Danah Zohar’s ‘Spiritually Intelligent Leadership’ in Leader to Leader (“hat tip” to Management and Leadership Articles) says what needs to be repeated more: that financial capital is not as important in business as social and spiritual capital.
   It’s a vicious cycle out there. Because capitalist society places an emphasis on the money aspect, those with a real vision, which takes into account emotion and spirituality, are in short supply.
   I rather like Danah’s analogy of a wedding cake:

This obsession with material gain has led to short-term thinking and the narrow pursuit of self-interest. It is true that any kind of enterprise we want to engage in requires some kind of financial wealth if it is to succeed in the short term. But for leadership to inspire long-term, sustainable enterprises, it needs to pursue two other forms of capital as well: social and spiritual. These three types of capital resemble the layers in a wedding cake. Material capital is the top layer, social capital lies in the middle, and spiritual capital rests on the bottom, supporting all three.

   She goes on to reveal her 12 principles of spiritually intelligent leadership, and I realize these are ones that I have applied in 19 years of business. It’s great to have them summed up, because we all have off days. When I’m down, I tend to forget one or two of these principles—so by seeing them broken down, I know what I can address that day. Posted by Jack Yan, 12:03  permalink

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