It has been said that the note of a Tibetan singing bowl is the sound of inner peace. That’s not something you might expect to hear in the MBA classroom. But it rings through Hawes Hall at the beginning of each session of The Spiritual Lives of Leaders, a second-year course that seeks to answer some fundamental questions:

What is the connection between spirituality and leadership, in a world that demands results? What is the role of religion in the lives of high-level decision-makers? And how can understanding the beliefs of others make us more effective global leaders?  Metta McGarvey, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and part of the teaching team, asks for the attention of the 54 students.

“What I’m doing here today is leading us through an exercise to become a little more fully present,” says McGarvey. “This is a gateway skill for enhancing and supporting our ability to access that which gives us spiritual sustenance, wherever you find that. . . . In these practices of presence, we’re working to create an inner space that’s a little more roomy, a little more accepting over time, and this helps us learn how to hold everything with greater clarity and greater warmth.”

She asks the students to close their eyes, sit comfortably, and take three deep, healing breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth—inviting them to enjoy the sensation of being in the room together. There is a profound silence. Then she strikes the resonant bowl three times: bong, bong, bong. Eyes open and class begins.

The Spiritual Lives of Leaders began as a Short Intensive Program (SIP) offered for three years as a four-day, no-fee, no-credit class during January break. Taught by HBS senior lecturer Derek van Bever (MBA 1988), along with Baker Foundation Professor of Management Arthur Segel, Harvard Divinity School Practitioner in Residence John Brown (MBA 1974), Professor Nien-hê Hsieh, and Professor Howard Koh of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the program included early-morning spiritual reflections and sessions with guest speakers, including Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan and former Harvard University President Larry Bacow. The SIP was wildly popular; many students said it was the most powerful experience they’d had at HBS. A few members of the original team, including van Bever, Hsieh, and Brown, decided to expand its scope to a full-term offering this year.

“At HBS, faith and spirituality are not typically part of the curriculum,” says Poonam Daga Sacheti (MBA 2021), a product developer for DocuSign in the San Francisco area. “We’re normally talking about leadership, about innovation, about strategy.” When she saw the course description for the Spiritual Lives of Leaders SIP, she thought, “I’d love to have that conversation; and it’s not a topic that I can easily broach in regular conversations with other HBS students. We wouldn’t really meet for coffee or beer and say, ‘Today, let’s talk about our spirituality.’ ”

Sacheti, who is from India and practices Jainism, says, “I am a person of faith. I find a lot of peace in faith. In times of adversity, or difficulty, or joy, I go back to faith.” She says her “biggest learning” in the SIP came from the emphasis on other traditions. “We had Jewish folks come in. We had someone come in from the Muslim world, and they shared about their values of giving, of generosity. We had someone come in from Hinduism, and they spoke about the Bhagavad Gita.” 

Sacheti says the course continues to influence her. “I feel like spirituality has been ignored for so long in the work setting. The older I get, the more life experiences happen to me, the more important it becomes to cultivate this habit and not let it pass by.”

“Our ambition is to create a course here that’s different, timely, and life-changing for us, but also for the University,” van Bever tells the class. “We need to show the University that it’s okay to talk about this very important dimension of human existence. We are focused on helping you to build your capacity for spiritually grounded leadership so that you can steady yourself and others in a world that is not getting any more predictable or any less chaotic.” 
With a teaching team drawn from six of the university’s graduate schools and students selected from across Harvard, The Spiritual Lives of Leaders embodies the spirit of “One Harvard.” When reading students’ introductory statements for this term, van Bever says he got the sense that “They’re worried that when the chips are down and they will have to make hard decisions, they won’t be spiritually grounded. They won’t know what handholds to grab onto when all eyes are on them.” The course aims to introduce, van Bever says, “sometimes for the first time for this generation, some of the resources and tools and wisdom that exist that have helped people make moral decisions over time. This will be a very unusual classroom experience for most students. It’s a conversation that we don’t typically have at Harvard, and it’s not one that everybody wants us to have.”

Having grown up a Presbyterian PK—preacher‘s kid—van Bever considers himself “a bridge-builder between the domains of spirituality and leadership, across my career in business and now at HBS.” He enrolled at Harvard Divinity School after leaving the company he helped found and joined the Congregational Church upon graduation from HDS in 2011. He is now on the path to ordination. “I have always been attracted to people and institutions that have a deep grounding in values and ethics, culminating in my great, good fortune to spend the last decade of his life at HBS with Professor Clayton Christensen, who was pleased to share the impact that his faith had on how he lived,” van Bever says. “As we are encouraging our students, I maintain a private morning-reflection practice and also a daily gratitude practice.”

“When Derek was a student, we often discussed connecting the divinity school to the business school,” says Laura Tuach, assistant dean for ministry studies and field education at Harvard Divinity School and a member of The Spiritual Lives of Leaders teaching team. “My hope is that we continue these interdisciplinary conversations, as it’s crucial for people to connect deeply with a sense of the transcendent. Whether students draw from faith traditions or a personal sense of spirituality, I want to nurture their curiosity and wisdom so they can lead from a grounded place, continually calling upon that connection in their leadership as it emerges.”

“I remember a conversation with somebody when I was in graduate school, and they said, you know, the most interesting thing about you is that you go to church,” says Nien-hê Hsieh, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at HBS. Hsieh was involved with the Harvard Episcopal chaplaincy as a student. “That stood out. Maybe that’s unusual here, but for much of the world, that’s not so unusual.” For him, the intention of the course is to acknowledge the spiritual dimension of people’s lives: “The lens that I approach it with, since most of my research and teaching is in the area of ethics, is that spirituality informs not only a person’s sense of what’s right and wrong, but also who they are, how they show up, and how they act in the context of work. At the same time, we need to examine critically what are the limits to leading with spirituality and faith in a secular, liberal, and multicultural workplace.”

“I believe the emphasis on leadership [in the course] is not as important as the emphasis on being decent and asking, who am I and what do I do,” says John Brown of HDS. “Those questions are best pursued through some examination of the spiritual and religious side of human beings.”

 An interest in spirituality is an obvious prerequisite for the course; religious affiliation is not. “We specifically and strategically have downplayed emphasis on religion,” says Brown. “Now I am not at all trying to proselytize or lead people to Jesus and Christianity, but what I have learned is that there is a lot of wisdom in the teachings that come out of the Old and New Testament. But they are not the only sources. We broadened the landscape to include other world religions and other gateways.” Brown says that the course comes along at a critical time in students’ development. “These young people have begun to examine who they are, where they want to be as human beings down the road. I would like to play a part in helping them to feel both comfortable in exercising that pursuit but also deepened in their awareness of how others have taken that journey. My goal for the students is really relatively simple: to become more enlightened human beings who may or may not occupy leadership roles someday.”

Centered by the Tibetan bowl breathing exercise, the students in Hawes are ready to address today’s topic: making room for one’s faith and spiritual calling as a leader. One of the guest speakers for the day is Ann Fudge (MBA 1977), who retired as chairman and CEO of Young & Rubicam after a long and successful career in brand management at companies that include General Mills and Kraft General Foods. She recounts a career underpinned by a life rooted in spirituality. But she admits, laughing, “My 24-year-old self would not have been here.” 

“I grew up in segregated 1950s Washington, DC, attending St. Augustine School through eighth grade, where Black nuns taught us to ‘treat others as you want to be treated,’ ” Fudge tells the class. “My experiences, which included being one of four Black girls in my high school class of a hundred, shaped my perspective. Faith isn’t something I consciously talk about—it’s just a part of who I am and how I look at the world.” Though raised Catholic, Fudge says she has evolved spiritually, drawing inspiration from Buddhism and the Dalai Lama’s teachings on compassion. 

Fudge says that when a new leader comes into an organization and does the right thing, even when it’s difficult, it sends a very clear signal to the entire organization about how you are going to operate and what’s important. “When I was president of Maxwell House, we shut down a production line because the beans had come in and they were not good. The guys on the line said, ‘Well, we can push it through.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you can’t push it through. You can’t roast this stuff to taste like it’s supposed to.’ My boss came down on me like a ton of bricks, but it was the right thing to do. Now, do I say it’s all because of my spiritual grounding? You better believe it. I really do believe that, and I can say that with more clarity now.” Speaking of the importance of having a centering force at moments like these, especially in a leadership role, she adds, laughing, “If you don’t have a grounding in faith, you’re going to find yourself in a hot mess.”

After a question-and-answer exchange with Fudge, van Bever draws the session to a close. 

“Metta, will you breathe us out?” Three healing inhalations, three long exhales. And the singing bowl sounds again.

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