Get to know your workmates

"Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing." - 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NIV)

We all like to be treated as a whole person—we want others to appreciate us in all our complexity.

People at work are more than their jobs. Each person is moulded by their past experiences of family, school, religion, health issues and relationships.

Stop and consider: How well do you know the personal backgrounds of your work colleagues?

Why is this important?

Getting to know your colleagues’ backgrounds can be useful in a number of ways. It can help you to:

• Show kindness and compassion: for example, the young mum who has been up half the night with a crying baby might be moody and cranky in the way she presents at work. But knowing her situation at home will help you to make allowances and respond kindly. And she is filled with joy when you bring her a cup of tea and a muffin. Similarly, the middle-aged man going through a divorce appreciates being cut a bit of slack for his lack of focus at work. His crisis will pass and he’ll give back double to the firm for being understood and appreciated when things were hard.
• Build friendships: knowing a person’s background makes it easier to talk to them about the things on their heart. Knowing about their spouse and children, what sporting teams they follow, and so on, will generate a gold mine of conversations and strengthen your friendship.
• Talk about Jesus in a sensitive way: knowing someone’s religious background and other things about their personal life will help you to talk about Christian things in a more sensitive way. I find that asking people (when appropriate) about their family, and if their family has any religious beliefs, gives me a lot of information about how they think about God and the world. This in turn helps me to know the best way to talk to them about Jesus. For example, someone who grew up in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses but who rejected that way of life as a young adult might well be suspicious of organized religion. Knowing this background will enable you then to talk about Jesus more personally (and perhaps, at least initially, to avoid inviting them to a Christian meeting). A person with this kind of background is also likely to have a ‘saved by works’ mindset, so emphasizing our assurance of salvation through Jesus might be the best way to go.

Question: Why is it important to know some personal background information about the people you work with?