The greatest detriment to business success in the modern world is an absence of morals and ethics. On the other hand, moral and ethical businesses create a strategic competitive advantage. In this week’s episode of By Your Life, we talk about how an increase in faith and morals at work creates a healthier environment and a healthier work environment is good for business.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_10_06.mp3
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 6, 2019
Welcome to the eightieth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life. If you haven’t already, please sign up for notifications, and if you know of someone who can benefit from By Your Life, tag them, share it, like it.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. The reading from Luke’s Gospel began with the apostles saying to Jesus, “Increase our faith.” (Lk 17:5) The first time I read the readings reflecting on how to apply this Sunday’s scripture to our work lives, I skipped over this line. Instead, I looked to the rest of the Gospel, the first reading and the second reading for inspiration, and found a lot of important messages that apply to work. But all week, I kept going in circles and could not form any cohesive thoughts. I kept praying, “God, you know who will be reading this. What do you want me to say to them?”
Then, this morning it came to me. “Increase our faith…at work.” Duh, Lisa. This is the whole point of By Your Life. Our faith lives and our work lives aren’t separate. If we want to be more successful in our work lives, we need to increase our faith!
But how do we do that in a way that makes sense in the marketplace?
Coincidentally, also this week, when I went to put a CD in my car, I ejected the one that was in there. It happened to be Matthew Kelly’s CD Faith at Work and the Holy Moment. (You can get a free copy at DynamicCatholic.com, just pay for shipping and handling.) He was speaking to a group of businesspeople at a conference on business and ethics, but he could have been giving a homily for this week’s readings.
There were three things that he said that I’d like to share. The first was that there are two issues that need to be dealt with. There are two questions that keep many of us from integrating our faith and work lives. They are, “Is it profitable to be ethical in business in the modern world?” and “Is it possible to be ethical in business in the modern world?”
The answer to these two questions is definitively, yes! There is certainly evidence of the cost of failing to be ethical in business. Pharmaceutical companies that pushed opioids when they were aware of the addictive nature of the drugs, the car manufacturer that tampered with emissions tests, the bank that fraudulently opened accounts for customers without their knowledge, and the mining company that knowingly violated safety regulations, are all paying the price both financially and in loss of brand equity. On the positive side, there are companies that are thriving because of their ethical business models. I write about several in my book, The Value of Core Values, and have written articles about several more in TwoTen Magazine. Despite this evidence, we don’t see it happening as often as we should because secular leadership models exclude spiritual development when training business leaders.
In Faith at Work and the Holy Moment, Matthew Kelly explains the reason ethics in business is profitable is because “business health is a multiplier of talent.” We hire for talent. We pay top dollar for skills and knowledge, but the game-changer in business is creating a healthy environment for that talent to grow, develop, and execute. How do we create a healthy environment? The answer is values-centered leadership. How do we become values-centered leaders? By increasing our faith.
In their book, The Challenges of Pastoral Leadership: Concepts and Practice, Ronald Rojas and John Alvarez devote a chapter to how secular leadership models do not translate to success in pastoral leadership. I read this book with great interest because I believe the limitations they outline in secular leadership models are also limitations in the secular world. The missing component of most secular leadership models is spirituality.
Why is this important to our leadership success? Well, we are whole people. We are created as physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings. Yet, 95% of all corporate training dollars are spent developing skills and knowledge, or the physical and mental aspects of our jobs. With the advent of theories of emotional intelligence promoted by Daniel Goleman (see our Resources page for links to his books) and the like, business leaders recognized that EQ is as important if not more important than IQ in leadership success. And so, in some organizations, training and development of emotional intelligence has been added. But there is still this gaping hole in the fourth dimension of our beings, that is our spirituality.
Our secular organizations are not likely to address this gap. For this reason, it is up to us. In the second reading, St. Paul writes to Timothy, “I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God that you have.” (2 Tim 1:6) By our baptism, we were given the gift of faith. It is our job to fan the flame. Bishop Howard J. Hubbard wrote “The laity must strive to make the connection between faith and work, between weekend liturgy and weekday responsibilities, between seeing God’s presence at the altar, and at the desk, at the sink, on the farm, in the labor union hall, at the PTA meeting, in the political caucus and the legislative chamber.”
A place to start is to join the apostles and pray, Lord, “increase our faith.” (Lk 17:5) But Jesus tells us that we already have all the faith we need. He said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to [this] mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” (Lk 17:6) We don’t need more faith. We just need to use the faith we have. We just need to stir the flame.
But we don’t do that. It is unfortunate that the vast majority of Catholics do not even attend Mass on Sunday. According to data collected by the Gallup organization between 2014 and 2017, only about 39 percent of Catholics reported attending church in any given week. That’s down from 45 percent between 2005 and 2008. And it’s a huge drop from 1955 when Gallup polling reported weekly Mass attendance at 75 percent. This means that today 61 percent of Catholics fail to fulfill the minimum obligation of attending Sunday Mass. Not only that, of the 39 percent that do attend Mass, you can readily observe many people who come in late and leave early, attending for the very minimum time they think they need to be there to meet their minimum obligation.
If you’re listening to this, you’re likely one of the 39 percent who does attend Mass on Sunday. And that is a good thing. But it isn’t good enough. Luke’s gospel goes on to say, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.” (Lk 17:10) Being a minimalist isn’t going to increase your faith. Being a minimalist at work isn’t going to lead to success there either.
We all have worked with a person who only did the very minimum they thought they were obliged to do. They figure out what is the least they can do and get away with, without being fired. They figure out how many sick days they have and take every one of them, whether or not they are sick. When something needs to be done, they are the first to say, “That’s not my job.” They show up and leave right on time, regardless of whether the work that needs to be done is done, and they don’t care who is left to carry the load. The thing is, what they don’t realize is that by not stepping up to help others, they aren’t helping themselves either. I’ve never met a happy minimalist.
I’ve never met a happy minimalist. #leadershiplessons #wisdom #minimalismYou likely know the type of person I am talking about. You don’t like working with these people, they drain your energy and cause strife and discord in your workplace. You wish someone would do something about them. You feel like the prophet Habakkuk in our first reading when he cries “How long, O LORD, must I cry for help and you do not listen? Or cry out to you, … and you do not intervene?” (Hab 1:2) You look at your boss and want to scream, “Why don’t you do something about them?”
I was talking with a client recently, and this is exactly how she felt. She had a co-worker who consistently called in sick when their team had a major proposal due and my client felt dumped on because she had to pick up the slack. To her credit, she came to me because she didn’t want to just leave it to someone else to take care of. She wanted to talk with her co-worker but didn’t know how. So, I coached her through gaining clarity of her motivation, checking her attitude toward her co-worker, and possible ways to engage her co-worker in a positive conversation.
Most of us wouldn’t do this. Instead, we let frustration build into anger because no one else will address the problem. Then, at some point, there is a straw that breaks the camel’s back and we do something rash. And as our first reading so aptly states, “The rash one has no integrity.” (Hab 2:4) When their bad behavior triggers us and we react, we most likely aren’t the best-version-of-ourselves. As I tell my clients, the other person owns their bad behavior, but if we behave badly in response, we must own ours.
But, I often hear people say, “It’s not my job to discipline another employee. That’s the boss’ job.”, and that may be true, but there is nothing in your job description that prevents you from teaching or helping another employee. Saying, “It’s not my job.”, is nothing more than fear speaking. We are afraid to confront our co-worker. But, as St. Paul wrote to Timothy, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.” (2 Tim 17) When we increase our faith, we develop our power to act in these situations with love and self-control. If you respond to your co-worker with love and self-control, you may understand what is really going on with them, learn that they aren’t faking it, and the two of you could work out a solution so you don’t feel dumped on when personal issues keep your co-worker home.
The third thing Matthew Kelly said in his Faith at Work CD is that successful organizations take the long view and no organization has ever existed that has more successfully taken the long view than the Catholic Church. This long view is the response the Lord gave to Habakkuk when he said, “Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets, so that one can read it readily. For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” (Hab 2:2-3)
You can’t create a healthy environment for your talented team to thrive if you don’t take the long view. Otherwise, concerns about quarterly profits will trump all else in how you make decisions. You’ll dispose of your core values at the first sign of tough financial times. But, as Matthew Kelly says, “Our values have to be our values whether we win or lose. Our values have to be our values, whether it is profitable or not.”
Our values have to be our values whether we win or lose. Our values have to be our values, whether it is profitable or not. ~ @MatthewFKelly #corevalues #valuesbasedleadership #leadershipAnd this is the challenge for us in the workplace. We must be willing to take a stand against something that is wrong because our values are our values. We must be willing to speak up with a spirit of power and love and self-control when we see violations of ethical and moral behavior. We must create an environment where people not only feel safe to speak up but are appreciated for doing so because healthy businesses are always striving to become better versions of themselves and that is impossible if no one is willing to speak up.
If you are working in an environment where you feel you must compromise your values, pray with the apostles, Lord, “Increase our faith.” (Lk 17:5). Participate in the Holy Mass but don’t stop there. A minimalist can’t become the best version of himself spiritually or otherwise. Read, listen to, and watch resources that can help you in practical ways to stir the flame of the gift of God that you have. Stop reading, listening to, or watching the negative influences that are keeping you from increasing your faith.
Bishop Barron reminds us that “Authentic faith has nothing to do with naivete, credulity, or gullibility. Rather authentic faith is a confidence in God.” So, if you are tempted to look the other way when you witness something wrong, look to God with confidence. Remember the long view and how your failure to act plays out in the scheme of eternity. Have integrity, speak up, and remember, “the just one, because of his faith, shall live.” (Hab 2:4)
Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us to increase our faith, hold tight to our values, do more than what we are obliged to do, and focus on the long view so that we may glorify the Lord by our lives.
Lord, increase our faith so we may live as righteous people in the will and the confidence of God. We thank you because when we are weak, you are strong. Give us a measure of your strength so that we might not give into discouragement, deception, and doubt. Help us honor you in all our ways, and glorify you, by our lives.
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