A Leader’s Personal Journey of Insight: Going Through Darkness into Light as a Condition of Leading an Organization Through Its Own Darkness

Abstract

The need for a personal journey of transformation is fundamental to multiple religious and philosophical traditions, both western and eastern traditions. Each of the traditions expresses “the way,” or “the path” to authenticity and self realization. Personal transformation and spirituality can serve as an important and effective foundation for workplace leadership, applying spirituality principles in management and engendering a culture of interconnection. A spiritually grounded workplace is ideally led by servant leaders and expresses in action authenticity, reciprocity, personal goodwill, a sense of meaning, internal motivation, and organizational excellence. The “the way we do things around here” embodies organizational culture, so that a spiritually grounded workplace could be expected to reap the benefits of high employee job satisfaction and high employee engagement and motivation, and would result in high organizational effectiveness. A spiritually grounded workplace would not necessarily be isolated from such challenges and social movements as the #metoo and #timehascome movements that call for leaders to engage employees and stakeholders, including customers and suppliers, to critically examine the current situation and if necessary to close the gap between reality and aspiration. One could argue that a spiritually grounded workplace would be one where the benefits of such movements could be safely and soberly evaluated and adopted, because the foundations of both the organization and its employees provide stability and truth. Such a critical examination requires active, nondefensive listening by management and courageous speaking by employees without fear of reprisal or retaliation, and the development of “close the loop” action items to remediate problem areas leads the organization through its own darkness into light. Like life itself, both personal and organizational transformations are ongoing projects, not “finished products.”