Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-08-29-usccb-daily-mass-readings

Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time – August 29, 2021

Welcome to the one hundred and seventy-ninth 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 Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Year B) You don’t need me to tell you that 2020 was a tough year for everyone. For many, the challenges were caused by the pandemic but for others, their problems were of their own making. I’m referring to those companies that made Forbes list of the biggest business scandals of 2020. One of those companies was Wells Fargo.

The Best of the Worst

You might be surprised as I was to see the bank on the list. Didn’t they confess to wrongdoing, pay a bunch of fines, and promise to clean up their act years ago? Yes, they did.

In 2016 Wells Fargo paid $185 million in penalties, CEO John Stumpf retired, and the trouble seemed well on its way to resolution. But it wasn’t. The scandal got bigger, not smaller. The size, scope, and duration of Wells Fargo’s illicit conduct was staggering. In 2020, ex-CEO Stumpf paid $17.5 million in fine for his role in the scandal, and the government sought an additional $37.5 million from five other ex-officers. Not only that, the company also agreed to pay $3 billion to resolve federal criminal and civil investigations of the scandal because the bank discovered it had created 3.5 million fake accounts, not the 2 million to which it previously admitted. It also discovered it had charged more than 800,000 car loan customers for auto insurance they didn’t need or even know about which led to another $1 billion fine and a $400,000 class action settlement.

2021 has not been exempt from scandals either. A couple of weeks ago, three-term Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York resigned his office rather than endure a likely impeachment over sexual harassment allegations. An investigation commissioned by the New York Attorney General reported that Cuomo sexually harassed at least eleven women during his time in office. The former governor has emphatically denied intentionally mistreating women and claimed that pressure for him to resign was politically motivated.

Is he lying? Well, his “intent” is hard to prove, but he’s deluding himself to believe that his behavior isn’t “mistreatment” of women. Those of us who never stepped foot in the governor’s office can only speculate. But one of his accusers said that Cuomo sexually harassed her for years and that many saw it and watched.

Part of the Problem

My point in bringing this up is that as egregious as his behavior may have been, it wasn’t just the governor who is to blame for the toxic and hostile workplace. In fact, the probe found that Cuomo’s staff took action “intended to discredit and disparage an accuser.”  There were those who actively participated and others who passively allowed it to continue, or as the accuser said, “saw it and watched.”

And how could Wells Fargo create 3.5 million fake accounts? The executives who rightly paid big fines for their roles are only part of the problem. I can’t help but think that the bank wouldn’t be paying billions in fines to settle misconduct charges if some employees had reported the scheme when they first knew about it. The #metoo movement that brought attention to widespread sexual harassment across the country would be unnecessary if more people, men, and women, in the New York governor’s office and elsewhere, refused to look the other way and tolerate this injustice in their workplaces.

These headline-making, sensational stories are just the tip of the iceberg of what goes on in organizations nationwide every day. We are all presented with situations where we have to decide between what is right and wrong and how we are going to respond. It is not just about what we might do wrong, it is about what we might fail to do right that is cause for concern. As I often tell my clients, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!”

Deluding Yourselves

In the second reading, St. James encourages us to, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.” (Jam 1:22) When the Wells Fargo scandal first broke five years ago, I searched their company website to see what they said their core values were. This is what I found:

Our values should guide every conversation, decision, and interaction. Our values should anchor every product and service we provide and every channel we operate. If we can’t link what we do to one of our values, we should ask ourselves why we’re doing it. It’s that simple.

We have five primary values that are based on our vision and provide the foundation for everything we do:

• What’s right for customers
• People as a competitive advantage
• Ethics
• Diversity and inclusion, and
• Leadership

The company was right in what it said, it just wasn’t a doer of its word. Their leaders were deluding themselves.

Unfortunately, too many companies are led by people who give lip service to their core values. They don’t own the values and therefore they don’t live them. This lack of congruency between what is said and what is done undermines trust. It would be better to not have stated the values at all.

So why does this happen? Why do leaders like those at Wells Fargo invest time and energy in creating a list of company core values only to abandon them when facing financial or other pressures? I don’t think they start out with the intent to be hypocrites. I think it is because they totally miss the point. Somewhere, they read that they need to have a vision, mission, and values (and they do), but they don’t really understand the purpose. They fail to grasp how the vision, mission, and values are the blueprint for the businesses they want to build. What happens is that the blueprint goes into a drawer or on the shelf and it gathers dust.

Owning Your Values

I have worked with clients who did grasp the implication of stating their core values and then not honoring them with their decisions and behaviors. They knew they would be hypocrites the minute they announced them to their employees because they weren’t living according to the values they defined. They created a list of aspirational values, and they knew they had to change their ways if they were to truly become the guiding principles for the organization.

I give these people a lot of credit because at least they honestly admitted their fears, and they humbly moved forward making progress on the personal growth needed to make the values their own. But why change? Because they recognized that what they were doing wasn’t working for them. Morale was low, and they were not hitting their financial targets. They knew they couldn’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results. They also recognized they couldn’t keep being who they were and expect to behave differently. They had to change if their company was going to change. And, in the end, they just weren’t having any fun anymore, so they were willing to do the hard work needed to build a business that was a great place to work.

The reason you bother to define core values is because you believe that your company will be a better place to work if people embrace them. But this can only happen if every person in the organization is a “doer who acts” according to the values. It is not enough for team members to know all the rules of the game but remain on the sidelines. They have to get in the game.

An Absence of Values

In all the years I’ve been facilitating core values conversations, I’ve never had a leadership team identify dishonesty, hubris, greed, malice, deceit, envy, or arrogance as their core values. Obviously, that would be ridiculous. However, I have worked for many organizations that suffered from the effects of these core problems. The reality is that every leader and organization operates according to a set of values. The question is, are those values the ones for which you want to be known and which lead to success? When you fail to create a culture based on positive values, these negative qualities can grow and fill the void.

Dust Off that Blueprint

God knows this. That is why he handed down commandments by which we should live. These commandments aren’t a list of rules to keep us from living, rather the truth that gives us life. God has given us a blueprint for building a life with Him. Is your copy of the blueprint gathering dust on a bookshelf or is it your go-to guide for living your life? This Sunday’s readings is a call to all of us to look in the mirror.

Living our faith has real implications for our decisions in the marketplace. We can’t leave our faith in the pews on Sundays when we walk out of church. Otherwise, we are the ones of whom Jesus speaks when he quotes Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.” (Mk 7:6) Which human precepts are keeping your heart from honoring God?

If we listen to the Gospel message but not practice it, we are failing to improve ourselves spiritually. If we have a list of guiding principles but do not honor them, we are failing to grow and develop ourselves personally and professionally. How does our Catholic faith shape who you are at work? Do you “humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you”? (Jas 1:21)

St. James wrote, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (Jas 1:27) Yes, care for the widows and orphans and sick and poor and take care that you also speak up when there is an injustice in the workplace. Do not allow yourself to be stained by what the world teaches. Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke Click to Tweet

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we know that you are close and will answer when we call upon you. Help us to carefully observe your commandments. Give us the grace to courageously live the Gospel every day, personally and professionally, so that in all that we do, we may glorify you by our lives.

May God bless you abundantly this week as you are doers of his Word and may you glorify the Lord by your life.

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