Leadership and Spirituality

A leader is effective because of the results they bring - are sales up, are customer satisfaction scores satisfactory, what is the of employee retention? This is fair. After all, businesses exist with the sole purpose of generating revenues and making profits.

During the last 2-3 decades, the understanding of what makes a leader effective has slowly started to shift. Whilst it is still about the results they deliver, the 'how' has gained importance too. Today's leaders are being trained on the importance and use of concepts such as EQ. They are being taught to be empathetic, step into the shoes of their teams, to understand where they are coming from. Gone are the days when a leader focused only on getting a task completed. Today's leaders balance the 'what' (results) with the 'how' (the way they get there).

All that is fairly logical and simple. I bet you, my dear reader, are wondering where spirituality comes in and where the link is. Spirituality is often linked with religious hocus-pocus. In my opinion, spirituality is having a deeper understanding of oneself - one's motivations and drivers, one's values and deepest beliefs. This will enable the leader to be even more effective.

Dr. Deepak Chopra, author of '7 spiritual laws of success' says it beautifully and I quote: “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention."

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