Leader spirituality and leader virtues as predictors of effective leadership

Abstract

A growing body of literature indicates that leader spirituality positively influences how leaders lead. There is also a body of literature that indicates that followers associate good leadership with behaving ethically. A concept related to leader ethics is leader virtues. Historically, virtues have been written about from a theological perspective. Recently, Riggio, Zhu, Reina & Maroosis (2010) developed an empirical assessment to measure leadership virtues. In this study, 143 leaders were rated by their followers, peers and supervisors using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and the Leadership Virtues Questionnaire. The leaders completed three spiritual and religious assessments on themselves. The results of the analysis found that leader spiritual well-being had direct effects on how virtuously and how actively followers, colleagues and supervisors rated these leaders.