Frontiers: Leadership and Spirituality

Lead article by Gary Strack and Myron Fottler

Softbound, 45 pp, Summer 2002, ISSN 0748-8157
Order code: WWW1-J471,
Price: $29.00

In this issue, spirituality is not associated with religion. The fact is that the spiritual roots of healthcare delivery are well known and for many segments of the industry remain central to their mission. The intent of this issue is to examine leadership through the lens of spirituality. The lead articles speak expressively about how essential it is to join leadership and spirituality.

Gary Strack, president and CEO of Boca Raton Community Hospital, and Myron Fottler, professor and executive director of the department of health professions at the University of Central Florida, have taken a different approach to leadership and spirituality. Strack and Fottler have pulled together existing literature of scholars and writers on spirituality, attempting to link it with leadership through a framework of analysis. In this issue, they present five leadership practices that support elements of spirituality in leadership.

Margaret Wheatley, well-known author and consultant, determines that leaders are required to help others establish a relationship with uncertainty and disarray that necessitates moving toward a "spiritual threshold." She describes eight fundamental principles that define the essential work of leaders and then concludes with suggestions that leaders can use to attend to their own spiritual health.

All three commentators speak about the necessity of considering how spirituality results in increased leadership effectiveness. Patricia Sodomka, FACHE, executive vice president and chief operating officer of MCG Health, Inc., in Augusta, Georgia, reveals that the articles by Wheatley, and Strack and Fottler represent two very different perspectives on spirituality and leadership. Donald Camp, administrator of Family Support and Rehabilitation Services at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, believes that spirituality exists to give people a sense of meaning and purpose, to bring insight to and understanding of the self in relation to an often larger whole, and to develop self-understanding that cues in individuals to contribute to a common good. And finally, Delois Brown-Daniels, vice president of Mission and Spiritual Care at Advocate Masonic Medical Center and Ravenswood Medical Center in Chicago, speaks to the value of the two articles as an effort in the "closing of the divide between secular and spiritual spheres."