Overview
Leadership is shifting from a focus on power and control toward more creative and spiritual models. Declining loyalty reflects rejection of status-driven authority. People seek values, growth, and a sense of purpose. Future leadership must embody compassion, integrity, and higher consciousness, unlocking human potential while serving humanity and the planet through moral, creative, and spiritual guidance.
Introduction
What many leaders decry as “declining loyalty” may be subtle rejections of status and power. Relationships that people perceive as inhibiting their growth and development as humans are problematic. Ignoring vital, spiritual aspects of their lives, or even more seriously, subjecting them to values they do not necessarily espouse. Increasingly, people seem to be awakening to the inherent possibilities within them. They are crying out for leadership.
They are becoming aware of their ability to serve humanity and the Planet. To bring benefits the world would never have known.
Increasingly, people seem to be eager for experiences and meaningful relationships. This includes followship that enables them to live out their possibilities. Even if, ostensibly, in some cases, more people than ever before seem to identify with transcending values and virtues that, alone, can rescue our beleaguered Planet and bring about the much-desired sustainable global future. These, in part, explain the emerging and gradually spreading concept and practical leadership.
The Leadership Journey
Yesterday, it was “Leadership.” Today, it is “Creative Leadership.” Tomorrow, it’s shaping up to be a session on “Spiritual Leadership.” Is it a bridge too far? Not really. The transition may seem slow, but the trend is discernible and, from all indications, appears irreversible, particularly in relation to human destiny. When was the last time you heard one of those cliché leadership phrases?:
- This way, or the wrong way!
- The buck stops here!
- Order is an order!
- The boss knows best!
- Authority cannot be divided!
Whatever happened to those once-hallowed dogmas?
The remainder of this article sketches the ever-evolving leadership patterns. From the fist-pounding, command-and-control, alpha dogs of the recent past. To the creativity-conscious, innovation-driven mavericks of today. Then, too, quite possibly, the diffuse moral exemplars of tomorrow.
Long-term Leadership
“There is a time for the use of power and control to assure safety and survival, but that strategy has reached the limit of its usefulness in contemporary organisations. Today’s challenges require a new level of organisational capability. The long-term productivity of organisations and the sustainability of the human population they serve depend on our ability to enlarge the circle of concern and “collectively” learn our way through today’s constraints.”
— Barbara B. Lawton
Historical evidence indicates a near-universal tendency to divide humanity into the “wise” and the “ignorant, “Leaders” and “followers.” Across time and cultures, the wise have been perceived as possessing superior intelligence, knowledge, and reasoning. These qualities, presumably, distinguish and predispose them to lead others toward what they (the wise) regard as desirable ends.
Recorded history traces this (wise-ignorant) division of humanity at least as far back as an ancient Greek civilisation. Socrates, for example, described the wise as “Philosopher Kings.” His successor, Plato, posited that “the wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow.”
According to Plato, the only hope of resolving the human predicament was for true lovers of wisdom to assume political office, or for those who rule to become lovers of wisdom. Aristotle, another venerated Greek philosopher, argued that “from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”
We Are All Pilgrims
Contemporary versions of the principle of unequal distribution of leadership abilities are readily apparent. A line in a popular novel compares the human experience to a journey on which the strong shall lead the weak, and the most endowed shall guide the less gifted. It reads: “We are all pilgrims on the same journey – but some pilgrims have better road maps.”
Many modern leaders still assume extraordinary ability, such as “born leader,” “natural ruler,” “designated leader,” “great man/woman,” “the cream of society,” “high and mighty,” “gifted and talented,” “the best and brightest,” and more.
In the allocation of social responsibilities and the distribution of power and privileges, assumptions of extraordinary ability are also evident. Leaders in many cultures are looked upon to set directions, assign tasks, make key decisions, and energise other members of society, a group, or an organisation, due to their presumed superior knowledge, longer vision, or better sense of direction. They enforce compliance, evaluate performance, reward loyalty, and punish disloyalty.
Followers are often regarded as ignorant and powerless due to their presumed inferior endowment. They require guidance as they are perceived as lacking vision and are supposed to be unable to manage themselves; therefore, they are considered “governed.” There are even suggestions that subordinates cannot be trusted to do the right things and, therefore, have to be controlled. They do not always know what is best for them and, therefore, need their leaders to decide for them, thereby allowing them to be “empowered.”
The Leadership Crisis
By all accounts, the world has had many great leaders. The names come from practically every culture and every field of human endeavour. Many of the advances in civilisation and the spectacular progress that the human race has made have been inspired by. This is, at least in part, due to the vision and dedication of these great individuals.
Ironically, at a time when many groups, organisations, communities, and even national societies are pining for strong leadership, many incumbent leaders are complaining of declining loyalty. Warren Bennis, a foremost leadership scholar, pointedly asks: “Why can’t leaders lead?” “Why are people unwilling to follow?” A cursory review of the leadership literature identifies several possible reasons why leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to lead and why people seem reluctant to follow.
Barriers To Leadership
- The Alpha Dog Syndrome: One or a few members of a group or organisation become the messiah to whom others are expected to defer.
- One-Man-Show: Authoritarianism and, resultantly, inadequate opportunities for other members of a group, organisation, or society to reveal and express their capabilities, including “leadership.”
- The Great Person: Notion of Leadership: The practice of giving the leader all of the credit for a group’s success. Thereby denying or minimising the contributions of other members.
- Lack of Unifying Vision: No transcending ideas or ideals toward which people can focus their energies and actions. Higher (moral) purposes that people perceive as reflecting or promoting the values they deeply believe in or regard as worthy of their commitment.
- Credibility Gap: The discrepancy between what leaders are expected to do and what they actually do. Inconsistencies between what leaders say they are doing and what they are perceived to be doing.
- Insufficient Opportunity for Personal Growth and Development: Tendency by some leaders to seek to think for the people; to create a vision and then invite others to work to achieve that vision; to decide what has to be done, and also plan how to do it.
- Growing Demand for Personal and Group Identity: The increasing rejection of leaders (leadership or otherwise) that people perceive as devaluing them as human beings, or as making inadequate use of their capabilities.
Modern-Day Leadership Crisis
The phenomenon whereby leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to lead, and people seem increasingly reluctant to follow, has spurred a bewildering array of “leadership development” programs. These programs encompass a range of services, including training, coaching, consulting, mentoring, internships, and more. These are in addition to a spate of material rewards intended to induce loyalty and increasingly severe forms of punishment designed to deter recalcitrance and disloyalty.
Ironically, disenleadership with leadership seems to be growing. This is so, despite the barrage of leadership development programs, despite increasingly tantalising incentives for loyalty, and even with today’s heavy-handed crackdowns on dissidents. This irony has sparked a serious reevaluation of the leadership crisis, yielding some tentative conclusions. Two of those conclusions:
1. Developing potential
First, the modern-day leadership crisis is unlikely to be resolved by conventional “carrot-and-stick” approaches, but rather by goals that people perceive as bringing out the best in them and enhancing them as individuals of worth. Harold Kushner aptly summarises people’s frustration with leadership that inhibits potential, as well as their desire for meaningful and effective participation in the conduct of affairs. Kushner’s words:
“It is frustrating to know that you can do something and not be called on to do it, or to believe that you can do it and never have the chance to find out”. –Harold Kushner
2. Encouraging creativity
Second, and relatedly, an essential part of the solution to the modern-day leadership crisis is social, economic, and political-business structures and relationships that people perceive as recognising, harnessing, and engaging their innate creative abilities. These, it seems, may have inspired the increasingly popular ideological leadership.
Creative Leadership
“The greatest challenge of our time is to create a culture that promotes learning in the face of intense pressure to keep on doing things the same old way”. Dorothy Lage
Leadership, as the term is used in this article, is the ability of the person(s) at the head of a group or an organisation to inspire other members of the group or organisation to search for new ways to reach collective or corporate goals. The Centre for Creative Leadership, the world’s leading institution on leadership matters, underscores the leader’s ability to leverage the creativity and ingenuity of a group or organisation to achieve desired goals.
The Centre for Creative Leadership: Styles of Leadership
Relevant literature on Creative Leadership describes leadership variously:
- Inspiring
- Energising
- Catalysing
- Enlightened
- Transforming
- Servant
- Post-heroic
- Principle-centred
- Mutualistic
Features Of Creative Leadership
Distinguishing features of Creative Leadership, as highlighted in the literature, include:
- Inspiring people to think in new ways and to “rise above the level of mediocrity.”
- Handling problems and challenges in ways that call forth the creativity of other members of a group or organisation.
- Respect for the integrity of others and a commitment to the actualisation of their innate potentialities.
- Ability to unify seemingly disparate interests.
- Commitment to the enhancement of subordinates and constituents.
- Capacity building.
- Team building.
- Empowerment.
- Continuous improvement.
Ironically, despite all the inspirational, creative problem-solving, team-building, empowerment, and continuous improvement efforts, disleadership with leadership continues to grow and spread.
Values Are Key
A review of the platforms of many social movements suggests that the amount of loyalty and commitment that today’s creative leaders can reasonably expect depends on the extent to which followers, or constituents, perceive the leadership/followership relationship as promoting or advancing the values and virtues in which they deeply believe.
Somehow, people around the world seem to be awakening to morality and higher purposes, even in traditionally dog-eat-dog, “kill-or-be-killed” corporate environments. For the first time in recent history, the consensus seems to be emerging that the future of civilisation critically depends on values and virtues that conventional economics, business, and politics have not adequately served.
The Earth Charter, “Our Common Future,” “Caring for the Future,” “No Limits to Learning,” and many other publications by the United Nations and the Club of Rome, for example, illustrate this global shift in thinking.
To the extent that these observations are valid, what many leaders decry as “declining loyalty” may be subtle rejections of status and power. Those relationships that people perceive as inhibiting their growth and development as humans are often problematic. Ignoring vital, non-material or spiritual aspects of their lives. Even more seriously, subjecting them to values they do not necessarily espouse.
Increasingly, people seem to be awakening to the inherent possibilities within them. Their ability to serve humanity and the Planet, to bring benefits the world would never have known. And, increasingly, people also seem eager for experiences and relationships, including “followership,” that enable them to realise their full potential. These, in part, explain the emerging and gradually spreading concept and practice of Spiritual Leadership.
Whispers of Spiritual Leadership
“We are made in such a way that only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.” -Harold Kus
Leadership, as perceived in this article, implies no mystical experience; rather, it is simply the personal cultivation and exemplification of transcending and universally beneficial ideals, values, and virtues that intuitively attract followers and loyalty. There are two sides to leadership: one side (“Spiritual”) is the set of values and virtues that characterise an individual, shaping their life and giving meaning to their existence. The other side (“Leadership”) is the inspiration that those virtues evoke, causing others to want to emulate or follow voluntarily.
Consider, for example, Pope John Paul II, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King. Global icons, these twentieth-century spiritual leaders lacked practically everything that is typically associated with leadership: inheritance, lineage, “blue-blood,” monetary fortune, political connections, power, overbearing stature, and personal “charisma.”
Notwithstanding those “handicaps,” They nourished and profoundly enriched the world with the virtues they embodied. By cultivating and living out qualities that everyone inherently possesses or is capable of (but which most people often overlook), they awaken in humanity virtues that the pursuit of which gives meaning and significance to people’s lives.
5 Lessons of Spiritual Leadership
From their lives emerge five lessons of immense significance to bona fide and aspiring leaders, as to everyone else, of course.
1. Leadership is necessary
Leadership is not only possible, but it is also necessary. In every position, one occupies the parent, educator, corporate executive, public administrator, politician, caregiver, spouse, or friend.
2. Leadership is feasible
Second, and relatedly, Spiritual Leadership is feasible across domains and in practically every value that one deeply believes and cherishes. Carol Pearson’s wish for the world poignantly illustrates these two conclusions:
“Each of us has a piece of the puzzle of solving the great world problems of our time and creating a more just, humane, and beautiful world. … If everyone who loved to create beauty did so, we would live in a beautiful world. When everyone who loved cleanliness and order cleaned up, we would live in a clean and orderly world. If everyone who yearned to heal the sick did so, we would live in a healthier world. If everyone who cared about world hunger shared their creative ideas and acted to alleviate the problem, people would all be fed,” – Carol Pearson
3. The galvanising power of moral values
The very large following that Mother Teresa and the four other global icons drew attests to the galvanising power of moral values, as against the “carrot” and the “stick.”
4. Refutation of material reward
The enormous personal sacrifice that millions of people have made in support of the virtues that characterised these spiritual leaders is a stunning refutation of material reward as motivation for (lasting) loyalty.
5. Spiritual values are immortal
The fact that people still hold the five global icons in very high esteem testifies to the enduring nature of the spiritual values they embody.
The Qualities of Spiritual Leadership
Next, we describe some of the qualitative leadership. A very short list includes:
- Altruism
- Authenticity
- Benevolence
- Compassion
- Consistency
- Ecological consciousness
- Forgiveness
- Generosity
- Gentleness
- Gratitude
- Helpfulness
- Honesty
- Humility
- Integrity
- Kindness
- Love
- Respect
- Selflessness
- Simplicity
- Truthfulness
- Understanding
Contrary to some presumably “scientific” worldviews, these and related virtues are not mere homilies; they are absolute but long-neglected essentials both for our collective survival and for the enduring success of practically everything we do. Consider love, for example, Abraham Maslow’s prophetic plea urges this virtue as a strategy to reverse currently self-destructive human tendencies. Maslow’s words:
“We must study love, teach it, understand it, predict it, or else the world is lost to hostility and suspicion.” – Abraham Maslow
The Impact of Non-Spiritual Leadership
Studies in psychotherapy, in particular, associate the dearth of these virtues with many of the social and psychological problems that are ruining the lives and destinies of countless millions of people around the world. One widely reported problem is the spreading sense of personal futility and, resultantly, the global “epidemic” of meaninglessness, including:
- deep feelings of unfulfillment [and] the plague of boredom that abounds in the workplace
- busy yet bored employees whose hearts are not in the work they are doing
- outwardly successful, yet emotionally troubled executives
- honoured and well-educated, but without ever having experienced what it means to be truly alive
- having everything one ever wanted and knowing that it is still not enough … continuing to feel that something is missing
- Some people who turn to drugs in a desperate effort to rise above the emotional flatness of the everyday … to add excitement to their otherwise humdrum, boring lives
- hundreds of troubled young people who have so much to live for, but decide to take their own lives every year
- Ever more people today who have the means to live but not the meaning to live for
- The forgotten four-fifths who have neither the means to live nor the meaning to live for
- most of us who go to our graves with our music still inside, unplayed, unheard
Personal Worthlessness
The growing sense of personal worthlessness is a global concern, particularly for psychologists and psychotherapists. Leo F. Buscaglia, for example, deplores the tragedy and, pointedly, underscores the importance of self-disciplined leadership, both for one’s good and for the Planet:
“Too many of us see ourselves as useless and worthless – and certainly without the ability to offer anything to our world. We choose to be followers rather than leaders. Too often, we become conformists rather than have the courage to be ourselves and create newness through the expression of those selves. We, in this way, lose ourselves, and in so doing, the world, too, experiences the loss of us”. – Leo F. Buscaglia
Spiritual Leadership Versus Political Correctness
It is an irony of modern times that when personal and collective morality seems to offer the best hope of resolving the dreadful situation the world is facing, leadership remains the exception rather than the rule. “The cry of many but the practice of a few,” practically everyone extols moral values.
In reality, however, relatively few people seem willing to make necessary efforts, particularly if they perceive that there is a “price” to pay. For the sake of group solidarity, social cohesion, professional etiquette, patriotism, party loyalty, ecclesiastical faithfulness, etc., very many people would rather be “politically correct” than speak their truth.
Encouraging Signs
Motsl values are not evident in many modern-day leadership situations. They are, however, certainly spreading. By all indications, the trend appears to be irreversible. Worldwide clamours for personal growth and development are growing. The growing disaffection with unfulfilling social, economic, political, and professional arrangements and relationships suggests we may be entering a period in history when spiritual virtues will become an integral part of everyday activities.
This is a time in the foreseeable future, hopefully, when the worth of human interactions, policies, decisions, and relationships will derive primarily from their ability to fulfil people’s higher (spiritual) needs, above and beyond material considerations.
Three Ways Spiritual Leadership Can Thrive and Flourish
To thrive and flourish, however, leadership and its underlying virtues are likely to require three key elements: an ethical foundation (moral consciousness), formal action, and widespread engagement.
1. Moral consciousness
The ethical foundation of leadership, as envisioned in this article, is the worldwide recognition and acceptance of shared global values as the guiding principles of society and the basis of all human endeavours, including the economy, business, education, politics, medicine, sports, entertainment, caregiving, and more.
2. Formal action
The formal action component of leadership, as envisioned in this article, involves institutional arrangements and social processes that enable (i.e., respect, challenge, encourage, and support) everyone’s virtues to flourish and thrive.
3. Mass engagement
The mass engagement component of leadership, as perceived in this article, is everyone’s obligation to lead by personal example. To cultivate and to genuinely express one’s cherished values in ways and things that conduce to the greater good. Thus inspiring others to emulate.
Lecomte du Noüy’s statement highlights the crucial element of leadership, emphasising the global spread of spiritual awareness. According to Noüy, human evolution depends on the progress of morality and its expansion to the majority of people. Fundamental moral ideas are absolute and cannot be perfected; therefore, it is incumbent upon humanity to spread these concepts and etch them into people’s hearts, giving them as much strength as instincts.
Two Obligations
Central to Noüy’s admonition is everyone’s twin obligations. The first obligation is to cultivate life-enriching, ecologically-sustaining ideals and values personally. The second obligation is to embody those virtues in one’s sphere of life, inspiring and edifying the people one encounters. General Napoleon’s advice is relevant in this regard, urging individuals to exemplify their virtues so genuinely and publicly that all people are eager to follow, while others are abashed to contradict.
Finally, Albert Einstein has two sobering messages for scientists who seek to eliminate love in the name of scientific progress and render moral values irrelevant in public, business, and professional life. First, not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Second, Einstein emphasises that humans are part of a whole called the “Universe”. He contended that the human experience is an optical delusion of consciousness. A consciousness that restricts people to their desires and affections for a few individuals nearest to them. The task must be to free ourselves from this prison. We can do this by expanding our circles of compassion to encompass all living creatures and the entirety of nature in its beauty.
