Workplace Archives - Bob on Books

Working from the Inside Out, Jeff Haanen. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, (Forthcoming December 12) 2023.

Summary: In a disintegrating world, outlines how five dimensions of inner transfornation can, in turn, transform our outer world of work and our life in society.

It is hard to read a book in recent year that doesn’t speak to personal struggles with despair, the divisions of our public lives, and the fragmentation and disintegration so many of us feel. Work often feels that way. We are urged to “bring our best selves” to our work. But how is that even possible? Jeff Haanan, who founded the Denver Institute for Faith and Work believes that a faith that transforms us from the inside out offers hope for the reintegration of our work life and life in society.

He believes transformation is grounded in five principles:

Seek deep spiritual health: Haanan invites us to become self-aware, to understand the desires that motivate us, and to cultivate consistently the spiritual practices that nourish our delight in God.
Think theologically: He treats theology as the story that frames our lives and appeals for a commitment to taking time to think well and clearly, no matter what job we are in.
Embrace relationships: Healthy relationships involve the ability to differentiate while staying connected. We can grow relationally through feedback like 360 reviews. In our Zoom age, Haanan stresses the importance of face to face meetings and paying attention to each other.
Create good work: Good work recognizes that we long to create as those in the image of the Creator, stewards gifts well, including workplace conflict, and practices sabbath, setting limits on our work.
Serve others sacrificially: Reconciling all things including redemption with God, our lives, our relationships, our systems and structures, and our created world.

Haanan devotes a chapter of the book to each principle, illustrating each with workplace stories.

The final chapters develop how this plays out in work and life. Haanan explores how change happens and how the various factors of suffering, community, feedback, and our spiritual disciplines all work together. He tackles the subject of translating faith into the workplace, and how the life of love weaves through and requires the five principles.

One of the things I like the most of the book is the sidebars on professional versus working class perspective. So often, this is lacking in faith-at-work discussions. For example, early in the book he contrasts the workplace identity that is so important in the professional class with the communal identity focusing on family among working class, who view a focus on workplace identity as narcissism. He also draws on the work of Tracy Matthews who founded Attune with its focus on both self-understanding and spiritually attuned workteams. Having gone through Attune training this spring with Matthews, I would affirm the value of this work in pursuing shared spiritual health in teams. Even good teams can get better.

The subtitle of this book, “a brief guide to inner work that transforms our outer world” is so accurate in summarizing this book. Haanan offers a brief and memorable rubric that business leaders can use in their personal contexts. The numerous stories show the connection of inner and outer in practice and how the life that integrates faith and one’s daily work is possible, even in our fragmented, divisive world.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

How to Have Difficult Conversations About Race, Kwame Christian. Dallas: BenBella Books, 2022.

Summary: Makes the case for the importance and unavoidability of workplace conversations about race, how we may overcome our fears, and offers a framework of practical skills in engaging these conversations.

Kwame Christian is the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Trained as a lawyer, he works as a mediator in legal negotiations and teaches negotiation skills. He’s also a Black man who actually avoided race conversations because they were so emotionally taxing, until his wife confronted him with the inconsistency of telling people they needed to have difficult conversations in negotiations but avoiding difficult conversations about race. When he first presented these ideas, he took a different approach. He told people that he was not going to tell them how to think about race but was going to show them how to talk about race. Those first presentations eventually led to this book.

The book is organized around three straightforward parts: the problem, the solution, and taking action. In the first part he addresses our resistance to and need for having difficult conversations about race. He proposes that we do so because we care about our colleagues and our relationships with colleagues, we care about fairness, and we care about progress in our organization. One of Christian’s key observations is that progress only happens when people are persuaded to implement changes. For this, a winning mindset is critical, in which people are convinced that difficult conversations can lead to progress and not trauma. It means accepting that if one party thinks race is at issue in the conversation, then it is. It means a willingness to make mistakes. He offers help in identifying our underlying fears that lead to negative thought patterns that undercut our efforts. He also discusses the psychological barriers of implicit, attribution, and confirmation bias and other barriers and antidotes, often the key aspect of which is awareness and ways we can flip the script.

Christian then turns to solution. It begins with a focus on strategy, clarity on how we hope to move a conversation toward our goal that includes what we do, say, and how we say it. He argues that negotiation is never about compromising core values or accepting mistreatment. We start with building trust. He differentiates between level one and level two communication. Level one is about understanding to strengthen the relationship. Level two is about persuasion to change behaviors and beliefs, which can only happen on a foundation of level one. The goal is a collaborative rather than combative conversation. He talks about how to begin by outlining situation plus impact plus invitation., focusing on one person at a time and one topic and calling in rather than calling out. Then he comes to the essential part of having effective conversations which is to mobilize compassionate curiosity which focuses on acknowledging and validating emotions, getting curious with compassion about our feelings and why these bother us, and then using joint problem solving to care for each other. He addresses the mistakes we can make and how to avoid them–for example speaking different languages (e.g. what we mean by “privilege”).

The final part of the book focuses on how we take action to advocate for positive change. One of the most sensible observations here is that the perfect is unrealistic and that we should focus on better. He then concludes with the role of difficult conversations in equity discussions. This involves collaborating rather than competing and how we become and recruit good allies. An appendix applies the principles of the book to practical workplace scenarios.

There is so much to appreciate about this book. It is realistic, focusing on the necessity of difficult conversations. Avoiding them often leads to worse outcomes. It is positive, focusing on collaborative problem solving rather than blame or shame. It is focused on identifying barriers to progress rather than trying to change how the world feels about race. It values relationships and what we may learn from one another with its key practice of compassionate curiosity. The book is filled with examples that most in the workplace can identify with. Finally, it offers both the grace to make mistakes and learn, and the hope that difficult conversations can lead to change and deeper understanding–that these conversations are an opportunity. This is a resource that ought to be on the shelf or desk of any workplace leader–within easy access until the “playbook” becomes ingrained.