NIBIC NEWS – National Institute of Business & Industrial Chaplains – December 2014
2015 is at our doorstep, so I am using the last hours of 2014 to wish each NIBIC member a blessed and fulfilling ministry in 2015, and adventures to share.
Washington, D.C. Gatherings coming up: The annual pastoral care leadership meetings are getting ready to open at the Mark Center Hilton in Alexandria, VA, so I am extending an invitation to any NIBIC member in range of D.C. to join our delegation for the COMISS Network conference, Sunday and Monday, January 11-12.
The theme this year is “Flourishing in the Midst of Caring”. Matt Bloom, Ph.D., will be giving four presentations: Overview of the Science of Well-being, Identity as a Foundation for Enduring Well-being, Understanding the Power Impact of Relationships on Well-being, and Building Daily Well-being Through Restorative Practices. I will bring back to the NIBIC membership all the materials that come out of these sessions for our continued reflection and discussion.
I will be staying for the two following meetings, NCMAF for military chaplain endorsers and ECVAC for VA chaplain endorsers. I currently sit on the board of ECVAC, and we are planning a lively session on challenges facing our VA chaplains in the midst of the on-going care-provision problems at the VA and also opportunities to broaden the impact of chaplaincy on separated and retired military families.
A Resource for NIBIC Members: Business Management Daily is an online newsletter that provides a fine variety of workplace resources. It is from Capitol Information Group out of Falls Church, VA. Email is postoffice@businessmanagementdaily.com. My copy came today with an interesting article entitled, “Human Resource: Avoid ‘talented terrors’: Hire for Attitude”, referencing Mark Murphy’s new book, Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting Star Performers with both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude.”
The article quotes Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, who held that, “if you don’t have a good attitude, we don’t want you, no matter how skilled you are. We can change skill level through training, we can’t change attitude”. “Nearly half of new hires (46%) fail within 18 months of being hired,” according to research from the book. “It is not a lack of technical skills (only 11% fail for that reason). Instead, 89% fail for attitudinal reasons – emotional intelligence, coachability, motivation and temperament: ‘talented terrors’, people who perform the job tasks exceedingly well but are hell on roller skates to be around.” Murphy advises hiring managers to identify the core values that are important to their organization and ask candidates questions that extract those values. Technical competence is relatively straight-forward to ascertain; the best interview questions are behavior-based inquiries that focus on HOW the person will perform those tasks.
I think this is a key area where our presence within workplaces is most valuable. First, differing from Herb Kelleher in one aspect: chaplains can engender hope and movement towards transformation and growth in employees, to effect turn-arounds. We also can be essential agents to help company managers articulate and examine their company core values and focus them on those that lead to the spiritual/business high-ground. We can then help them to design interview questions that identify candidates with congruent passion about their work and how they do it.
This process is an important part of my own workplace ministry. For my client companies, I work with groups of hiring managers to help them surface and prioritize what they consider their core values for the company. I then help them to design a set of values-based interview questions to delve deep into what makes potential employees tick and also provide for expectations – to help them model how they can bring along newer and younger workers. As a New Year’s gift to you, I am attaching an example of what I use with several of my own companies for which I serve as a chaplain. These questions can be not only used to help with the hiring process but also in manager retreats, lunch-and-learns, team building, planning for organizational change and leadership training. Try it and share your thoughts with the rest of us NIBIC members.
Short news Notes from around NIBIC:
Alan Harris, from Kansas City, is working on a program for the Center for Spirit at Work called “Spiritlink” to help link individuals, businesses, churches and communities in collaborative meaningful work. For updates from Alan, he can be contacted at alan@worklifesoul.com, www.worklifesoul.com.
Arthur Johnson , from Brooklyn, NY, is part of the New York State Chaplain Task Force, with ministerial title of Chaplain and is a Department of Transportation Certified Substance Abuse Professional and A NAADAC Certified Recovery Coach. Email is arthurj1j@verizon.net.
Juliette Jones, from Warm Mineral Springs, FL, serves as a Chaplain for Palliative Medical Associates of Florida. Her chaplain service in other areas has expanded into what she calls eco-sacredness, to help people experience “the holy” in the natural world and to recognize their relationship as human beings to all creation. She is also part of an effort to restore Warm Mineral Springs by enforcing of environmental laws. Contact her for more information: jewelbox2@verizon.net. http://springseternalproject.org.
Elvervice “Sonny” Davis, from Memphis, TN, reports that he has been called out of “retirement” again as Interim Executive of the United Methodist neighborhood Centers of Memphis, TN. Sonny is also a Clinically Certified Criminal Justice Specialist and Doctoral Addictions Counselor with the National Association of Forensic Counselors. In addition to his ministry, he loves gardening, traveling and golf. Sonny has offered NIBIC hospitality to hold a conference in Memphis. Chaplaindavis07@gmail.com.
News from the NIBIC Board:
The following have been serving on the NIBIC board: Diana Dale, Greg Edwards, Juliette Jones, Mark Applewhite, Alison Alpert, Joseph Borsh and Art Jacobson. We have had email roundtables this fall around several items, including upgrading our website, changes with the Journal of Pastoral Care Publications (JPCP), and getting our NIBIC members more involved with one another and NIBIC.
Alison took the lead for us in experimenting with new options for our website. To date, Greg has managed it using the E-Zekiel software, which for most of us is hard to administer and make changes. Alison offered a new sample design from Freehostia. We have also suggested WordPress, which WorKlife Institute uses. A need we have is to provide a members-only page for our Directory and access to the Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling. We also want to make it blog-like, to facilitate member sharing and also ability to post helpful ministry aids. This work is on-going and looking for expertise.
Our NIBIC representative to the board of the JPCP, Dave Plummer, tells us that the sponsoring member organizations are now down to three, with the departure of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education: The National Association of Jewish Chaplains, NIBIC, and the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. Originally all member pastoral care groups of COMISS were members and NIBIC was a charter member. Over the years, groups have dropped out due to having their own publications or lack of member interest. Our assessment for 2014 is $1,540 and for 2015 will be $1,432, a flat rate for organizations under 100 members. In 2015, we will have to determine whether this is a valued service for our members, so we need feedback from you – do you read it, and is it helpful to you?
The board has divided up the NIBIC directory and each of us is taking a group of members to personally contact and encourage their active involvement and good ideas. Please respond positively. I am attaching another copy of our current Excel-based Directory to use if you are not already accessing the one on our web page. The 2015 Directory Update and Dues form is also attached. Those of you who have not yet paid for 2014, please do so when you submit your current dues so that we can retire our 2014 obligation to the JPCP and get off to a vital start to 2015.
When you send in your update page, please seriously consider having a NIBIC gathering later in 2015 and helping to plan that, also volunteering for the board, the website update committee, news notes editor or other service.
Wishing you a great start to 2015.
Chaplain Diana Dale, D.Min., Ph.D., LMFT
Executive Director, NIBIC
dianadale@worklifeinstitute.com
713-266-2456 (office); 281-685-3576 (mobile)