SPIRIT AT WORK JUDITH NEAL BRINGS INTEGRITY, EXPERIENCE TO UA CENTER

By Bettina Lehovec

Sunday, November 8, 2009

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FAYETTEVILLE — The call came early for Judith Neal. She was just 15 when she read an article about a cutting-edge approach to production in a Volvo plant in Sweden.

The pilot program strove to introduce a sense of meaning to the normally tedious process of building a car. Rather than keeping workers at assembly line stations, the program brought them together to rotate around a complete car. The team approach paid dividends beyond personal satisfaction - it also increased quality, productivity and time.

“Why that appealed to a 15-year-old girl, I can’t tell you, but I was really taken with it,” said Neal, who serves as director of the Tyson Center for Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace at the University of Arkansas.

The center, which opened in the spring in the Sam M.

Walton College of Business, is one of a handful in the country pioneering the new field of faith and spirituality at work. The goal is to encourage a dialogue and create a resource center for academics, business people and faith communities worldwide.

Neal, who’s followed a lifelong passion for bringing faith and spirituality to the workplace, is a good fit for the job, said Dan Worrell, dean of the business college.

“She has academic credentials;

she has work experience in the private sector; she has a long history of being deeply involved in this field,” Worrell said. Neal helped found the Management, Spirituality, and Religion Interest Group of the Academy of Management, as well as starting her own Center for Spirit at Work.

She’s written for numerous publications and published a book, “Edgewalkers,” about business leaders who successfully navigate the territory between two worlds. A second book, tentatively titled“Creating Enlightened Organizations,” is close to publication.

Following Her Heart

Neal spent her early years in southern California, then moved to Hawaii at age 8. Her parents didn’t practice any religion, but a Hawaiian friend introduced Neal to the Episcopal church.

Neal’s mother was a fulltime homemaker, and she always assumed she’d be the same. Yet she recognized the important role work played in people’s well-being. The pull toward making that more meaningful continued to surface in her life.

A turning point came when Neal was introduced to the human potential movement in a college business class. A newly divorced mother of two, the 28-year-old had never experienced much selfreflection. It suited her so well she switched her major from accounting to organizational behavior, which was then a new field with an unknown future.

The leap of faith reflects a pattern Neal describes as “following my heart.” She’s allowed her inner promptings to guide her, rather than looking at external factors such as job security or pay.

Neal used the heart criteria to determine her course when she graduated from Quinnipiac College near New Haven, Conn., at age 31. Inspired by her love for learning, she applied directly to Ph.D. programs at several prestigious schools. The fi rst person in her family to graduate from college, she lacked the context to even consider a master’s degree program fi rst.

Neal was accepted into the management program at Yale, from which she graduated in 1985. She also continued reading spiritual literature from a variety of world religions and paths. She’d tried di◊erent churches, but none seemed right for her, she said. Instead, she followed her interest along eclectic pathways.

Another passion was music. Neal was part of a folk music duo, playing in bars for extra money while a struggling student at Yale.

“It was fun - a nice pressure valve from all the heavy, heavy, intense intellectual work. It brought me some balance.”

Blowing The Whistle

In 1985, Neal went to work for a Honeywell arsenal plant in Joliet, Ill. Just taking the job involved an agonizing decision, because her values were in conflict with the military usage.

“The Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ As far as I’m concerned, that means war, too.”

A former professor changed her mind. He told her he was impressed with the innovative management practices at the plant - an approach that fit her area of expertise.

Two years after she arrived, Neal uncovered a situation she believed to be fraudulent. Members of the ballistics team were being asked to falsify quality-control test results before shipping munitions to the Army, she said. The workers were threatened with job loss if they refused to comply.

Neal called the ethics hotline within the company to report her suspicions. Higher-ups within Honeywell immediately contacted the Army and began their own investigation, she said. The company eventually reached a settlement with the U.S. costing the corporation $2 million in damages plus $400,000 in replacement ammunition, according to background information in a 1999 ruling by a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

Honeywell, which merged with Allied Signal in 2000, no longer has easy access to earlier records, a media relations representative at the company said.

The appeals court ruling upheld a district court decision awarding Neal compensation for the “resentful mistreatment” she received as a whistleblower. Neal said she lived through a nightmare of ostracization, harassment and threats to her life. “All hell broke loose,” she recalled. Although some management changed as a result of the investigation, her immediate supervisor remained. He directed Neal to stay isolated in her o◊ce, giving her busy work that utilized few of her skills.

“I could read the handwriting on the wall,” Neal said. “My career with Honeywell was over.”

The experience served as a wake-up call, she said. She’d been something of a people pleaser, telling people what they wanted to hear. She found a depth of spiritual peace within the turbulence that propelled her to greater transparency.

“It was time for me to take a stand for my truth - tell the whole truth - no matter what the cost to me. ...

“In my whole life, that event became the biggest crisis and the biggest opportunity for awakening and growth.” Finding Meaning At Work

Eventually, Neal found her way back to academia, this time as a professor of management. She worked for the University of New Haven from 1988 to 2005, fi nding adepth of satisfaction she hadn’t yet known.

“The minute I started the first class, the magic happened,” she said. “There was a sense of great, great joy ... in helping people fi nd purpose and meaning.”

She brought her personal faith into her work, praying that she might be of service to the people whose lives she touched, she said. When colleagues asked her what she did to engender such positive responses from students, she replied that she didn’t do anything, she simply loved them.

With her success came a renewed desire to help others live their faith in the same deep way.

“It’s not just for Sunday, or Friday evening if you’re Jewish or Muslim - it’s for every moment and every part of your life,” she said. “It makes a positive difference to live your faith and do your spiritual disciplines.”

At first, Neal felt like the only person interested in this type of undivided life. But her research led her to others just as eager to explore the new frontier. In 1994, she started “Spirit At Work,” a newsletter that grew to reach some 5,000 subscribers.

The Center for Spirit at Work grew from the newsletter. The membership organization was featured in Business Week, Fortune and the New York Times, Neal said. Spirituality in the workplace was becoming a buzz word in business circles. Neal found herself at the forefront of a swelling tide.

“Judi is a leader in the field,” said Martin Rutte, founder and chairman of the Centre for Spirituality and the Workplace in the SobeySchool of Business at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada. Rutte is also president of Livelihood management consulting in Santa Fe, N.M.

“She was one of the first to take on the academic and research arena and move that out into the global arena,” Rutte said. “She combines both deep academic qualifi - cations and expertise plus a strong entrepreneurial bent. She’s deeply committed not only to research but to mentoring others.” ‘A Dream Job’

Neal took early retirement from the University of New Haven in 2005. She planned to devote her time to her consulting business, Judith Neal & Associates, and to the Center for Spirit at Work.

After a few years, the energy at the center seemed to dwindle, she said. She and the board tried to revive it, but finally decided it had accomplished its purpose. Neal closed the center in 2008, ready for something new.

That summer, she met Ralph Ellis at a guitar camp. She felt she’d found her life partner, she said. Starting a new position 1,200 miles away was not in her plans.

Yet when she saw the job description for Tyson Center director, she recognized it as a perfect match.

“All of it seemed so perfect for taking this work to the next step,” she said. She interviewed for the position in January and again a few weeks later. That time, Ellis came with her, and proposed to her on the plane. The two moved to the area in April and were married in July.

“I want to give it my all,” Neal said about her work with the UA center. “I want to pull everything together I’ve ever worked on and have it here as a resource for people all over the world.”

Entertainment, Pages 13 on 11/08/2009

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