All Leaders are Spiritual Leaders

“Spirituality is a widespread (nearly universal) human trait that people approach in many different ways but with the same goals. They wish to find meaning and value in everyday life, to make sense of life, and to connect themselves with something larger. Spirituality is a way of integrating our own experiences with the idea of something more overarching and more timeless than ourselves.” ~ David Rosmarin

In our coaching at The Restored Leader we serve all kinds of executives and managers—people of overt faith and people of no explicit faith. Here’s the thing: My experience leads me to believe that all men and women are spiritual at the core. Not religious necessarily, but spiritual. What does that mean?

As the epigraph above describes, to be human is to look for meaning… to attempt to make sense of the beauty and brokenness of our world and “to connect themselves with something larger.” We are all hardwired as meaning-makers. We want to assemble the data points that appear chaotic and arbitrary and find patterns that point toward something worth living for. This “something” may begin with personal comfort and advantage, but eventually we need something more.

To be spiritual is simply to pay attention—to our own needs and to the needs of the whole. It calls us to move beyond self-preservation and self-interest to the greater good. This call can be resisted, so people’s leadership can certainly get stuck here. The call toward the greater good gets quieter, but it never goes away.

Far beyond sentimentality lies some instinctive orientation to sacrifice our small needs for the larger needs of the collective. And while we may consider ourselves “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR), the Latin root religio means to reconnect, to reforge the ligaments of our joint solidarity. In that sense, almost everyone is “religious” in that we need connection like we need oxygen.

True, religion implies institutionalism… and that rarely garners our greatest belief. But community, compassion, camaraderie—that is worth giving our best for. That is worth believing in. That is our fundamental spirituality, and it occupies most of us in some degree. Which means that it is something we can appeal to in others and actively cultivate in ourselves.

Again, spirituality is not sentimentality. Spirituality is seeing the unseen and reaching for transcendence. It is, in fact, believing that Transcendence is reaching for us. It is to believe that we are beloved, worthy, and worth becoming the best versions of ourselves. Do you feel that today?

This is what professional coaching is all about: someone who believes is you more than you believe in yourself, someone who calls you to your best and truest self. Someone who nudges you beyond false complacency toward uncomfortable growth. Toward becoming who you are meant to be. Toward your spiritual self. Toward personal change so you can become an agent of restoration to all those around you. What could be better?

This is also relevant to your sphere of leadership: You can always reach for the spiritual in those you work with. If you feel inspired to grow and become your best self, take our Readiness Assessment here.

Believing in you, Jerome