This is an excerpt from Spiritual Leadership: A Leader's Pursuit for Integrity, by Leonard Doohan, © 2007. Paulist Press, Inc., New Yorlc/ Mahwah, N.J. It is printed with permission of Paulist Press. www.paulist press.com. When I think of a spiritual leader I think of a person with tremendous energy, who knows what life is about and is living it well, who is comfortable with chosen values and lives them with integrity, who knows the value of other people and cherishes their lives and input, and who is both rooted in the historical values of a chosen tradition and yet is convinced that any tradition must change to be equally relevant in the future as it was in the past. Above all, a spiritual leader is motivated by an experience that has touched him or her profoundly and has influenced the way he or she now lives. This kind of person shows no embarrassment in talking about the experience, and makes decisions based on the values of this experience. This faith-motivated commitment is desperately needed today, especially when we see so many organizations full of leaders with the wrong mindset. This experience that changes a person's life is what we call an experience of "faith." When we talk about "spiritual leadership," we refer to leadership motivated and inspired by the spiritual values of a person's "faith." So, spiritual leadership is a leadership that is motivated by everything that one holds dear in the depths of his or her own heart as the result of a personal experience that has changed one's life and way of living it in the future.