Leadership in Business - What is the threat of Spirituality? 

 Extracts from full speech -

I thought I would be really very practical in what I’m going to talk about today because I think that it’s a very serious and important issue. We need to bring the things that we are so concerned and passionate about, spirituality in particular, into the world of organisations and by that I mean obviously the corporate world but also the public sector. The corporate world, the business world is one of the most powerful forces in the world today as you all know. The economy of any of the large corporations is larger than the economies of some of the quite big countries in the world. So there is an enormous amount of power in the business world and one of my real passions is about the abuse of power, which is why I found myself in the field when I do a proper job. I’m in the field of being a business consultant, trying to make business a better place to be in. If you are in business, because people do need to earn a living, and also to get business to be more ethical and value drive than they are at the moment, in doing that, I have had to find out how to introduce spirituality into business without scaring the hell out of them. So I have experimented with that and I’m pleased to say that when I say to other people what are the difficulties you meet, (in bringing spirituality into business discussions) they say that this was a challenge. Of course it is a challenge but I’ve actually found it easier than I had expected all the way through. I find time and time again when I’ve been working, what I have felt is been sort of on the edge that afterwards I could have gone further.  So what I want to do really here is to encourage those of you particularly who interact with this community that desperately needs change, to go for it; to take spirituality in there, to do it. Because I don’t know how business is going to clean up its act unless it gets spiritual values in business. Of course you can say things like business and ethics or when they use the term business ethics or spirituality in business you could almost say it is a contradiction in terms but I don’t think it has to be. I think that’s what we need to work towards. So what I want to do with you today is to spend another thirty or forty minutes sharing some of the things I’ve done in case they are useful to you. (Click on file to contnue..)