Conflict between spiritual leadership education and workplace professional demands

Professional Implications on Education

Professional Implications of Education

Contemporary Education Issue

Professional Implications of Education

When the students are taught that the God wants servants and not the leaders, the students might get confused for a second whether they are bluffed about the professional life and leadership? Plenty of courses are taught to the business administration students telling them to grow up as a leader yet some spiritual leadership guides them to be 'good' followers only thus only following instructions, not developing their own. It is the imbalance between the course curriculum and the demands of world out there that makes it hard for the students to decide which path to choose, that of a surrendering servant/follower (what spiritual leadership teaches) or the path of a visionary leader (demand at work place). The choice can be simplified but the options also need review.

Educational and Professional Life

The knowledge gained and courses studied during education serve as the theoretical base for practical work life of a person. In a given situation, an individual decides on the basis of what he learnt in college and what he experienced. Since the work place involves body, mind, heart and soul of an individual, the spiritual leadership and spiritual ethics are also widely taught in colleges. Yet there is often a severe clash between what spiritual leadership teaches and what the work place environment demands. This lack of professional implications of education of spiritual leadership may stress out the employee rather offering support to increase productivity.

What Professional Leadership Demands

One of the contemporary issues of the education curriculum is that it asks for developing leadership traits on one hand and the follower traits on the other. The professional leadership demands to take responsibility of one's job, actions and self. The spiritual leadership on the other hand promotes the idea that everything is from God hence an individual should not be blamed for everything that goes wrong. While on theoretical grounds this may seem logical, such an education will encourage the student not to be responsible enough in his life.

The organizational environments today are very diverse. Not only that people are hired in different countries for low wage rates but also the immigration results into very diverse demographics at work. With people coming from different religious backgrounds other than Christianity i.e. Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and even Atheism, it would be unfair to teach and demand the observation only of the Judeo-Christian values (Blackaby, and Blackaby, 2001). It is like giving space to conflicts in name of the spiritual leadership.

The leadership roles in an organization often demands to solve challenging issues. There are occasion when the leader has to fire people from the organization due to overcrowded workforce or the low productivity issues. The Christian values at this point will demand the leader to 'surrender to will of God' and keep the additional/unproductive employees and let the discerning get guidance (Proverbs 1; New International Version (NIV), n.d.). Thus harming the interest of one person for the benefit of the organization and idea of the survival of the fittest may not be what spiritual leadership supports in its true sense.

What law and society says?

It is legally null to not let employees have their own personal or religious values but to ask them to follow a particular set of religious values. Also the American social culture disapproves snatching people's liberty to choose religious principles. The people are born independent and they should be given the right to choose their path. They can be inspired to follow one path over the other but they should not be made to observe one set of rules when they actually believe the other. Thus. The American society does not suit for implementation of conservative believes since the population dynamics is composed of a wide variety of people coming from diverse backgrounds. America is proud to help people live with own choices.

Is Spiritual Leadership Impractical?

Spirituality is much more than the religion. It is also about making, about ethics, about values and belief towards purpose of life. Spirituality has a broader canvas to cover than Judaism or Christianity would cover alone. It is about finding meanings in what we do and not finding monetary benefits in what we do. Thus spiritual leadership is not impractical in itself but the conservative approach of spiritual leadership is something what makes it an educational dilemma. It often teaches passivism in form of trust in God than to rely on our skills.

The business world out there lacks peace of mind and soul since it is always in a rush. People often lack focus thus more than half of the businesses fail since they find only one purpose in business and that is money making. The truth is that business administration involves much more; it involves offering employment opportunities to help people lead better and independent lives, it asks for corporate social responsibility and observing ethical values. Hence, spirituality is practical in the business world but what makes it impractical is the conservative and narrow view to it. Even talking to employees about their satisfaction of life can be a spiritual deed if the intent to help people and please God is involved.

What needs to be done?

Spirituality is as a fundamental component of our being as are heart, lungs, liver, kidney, brain and eye. For body, the diseases like cancer and infections can be fatal and the disease of soul is guilt, insomnia and fear. Thus the idea is not to eliminate spirituality from leadership but to make it more relatable and practical so that there is no gap between what students learns at school and what he is demanded of in social and practical life. The spiritual leadership course can be designed by taking following systematic measures:

Find religious background of subjects (students, teachers and professionals)

Conducting a survey on understanding of Spiritual Leadership

Survey students

Survey professionals

Analyze organizational leadership's perspective on:

Organizational vision, ambition, mission and values.

Find stakeholder effectiveness standards and problems.

Organize empowered teams/task forces around key issues.

Develop and discuss the goals of spiritual leadership (Lockridge, 2013)

Relate spiritual leadership to the students as well as worldly matters

Evaluate Spiritual Leadership success

Evaluate student's and professional's satisfaction with the course design

Conclusion

The spiritual leadership appeals those a lot that have problems at work place and these people feel like spirituality at work place and spiritual leadership will save them from professional or career disaster. The truth however is that without making the plan of spiritual leadership practicable, the confusion will only increase. The researchers should not base the spiritual leadership plan on Biblical guidelines and then to implement those plans rather the researchers are required to find spiritual problems of the workforce first. This will help understand the problems of the employees and to come up with a responsive spiritual leadership that guides people to attain leadership goals through spirituality and not to sacrifice leadership for the purpose of spirituality. God does want to see us follow His instructions yet He gave us the mind to make our own decisions too to increase the productivity and performance of self and the organization we work in and people in it.