ENDEAVOR
Earlier this week, I had a gratifying experience as a graduation speaker. I was invited to the CARD-MRI Development Institute in Bay, Laguna, to speak before newly minted Ph.Ds and master’s degree holders who were graduating from the Southeast Asian Inter-disciplinary Development Institute (SAIDI) School of Organization Development.
Fifteen years ago, I obtained my doctoral degree from SAIDI. After devoting my energies to a career in management education as a professor at the Asian Institute of Management, this was a fitting capstone in my personal endeavor of being a lifelong learner. It is truly rewarding to join the community of scholars.
From a blogsite, The Deliberate Owl, I came across this edifying description of what makes a scholar:
“To be a scholar is to be a seeker of truth and knowledge. Methodologies, subject matter, productivity, means of knowledge dissemination will all vary. What remains is a deep-seated curiosity, a joy in discovery, a passion for learning, a drive toward truth. One of the great rewards of scholarship is the process of synthesis and discovery of new ideas, concepts of information, or knowledge, with occasional eureka moments of insight. Sometimes that creativity or insight comes from working or thinking alone; other times, you generate new ideas in conversation with other people.”
The blogger is associated with the Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship in Montclair, New Jersey, United States that is “dedicated to multidisciplinary study of science and the humanities and supports the work of independent scientists and scholars.”
I enrolled in SAIDI sometime in 2002 and with the support of my employer, the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), I hurdled the academic requirements preparatory to dissertation writing within two years. Then, I went into a two-year work leave in order to expose myself anew to the warp and woof of business management. I finally began my dissertation writing in the second half of 2008.
Fortuitously, my wife and I travelled to New York to join our daughter who was then concluding her graduate studies at New York University, and had obtained employment in a non-profit institution. Being in New York gave me the chance to meet in person the authors of books that were helpful in clarifying the theoretical underpinnings of my study on Spirit-Led Organization.
Here is what I wrote about that unique time in history in my book, DIWA: Spirit-Led Organization – “The global financial crisis that was triggered by the collapse of two major investment houses on Wall Street in late 2008 shattered the façade of a decadent capitalist system and sent shock waves across all continents. Faced by severe constraints in physical and financial resources that followed, business corporations, government and even civil society institutions realized that they must learn to marshal and mobilize the talents and skills of their people to the fullest extent.”
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to meet and interview Dr. Elizabeth Denton, co-author of A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America on Sept. 17, 2008. This book enabled me to realize that the concept of Spirit-Led Organization was already widely embraced and practiced. She referred me to a rich trove of books and resource persons, among them, Dr. Judi Neal, founder and executive director of the Association for Spirit at Work, after visiting the website of the Institute of Spirit at Work.
She invited me to an early evening panel discussion at the Marble Collegiate Church in midtown Manhattan. The event was billed as “News from the Front: Stories of In- spired Travelers.”
Dr. Neal said that she is a seeker, an inquirer on the meaning of life. For most of her life, she kept her spirituality private and within herself. Then she served a stint as manager of organization development at Honeywell’s defense unit. She was impressed by the leading- edge practices at Honeywell, but came at a crossroads when she discovered that the company was “knowingly making faulty ammunition” that posed a great danger to the lives of American soldiers in the battlefields. From that time on, she said, “I no longer wanted to serve corporate America.”
Sometime in the mid-90s, there was a spiritual resurgence in corporate America. “People felt lonely and disconnected,” she observed. Their quest for life’s meaning sparked a greater sense of purpose and mission within them. This was the era during which President George H. Bush popularized the term “the vision thing,” referring to the popular practice of companies to craft vision-mission statements to inspire their people to align themselves with corporate goals.
That did not impress Dr. Neal. She shifted her focus to the academe, taught for over a decade, and became Professor Emerita at the University of New Haven, before launching her own consulting firm. She said: “I felt moved by some inner force to follow God’s plan. Moments of grace just came to me and opened up my spirituality, making it the center of my life.”
For Dr. Neal, a tangible expression of spirituality in the workplace is “to be a witness:” “I will tell my worker, ‘I know your pain and I understand your situation. I will not judge you. I will accept you as you are.’” She said that this is like tapping into a “heart space above the head.” She believes that, “We need to be detached but still compassionate.” This is the way we can be kinder and gentler toward those with whom we work, as “everyone goes to work bringing some kind of baggage or other.”
Dr. Neal calls her fellow panelists Edgewalkers, coining the word from a journal article entitled, “How to Walk on the Leading Edge without Falling off the Cliff.”
In ancient cultures, she pointed out, each tribe or village had a shaman or medicine man. “This was one of the most important roles...without a shaman, the tribe would be at the mercy of the unseen gods and spirits,” as he was “the person who walked into the invisible world to get information, guidance, and healing for members of the tribe. To be a shaman required a long period of apprenticeship, and “years of training under an elder... (that) required great personal risk. The shaman had to face his or her own shadow and become pure and selfless in order to serve the tribe.” Thus, the Edgewalkers are “serving those who walk between the worlds.”
Indeed, Judi Neal and her fellow Edgewalkers illuminated their audience with a thousand points of light on a cool night in Manhattan.