INTRODUCTION:

Many leaders exists in corporate world but very few elevated as great and very effective leaders, it is not so easy until unless one could able to practice workplace-spirituality and self management. Spirituality helps in understanding emotional wellbeing, as everyone knows that, India is the land of spirituality and it has Vedic civilization in which each and every aspect of human life is attached with spirituality. The roots of spirituality laid strong foundation for the development of values in people and society. According to Vedic civilization, the perfection of life is to realize one’s self. The main objective of spirituality is to envisage self-realization in one’s life. The core meaning of self realization is the act of achieving the overall development of our abilities and talents. At the same time self assessment is required to identify and understand – who we are and what we have to perform.

The self management is fundamental requirement that focus on – how people could manage themselves in their life and their work in order to manage others. Self management focuses on how one can control and manage his/her emotions, inner resources, and abilities. Self management can also describe as the process of managing our impulses.

Leadership can be defined as one's ability to get others to willingly follow. Every organization needs leaders; leaders can be found and nurtured with the following traits, clear vision, and vivid picture of where to go, as well as a firm grasp on success and how to achieve it. But it is not enough to have a vision; leaders must also share it and act upon it. Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co., said, "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”A leader must be able to communicate his or her vision in terms that cause followers to buy into it. He or she must communicate clearly and passionately, as passion is contagious.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

Ø To understand the concepts of Spirituality and Self-management

Ø To review how these concepts Spirituality and Self-management related to leadership.

Ø To analyze and find out the role of Spirituality and Self-management in making people as effective leaders.

WORKPLACE SPIRITUALITY:

Many Researchers have provided empirical evidence by conducting research on spirituality and its affecting factors in the various domains of individual’s life. Since past twenty decades the concept ‘spirituality at work’ has gained acceptance as an important concept to be researched in the context of management. There are many definitions of spirituality at work provided by researchers, yet no universally accepted definition of it. Even though defining spirituality is difficult because of its abstractive nature, many academicians considered it as their area of interest to research because of its positive influence on individual’s life.

Literature helps us to understand that many practices recommended for cultivating spirituality are similar to those recommended for improving emotional wellbeing. This is because there is a connection between the two—emotional and spiritual wellbeing influence one another and overlap, as do all aspects of wellbeing. Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than us, which can result in positive emotions, such as peace, awe, contentment, gratitude and acceptance; it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness. *"Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred."

If a system were left to itself without any managing or controlling force, it would be per se degenerate into a state of increasing randomness and disorderliness. A human being is like a super system that consists of various other systems: Nervous, Respiratory, Circulatory or Digestive, they all still required to work in symbiosis so as to keep the super system in an orderly and balanced state. Mind and body cannot separate. The body’s voluntary actions are subordinate to the state of mind, which are affected a common man by ambience. Hence, he could easily succumb to temptation, anger, frustration, revenge, lust and greed. If these negative forces rule the mind, people often slip into a crisis, and society in catastrophe.

IMPORTANCE OF SPIRITUALITY IN ONE’S LIFE:

Many ancient Indian scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagvatgeeta, and Arthasastra etc….are the outcome of spirituality which highlights the important aspects to manage or control one’s self. Aurobindo, the famous guru explained spirituality as ‘an attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, all embracing unity, and to rise life in all its parts to the divines possible values’.

The tremendous Speech given by Swami Vivekananda at Chicago on 11 September 1893 reveals India has spiritual values like tolerance and universal acceptance. His spiritual thoughts and preaches revolve around the aspects like strengthening body as well as mind by recognizing practicality in life. Through his preaches he tried to stimulate the inner power of individuals. Swami Vivekananda stress on the point that cultivating and expanding spiritual knowledge empowers human life in all aspects. The Indian spiritual gurus like Ramakrishna paramahamsa; Ramana maharishi etc…mentions that spirituality is a fundamental aspect of existence.

Peter Pruzan explains spirituality as ‘search for meaning that transcends material wellbeing. It is a focus on basic deep rooted human values and relationship with a universal source, power or divinity’. ‘The impact of spirituality in Management’ by JosephMlozano and Raimen Ribera stress that spirituality is a constructive dimension of human- beings. According to Ashforth and Pratt (2003), the three dimensions of spirituality are – Transcendence of self which they define as a connection to something greater than oneself; Harmony which they associated with authenticity, balance, and perspective; Growth which they mention as a realization of one’s aspiration and potential.

Some researchers devoted maximum efforts on the development of theories and models for spirituality at workplace (Mitroff and Denton, 1999; Ashmos, Duchon, 2000; Kinjerski and Skrpneck 2006; Milliman, Czaplewski, Ferguson, Pawar 2009). Empirical evidences on Spirituality at work as an independent variable that leads to dependent variables like Job satisfaction, Job involvement, organizational commitment, Employee wellbeing, Ethical behaviors etc..(Milliman, Czaplewski, Ferguson, Rego, Pina, Pawar, Gotsis and Kortzei, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz).

These are some meanings which supports that spiritual thinking provides inner strength to shape our attitudes and behaviors and it is nothing but managing our self in response to the situations and circumstances that we encounter in our day to day life.

SELF MANAGEMENT:

Self Management is an important and considered as a basic aspect that every individual has to concentrate. It is the process of control on individual’s own behaviors and attitudes in the way of goal attainment.

Actually there is no standard accepted definition. Rather several terms are used to explain the meaning of self-management as Training and Preparing or empowering self to attain specific outcomes. The timely analysis of self is very much required in the present lifestyle. This is because every individual irrespective of position has to play various roles in his life; it may be personal life or professional life. In addition to Technical, functional, communication skills, it is necessary for every individual to have self-governance skills. Self management represents an individual’s exerting control on his decision making and selected behaviors. Everyone has to nurture those behaviors which help to lead circumstances effectively and successfully that come across in one’s life.

If a system were left to itself without any managing or controlling force, it would be per se degenerate into a state of increasing randomness and disorderliness. A human being is like a super system that consists of various other systems: Nervous, Respiratory, Circulatory or Digestive they all still required to work in symbiosis so as to keep the super system in an orderly and balanced state Self management and self regulation are terms used interchangeably with same intensions. Self regulation has been evaluated and positive results have been found in clinical settings. Mind and body cannot separate. The body’s voluntary actions are subordinate to the state of mind, which are affected a common man by ambience. Hence, he could easily succumb to temptation, anger, frustration, revenge, lust and greed. If these negative forces rule the mind, people often slip into a crisis, and society in catastrophe.

But there is also an enlightened state of mind called conscience, which is a highly ordered state endowed with justness and reasoning combined with kindness, sacrifice and compassion. This conscience is supremely able to apply checks and balances to the functioning of mind, and correspondingly to the body’s activities and actions. A person who elevates himself/herself to this enlightened state is truly suited to managing self to managing and serving others.

Individuals alone have the tendency to attribute success to one’s own ability and attribute failures to external forces. Self-management without critical self-analysis is futile exercise. Depending up on the magnitude of the inner force or voice of conscience, the ‘managing self’ regulates the behaviour of a person. To understand right Vs wrong we have to listen to the voice of our conscience and the voice of inner force. For this there must be some moments of quietness (calm and cool), this is what meditation talks about. Both self mgt. and meditation support each other.

Self Mgt. is essentially an internal process of improving one’s self for which, the researchers adopted the inputs of Ram Pratap in his book Gandhi and Management. By conducting a survey on the following tools they are trying to understand Self Management impact on leadership.

Self Management tools:

Ø Self introspection

Ø Self actualization

Ø Self abnegation

Ø Self repentance

Ø Self confession

LEADERSHIP:

Along with these, one more dimension also gained great importance, that is, emergence of recognition of ‘Leadership’ as an outcome of Individual spirituality. There is a growing interest in these two domains i.e.; Spirituality and Leadership among academicians and Researchers. There are various Leadership styles and some of them are Authoritarian, Democratic, Laissez-fair, Bureaucratic, Charismatic, Servant leadership, Transactional, Transnational, People-oriented or Relations-oriented etc. Because of these many leadership styles one question arises that, which leadership style gives the best to the individual. The answer for this question has been researched by Management theorist of Ohio state university and University of Michigan in 1950. They published a series of study to determine whether leaders should be task-oriented or relationship oriented or people-oriented. The result came out with result that ‘no one best style’ and leaders must adjust their leadership style to the situation as well as to the people being led.

SPIRITUALITY AND LEADERSHIP:

The theory development of spirituality and its relation with leadership is in development phase (Reichas and Schneider, 1990). Research has been conducted to link between spirituality and organizational leadership (Fairholm, 1998; Fry, 2003; Strack et.al, 2002).

Sharma (2010) has proposed the model of Spiritual leadership. In this model he presented set of values and attributes like truth, integrity, character, compassion, conscience, humility and adopting practices like self discipline, simplicity, individualized consideration, community services and openness to faith. The combination of values, attributes and practices results to Altruistic or Transcendental idealized influence which in turn results in to two sets of outcomes i.e. personal outcome (wellbeing, self transformation, enhanced motivation, enhanced commitment, ethical behavior) and Social or organizational outcome (devotion to duty, enhanced satisfaction, enhanced performance, group productivity).

According to Fry (2003), the effect of spiritual leadership brings together or creates a sense of fusion among the four fundamentals of human existence (body, mind, heart, and spirit) so that people are motivated for high people are motivated for high performance, have increased organizational commitment and personally experience joy, peace and serenity.

There are some more research which supports the argument that individual’s engagement in spiritual practices leads to greater leader motivation (Alexander, Rainforth, and Gelderloos, 1991), strengthens leader relationships (Anderson et al, 1999), improves leader resilience ( Quick, Gavin, Cooper, Quick and Gilbert 2000), and increases leadership effectiveness (Mc collum, 1999). Spiritual practices have created improvements in the leader’s performance (Alexander et al 1991, Anderson et al 1991) and Organizational productivity (Alexander et al 1993).

Reave (2005) in his paper, he states that there is a consistency between spiritual values, practices and effective leadership. Spiritual values such as integrity, honesty, and humility have effect on leadership success. Some more leadership models from Indian context that consist spiritual dimensions are:

Enlightened leadership model (Sharma, 1995) – higher order purpose for existence, values harmonizes vision, mission, and action. Karta model (Singh and Bhandarkar 1990) – leader is considered as father figure (kartha) who is effective, protects, empowers, grooms and develops.

Nurturant-task leadership (Sinha, 1980) – Taking care of subordinates, being considerate and affectionate, contingent on task performance. Vijigshu model (kautilaya) (Sharma 2002) – Requires leaders to be self motivated and driven by victory motivation. Yin-Trinity model (Sharma 1996) – considers the power of three female idols – lakshmi, sarawathi, Durga symbolizing wealth (right use of wealth), knowledge, and power. Workship model (chatterjee 1998) – describes four paths towards workship. According to this model when work is done in the spirit of workship, the quality of work changes and it transformed to extraordinary reality. Wisdom leadership (chakraborthy, 1999) – leaders has a touch of Rishi(sage) or the touch of sacredness in all actions.

From these reviews it can be understood that the views about outcomes of leadership from western and eastern context are almost similar. But in the Indian context, leadership models include those entire elements which are the results of spiritual thinking and practices though spirituality is not included as independent variable. Study of literature on spirituality and leadership stresses the fact that Effective leadership skills demand those characteristics which are the results of spiritual thinking.

METHODOLOGY:

Primary and secondary data methods adopted to collect the data, for primary data we designed a questionnaire and secondary data we derived from the available books, journals, related reports and documents.

The analytical results presented with the required statistical tools and related tables presented as exhibits in the end of this article.

To achieve above mentioned objectives, Research has been carried on the basis of below mentioned working hypotheses.

Hypothesis:

H1:

Spirituality is significantly related to Self Management and Leadership.

H2:

Effectiveness of Leadership significantly depends on Spirituality and Self Management.

To test the above mentioned hypotheses and to attain the research objectives, Correlation and Regression analysis has been conducted. For this purpose SPSS version.20 has been used.

Measuring Instrument:

To carry out the survey, questionnaire has been used as data collection tool. Questionnaire has been constructed on three variables: Spirituality, Self management and Leadership.

Spirituality questionnaire has been constructed on variables: positive thinking, intrinsic motivation, purpose in life, good relationships with others, responsibility towards environment and helping others.

Self management questionnaire has been constructed on variables: Self Actualization, Introspection, Abnegation and Confession.

Leadership questionnaire has been constructed on variables: vision, Altruism, continuous growth, hope.

Responses are collected from seven-point Likert rating scale with highest value 7=strongly agree to 1=strongly disagree.

Sampling method:

Sample has been selected from the population of mining engineers who are working in mining industries. Method of Stratified sampling has been adopted to select the respondents. Under this method total population is divided into strata which are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. The elements from each stratum are selected using simple random sampling independently from each group. The reason for selecting this method of sampling is to select the respondents from various levels of managerial cadre. Research has been carried with the sample of 51 which includes respondents from senior mines managers to junior level managers.

Demographics of the Sample:

Questionnaire has been distributed among the 51 employees in the mining industry who are in the managerial cadre. Sample consists of 8 senior mines managers whose age falls between 50-55 having work experience from 12-16 years.12 Mines managers with age group 40-50 having work experience 10-12 years, 16 2^nd class managers having maximum of 10years and minimum of 5 years work experience belongs to the age group 30-40 and junior mines manager having work experience 3-5 years and age between 26-35 years. Questionnaire has been mailed to employees and requested to mail the questionnaire within the stipulated time.

Testing the Questionnaire:

Reliability test has been conducted to test the internal consistency of variables in the scale. Validity test of questionnaire has been carried out by factor analysis to extract the factors. Principal component analysis is the method of extraction and varimax is the rotation method. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy of the instruments are 0.795 for spirituality, 0.642 for leadership and 0.639 for self management and all KMO measures of three scales are greater than 0.5 which indicates that factor analysis could be used for the given set of data. Bartlett’s test of sphericity tests the significance of correlation matrix of variables which indicates that correlation is significant (i.e. correlation matrix is not identity matrix).

Bartlett’s test of sphericity for the significance of the correlation matrix of the variables indicates that the correlation coefficient matrix is significant as indicated by the p value corresponding to the chi-square statistic. The p value is 0.000 which is less than 0.05, the assumed level of significance. This indicates that correlation matrix of the variables is significant. All these values justify the use of factor analysis.

As per Kaiser Criterion, only factors with Eigen values greater than 1 are retained. Together they accounted almost 73.2%, 78.163%, and 75.873% of the variability in the original values of Spirituality, Self Management and Leadership respectively.

Reliability:

The internal consistency of the three scales has been measure by cronbach’s Alpha. The values of Spirituality (8 items), Self management (10 items) and leadership (9 items) scales are 0.834, 0.755, and0.933 respectively.

Correlation Analysis:

The first hypothesis (H1) can be tested through correlation. This is a statistical tool that can be applied to measure the degree of association between two or more variables. In the present study correlation (r) has been analyzed by using Pearson’s coefficient of correlation. The following table gives the results of correlation analysis. The results indicates that correlation between Spirituality and Self Management is 0.682 i.e. r=0.682 which means that spirituality and self management are positively related. The correlation between Spirituality and Leadership is 0.789. It means Spirituality is positively associated with leadership and vice versa. Again one more value i.e. r= 0.895 indicates the positive association between Self management and Leadership. The p value for the correlation coefficients of all three variables is 0.000 which is less than 0.01, the assumed level of significance. This implies that the correlation coefficient among the spirituality, self management and Leadership are positive, high and statistically significant. From this analysis it has been proven that H1 is true and can be accepted.

Regression Analysis:

Correlation analysis can mention the relation between the variables but doesn’t specify which variable influences which variable. These limitations can be overcome by Regression analysis. It could be used to test an overall relationship exists between the dependent variable and a set of independent variables. It can also be used to measure the relative importance of various independent variables in explaining the dependent variable.

In the present study, leadership effectiveness is assumed to be dependent on independent variables- Spirituality and Self management. The below tables (exhibits) provides the results of dependent and independent variables.

The regression results indicate that both spirituality and self management positively influence the leadership. This is evident from the above tables.

Modal summary table shows what % of variability in the dependent variable is accounted for by all of the independent variables together. There is 85.4% of variability in Leadership with the influence of Spirituality and Self Management. ANOVA table gives the results of F-test to determine whether the modal is a good fit for the data. R square for the modal is 0.860 which is high and significant as seen from the p value <0.001 (0.000) of the F-statistic of ANOVA table. The ‘R’ column represents the value of the multiple correlation coefficients. ‘R’ value of Modal summary can be considered to be one measure of the quality of the prediction of the dependent variable.

Coefficients Table is evident that Spirituality and self management are found significant variables as p values of their coefficients are 0.000 (p value <0.001) which explains the relation between independent variables (spirituality and self management) and dependent variable (leadership). The regression analysis supports the second hypothesis that effective leadership depends significantly on spirituality and self management.

CONCLUSION:

Spirituality has gained great importance in Indian ethos. There is no doubt to say that spirituality has become an important element in each and every individual’s life irrespective of his/her religion. But implementation of spiritual thinking in various dimensions of life can be considered as a new perspective. According to Vedic culture spirituality enhances the potential of self managing which is very important for both personal and professional life. Managing self is very important to reach heights in personal and professional life. Spirituality is the best tool which helps an individual to manage his thoughts, beliefs, attitudes in every aspect of his life. An individual who can manage himself internally can able to handle his external circumstances successfully that he encounters in his life. The continuation of this attitude will leads to the enhancement of leadership effectiveness. From the above analysis we can enunciate that spirituality and self management can help an individual to improve his leadership capabilities.

Though, research on spirituality has been started before twenty decades, still it is in infant stage because of lack of sufficient empirical evidence on various dimensions of spirituality and its outcomes. Research should be encouraged and conducted rigorously, in order to share the knowledge on advantages of spirituality and self management that leads to effective leadership. Organizations should inculcate the spirituality practices in order to manage themselves and enhance their leadership qualities.

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Received on 16.08.2017 Modified on 10.09.2017

Int. J. Ad. Social Sciences. 2017; 5(4):205-210.

Spitituality and Self Management for Effective Leadership