Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-03-07-usccb-year-b-mass-readings
Third Sunday of Lent – March 7, 2021
Welcome to the one hundred and fifty-fourth 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.
A Toxic Culture
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Third Sunday of Lent. (Year B) Have you ever worked in a toxic environment? Is your current workplace toxic? If you have or do, you recognize that such an environment is unhealthy, it stifles the growth of the individual and the organization. Families can also be toxic. They create an environment that is harmful to individual growth and development. Similarly, we know that physically a toxic environment is one where a chemical substance can cause damage to an organism or an entire organ system. It is very harmful and can spread widely throughout an area and is often gradual, subtle, but with the same harmful effects.
What is Culture?
An organization’s or a family’s culture—the sum total of its values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors—profoundly affects all of its activities and achievements. All organizations have cultures comprised of the underlying beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that determine their performance. Some of these cultures exist by design; others exist simply by default. Some are toxic and others are healthy.
I bring up the topic of culture because our readings this Sunday highlight the keys to success to creating a values-centered culture in business that I wrote about in my book, The Value of Core Values. These keys to success are also alluded to in Matthew Kelly’s book, The Culture Solution: A Practical Guide to Building a Dynamic Culture. These fundamental principles to cultivating a winning culture include getting very clear about your core values, being specific about what they mean in terms of behaviors, sharing them constantly and consistently, incorporating them into your business practices, policies, and procedures, and honoring them by practicing them.
Values-Centered Culture
The reality is that every leader and organization operates according to a set of values. In my book, The Value of Core Values, I challenge my readers to address a set of critical questions: Do you know what those values are? What do your employees, customers, suppliers, and others think those values are? Are those values the ones for which you want to be known and which lead to success?
Every leader and organization operates according to a set of values. Are those values the ones for which you want to be known and which lead to success? From The Value of Core ValuesIn The Culture Solution, Matthew Kelly writes, “Mission, vision, and values are the foundation upon which we build a successful organization and a dynamic culture. Values are what animate the culture every day… ‘Animate’ comes from the Latin word anima, which means ‘breath,’ ‘soul,’ or more literally, ‘to bring to life.’ Values bring life into an organization; they give it a soul. Without values, an organization becomes soulless, lifeless. A culture with no values at all isn’t unhealthy; it is actually dead.”
Without values, an organization becomes soulless, lifeless. A culture with no values at all isn’t unhealthy; it is actually dead. ~ Matthew Kelly from The Culture Solution @MatthewFKellyAn Absence of Core Values
I’ve worked with many leadership teams to help them to discern a common vision and shared values. Unfortunately for one team, values that would benefit both the organization and the individuals—such as integrity, service, trust, teamwork, or quality—didn’t get much traction. At one point the CEO blurted out in frustration, “We have no values!”
Actually, the CEO and his leadership team did value one thing: profitability. Not organizational profitability, but personal profitability. They all had dreams of a big payday when they could sell the business at a huge profit and each share in the wealth. Meanwhile, their selfish attitudes and dysfunctional behaviors were damaging the morale of the entire organization, resulting in high employee turnover, poor product quality, and less-than-stellar financial performance.
I can only imagine how many individuals and organizations across our country are underachieving because they don’t understand or appreciate the value of core values. Matthew Kelly writes, “most of the time corporate values are a joke…. They get plastered on a wall at the head office and printed in corporate brochures, but the employees snicker at them; they consider them a joke because they don’t reflect the way people have been treated as team members and they don’t reflect the way they see the organization treating customers each day. When your values are considered a joke, you have a very sick culture.”
He’s right. We hear all too often about companies like this. Shipwrecked careers and discredited companies make headlines. Unfortunately, we don’t hear about companies where values-centered leadership thrives, and as a result, so does the business. So, in writing The Value of Core Values, I set out to find organizations that take core values seriously, not just in theory, but in day-to-day practice. I had a hunch that I would discover some that were not only living their core values but were thriving because of them. And I was right!
A Thriving Culture
The leaders I interviewed turned out to be as inspirational as their stories. I was struck by their positive attitudes and sincere humility. They understand that their personal values set the tone for the entire organization. Like the rest of us, these leaders face daily struggles, but they remain committed to living their core values every day, both individually and organizationally. They hold themselves accountable for the values they espouse to others.
Since writing my book, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing many other leaders who share the same commitment to cultivating a values-centered culture. One such leader, Dina Dwyer-Owens, is the co-chairwoman of Neighborly Board of Directors. I was introduced to Dina by a colleague who knew we shared a passion for values-centered leadership. I sent her a copy of my book, we hit it off, and I ended up writing her story for TwoTen Magazine. Interestingly, Matthew Kelly also highlights her company in his book, The Culture Solution.
Her company, Neighborly, was formerly known as The Dwyer Group and was founded by her father, Don Dwyer. It began as a one-brand franchise company and has grown into the holding company of 21 service-based franchise organizations that provide a variety of specialty services through nearly 3,500 franchisees, in nine countries.
Don Dwyer established a Code of Values that was founded upon his Catholic faith, were the principles he lived, and upon which he built and grew his business. Dina always credits the Code of Values at The Dwyer Group for fostering the environment that makes the company unique. At every opportunity, Dina passionately shares the Code with employees and franchisees throughout the company. She said, “I am certain that successful growth of the company has been and will continue to be founded on the Code of Values.” Dina now spends most of her time helping other companies develop values-centered cultures by sharing how The Dwyer Group/Neighborly has done it.
The First Key
Where can you begin? The first key to success through values-centered leadership is “owning your values.” As I did for the readers of my book, I challenge you to get very clear about what you value. What is really important to you on a personal level? What would you not want to give up for all the money in the world? What would be important to you if you did have all the money in the world? Gaining clarity about your personal values is essential to living life with passion and purpose.
Which brings me back to our Sunday readings. In our first reading, God tells us what our #1 value must be. He said, “I am the LORD your God…You shall not have other gods beside me.” (Ex 20:2-3) As I said in last week’s episode of By Your Life, unless and until God is that which you love and that which all your other loves are in relation to, your loves are not properly ordered.
The Second Key
The second key to success through values-centered leadership is defining your values so everyone understands what they mean in terms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. We were given this clarity by God when he said, “You shall not make for yourself an idol… You shall not bow down before them or serve them.” (Ex 20:4-5) Then, in the second and third commandments, he adds clarity in terms of acceptable speech and expected behavior. “You shall not invoke the name of the LORD, your God, in vain.” (Ex 20:7) And “Remember the sabbath day—keep it holy…. You shall not do any work, either you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your work animal, or the resident alien within your gates.” (Ex 20:8, 10)
But as I’ve already noted, having clearly defined core values is a joke if they are not honored. When you don’t practice what you preach, and when you don’t hold others in your organization accountable for honoring the core values, they are worse than meaningless, they are a joke.
Honoring Values
In John’s Gospel this Sunday, we heard about the Cleansing of the Temple. When Jesus saw the people selling oxen, sheep, and doves, he was angry and “drove them all out of the temple area (Jn 2:15) saying, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” (Jn 2:16) Jesus was angry that they made honoring his Father’s house a joke. Responding to the toxic environment that had been created in the temple area, an area that was designated as a holy place, the dwelling place of God, and a place of prayer, Jesus was calling them out for it.
And he was right to do it. When he did, John tells us that the Jews said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” (Jn 2:18) In other words, “Where do you come off telling us what to do?” Individuals within an organization must be willing to be held accountable to the organization’s core values, and they must be willing to hold others accountable to them, otherwise, your core values are in fact, nothing but a joke.
Matthew Kelly writes, “Will some people resist? Yes. Will there be people who sabotage the effort to build a dynamic culture out of fear, comfort, or laziness? Absolutely. Would you let those people train the rising stars of your organization? I don’t think so. If someone were poisoning your child’s drinking water, how long would you tolerate that? If you found out today that you had cancer, how long would you delay before you sought appropriate treatment? You cannot allow disruptive personalities to kidnap your organization’s culture. Cut out the cancer. Culture builders in positions of leadership act decisively with courage to protect the mission and give the organization the best chance of becoming the best-version-of-itself.”
God in the Marketplace
Jesus admonished the Jews for making God’s house a marketplace. These days in our secular business world, we’re met with a similarly angry response if we try to bring God into the marketplace. Society demands that we leave God in our places of worship and not bring him to work. But why? Wouldn’t every business relationship be better if they were founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Think about it. If God is love, wouldn’t every business be a little better off if God were present?
Dina Dwyer-Owens has written a book about the values-centered culture at Neighborly called, Values, Inc. How Incorporating Values into Business and Life Can Change the World. I was honored to be asked to preview the book before it was published, and I was happy to endorse it because she begins her book by writing, “Love [is] the purpose of life and there always should be room for love wherever you are, including at work.”
Love is the purpose of life and there always should be room for love wherever you are, including at work. ~ Dina Dwyer-Owens from Values, Inc. @DinaDwyerOwensGod delivered all these commandments (Ex 20:1) because he knew man’s tendency toward selfishness and sin. He gave us these commandments for our own good so that we can live in community with one another and thrive. We know that these commandments can be summarized as “love God” and “love each other.” Nowhere does it say, “except at work.”
Let’s pray.
God, you invite us to honor these timeless commandments which provide a path to a flourishing moral life. During this Lenten season, help us to cleanse ourselves—our temples of the Holy Spirit—from all that keeps us from honoring you. Cleanse our hearts, our minds, our souls, our speech, and our actions so they may be consistent with the Christian life, at home and at work, so that in all that we do, we may glorify you by our lives.
May God bless you abundantly this week as you do a little spring cleaning and rid yourself of whatever is out of order so that you may glorify the Lord by your life.
If you liked this episode, spread the word. You know what to do, forward, share, or click to post. Also, check out the Resources page where you can find a link to the books and other resources mentioned in this and other episodes of By Your Life. I’m always interested in what you think, so give me some feedback by leaving a comment.
