8. Future-Oriented Identity: Necessary Leader Transformation Through Spiritual Engagement

Future-oriented leaders will be called to transition to new, more globally aware, socioculturally sensitive, sustainably focused, justice-oriented roles that stretch beyond current contemporary leadership models. Preparing leaders for such a future will require integrating hard skills traditionally taught in business schools, the soft skills of emotional intelligence, empathy, moral decisiveness, and mindfulness, and spiritual skills that can transform and shape the leaders’ identity. Such an integrated transformational development approach can allow for an authentic “refocusing” of purpose and approach, so leaders can better understand and care for the more diversely motivated constituents in the twenty-first century.

This chapter will examine the criticality of spiritual engagement in reshaping the heart, recasting identity, and preparing the leader to practice leadership and decision-making in the new twenty-first-century role. Spiritual engagement for this examination is defined as the transformative cycle of behaviors, attitudes, expectations, and resulting changes in attitudes and expectations from personal spiritual practices or disciplines. For the leader, the identity transformation allows authenticity in new century roles evidenced by diminished pride, selfishness, greed, and ambition resulting from a changed heart.