Leadership, Spirit and the whole person.(Martha Nesbitt on Russ Moxley's 'Leadership and Spirit: Breathing New Vitality into Individuals and Organizations')

Russ Moxley's 1999 book, Leadership and Spirit: Breathing New Vitality into Individuals and Organizations, speaks to women in higher education, according to Dr. Martha Nesbitt, the president of Gainesville College GA.

"It weaves together many of the strands that I've discovered along the way," she told women at the annual conference sponsored by American Association for Women in Community Colleges and the National Institute for Leadership Development, held in Phoenix in June 2002.

Too often people working in organizations come to feel stale and uninspired, burned out and unmotivated to do their best. Moxley offers a model to solve this problem and invest organizations with purpose and energy, based on these assumptions:

* We each have four energies--physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

* We are whole people who cannot be fragmented or compartmentalized.

* To be fully alive and fully human, we must claim our spiritual energy, understand the integration and interdependence of all our energies and use all of them in our work and our leadership.

He offers this definition of spirit: "Spirit comes from the Latin word spiritus, which means breath, as in the breath of life. Spirit is the unseen force that breathes life into us, enlivens us, gives energy to us. Spirit is the 'other'--the life force--that weaves through and permeates all of our experiences. Spirit works within us. It helps define the true, real, unique self that is us. It confirms our individuality."