Search results

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the success of the US economy at the end of the second millennium do not necessarily mean the end of socialism. In fact both capitalism and socialism are beneficial for a unitary human development, which consists of both material and spiritual development. Capitalism, with its emphasis on self‐interest and individual freedom, has been crucial to material development. But socialism, with its preference for other‐interest and collective necessity, is conducive to spiritual development. Thus, what is needed for further development of the human race is a unitary economics that synergizes capitalism and scoialism.

Spiritual topics emerge in executive leadership coaching. However, the scholarly literature has emphasized the performance development aspects of executive coaching (EC) more than the development of executives’ inner lives, although there is some evidence of practitioners addressing spiritual topics. Executive leaders have spiritual needs and executive coaches may be well positioned to address the intersection of the leaders’ work and spiritual lives, provided coaches observe skill boundaries and the limitations of the coaching context. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the merits of including spiritual development (SDev) in EC and how executive coaches can incorporate it in their practice.

EC, SDev and spiritual direction are compared, drawing attention to conflicting and complementary aspects of SDev applied in EC. Organizations’, clients’ and coaches’ likely concerns about such integration are explored and addressed. Suitable contexts, principles, a basic developmental framework and practical steps for executive coaches considering the inclusion of SDev in EC are proposed.

The paper provides coaches, consultants, executives and those charged with executive development with a foundational understanding of the role of SDev in EC.

A framework is provided for professionals involved in executive management development to address executive leaders’ spiritual needs through EC.

Similar to religion, spirituality is considered a private affair along with issues of faith, hope, and love (Palmer, 1998). American public education has been reluctant to address such issues due to our cultural norm of “separation of church and state” (Love and Talbot, 2000, p. 1) yet the American Council for Education calls upon higher education to provide students ways to explore their personal values, world beliefs, and spirituality (Chickering et al., 2006; Dalton and Crosby, 2006). As such, the purpose of this paper is to explore student leaders’ perspectives on how leadership development activities influenced their sense of spirituality.

A qualitative case study design was used to explore responses from ten student leaders who completed a leadership development program in the Spring 2015 at a public four-year institution. As part of the leadership development program, students were paired a peer mentor while they completed leadership workshops, a reflection paper, self-assessment, and an ongoing community service project painting murals with individuals who have intellectual disabilities. Participants were from various majors and religious backgrounds and had completed the leadership development program two months prior to their participation in this study.

Findings revealed that leadership workshops, self-assessment, reflections, peer-to-peer mentorship, and an ongoing shared community service project, influenced students’ perspectives of spirituality and their leadership identity. Student leaders both did and did not differentiate the developmental process of leadership from the spiritual development process, defining both as cognitive and emotional development deeply grounded in self-awareness. Study participants shared that through self-reflection, developing their inter and intra personal skills through conducting service, shaped their understanding of their spiritual identity and developed their sense of self.

Study results are not generalizable but provide insight into the experiences and perceptions of student leaders on two hard-to-define topics: spirituality and leadership. The order of the interview questions may have influenced the thought process leading up to student’s responses connecting spirituality and leadership concepts. Another limitation is that the leadership activities were designed and coordinated by the lead investigator. Hence, there may be findings that were influenced by the investigators’ personal beliefs about leadership. Study participants may have also felt more comfortable discussing their beliefs about spirituality because of their familiarity with the lead investigator.

Results support the notion that non-faith based public institutions may intentionally support the spiritual development of students through the context of leadership development program activities. Approaching spiritual and leadership development through Baxter Magolda’s (2009) theory of self-authorship allows students to experience new activities coupled with personal self-reflection, to deepen their self-understanding, compassion for others, and self-awareness. This learning is an ongoing process that expands as students engage in contemplative practices such as mindfulness training provided through leadership workshops, self-reflection, and peer-to-peer interactions and self-assessment.

This case study illustrates that intentionally designed and implemented leadership development programs may cultivate both the spiritual and leadership identities and behaviors of students. Also, this study reveals that spirituality and leadership are not mutually exclusive processes because both are deeply rooted in connecting to our community, connecting to our greater purpose and our higher consciousness about who we are and how we treat others. Hence, this work may support educators develop more compassionate and empathetic students who are agents of positive social change.

This qualitative case study suggests a new framework for public institutions to support students’ leadership and spiritual development through the theoretical framework of self-authorship. As such, educators can stop being fearful about discussing religion, spirituality, and matters of the heart if they use this framework to design leadership developmental activities.

Using data from the Multi-Institutional Study of Leadership, this study examines the relationship between the eight values of the Social Change Model of Leadership Development with a student’s spiritual quest. Finding consistent positive relationship between the two constructs, the article discusses the intentional use of reflection in student leadership development programs to facilitate student growth in both leadership development and spiritual quest. Suggestions for implementing reflection are provided as well as discussion of further research.

This paper seeks to outline and compare two approaches to workplace spirituality facilitation and to derive conclusions and suggest implications for research and practice.

The article uses two real‐life descriptions from the existing literature to outline two approaches to workplace spirituality facilitation. It outlines similarities and differences between them. It also compares them on key features and outlines their implications and complementarities. Based on this, it describes conclusions and implications for research and practice.

The paper finds that the first approach, with its starting point of organizational spiritual values and emphasis on organizational processes to facilitate the transmission of these values, can be identified as an organization‐focused approach. At the centre of the second approach is a program for transformation or spiritual development of individual employees.

Inputs from the present paper will help future research to specify: comprehensive classifications – typologies and taxonomies – of various types of approaches to workplace spirituality facilitation; and new theories of workplace spirituality facilitation.

The paper can inform workplace spirituality implementation efforts in organizations.

Theory development in workplace spirituality is at a formative stage. Thus, various inputs, outlined in the research implications part of the paper, for further theory development will be a valuable contribution to workplace spirituality research.

This study aims to synthesize the rich knowledge on spiritual intelligence (SI) research within the framework of human resource development (HRD) research.

Based on the search of multiple electronic databases authors conducted thematic review of the literature on SI and HRD. Themes associated with SI and HRD are extracted while employing the content analysis technique.

Five major themes emerged through the process of content analysis on the body of the reviewed literature. The themes which described the presence of SI-related research within the field of HRD, included: Conceptual connections between SI and HRD; SI Holistic Mechanism; SI and Leadership development, SI measurement tools and, finally, the impact of SI on sustainability.

The inclusion and exclusion criteria are that the search for this review has been limited to peer-reviewed journals that are published SI-related articles. This paper excluded all articles on SI that `do not explicitly discuss the valuable role of human resources. The key words used are spiritual intelligence (SI) and HRD.

This paper offered new-fangled value and insightful understanding on SI and its implications for other areas, more specifically HRD. It suggests that SI is an important component for organizational development. Such interventions nurture the human resources that can lead to better performance as a whole.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of spiritual group training on improving the spiritual well-being (SWB) among adolescences. The SWB is one of the factors that determines adolescences’ positive behavior. A number of previous studies have supported that spirituality and juvenile delinquency were negatively correlated. The level of SWB is mostly influenced by the peers’ group interaction and the role of others in the environment.

The authors developed a Spiritual Group Training by utilizing a number of relevant literature. The authors constructed the training using the meaning of life, values of life, life goals, life connections, and relation to God. In order to yield empirical evidence, the authors performed a pre- and post-test experimental design. The study recruited 26 randomly selected students from five high schools. The authors adapted a 13-item SWB scale to measure the participants’ SWB.

The results showed that Spiritual Group Training significantly improved participants’ SWB (t=9.71, p<0.001). The results confirmed the study hypothesis that spiritual group training enhanced adolescences’ SWB.

Designing a proper intervention and evaluation was a challenging task for the authors. In this study, the authors evaluated the training by utilizing a simple pre- and post-test design. Future investigations should employ a different evaluation design.

Most studies support the notion that spirituality is negatively correlated with adolescence’s negative behavior. However, only a few, if any, investigations have focused on developing certain training focusing on SWB. This study contributed an important idea on the use of SWB to develop adolescence SWB.

The growing focus on learning as being key to organisational success has raised the level of debate amongst practitioners and academics alike as to just what learning is. Consideration of spiritual ideologies offers the opportunity to reflect upon such areas as: complexity and connectivity, the meaning and purpose of work, individual identity and sensemaking, community and collaborative behaviour, dialogue, moral leadership and wisdom. Our spiritual capacity provides a deep foundation from which to explore and question our ontological assumptions. This paper locates the position of spirituality in the learning debate; examines the relationship between who we are, our being, with what we do, our doing; and implies that organisational performance can be improved by attendance to the spiritual richness of humanity.