Growing numbers of people are beginning to talk about spirit and
work in ways that are intended to enhance personal satisfaction, increase
levels of personal commitment to organizational goals, and allow work-
ers maximum freedom to function authentically to their spiritual values.
To date little of this discussion has entered the formal academic and
professional literature. However, there is growing pressure to include
these ideas in revised definitions of leadership and discussions of a
leader's tasks.

This book attempts to define spiritual leadership and assess its force
as a new approach to leadership, one focusing and integrating current
ideas such as values-based leadership, visioning, empowerment, and de-
veloping trust cultures. We will identify current pressures in the work-
place that foster spiritual leadership. New scientific theories of chaos,
new realities about the place of work in the lives of workers, and new
demands upon work, the job, and career to fulfill needs formerly pro-
vided by home, church, and community combine to force our attention
to the spiritual side of work and the leadership of workers.

The goals of corporate action have changed from profit alone to profit
and individual worker development. This fact of contemporary U.S. (per-
haps even world) life is in the process of instituting a sea change in the
life and work of workers and their leaders. The full dimensions of this
fundamental change are not always clear, but the fact of the change is
attested to every day as workers are laid off, customers are asking for
new and radically different products every day, and workers on the job
demand more fulfillment from their work.

The preeminent goal sought by corporate leaders throughout the his-
tory of business has been profit. Concern for the bottom line drives busi-
ness decision making. This has been the case throughout history and will
continue into the future. Businesses are, after all, economic systems that
use money as the primer of collective action as well as the goal of actions
taken. Professional managers evolved over the years to focus corporate
attention and corporate resources on the money flow and on maximizing
return on money and other assets invested.

Perhaps the most significant change in the philosophy of business over
the past several decades has been the introduction of another powerful
drive, a drive that threatens to take an equal place with profit as the
motivator of executive action. This drive comes not just from the core of
managers at the head of the business hierarchy (or from their bosses, the
board of directors), but from the rank and file workers. It is a drive to

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