How can strong people become stronger? How can good organizations achieve excellence? C. Stephen Byrum, Ph.D., organizational and leadership consultant, and Leland Kaiser, Ph.D., healthcare futurist, share their guidelines in Spirit for Greatness. The book is organized around Memorial Hermann"s core values of Vision, Ethics, Trust, and Spirituality, which are universally applicable to other organizations. These principles are gleaned from the Memorial Hermann Healthcare System"s "Spiritual Leadership Institute," initiated in 1997.

The authors begin with the premise that ethical conduct, defined as right action even when no one is watching, is essential for transformational leadership. Adhering to this principle, it is imperative for organizations to encourage the spiritual growth and moral tone of all staff members, while preserving their religious autonomy, in order to implement the vision of such powerful leadership.

Byrum illustrates this point with the story of a married supervisor who, despite professing "Bible belt" religious traditions, openly carried on an extramarital affair with a female co-worker. His actions not only led to gossip but undermined the productivity and quality of the whole work environment. Other workers believed if the boss could ignore the rules they could also. Their loss of respect for him translated into reduced work performance and overall poor morale.

Conversely, organizations built on mutual confidence, respect, and trust are strong. These foster authentic listening which leads to genuine consensus, but only when rooted in true integrity and accountability. A strong organization fosters what the authors call a good place, which compensates, potentiates, facilitates, provides opportunities, and rewards those who work there.

If an organization is to manifest power and beauty, it must nurture these qualities of a good place. The authors ask us to take an honest look at how good we want to be and how willing we are to stretch beyond adequacy to rich goodness, which they equate with greatness. Kaiser considers this challenging question in his profound, yet elegantly clear, description of each individual"s spiritual journey. This continuously unfolding path leads us through our life"s circumstances and events, constantly mirroring to us our inner strengths and weaknesses. He asks us to look at where we are on this path, to understand the role of unresolved issues which are contributing to our present circumstances, and to look ahead to where we and our organizations want to be.

He asserts that truly transformational leaders face and use their inner conflicts to achieve greater creativity in their organizations. Such leaders thrive on chaos, using intuition and possibility thinking to vision the best future. According to Kaiser, "What looks like chaos is actually a large pattern beyond your perception." He challenges us to overcome our fear of transformation which may prevent us from reaching our true spiritual and leadership potential.

In order to do this we must honestly face our shadow -- that part of ourselves which we would rather not examine, where we have buried our angers, hurts, and fears. Worry, anger, envy, jealousy, depression, drugs, excessive sexuality, or any other negative addictions will drain power and greatness from us. Those negative ego traits in our shadow tend to crystallize in the organizations around us, limiting their energy and resources.

It is in our best interest to consider the spiritual principles which these authors are mentoring in their book. They define spirituality as ‘caring’ in its most universal sense, emphasizing the avoidance of confusion between spirituality and organized religion. They caution against infusing the workplace with any one particular religious perspective or practice.

The greatest value of this book, together with the self-study program of which it is a part, is to provide a template for individual and organizational caring. If the principles of Spiritual Leadership put forth in this authoritative work could be implemented by even a small percentage of contemporary organizations, our whole culture would be elevated to a higher standard of greatness.

Reviewed by Rev. Cay Randall-May, Ph.D.
Author of “The Intuitive Career” (2005, CayMay Press)