Stephen R. Covey said, “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.” In this edition of By Your Life, we talk about the rewards of establishing the right priorities and being disciplined to carry them out.
Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2020/20_06_28.mp3
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – June 28, 2020
Welcome to the one hundred and eighteenth 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.
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 Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Habit #3 is to “Put First Things First.” He said, “Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.”
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. ~ Dr. Stephen R. Covey @stephenrcoveyIn this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus lays out the priorities in the conditions for discipleship and he set a very high standard. He said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.” (Mt. 10:37-38) This is not exactly an appealing job posting. It would be like an employer advertising that, “Your job comes before your family. You can expect to work long days, nights, and weekends. In fact, we may work you to death.” Can you imagine people signing up for this? Yet they did, and still do, to this day.
Most employers don’t set expectations for an unbalanced life in their job postings. Good ones know that work-life balance is not only good for the employee, it is good for business. On the other hand, it is good to advertise exactly what is expected for success, not just on the job, but in the organization. That means, the employee shares the company’s vision, mission and core values and is a good fit for the company’s culture. That also is not only good for the employee, it is good for the business.
All of the CEOs I interviewed for my book, The Value of Core Values said they incorporated their core values into their hiring practices. Jay Fechtel, CEO of The Fechtel Company a high-quality custom home designer and builder, put it this way, “We discuss our mission statement and core values with every person we interview. I ask all job candidates if they have a problem with any of them. I never get a negative answer, but sometimes people say, ‘No, everything looks fine.’ Those people probably won’t fit. Other candidates say, ‘Wow! I’ve been looking for a company like this. I love everything about your values, and I really like what you’re doing.’ Those are the people who usually end up being successful hires.”
And that’s what you want as an employer and that’s what you want as an employee… to be successful. But if you look at the most recent Gallup employee engagement survey results, as a whole, companies in the U.S. are missing the boat. Even though the 2019 survey reported 35% of workers are “engaged”, the highest percentage since the survey began in 2000, 52% of workers were disengaged, meaning they are psychologically unattached to their work and company, and put time but not energy or passion into their work. An additional 13% of workers are “actively disengaged”, meaning they are miserable at work and spread their unhappiness to their colleagues. That’s almost 2/3rds of American workers who are just passing time at work, or worse.
Why do we care about engagement? Analysis by the Gallup organization reports that team members with higher levels of engagement produce substantially better outcomes, treat customers better and attract new ones, and are more likely to remain with their organization than those who are less engaged. Engaged employees are also healthier and less likely to experience burnout.
Companies with higher levels of employee engagement are the ones where the CEO and board have made engagement a priority. They invest in training their managers to be better leaders, create cross-company communication and sharing of best practices, and they hold people accountable. They know there is no meaningful mission or purpose without clear expectations and accountability. So, making sure employees know what’s expected of them is the foundation of excellent leadership. Then, they recognize and reward success and do not tolerate mediocrity.
I don’t want you to think that employee engagement is solely the responsibility of the employer. It isn’t. The 2/3rds of workers who lack energy or passion for their work are just as culpable for the current state of employee engagement in the U.S. If you are one of them, what should you do about it?
In his book, Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction, Matthew Kelly walks the reader through a practical system to drive higher levels of personal and professional satisfaction in your life. There are two points he makes that are important as we reflect on the topic of employee engagement and our readings from this Sunday.
First, Matthew Kelly writes that “Work-life balance, work-life effectiveness, personal and professional satisfaction—or whatever you choose to call it—is not an entitlement or benefit. Your company cannot give it to you. You have to create it for yourself. You are personally responsible for living the best life you can… If we refuse to face this truth, we become victims who are incapable of thriving and must content ourselves with surviving.”
Work-life balance isn’t a benefit your company can give you. You must create it for yourself. Refuse to face this truth and we are victims who must be content surviving. @MatthewFKellySecondly, the Personal and Professional Satisfaction System he proposes involves assessing where you are and pinpointing your areas of dissatisfaction, establishing priorities, developing core habits that keep you healthy, focused and energized, weekly planning for those things you want to move forward, and a system of accountability through quarterly review. While each step is important, the key to this system is to establish proper priorities for your life. He writes, “Without a clear sense of what our priorities are, everything is important, which means nothing is important, and we become victims of the tyranny of the urgent.”
Without a clear sense of what our priorities are, everything is important, which means nothing is important, and we become victims of the tyranny of the urgent. @matthewfkellyMatthew then shares one of the most useful tools he’s come across in his career as a business consultant. It is a simple but effective approach to establishing priorities. I have used a similar approach with my coaching clients, and it has been enormously effective at helping them gain clarity of what is most important.
But our Gospel this week lays out an even more effective tool. We know what is most important because Jesus told us. “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Mt 10:37) Jesus isn’t a selfish and egotistical tyrant dictating love for himself above all others. Jesus is our Savior, not our boss. He is love itself and has no need of our love. We are the ones who need love and need to love, and he knows this.
Covey said, “Effective leadership is putting first things first.” and Jesus couldn’t be more clear about what comes first. Our challenge, as Covey said, is effective management and the discipline to carry it out. We need to understand what is keeping us from living this priority. What are we placing as #1 before him? What are we afraid of releasing to him? What steps do we need to take to get our priorities right?
I was listening to NPR in the car the other day and the host was interviewing an author who’d just published his book about finding your spirituality in everyday rituals. The author, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, admitted that he was lost and went there looking for answers that he couldn’t find anywhere else. I’ll admit I didn’t read his book, but I did read the foreword and the introduction and found enough to let me know it was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It sounded good, appeared harmless, and wasn’t promoting immorality. It just wasn’t based on truth.
His premise is that you can find spiritual nourishment totally in daily activities. The author rightly observes that the same things that we think of as religious—building community, engaging in texts, singing songs together—are happening in secular places. But then he places everything in the wrong priority. He said, “Find the right thing for you – what will help you connect with yourself, what will help you connect with other people, what will help connect you with nature, and then something that will connect you with the transcendent.” In other words, I’m first and God, the transcendent, is a distant fourth. That is definitely not the right priority, and it is not harmless; it is dangerous.
Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt. 10:39) He is clear your life is not about “finding the right thing for you.” One who denies Jesus to save one’s earthly life will be condemned to everlasting destruction. But giving of our earthly life for Jesus’ sake will be rewarded by everlasting life in the kingdom. As St. Paul wrote to the Romans, “If, then, we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.” (Rom 6:8), not only in the world to come, but we will find what we’ve been seeking in this life.
So, this week, let’s put first things first, personally and professionally and place Jesus in the #1 spot in our lives. Let’s pray for understanding of what is keeping us from loving Jesus more than mother, father, son, daughter, or whatever is most dear to us. Let us pray for the ability to see what we are placing as #1 before him. Let us pray to be released from fear so we can take the steps we need to take to get our priorities right.
Jesus, hear our prayer. Help us to love and desire you more than anything in our lives so that by living with right priorities, we may be your witness to a world that is looking for you in all the wrong places. Strengthen us when we lose our way, and gently guide us back to you.
May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life.
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