Leadership plays a key role in the holistic well-being of individuals in every organization. Religious sisters strive for holistic well-being, both as an individual and as a community, and spiritual well-being forms an important element of holistic well-being. One of the responsibilities of the leader is to foster the holistic well-being (physical, emotional, moral, intellectual, spiritual, and psychological) of the followers ( Obi and Bollen, 2017). Each local religious community or convent comprises an appointed leader. Convents are of relatively small size (between 2 and 20 or more religious women, with a local community leader). In this study, we focus on the role of servant leadership in the presence of team trust and team conflict as antecedents of spiritual well-being.Ĭonvents in our study are local religious communities within a Catholic Women Religious Institute, mostly situated in Nigeria, also in other parts of the globe. In such a context, trust in each other is the key to well-being, and conflicts threaten both community life and personal as well as spiritual well-being. Leaders in religious contexts usually hold responsibilities for the spiritual well-being of followers, particularly when religious leaders and followers live and work 24/7 in religious communities, such as convents. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Further findings showed that servant leadership indirectly fosters spiritual well-being: Gifts of the Spirit (GSp), and Fruits of the Spirit (FSp), through the mediating role of team trust, however not through reduced team conflict. Using structural equation modeling, results showed that servant leadership is positively related to team trust and negatively related to team conflict. Quantitative survey data were collected from 453 religious sisters (followers) within a Catholic Women Religious Institute in Nigeria. Specifically, we examined how servant leadership fosters spiritual well-being through, respectively, the mediating role of team trust and reduced occurrence of team conflicts. This study investigates how female religious leaders nurture spiritual well-being in religious sisters. 2Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN DIVERSE CONTEXTS PROFESSIONAL
1Occupational & Organizational Psychology and Professional Learning, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.Innocentina-Marie Obi 1 *, Hillie Aaldering 2, Katalien Bollen 1 and Martin Claes Euwema 1