Coaching by value: The leadership spirituality connection

Today leaders ask themselves "who am I" and also "what am I to do." Decades ago leadership depended more upon secular power, but now leadership depends more upon values. Whereas values were once considered by business leaders as 'too soft' to be included in any serious approach to management, they have now become a central part of organizational strategy. The concept of Managing and coaching by Values is fast becoming the principal driver for reengineering a sustainable and competitive culture (Dolan et al, 2006). A new transcendent Spiritual leadership is arising from a philosophical commitment and expressed in actions appealing to diverse cultural environments (Solouki and Dolan, 2010). Value Based Leadership, can include 4 axes: economic-pragmatic leadership, Ethical-Social leadership, Emotional-energetic leadership, and Spirituality Leadership. These four axes in Leadership offer the opportunity for a holistic view of leadership. In this paper we argue that coaching by leaders and adapting a managing by values philosophy can be perhaps the only remedy for achieving excellence, as this represents a framework for ongoing renewal of corporate culture, and is critical for inspiring a collective commitment to the organization and its outcomes (Dolan, 2010). The proposed paper will explain why leaders should incorporate spiritual axis into the already known tri-axial model of leadership (Pragmatic, ethical and emotional). Albeit the difficulties to define spiritual leadership, we will try to show how it differentiate from Emotional dimension. While the latter focuses more on the feelings, attitudes, and traits as part of a culture, spiritual values would focus on people at another level, where they create the significance of their being. Unlike other values, spiritual values need not always have the characteristics of instrumentality. A new framework for effective leadership in the XXI century where instrumental values are blended with spiritual values will be proposed.