The article determines the level of spirituality expression of Lithuanian mid-level businesses CEO’s. The authors briefly present a scientific premise of spiritual leadership theory that was the basis for the research. Spirituality is represented in three different levels: intra-personal, supra-personal and inter-personal by identifying elements of each level that are interrelated. The article points out links with other similar scientific research, describes research methods and research instrument, provides research scope and stages, and indicates methodologically significant data collection and analysis procedures. Research findings show CEO’s spirituality expression that leads to a conclusion that spirituality among leaders of mid-level Lithuanian businesses is not expressed enough in neither of the above spirituality levels. However, the presence of high score allows us to infer that there are some instances of spiritual leadership among these executive managers.

There is still a prevailing approach in management science, as well as in practice, that success of organizations mostly depends on their top managers. It is very difficult to find out the answer to the question what determines success in manager’s job. The increasing number of female managers cause more and more frequent considerations on differences between male and female managers, also which gender managers are more successful in different organization’s life stages. It seems that the following stereotypes are still widespread in the society: managers of organizations must be leaders, managers or leaders are naturally born; managers and leaders are different as well as management and leadership; men are more successful managers than women. The efforts to find answers to these issues reveal that scholars and authors in this field of management usually analyse personal qualities of leadership, inherent leader‘s behaviour or characteristics in various situations. Less attention is being paid on behaviour and personal qualities of manager. The survey presented in the article also could contribute to scientific discussion on gender leadership, determining the differences of leadership of male and female managers identified by their subordinates. The survey has been carried out questioning the employees of small and medium-sized enterprises of Kaunas city (hereinafter referred to as SMEs). This segment was chosen because employees in such size organizations are more familiar with the top managers. The goal of the survey – to compare top managers of different genders in SMBs of Kaunas city and to evaluate the gender aspect’s influence on the managers’ personal traits, inherent leadership behaviour as well as the factors influencing managers’ success. The methods of the survey: analysis of literature sources, questionnaire, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), MS Excel, comparative analysis.[...]