Yesterday I arranged a meeting between a group of Danish leaders and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the famous Indian guru, for a talk about spirituality at work and leadership.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is not only the spiritual leader of hundreds of thousands of people world wide, he is also the leader of the world’s largest volunteer-based NGO operating in nearly 150 countries, and he has some great perspectives on leadership and on how spiritual values and practices can improve the business world.

Recently the organization he founded, the Art of Living, celebrated it’s 25th birthday – and 2,5 million people came. CNN had a great report from this Silver Jubilee.

I have no guru myself and I am not a member of Art of Living but I have taken some of their courses, and I appreciate their approach to spirituality because it is non-religious, non-dogmatic, light-hearted and above all fun. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar doesn’t take himself very seriously – and I always appreciate that in a leader.

Yesterday’s event was proof positive that the business world is opening up to these perspectives and that there is a desire for new ways of making people happy at work. And there is good reason to do so. The main things we stand to get from introducing spirituality at work are:

• Less stress
• More self-development and better self-leadership
• Better team-work and communication
• More energy
• More happiness at work

I had to stick that last one in there. Sorry :o)

My main regret is that we didn’t have more time to explore these questions yesterday – they go to the core of business and why we do what we do, and are not really resolvable in the space of an afternoon.

What I enjoyed most about the event was meeting other business people with similar interests, and seeing the lively debate sparked by this meeting. I strongly hope that we can use this as the start of an effort to focus more on these questions in Danish businesses. I’ll certainly try to get something started.

The proceeds from the meeting went to the Dollar a Day Foundation, which runs school for poor, rural children in India, so participants did something good just by showing up :o)