Is There Room for the Soul at Work? - spirituality in the workplace - Interview

Workforce, Feb, 2001 by Bob Rosner

Martin Rutte is a speaker and a leader in the emerging management field of spirituality at work. He is the president of Livelihood, a management consulting firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Rutte was the keynote speaker at the first International Conference on Spirituality in Business, held in Mazatlan, Mexico. He has spoken on this topic in Brazil, Canada, and South Africa. Rutte also is co-author of the New York Times business best-seller Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work.

Workforce: So, get up on your soapbox and tell us how you'd define spirituality.

Rutte: I normally refuse to answer that question at the beginning of a conversation because I've found that people are trying to see if my definition of spirituality, if my answer, fits with theirs. If it does fit with theirs, then they'll be getting more of the same. If my definition doesn't fit with theirs, then they'll shut me out. In both cases, I don't feel they've engaged or deepened their own appreciation of spirituality, they've just reacted to mine. To get around this, I've found it best to think of spirituality not as a definition/answer but rather as a question. It's really an ongoing life question, an inquiry. As business people, we are always engaged in inquiries. For example, a typical business inquiry is "How do I make my business more successful?" No matter what answer we get to that question, we continue to ask the same question over and over and over again. Because by doing this, we deepen and broaden our appreciation, our insight, and our clarity of the arena. If we think of spirituality in the same way, as an ongoing inquiry, we can experience what benefits lie within this arena at work. When you and your work colleagues ask such questions as "What is spirituality in the workplace?" or "How do I have a more fulfilling spiritual experience at work?," I believe you have a significantly deeper sense of the spiritual. Such questions in your organization could lead to a conversation about ethics, integrity, how to better feed people's spirits, the state of relationships between people, and so on.

WF: A crass question: does the soul mailer? Isn't the workplace just there to fill our pocketbooks?

Rutte: In the Soviet Union, where the spirit was shut down for some 70 years, an explosion of spirit did occur when communism fell. I think in the same way in Corporate America today the spirit has been ground down and assaulted. It's come to a point now where employees are no longer willing to have that occur. They don't want to leave their souls at the door when they go to work. What people want is to have their basic survival needs met. But they want more than simply this. They want a place where their spirit soars, where their soul is nourished. And they want a place where they can contribute to the aliveness of their colleagues, customers, and clients.

WF: Can you talk more about spirituality and religion?

Rutte: Some people access their spirituality through their religion. Others meet their spiritual needs through alternative exploration. Sometimes they see each other as being in different camps. The "spiritual" people think religion is dogmatic, old-fashioned, more concerned with arcane rituals. The religionists see the spiritualists as crystal lovers, as flaky. What they both don't see is that they're both after and from the same place--the divine. Many of us disconnect from religion because of childhood memories: "Religion did this and it shouldn't have," or "Religion didn't do this and it should have." Go and be complete with your own religion. Do what you need to do to heal your separation. Be complete with it in a way that enlivens and enriches you and it. And religions have to open their doors and their hearts to different needs and voices. What good is it if you have a religious building but your pews are empty? I remember a Presbyterian minister who had taken a business marketing course. What he disco vered in the course is that he had two kinds of clients attending his church. One was the regular Sunday observer: sermon, prayer, song, collection. The other was the seeker. The seeker came with questions, with doubts, with deep concerns. The seekers did not want the traditional service. They wanted deep, authentic dialogue. And so the minister created two different forms of Sunday service. He truly bridged the spiritual/religion gap.

WF: Many in HR are concerned about potential legal liability that could come from allowing religion into their businesses. What would you say to address this concern?

Rutte: There is a difference here between religion and spirituality. In the legal sense, an imposition of religion is something to worry about. However, we are speaking here of "allowing" a discussion on spiritual issues. This is more about exploration than imposition. I do not agree with imposing a religious point of view, but at the same time we don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. I believe you can have an exploration, a deepening of the spiritual experience at work without having people become upset with someone trying to shove a particular point of view down their throat. Nobody likes having points of view imposed, whether it's about religion or any other topic.