Nurturing the Spiritual Aspect of Leadership

There is a hunger among university students – including those in the law enforcement, firefighting, and business management majors – for a safe place in which to explore the most important issues in their lives. That starts with nurturing their innate sense of spirituality – a desire to become more whole in mind, body, and spirit... and become the kind of leader they feel called to be.

Creating and conducting programs that nurture the spiritual aspect of leadership

As Chair of the undergraduate Business Management Major and the Organizational Leadership Concentration at Union Institute & University, I have a passion for nurturing the spiritual core of our law enforcement, firefighters, and business management students.

The distinction between religion and spirituality is such an important one today. Religion is taught, something learned from family, church, culture, etc., but spirituality is innate, present at birth as an intimate and compassionate connection with all of life.

When this essential aspect of mental health is ignored, it shows itself in depression, drug addiction and relational abuse. It is this innate spiritual intuition that helps us to know we are whole, loved, guided and never alone, a critical connection when facing life’s challenges and transitions.

There is a hunger among our students for a safe place to explore the most important issues in their lives. Issues such as, ‘How can I break out of my adversarial and defensive responses in conflicts with my spouse, my children, as well as my colleagues and followers at work? How can I overcome this chronic stress and worry to become the kind of leader I feel called to be?’

Resolving conflicts in ways that deepen trust is a leadership competency. It is a spiritual process… a soul-searching examination of our integrity.

Our leadership courses have participants recognize that the quality of their own lives depends upon how they treat each other… that it does matter how we relate, how we negotiate and how we deal with conflict. There is something in the nature of reality that intimately connects us and when we ignore and violate that inner knowing, we suffer and those most dear to us suffer as well.

There is a natural spiritual awareness that can be acknowledged, honored, and nurtured in our classes and it finds expression in ‘seeing the other as our self’.

When we stop ourselves in the middle of a conflict, and ask, how would I respond right now if that were me over there… then do our best to respond from that perspective, something is profoundly different. In that openness, the precise words and actions needed for the unique situation often come to us. And perhaps most important, our intention has integrity.

Participants use the daily events in their lives to conduct experiments, then observe the responses they get as evidence that they are on the right track. When repeated often enough, this evidence-based learning generates new habits of thinking, feeling, and relating, habits more closely aligned with ‘something within us that knows’.

Right Mindfulness is also central in my courses. I have students notice that they can watch their thoughts when in a conflict as their mind tries to find the right language to justify their aggrievance.

Once they recognize, based on their own direct experience, that they can perceive their thoughts, it opens a whole new level of awareness and questions such as, what am I?…. Am I my thoughts or that which is aware of my thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and perceptions? Am I my human experience or am I more the knower of body, mind, and world?….

Most of these students are surprised at this distinction…..  and recognize that they can take their stand knowingly as awareness…..  seeing the totality of the situation including the current responses in their body and their mind.

Our police officers have had a lot of training in both conflict and negotiating but they tell us they have never had training that addressed this essential aspect of their leadership. They report that it has changed the quality of their own lives as well as that of their spouses, children, and colleagues. And it has changed the way they engage those in the communities they serve.

Our management students tell me that this is what they had hoped higher education would be about, assisting them with what is most important in their lives.

For it is this connection, this oneness, this love, that truly matters in our lives. People’s deepest desire is to be a presence of peace in their homes, communities, and organizations.

The greatest gift we can give others is our trust in Life, to no longer project our fears onto them. It is a Trust that nurtures that same spiritual presence in them.

Such a spiritual sensibility is also essential for democracy… For it makes possible the civil discourse necessary for it to exist.

There is a desire for something deeper than our culture is currently providing. As educators, researchers and organizational leaders, there are ways we can nurture this innate connection, making us more whole in mind, body and spirit.

That’s my calling.