Spiritual leadership and job performance in the public service in Ghana: the mediating role of employee engagement

Purpose Ensuring employees perform in the public sector is very relevant due to the significant role public sector employees play. Enhance, ensuring that employees are effectively engaged, is a sine qua non for better performance in the service. This can be achieved through an effective leadership style. Nevertheless, the current literature on leadership style and employee engagement is short. Thus, the study fills this gap by examining spiritual leadership (SL) style, employee engagement and performance. The purpose was to find how spiritual leaders enhance employee performance through employee engagement. Design/methodology/approach Using the quantitative approach and convenience sampling, data gathered from 207 employees were analysed using structural equation modelling. Exploratory research design was employed, which focuses on some randomly selected civil service institutions in Ghana. Findings Findings suggest that SL positively impacts employee engagement and employee task performance. This is achieved when leaders exhibit SL characteristics and promote workplace spirituality. Additionally, employee engagement mediates this relationship. Hence, developing a SL style is crucial for effective employee engagement and task performance improvement. Practical implications It shows the role of SL in building engaged employees to perform. Leaders need to exhibit SL characteristics and promote workplace spirituality, particularly within the public sector in developing countries. Originality/value It contributes to the SL literature using Fry’s SL Framework in the human resource management and public leadership literature. There are limited studies of SL in the public sector, especially in developing countries, creating a lacuna in the extant literature. Thus, this is one of the few studies that have looked at this leadership style in the public sector and from a developing country’s perspective, where spirituality is very high.