The Implications of the Study for Leadership

    The research found that organizational leaders’ spiritual intelligence is rooted in some form of connection with God. Coresearchers 2, 4, 5, and 6 expressed a direct relationship with God; Coresearcher 1 expressed an indirect relationship with God through the Christian Scriptures and his church; Coresearcher 3 expressed an indirect relationship to God through the Christian Scriptures and cultural and historical writings; Coresearchers 4, 5, and 6 also expressed an indirect relationship with God through the Christian Scriptures; and Coresearcher 6 expressed an indirect relationship with God through Islamic and Hindu Scriptures. 
    The coresearchers also expressed their connection to God in terms of two spiritual disciplines, i.e., praying and meditating (Coresearchers 2, 4, 5, and 6); and Coresearcher 6 expressed fasting. Coresearcher 1 expressed no spiritual disciplines but appealed rather to the efficacy of his faith as the vehicle through which he exercises his spiritual intelligence; and similarly, Coresearcher 2 appealed to reading as a means of fortifying his spiritual intelligence; and Coresearcher 3 appealed to his integrity as the means through which he exercises his spiritual intelligence. Faith, integrity, reading, and journaling have not traditionally been understood as spiritual disciplines. In fact, they are absent from Foster and Griffin’s (2000) list of 12 spiritual disciplines; rather, they are more akin to practices and virtues.

    These findings imply that the way in which the organizational leaders in this study experience spiritual intelligence is directly related to (a) what they believe about what they perceive as an essential relationship to God, the church, the Bible, or sacred and other writings; (b) how they interpret and apply the sacred writings and other writings (history and culture); (c) how they exercise spiritual disciplines and other practices connected with their spiritual development (faith, integrity, reading, and journaling); and (d) how their beliefs, interpretations, and exercise of spiritual disciplines and practices are manifested in their leadership interactions.  

    What is the content of organizational leaders’ experiences as they describe them? The content of organizational leaders’ experiences varies according to (a) how they perceive their relationship to God, whether directly or indirectly; (b) how they perceive themselves; and (c) how they perceive their responsibilities to their respective organizations.

    The data from the coresearchers’ interviews show that there is a clear link between the coresearcher’s exercise of spiritual intelligence and their identities. That is to say that spiritual intelligence appears to occupy a critical place in how coresearchers perceive themselves and desire to be perceived by others, particularly by their subordinates. The coresearchers’ concerns for their self-perceptions and how their subordinates perceive them is shaped by (a) coresearchers’ direct and indirect relationships with God, and (b) coresearchers’ exercise of their spiritual disciplines and practices. Additionally, the coresearchers’ identities are impacted by their occupations, and their positions as leaders.            
    The leadership literature shows that there is a symbiotic relationship between the leader and the organization, and vice versa, leading this researcher to speculate that where spiritual intelligence is exercised by the leader, there should be some evidence of its impact on the organization’s culture and context, and vice versa. The descriptions of the coresearchers’ spiritual intelligence experiences were in the context of their leadership functions and confirmed that they employ influence, trust, respect, intuition, connection, empowerment, victory, and sacrifice in leading their organizations. 
    The findings also demonstrated that (a) spiritual intelligence functions in the day-to-day responsibilities of organizational leaders; (b) spiritual intelligence functions differently for each leader; and (c) spiritual intelligence plays a prominent role in the leadership practices of spiritually intelligent leaders. 
Conclusions
    The data gives critical insight into nature of the values that organizational leaders embrace. These 8 values can be placed into 2 groups: (a) those that are exercised initially or primarily by the leader (influence, intuition, empowerment, and sacrifice), and (b) those that are exercised mutually in the leader-subordinate relationship (trust, respect, connection, and victory). In these two groups of values, from the perspective of spiritually intelligent leaders, we may deduce that in training and developing leaders, time and energy should be given both to the cultivation of individual and shared values. Conversley, when working with subordinates, the shared values must be cultivated, the end objective being the subordinate's buy-in. 

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