Sunday, September 26, 2004
Wanted: spirited leadership
The new presence of spirituality in the office shows an attempt to repair the cracks growing in our institutions, and restore our faith in them.
Healthy spirituality is not only at large in the public imagination, it's in fashion, even in the corporate world. Spirituality has reached senior management. Consultants and conferences abound, all hell-bent on helping companies get in touch with their souls, and spiritual leadership facilitators are billing the Blue Chip names for some serious meditation time.
And what exactly do the consultants do? In the least ecstatic and fuzzy examples, this trend is packaged as teachings in corporate social responsibility, a well-intentioned booster to help large organizations nurture the health and well-being of employees. Tending the spirit is only one facet of the holistic approach, the theory being a good soul does good work.
Leslie Malin of Management by Design in New York State offers her own brand of workshop, one in which she coaches employees and managers in discovering their divinity in the workplace. In a recent interview, she explained the trend of spirit work as an inevitable reaction to the self-centredness of the last decade.
"I remember being vitally interested in the interconnectedness of work and spirit 10 years ago when one could barely find a book or article on the topic. That was the early '90s and people were intoxicated with me-ism and unlimited financial boom times. Obviously, we have moved on from there. ... Many baby boomers were shocked into realizing that financial security is an illusion and that real security is achieved in deepening the self and becoming richer inside as those are qualities that cannot be recklessly gambled or invested away."
Malin points to the disillusionment wrought by the Enrons, Morgan Stanleys, even of Martha Stewart as contributing factors to a desire for a new ethic.
"I think a new breed of managers, employees and entrepreneurs want to create wealth on material, intellectual and spiritual levels."
Some new tests are afoot to measure more than profitability. Long ago, for instance, we primarily valued a worker's IQ, their Intelligence Quotient; in the '90s we began to include a measure for EI, or Emotional Intelligence.
Now, according to Whiteley, some organizations are implementing a third index, a test for SI, or Spiritual Intelligence.
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