Empowering Businesses, Leadership & the Workplace
This is the first of five blogs on how including spiritual elements at work can strengthen the whole structure of the business and help it to prosper. We’re going to see what that looks like in practice and checking out a few inspirational companies and leaders who are cutting a great trail - how they’re making our lives and our planet that much better.
First off let’s just define what we’re talking about. Secular spirituality is about living with a sense of purpose, becoming wiser, kinder, and bringing benefit to others as well as to yourself. All these traits of spirituality hold for businesses every bit as much as for individuals… let’s not forget that every business is made up of a collection of individuals.
During my earlier days of working as a healer and spiritual coach, I found that I was increasingly attracting clients who were leading teams, or a workforce, and my work naturally veered towards leadership training. Speaking one day to a prominent leadership coach and telling him that I incorporate spiritual elements into my wellbeing and leadership courses, he looked puzzled and asked me “What does spirituality have to do with leadership?”.
It was my turn to be puzzled. To my mind I couldn’t understand how you can work effectively without incorporating values, purpose, mission into your strategies. I’d even covered this when I was studying for my MBA as far back as the late ‘80’s with works Peters & Waterman, and Drucker on the impact of company culture on the workforce and the responsibility of leaders for the common good. The question from a specialist in this subject whom I respected post 2010 came a little out of left field. On reflection though, it was a fair question which set me thinking.
So what does spirituality have to do with leadership, businesses and the workplace?
I identified four main areas in which many corporates and businesses are already engaged in what can be termed as spiritual elements; these are set out below in order of sphere of influence:
1- Corporate Social Responsibility – community / global
One of my favourite examples of this is Kate Spade’s On Purpose Rwanda programme where she trained disadvantaged women so they become independent and then go on to help their community
2- Vision, mission and values – internal to senior leadership/ internal to the organisation’s workforce / external to how the organisation is viewed by others
Care needs to be taken that these are integrated in the fabric of the organisation and not just isolated to the shareholders or clients. Some corporates are taking this to the next level, like Cisco which started publishing a purpose report in 2021
3- Leadership styles – organisational / departmental / teams
A good example of this is Servant Leadership where the leader works to foster the potential of the people they lead, and to create a working environment which is inclusive. There’s a great story of UPS’s Jim Casey who in 1929, in a bid to be more approachable and accessible to his employees, circulated a memo telling them to address each other by their first names, himself included, so when the janitor passes him in the corridor, he says “Morning Jim”.
4- Personal responsibility – local / impacts every member of the organisation
Each one of us is like a drop of water; we can create waves that are harmonious and productive, or we can create a discordant energy which is disruptive to our own growth as well as to others’ productivity.
The next 4 blogposts will be looking at each of these areas in more detail and giving concrete examples of companies that are working with awareness. We will start with Corporate Social Responsibility, in order of sphere of influence.
