Your role at the workplace is greater than your job description

“Bringing Your Soul to Work”
by Cheryl Peppers & Alan Briskin
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2000


I have this artist friend who has a job as executive vice president of a construction-related firm. From nine a.m. to six p.m., he is the perfect engineer who wants every process executed with precision and who makes sure every work component works along a predetermined system.

After six, he rushes home (not to catch the early evening news) to lose himself in his studio. He picks up brush and palette -- and picks up, too -- one other unfinished business: an oil painting on canvas.

I asked him once how he could apply himself with such intensity at work and with equal, if not more, passion at his art studio. His answer was unexpected: “I work here,” he said, pointing to a busy mix of men and machines through his glass window, “so that I can finance my art.”

Another friend gets out of the plush offices of a computer company during lunch breaks -- camera in tow – to photograph the “remaining human elements” (his words) in the concrete jungle – a close-up of a vein-lined leaf, a long shot of a green patch in Makati, or the innocent smile of a streetkid perched on a pushcart. Why does he do it? His reply was as absolutely honest as it was mildly shocking: “By being back to what I most love to do, away from the hustle and bustle of work, I keep my sanity.”

Has the present-day workplace somehow succeeded in sundering soul from body? Has work been deprived of meaning? Has high purpose become incompatible with big business?

A book offers an answer -- and a way of “Bringing Your Soul to Work” which, incidentally, is the book’s title, authored by Cheryl Peppers and Alan Briskin. The book asks: “How do we go beyond simply balancing work and personal life to an approach to living – that has integrity and beauty?”

However, while waiting for the initiatives of corporate organizations toward this end, executives and professionals need to find ways to avoid a workaday chore that seems to tell us to bring your mind and body to work – but leave your soul behind!

The authors first discuss the “inner wilderness of the soul.” The wilderness conjures up a mix of fear and excitement – apprehension over the unknown and thrill over the adventure it offers. This is exactly what the authors want us to feel about our soul at work.

True to their calling as scholars, they make sure “soul” has been properly defined – using several points of view: Greek, Latin, Hindu, Hebrew and some indigenous traditions. The Greeks look at soul as “psyche,” the Romans as “anima,” and the Hebrews as “breath of life.” The authors add that the “Hebrew creation story implies the coming together of divinity and humanity, spirit and body.”

A Ph.D. in professional psychology, Ms. Peppers switches from theology to psychology, saying: “Each of us brings to work a multiplicity of selves.” Explaining contrasting personalities within us, particularly the good and the bad side, she suggests “managing the tension” to bring out the best out of such turbulence.

The authors advise readers to take time reading the book and going through such exercises as keeping a journal – especially as they bring the readers to journey back into their past fears, and travel on into their earnest hopes and fondest dreams for themselves. The book also abounds with stories of conflicts resolved to the fulfillment of the soul at work.

This theme keeps recurring in the book: Be true to yourself at work. Link role with soul. From being lyrical, the authors become practical: They offer six ways to deal with “what pulls us out of our role” – naming them as: criticism, fear, transitions, competing roles, fatigue and loss of purpose.

The book is a well-written piece, rich with psychological, theological and philosophical anchors. Perhaps, that’s what the authors are, in fact, saying: all these truths agree that the soul must be greater than its job description – and must, therefore, find ways to express that “greatness” at the workplace. Unfortunately, the authors say, some people are led to “rejecting a greatness for which they do not wish to be responsible.”

This book insists that you take an inward journey into yourself, and it’s hard to disagree. But, when the book ventures into relegating the battle between good and evil to simply “managing the tension” between positive and negative sides in a two-sided nature, it’s hard to agree. After all, good and evil are irreconcilable forces, and dealing with such mutually exclusive antagonist forces is much more crucial than dealing with quarrelsome sisters inside yourself.

On the whole, however, the book can be quite liberating (if only it liberates itself from subjects that are better left to theologians), especially with these stirring lines from Nelson Mandela, the legendary South African leader: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”

The soul at work is powerful beyond measure. This book at least begins the effort to tap such power and, because of that, the book is worthy of one’s precious time – when everyone else is asleep and your soul is suitably stirred.