Is Your Work a Job or a Calling?

Elizabeth Jeffries,CSP, CPAE http://www.tweedjeffries.com

It was a sunny, warm June day in New England and I had just finished speaking to a group of healthcare executives at a leadership conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Having a bonus of a few hours before my flight home, I decided to walk down the hill to enjoy the sights and sounds of this quaint Victorian village.

Scores of shops lined the old streets. I wandered past the bakery with its aroma of fresh baked bread, past an antique furniture store with history captured in old chairs and tables, and past a boutique where cherished linens had been preserved for generations.

My initial intent was to aimlessly wander the streets for a while. That is, until I came to a shop that seemed to call me inside. I opened the door of The Hour Glass and felt as though I were entering another era.

The small shop was completely vacant of human energy and the only sounds I heard were from a collection of old clocks, the most beautiful I had ever seen! There were grandfather clocks, grandmother clocks, mantel clocks, table clocks and even alarm clocks from ages past. Just as my enthusiasm was about to bubble over, I heard the tinkling of a bell and noticed the parting of the curtains in the corner. An elderly, rather frail gentleman in his 80s with slightly stooped shoulders and a shuffling gait slowly made his way toward me. He wore a pinstriped shirt with the sleeves rolled up, wide navy suspenders, and bifocals with a jeweler's loop off to the side. Mainly he wore a loving, gentle face with lots of life lines and a big warm smile! Assuming he was the clock repair person, I approached him with enthusiasm and a sense of respect for his work and said, "These are magnificent! You must repair these clocks, right?" Acknowledging my comment, he paused for a moment, stood just a little taller, smiled gently at my apparent naivete and softy but firmly said, "Oh no, my dear. I don't repair clocks. I restore history!"

I met Louis Cormier many years ago and yet I can still see his bright eyes and impish smile, recall the title on his business card, Clock Surgeon Since 1922, and hear his poignant words," I don't repair clocks. I restore history!"Although Louis Cormier didn't use the exact words, his work with clocks was his calling. How else could he devote nearly 70 years to a career and be as peaceful and centered as he was? How else could he see beyond the process of his work to repair clocks to the meaning of his work to restore history?

The Clock Surgeon, the Calling and Robert Greenleaf

In describing servant-leadership, Robert Greenleaf says that the servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. As I've pondered Greenleaf's work over the last 10 years, I've often wondered where this feeling that one wants to serve comes from. My conclusion is that it comes to us as a calling and often manifests itself in our work.

Greenleaf seemed to refer to this idea of calling when he said, "everything begins with the initiative of an individual. The forces for good and evil in the world are propelled by the thoughts, attitudes, and actions of individual beings. What happens to our values and therefore to the quality of our civilization in the future, will be shaped by the conceptions of individuals that are born of inspiration."

According to Webster's New World Dictionary, the word inspire means to breathe life into. It also means to cause, communicate or motivate as by divine influence. It's a powerful word that paints a picture of someone or something beyond ourselves infusing us with a purpose or a mission and calling us to action.

I love the word inspire. It has such a ring of hope to it! Greenleaf captured this in his 1984 commencement talk at Lverno College in Milwaukee when he said, "When I started to write on the servant-leader theme, I was trying to communicate a basis for hope with the intent that the combined influence (of teachers, students, trustees, churches, and administrators) might give a greater basis for hope than is now generally available to young people, and make for a better society."

When I think of calling, I can't help but think of Sister Mary Norbert, my second-grade teacher at Presentation School on the west side of Chicago. She constantly talked to us about our vocation, and of course she meant a religious vocation. She encouraged us to be open and listen to God to see if we had a vocation to serve as a sister. (I admit I considered it for a brief time in high school. I actually investigated the cloistered community, the Order of the Poor Clare's, and was quite serious about it until I understood what a cloistered order was. Since I now make my living speaking, you can see why that didn't work for me.)

Later I also found out that the word vocation comes from the Latin word voca which means to call. I now believe that we all have a vocation, that we are all called to a unique purpose and certainly some even to a religious vocation. I have a picture of that calling in my mind that looks like this.

Before our spirit enters our body, we're having this conversation with God about what we'll contribute when we come to earth in our human form. We discuss and discard many possibilities and finally hit on it. We're very excited (God, too, because God wants us to love our work), and we're bursting with enthusiasm and shouting, This is awesome! Send me, God. I'll go. I know I can do this! You can count on me! So we come to an agreement with God about our unique assignment, we promise to do a great job, and our spirit goes off to enter our tiny body. On the way, however, it seems we forget what we agreed to do, and so we spend the rest of our lives trying to remember what it was we told God we would do here on earth.

Why Are We Here, Anyway?

Today, more and more organization executives and boards are crafting or revisiting their mission statements. I hope it's more than management-by-best-seller and that they truly see that a clearly articulated, shared organizational mission statement gives people a reason to do their work with pride and integrity. And yet while all this crafting is going on, few bring in the idea of personal mission or talk about their own calling or that of their people.

When my partner and I work with organizations on their mission, we are compelled to discuss the next step, which is how to bring the organizational mission and the personal mission of the people who work there in alignment. I'm still surprised at how few managers and executives have consciously contemplated this at all, let alone have articulated their own personal reason for working or what drives them to do their specific job. Yet it is also a paradox that when we discuss the concept of calling, I see light bulbs go on and the door of awareness opening. Is intuition involved here? Do we know on some deep level exactly what it is we are called to do? I believe so. This also gives some credibility to the assignment from God concept mentioned previously.

Greenleaf himself states that he did not get his notion of the servant as leader from conscious logic. It came to him as an intuitive insight as he contemplated Leo in Hermann Hesse's novel, A Journey to the East.

Last year, I decided to be more bold in my discussion on calling, and I began asking my audiences, "How many of you feel the work you are doing is something that you are called to do?" I wasn't sure what to expect and I certainly didn't want to embarrass the people who hated their work or create a situation where people felt they had to say yes because their boss was in the room. But I truly believe that if we want to change the world, as Greenleaf says, "we must first know who we are and where we stand." I've now asked more than 50 different groups of people numbering from 25 to 2,500 and about 80 percent of the audience raise their hands that they do indeed feel some sort of calling to the work they are doing.

Perhaps I need to clarify here that, as a professional speaker and an author, I work primarily with healthcare organizations and that it makes sense that most of these managers would see their work this way. After all, healthcare is a service, an ennobling cause, considered a ministry to many, and a spiritual practice to some. The interesting response is the one I've gotten from business audiences. Recently I addressed a group of 80 managers from a large successful franchise management company on the servant-leadership ideas and personal calling. I asked them the same question and nearly everyone in the group responded that they, too, felt called to do their work.

Amazing, you say. Yes, with the ridicule piled on business leaders today, with CEOs routinely portrayed in movies and on television as crooked, greedy, and overpaid boors, even business magazines dare to raise the question. Is there no more to business than the bottom line? Well, apparently there is for some businesses.

In his book, Business as a Calling: Work and the Examined Life, Michael Novak says that not only is business a morally serious vocation, it is a morally noble one in that it creates social connections, lifts its participants out of poverty, and builds the foundations for democracy. So why shouldn't sales-people, manufacturing managers, and retail store clerks think of their work as a calling, too? It serves as a motivator and helps to initiate, focus, benchmark, and refine all our activities.

How Do I Know It's A Calling?

Here are some ways you can uncover or clarify your calling.

Listen and be attentive to your surroundings. One of Greenleaf's tenets of servant-leadership is listening. He says that a true, natural servant automatically responds to any problem by listening first. If you want to discover, clarify, or refine your calling, start by listening. This may entail finding quiet time, being still and getting out of the constant state of busyness most of us live in.

Since we're talking about being called, it stands to reason that someone is doing the calling. Therefore, we need to listen for and to the caller. Sounds like Sister Mary Norbert's advice again. God speaks to us in many ways and gives us directives, information, and guidance. It may be through other people, through prayer, through writing, through meditation, and through simply hearing the right thing at the right moment. In his talk at Alverno College, Greenleaf shared with the graduating class how he came to his decision of his life's work in business:

"I went to college with a clear vocational aim that I would become an astronomer, like a favorite uncle who encouraged me. I quickly concluded that, although I had the aptitude for science and mathematics that qualified, I did not have the temperament for an astronomer: I was not cut out for it."

Greenleaf goes on to say that he had a professor in his last term in college who spoke of the United States as a nation of large institutions that were not serving us well. The professor challenged the students to get inside those organizations and change things for the better. Greenleaf continues:

"My doors of perception must have been open a bit wider than usual that daybecause that message came through loud and clear. My career aim was settled. I would get inside the largest business that would hire me and stay there if I could."

Answering his call, Greenleaf chose AT&T for that very reason.

Get your ego out of the way. In his book, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Frederick Buechner says, "There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work. The challenge is to find which is the voice of God rather than society, ego or self interest. The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

Richard Bolles in How To Find Your Mission in Life says, "You will never know your career mission without having an understanding of your personal mission (calling). The two are inextricably linked." He says that our mission here on earth is one that we share with the rest of the human race; that is, to do what we can, moment by moment, day by day, to make the world a better place, following the guidance from within and the needs around us.

Bolles says there is also a mission that is uniquely your own, and no one else can have it, simply because they are not you! It is...

• To exercise the talent which you came here to use, your greatest gift which you most love to use...
• In the place or environment which most appeals to you...
• For the purposes that are most apparent in the world!

Richard Bolles believes that a personal calling is spiritual and that we can't deal with a career mission without understanding the spiritual aspects of it.

Stephen Covey says in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that until you can stand in front of others and talk about your mission in life, you can't hope to be an effective leader.

Be open to ideas all the time. Greenleaf cites five specific ideas he received from others up to and including the servant-leader idea from Hermann Hesse. He says, in retrospect, responding to each of these ideas when it was offered was the ticket of admission for receiving the next one. Our challenge is to be so consciously connected to our spiritual self that we can discern when something is right for us.

Four Power Points of a Calling

According to Michael Novak, a calling has four characteristics:

1. Each calling is unique to each individual. Not everyone wants to be a psychiatrist (as Dr. Scott Peck discovered when he was trying to persuade a young man to go into psychiatry who wanted to go into business). A calling causes a desire and oftentimes, a passion for doing something that you simply can't say no to.
2. A calling requires certain preconditions. One is talent. You may love opera, ballet, or running a big business, but a desire in itself does not make it a calling. For a calling to be right, it must fit our abilities. Another precondition, says Novak, is love. Not just of the final product, but as essayist Logan Pearsall Smith said, "love of the drudgery it involves." Along with desire and talent, will you put in the hours and have the commitment to be an Olympic class athlete? You have the desire and talent to write a book. Do you love the drudgery and discipline of writing, editing, rewriting enough to birth it?
3. A true calling reveals its presence by the enjoyment and sense of renewed energies its practice yields us. We are willing, without complaint, to shoulder the burdens of the calling because we know it is our duty, part of what we are meant to do, to go on. Enjoying what we do is not always enjoyment.
4. Callings are not usually easy to discover. Many false paths may be taken before the fulfilling path is uncovered. Experiments, painful setbacks, false hopes, discernment, prayer and much patience are often required before the light goes on.

But oh, when the light goes on! Some people know very early on what their life's work is. One is our computer consultant. A twentysomething young man with a cheery countenance and a passion for his work, Lee Pfieffer attacks each computer problem with a sense of excitement, confidence, and determination. One day as I was marveling at his expertise in solving a networking problem at our company, I commented to Lee that he seems to have found his calling. Without hesitation, he gave a full-bellied laugh and a resounding Yes! Questioning further, he told me he knew when he was five years old that he had an aptitude for fixing things. It seems he took apart his mothers hair dryer and returned it to perfect order! Lee has a desire, coupled with talent, loves what he does, and is willing to spend hours every week studying the changes in technology to be the best at his craft. Although he may not have had the language at his fingertips until I asked the question, Lee has uncovered and is living out his calling. He is a servant-leader at its best because as he functions from his calling, people follow him (in this case, they buy from him).

A Calling Is Not Always Comfortable

If we only did what felt comfortable, the work of the world would never be accomplished. I've been telling a story in my seminars for some time now because when I first heard it as an adult, it changed my life. Its message gave me the courage to listen to my own call and start my business, even when I had no idea how I was going to do it. It's at the core of what servant leadership and calling is all about. It's the story of Jonah, the biblical character who was swallowed by a big fish.

The story goes like this. Jonah was asked by God to go to Nineveh and preach. You can almost hear Jonah saying, Who me? You've got to be kidding. Who's going to listen to me? I don't really know what to say! Nineveh is so far away, and I already have so much to do. Thanks for asking, but I don't think I'm the person for the job. Might be a good idea if you asked someone else.

To make sure that he is not selected for this assignment, Jonah goes down to the pier and hops aboard the first passing ship and sails off, hoping that God will eventually choose someone else for the job. After setting sail, the ship heads into a big storm. Jonah takes it personally, sure that God is trying to punish him for not accepting the Nineveh post. Rather than have everyone on the ship incur God's wrath, Jonah jumps overboard.

Jonah is then swallowed by a big fish and for three days and three nights Jonah sits in silence in its belly. Jonah now has plenty of time to think about his life and all that's happened. It's cold, damp, smelly, and so dark inside the fish that Jonah can't even see his hand in front of his face. It's so lonely and Jonah just wants out. Pretty soon Nineveh doesn't sound so bad after all!

In time, God in His mercy has the fish cough Jonah out onto the shore. You can almost see Jonah dusting himself off, looking down the beach, and saying, Okay, God, which way is it to Nineveh?

When God Says Go

A few years ago I discovered that famed psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow coined the phrase the Jonah Complex to describe a documented psychological group of symptoms found in people who run away from their real calling in life. Jonah's story demonstrates, as Maslow concluded, that you can't run away from your calling. Maslow says, If you deliberately set out to be less than you are capable of, you will never truly be happy. The Jonah Complex, as Maslow describes it, is that tendency within each of us to try to run away from our greatness, to not accept the challenge we hear calling us from within. It's a refusal to face up to our capacities for tremendous achievement for changing the world. That's a pretty strong statement from Maslow, but Greenleaf was no less subtle when he answered his call and challenged all of us to build a better society as servant-leaders.

We've all had times when we were in the belly of the whale. No doubt some of you have an awareness of being in that uncomfortable spot right now. As Greenleaf observed, "Awareness is not a giver of solace, it is just the opposite. It is a disturber and an awakener. Able leaders are usually sharply awake and reasonably disturbed." I must admit I still find myself in the belly of the whale sometimes. It's not because I don't know my calling, it's because I get into my own ego and control needs. But the state of being disturbed now and then does keep me sharply awake.

Roadblocks to Hearing and Answering the Call

We don't hear and answer God's call for some fairly common reasons. Negative self talk, such as "I'm not worthy, I can't do this, I must not be hearing right, It must be someone else who should do this, Not me, Surely you jest!" is one reason. We have fears." I don't know how. I'll mess it up. I'm not smart enough." Laziness is another roadblock. Following our calling can be very hard work. We may think, I'm pretty comfortable. If I start this, then I have to give up some of my creature comforts.

Lack of faith is still another roadblock to hearing and answering our call. The Jonah story is really a story of faith. It's about stepping out and taking action without having all the answers. We get into the details of how on earth am I going to do this; not accepting in faith that we are never given an assignment without being given the tools somehow to carry it out. Whether it's Kennedy and the space program, Disney and a theme park, or Moses and the people of Egypt, God always shows us the way when we answer the call in faith. If we come from a place of service, surrender to our inevitable inadequacies, stay focused on the mission we were sent to do, and simply get our ego out of the way, we can change our world, or as author Peter Block says, the room we are in.

An Urgent Time to Hear the Call

In a world that seems upside down, where change is so rapid and continuous, where there is no job security for any of us, we need and are hungry for meaning in our lives and our work. The word work comes from the Greek, meaning to worship. No, it doesn't mean to worship our work. It is a means of worshiping God. It does mean that each of us has been given unique talents, skills, abilities, and gifts. We don't own them. We are called to uncover our gifts, develop them, and use them to serve others. The answer to how and where we serve is clear, if we but ask, listen, and take action in faith. That is what servant-leaders do.

Elizabeth Jeffries, CSP, CPAE works with organizations that want to put their mission into action and with people who want to get more meaning from their work. She is the author of The Heart of Leadership: How to Inspire, Encourage and Motivate People to Follow You, and an award winning speaker, Elizabeth can be reached in Louisville, KY at 1-800-254-5777 and on-line at Elizabeth@tweedjeffries.com or www.tweedjeffries.com.

© 1998 Elizabeth Jeffries

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