By the way . . .

Q SOLUTIONS,LLC

INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS FOR LEADERSHIP

By the way . . .

The Study

Research Method and Design

The objective of this study was to provide descriptions of spiritual intelligence as it is experienced and communicated by organizational leaders in their organizations. To accomplish this objective, this researcher adhered to general empirical phenomenological principles and applied them in a way best suited to understanding the phenomenon of interest (Polkinghorne, 1989). The phenomenological method was selected for the purpose of capturing the essences of how organizational leaders experience and interpret spiritual intelligence. It seeks to draw from the descriptions general or universal meanings, i.e., the essential structures of a person’s experience (Giorgi, 1979).

Three basic processes comprised the methodology for this study: study design, data collection, and data analysis. The research design consisted of prescreening prospective coresearchers, selecting those that met the criteria, gathering the data, analyzing the data, and summarizing the findings of the study. The coresearchers in this study are all leaders of organizations. They have had self-acknowledged spiritual intelligence experiences in their leadership context, and were able to describe and explain those experiences. The six coresearchers are presidents, owners, and chief decision makers who were overseeing a minimum of five subordinates.

The data collection consisted of interviews that were unstructured and open ended in order to evoke "comprehensive descriptions that provide the basis for a reflective structural analysis and that portray the essences of the experience” (Moustakas, 1994, p. 13). The objective of the interviews was to seek to obtain naïve descriptions through open-ended questions in order to determine the significance of each coresearcher’s experience to him and her.

Four instruments, or data sources, were used in order to capture each coresearcher’s data: (a) the Coresearcher’s Information Sheet, (b) an audio recording device for the interviews, (c) the interviews, and (d) field notes.

Coresearchers were debriefed in person following their participation in the interviews. The debriefing took approximately 20 to 30 minutes. During the debriefing, coresearchers were given the opportunity to ask questions of the researcher and share any feedback concerning their participation in all aspects of the study.

Data Analysis

In the phenomenological analysis of data, the empirical-phenomenological approach involved obtaining descriptions of phenomena experienced, which were used as the means of “reflective structural analysis that portrays the essences of the experience” (Van Kaam, 1966, p. 15). Giorgi, Knowles, & Smith (1979) underscored the importance of focusing on “discovering the meaning” (p. 83) of the phenomena, i.e., the experience of the phenomena without any prejudgment of that experience. Their approach is characterized by an openness that aims to apprehend the structure of the phenomenon, the origins of the phenomenon, and the perspectives through which the phenomena can be known or understood.

The data analysis involved the use of phenomenological analysis and the Spiritual Intelligence Literature Evaluation Reference Tool (SILERT). In the absence of a construct that evaluates the underlying philosophical assumptions of spiritual intelligence authors, this researcher created a spiritual intelligence SILERT, based on worldviews identified by Geisler and Brooks (1990). The tool was applied by the researcher in evaluating and classifying the philosophical underpinnings of the spiritual intelligence literature consistent with the researcher’s worldview. SILERT was not used as a means of prescreening possible coresearchers, and its parameters were not criteria for coresearchers, but rather, a tool created and used by this researcher to classify and analyze the many worldviews represented in the literature. Essentially, SILERT was this researcher’s way of making sense of the spiritual intelligence literature, and, by extension, the interview data. It provided a means for classifying the literature into the seven distinct worldviews proposed by Geisler and Brooks (1990) and Geisler and Turek (2004).

Table 1. The Spiritual Intelligence Literature Evaluation Reference Tool (SILERT).

ONTOLOGY (The Study of Being, Existence, Reality)
Theists	Pantheists	Panentheists	Atheists	Postmoderns
. . . describe God as . . .
Creator of life	all is God, and God is all	developing	nonexistent	ultimate meaning
Sustainer of life	not personal matter	incomplete, evolving	human invention	purely subjective
Source of life	substance of life	dynamic, becoming	socially constructed	socially constructed
Belief Systems
Judaism Christianity Islam	Hinduism Taoism New Age	Process theology	Buddhism Secular humanism	Agnosticism Naturalism
EPISTEMOLOGY (The Study of Knowing—How We Know)
revelation	seeking within	being revealed	experience	perception

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