Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM  

In our world today, the thing we are most lacking is leaders who can convey vision.  Great leadership depends primarily on vision -- not just any type of vision, but one that we can appreciate intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

A vision is something we reach for, something we aspire to, something that is the glue of our enterprise, the driving force, the vitality within it.  When we are touched by a vision, our deepest values come into play and we have a sense of abiding purpose.

One reason that visionary leadership is in short supply today is the value our society places on one particular kind of capital -- material capital.  For leadership to inspire long-term, sustainable enterprises, it needs to pursue two other forms of capital as well: social and spiritual.  These three types of capital resemble the layers in a wedding cake.  Material capital is the top layer, social capital lies in the middle, and spiritual capital rests on the bottom, supporting all three.

Here’s this month’s feature ...

Spiritually Intelligent Leadership by Danah Zohar

From --  Leader to Leader, No. 38, Fall 2005

Highlights from the article:

• Social capital can be measured by the amount of trust in a society, empathy people feel for each other, and commitment to the health of the community.  The health of the community is measured by criteria such as the rate of crime, divorce, illiteracy, and litigation.
    

• Spiritual capital reflects what an individual or an organization exists for, believes in, aspires to, and takes responsibility for.  Spiritual capital involves a new paradigm in leadership practice, a different mind-set that unleashes the power of individuals and organizations by evoking people’s deepest meanings, values, and purposes.
    

• Beyond IQ, or even Emotional Intelligence, spiritual intelligence is the ultimate intelligence of the visionary leader.  It was the intelligence that guided men and woman like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa.  It is an ability to access higher meanings, values, abiding purposes, and unconscious aspects of the self and to embed these meanings, values, and purposes in living a richer and more creative life.  Signs of high spiritual intelligence include the ability to “think out of the box,” humility, and an access to energies that come from something beyond the ego, beyond just me and my day-to-day concerns.
    

• To achieve real transformation, we have to change the motivations that drive behavior.  That is the prime responsibility of a visionary leader.  Today, business, politics, education, and society in general are driven by four negative motivations: fear, greed, anger, and self-assertion.  When we are controlled by these negative emotions, we trust both ourselves and others less, and we tend to act from a small place inside ourselves.
    

• We can change our motivations to more positive ones if inspired to do so.  A leader practicing the 12 principles of spiritual intelligence can provide that inspiration and the energy it unleashes.  When we apply these 12 principles to our collaborations and our lives, self-assertion becomes exploration, anger becomes cooperation, craving becomes self-control, and fear becomes mastery.  Our motivations have been raised and this changes our behavior.  As our behavior changes, our results change.

For the full text article, go to ...
http://www.leadertoleader.org/knowledgecenter/journal.aspx?ArticleID=84

12 Principles of Spiritually Intelligent Leadership

Spiritually intelligent leadership can be fostered by applying these 12 principles:

• Self-Awareness:  Knowing what we believe in and value, and what deeply motivates us.  This awareness is the bedrock of authenticity and genuine communication.

• Spontaneity:  Living in and being responsive to the moment.  To be spontaneous also means letting go of all our baggage -- past problems, judgments, assumptions, interpretations, and projections.

• Being Vision- and Value-Led:  Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly.  Knowing that life is about making a difference for others.

• Holism:  Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging and cooperation.  Realizing that we are part of an integrated human system where each part is defined by every other part of the system.

• Compassion:  Having the quality of “feeling-with” and deep empathy.

• Celebration of Diversity:  Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them.  Our ability to learn from each other comes out of our differences.  Our differences challenge us to think and grow.

• Field Independence:  Standing against the crowd and having one’s own convictions; a willingness to go it alone, but only after carefully considering what others have to say.

• Humility:  Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one’s true place in the world.

• Tendency to Ask Fundamental “Why?” Questions:  Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them.  Answers are a finite game played within boundaries, rules, and expectations.  Questions are an infinite game; they play with the boundaries, they define them.  Great leaders are called by great questions.

• Ability to Reframe:  Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture; seeing problems in a wider context.

• Positive Use of Adversity:  Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering.  Adversity is inevitable in life, yet dealing with it makes us stronger, wiser, and braver.

• Sense of Vocation:  Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back.

These principles are derived from the qualities that define complex adaptive systems.  In biology, complex adaptive systems are living systems that can create order out of chaos.

Next Month

In both the workplace and the homeplace increased expectations and productivity seem to be ever-raising the bar of excellence and performance.  But at what point does the human being get lost in the human doing?  When is enough enough?!

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