By Suryanarayana Saraswathula
Before Leading Others, Understand What Is Leading You
Leadership is usually described in terms of what we do with others: setting direction, making decisions, building trust, developing people, and guiding organizations through change. We spend considerable time learning how to communicate better, think strategically, delegate effectively, and influence those around us.
But there is an earlier question that receives far less attention:
Before I lead others, what is leading me?
A leader may believe that a decision is being made through careful judgment. Yet beneath that decision may be ambition, attachment to a particular outcome, fear of failure, the need for recognition, impatience, or simply a deeply established habit of responding in a certain way. None of these necessarily announces itself. We experience the decision as our decision, often without examining what may be shaping it.
This is one reason the Bhagavad G?t? remains so relevant to the inner dimensions of leadership. Its starting point is not a technique for influencing others. It is a human being confronting himself. Arjuna stands in the middle of a crisis, unable to move forward with clarity. Lord Krishna’s teaching gradually directs his attention beyond the circumstances surrounding him toward the tendencies shaping his response.
What Shapes the Leader Within?
Consider two leaders facing the same situation: an important project has fallen behind schedule.
One responds immediately, demanding explanations and tightening control. Another pauses, tries to understand what has happened, and then decides what intervention is needed. The external situation is the same. What differs is not simply leadership style. Each leader is seeing and responding to the situation through a different set of inner tendencies.
Much of what shapes a leader’s response operates before it becomes visible in words or actions. Our tendencies, preferences, emotions, assumptions, and habitual patterns influence how we interpret what happens around us. They affect what draws our attention, what disturbs us, what we resist, and what prompts us to act. Becoming aware of these influences is an important step toward understanding what may be leading us from within.
The Bhagavad G?t? offers a particularly useful way of understanding these inner tendencies through the three gu?as: sattva, rajas, and tamas. They are not labels for three kinds of people. Rather, they describe qualities of nature that operate in all of us, in different combinations and at different times.
Sattva is associated with clarity, balance, and discernment. Rajas expresses itself through activity, desire, restlessness, and attachment to results. Tamas appears as inertia, confusion, resistance, or avoidance. None of us operates from only one of these tendencies. A leader may approach one decision with remarkable clarity and another with impatience or resistance. The value of understanding the gu?as is therefore not in categorizing ourselves, but in becoming more attentive to what may be influencing us at a particular moment.
That awareness can change the quality of leadership.
When a difficult email arrives, is my immediate response coming from clarity, or from the urge to defend myself? When someone on my team disagrees with me, am I listening carefully, or has my attachment to being right already begun shaping what I hear? When a decision has been postponed repeatedly, is further analysis truly needed, or has discomfort gradually turned into avoidance?
These are small questions, but they reveal something important. Before our tendencies become visible in our leadership behavior, we can often recognize them in the movements of the mind.
Awareness Before Action
Becoming aware of these tendencies does not mean judging every thought or emotion as good or bad. Nor does it require us to eliminate rajas or tamas and somehow remain permanently in sattva. The first step is simpler: to notice.
That small shift from reaction to observation can create space for discernment.
Imagine receiving a message that challenges a decision you have made. The first impulse may be to respond immediately. Perhaps the criticism feels unfair. Perhaps the person has questioned something in which you have invested considerable effort. The response begins forming before you have fully considered what was said.
What happens if, before replying, you ask:
What is influencing me right now?
Is there clarity, or am I reacting from irritation, defensiveness, anxiety, or attachment to my position?
A second question can take the reflection deeper:
How is this influencing what I am seeing?
The situation itself may not have changed. But our ability to see it clearly can change considerably once we recognize the lens through which we are viewing it.
And then comes the question that turns awareness toward action:
What response would bring greater clarity?
The answer may still be firm. Thoughtful leadership does not mean avoiding disagreement, delaying difficult decisions, or becoming passive. Sometimes clarity requires saying no, confronting a problem, or making an unpopular decision. The difference is that the response is less likely to be driven unconsciously by the very forces we have failed to notice.
This pause need not take long. In many leadership situations, a few moments of genuine observation can be enough to interrupt an automatic response. Over time, those moments can become a discipline: not withdrawing from action but bringing greater awareness to the place from which action begins.
The Leader and the Inner Battlefield
This brings us back to Arjuna.
The battlefield of the Bhagavad G?t? is real, and Arjuna’s crisis arises in the midst of an impending war. Yet the dialogue that follows also reveals an inner struggle familiar far beyond the battlefield: the tension between responsibility and emotion, clarity and confusion, action and avoidance.
Leaders encounter their own versions of these tensions. A decision may be necessary, yet relationships make it painful. An organizational change may be called for, yet uncertainty creates hesitation. A capable colleague may need greater responsibility, yet a leader’s own need for control makes entrustment difficult. We may know what needs to be done and still discover resistance within ourselves.
The Bhagavad G?t? does not ask us to pretend that these inner movements do not exist. It invites us to recognize them so that they need not determine our actions unconsciously.
Perhaps this is one of the less visible responsibilities of leadership. Before asking, “How do I lead this situation?” we may sometimes need to ask, “What within me is trying to lead it?”
Leading from a Clearer Place
Thoughtful leadership does not begin with having all the answers. It begins with becoming more aware of the place from which our answers arise.
We cannot prevent ambition, fear, attachment, impatience, or uncertainty from appearing within us. Leadership does not require us to achieve a state of perfect inner calm before we act. What we can cultivate is the ability to recognize these influences without automatically allowing them to determine what we do next.
This is where self-awareness and discernment begin to work together. Awareness helps us notice what is happening within us. Discernment helps us determine what deserves to guide our response.
Over time, this changes more than individual decisions. It can change how we listen, how we respond to disagreement, how we exercise authority, how readily we entrust responsibility to others, and how steadily we face outcomes we cannot fully control.
The Bhagavad G?t? reminds us that the outer circumstances of life will continue to demand action. The challenge is not to escape those circumstances, but to understand what is happening within us as we meet them.
That idea became one of the central reflections behind my book, The Making of a Thoughtful Leader: Timeless Wisdom from the Bhagavad G?t? for Today’s Leaders. Drawing on the Bhagavad G?t? and the realities of contemporary organizational life, the book explores these questions through the lived experiences of Rajiv, a representative senior executive, and his colleagues Priya and Arun, as they navigate decisions, relationships, responsibility, technology, change, and the inner challenges of leadership.
Perhaps the question worth carrying into the next difficult conversation, decision, or moment of uncertainty is a simple one:
Before I lead others, what is leading me?
About the Author
Suryanarayana Saraswathula is a leadership practitioner, mentor, and lifelong student of the Bhagavad G?t?. His work brings together global technology leadership, developing people, and the exploration of timeless wisdom to help leaders navigate today’s challenges.
During his twenty-five years at Caterpillar, he held leadership roles in technology, software engineering, and organizational transformation across the United States and India, leading multicultural teams and developing leaders in complex environments.
Teaching and learning have remained central throughout his journey. He has been deeply engaged in the study and sharing of the Bhagavad G?t? and facilitates weekly adult study sessions exploring its practical relevance to self-awareness, leadership, and purposeful living.
He is the author of The Making of a Thoughtful Leader: Timeless Wisdom from the Bhagavad G?t? for Today’s Leaders.
