Nurses’ perspective on spiritual leadership: A qualitative study based on Fry’s spiritual leadership model

BACKGROUND: Spiritual leadership and spirituality in organizations have the capacity to develop individual and organizational outcomes. This concept, as a newly established paradigm, has many ambiguities and definitions highly affected by cultural contexts. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed at determining the concept of spiritual leadership from nurses’ perspective and recognizing aspects of spiritual leadership model in the Iranian nurses’ sociocultural context, to achieve a common and comprehensive understanding of the concept under study. METHODS: This qualitative study used a directed content analysis method. The participants of this study were 14 managers and nurses employed at different wards of hospitals affiliated to medical universities of Tehran, and were selected using purposive sampling method on the basis of inclusion criteria. The data were collected via individual, deep, and semi-structured interviews from October 2015 to March 2016. RESULTS: In this study, 14 participants were interviewed, 11 females and three males aged between 26 and 52 years old with a mean working experience of 13 years. After data analysis, 33 subcategories were distilled which fell into nine categories and three main categories including “spiritual leadership”, “spiritual well-being”, and “organizational consequences”. The findings indicated that spiritual leadership can, through application of intrinsic motivation, help develop individual and organizational outcomes by the use of elements of extrinsic motivation in organizational learning. CONCLUSION: Nursing managers and nurses expunged upon various dimensions of spiritual leadership. The elements of extrinsic motivation and organizational learning have the potential to develop spiritual leadership. The nursing leaders can use this potential to foster the outcomes of nursing services.