Hey there, and welcome to The Mode/Switch, a publication that helps you—in the middle of your org—do more than cope when work’s a lot. Each Tuesday, you find a newsletter or an intergenerational podcast with insights for better organizational communication.
And since the everything in the world feels so peaceful and so stable right now, let’s bring up an easy topic this week: religion at work.
I know, I know. But here’s a convo to help you avoid missteps about the diverse faiths that give your people strength and meaning.
When you work with your people, you’re engaging the weave of all that gives them energy and purpose. You’re engaging their interwoven vocations.
I use that term, because I’ve been away attending a NetVUE seminar in Indianapolis focused on questions related to vocation.
It’s a tricky word. Sometimes it’s treated like a trade, as in “vocational training.” Other times, it’s reduced to a spiritual calling like being a nun. Sometimes, it’s just a job.
But vocation is most generously understood as a calling from beyond yourself.
It might be a theological concept (if the caller’s understood to be divine)…
…or it can be a humanist concept (if the calling’s from another source of meaning).
Either way, people’s vocations emerge in callings from all of life. As a partner. As a parent. As a friend. As a neighbor. As a supervisor. Your vocations give you meaning and strength to do what you feel called to do.
You know this for yourself. But it’s easy to forget that the same is true for your team.
Given how dicey everything feels at work, it’s easy to pretend your people can just do their job day in and day out without the resources of meaning and purpose.
(They really can’t, but—more on that later.)
I mention vocation because this week’s Mode/Switch Pod with sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund and entrepreneurship professor Denise Daniels proved to be profoundly vocational. Their research (15,000 surveys, 300 qualitative interviews!) makes clear that faith is a huge driver in the workplace.
Our intergenerational team—Josh (Millennial), Madeline (Gen Z), and I (slacker Gen X)—probe their findings, examining the startling power of religious faith to provide meaning beyond oneself.
Ecklund & Daniels’s new book Working for Better: A New Approach to Faith at Work and this week’s podcast helps you practice a respectful pluralism as you encounter religious difference in the workplace. Our intergenerational team (Gen Z, Millennial, and Gen X) probe these researchers’ arguments, engaging questions like…
Is religion at work a Trojan horse for proselytizing?
What is legitimate religious expression at work? What’s discriminatory?
Why are men more willing to talk about faith at work, even though women are more likely to find religious meaning in their work?
How can you create psychological safety for religious practitioners at work?
If you’re leading from the middle of organizations, your job is hard! It might feel easier just to say, “Our job’s complicated enough without bringing God into it. Let’s just leave the sacred stuff at home.” It’s a reasonable survival strategy.
But that avoidance forgets how vital a source of meaning at work faith can be.
If you’re a mid-level leader who studiously avoids mentioning the sacred at work, you might be trying to be non-discriminatory. Thank you for that! But I encourage you to listen to this brisk, funny, and definitely data-driven conversation to learn how it’s not actually religiously neutral to ignore people’s diverse faith commitments on the job.
Want to connect with Dr. Ecklund or Dr. Daniels? Check out their websites here and here. Also, check out their new book, drawing on original research in the largest study on religion at work to date!
Mode/Switch Tee-Shirt Giveaway
I write this newsletter because supervisors, managers, and directors are burning out faster than any other workplace demographic.
But they benefit when someone like you notices them!
I’m offering a free Mode/Switch tee‑shirt to you when you nominate ten managers who might benefit from the Mode/Switch newsletter/podcast.
You simply share their names and email addresses to craig.mattson@calvin.edu. (Include your P.O. address & shirt size, plz.)
I’ll send a brief, respectful invite, letting them know they were recommended.
No pressure. No public posting. No automatic subscriptions.
It’s a limited-time offer, of course. But it’s a way you and I can collaborate to support the vital middle of organizational life.
