Editor Natasha Gunn goes to Almere, the Netherlands, to hear Deepak Chopra speaking on leadership and discovers that, for a true leader, there is nothing more important than getting in touch with your own soul.

Defining a leader
Chopra defined a great leader as “the symbolic soul of a collective dream.” Which means the leader represents the dream of those they lead.  Not necessarily a good manager, a leader, whether leading a family, community, country or the world, is a catalyst for change and transformation.  The leader must ‘be’ the change, have a mythical story behind them  - people and societies engage in action to consume a myth, which can be negative or positive: suicide bombers, marching for peace in times of war, sparking revolutions and movements for ecology, feminism, justice - and also be a good story-teller..

Myths have eternal themes
At home, Chopra said that his mother was the leader and his inspiration. He tells a tale about when Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, passed through his home village in India. Before the event, his parents were full of the subject. His mother particularly was focussed on choosing the ‘right’ Sari to wear. His father remarked that it didn’t really matter which sari she chose as Nehru wouldn’t notice it anyhow.

When the day came, Chopra and his family waited from the early hours to glimpse the great man driving past. Mrs Chopra had chosen to wear "a beautiful pink sari". People lined the streets, hung from trees, piled up on top of buses, anywhere where it was possible to get a view of the great man.

The six-year-old Chopra remembers Nehru’s car driving slowly up to where his family were standing, and then, amazingly, Nehru, who was wearing a white suit with a rose in his buttonhole, turned, looked as his mother, took out the rose he was wearing and threw it to her. Mrs Chopra caught the rose as the stunned crowd looked on and afterwards displayed the flower to the whole village in her living room until it withered. She then threw a party and gave each departing guest a petal. The rose, she explained to the young Chopra, symbolised the Indian dream of independence.

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