Leadership and spirituality - Invitation to an impolite conversation

I cannot think of anyone I work with who is openly religious – the closest I get is when a colleague says 'God bless' at the end of a conversation or email. Yet my work time is structured around Christian beliefs – I take holidays at Christmas and Easter, and don't work on Sundays (well, almost never – Sundays can be a bit dull sometimes). Work organisations seem to be secular, though, on the whole, and leaders tend to appeal to rationality or economic arguments rather than a god. Yet if some commentators are to be believed, business, entrepreneurship and leadership are all currently being 'spiritualised'. Look through the usual places, Amazon, high street bookshops, airport news-stands – there will definitely be a few books, maybe more than a few, either in the business or the self-help section, that bring together spirituality and work.

What's going on here? Is it another consultant or academic led management fashion, to follow the 198's culture movement and 1990s business process re-engineering fad? It certainly feels like it when you read some of the books and journal papers. They claim all sorts of amazing things for spiritual leadership or leading with spirit – that it will transform you, the people you work with, your organisation, maybe even the world if the author is especially ambitious.

These are considerable promises, but the basis of them is relatively unusual in the supposedly secular world of work, and may be uncomfortable for some.

I was born and brought up in the West of Scotland where, in the 1970s, parents and teachers advised children that there are two topics it is polite to avoid in conversation: politics and religion. Yet, again, religious belief runs through everyday life; for example, most children attend either non-denominational (Protestant dominated) or Catholic schools from age 5 on. This makes a difference; I had no Catholic friends until I began to work part-time aged 16 and met people who attended other schools. There as sporadic conflict between groups of children who attended different schools, and mutual suspicion of the 'other' group. That suspicion is simultaneously relatively trivial, as I experienced it, and deadly serious, as people in Northern Ireland experienced it; between my birth and 1993 more than 3,000 people died there in a conflict with religious foundations. That murderous conflict provided a dangerous and serious foundation for less dangerous and serious activities, such as football, many of those singing sectarian songs at football matches, as I did, were second or third generation descendants of Irish immigrants, as I am; going to watch football meant walking past people selling scarves or flags carrying prints of Republican o Loyalist paramilitaries; and the colours you wore could either make you a friend or enemy of strangers.

So maybe, in that context, it makes sense for parents to tell children not to talk about religion or politics if they want to be seen as polite and be safe. It seems that many of us still follow this precept; Tony Blair's press secretary Alistair Campbell famously told a journalist 'we don't do God' when his boss was asked about the influence of faith on policy. While in office, Blair refused to talk about his religious beliefs, and waited until leaving office before converting to Catholicism rather than become the first Catholic British Prime Minister.

Similarly, there are regular employment tribunals to hear the cases of employees sacked or disciplined for expressing their religious beliefs at work – reaction to these trends towards extreme positions. For some commentators, religion is the last refuge of delusional bigots, the preferred position of people who cannot accept science or rationality, fantasists who cannot be trusted in anything they say. Yet for others, expression of deeply-held beliefs is entirely appropriate, especially if they are Christian beliefs. So what do we prefer? Value-free or value-neutral workplaces, or spaces where we can all express our beliefs, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddist, humanist, pagan, atheist, whatever?

Compared to, for example, the US, the very British reticence in talking about religion or spirituality makes it all the more strange that both are making a comeback in business, management and leadership here. It is impossible to go shopping without coming across products that claim to be spiritually uplifting or enlightening, especially in health and beauty; feng shui consultancies offer to furnish and design your office so that your energies are aligned, spiritual management development programmes promise enlightenment and often productivity; aromatherapy candles soothe away work-related stress; yoga enables creativity and innovation.

Historically, we might also think of early entrepreneurs such as Josiah Wedgwood, the Cadbury family, or William Lever, all enthusiastic promoters of religions through their businesses. Bourneville, still the spiritual home of Cadbury, is remarkable for being a factory town with no pubs thanks to the Cadbury's Quaker beliefs; at Port Sunlight on Merseyside. Lever refused to allow any churches to be built other than for the religion he practised (and he then also appointed the vicar to ensure the sermons contained the right messages about working hard and following managerial rules). From these and other examples of early industrial leadership, Max Weber developed the idea of the Protestant work ethic, which then passed into everyday language to describe a well disciplined hard-working employee relatively unconcerned with world reward.

This leaves us with the possibility that spiritual leadership is not so new or unusual after all? Well, as ever with management and leadership, no and yes. No, in the sense that leaders are and always have brought beliefs to work; no, because there are strong spiritual elements to many classic theories, such as Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; and no, because some of the most recognisable theories of leadership make use of ideas from religion – charismatic leadership being the best example.

But spiritual leadership, as it is being defined in popularising and academic accounts at the moment also has a few distinguishing characteristics from previous versions. First, so far, it is largely a North American phenomenon. This is true of most business fads, but it is important here because US society has such a specific religious profile – high levels of church attendance, dominance of Protestant churches, and high levels of evangelical activity. All of this feeds into the academic work of US-based academics, and their writings about leadership, and its relevance to other societies, should be questioned. Second, the language being used toady is less 'religious' and more 'spiritual' – perhaps to avoid the possibility that religious beliefs are seen as dangerous or exclusive, perhaps to allow for a more 'pick and mix' approach, using self-management or leadership techniques from lots of different traditions. We can also question this, though, as most spiritual ideas and traditions have a religious root of some kind, and this obviously may be difficult for some – if a committed Christian, for example, is 'asked' by a leader to engage in activities or work in a way that challenges their beliefs. It also appears that some of the 'spiritualities' being encouraged in the US workplaces are, in fact, religions.

These might be quibbles, but they might also indicate that re-introducing spirituality and/or religion into workplaces, through leadership or other management methods, touches on areas of personal identity and thinking that not all of us wish to explore in that context.

Dr Scott Taylor
Senior Lecturer in Leadership Studies
Centre for Leadership Studies
University of Exeter Business School