'Leadership can be taught'

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Deepak Chopra</span>''s dream is a global leadership institute for the young, perhaps in India. The focus, he tells <span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Nilanjana Bhaduri Jha</span>, should be on leadership training with the youth.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">You talk about the soul of leadership.How important are the heart and mind of leadership?</span><br /><br />Very important. All soul is not really going to make you action-oriented. You have to have a clear, sharp mind. You have to be a doer. You have to have the basics of risk taking and action. <br /><br />Leadership is about all aspects being very context oriented. Every situation has to be understood in its context - religious, emotional, social, economic, mythical, historical. <br /><br />That''s where the US leadership dismally fails - zero understanding of context.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Is a leader born or taught? What signs would distinguish leader from follower?</span><br /><br />I don''t think you are born with any special talent. You are influenced in childhood by parents, culture, and education. And leadership can be taught. If a child shows special interest in music, you teach him music; so a child can be taught leadership. <br /><br />It has nothing to do with charisma. If you pick leaders because of that, then you pick the wrong one. <br /><br />Leadership is the ability to bring about change and therefore unfold the potential of a group - be it family, a business or a political party. Any group. That kind of leadership has nothing to do with charisma.<br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">Does your theory address the conflict between ethics and commercial objectives? How does a leader handle this conflict and also hand it down to those he leads?</span><br /><br />In the end, your commercial objective is tied down to ethics. Ethics is a by-product of your awareness as is your commercial enterprise. I focus neither on ethics nor result-orientation - but I do know results will take care of themselves if you focus on process, you understand process, which is a product of how aware you are. <br /><br /><span style="" font-weight:="" bold="">A good leader is worth his weight in gold. Do you agree?</span><br /><br />More than that. The price of pure gold is going down anyway. We need new leadership. I have given up on my contemporaries. You want a new crop, you have to have a new seed. <br /><br />My dream is a global leadership institute that will teach principles to young people at the college level. Leadership should be a discipline. Maybe, such an institute could be in India. </div> </div>