Sunday Meets Monday - Instead of leaving their values at the door, a growing number of key business leaders are bringing ethical standards and principled practices back into the boardroom and beyond.

by Amy Gage  |  Illustrations by Carl Wiens

Faith and values have had a hard time finding their way through the front door of many U.S. companies—until recently. Though the news is still routinely filled with stories of unethical business practices and unseemly corporate capers, a growing number of businesspeople, many in key leadership roles, are working for change. Acting on their belief that values can play a critical role in corporate culture, these leaders are changing the face of business.

One such leader is Bruce Nicholson. Known to many as chairman, president and chief executive officer of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Nicholson, a lifelong Lutheran, began his career in the mid-1960s as a college student working a summer job at what was then Lutheran Brotherhood. “I was baptized Lutheran, confirmed Lutheran,” he recalls. “I went to a Lutheran college, I married a Lutheran in a Lutheran church.”

But it wasn’t until he turned 30 that Nicholson really began making the connection between the values he had learned in a churchgoing family and the work he did to earn a living. Since then, he has developed daily habits that allow prayer and faith to guide his path—as a family man, a community servant and a business leader. And now he is working to help others in business and elsewhere do the same.

“People of faith often have this notion of vocation: ‘What am I called to do in this world?’” says Nicholson, who founded an annual series of business leader forums at Thrivent Financial to explore how personal values influence behaviors at work. While some people may think this vocation he speaks of needs to be separate from our day-to-day working lives, Nicholson believes, ideally, it should be seamlessly interwoven whenever possible.

“It’s the Sunday/Monday question: How do people of faith start to bridge that gap between Sunday morning worship and Monday morning, when you show up at work?”

Forum participants, including the likes of Best Buy chief executive Brad Anderson and retired Toro Co. chief executive Ken Melrose, have shared rich examples of how they have worked to weave this sense of vocation into their working world and bring principles and a sense of ethics to their companies and business practices.

Many of the insights shared by experts and these leaders are good reminders of ways our values and faith can be reinforced in both work and home environments.

Model What Matters
Nicholson isn’t alone in seeing a greater interest among Americans in work-life integration, whether it’s balancing office demands with family time, making their own health a priority so they can be strong for others or giving back to the communities in which they live and work.

“There’s a renewed interest in people wanting to bring wholeness and a sense of balance to their entire lives,” says Kurt Senske, chief executive officer of Lutheran Social Services in Austin, Texas, and author of two books, Executive Values: A Christian Approach to Organizational Leadership and Personal Values: God’s Game Plan for Life. “It’s about not compartmentalizing work and faith and home, but trying to live a congruent lifestyle.”

For Senske, also vice chairman of the Thrivent Financial board of directors, that means leaving the office by 5:30 p.m. on the days when he isn’t traveling. He incorporates exercise and healthful eating into his daily life, and maintains a faith practice that keeps him centered and grateful for God’s gifts.

“As a leader, I’m responsible for emulating that balanced lifestyle,” says Senske, who has been married to his wife, Laurie, for 16 years and has a 12-year-old daughter, Sydney. “I’m a big believer in looking at life not as a marathon but as a series of sprints followed with periods of rest and rejuvenation,” he explains. “That enhances your capacity to grow in all areas of your life.”

Be Accountable to Others
“Everybody has value in the organization,” says Ken Melrose, retired chairman and chief executive of Toro Co. “The leader has the responsibility to create the right environment that empowers people and builds trust.”

During one of three Thrivent Financial forums, Melrose outlined how he rebuilt the cultural foundation of Toro by articulating key principles and values.

He boldly discarded the business adage that the customer always comes first—as well as the more contemporary practice of running businesses solely to maximize shareholder value. “The most important stakeholder is not the shareholder but the employee,” Melrose explained to the audience. “Treat them well, and they in turn will focus on the second most important stakeholder, the customer. Over time, that drives increasing profits.”

He also instituted a practice that asked employees to rate their managers on “people values,” meaning how well their supervisors listened to and empowered their employees. Initially, the managers were upset, Melrose acknowledges, “but it really changed their behavior.”

Bring Your Faith and Values to Work
In the last decade, insider-trading scandals at companies like WorldCom and Enron have made the term “business ethics” seem an oxymoron to some Americans.

Nicholson hopes to help shift that mindset by engaging his business peers, his employees and his fellow Lutherans in faith-based conversations. “There is a hunger among people in general—in the workplace and in the world—around the whole topic of spirituality,” he says. “I’m interested in how organized religion plays into that discussion.”

As a faith-based organization, Thrivent Financial has the freedom to have on-site chapels at its offices in Minneapolis and Appleton, Wisconsin, as well as an online weekly workplace devotional. Those who work in a secular corporation, however, can have an equally strong sense of vocation, says Nicholson, by being grounded in and conscious of their calling.

For Mary Brainerd, president and chief executive officer of HealthPartners and one of the upcoming forum speakers, it’s easy to find meaning in her work. “I personally feel so strongly that we each have gifts that we bring to the world, and there are many paths to use those gifts,” she explains.

One of Brainerd’s favorite books, Leadership Is an Art, by Max Depree, cites three characteristics to which she tries to adhere: integrity, the ability to build and nurture relationships and a focus on creating community, both within the organization and in the larger world.

Personal Attention Pays Off
Recently retired Cargill chairman and CEO Warren Staley, who spoke at a Thrivent Financial forum, fostered a sense of community and camaraderie at Cargill by sending employees handwritten notes, attending workplace functions or having coffee with someone facing a hardship at home.

“What you say is important, but it’s what you do that matters. People will always remember how you made them feel,” Staley explains. “My job was to engage the mind and heart of every employee at Cargill.”

Recognizing achievements is vital to an organization’s success, he believes, so Staley always has looked for ways to thank people individually and as part of a team. He didn’t shy away from constructive criticism so long as the emphasis remained on the positive. “We talked about things that didn’t work, but did so in the context of lessons learned,” Staley says.

Evolve Into a Servant Leader
When Fortune magazine named Best Buy one of its “most admired” companies in April 2006, Brad Anderson, the chief executive, was on the cover. He didn’t like that. “I want to be known as the servant of the employees,” he says. “Too much credit winds up going to the leader. I’m riding on the backs of all the people who helped us accomplish this.”

Likewise, Cargill’s Staley kept a list in his desk drawer that described the characteristics of a leader. It included dictates such as these: Invite dissent. Encourage risk-taking. Listen and show respect.

And this, of course: Help people find meaning in their work. “Even the person in the lowliest or most monotonous job has the ability to impact his fellow workers or a customer,” says Senske, whose books have inspired a secondary career as a business coach. “I don’t buy into the idea that people have meaningless jobs, and I don’t think Martin Luther would say that, either.”

Ultimately, the strengthening of values in the workplace needs to begin with each individual, one good deed at a time, regardless of whether the leaders in your company, or even other employees, share similar values or intentions. Sometimes it’s the smallest thing—a kind word, an offer to help, a compassionate ear—that can turn the company tide and inspire others to take action in their workplace, congregation or community.

Amy Gage is a writer in Northfield, Minnesota, and a former newspaper columnist on work-life issues.

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Ethics at Work

Through its Business Leaders Forum, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is helping business executives examine how their faith and values can enhance the jobs they do each day.

To learn more about this year’s series, featuring guest speakers Bill George, Mary Brainerd and Steve Sanger, visit www.thrivent.com/businessleadersforum.