Why Add Spiritual Advising to your Toolbox?
Leadership & Venture Success
Why should coaches, spiritual directors, and mentors add spiritual advising to their toolboxes?
Put simply, spiritual advising is the best way to serve your believing clients.
For the Leader and the Venture
Coaching and spiritual direction provide useful frameworks and tools, but they also have professional boundaries and limits. Some coaching models require that the coaches decide if the company or the leader comes first. Instead, spiritual advising is large enough to encompass both. It is possible to work for the flourishing of both the leader and the venture.
The Holy Spirit Isn’t Limited
Some models of supporting leaders are simply about being responsive to the desired goals of the leader or limiting yourself to asking good questions. Spiritual advisors can initiate in any area that the Holy Spirit leads: confronting personal lifestyles, recommending team tools, or even suggesting product ideas. Spiritual advising doesn’t limit what areas you speak into because the Holy Spirit isn’t limited. The Spirit can choose to reveal and direct anyone on the team, including you. Spiritual advising gives you freedom to speak the truth in love. In fact, I believe that the leaders that I've worked with have been attracted to the model of knowing that my first commitment isn't to them or to their company but to Christ, and, therefore, I might poke into areas that they're not necessarily asking me to. The best clients want to be challenged and don't want you holding back. Trust will be established if they know that you are seeking out the Holy Spirit's input and that you truly care about them and their mission.
Flexibility & Freedom
Whole Life Transformation
Multiple Resources Lead to Whole Life Transformation
Of course, all of the tools that are used in coaching, counseling, mentoring, spiritual direction, or other strategies are entirely usable by spiritual advisors. Instead of narrowly focusing on one aspect like performance or growing a skill, spiritual advising also adds in the formational components of being a follower of Christ. For instance, conflict between leaders can lead to discussions about not just how to manage conflict but also how conflict was experienced in families of origin and with God. Not only are workplace conflicts an opportunity to grow and skills, but they are also openings to unpack root experiences and theological beliefs that impact how leaders manage conflict in every context of their lives.
The Advisor's Toolkit
Based on (1) extensive academic research on entrepreneurs, (2) interviews with multiple coaches who serve founders, (3) a theology of work, leadership, and entrepreneurship, and (4) my experience advising multiple ventures and mentoring hundreds of MBA students for over two decades, I believe that a spiritual advisor is most helpful to leaders by anchoring them in four key areas: identity,motivation, discernment, and resiliency. By supporting leaders in these areas, spiritual advisors can enable the success of both the leaders and the ventures. See the Toolkit for examples of resources for each area.
