Spirituality

Spirituality

Spirituality can be defined as a feeling or an instinct power beyond our typical actions or behaviors. Some scholars associate spirituality with religion, while others argue that spirituality does not necessarily involve God, but bringing out the hidden powers in ourselves. However, most scholars, both secular and religious, agree that spirituality is a source of motivation, and gives life a meaning during challenging periods or what the author calls the turbulent and frustrating currents of white water. Spirituality is essential for managerial leaders due to the nature of their duties and responsibilities in their jobs. Managerial leaders should be the last people to give up in organizations if they have to do so. They are also the source of motivation and inspiration to minor employees through having a bold vision, leadership, and giving direction to other employees. Generally, they must provide a meaningful place for themselves and other employees. A managerial leader must view the employees as whole beings, not just employees who need to be exploited or mistreated to bring out their best.

Spirituality is essential is management leadership. A strong sense of spirituality affects an individual’s attitude, emotions, and behaviors, which are compelling characters of managerial leaders in the workplace. A manager leader with spirituality will possess positive attitudes, feelings, and behaviors, and the vice versa for managers without spirituality. The workplace has become an essential place where people seek the meaning of their life in their current life. Time has changed when people would seek spirituality or wholeness in religious institutions because many people since the 1960s in the US do not actively attend religious services. Likewise, people no longer find the meaning of life from families or neighborhoods because most people do not stay with their extended families and often relocate from one area to another due to various reasons. This is why the workplace has become an essential workplace where people find spirituality and the idea of wholeness. Courtships, marriages, and close friendships are common among coworkers. Nowadays, the workplace is not just a place where people only come to perform the assigned duty but a place where people socialize, form friendships, and find a sense of fulfillment.

The following is a true story about Peter, my close friend, who was showing a sense of spirituality when the family company was going through turbulent and frustrating currents of white water. Protac is a family-owned company that was established by Joshua, my friend’s father. Though he is the chief executive officer of the company, it is jointly run by the family members who hold different managerial positions in the company. Protac company deals with baking bread and cakes. The companies supply their products to supermarkets, wholesale, and retail shops in the city. The company is a household name as many people consume its products. Peter is a supervisor in the company, and he directly deals with the well-being of the casual and subordinate workers like line and team leaders. The reason why Joshua nominated Peter for the position is that Peter has excellent interaction skills, and thus employees would find it easy to share information with him.

Last year, the company was under the spotlight of the media, when a local television station exposed the company of producing unhealthy foodstuffs due to greed of money. According to the report, the company mispresented information on the nutrient value of the products. The report claimed that the products had excess sugar and fat levels than they were labeled in the packaging bags. The report concluded that foods are likely to cause health complications. This affected the company negatively as it minimized its sales due to the reduction of the company. Unestablished employees in the company provided information to the television investigators. This greatly led to mistrust among the employees as well as angering Joshua, who initiated an idea of firing every employee in the company but was stopped by Peter.

The company was facing a challenge of mistrust among coworkers and also financial constraints. However, Peter used this opportunity to bring the company back to the throne through several measures. First, some employees opted to quit jobs, but Peter reassured them the company would raise to its throne, and the challenges will be over. He inspired the employees that the spotlight was not meant to bring them down but to challenge them to improve their services. Second, Joshua had trust issues with all employees as some had leaked information to the investigators, and thus, he wanted to fire every and employee and hire new employees. However, Peter explained to him firing the employees will not be a solution, and it even exposes the company more unfavorable to society. He explained to him that the hard times the company was going through were to strengthen the company.

More importantly, Peter organized an interview with the television that had exposed the company. This is one of the practices that were least expected because the interviewee would have to answer tough questions from both business people and their customers. Even Joshua avoided most interview requests from the media. During the interview, Peter apologized for the inconveniences the company made and reassured its customers of providing high-quality products. He explained that the company had taken adequate measures to ensure its food, it’s healthy and even challenged the television to conduct another research to approve if the company is now providing healthy and quality products.

Since then, the company has been rising again, and today it is making a lot of profits. This can be attributed to the extraordinary work completed by Peter. He took initiatives that nobody would take to restore the company, even the CEO. Everybody in the company was viewing it as a fail, and nobody believed it would rise again. The questions remain what the additional motivator for Peter was, and the answer might be spirituality. Spirituality leads managers to find a way where people would believe there is no way. Peter’s spirituality did not only help him, but it also restored hope in other employees who wanted to quit jobs. This is what all leadership is about, motivating, inspiring, guiding the subordinate. However, without spirituality, it may hard to achieve the same.

What leadership styles should then managerial leaders engage the incorporate spirituality? In my opinion, I believe it is transformational and servant leadership. Servant Leadership emphasizes that leaders must give the needs of the subordinate workers the priority. Servant leaders are characterized by empathy, personal commitment, and the spiritual growth of the minors. Transformational leadership emphasizes nurturing leadership abilities in others, development of mutual trust. Transformational leadership is characterized by charisma, inspiration, consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Spirituality is essential to practice these leadership strategies as they are very challenging.

The author establishes the concept of wholeness as an essential factor in the workplace. The author argues that when we see something whole, we see beauty, goodness, and spirit. The concept of wholeness in the workplace is represented by satisfaction. Satisfaction includes personal well-being, competency, health well-being, and spiritual well-being. However, when an employee is experiencing challenges, we find that he gives the worst outcomes. For instance, when employee spirituality goes down due to work-related stress, he or she performs poorly because the work has lost meaning, and no longer enjoys doing it. On the other hand, when an employee is in good form, he likely gives out the best, sometimes even going beyond what is expected of him or her to deliver. For instance, you may find an employee voluntarily working hours to achieve a specific goal.

Many companies emerged out of the white paper situation. The Walt Disney Company is one of the household companies in the US. However, the beginning of the company was challenging as Walt Disney, the founder, passed through a lot of challenges but never gave up. At the age of 22, Walt Disney was fired from the newspaper job for being not creative enough. He founded the first animation company but went bankrupt. However, he found success in the cartoon character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but soon, the rights were taken by the distributor, Universal Studios. He never gave up and continued to try his fate. Later he developed the idea of Mickey Mouse, which would turn to be his fate and make him successful. Just like Walt Disney, companies go through many challenges in their initial stages. However, what matters is how you are working to improve in the situation. Unlike Walt Disney, many give up and find focus on other items. Despite the challenges, there are always undetermined forces that drive people to continue trying to make it eventually.

Spirituality is essential in management leadership. Spirituality affects the emotions, attitudes, and behaviors of leadership, which in turn affects other employees in the workplace. Spirituality guides people to overcome challenges in workplaces. The two leadership strategies that have been found to align with spirituality are the servant and transformational leadership. Through the example of Walt Disney Company and Peter, we conclude that spirituality dramatically helps people to overcome challenges. In conclusion, managerial leaders need to provide a pleasant working place because it contributes to employee wholeness and provides meaning to them.