Peacemaking: a Key to Christian Company Culture

For many, the workplace is a very stressful place to spend most of their waking hours.  Even non-believers can quickly perceive the difference between a healthy work environment and one that wears them down and puts them ‘on edge.'  Experiencing dysfunctional workplaces and hopelessly frustrating jobs has become so cliché that popular TV series and movies center on this theme.  Bible-believing Christians know that there is a terrible eternal cost to ‘marinating' in an environment where conflict, tension, and distrust predominate.  We can easily carry home our sense of frustration, anger, or resignation. As followers of Christ, we know that we're to live differently.  As Christian business owners and CEOs, we're called to be Christ's stewards and ambassadors by providing a workplace culture that helps to shape healthy habits in our team, shares Christ's ‘living water,' and actually gives them a small taste of the Kingdom.  This is among the most effective ways to soften others to the gospel message.

The fact is that when our people suffer, our companies suffer. Teamwork, well-directed energy, and can-do planning and execution are all sapped by distractions related to broken relationships, distrust, and apparently ‘irreconcilable differences' in the workplace.  And when God's companies suffer in this way, His witness to a hurting world is hampered by cynical employees who quickly roll their eyes at the latest ‘top priority' or company ‘initiative.'  According to contemporary workplace research*:

• 53% of workers report losing work time while worrying about conflict.
• 22% said they put less effort into work because of conflict.
• 66% of absenteeism ( typically 1 of every 40 days) is due to personal/family problems (not illness)
• An even bigger issue is those on-the-job but effectively ‘absent' in terms of poor performance (focus/quality/productivity)! For example, lean consultants routinely report 33-50% improvements in productivity and 10-fold reductions in quality problems during three-year engagements with committed clients across all industries, and federal government managers estimate that 42% of government tax money is wasted.
• 87% of employees say they'll work harder for a company that's willing to help them with their personal problems.

A common theme among companies who successfully ‘re-enlist' their workforce is that they give them hope and ‘ownership' in what's going on by equipping them to succeed and to continually improve how they perform in an environment where shared plans, priorities, values, and methods are clearly communicated so that voluntary ‘alignment,' teamwork, and continuous improvement can actually flourish. Yet even in such well-led working environments, aggravating exceptions and ‘noise' associated with imperfect humans working in a fallen world will frequently intrude!  So, what else can be done?

Our Peace in the Storm

Some leaders are unshakeable in their mission, focus, values, and optimism.  The set-backs that so easily derail others are seen merely as issues to be considered, evaluated, prayed over, and successfully dispatched along a never-ending journey.  These are the folks who seem, like Paul during the shipwreck episode off the coast of Malta (Acts 27-28), to be supremely unflappable in the midst of the storm.  Still smiling, yet unwavering in what they know to be true, they bring an air of can-do perseverance to the workplace that can be infectious.   If only such leaders could replicate this resilience and confidence in their staff, their companies would be juggernauts of unmatched growth and performance.  What's going on here, and how can we extend or leverage it across an entire enterprise?  

We see it with orphans and foster children who are later adopted into a safe and supportive, high-functioning family. When people feel safe, secure, and loved - especially in ‘high expectation' environments - they tend to flourish.  In his fine commentary on Mark's Gospel, King's Cross (Dutton, 2011), Tim Keller said, "As a child blossoms under the authority of a wise and good parent, as a team flourishes under the direction of a skillful, brilliant coach, so when you come under the healing of the royal hands, under the kingship of Jesus, everything in your life will begin to heal."     more