Pioneering at Work

“Endeavor is critical because it seems everything about people’s lives is celebrated except their faith.” ~Lis

Schiller

Elisabeth Schiller is the Associate Director of Trade Compliance at Saint-Gobain Corporation, one of the world’s largest building materials companies with 180,000 employees. She and fellow Endeavor pioneers spent time working through the answers to Why am I not talking about God at work?

“We went through all the words,” she says. “Fear, repercussions, job reviews. My goal was to deliver the Endeavor idea to my top executives so they would empower me to talk about God to fellow employees and awaken them.”

Now, as the corporate prayer team leader, Schiller is expanding her ministry as she would a business starting small and growing consistently. “Many of our employees work from home. That is a positive for me because teleworkers have no physical workplace boundaries. If we can touch just a few people from our base in Texas, word of mouth can spread to locations around the world at the speed of the Internet.”

Saint-Gobain recently onboarded a DEI1 director to cultivate a corporate environment that will help employees

1 Diversity Equity and Inclusion thrive. Schiller says part of that corporate culture includes making employee resource groups (ERG) inclusive. “I am excited when someone replies, ‘I’m a Christian, too!’, but I want to grow an interfaith group as well.”

Don’t Just Leave It Up To The Pastor

Schiller’s advice to those aspiring to serve at work: “Pray about it. There will be fear in the back of your mind, but seek people who have done it and listen to their testimonies.”

Serving can happen in the simplest of ways, she says. “A remote employee called me with a 401K question because he was ill and going on disability. I asked him if I could pray for him. He said in all the calls he’d made to prepare for his leave, it was the most beautiful question anyone had asked. I may never meet him but if we had an ERG where he is, someone in that group would certainly be there with him, caring for him seeing to his needs. After Endeavor, I am always comfortable asking and I see others doing the same.”

“As testimonies are given, the seeds are being planted and watered. For me, we are in 76 countries and I’m going to start more ERGs as soon as the first one is in place.”

SERVANT LEADERSHIP • MARK JOHNSON, SENIOR VP, NORTH

Mark Johnson (facing page, left) recalls a faith conversation he had while visiting a store over the Christmas holiday. The store was short-staffed and not well prepared for seasonal sales. As he arrived to tour the location with his District Manager, she prepared him for what he might encounter. Without a servant leader mindset, the store inspection might have been less than pleasant. Instead, he said, “Let’s just go in, see what you have, and let’s solve it together.” Moving inside, he saw things were indeed not in an acceptable place and decided then they would both roll up their sleeves and visit no other stores that day so they could do whatever it took to get things in ready condition. He says, “We set stock, started pulling things off the walls, and putting things on shelves. We were there before the store opened and I realized there was no music playing. I pulled out my phone and started playing Christmas worship music. I didn’t put in my ear buds because I felt like God was telling me to just share it out loud. One of the nearby workers asked me where I got my music.”

What followed, he says, was a great conversation about her life and her membership and service at church. Other employees gravitated toward their workstation to listen and join in. It all started because of the decision to lead by example and set an atmosphere of camaraderie in the work and joy with music. He adds, “At my level, I have to always be careful and aware that some may be offended or feel pressured to engage, but I’m not embarrassed by my faith in the workplace. That day it turned into a really fun experience a God wink and an affirmation that what we are doing is right.”

Lt. Colonel USMC (RET) Mark Johnson knows leadership. As senior vice president for a North American retailer, he leads 600 stores with more than 14,000 employees. He is also the executive co-sponsor over the company’s interfaith program and lives by a core tenet: “Mission first, people always.”

Johnson believes dialoguing and equipping people to share faith is a necessary step to retain top talent. “High level leaders must realize we can’t accomplish anything without our team doing the work. Making sure employees are taken care of in ways that are truly meaningful to them is what helps leaders stay grounded and galvanizes teams to accomplishing the mission.”