Eps 1: spirituality in leadership
— Spirit
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Host
Allan Gregory
Podcast Content
This perspective suggests that spirituality in leadership does not entail directives and the chain of command, but rather transformative leadership, which defines an organizations values and helps followers feel they are contributing to a valued, worthy goal-set. Combining these two terms suggests that the leader who integrates spirituality into their leadership will be the one who causes others to search for and understand their inner selves, and who cultivates among his followers a sense of meaning and importance. One definition of spirituality in leadership is a holistic approach to leadership where a leader seeks to foster a sense of significance and interconnectedness among employees. Leaders should model values of altruistic love through their attitudes and behaviors, creating a sense of belonging--that part of spiritual wellbeing that gives a person the feeling that they are understood and valued.
Spiritual leadership involves motivating and inspiring workers internally, through hope/faith, a vision for serving critical stakeholders, and a company culture built upon the values of altruistic love, in order to create a highly motivated, engaged, and productive workforce. Spiritual leadership is a cause-effect theory that is grounded in the intrinsic motivation model, which includes a vision, hope, faith, and altruistic love; theories about workplace spirituality; and theories about spiritual survival and wellbeing. Spiritual leadership encompasses values, attitudes, and behaviors needed to motivate the self from within, and fulfill basic needs of spiritual well-being via vocation and affiliation, all of which have positive impacts on employee happiness, corporate sustainability and social responsibility, and financial performance--the triple bottom line. Spiritual leadership addresses both leaders and followers core needs for spiritual survival and well-being through calling and membership; builds vision and values alignment at individual, empowerment team, and organizational levels; and, ultimately, promotes higher levels of commitment and organizational productivity.
Of these areas, employee commitment is a central, underlying measure for other productivity categories; in other words, high levels of workplace spirituality and spiritual leadership, as drivers of organizational commitment and productivity, are necessary to optimizing organizational performance. This research further identified the role of workplace spirituality in mediating the spirituality-leadership relation to organizational commitment. Practically, the findings offer insights about how leaders should be attentive to employees spiritual needs, including involvement in company-wide social activities. From an organizations point of view, the incorporation of spirituality in leadership can result in greater feelings of trust, organization support, and engagement by employees, all of which can positively impact the organizations productivity.
Spirituality and spiritual practices, then, have key roles to play in helping leaders to become more effective in multiple ways. Second, and we explored this, spiritual practices typically give leaders space to reflect on themselves, their behaviors, thoughts, and reactions to the world around them. First, spirituality provides leaders the ability to quiet their minds, get some perspective, and reflect, to get a measure of clarity.
The individual perspective also stresses individual Spiritual Leadership, in which leader development is guided by personal knowledge, skills required to fulfill a role, and the ways the leader is able to influence followers in moving toward a specific direction. Spiritual leader is somewhat different because the very concept qualifies that aspect of leadership, situating it in a church or religion, or in spirituality. As humans, we are naturally self-centered, therefore a spiritual leader makes himself/herself aware of ones own human frailty, thereby producing a humbleness and reliance upon God daily.
Spiritual maturity therefore enhances ones capacity for being an effective leader. As leadership roles grow increasingly complex in this confusing world, a sound spiritual foundation provides character, integrity, and convictions to underpin discernment and compassionate decision-making.
Our current theories and models of leadership leave something to be desired when it comes to acknowledging spiritual ways of knowing. Spirituality is becoming more important in the concepts of leadership, and each leader needs to become conscious of what this means and how to bring it into practice. It is important for each person to also be aware of how spirituality can be integrated into the workplace.
We wanted to focus on work-life balance, which plays an important role in developing the leaders personal spirituality, and how leaders can integrate spirituality into their work lives along with those they hire. Workplace spirituality is about leaders and followers understanding each other as spiritual beings with a sense of calling which provides a sense of meaning and purpose to their lives. Workplace spirituality is designed to make sure employees bring their whole selves--physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual--to the organization , which eventually increases performance and engagement in work and organization .
Connectivity means that the bond between leaders and their employees may positively increase when spirituality is applied to a leadership role . Through Spiritual Leadership spiritual leaders allow their employees to feel like part of a larger whole , and managers are able to provide comfort in their employees workplace, further implicating employees are able to have confidence in their bosses, their motivations are maintained, and they are strengthened.
The first reason is that leaders in non-profit organizations that adopt the model of spiritual leadership implicitly involve their concerns about the well-being of employees and their services to the community. The second reason is the common assumption that the leaders of nonprofits are unable to motivate employees for better performance. The Spiritual Leadership Model of Strategic Excellence for Performance, outlined in Figure 1, provides a process to affect both customer satisfaction and financial results, while cultivating the necessary motivation and guidance that promotes both human happiness and superior operating results.