While some might describe me as a soulful or spiritual person, I’ve avoided wandering into exploring beliefs or spiritual leanings in my business life, but the epiphany I’ve had thanks to one of the leaders in a peer-to-peer coaching forum has led me to write this blog (mind you, the real dilemma I’ve had over whether or not to publish it is evidence that I still believe to some extent that never the twain shall meet).

You see, I had always felt that business leadership and spiritual growth were two separate things, requiring different approaches. I thought that the path to work/life balance was to separate the two and to allocate time and energy to each when the time was right.

I lived my life by this set of beliefs and achieved a degree of success in navigating the  challenges life presented by adhering to this paradigm. Yet at the same time I never felt fully satisfied with my approach as a leader/manager.  Over the past few years I have begun to question whether my approach is still fit for purpose, especially given that the business world is (thankfully) evolving towards a more human-centred approach.

Yet something stopped me from writing or talking about this topic. I suppose it was a fear of rejection. Would my readers think they had lost me to religion or mysticism or some equally suspect realm? And how would I articulate my emerging understanding of something new and relatively unexplored?

Sitting with unease

My sense of unease around spirituality in leadership was stoked at a recent peer-to-peer leadership coaching forum. Though we usually address challenges in the forum, every so often the members of the forum share success stories. The feedback from one member intrigued and challenged me, but what most inspired me to write this blog and overcome my fears of rejection was the sheer interest in and enthusiasm for the approach from the other members of the forum.

Conor (not his real name) shared how, after years of persistently trying to develop a supportive and engaged culture, he was recently enjoying some much-needed success in achieving this vision. He reported that his business was performing much better too. His peers asked him to specify what he was doing differently and what had changed in his approach.  He said he now sees his people as human beings, like himself, on a spiritual journey. He told us he believes that, besides achieving material success, we are each on this earth to find out who we are and how we can evolve in our awareness to be the best we can be. For him, that meant feeding the soul as much as the body.

As a result, he said he now spends more time engaging with his staff as humans.  Every week he allocates time to say hello, at a minimum, to all members of staff in the building. He also takes a greater interest in their personal issues (when appropriate) and makes a point of remembering their stories so he can later follow up on issues that had concerned them. Up to this, most of his conversations had been focused on work and KPIs.

Seeing the unlimited potential

He had worked on his ability to stop seeing his people as a resource to be exploited for the success of the business. He reminds himself, when engaged in solving a problem, that he is first and foremost dealing with a person. While recognising that he can only improve the conditions and pay of employees if the business performs better, he also understands that it is important that his employees feel happier and grow personally.

He used the word spiritual but what Conor was really talking about was compassion and understanding, and seeing each person in the company as a human being with unlimited potential.

Unblocking potential for self-discovery

His peers in the group asked him how he addresses unmotivated employees. He answered that he is now more willing to grapple with poor performance or behaviour when it is brought to his attention. However, he no longer sees this as an exercise in doling out punishment or reprimands. Now he engages with people to better understand what is happening and why. He said he no longer sees poor performance as a mark of someone who is inherently lazy. He encounters all employees as human beings on a journey of self-discovery and sees his role as helping them find what truly motivates them.

He pointed out that his actions in helping a few employees resolve how they were blocked from fulfilling their potential contributed to the improvement in the culture. For some employees, this involved teasing out the issues, for others it involved helping them find roles that better suited their talents either within his company or in other industries. In the past he had avoided this part of his role as he perceived it as involving conflict. He now understands that the conflict came from the fact that he addressed performance improvement only through disciplinary procedures, rather than seeing the good in others and helping them find fulfilment, sometimes with another organisation.

Conor’s experience provoked a fascinating and in-depth debate amongst the participants. The following are their observations on developing this type of culture.

• Your success comes not just from the leadership techniques you learn from experience and training but from a fundamental shift in how you see people, or, as another member put it, a shift in your value system.
• To see people not only as a resource to create a successful business, but as human beings or souls who are on their individual journeys through life trying to be the best they can be, means seeing the good in people and looking at their potential beneath their struggles.
• The better people feel about themselves, the more successful the business.
• The more open and honest the culture, the more people will work towards the success of the business.
• It’s not a case of people before profit; it’s a case of people and profit. We need both equally.
• We are responsible for neither people’s material nor spiritual well-being. We are responsible for how we help create the conditions for our people and the business to achieve their potential.

You could say that spiritual leadership is just a label, and, like all labels, it can be interpreted differently by others. Labels like ‘soulful leadership’, ‘greater consciousness’, ‘heartfelt leadership’, ‘empowerment’ and so on could convey a similar sense. Each label is right for each person at whatever point they are on in their leadership evolution. A question for me: is this casting around for more secular terminology an indication that I am still uncomfortable with the concept?

My final insight for myself is to experience my own vulnerability around the use of language or delving into a topic I perceived to be difficult, and not to be put off writing about it by how I think others might react.