Synopsis
“An incredible dive into the intersection of spirituality and business. Gibbons wrote the book that needed to be written for our world—showing us how our spirituality is the key to our humanity in business.”—Marshall Goldsmith
Is there a spiritual revolution in society and in business?
The Spirituality of Work and Leadership is the most comprehensive treatment of workplace spirituality to date written by one of the “movement’s” founders, and covers meaning-making, work, workaholism, vocation and purpose, happiness, mindfulness, altruism, motivation, engagement, and leadership. Spirituality, the book maintains, uniquely embraces the inner work of personal development and the outer work of what is needed in the world. Some of the best writing on those human topics comes not from psychology, but from spirituality (and philosophy, evolutionary biology, sociology, and systems thinking). The big questions are:
What do we mean by spirituality? How is it different from religion?What is the link between leadership and spirituality?What is the relationship between spirituality and science?What is the historical relationship between spirituality and work?Can we prove workplace spirituality is of value? What is the evidence?Can spiritual experiences at work be cultivated?What insight does spirituality give us into human motivation?What is the purpose of purpose? How do we create purposeful lives and organizations?What would a spiritual consulting firm look like?
Is there a spiritual crisis in business?
Before the COVID crisis, there was another crisis in business—one of meaning. A Gallup poll found only 13% of workers were engaged at work and fully 24% were “actively disengaged.” The problem, says Paul Gibbons, is that you cannot cut a check to buy your workers meaning—you need to provide work that has intrinsic value—a purpose, not just a paycheck. But businesses aren’t temples and business leaders aren’t priests or spiritual gurus. How do leaders lead meaning-making at work and the more purposeful businesses that 21st-century workers claim they crave?
Moreover, the “normal” to which we would like to return was really a crisis. Our world is continually punctuated by ethical scandals: Enron, Wells Fargo, pharma bro, BP, Weinstein, Purdue Pharma, Theranos, Facebook, WeWork, Uber, and Boeing’s 737 Max. Can ancient wisdom traditions really provide guidance on 21st-century issues such as AI, human cloning, climate change, inequality, sexual harassment, outsourced jobs, and a surveillance culture? Would spiritual wisdom have made a difference during 2020’s COVID crisis?
How do we humanize business using ideas from spirituality?
Volume I of the Humanizing Business series is a book for business leaders who want fresh ideas on leading 21st-century organizations. It is a book for spiritual people, the faithful and the mystics, who want to bring their whole selves to work. It is a book for humanists and the secularly inclined who have a hunger for meaning that philosophy, science, and spirituality may fulfill.
The book is scholarly in approach, a think-good book as well as a feel-good book. It relies on the work of Nietzsche on meaning, Harvard’s Steven Pinker and Michael Sandel on altruism, Yuval Harari on evolutionary biology, neuroscientist Richard Davidson on mindfulness, Aristotle on happiness, and theologians from the Abrahamic religions. Rather than just a book with philosophical ideas, Gibbons describes his experience putting these ideas to work over the last two decades at Shell, Microsoft, Zappos, and HSBC Bank. According to investment banking EVP Robert Entenmann, “Gibbons towers above business thinkers in the way that Drucker did in an earlier era. Even Drucker did not bring to business thinking the breadth of scholarship and originality of thought that Gibbons does.”
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