By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Wisdom, of course, can come from many unusual places and from very unexpected sources. Yet, most people still are surprised when I point to a Catholic Trappist monastery in Utah as the source for some valuable insights about human resource (HR) best practices.
It’s an unintended but obvious underlying theme of my new book, Monastery Mornings—My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks, (Paraclete Press 2021). The memoir tells the story of my unusual boyhood growing up—after my parents divorced—amid Trappist monks who lived near our home in Huntsville in rural Northern Utah.
The book addresses a number of universal ideas such as overcoming adversity, being open to unexpected friendships, and finding a sustainable life pathway. Yet, it also includes wonderful lessons, from monks to us in the business world, about mentoring and about employee engagement.
My relationship with the Trappists is a classic example of good workplace mentoring. In my youth, I helped in their small book store and on their 1,800 acre farm. The monks took me under their wings, let me follow them around as they worked, introduced me to the basics of that work, trusted me to do it, praised me when I did well, and taught me to do better when I did not do so well.
I knew the monks cared about me, and about my success. As a result, I trusted and valued their feedback, listened to them, and grew/matured as a member of their extended community. Without giving away too much about the book, I’ll just say this mentoring process worked.
Mentoring is important beyond the monastic context too, so the question for HR, of course, is how to replicate such important activities outside of an abbey. I think that the lesson for us in HR is that good mentoring requires a similar type of investment of time, talent, trust, and treasure from all involved. Mentoring is not just a transaction, it is a relationship.
The other striking aspect of Monastery Mornings, at least from an HR perspective, is the very obvious fact that my Trappist friends were some of the most engaged “employees” ever. How did that happen? The engagement flowed, at least in part, from the vows or promises the monks made and kept.
The Utah Trappists took vows of celibacy, poverty, obedience, stability (promising to remain a member of their community), and conversion of manners (that is, to and change and live the monastic life to its fullest). Many of the monks I knew spent decades—most of their lifetimes—“employed” as part of the community.
Now that’s what I call engagement, a full and complete commitment to a group mission and set of identified goals. In another book about the Trappists—Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO’s Quest for Meaning and Authenticity—corporate executive and entrepreneur August Turak explained that monks are successful not despite their high principles, but rather because of them.
My Monastery Mornings book translates those monastic principles into rules of engagement that might apply outside of a monastery. In other words, I describe how what I saw growing up at a monastery helped empower me to try to live a better life.
Thus, for me, the Trappist vow of obedience really means to listen and focus on others. The monk vow of stability means to build and sustain community. Poverty means to live with greater simplicity and more compassion. Celibacy outside a monastery means to act with devotion in relationships. Finally, the monastic vow of conversion of manners means to develop self-understanding and try to grow from it—to change for the better.
When I consider those translated vows, I cannot help but think that any employer would want (and would greatly benefit from) employees who promise to listen better, to seek to build/sustain a workplace community, to work with greater simplicity and compassion, to show devotion to their job, and to develop self-understanding that facilitates growth and change.
Such a commitment to principle is not unheard of outside the monastic setting. For example, although they are not “vows” in the strictest sense, one of my employment law clients does ask its employees to follow certain core values: sincere communication, people make the difference, integrity, resilience, inclusion, and trust and empowerment.
The monks in my book teach us that any successful community—including a business and its HR professionals—not only must carefully formulate and clearly articulate its mission and governing principles, it also must nurture and develop the mentors who can help others understand and commit to those principles.
One of the monastic leaders I quote provides some interesting insight about how to succeed in a monastery. Trappist Father David Altman explains, “The monk must put forth great effort to make many relationships work and to grow through them…this is challenging work.”
Most people probably never have considered whether cloistered monks from an isolated rural monastery could teach us much about living and working in the outside world. They should think about it. When they do, I predict they will agree it’s not be such a bad idea to try to make our workplaces a little more monk-like.
(Note: I assisted with a similar version of this story written by Jathan Janove and published here.)
*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
