Honoring the Worker.

Since Labor Day is a day that it set aside to honor working people, it seemed like a few quotations from Robert Greenleaf regarding work might be an appropriate way to close out the day. The following quotes are from the chapter titled “Servant Leadership in Business” from Greenleaf’s book Servant Leadership – A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness.

The new business ethic: “The work exists for the person as much as the person exists for the work. Put another way, the business exists as much to provide meaningful work to the person as it exists to provide a product or service to the customer.” (p. 155)

“The next step may be to acknowledge that every person is entitled to work that is meaningful in individual terms, and that is the obligation of employers, in toto, to provide it. Whereas ‘a living’ can be dispensed via money through a relief agency, ‘meaningful work’ is likely to be delivered only within an employing institution that is living by a new ethic.” (p. 159)

“I believe that you need to assume that work, all work, exists as much for the enrichment of the life of the worker as it does for the service of the one who pays for it. This does not mean that work will not be hard, demanding, and sometimes frustrating. It is just that the workers’ life goals (quite apart from the money they earn) will be served by doing the work, and that is at least half the reason the work is there to be done.” (p. 168)

These seem to be worthwhile words to think about as we start the new workweek.