Hear from folks at Google, Equinix, American Airlines, Intel & Tyson FoodsWould you like to see what religious freedom looks like inside some of the most innovative and successful workplaces in America? Here are three great opportunities:
APR 21, 2022 – MORAL AND ETHICAL LEADERSHIP (IN-PERSON EVENT)
Join us Thursday, April 21st for an enlightening panel discussion hosted by Brian Grim with the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation. He will be joined by Craig Carter from Intel and Father Greg McBrayer from American Airlines. Hear what two businesses have gained when they are religiously inclusive in their workplace. Find out which Fortune 100 businesses are doing it, and how you can too.
* The Phoenix Chapter of the BYU Management Society is a group of business professionals dedicated to growing moral and ethical leaders in our community. They have a mutual respect for high moral and ethical standards as a code of business conduct and integrity. They serve the greater Phoenix area and deliver programs to help members live by high standards and grow as leaders. Membership is open to everyone who values and strives to live by moral and ethical standards.
The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation supports this webinar.
Join Jeffrey Murphy, a chaplain* with Tyson Foods, for a discussion of chaplaincy in a corporate setting.
Corporate chaplaincy is a growing field. Yet many in the profession have little knowledge of chaplaincy in the corporate setting, not least because CPE is often based in the healthcare. How will our industry adjust to the growth of corporate chaplaincy and prepare candidates for work in this field?
This webinar will offer the reflections of one chaplain who moved to the corporate setting after nearly thirty years in healthcare. It will also look at the growth and potential growth of corporate chaplaincy, and the similarities and differences between chaplaincy in the healthcare setting and the corporate setting.
Join us Thursday, March 3 (9am PT / noon ET), to hear how people of different faiths and beliefs from Google and Equinix are working together as allies and collaborators to address challenges facing societies today.
Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the WorldReview by Brian Grim
As I reflected this week on the value of working with people different from myself, I came back to a point made by Chris Lowney in Heroic Leadership. With the provocative subtitle, Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the World, he offers insights that benefit any organization – business or otherwise.
Chris Lowney vice chairs the board of CommonSpirit Health, America’s largest nonprofit health system with $29 Billion in revenues and more than 150,000 employees, and previously served as a Managing Director of J.P. Morgan & Co. on three continents.
But it is his stint as a Jesuit seminarian before his business career that influenced his approach. And the 450-year-old “company” is the Society of Jesus, known as the Jesuits (Pope Francis is a member), founded in 1534 by St. Ignatius of Loyola and his companions.
Reflecting on the large number of companies that were extolled in the 1982 “Best-Run Companies” book by Peters and Waterman, that are now no longer in business (e.g., Eastman Kodak and Kmart), Lowney offers a Jesuit insight.
Given that excellence is not a “timeless plateau that once attained is never forfeited … succeeding in this world requires individuals to cultivate the personal skills needed to thrive in an environment of near permanent change” (pp. 148-49).
One way that Jesuits cultivated the skill of such thriving is to “see God in all things.” This not only includes the people we encounter but each moment of the day, each sense and sensation, in the consolations and desolations we experience. This approach was in contrast to the monasteries and convents of Ignatius’ day, that found God within the walls, walls which were often viewed as providing protection from the vagaries, temptations and dangers of the world.
The principle of seeing God in all things means that we are actively seeking to see the good and excellent, and even the spiritual, in all we encounter. It embraces the messiness of the world rather than seeking protection from it. Such a skill breaks down barriers and creates workplaces that are innovative, trusting and collaborative, where people can adapt, create and respond quickly.
An example of this is the tremendous interfaith collaboration at one of today’s most successful global companies, Intel. To see it in action, check out the discussion between leaders from their Christian, Muslim and Jewish employee resource groups from our 2021 Faith@Work Conference: Today’s need for greater empathy and “thicker skin”.
Part of the blog series, Authenticity & Connection
Put differently, day after day, what motivates your work? Is it the need to earn money to support a lifestyle or family? Personal recognition? Avoidance of blame? A desire to help the working group succeed? The sheer satisfaction of a job well done? A desire to provide truly useful goods and services to customers, or to make the world a better place?
This year, for its 100th birthday, the Harvard Business Review is highlighting twelve of HBR’s “finest articles.” It’s notable that the first in this series was written by a self-described “deeply religious” man, Professor Clayton M. Christensen (1952-2020)*, about the intersection of his faith and his work: How Will You Measure Your Life? (hbr.org)
Facing life-threatening cancer, Christensen wrote:
“Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.”
“It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that Harvard Business School draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives.”
“I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.”
“My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction.”
“Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”
For many like Prof. Christensen, the ultimate “why” of work is rooted in their faith. They seek to honor God in the way they perform their duties, and the way they treat others. That’s why they honor their commitments, treat others with respect, stand up for the rights of others, give credit where it’s due, visit coworkers in the hospital, and show other kindnesses. For some, such deeds are a way of earning God’s favor. For others, works like these are an appropriate, worshipful response of gratitude for God’s unmerited kindness to them.
Of course, many workers simply haven’t thought about it. They go to work day after day without reflecting on any ultimate why.
We at the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation are driven to celebrate and enable cultures that encourage free and voluntary discussions about workers’ personal “whys.” We help companies listen to the diverse personal WHYs of their people. We do this because we’ve seen how such workplace discussions facilitate positive, transformative authenticity and connection. We’ve seen that, when employees voluntarily open up to disclose their “why,” there’s a self-induced accountability to act according to those expressed principles. When they tell, as Christensen did, about the intersection of their faith and their work, and live according to their professed principles, they inspire others, and sow hope. And when they die, they leave a legacy of civility that makes the world a better place.
The large positive legacy that Clay Christensen left is not measurable in dollars. His life story touches many who are outside his faith tradition. In a comment on Christensen’s Boston TedX Talk (with 1 million views), Cameron Fife aptly observed:
“For those of you who aren’t really religious, I think the point he is trying to make at the end of his talk is this: Don’t measure your life by the amount of money, the degree, or the number of friends you have by the time you die. It’s much better to think about some of the individual experiences or moments in your life where you can really see the good impacts you made on your peers or society as a whole.”
Whether we’re “religious” or not, the question of one’s ultimate “why” is, essentially, a matter of faith and belief. To the extent that we seek to conduct our daily work so as to leave a particular kind of legacy, we honor the core principles (God’s will, as it were) we profess to live by.
That is the standard against which our lives will be measured. It’s worth considering.
* Clayton Magleby Christensen (April 6, 1952 – January 23, 2020) was an American academic and business consultant who developed the theory of “disruptive innovation”, which has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Christensen introduced “disruption” in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma, and it led The Economist to term him “the most influential management thinker of his time.” He served as the Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (HBS), and was also a leader and writer in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Christensen was also a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, a venture capital firm, and Innosight, a management consulting and investment firm specializing in innovation. For more, see the New York Times obituary of Christensen, which describes his lasting impact on business.
Faith@Work is not only a growing movement within Fortune 500 companies (see REDI Index), it is also a topic of scholarly study. For example, RFBF has contributed chapters to three recent Routledge publications:
Authors of books related to faith@work movement will be joining us at our May 23-25, 2022, Faith@Work National ERG conference Dare to Overcome, including David W. Miller, Ph.D., Director of Princeton University’s Faith & Work Initiative, who is revising his classic God at Work (Oxford University Press) in light of the growing multi-faith workplace engagement.
Also, Rear Admiral Alan Baker (US Navy, ret.), 16th Chaplain of the Marine Corps, will keynote our special corporate chaplaincy track with insights from his seminal book Foundations of Chaplaincy: A Practical Guide (Eerdmans). Chaplains of various faiths and denominations provide compassionate ministry of presence in some of America’s largest corporations, including American Airlines, Tyson Foods, and Coca-Cola Consolidated, all sponsors of our May 23-25 conference.
If your company would like to participate in the 2022 REDI Index, email and/or learn more here.
Part of the blog series, Authenticity & Connection
In May 2021 I wrote a blog on “Strengthening Employee Engagement.” Since then, companies have seen a swelling flood of disengagement in workplaces. A Gallup study published in early 2022 has revealed this:
“For the first year in more than a decade, the percentage of engaged workers in the U.S. declined in 2021. Just over one-third of employees (34%) were engaged, and 16% were actively disengaged in their work and workplace, based on a random sample of 57,022 full- and part-time employees throughout the year.”
Disengagement presents a serious threat to a company’s bottom line, to a company’s culture, and to society at large.
Why is disengagement on the rise? Several contributing factors can be cited. The 2022 Gallup study noted the impact of physical isolation due to Covid; but also pointed out that companies with strong corporate cultures have remained vibrant. As Jacob Morgan reported in his 2017 article in Harvard Business Review, companies that invest in employee experience outperform those that don’t. Perhaps more now than ever, what’s needed is a focus on freeing employees to express their hearts, and listening to them.
Unfortunately, in many corporate cultures, even today, there’s a perceived or real “gag order” on faith-oriented discussion in the workplace. That constraint has the effect of fortifying perceived walls of separation. It prevents many employees from truly “showing up” at work. It discourages those who want to connect with one another on a deep level, and keeps them from building trust across faith traditions.
It’s high time that companies invite all their employees to openly apply their faith and beliefs to work. We should encourage them to share the values, traditions and motivations that define their core identity and inform and inspire the way they work.
The diversity movement has much to say on topics like full engagement and welcoming people across the spectrum. It’s about time the principles driving diversity and inclusion were embraced more broadly and applied to employees’ faith and belief in particular.
The good news is that faith and belief is being unleashed in more and more companies. (See the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation’s REDI Index). Where it is, we’ve seen warm, respectful, healing connection and mutual respect. These companies are weaving a fabric of culture that strengthens friendships, improves the bottom line and makes the world a more civil place.
Let’s free our people to be more engaged at work.
As the 2022 Winter Olympics are about to open in Beijing, the Pew Research Center has released key findings on U.S. and international views of China.
Among those, they find that the “level of government restrictions on religion in China have been classified as ‘very high’ every year since 2007, according to an annual Center study of such restrictions around the world. In 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, various sources estimated that more than a million people were arbitrarily detained by government authorities and subjected to human rights violations in the Xinjiang region.”
If you’d like to better understand the methodology and findings of Pew’s global studies on religious restrictions, please check out the TEDx Talk by Brian Grim from 2013 in Vatican City when he lead the initiative at Pew. Those data are part of what led him to found the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation (RFBF) in 2014, seeing that business can be a powerful force supporting interfaith understanding, religious freedom and peace, as was summarized in a co-publication released by the UN Global Compact and RFBF that same year.
Dare to Overcome’s overarching objective is to build allyship among diverse communities in the workplace and marketplace worldwide. Why? It’s good for businesses, economies and societies!
DTO 2022 will be May 23-25, 2022, in Washington, DC, where the 2022 Global Business & Interfaith Peace Award will be given along with recognition of the 2021 Global Business & Interfaith Peace Award winners who could not gather in 2021 due to covid.
2021 Gold medalists included Pat Gelsinger, CEO Intel Corporation, and Sandra Rivera, EVP of Intel.
See their acceptance speeches.
American Airlines is the global partner and official airline of Dare to Overcome (DTO), with the shared mission of caring for people along life’s journey. Many other top corporations have been involved, including Google, Intel, Salesforce, Walmart, American Express, EY, Hyundai Group, Accenture, SAP, and CVS Health. In addition to American Airlines, other corporate partners through the years include Ford, Tyson Foods, Dell, Texas Instruments, PayPal, Equinix, and Kathy Ireland Worldwide.
DTO’s mission is to shine a light on business successes in promoting mutual respect and allyship among diverse communities. Awards are given each year to CEOs and companies building peace through interfaith and intercultural understanding in their workplaces and communities.
DTO 2023 will be in India, held in tandem with the G20 Meeting, which India will host.
India’s rich cultural and religious diversity is a tremendous business asset to the country, making it an ideal location not only for DTO 2023!
For example, see below how India’s Cobra Legal represents just the tip of the iceberg of the depth of India’s companies’ commitment to building bridges of trust and community in workplaces across the country!
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