Spiritual Leadership? by jeff tanner
June 6, 2008
10:01 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
Franky Schaeffer's book Addicted to Mediocrity has occupied prominent space on my bookshelf for years not so much because of its stellar critical quality (ironically), but as a reminder that I, as a professed follower of a leader named Jesus Christ, am called to excellence in my chosen vocation--leadership. Having been born into, held membership in, worked for, and led in Christian organizations for my entire life, I had experienced less than excellence and had become increasingly callous to anything defined as Christian. Christian music, Christian organizations, Christian schools, Christians--I immediately found myself considering these as less excellent then their secular counterparts.
However, for three years in my current Christian workplace, I've experienced excellence that is validated by industry benchmarks, and it's also the most spiritual environment where I've worked. Intrigued, I've read various research studies connecting workplace spirituality to organizational effectiveness that have reinforced my current experience. So was my prior experience abnormal, or is there another explanation?
I think that the answer can be explored through the increasingly validated theory of spiritual leadership conceived by Fry (2003), in part because of the his distinction between religion and spirituality (see prior post). I've realized that religion was the focal point of organizational culture for most of my life, but my current workplace, while calling itself Christian, is more concerned with supporting its employees' relationship with God and that they embrace the company's values, which are based on Truth that's contained in Scripture and validated by science. It's through the foundation of these values, I hypothesize, that they feel a sense of membership and calling, which are two variables that lead to organizational effectiveness in Fry's model.
Fry, L. W. (2003). Toward a theory of spiritual leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 14, 693-727.
Schaeffer, Franky. (1981). Addicted to Mediocrity. Crossway Books.
10:17 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
If you practice a religion and see the topic, spiritual leadership, you may be concerned that "spiritual" is defined within the context of another religion or none at all, and therefore irrelevant to you. If you're not religious, you might also regard this topic as irrelevant, but you might very easily experience other emotions such as intrigue or anger, depending on your frame of reference and experience with spiritual or religious things. Acknowledging these questions and concerns, let's examine some research that provides insight into the emerging understanding of spirituality and religion in the context of leadership studies.
One meta-analysis of the spiritual leadership literature found that "religion was predominantly associated with formal/organizational religion, while spirituality was more often associated with closeness to God and feelings of interconnectedness with the world and living things" (Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999, p. 896). Another study identifies that religion is about systems and processes (ritual and ceremony) while spirituality "is concerned with qualities of the human spirit" (Fry, L. W., & Slocum, J. W.,Jr., 2008, p. 90).
From this perspective, we might say that spirituality is focused on "being" while religion is focused on "doing." This understanding doesn't appease any concerns related to the potential relativistic nature of spiritual leadership, but it may eliminate fears that a specific religion’s rules might be required of leaders seeking to acknowledge their whole selves as they lead in organizations.
Thoughts?
Fry, L. W., & Slocum, J. W.,Jr. (2008). Maximizing the triple bottom line through spiritual leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 37(1), 86.
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., & Scott, A. B. (1999). The emerging meanings of religiousness and spirituality: Problems and prospects. Journal of Personality, 67(6), 889-919.
May 5, 2008
01:55 pm | 0 recommendations | 2 comments
Perhaps the biggest temptation I've had is to produce a dissertation that solves one of the world's great problems--groundbreaking research that will prompt new discoveries in leadership theory and practice. I've entertained forming and validating my emerging meta-leadership or parasocial leadership theories, for example, intuiting that these are novel and relevant.
However, my Tuesday conversation with Dr. Bocarnea stifled my grandiosity for now, and so I'll take the pragmatic, albeit less ego fulfilling approach to this big project. And so I proceed into immersion, and I'll blog here about what I discover in a concise 200-word (or less) format.
The topic area--for now--is spiritual leadership. I hope to discover a connection between spiritual renewal practices and leadership behavior. The theories and variables will be determined from the literature, and so I begin the discovery.
This is as much a practice in creating a habit of writing and recapturing the doctoral approach as it is to facilitating a dialogue. I recognize that no one may read or respond to this, although I'd welcome the interaction and feedback.
