Biblical Principles of Hiring and Developing Employees

© The Author(s) 2018

Bruce E. WinstonBiblical Principles of Hiring and Developing EmployeesChristian Faith Perspectives in Leadership and Businesshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70527-9_1

1. The Virtues from the Beatitudes

Bruce E. Winston¹  

(1)

Regent University, Chesapeake, VA, USA

Bruce E. Winston

Email: brucwin@gmail.com

Introduction

This chapter presents the seven Beatitudes as virtues that organizations should seek in new employees and develop in all employees. Supervisors can use these seven virtues in employee evaluation and leadership development. Virtues, according to Aristotle (Hardie, 1964), are passions or action that lie at the mean between two vices—a balance between defect/neglect and excess. Hardie (1964) quoted Aristotle’s description of a virtue that helps depict what is meant to be at the mid-point between two vices:

Both fear and confidence and appetite and hunger and anger and pity, and in general, pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, and the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best and this is characteristic of virtue. (p. 187)

The value of selecting and hiring virtuous employees lies in both the alignment of the employees’ virtues with the virtues of the organizations and in hiring ethical employees. I define ethic as a behavior that is considered by the person to be more appropriate than any other behavior given the circumstances of the situation. Ethics can be clustered into codes of ethics which explain the profile of behaviors suitable for an organization; association membership, such as the American Medical Association uses; or for an industry, such as the military. My premise for this book is that an ethic and a code of ethics for an organization should be based on the seven Beatitudes and developed into a code of ethics for each organization.

In this chapter, I explain (a) each Beatitude, (b) the two vices that the Beatitude lies between, (c) examples of the Beatitude, (d) why the Beatitude is a worthwhile virtue for new employees, and (e) I will explain the scale developed by Kilroy, Bekker, Bocarnea, and Winston (2014) that can be used to measure the Beatitude in an employee.

I recognize that there is no consensus of why Jesus selected these specific seven Beatitudes. Domeris (1990) posited that the seven Beatitudes were formed as two clusters: the first cluster to those in the lower class (Beatitudes 1–4) and then the second cluster to the upper class (Beatitudes 5–7) as a means of contrasting to what the Pharisees of that day believed and taught, as well as Smith (1998) who contended that the first Beatitude could be paraphrased: Blessed are you even if you are not a person of powerful charismatic endowment meaning that the targeted audience are those that lack something. I differ from both of these authors in that I think the use of the terms have application to the time of Matthew’s writing and today’s contemporary organizations and all of the people in the organizations. While I believe that some people in contemporary organizations may need more development of specific Beatitudes more than other Beatitudes I think that the Beatitudes apply to all of us universally.

Blessed

Each Beatitude begins with ‘Blessed,’ the Greek word is ‘Makarios,’ that means to be blessed or happy. It carries with it a grand notion of timelessness in that it implies past, present, and future all at one time—no beginning and no end. Makarios carries with it a sense of personal knowing. One ‘knows’ when one is blessed. If I say that ‘you, who are reading this book, are blessed’—you know it is you to whom I speak.

The Blessings

Each of the Beatitudes provides a blessing to those who have, and live out, each virtue. The blessings alternate between God/Heaven-focused (Beatitudes 1, 3, 6, and 7) and Reciprocity of giving/receiving the virtuous behaviors (Beatitudes 2, 4, and 5). The God/Heaven-focused blessings escalate from gaining the Kingdom of Heaven to becoming children of God.

Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit

Definition

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God (NAS). The word we translate as spirit is pneuma and is used for many meanings, including arrogance. When one is poor in spirit one can be referred to as being humble and teachable. This condition of humility is similar to what Collins (2001) found in Level-5 leaders.

The Two Vices Between Which the Beatitude Resides

According to Winston and Tucker (2011), the virtue of poor in spirit lies between the two vices of being lowly and haughty.

Proverbs 29:23 admonishes us to understand that ‘‘a man’s pride shall bring him low: but honor shall uphold the humble in spirit’ (NAS). The Hebrew word for spirit is ruwach, and like the Greek, pneuma is used in multiple ways, to include emotions and actions, such as anger and courage, according to Strong’s Concordance (word #7307). Ruwach can also reflect haughtiness, as Winston and Tucker (2011) used in the vice. Having a humble spirit, as presented in Proverbs 29:23 can reflect the balance between lowly and haughty.

Lowly

According to Campbell and Lavallee (1993), low self-esteem can cause people to act in ways that are detrimental to their well-being. Pierce and Gardner (2004) examined self-esteem as an organizational construct that they found was related to employee motivation, job satisfaction, and organizational citizenship behaviors. Pierce and Gardner defined Organizational-Based Self-Esteem as. … the degree to which an individual believes him/herself to be capable, significant, and worthy as an organizational member (p. 593). Thus, a lowly person would not perceive to be capable of doing what should be done, which would lead to being of little value to the organization.

Haughtiness

Please note that this section comes from a conference paper I presented in 2010. The paper was not published, but I did present it, thus, I am formatting it as a long quote so as not to plagiarize my own work.

Haughtiness can include boasting about oneself. James 4:16 provided us with a negative point of boasting (‘Kauchaomai’) yet in 1:9 James said that the lowly man would be exalted, thus we have a contrast of boasting (‘Kauchaomai’) of self in 4:16 with others boasting about you in 1:9. Torres (2003) applies to this section in that Torres defined one side of pride as having an excessively high opinion of one’s self. LaMothe (2005) also defined pride as someone thinking too highly of him/herself.

An extreme level of haughtiness may result in hubris. Cheng (2007) defines hubris as dominance, aggression, and disagreeableness, arrogance, a sense of superiority, and conceit. Hayworth (2007) described hubris, not as dominance, as did Cheng, Tracy, and Henrich (2010), but rather Hayworth contends that hubris is a high level of confidence usually turning into overconfidence.

Mark 7:22 used the word ‘Huperephania’ to describe the pride of self that comes from within the person. Jesus presented to His audience the evils that defile a person. Thus it is not what is said about a person that results in pride but what the person believes about himself. This may be akin to ‘believing your own press.’ This also ties to self-evaluation and self-development.

Goleman, Boyatzis, and Mckee (2003) posit that hubris in leaders results in leaders creating dissonance with followers and removing any hope of pride or positive self-esteem that the followers may have in their work or toward the firm. This would contribute to the followers ‘sense-making’ (Weick, 1995) about the organization.

2Cor 12:20 shows Paul’s concern that he and the church may not see each other as each wishes to see and the result includes a list of things including ‘Phusiosis’ or puffing up the soul. This ‘Phusiosis’ is haughtiness in that the result is a deliberate effort by someone to think more highly than he should. This can be a reaction to others’ view not being as good as the person desires. (Winston, 2010, pp. 6–7)

Humility

Owens and Hekman (2012) point out that there is a lack of consensus as to what humility looks like in leaders’ behaviors. Owens and Hekman’s posited that humble leaders tend to view themselves (more objectively), others (more appreciatively), and new information or ideas (more openly) (p. 789). The third behavior has a connection with being teachable in that humble leaders and employees are willing to listen to others’ ideas and insights. The example about Pacific Power & Light Company (Marzano & Heflebower, 2011) shows this openness when describing a brainstorming session of how to remove ice from power lines during the winter. Someone in the group jokingly suggested using helicopters to place pots of honey on the support poles so that bears would climb the poles, thus causing the poles to shake and the ice would fall off. A secretary then recalled her time in Vietnam as an army nurse and recalled how the ground shook when the helicopters landed in the camp. She suggested that the firm fly helicopters over the powerlines and the vibrations of the rotors would knock the ice of the powerlines. The managers demonstrated openness in listening to the secretary’s idea.

Example

I have had the pleasure to meet some people who are poor in spirit . The first example was a man who was a senior executive in a large regional bank. He was well-educated, accomplished, and had received many promotions during his career. At the time, I was in my early 20s and was neither well-educated nor accomplished. My wife and I visited him and his family while we were on vacation and I found it interesting that he was a good conversationalist and was interested in hearing what I thought about things. Over the years as I interacted with him I saw that he was not just trying to be conversational, but that he was asking to learn and understand things better. A second example is an academic researcher who came to our campus as an invited speaker. The day after his presentation and interaction with our students I met him for breakfast. He commented that he had not met students who had an authentic interest in their professors and wanted to understand how we accomplished this. The professor was at the top of his field, and he was interested in learning.

Being poor in spirit requires that one truly believes that other people have knowledge and information to share, regardless of the education or status of the other person. The poor in spirit are active listeners, who convey a perception of care and love to the other person. David Augsburger is credited with the quote Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable (http://​www.​goodreads.​com/​quotes/​288161-being-heard-is-so-close-to-being-loved-that-for) that helps convey the importance of the virtue of being poor in spirit.

When I present seminars on the Beatitudes, I ask the attendees if anyone had worked with a manager who exemplified being poor in spirit . Very few people indicate that they had and of those who were willing to describe what it was like to work for that manager, the common element I heard aligned with Augsberger’s quote. When the culture of an organization resembles the virtue of being poor in spirit, the climate of the organization is one in which people felt loved and trusted, according to the seminar attendees. When the manager wants to hear what employees have to say, the employees feel the respect and go the extra mile to help.

As I used the Beatitudes in my consulting work, I noticed that the first Beatitude on poor in spirit was the most common problem I encountered. When the manager was not poor in spirit, things just seemed to always be problematic. When the manager is not humble and not teachable, it is difficult to see the real problems and to seek the real solutions.

The Scale to Measure the Beatitude

Kilroy et al. (2014) developed a scale to measure each of the seven virtues described in Matthew 5. We treated each virtue as a separate concept because we could not find an operationalized definition of ‘Beatitude’ as a concept and we did not see any evidence to imply that there was a single concept.

Kilroy et al. developed an item pool of 12 items that could be used to measure the virtue. The seven-item response method for the survey items was:

Not at all like him/her 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Exactly like him/her

A sample of 146 people completed a survey that evaluated their manager using the 12 items. Principle component analysis resulted in two factors, but the second factor consisted of only one item. Thus, we did not use that factor. The one factor explained 67% of the variance in the data and had a Cronbach’s Alpha above .90, which allows the optimization of the scale. We selected the five highest loading items and reran the analyses. The resultant scale explained 74% of the variance and had a Cronbach’s Alpha of .91.

As a validity check, we correlated each of the seven scales with a single scale that measured supervisor effectiveness. The poor in spirit scale had a strong correlation of r = .86, p-value < .01. Also, we correlated the seven scales with the Essential Servant Leadership Behaviors (ESLB) (Winston & Fields, 2015) and the Despotic Leadership scale (DL) (Hanges & Dickson, 2004). All seven virtue scales showed significant positive correlation with the ESLB and significant negative correlation with DL scale. The items and the factor loads from the Kilroy et al. study (p. 17) are listed in