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Jory Des Jardins also blogs at Pause.
Last year I met with a respected, retired executive, now a successful excecutive coach who studies and practices Shamanism. He performed a ritual meant to determine my totem animal--a guiding symbol that I could invoke during times of personal or professional consternation.
During the "journeying" ritual, I envisioned my totem animal--a cougar--which symbolizes a transition into learning to recognize one's power and responsibly wielding it. The totem animal seemed appropriate to me. I'd made some bold changes in my career, and they were paying off tremendously. I'd proven that I had power, but acknowledging it and building on it felt awkward to me. Being able to apply this knowledge, as intangible as it may seem to some, helped me with future decisionmaking. I often turn to my totem animal to help me see beyond an immediate business question and to consider instead the underlying power issues that are often really at stake.
I told the executive shaman about my vision, then I asked him about his totem animal. He told me, then he said, "Many people keep their totem animals private." This indicated to me his knowledge of the ways of the Shaman, and a more practical sensitivity to the corporate world's hesitation to embrace "extracurricular" personal development. In essence he was telling me not to broadcast how I got this critical information about myself, lest my clients think I was a little--you know--loony.
It occurred to me how sad this is. There are a significant number of people who consult coaches, spiritual healers, shamans, how-to books, even the Bible to help them put their work in perspective, but like this executive/Shaman, these people keep the source of their knowledge a secret. In his "Day Job" my coach works with corporate CEOs and executives, helping them with organizational strategy. Motivational Speaking is the most woo-woo term he uses publicly to explain what he does, perhaps because the word "Motivation" still connotes how to achieve a business outcome. Before he retired he'd helped businesses thrive and profit; he was well aware of the importance of business acumen and publicly advocated a reasoned, quantitative business approach. Yet, in private, he was actually a translator, applying spiritual principles he'd adopted from his Shamanic practice to corporate dilemmas. To him the spiritual and the professional were one of the same.
Companies are making strides in honoring employees' need for such things as balance and personal challenge and are offering more holistic professional training, but they won't touch any SPIRITUAL development with a ten foot pole. And yet there are hidden costs to prentending that the spiritual doesn't or shouldn't exist in the workplace.
Before I explain why, let's make clear what I mean by "spiritual." On the The Future of Work blog, Charlie Grantham provides a solid distinction that I'd like to carry through this discussion,
"...We're talking here of the spiritual, not the religious dimension of our lives, although the two are often confused. Spirituality (in our sense) is more about the personal search for answers and understanding; religion is more of a socially organized effort, or praxis, towards the same end. We believe that within the context of organizational change and its impact on the individual there should be a more personal approach: a spiritual one."
A resoned response to this approach would be: Why should business address spirituality? It's not our issue; it's a personal choice. From the standpoint that any number of employees with the same business acumen can all be at different levels of spiritial awareness, I agree that addressing spirituality is a dodgy proposition. But we shouldn't confuse it with the dilemma that results from, say, enforcing prayer in school, or any specific belief system on workers. Rather, infusing spiritual awareness is an opening up of a higher-perspective discussion--one from which workers can make much more informed decisions.
In my view, my spiritual development is the strengthening my personal platform, from which all actions result, business-related or otherwise. While spirituality can't necessarily be tied to business outcomes, the lack of it certainly can. As Grantham states:
The spiritual dimension is especially important when it is occurring in the context of other failing social institutions from which we have traditionally brought meaning to our lives, such as political, educational, and religious structures...
...It may be that this is the core issue facing the increasing irrelevance of modern corporations. Obscene profits, reckless lack of regard to the environment, and abuse of power are hallmarks of toxic work
