Law of giving rules the motivation of a team

“Many times a day I realise howmuch my own inner and outer life is built on the labours of other men, bothliving and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give inreturn as much as I have received.� These are not the words of a saint butof a scientist - Albert Einstein, whose life was a saga of a search for theeternal truths of life. A life of giving is a life ofself-expansion. In giving, the self becomes an expression of nature’seternal cycle of creation, preservation, and transformation. Giving is thecreative process of transformation of self to self. In giving, one’s selfbecomes part of the perennial flow of energy in the cosmos. To give is togrow.The inspiration to give comes spontaneously to a leader. Aconscious leader understands the paradox of nature, in which the law of givingfunctions in reverse direction to the law of grabbing. As one grabs more money,power, and status one accumulates, as one hoards what one has accumulated, onegrows poorer and poorer. This poverty is the outcome of the limiting law ofmaterial wealth. All material wealth diminishes in time and in unfavourablecircumstances. The grabbing mind is forever insecure that its wealthwill be taken away by someone else. A large part of the energy of this mind iswasted in its anxiety to hold on to what it has got. This insecurity is theprice of poverty consciousness.Taoism describes the process ofgiving through the symbolic expression of emptiness. The capacity of a clay potdepends on the emptiness of space it has and not so much on the material of thecontainer. What exists in material form serves for possession and that whichdoes not exist in material form but in terms of space or capacity, serves foreffectiveness. Clinging to possessions results in the burden ofaccumulation. On the contrary, affluence is the fullness of being that comesfrom giving. “Give what you have to give. It will come back to you ... Butdo not think of that now... it will come back to you multiplied athousand-fold,� said Swami Vivekananda. When we give from a sense ofabundance, we always find ourselves in abundance. This is an infallible law ofnature.In giving with joy, leaders enact the inviolable law ofnature’s kingdom. The mind, power, and privilege and all that is held dearwill ebb away with the tide of time. The hairs will turn grey, the skin willwrinkle, the eyes will fail, and the intellect will be dulled. What will remainin circulation even when we are not around, are the intangible things we giveaway — the little acts of love, the gifts of service, companionship, andcompassion.Self-managed teams in contemporary organisations energisethemselves by means of the principle of self-giving. For that matter, noteamwork can happen without unconditional giving by team members.Team spirit is developed when giving happens spontaneously. MotherTeresa told her Sisters in the Missionaries of Charity, “Give till ithurts.� In organisational team-work, members give their labour, theirknowledge, and their attention. They also lend their ears and voices. Finally,they give their hearts and their spirits. Leadership is the task of theorchestration of unique gifts that each team member brings to the organisation.A leader’s role is to turn the conditioned efforts of team members towardsunconditional giving. (The author, a professor at IIM Lucknow, is aninternationally renowned management thinker.)