is really our most important service of all as a leader that you need to give the inspiration and encouragement and it needs to be given throughout the project to anyone who's making a contribution you'll be you'll be in you'll find that this inspiration or or this encouragement and reciprocation it's like fuel to feed the enthusiasm of

the devotees this gives the importance of the service being rendered along with the person rendering the service so we need to encourage that that service is important and so is the person performing the service we all know that srila prabhupada was amazing he was the master of fanning the spark and he would encourage the the tiniest little service that anyone would do and he would just blow it up and make them feel like so wonderful so we need to follow in shiloh prabhupada's footsteps and really inspire and encourage the devotees and we need to recognize

that any service done and completed by someone there should be a specific function or something to recognize this it may not always be possible with every little service but in london we also have a volunteers program for all the volunteers who help with all the festivals and so many aspects of the running of the temple so every year we try to have an event where we say thank you we also have a patrons program where we our patron program has turned out to be every year we have a we hire a boat and we go

down the thames so we invite all of our patrons to come on this boat we have kirtan nice brasadam we invite a vip to give a lecture a drama and we just have a wonderful day and say thank you very much we want to recognize all of you who are helping to make so many activities possible in the temple so we need to we need to do this regularly and perpetually so there's so many things that could be discussed really around the principle of leadership we could probably do an entire uh you know six to

twelve course um module course about leadership we've just tried to give you some food for thought you're a leader you're a manager you're taking responsibility in srila prabhupada's iskcon and we're just really trying to give you some principles that may assist you and your service to shula prabhupada so we'd like to thank you very much for your kind attention and we hope that you've gained some benefit from something that you've heard in this course thank you hari krishna