Dissertation

Adult Third Culture Kid’s (ATCK’s) Concept of Belonging and Identity Creation: Can Spiritual Self-Leadership Be a Solution?

Lyons, Shelly

2025

Overview

Adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs), with their mobile and cross-cultural childhood, bring into adulthood both benefits and challenges which impact their personal and professional lives. This research was conducted through narrative inquiry with 25 ATCK participants ranging in age from 18 to almost 80. These participants came from various backgrounds: military kids, diplomatic kids, missionary kids, and business expat kids. The research question that guided this study was “How can spiritual self-leadership foster identity development and sense of belonging in ATCKs in order for them to elevate their potential and value contribution in the workplace?” The four objectives for this study were to: (1) identify how ATCKs’ professional lives are impacted by their cross-cultural mobile life before the age of 18; (2) explore how the Spiritual Leadership model (Fry & Nisiewicz, 2020) can foster identity development (inner life) and sense of belonging (membership) for ATCKs within the workplace; (3) examine how ATCKs’ deconstruction and/or construction of faith impacts their inner life and, by extension, spiritual self-leadership; and, (4) propose recommendations for how ATCKs can cultivate spiritual self-leadership for themselves and leverage their value within their workplaces.Four emerging threads arose from the participants’ stories. The first emerging thread was professional mobility and restlessness, which were the most commonly cited impacts on ATCKs’ professional lives. Many ATCKs feel the need to change jobs, organizations, and geographical locations frequently, mirroring their mobile lives before the age of 18. The second emerging thread was spiritual leadership in the workplace. Although only a few of the ATCKs highlighted how organizational leaders who exercise spiritual leadership had helped them mitigate their challenges, those who did, spoke of how these leaders helped to foster a sense of belonging and provided outlets for purposeful living. The third emerging thread was the core spiritual beliefs questioning process. This process varied between ATCKs where some completely deconstructed the faith they followed before the age of 18 while others only sifted through their core spiritual beliefs. Some settled on their spirituality, while others still search for their path. Regardless of where this questioning process led them, the value was in the journey, not the destination. The fourth emerging thread was spiritual self-leadership principles. These principles were gleaned from examples from the lived experiences of the ATCKs, as well as their advice for other ATCKs. The ATCKs’ narratives clearly showed how they had used spiritual self-leadership to cultivate their inner life, mitigate their challenges, and engage with their community.The spiritual self-leadership principles from the fourth emerging thread informed the creation of the Spiritual Self-Leadership model, a signature contribution of this study. The model includes six principles which are housed under two headings: Focus on Self and Taking Self into Community. The four principles under Focus on Self are know yourself, develop your spirituality, seek professional help, and commit to a lifelong, continual journey. The two principles under Taking Self into Community are build your community and live your purpose. This model was developed as a tool for ATCKs to lead themselves towards fostering identity creation and sense of belonging; however, it has implications for a much wider audience. For organizational leaders, this model provides a pathway towards greater understanding of ATCKs and their challenges, as well as awareness of the need to provide space for ATCKs to cultivate their spiritual self-leadership. As well, leaders can use this model as a guideline on how to cultivate their own inner life and spiritual self-leadership, and, using this knowledge, to encourage their followers to do the same. If organizational leaders provide space for all organizational actors to cultivate and practice spiritual self-leadership, a climate of spiritual well-being can be created and encouraged for everyone within the organization.The Spiritual Self-Leadership model has implications for both the academic and non-academic world. This model is the first of its kind to marry spiritual leadership and self-leadership into one model. This overlap can inform literature in both subject areas in the organizational leadership discipline, as well as set itself apart in its own subject area. In addition, the model can fill a gap in the mainstream leadership literature for the same reason. For the ATCK academic literature, the model contributes knowledge on how to mitigate ATCK challenges of identity and belonging in order to elevate their potential and value contribution in the workplace. Very little has been written about ATCK professional challenges and nothing on solutions. The model’s practicality can be attractive to both academic and practitioner audiences.The recommendations for practice are centered around the Spiritual Self-Leadership model and how it can be made available and usable to the greatest number of people. First, training materials should be developed for ATCKs, ATCK practitioners, and organizations with target audiences such as those who dispatch expatriates, those for whom ATCKs work, organizational leaders, HR practitioners, and academic institutions. Second, a published book should be written to widen the access for ATCKs and organizational leaders. Third, a website should be developed to further widen access and provide videos and resources for all interested in the model. Although the Spiritual Self-Leadership model was birthed from ATCKs’ narratives and was designed to help ATCKs mitigate their belonging and identity challenges, this model will also help leaders who desire to cultivate their inner life in order to become a more effective spiritual leader.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Business administration / Management / Sociology / Spirituality
• ISBN: 9798311952927