Another way for Beingful leaders to lead is to include other levels of identity or personal self by going beyond material wellbeing and seeking the humanistic wellbeing of their stakeholders. This means nurturing the human and social connections of employees and other stakeholders with one another and the corporation, thereby transforming corporate culture itself.

But this journey requires us to understand who we ourselves are, as the Upanishads emphasize. The life of Ursula Burns, the CEO of Xerox and the only female black CEO of a Fortune 500 company during her time, illustrates why it is the key to becoming a Beingful leader-by-example. It is this understanding that connects us to the common humanity that we share with others.

Ursula Burns grew up as a poor black child on in the Lower East Side of New York. Her mother washed and ironed clothes for a living and exchanged cleaning services with a local doctor to provide health care for her three children. Despite these conditions, Ursula learned valuable lessons from her mother:

Where you live, she pointed out, has nothing to do with who you are. Who you are is about your character, it’s about the amount of energy you put into things, it’s about how much control you take off your whole life. She really believed that you control your destiny, your future.
Value of Education: When I was a kid, she couldn’t change where we lived; but she could invest a disproportionate amount of her energy and her resources towards our education. My mother’s highest pay, ever, was $4,400 a year; yet, somehow she managed to send me to a high school that cost $65 a month. Multiply that by three and you realize that half of her salary went to our education.

This emphasis on education led Burns eventually to a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Columbia University. She joined Xerox in 1981 and stayed there ever since. Her hard work, dedication, and intelligence soon got noticed. In 1991, she became the executive assistant to the CEO of Xerox. In 2000, she became a senior vice president and began to work closely with Anne Mulcahy, who would later become CEO. In 2009, Burns became CEO, the first time that a Fortune 500 company had a woman-to-woman CEO transition.

Despite these rare accomplishments, Ursula Burns managed to retain authenticity, directness, and a sense of self-understanding that was remarkable. An emphasis on being authentic and bringing your whole self to the workplace was important for her. She had developed a reputation at Xerox for her directness and her encouragement of employees to be more frank and impatient (and even cranky!) with one another.

The Humanist