The Bhagavad Gita’s Approach to Team Management

Excitement and Lack Of Teamwork

Excitement: As soon as Bhīṣma, the grandsire blew his conch shell, the Kaurava army also started beating the drums, blowing bugles, trumpets and horns  all suddenly. It says it suddenly started. The combined sound was tumultuous and a confused noise. It represents excitement, eagerness.

Excitement is a sort of anxiety, anxiety is a sort of excitement. If you are after excitement you cannot be meditative, you cannot move to a subjective world, you cannot move inwards, because there you will be alone and there is no excitement. Excitement needs the other.

Even before the war started they were excited, which is an indication that they are not focused on what they have. Their focus was on others. Like the Hare, after challenging the Tortoise the Hare was so excited that he even forgot that right now he was in a running competition with the Tortoise. It thought that the Tortoise was very slow and he could rest. He rested and what happened – he lost. With all the capacity to win he still lost the race.

Lack Of Teamwork: For Duryodhana his team was special but not unique. As Duryodhana was proclaiming from the beginning that we have strength, victorious people with us, sophisticated weapons, etc. These words made the team excited about it. All this was available to them but in their personal capacity. Not as team strength. By making everyone special he created a rift within the team. Everyone was special, not unique.

Difference between a special person and a unique person – a special person is out of comparison. They are different from other persons, they feel that they are extraordinary, while a unique person knows that they are simply unique, as they are without any comparison. Unique person is connected with everyone as he knows that everything in existence is incomplete, imperfect.

Codependency

As soon as Arjuna saw different grades of friends and relatives he became overwhelmed, meaning he became aware of the objective world, lost track of his subjectivity. This is Unconsciousness. Whenever we become aware of the objective world and become unconscious of self this is Unconsciousness. This is an entry point of codependency.

How to recognise codependency:

Co-dependent relationships are characterized by a number of things, the main ones being addiction to trying to “fix” someone, depending on another person to be happy, and a feeling of “needing” someone, just wanting to be around them, etc.

When our fear of losing someone outweighs our fear of losing our own self into them, we can be sure that we are co-dependent. For example, when we have found ourselves forgiving someone time after time, having to “get over” constant feelings of disappointment or frustration out of fear that the person will leave us if we don’t.

We are letting fear be the motivator of the relationship which means we have completely become prisoners to their behavior. Roles have been established, and the more we are attached to these roles, the more dependent we are on the other person to reinforce the one we are playing.