Spiritually and Developmentally Mature Leadership

The book goes beyond theory to offer tools and suggestions for developing emerging leaders. Inspired by the pioneering work of leadership scholar Andre Delbecq, this book points towards an expanded model of leadership that incorporates an active inner life, and posits that such fully human models of leadership will be essential to meet the profound challenges of the 21st Century. Without presuming to provide definitive answers, the text explores central questions such as: What is the added value of spiritual maturity to leadership? Would the integration of mature spirituality with well-developed intellectual and emotional capacities produce more beneficial leadership outcomes for organizations and individuals? What would a spiritually and developmentally mature emerging leader look like in 10 to 20 years? How do we prepare emerging leaders for the challenges they may face; and how do we model spiritually and developmentally mature leadership in ways that resonate with them?Professor Andre Delbecq (1936-2016) of the University of Santa Clara created the heuristic of “spiritually and developmentally mature leaders” to encapsulate his observation that outstanding leaders often seemed to draw strength and wisdom from sources that are not typically studied or taught in leadership courses. Thirty scholars and practitioners accepted Delbecq’s heuristic as the starting point to explore spiritual components of leadership that do not easily lend themselves to quantification or clear causal links. The analysis of their disciplined engagement with the heuristic forms the foundation of an exploratory, fully human understanding of leadership. This analysis is supported by literature reviews, including an overview of Andre Delbecq’s relevant work. Ultimately, the authors call for further collaboration across disciplines and between research and practice to build on the conceptual constructs offered here, and, especially, to create pedagogies for the training of spiritually and developmentally mature leaders

​Daniel Harris is a retired diplomat who served as Director of the Tyson Center for Faith & Spirituality in the Workplace from 2013 - 2107. His teaching and research interests include transformative teaching, especially in relation to spirituality and leadership. He created and taught “Authentic Leadership in a Multi-faith Workplace” at the Walton College of Business and collaborated on two articles looking at the responsibility of business schools to stimulate students to reflect on meaning, purpose and morality. Lori Holyfield is a Professor of Sociology and Director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Arkansas. She is a qualitative methodologist and areas of specialization are sociology and culture and the sociology of emotions. She has served at the University of Arkansas since 1995. Linda Jones is an Associate Professor of Language Specialties for the Department of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Arkansas. She is a qualitative and quantitative researcher and her areas of specialization are languages and technology, French Colonial Mississippi History, and Higher Education and Spirituality. She has served at the University of Arkansas since 1988. Rhonda S. Ellis has been an inspiring educator for twenty years in higher education and a leadership coach/trainer and consultant for ten years. As a professor, her research focus has been workplace spirituality, job satisfaction, organizational culture, and organizational commitment; moreover, she conducts research within her coaching practice with the focus on communication and customer care, and individual and organizational transformation. Judi Neal was the founding director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace and has been researching, teaching and consulting in the field of workplace spirituality for 25 years. She is the author of five books in the field and is a founding editor of the Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion, and one of the founders of the “Management, Spirituality and Religion Interest Group” at the Academy of Management.