Spiritual values in leadership and the effects on organizational performance: a literature review

Spiritual leadership is an emerging area of study, with much research demonstrating the need for spirituality in the workplace. The spiritual literature reveals five values that are consistent with a spiritual individual. These include finding meaning, altruistic love, self-awareness, visioning, and authenticity. Certain values act as broad umbrellas that allow for study of sub values such as faith, meditation, positive thinking and humility. This project reviews the literature to show how each of the five values affect leadership behaviour and how they increase subordinate performance and therefore produce more profit for an organization. The literature search revealed that each of the above values produced higher performance in subordinates either directly or through correlation. I identify twelve propositions that highlight the importance of spiritual leadership in the workplace. Furthermore, I demonstrate how a leader can cultivate the five values of a spiritual individual to become a spiritual leader. --Leaf i.