Values, gifts, and legacy: The keys to high performance and high fulfillment

Journal for Quality and Participation, The, Spring 2001 by Klein, Eric

THEY WERE LIVING THE DREAM: A BREAKTHROUGH technology. A stock with wings, rising into the ethers. And yet when I talked with people about their work, again and again they said, "Something is missing." That's why my colleagues and I had been invited into find out what that "something" was and how to incorporate it into people's experience of work again.

As I talked to these employees I was reminded of many hundreds of conversations that John Izzo and I held while preparing our book, Awakening the Corporate Soul. We found a crisis and a longing permeating workplaces. Organizations are asking more of people, and people are asking more of their lives. These two needs-for greater engagement from the corporate side and for greater wholeness from the personal side-are complementary. But when the natural marriage of these two needs is unacknowledged, the something-is-missing syndrome strikes.

Once there was a great king whose most precious possession was a crest jewel that he wore at the center of his forehead, tucked in the folds of his turban. This crest jewel was his treasure. One day while hunting with his guardsmen, the king knelt beside a lake to refresh himself with the cool waters. As he reached down, the crest jewel dislodged, fell into the lake, and disappeared below the surface.

The recovery of personal meaning and purpose always requires an investigation that goes below the surface. This points our attention to the inner life of work. Exploration of the inner life is by definition spiritual. Thus, for organizations wanting greater commitment this means opening up the business conversation to include dimensions of soul and spirit that have been traditionally left at the office door. But the spiritual dimension can never be amputated from work. It can be ignored, but never removed.

The king stood up in a panic, shouting jfr his guardsmen. "Recover the jewel!" he cried. The head guardsman jumped in and started digging. The water became murky. The king's anxiety rose as one by one he commanded his guards, some on foot and others on horseback, into the lake. Churning from the flurry of activity, the darkening waters of the lake heaved. Running back and forth on the shore the king screamed, "Find the jewel! Find the jewel!"

There is an inherent contradiction in declaring the soul off-limits while asking people to give more of their energy and intelligence to work. The soul is the very source of commitment and creativity. The soul, as I am using the term, and as it applies usefully at work, is not a "thing" (not even a metaphysical thing). Soul is the way our deepest capacities manifest in us, through us, and as us. Initiatives that seek to increase engagement without acknowledging the soul echo the attempts of the king; they just intensify the very dilemma they are attempting to resolve.

Let's be clear: While there is something enticing and compelling about incorporating the spiritual dimension into our work, there is also something terrifying. It is not only "the organization" that keeps out the soul. We also hold it back. There is a kind of security in waiting for the organization to become "enlightened" before embodying our deeper potential. It can feel risky to bring more of who we are into work. But it is more risky to suffer the loss of soul, the evaporation of meaning, passion, and purpose at work.

At the height of his anxiety, the king was approached by a wise man who said, "I can help you recover the jewel."

"Good," replied the king. `Jump in the lake and start digging."

"That won't help," answered the wise man.

Sounds like Dilbert, doesn't it? The king tried to put the wise man to work to do something useful, measurable, and manageable. There is a part of us that may doubt the practical impact of focusing on spirituality. In fact, spirituality is eminently practical-- it works (see Mitroff & Denton, A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America, Jossey-Bass, 1999). But never under-- estimate our capacity to turn powerful principles and practices into programs that serve the status quo. Any approach to bringing soul into the workplace must include methods for both noticing when we, like the king's men, are "in the lake," and for getting us out.

If you have participated in a meeting where people talked at or over each other but called it dialogue, told others they were empowered but expected them to follow your lead, or listened to a presentation and wanted to share a truly divergent point of view but held your tongue, then you've been in the lake.

It is possible to get out of the lake and reconnect with the source of our personal passion and purpose. In my work, I have found that focusing on values, gifts, and legacy (VGL) provides individuals and teams a way of renewing their work from a creative, soulful stance. Through a series of structured exercises, individuals and teams: 1) examine the differences between core values and inherited values; 2) look at how to express their gifts in the work at hand; and 3) define what it means to keep their eye on both the business purpose and higher purpose (legacy) of their work.