A Profession of Faith
As we muddle toward the millennium, American business is being forced to address one of the greatest mysteries of the human condition--spirituality.
It’s not that corporate America has discovered God--or Yahweh, Krishna or Buddha, the Goddess or the Higher Power--all by itself. Rather, American workers are largely leading the way.
They are asking for prayer groups in company conference rooms, studying the Bible, the Torah, the Koran on lunch hour. They are demanding the right to wear turbans and head scarves, to have work schedules that honor the Sabbath and allow for crucial midday prayer breaks.
The marketplace is flooded with books such as “True Work: The Sacred Dimension of Earning a Living,” and “The Leadership Wisdom of Jesus.” Guidance is available at workshops on the intersection of faith and finance.
But for all of this evidence of increasing enlightenment, one crucial puzzle still remains, a high-toned query with fundamental impact on management and the workplace, a question that begets more thorny questions:
Just what is spirituality anyway?
Is it religion? Is it ethics? Is it all of the above? And in a nation of dizzying diversity, whose spiritual needs does a company honor anyway? Is the need of a vegetarian bus driver not to hand out hamburger coupons on par with the need of an Orthodox Jew who must be long gone from the office before sundown on the Sabbath? Can a fundamentalist Christian supervise a Muslim employee in a way that leaves both parties happy?
To Robert Nordlund, chief executive of Association Reserves Inc., spirituality is a quest for meaning in a sea of confusion, an antidote to the world’s emptiness.
“There’s a God-sized hole in each of us that needs to be filled with something,” says the 40-year-old executive, a devout Christian who adds that it is God who owns his Calabasas company. “Money, prestige, power do not buy happiness.”
To Dorothy Marcic--author, academic and member of the Bahai faith--spirituality is a “connection to the sacred, the belief in some higher power and the sacredness that goes along with that.”
Career consultant Judith Sommerstein--who celebrated her bat mitzvah at age 55 instead of the usual age 12--views spirituality as “really bringing a sense of God into my everyday life through looking beyond my own reality. I see myself as an agent of change.”
Allan Cox, corporate consultant and author of “Redefining Corporate Soul,” is quick to concede that “in some respects, I don’t try to define it.” But he knows it’s there. He knows it’s crucial. And he knows that it has a growing place in the American office.
There are many reasons the intersection of work and spirituality is so critical in the late 20th century. After a decade of downsizing, most American workers feel more betrayal than loyalty when they look at the corporations that used to offer both career and connection.
The workweek is longer now, leaving less time for spiritual Sundays. If meaning is to be had in life, it must be had at home and at work. The result is that workers are casting a critical eye to the office, trying to find meaning in the place they spend most of their time.
Modern life has become compartmentalized, say Michael and Justine Willis Toms, authors of “True Work.” “Work is here, and family is here and spirituality is there,” says Michael. “The question about whether work and spirituality goes together comes from the fact that we’ve separated something that was never separated before. It’s out of balance. We’re trying as a culture, as a society, as individuals to come into balance.”
Technology is another culprit in the problematic workplace, with the computer revolution failing in its promise to humanize our businesses, says William Willimon, professor of Christian ministry and chaplain at Duke University as well as co-author of “The Search for Meaning in the Workplace.”
“For some people, technology has made their work even more dull and routine,” Willimon says. “Spiritual practices are a way of redeeming your time, having an opportunity to focus on something else and to rise above the humdrum of the day, provide some sustenance for keeping at it. Business would do well to attend to those issues.”
Many are. For example, the Fellowship of Companies for Christ International--one of several workplace ministries cropping up around the country--has a growing number of members, company owners who strive to infuse their businesses with Christian principles.
The organization’s Western region has 121 member companies today, up from only 78 in 1995. Members commit to such seemingly divergent principles as the “importance and practice of prayer in business decisions” and “a commitment to excellence in all aspects of business decisions.” Both, the organization argues, have biblical underpinnings.
Nordlund, for example, says that he tries to “follow Jesus’ example of focusing on people rather than things.” Instead of firing an employee caught stealing from his firm, “we gave her a second chance and set up a debt repayment plan.”
He pays his suppliers on time and negotiates with vendors “from His point of view.” A former Rockwell engineer before opening a company that helps condo associations plan their reserve fund budgets, Nordlund said he evolved into viewing his company as a ministry.
“At first, you’re just a businessman, and business is neutral,” he says. “Then you realize you do indeed have a lot of people looking at you. I have more people looking at me than my pastor does on a Sunday morning. I’m a missionary whether I want to be or not.”
Sommerstein looks at many of Nordlund’s business practices and sees them from a Judaic point of view also. To her, it’s simply ethical, “treating human beings in the workplace the way you’d want to be treated yourself. Each religion can draw on their own teachings to be able to do this.”
As spirituality creeps further into business life, and managers and business owners grapple with just what it is and how to honor it, there are caveats. Marcic, author of “Managing with the Wisdom of Love: Uncovering Virtue in People and Organizations,” warns that bringing spiritual issues into a workplace “sure is open to abuse.”
There is a “big potential for problems” if spirituality is used as a litmus test for employment, as a way to elevate or differentiate workers, Marcic says. “People can use spirituality on a self-righteousness level or use it in a way that they say, ‘My religion is better than yours.’ ”
Marcic has plumbed world religion and found five themes or management virtues that are common across all religions and present in the most ethical companies. She argues that by employing the virtues--trustworthiness, unity, respect, justice and service--companies are more successful. And by shaping spirituality in such a nondenominational fashion, she says, managers can reach more and offend fewer.
“If you go in and say these are the common themes in all religions, who can argue with that?” she asks.
