Abstract
The slow pace of transformation in South African banks reflects the broader inequalities of a divided society, with race and gender still largely determining access to senior roles. Despite progressive legislation such as the Employment Equity Act, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, and the Financial Sector Code, meaningful transformation within the sector remains limited. In a global environment marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, South African banks have struggled to leverage the value of deep diversity, underscoring their critical role in advancing socio-economic transformation.
Traditional leadership models, including transformational and transactional leadership, have proven inadequate in addressing these challenges. This highlights the need for alternative approaches such as spiritual leadership, which centres on a shared vision and cultivates a culture of inclusion, belonging, and purpose. By promoting spiritual well-being and redefining work as meaningful rather than merely transactional, spiritual leadership strengthens employee engagement and alignment with organisational goals.
Through this values-driven approach, spiritual leadership enhances connectedness, reduces workplace challenges, and supports more effective, sustainable transformation, benefiting both organisations and their people.
This study aimed to develop a spiritual leadership model for aiding transformation in the commercial banking sector in South Africa.
A qualitative, interpretive, explorative, and descriptive contextual research approach was employed, using two sequential data collection methods: semi-structured interviews followed by personal narratives. This study was phenomenological in nature, focusing on participants’ lived experiences to construct their reality and gain deep insights into their perceptions and experiences.
To ensure further depth and credibility, the Delphi technique was employed towards the conclusion of the research process, facilitating consensus on key concepts and refining the development of the spiritual leadership model for transformation.
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Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to systematically identify patterns and themes from interview and narrative data, enabling an in-depth exploration of participants’ lived experiences. Building on the IPA findings, a two-stage concept analysis was conducted to develop and structure key elements of the emerging spiritual leadership model for transformation in the banking sector in South Africa. The first stage involved extracting relevant concepts from the raw data; the second involved defining and classifying these within the broader spiritual leadership framework. This methodological process allowed the study to move from rich, exploratory insights to a coherent conceptual model, effectively linking empirical findings with established theory.
The study focused on employees from one of South Africa's ‘Big Four’ financial service banks, which employs 29,433 individuals. The target population consisted of 120 members of the bank’s Diversity and Inclusion Forum, selected through purposive and convenient sampling, including 14 chairpersons actively involved in transformation efforts. Selection was based on forum membership and active participation, ensuring representation across management levels and minimising bias.
All 14 chairpersons were invited for semi-structured interviews, while 32 forum members were purposively selected for personal narratives, resulting in a total sample of 46 participants. The sample was balanced by gender (23 males and 23 females), and included 10 participants each from senior, middle, and junior management. It also included 6 employees with disabilities, 5 from the LGBTQI+ community, and 5 foreign nationals from other African countries working in South Africa.
The study identified eight key findings aligned with its objectives. First, participants described the banking sector’s culture as challenging, marked by self-serving leadership, top-down decision-making, limited psychological safety, and discrimination based on race, disability, and sexual orientation. Second, minority employees face significant barriers to career advancement. Third, autocratic and transactional leadership styles hinder transformation. Fourth, transformation efforts are poorly acknowledged and valued.
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Fifth, there is strong alignment between the bank’s existing values and spiritual leadership principles, offering integration potential. Sixth, spiritual leadership is seen as a driver of transformational change. Seventh, elements such as respect, psychological safety, trust, service, love, care, belonging, fairness, mindfulness, meaning and purpose and compassion are identified as key spiritual leadership traits relevant to the sector. Lastly, implementing spiritual leadership yields tangible benefits for both leaders and employees.
The study further outlines the essential elements required for developing a spiritual leadership model for transformation specifically tailored for a South African banking context. It addresses current shortcomings in leadership practices within the banking sector, highlighting a significant gap in the effective fulfilment of employee and organisational needs. Consequently, the proposed spiritual leadership model for transformation emphasises key elements critical for meaningful and sustainable transformation.
The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the incorporation of practical elements such as respect, psychological safety, trust, service, care, love, belonging, fairness, mindfulness, meaning and purpose, and compassion to ensure the model offers a robust framework addressing both the practical and spiritual dimensions necessary for effective leadership. This comprehensive approach positions spiritual leadership as a viable solution for promoting meaningful transformation and fostering a holistic leadership culture within the banking sector.
Furthermore, this study also offers an empirical contribution by exploring the lived experiences of employees within a major South African bank, focusing on the intersection of leadership, transformation, and inclusion. Drawing on data from members of the bank’s Diversity and Inclusion Forums, the study provides evidence of how self-serving, autocratic leadership styles and exclusionary organisational cultures hinder transformation efforts. It further reveals that spiritual leadership, characterised by values such as trust, compassion, respect, and meaning, can serve as a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable change. These findings extend existing literature by grounding the relevance of spiritual leadership in the context of organisational transformation within South Africa’s financial sector.
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This study acknowledges several limitations inherent to its qualitative, interpretative, and phenomenological design. Focusing on a single case limited generalisability but enabled rich, context-specific insights into spiritual leadership. Methodological constraints included purposive sampling and the challenges typical of qualitative research, such as complex data analysis and limited replicability. Data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic, conducted via online interviews, introduced additional challenges but also demonstrated the adaptability of virtual research methods.
While the proposed Spiritual Leadership Model for transformation in the banking sector was expert-reviewed, its practical effectiveness in driving transformation within the banking sector remains to be assessed in future research.