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Friday Nov 15, 2024
Tuesday, 28 April 2015 00:31 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
What they mean
What is really meant by ‘spirituality’? It is like you are asked to define ‘love’. Hard. It indeed is an ambiguous term.
A dictionary meaning goes as ‘the quality or state of being concerned with religion or religious matters’. ‘Spirituality’ at the workplace has a different manifestation, of course stemming from religious values, disciplines and the doctrine. How do we relate to it (spirituality) from a work situation’s point of view? It is what guides one’s actions, values and principles (may be derived from religious beliefs and philosophies) towards psychological growth and wellbeing, leading one to attain organisational goals through morally acceptable means. It is the bigger purpose of your life achieved through work which enables a positive personal transformation.
Trust, loyalty, forgiveness, acceptance, gratitude, courage, honesty, integrity, humility, compassion, endurance are some examples for spiritual values. You may be familiar with some of them as your organisational values, guiding and directing your mission statements or actions.
My memory goes back to the great Mahatma Gandhi. He amassed a wealth of spiritual values based on ‘Ahimsa’ (non violence) as the core weapon to defeat violence meted out by colonial power houses, whilst Gandhi possessed no political nor monetary prowess to challenge such power physically. Through this spiritual weaponry, he journeyed to transform and revolutionise the thinking of an entire India; and today still promoting it, standing tall as the world’s largest democracy, also giving rise to a strong nationalist movement.
Emotional Intelligence on the other hand was made famous by Dr. Daniel Goleman in 1995 through his groundbreaking publication ‘Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ’. Though all religions teach emotional intelligence, its application at work was compounded after Goleman’s study. The central meaning is how well one understands and regulates his/her own emotions as well as recognises the emotions of others (through empathy). This recognition should lead to a behaviour that is socially-beneficial and desired, creating win-win outcomes. Identifying and labelling emotions will enable one to predict and identify employee behaviour based on emotional information available leading to the understanding of other’s emotional states. Resultant impact being on positively affecting the delivery on tasks assigned.
Gone are the days when the work place was considered to be a place devoid of emotions. In fact it ended with the industrial era. Today’s information and knowledge eras immediately refocus on the softer human dynamics such as emotions, values, and spirituality which are essential towards the success of people who collaborate as teams to achieve a common goal(s) at work. They are even considered more important and critical than technical skills. A key driver of success in collaboration is how well one is able to not only understand and regulate one’s own emotions but those of others.
What the research says
An increasing number of leadership studies today are evolving to subject on spirituality and spiritual leadership. Research today has found that companies upholding spirituality are far more successful than those who are not. They are also more sustainable.
Peter Senge observed that any description of reality, be it modern or ancient, religious, mythological or scientific can only offer us a story, partial and incomplete about reality. The inquiry in business about building community, stewardship, core values, belonging, and spirit is about ‘real time, real stuff’ that has profound implications for organisations serious about business.
MIT Sloan Management Review concluded that it was necessary to integrate spirituality into management. It added that no organisation can survive for long without spirituality and soul and that we must examine ways of managing spirituality without separating it from the other elements of management.
According to a study by the University of Chicago Prof. Curtis Verschoor and published in ‘Management Accounting’ found that companies with a defined corporate commitment to ethical principles do better financially than companies that don’t make ethics a key management component, 
which is a construct of spirituality as listed above. As quoted by Prof. Verschoor, public shaming of Nike’s sweatshop conditions and slave wages paid to overseas workers led to a 27% drop in its earnings several years ago.
A recent study conducted by the University of Bonn and published in the Journal of ‘Organisational Behaviour’, November 2014 found that individuals who displayed emotional intelligence – the ability to discern other people’s emotions – were more likely to bring home a bigger paycheque than their emotionally-stunted colleagues. This is understandable, as organisations prefer those with a high level of EQ to key roles that will also pay more. Teams led by such individuals will demonstrate a higher degree of productivity enabling the payment of incentives for higher performance. “People increasingly rely on each other to get things done and that means understanding each other’s motives and emotions is a lot more important than it used to be,” says Yongmei Liu, an associate professor at Illinois State University’s College of Business, who co-authored the study.
The above findings point towards the connection of spirituality and emotional intelligence to increased and consistent growth of a company’s bottom line, which is fundamentally the core purpose of business – that is profits.
The case for business
Touchwood and Golden Key are classic examples of contemporary Sri Lanka cases of business failures where the sheer absence of spirituality and its belief occupy centre stage. Star Bucks as a result of evading tax in the UK faced profitability issues among other problems, costing the reputation of the brand, leading to a number of customers giving up their favourite coffee experience. Apparently the company is unlikely to make profits in the UK until 2017. It is prudent to reflect on other scandals of our times that led to financial disasters for business giants in the likes of Enron, Arthur Anderson, WorldCom, Global Crossing, and etc. The list will not end there.
In times like today where the business landscape is fiercely brutal, dynamic and uncertain, may be chaotic too, the benefits spirituality and EQ could usher in, are enormous. Increased brand reputation, customer and employee loyalty are two key returns. In issues such as mergers and acquisitions, organisational restructuring, outsourcing and off-shoring, increasing employee attraction, engagement and retention of a productive work force, the role spirituality and EQ has to play is unprecedented. Managing and retaining the millennial work force is another important aspect the subject topic offers a strategic direction in.
Some application tips for business:
1. Identify a core set of spiritual values and make all members of your organisation live them and uphold them leaving no chance for compromise. Build a culture where people openly discuss their emotions on a daily basis. Encourage them to discuss their moods, and assign work accordingly e.g. happy, ecstatic, euphoric, sad, joyful, etc. Towards this end, identify a leader and a cross-functional team to take charge of the execution and compliance.
2. Incorporate above in individual and team performance outcomes and measure them in their performance appraisals. Where possible, tie them to rewards.
3. Recognise people who are regularly achieving higher results.
4. Periodically conduct spiritual and emotional intelligence audits.
5. Measure business results pre and post intervention and identify the trends. If done well, it should show increasing profits with an upward trend.
The topic remains a growing movement; with about 500 plus books out there, along with numerous coaches and proponents. They are a must-have in the curricula of most academic study programs in the developed world today.
It is therefore critical for organisations to infuse the discussion into their DNA so that their employee communities live spiritually and emotionally intelligent lives, defining, constructing and renewing the organisational cultures for better business results.
Constructs of human constructions require human formulation, reconstruction and transformation leading to change, regularly and consistently. Embrace this important change.
(The author is founder Director and Chief Executive Officer of Target Resource Ltd., a business consulting, training, head-hunting, recruitment and research firm serving top private and the public sector organisations locally and globally. She was the course director of the MBA in Human Resource Management of the Open University of Sri Lanka. She is also a consultant for the Ministry of Public Management Reform of Sri Lanka. She is a business consultant, HR specialist, trainer, lecturer, writer and an international researcher on human dynamics. She may be reached at [email protected].)
