Helping People Flourish at Work

The Gallup organization uses a less theological term; it talks about "employee engagement." And they've been studying that since 2000, and they find that about two-thirds of the American workforce is involved in work that is not engaging. That is it doesn't pull out the best of who they are. And we would talk about that, in many cases, as “soul-crushing” work.

So, how do Christians in the workplace, particularly those who are in places of responsibility, keep that from happening? If you're a boss, if you're a supervisor, if you're a manager, if you have any authority at your workplace over anybody, today's podcast is specifically designed for you, because you actually have an opportunity to influence and touch the souls of the people who work for you.

And I can't think of anybody who's better qualified to talk with us about that today than my friend – and a long-time friend of the Hendricks Center, Steve Ramseur. Steve is a senior executive in the real estate industry.

And, Steve, as I understand it, you have roughly – what? – 4,000 people that you're ultimately responsible for?

And I can – I'll never forget my dad calling us on a Friday; it's an August day in San Antonio, beautiful, balmy, 106 degrees. And he calls us back out to the apartment complex to show us that we missed a couple of spots and pick up the trash and whatnot. So, that's where I started in the real estate business is – was really in the family business.

And then went and earned a bachelor's degree in urban planning, construction management, and a master's in real estate from Texas A&M University and started off as an appraiser up in Seattle, and then transitioned really into a broader role within real estate where now I'm the divisional president of a Fortune 500 company.

Think about it this way, if a somebody comes to work, and their experience of work is that they, first of all, may not be in a job that fits them, and so they're not doing well, and they don't see how their work contributes to anything larger – you know, any bigger picture, and furthermore, their co-workers are nasty people, and they don't get along with them, and then they feel like their boss isn't really for them and is a mean individual, and they're not getting paid all that much – I mean they're gonna take all that negativity home, and it's gonna influence how they relate to their wife, how they parent their kids. You know, they kick the dog, et cetera.

On the other hand, if somebody comes to work and they feel like, "Wow, this job that I have, you know, it's not the perfect job, but I really can see how I'm contributing to something that matters. There's a mission here that I believe in.

"And yeah, I have conflicts with my co-workers, but they get processed civilly, and we kinda work them out, and we're getting somewhere. And I feel like my boss really is on my team, and he's trying to help me succeed. And, you know, I'm not getting rich, but I feel like I'm getting paid fairly for the kind of effort that I'm putting out here." They take that home as well, and it changes everything.

I think about one of my mentors, whom you know, whom I won't name, but one of my mentors who says, "If you get the right people in the right jobs working together, miracles happen." And we intentionally work at that within my company as we focus on do we have the right people; are they in the right job; and how can we facilitate them working together so that not only they can flourish and thrive within the workplace, but that then spills over into the community and for our clients.

The second is the what and the how, "What am I supposed to be doing, and how do I do it?" Where I find the deficiency, that third ring in the Venn diagram there is the why and the wherefore. What's the mission? What's the message? What's our purpose? And that's how I think about work. And human flourishing takes place in that Venn diagram where those three circles come together. That's where – where, what, with whom, and why we work – that's really where people flourish.

It's an interesting time in the economy. So, we have to compete for that talent. And in order to compete with that talent – for that talent, we have to make sure that we have a sustainable, engaging culture, that we have a workplace that is healthy, and we focus on that. That's a big, big part – when I'm sitting in meetings with other divisional presidents of our company or the CEOs, that's what we're focused on. It's how do we create that environment where our people can flourish.

And what you're saying is that body matters. It matters to God. It needs to matter to the employer and even the physical space in which we put people.

The second is around the "what" and the "how," and that's gonna deal with your tools, your team, and your technology. We have to give people the right tools, training, put them with the right team and the technology for them to feel like they're productive. I think, if you think about human experience, it's really about engagement, which you talked about earlier. It's about empowerment, "Do I feel empowered to make an impact?" And then third, it's about fulfillment. Those are really the three legs of the stool of human experience, and we focus on that in the "what" and the "how."

But you work with many people who have very different worldviews than you have.

And, obviously, I'm a Christian, and I bring those Biblical principles into my workplace, and I look at them through the lens of love.

Now, in our culture, we don't really think much about shepherds, and what we do think, we kinda get out of the 17th-18th century, you know, sort of pastoral imagery and so forth. But what he points out is that shepherds have a very tough life because they basically live to take care of those sheep, because the sheep are the economic lifeblood of everything. And if you lose a sheep, I mean you've lost an asset. And that's why you will give your life for a sheep. You know, he lays down his life for the sheep.

But leadership is a core competence for us. We have three primary values which is teamwork, ethics, and excellence, and then leadership as a core competence. The last meeting I was at with our CEOs and regional presidents, we focused on servant leadership as a core competence for our team.

I'm going through the reviews of my direct reports this week, and yesterday I finished a review. After the review, I said, "Now remember, at the end of the day I work for you."

A name that may be familiar to some of our listeners is Ray Stedman. Ray Stedman was a pastor out in Palo Alto who founded Peninsula Bible Church, and he was a very good friend of my father's, Howard Hendricks.

And I have a recording of Ray Stedman, here at Dallas Seminary, from back in 1984, and he was speaking out of Ephesians 4 on the gifts that are listed there. And he got to the pastor gift – the pastor-teacher gift. And he was making the point that that gift is actually distributed far more widely in the Body of Christ than we realize.

It's – you know, we typically think of pastors as, "Oh, those are the paid professionals. These are the 'clergy' as we call them." And clearly we need people with those gifts in those professions.

But his point was, "And then there's a whole bunch of other pastors out there that are in different professions." And he said, "If you think about it, you can see why God would do it that way. Because in this world, so many people have pastoral needs. They come to work, and they've got a sick relative, or they've got a troubled child, or they're despondent in their soul. And right there in the workplace, you know, yes, we've got to get the work done, but you're dealing with people."

And as Henry Ford said, "When you hire a hand, the rest of the body comes with them." And his point was people show up with all of who they are to the workplace.

And you've got stories in abundance of situations where you've actually, quite apart from the work itself which has to be done, is important, is critical. The work matters. But then there's these souls; there's these human beings that you're right alongside, and you've actually been able to, in a sense, pastor some of them. Tell us about that.

And I look at the partnership of the team that we have, where I attend church here in San Antonio, and they're kind of like the training and coaching staff. Right? The home team comes in; they do concussion protocols; they maybe tape a wrist; they put an elbow in some ice; they encourage them, and they send them back out on the field. That's the partnership with what should be taking place from Friday to Sunday, Sunday to Monday.

When people are fulfilled in their work, when they have the tools that they need, they're in the right team and the right position, that fulfillment is going to result in increased productivity, higher satisfaction, all of those metrics will follow. But you can't start with those metrics; you've got to start with the person.

And in addition to that, when you employ someone, we don't just employ individuals; in a sense, we employ families, because when somebody shows up to the workplace, all of the ties they have to their family, whatever it is, even if they're single, they bring all that to work don't they?

If I were to go home and tell Angie, we're leaving this company, she would – she would not let me do it because she loves the people that I work with. She knows the spouses of the people that I work with, and she cares deeply for them.

And I realize that our culture is unique, and I wish it wasn't, but I was up with visiting my daughter at Baylor last week, and her roommate had interned with us in the Houston office last summer. She went on and on and on and on about our culture and about the impact that culture makes on her, how she can't wait to start with us when she graduates in May. It's a gravitational pull for people into our organization.

I had a conversation with a gentleman that I work with here before you and I were having this meeting about work we're doing in the community for people with intellectual disabilities. And it's that kind of thing where it's a holistic view of life, that giving and serving goes out from us into the community, that giving and serving comes from the community back in to us, and life has this holistic, satisfying, aura about it.

And I don't want to paint a picture of perfection here, because we live in a fallen world. But at the same time, I think that culture provides that shepherding atmosphere, if you will, for companies.

And I can imagine they hear all this, and they're like, "Well, this is great if you are up where you can – you're a mover and a shaker, and you can cause all these wonderful things to happen, but I'm just a working stiff. What difference does this make for me? How would I ever cause anything to flourish?" What would you say to that person?

And then if you build – if you go from the top down, it's difficult. If you build from the bottom up, it's much easier to do. And I'll tell you a story. One of the ladies who cleans the building here, she's a remarkable woman. Every time I see her, she says, "May the Lord bless you."

But I was talking to her in our break room – she comes in and gets coffee or those types of things in our break room, and it was around Christmas time, and I said, "Hope you're going to enjoy your time at Christmas."

And she looked at me, and she said, "Jesus is coming soon."

I said, "Yes, He is."

And every day, she's a witness everywhere she goes with a smile and a radiance for the Lord. And I think that that's probably the essence of how that is – it is the transformational nature of the gospel.

It's both a responsibility, but it's an opportunity to bring Christ's likeness into the workplace, again without quoting any verses. It's about as practical as you can get when you – the word you used earlier is to bring "love" into a work context. Right?

The image there is that this Shepherd has taken great pains, in an arid climate, to find food, to find protection, to find water, 'cause he wants that sheep to thrive. And whoever the people are around us, we have an opportunity to cause them to thrive by the way we interact with them and what we do in our work with them.

You know, the greatest in the kingdom is the one who serves the most. And I think that bringing that kingdom ethic, as you said earlier, into the workplace is going – is transformational.

And so, in coming into the Hendricks Center, I now work with a team. And I've discovered that that independence has some dark sides to it where I make decisions, or I say things, or I do things, or I don't inform people – or whatever it is – 'cause I'm not thinking in terms of team.

Talk to me about – what does a leader do when you realize, "Hey, man, I've really blown it here; I'm embarrassed; I dropped the ball; I've offended somebody; I've hurt somebody; I've caused a problem I didn't intend to cause"? What do I do?

And I haven't always handled it perfectly, but I have made a significant number of mistakes. I tell people that in the last two years, I've probably made more mistakes than any other point in my 30-year career because I took on a big technology project the last couple of years, which is a very different animal from commercial real estate, where I feel like I'm an expert. And that really exposed a lot of weaknesses, blind spots, et cetera in me, where I had to, as an independent leader, lean on a team who have expertise in an area that I don't.

I flew back and thought, "Okay, we're – kind of business has been set. We have a true North; we're flying in formation, and this is great. Within 30 days, there was noise within the team. And I flew back up to Chicago, called the team together, took out a yellow pad, sat in the middle of the room, and I said, "Okay, let's identify what the problem is." And for about 20 minutes I just listened. I filled in two pages on a yellow pad, and I realized there was a common denominator for the problem; it was me.

And from then on, the calls that I had with those different leaders I took to-do items from from those calls. I didn't give them to-do items; they gave me to-do items. My job was – you know, I'm a big sport of curling, the guys who are brushing ahead of the ball there, that was my job was to brush ahead of them, to make them efficient and help them do their jobs – do their jobs better. But as a 32-year veteran and divisional president of a Fortune 500 company, to sit there and hear that wasn't easy.

And in a way, that's what you were in there. It's like, "Look, you gotta make these guys succeed because in their success lies your success." But it puts you in that servant role, if you will, that the first shall be last. "And I'm here to, in a sense, give my life, as it were, my time, the best of my energies. I'm here for your benefit, your prosperity. If you do well with the gifts that God's given you, then things are gonna go well. And if not, nothing's gonna – nothing good's gonna happen."

But the labor of love is a labor because I want to put myself first. I want to get the credit. That's what I want, and I have to put that aside for the benefit of the team, and I have to pass that credit to the lowest person on the team. I have to give the accolades to the team as a whole, and that's a labor. That's hard; that's difficult to do.

But nurturing the souls of the people that we work with, in order that we can achieve our corporate objectives. But beyond that, something greater, that we can impact the communities in which we live and work.

And, you know, the world on its own is not very fruitful; it just gives us raw resources, and only human beings can add value to those resources that cause the world and its people to flourish.

And I just – I think about how many thousands – hundreds of thousands of Christians there are out there in the work world today, and they have, many of them, significant opportunities for influence because they're in networks and webs of relationships that they affect the lives of other people.

Yes, they're doing the work itself, which is critical. That work affects the lives of other people and ought to be done to the glory of God. In doing that work and in relating to their co-workers, they really have an opportunity to cause the world and its people to flourish. And that's really the vision that we're trying to start to create here.

So, my thinking is – this goes back to the steadfastness of hope. The story opens with flourishing and in a relationship with God and others. The story ends in flourishing relationship with God and others. We should pull those together into the here and now –

We have the opportunity to walk with God in our work every single day. Every day we walk with God in this garden, His creation, in relationship with Him and in relationship with those that He's put around us.

You said, "Bill, you know, I've been thinking maybe I needed to quit my job and go get a degree and end up, you know, pastoring a church or something."

And I just want to recommend to all of our listeners to the podcast today that this is what the Hendricks Center really is about. We're trying to create more Steve Ramseurs, if I could put it that way.

So, Steve, thank you very much for being with us today.