The Relationship of Healthcare Manager’s Spirituality to Their Self-Perceived Effective Leadership Practices

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships, if any, between the spirituality of healthcare managers and their self-perceived effective leadership practices.

METHODOLOGY
A convenience sample of 318 healthcare managers representing multiple healthcare organizations, including for-profit and not-for-profit enterprises, completed the LPI-Self and the Spirituality Assessment Scale (Beazley, 1997). The managers were attending seminars on service excellence (response rate = 80%). The typical respondent was between the ages of 41-50 years (46%), female (68%), Caucasian (86%), with at least a college degree (74%), and employed by a for-profit healthcare enterprise (63%). Cronbach Alpha coefficients were .81 for Challenging, .85 for Inspiring, .73 for Enabling, .74 for Modeling, and .90 for Encouraging.

KEY FINDINGS
The most frequently engaged in leadership practice was Enabling, followed by Modeling, Encouraging, Challenging and Inspiring. Enabling, Modeling and Encouraging were significantly correlated with spirituality. ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in these three leadership practices by more spiritual than on-spiritual managers. The greatest differential in mean scores was on the Encouraging dimension. A confirmatory factor analysis based model, using Lisrel XIII, revealed a moderately positive correlation between spirituality and leadership (r = .5). The author developed a conceptual theory postulating a rationale for the relationship between spirituality and effective leadership.