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SUNDAY TIMES - April 2005
April 17, 2005
Health
The office om
There’s a new spirituality in the workplace that has more
to do with emotional wellbeing than corporate ambition. And it may be
good for business, too, finds Fleur Britten
You may attend a weekly yoga class, have considered some kind of retreat
or have dipped into a copy of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, but hold
on to your chakras, chaps, as it looks like deep spirituality is about
to hit the workplace. According to Ian Mitroff, author of the bestselling
A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, “Spirituality could be
the ultimate competitive advantage.”
Profitability and spirituality, it emerges, are not mutually exclusive.
Apple schedules a 30-minute daily meditation break for its employees,
and the management consultancy McKinsey is now sending its executives
on spiritual intelligence courses. The World Bank holds regular meetings
for its Spiritual Unfoldment Society to discuss meditation, reincarnation
and the like, Orange has had its UK headquarters feng-shuied, and Kwik-Fit,
of all companies, provides its employees with a chill-out club, t’ai
chi and yoga.
It’s all about promoting ethics and trust, according to the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the UK’s human
resources body. The humble “servant-leader” who puts others
first in the powwow is more likely to end up on top nowadays than the
paintballing “top gun”. “The cult of ‘command
and control’ by an aggressive leader with unrealistic expectations
is outdated,” says Jessica Jarvis, of CIPD. “In the wake
of Enron and other corporate scandals, spiritual leadership is a growing
trend.”
Thankfully, spirituality can be taught. At Golcar Farm in Eldwick, West
Yorkshire, suits are swapped for Barbours and colleagues for collies,
as clients — which have included Barclays and the Bradford Chamber
of Commerce — are encouraged to make like a shepherd. Tasks involve
guiding the “corporate collies” Meg, Peg, Mossie and Hope
and a handful of sheep around an obstacle course. “We are not
eccentric or gimmicky,” says Barbara Sykes, the founder and dog
psychologist. “We encourage emotional correspondence and a journey
into one’s inner self. It’s not just about saying, ‘Come
by’ and ‘Lie down’. Dogs demand trust and honesty,
and if someone is too bolshy, the dog will think ‘I’m not
doing this’ and sit down. It’s the same in the workforce.”
At The Big Stretch, a seven-day residential programme in the Spanish
mountains, executives are not taught anything. “It’s a strange
method of working,” says the founder, Rosie Walford. “We
spend the first half of the week asking clients from Linklaters, Citigroup
and the like what they want to be remembered for, then we help them
identify a big ambition. We go walking in a great big landscape: you
get into an alpha state when you do semi-automatic exercise and the
subconscious pops into the conscious; things that are true bubble up
and resonate. After that, we do some creative lateral thinking: we go
river kayaking and use geological and natural stimuli to answer unrelated
questions. It puts people in an amazing space and sets off a stream
of ideas. You can always find solutions through nature.”
If that sounds like a bit of a, er, stretch, then listen to this. Pepita
Diamand-Levy, 35, reckons her company doubled in size after a stint
with The Big Stretch. “I had helped to set up a wedding-list service
and soon found myself daunted and plagued by a lack of confidence,”
she says. “I thought about getting a life coach, but then I heard
about The Big Stretch. Once there, we climbed a real mountain. I am
petrified of heights — it was definitely my Everest. Halfway down,
I screamed, ‘I can do anything!’ I returned to work a completely
different person, full of confidence. We have since expanded from one
showroom to three, and from one franchise to five.”
“Serving to lead” is the essence of the corporate
leadership programme at Shreyas, a luxury ashram near Bangalore, India.
Here, high-flyers from Texas to Bombay are put through exercises such
as feeding the poor. According to Pawan Malik, the founder and a former
investment banker, this “reduces one’s own needs and arrogance
and increases empathy. Clients tend to become more humble”. PD
Mundhra, who brings employees of his data-analysis firm, eClerx, here
twice a year, says: “We have learnt a more feminine approach to
leadership by shifting from helping ourselves to helping others. There
is no immediate reward for us, but a sense of joy from serving the community.”
And now, the UK has its first chief spiritual officer — Libby
Hammond heads up Tailored Talks, a public-speaking agency based in Airth,
Scotland. “I was aware that outside the workplace, people have
life, friends and emotions, and are hungry for something more than a
nine-to-five existence,” she says. “You have to protect
the emotional welfare of an organisation. Even sacking can be done from
the generosity of one’s heart.”
With 85% of UK organisations investing in leadership training, according
to CIPD, and 72% of managers looking for more meaning at work, according
to Management Today magazine, it is clearly time for a paradigm shift,
a spiritual awakening.
However, Danah Zohar, a leading management guru, warns: “I don’t
think you can go on a workshop to become a spiritual leader. It’s
a long and deep process of inner change.” Instead, she advocates
permanent on-site changes, such as dialogue groups and quiet rooms for
reflection and meditation. “Business people aren’t used
to going ‘inside’; meditation helps with that,” she
says. “And I wouldn’t use anything overtly spiritual, like
an altar in the forecourt. Real spirituality frightens business people
and they get it mixed up with religion. You don’t have to think
of God as your CEO.” Or your CEO as God.
For more information, visit www.corporatecollies.co.uk,
www.thebigstretch.com, www.shreyasretreat.com
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