Development and Validation of Viable Model and Measure of Yogic Leadership: A Novel and Holistic Paradigm

Abstract

Despite yoga’s potential to foster organizational excellence, the intersection of leadership and yoga has received limited scholarly attention. Therefore, we aimed to address this gap by developing and validating the yogic leadership scale (YLS). This study was conducted in three rigorous phases. Of 54 framed items, 49 were validated for their content by 10 experts. The first draft of YLS was subsequently administered to 669 participants for exploratory factor analysis and 256 participants for confirmatory factor analysis. The model was a good fit with five distinct factors—wellness and four intelligences (bodily kinaesthetic, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual). YLS’s intermodal convergent and discriminant validity were assessed by correlating with 10 criterion measures—Abbreviated Self-Leadership Questionnaire (ASLQ), Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS), Servant Leadership Behavior Scale (SLBS-6), Spiritual Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ), Paternalistic Leadership Behavior Scale (PLBS), Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), Personal Efficacy Scale (PES), Vedic Personality Inventory (VPI), Ryff’s Psychological Well-Being Scale (RPWS), and Vikruti Subdosha Questionnaire (VSQ). The results demonstrated strong positive correlations between the subscales of YLS and six criterion measures—PLBS, ASLQ, SLBS-6, SLQ, RPWS, and the satva aspect of VPI, supporting their conceptual convergence. The YLS subscales showed moderate and weak positive correlations with PES, ALQ, and the rajas aspect of VPI, indicating conceptual divergence. The YLS subscales also had negative correlations with VSQ and the tamas aspect of VPI by showing their conceptual divergence. Finally, YLS emerged as a novel tool to measure four dimensions of intelligence and wellness, which can aid in designing personalized bio-psycho-socio-spiritual interventions to optimize leadership influence, wellness, and work efficiency.