Purpose, Mission, and Vocation: The Foundation of a Catholic University Workplace Community

By Gary Miller, Director, HR Process Transformation and Integration, DePaul University

“Purpose is that sense that we are part of something bigger than ourselves, that we are needed, that we have something better ahead to work for. Purpose is what creates true happiness. “To keep our society moving forward, we have a generational challenge — to not only create new jobs but create a renewed sense of purpose.” — Excerpts from Mark Zuckerberg’s HarvardCommencement Speech, 2017

Zuckerberg’s comments convey the recently heightened awareness of many American business leaders: Purpose matters. In fact, John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, in their book Conscious Capitalism, which launched the growing movement by the same name in 2014, argues that having a higher purpose energizes companies, aligns the interest of all stakeholders, and helps companies discover how to best serve. The authors note that many CEOs have discovered that purpose matters, even citing Jeff Bezos, who advises leaders to “choose a mission that is bigger than the company.”1

Despite this increasing awareness of the importance of purpose, Gallup’s research has found that “though leaders are skilled at creating value through process improvements, they have much to learn about creating value by aligning the mission and purpose of their company with business strategies, culture, brand, and performance measures.” Without this alignment, employees are less likely to personally connect to the mission. The end result: a strong mission statement, efficient processes, but many staff who are indifferent to the long-term success of their employer and uninterested in going the extra mile to make a difference.

Building a Connection Culture

The key to meaningful and purposeful work, then, is not merely a strong and inspiring mission, but also a consciously developed culture in which people connect with that mission and with one another. This connection culture,2 at one time a given at Catholic colleges and universities can no longer be taken for granted. While there was a time when a high percentage of faculty and staff were priests and religious brothers and sisters conveying a strong sense of mission by their very presence, this is no longer the case. Today, especially in urban settings, many courses are taught by adjuncts who may teach at multiple universities, secular and Catholic. For many of the staff, their university employment may be one in a long string of jobs.

Given this, the creation of a workplace environment and campus community where staff and faculty are inspired by the mission must be part of a conscious effort. While many strategies may be pursued to improve engagement with the mission and increase camaraderie among faculty, staff, and students, purposely building a connection culture may be the most important, being consistent with a workplace identity of community,3 as well as key social teachings of the Church. Additionally, such an emphasis is fundamentally Catholic.

From Calling to Community

For centuries, the Church has recognized the importance of persons discerning their higher calling and committing to it. Traditionally, the faithful were instructed to discern a vocation, especially to consecrated life, the priesthood, or marriage — to find one’s role in the community through which to serve God, others, and the common good and to grow in holiness. Yet the idea of vocation is much broader. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the laity as having a special vocation of engaging in temporal affairs and directing them to God’s will.

In Laborem Exercens, St. John Paul II described work as a vocation in which we not only serve but also achieve fulfillment: “Work is a good thing for man — good for his humanity — because through work man not only transforms nature, adapting it to his own needs, but he also achieves fulfillment as a human being and indeed, in a sense, becomes ‘more a human being.”4

Building on the idea of work as a vocation, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, in The Vocation of the Business Leader, discusses the nature of vocation for those who work in business: “Businesspeople have been given great resources and the Lord asks them to do great things. This is your vocation. In this century alone, many businesses have already brought forth marvelous innovations which have cured disease, brought people closer together through technology, and created prosperity in countless ways.”5

The Vocation of the Business Leader provides a particularly useful insight about vocation. It notes that a higher calling isn’t necessarily something that’s discovered, so much as a recognition of how one might effectively serve in the role she or he currently holds and the importance of that service to the greater good. As with business, those who work in Catholic colleges and universities have a higher calling — to serve the mission and through this service, contribute to the good of individuals, families, and society. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, John Coleman argues, “In achieving a professional purpose, most of us have to focus as much on making our work meaningful as in taking meaning from it. Put differently, the purpose is the thing you build, not a thing you find.” Mother Teresa put it more succinctly: “Wherever God has put you, that is your vocation.”

A connection culture involves ensuring that every faculty and staff member not only understands the mission, but also is empowered to make important contributions to it. Such a workplace culture would be characterized by managers as coaches who listen and recognize each person’s contributions and provides the tools and training so that people can do their work effectively. Additionally a connection culture emphasizes strong peer mentoring relationships among faculty and staff with an emphasis on helping each member of the community find and use their strengths in their daily work, as well as help grow their strengths through development opportunities and career advancement.6 Such a workplace culture across the the university would facilitate an authentically Catholic college community identity that delivers that experience to its stakeholders, including students and their families.

In his Harvard commencement speech, Zuckerberg shared a story about John F. Kennedy’s visit to the NASA Space Center. Seeing a man carrying a broom, Kennedy “walked over and asked what he was doing. The janitor responded: ‘Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.’” Being a great place to work means more than just having an important organizational purpose. It also means being a place where employees understand their role with regard to the mission and are empowered to use and develop their strengths to make real and meaningful contributions.

Endnotes
1 Mackey, J., & Sisodia, R. Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2014). For the authors’ discussion on the role of purpose, see pp. 41– 67. See p. 42 for Bezos’s comments.
2 The term “connection culture” is borrowed from Prinitha Govender who used it to describe Costco’s workplace culture. Costco has not only gotten the first part of the equation right with a clear and meaningful mission statement, but has also created an environment in which employees are valued, are engaged, and feel connected to their co-workers and to the mission. This strong employee connection reflects the priorities of co-founder James Sinegal, who knew the importance of treating employees like family. This culture has resulted in Costco beating out Google in 2017 as the “best place in America to work.” 
3 In past columns, Craig Mousin and I have suggested that “community” is one of those attributes of Catholic higher education that is core to its identity. It resonates with our students and their families; as such, attributes of it should be consciously woven into the fabric of our workplace cultures. In recent columns, we’ve explored how respect and collegiality among faculty, staff, and students are important in building a healthy workplace, spilling over to the entire university community. We have suggested that raising the workplace awareness of the issues that face our students, such as DACA, is yet another aspect of building a healthy workplace and campus community. In the summer 2017 issue of Update, Mariella Palacios discussed how human resources can help a university contribute to the broader community through inclusive recruitment outreach to all, especially the underserved, in seeking qualified applicants.
 4 St. John Paul II (1981). On human work: Encyclical Laborem exercens. See Part II, Work and Man, Section 9. 
5 The Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP). The document grew out of a seminar sponsored by the John A. Ryan Institute at the University of St. Thomas (MN) and the PCJP, held in February 2011, called “The Logic of Gift and the Meaning of Business.” See the first paragraph. 
6 Many of the ideas in this paragraph are derived from (1) Gallup employee engagement research (summary of the research); and (2) Google management effectiveness research (summary of research)