Mindfulness and Spirituality: An Enhanced Leadership Perspective

Abstract

The success of companies today largely depends on leadership capabilities of employees throughout the organization. Managers with an interest in how people perform their work must be aware of the significance various leadership models have on organizational performance. In conversations among management ranks, the concept of leadership is often discussed as an implied skill, either naturally imbued or associated with generally accepted personality traits or characteristics. As such, the measure of efficient leadership does not consider qualities such as spirituality in leading an organization. Mindfulness has been increasingly proposed as one of several leadership paradigms with potential for unleashing inner strength within individuals. Therefore, in this chapter, we discuss the importance of Mindfulness in the preparation of organizational leadership. However, we enhance this view to suggest that mindfulness alone is a necessary but not sufficient intervention to produce the best leadership outcomes. As such, we extend this discussion by proposing an enhanced view of leadership that blends Mindfulness + Spirituality in a working model to optimize leadership efforts. This research considers the role of leadership at the individual level based on the mindfulness and spirituality literatures and includes a higher order concept of Spiritual guidance as revealed in Wisdom writings.