A Spiritual Philosophy of Working Life

  In his book, The Reinvention of Work, Matthew Fox has explored the work of organizational psychologist Richard McKnight, who has articulated a spiritual vision of work. Fox notes qualities that McKnight deems as the qualities of a spiritual person which businesses could help nurture and cultivate, including "Creativity, enthusiasm about life, acceptance of self and others, lives lived gracefully, being perpetual students of life, giving more than taking, optimism, peacefulness" (p.237-238). While reading this passage in the park today, I wondered, how might these qualities play out in an organization under management? I will try to articulate these points as I understand them in the paragraphs below.

  1. Creativity. Creativity is hard to define, much less condition. I am not a huge fan of trying to "mandate" creativity and originality through performance appraisals, as I feel that creativity is a rather elusive quality to define, much less predict or understand. The best that managers can do is to foster the optimal conditions in which creativity can occur. A few of these optimal conditions might include dialogue; uncensored communications between team members where all ideas receive equal care and support; giving workers time to reflect on changes they would like to see, by creating realistic targets; trust that leaders will be responsive to ideas; collaboration between team members in a free-flowing exchange of ideas. What's common among these qualities is the ability for workers to actively collaborate as well as a sense of open-ness and exchange. Ideas are seen to be collective energy that flows openly with other energies, rather than being confined to one "individual" body and mind. Effort can be seen in terms of open collaborative spirit, rather than the lone wolf who is doing everything her or himself through personal ingenuity.

2. Enthusiasm about life. I think this is related to not thinking of work as a source of fear and drudgery, rather but positioning working life as part of one's inner flourishing. In order to do this, workers need to feel both empowered to set personal goals within the context of working life, as well as confident that their ideas can have long-term repercussions. This creates a feeling of excitement and ultimate engagement with work: knowing that one's ideas are being heard, channeled and recognized. Also, one needs to see a parallel between their inner movement/growth and the organization's growth. If this does not happen, one will feel that their personal development lies separate from the world of work, which in turn leads to compartmentalization of spiritual life and efforts.

3. Acceptance of self and others. Through unconditional self- and other- acceptance, one can adopt a holistic view of self and others as part of an interconnected fabric, field or spectrum. In a meeting, I don't see my ideas as "pitted against" others. Instead, I experience both self and other as continually evolving new ideas while breaking down barriers that might create a hardened sense of the separate self as over and against the world "outside" the self. It's very important to break out of dualistic concepts of "mine" and "yours", to see that workers are on the same path of working toward the same goals, even though they are diverse and different individuals.

4. Lives lived gracefully. Although this point is not clearly spelled out in Fox's book, I think living gracefully means being able to make meaning of all experiences at work, whether they be deemed as "successes" or "failures". How people respond to failure or mistakes is often the result of previous conditioning. Instead of interpreting failures catastrophically or as an all-or-nothing scenario, one might re-envision failure as a process of taking stock of what went well or what went poorly, then seeing it as a learning process that can be improved over time. Taking the "middle path" of not interpreting success and failure as absolutes, could be one way of gracefully integrating failures into one's career path instead of ignoring or trying to cover over these life events.

5. Being perpetual students of life. I think this is a very big point, and for me it means treating work as a means for growth and learning, rather than only as a means for personal profit and gain. Learning never finishes, and workers have to keep coming up with new ways to do things better--or have the willingness to experiment. Big ideas often start with small questions, and that also dovetails with point #1 about creativity.

6. Giving more than taking. It seems counterintuitive to treat working life as "giving" more than "taking", especially when the goal of work is seen to be making profits in exchange for payment. However, if a person is engaged in work, they are more likely to feel generous. This is a natural outpouring which comes from a sense of genuine belonging in the company.

7. Optimism. This means the ability to look on the bright side, to accept and embrace the inherent goodness in all situations, and to trust the inherently good intentions of fellow colleagues. This also can lead to the self-fulfilling prophecy of bringing out the good in people by trusting in their inherent goodness and sincerity.

8. Peacefulness. I am a strong believer in seeing work as part of the cultivation of a sound and peaceful mind. When we are given challenges at work, we can use these challenges to create turbulent, dramatic situations or, conversely, to learn the art of equanimity in all situations.  Work life is the laboratory through which individuals can experiment with how they can achieve inner balance and peace in all situations. 

These 8 points are worth thinking about in terms of adopting and cultivating a spiritual philosophy of work. In subsequent blog entries, I hope to explore more concrete examples in detail.