Religion and Business

The topic of religion and business is one that interests me. First, so there is no misunderstanding, I think that the two are best not mixed - religion and business are very separate things. By combining the two, you run the risk of alienating your employees and your customers. Further, assuming your business isn't directly related to a religion, there is not direct cross over between the two.

At times, however, this can be taken too far. For example, always having Holiday or X-Mas parties instead of a Christmas party, etc. When planning my company's end of the year festivities, I still called it a Christmas party. To be fair, as the company is primarily located in a very homogeneous area, there, unfortunately, isn't much diversity so nearly everyone in the company celebrates Christmas, making this easier. I actually had employees tell me that they felt it was refreshing that we didn't try to hide or disguise it and actually called it a Christmas party.

But, I'm getting off topic - what I wanted to discuss is the application of religion in business. I'm very clear that I don't think the two should mix, yet, I also believe that my religion makes me a better business leader. The core fundamentals of nearly all religions teach traits such as honesty, compassion, trust, high morality, and other "higher level" type personality traits. These same traits are those of a strong leader. For someone to truly be able to lead an organization, a team, a project, etc., they have to have integrity and earn the respect of those they lead. The best way to earn this respect is to genuinely care about your teams and those you work with, conduct yourself truthfully, and to not look for ways to take advantage of nor cheat people.

Unfortunately, many business people don't seem to grasp this concept. Greed for the almighty dollar all to often overwhelms people so they lose site of these ideals. We see this regularly on the news, and I'm sure everyone has seen it where they work.

So, despite the separation of religion and business, if your looking for a good way to get centered as a leader, try going to church. So much of the ideals taught in the study of faith can be directly applied to your professional work life in how you choose to conduct yourself and present yourself to the world.