Spiritual leadership

In faith settings, spiritual leaders should consider the following areas to help them create safer cultures:

• Self-care - is an important aspect of healthy spiritual leadership which has a positive impact on the culture the leader works in. If you are giving out more than you take in this can lead to poor decisions and strained relationships with colleagues and workers.
• Shared authority - particularly in smaller organisations, senior leaders often find themselves managing situations alone or feeling unable to turn to another to help resolve problems. In the same way you should have alternative routes when the safeguarding lead is unavailable or part of the concern, leaders need alternative support and decision-making routes open to them. This can also help avoid a power vacuum.
• Allowing questions - how disagreement is handled is important. Asking questions and healthy disagreement can brings about good decisions, however unhealthy disagreement or censorship of disagreement can bring about harm.
• Guidance not enforcement - healthy leadership demonstrates by example and teaches rather than coerces. A person should never be forced to act in a certain way (unless their actions cause harm to another or if the actions of a person contradict a leadership or membership covenant they have committed to in some way – this may have consequences on whether the person can remain in their position).
• Valuing the whole person - healthy culture comes out of leaders seeing more than the contribution of a person to their organisation. Showing care and interest in the whole life of a team member enables a sense of trust, inclusion and belonging and demonstrates that each person is valued.