Spiritual Leadership, Personal Development and Leadership Development
The founders of the Edge believe that there is a strong need for spiritual leadership today. What is spiritual leadership?
Spiritual leadership is based on a consciousness of unity. In other words, a realisation of an inextricable connection between myself and another, myself and the world. What I do with myself, I do with the surroundings and what I do with the other I also do with myself. It is also the awareness that the other may be different to myself but then again not really. This has significant consequences in the way in which I communicate with the other.
Spiritual leadership is based on vision, that which I really wish to achieve in the world. Spiritual leadership is based on honesty. By this we mean: facing up to reality in a direct manner. This concerns both the external reality and the reality within ourselves. Put another way: spiritual leadership is leadership based upon the courage to be honest, seeing the outer and inner reality as it is. Spiritual leadership is the kind of leadership that is inspiring and uniting instead of pushing and dividing. A leadership that can guide us in the healing of our planet.
Links to examples of Spiritual Leaders:
- Dalai Lama www.tibet.com/DL/index.html
- Gandhi http://www.mkgandhi.org/ and http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/index.htm
- Martin Luther King http://www.thekingcenter.org/
- Nelson Mandela www.anc.org.za/people/mandela
- Neale Donald Walsch www.cwg.org/en/10/10-10-15-a.html / www.humanitiesteam.org
- Anita Roddick www.anitaroddick.com/aboutanita.php?PHPSESSID=2335d643a735a4238e59e9d7847d83f5
Personal Development
A necessary condition for spiritual leadership is personal development. Spiritual leadership requires leaders who have the courage to know themselves. Without rigorous self-investigation one cannot develop this kind of leadership. You have to go to the edge of your inner self, to find out who you are, to discover your essential qualities and core beliefs, and what it is that you have to do in this life. You have to learn how to empower yourself, even in disempowering circumstances. You have to learn to be flexible and open-minded, so that you can always grow and learn from what is happening around and within you. You have to be willing to confront your own pain to be able to see the pain of others and be compassionate enough to face it instead of running away from it. And finally you have to learn to stay connected with and follow your intuition, and more than that, your inner guide. That’s personal development towards spiritual leadership.
Leadership Development
So the good news is that spiritual leadership can be learned. Although many institutions offer leadership development programs, we, the founders of the Edge, are not aware of any post graduate programs that explicitly focus on the development of spiritual leadership. That is why we decided to fill this gap in leadership development and start the first International School for Leadership and Spirituality.
Erik van Praag, Dean of The Edge, has written a book entitled Spiritual Leadership (2002). In its PROLOGUE you can read more about what we mean by this phrase. You can order this book through: Paraview Special Editions, 2004
ISBN: 1931044880 or by clicking on the following link