Real Leadership: How Spiritual Values Give Leadership Meaning

This text explains why values-based spiritual leadership that coalesces employees into a harmonious group is the only way to successfully manage increasingly diverse workers in the 21st century.

A person’s values are the most powerful factor defining his or her actions; everyone has a value system or a spiritual component that triggers their behavior. Our personal values are a more powerful force upon individual action than corporate policy, procedures, tradition or peer pressure. Since the work environment is where the typical worker will spend the most time-more than at home with family, with friends, or at church-it is reasonable that workers will have spiritual demands as well as economic needs from their work lives. Unfortunately, this is a task managers are not prepared to meet.

Real Leadership: How Spiritual Values Give Leadership Meaning argues that values-based-i.e., spiritual-leadership is the only way to do leadership in today’s globalized, multi-differentiated world. The author traces the development of real leadership through five generations of theory, then builds a strong case for the values leadership strategy because of its ability to unify workers… and because it allows them to find personal meaning in the workplace task at hand.

Includes 9 arguments and over 40 key facts supporting values leadership as the only valid leadership theory

Harnesses the knowledge of over 200 contributing experts

Presents the novel ideas of many analysts, including recent doctoral work exploring specific aspects of spirituality, values, and leadership

Traces over 100 years of leadership research in a chronological fashion

Provides an extensive bibliography and index