Spirituality In Leadership Theory

Most leadership theories, transformational, transactional and laissez – faire focus on the development and motivating the followers. But they gave less attention towards spirituality. Many studies have been done in order to find the impact of leadership styles on the employee performance and how it can be used to improve the organizational outcomes. Spirituality is considered to be the innercore of leadership. Spirituality is something that is beyond the self. Leaders today, losing the values, morals, mission and vision to do the work. Spirituality is what deals with the improvement of personal values and understanding of self and work towards the integration of self and group development. As Fairholm (1996) worked on spiritual leadership having
Spiritual leaders are high on moral values, they don’t compromise collaborate and accommodate where their moral values confront. Hence, spiritual leaders are superior in values than the normal leaders. Leaders are the back bone of organization. Indeed, leadership effectiveness is measured by many methods such as 360 degree feedback, and achievement of organizational goals. But the way through which all this can be achieved passed through the spiritual values such as integrity, caring, respect and healthy conversation. And past researches show that there is an alignment between the two terms spirituality and leadership. Why spirituality is associated with leadership as past researches showed that in spiritual organizations leader’s scores are higher than in others in measuring leadership effectiveness (Reave, 2005; Druspat,
Spirituality was an underneath concept only within the religion and philosophy but as the time passed it sprang in other fields also. And from the last two decades spirituality is considered to be an important concept of organization and society as well. According to Nanduri and Mmereki (2013) man discover within himself the values with time which has direct connection to the reality of supreme power which is responsible for all creations in the universe, religions called it God and spiritualistic super consciousness. Spirituality is the latest concept that enters the management. It is also recently added in a number of national as well as international conferences, and a number of researches has been done on the finding some relationship between spirituality, leadership and personality till date. Apart from that yoga and meditation also found to provide some positive results in the development of spiritual values. Spiritual awareness of a person can be measured and the scores obtained can be practically used. According to them an ideal leader is one who possesses purity of heart, individual character, courage and spirit of adventure, patience, determination, sacrifice. These are also important as the leader should also be free from jealousy and greed. In today’s materialistic world where everyone is after only physical, intellectual, financial skills