“Give freely without begrudging it, and the Lord your God will bless you in everything you do.”

We are likely to hear these kinds of statements throughout the business year: “We’ve got to take back market share”, “We’ve taken in XXX millions in profit this year.”, “We’ve taken control of their business.” The operative word is “taken” or “take”. Business is built around taking in more and more until ultimately we have “taken over”. So, it would not be that unusual for a day to be filled with activities that are about also taking. We can only hope that this taking is from the competition and not from each other, but that would be naive to think. Yes, we also take from one another all day long. We take people’s time and talents. We also take their ideas and put them to work. Not all taking is bad, but it is important that we balance this with giving. Giving is a word that is less used in the office unless we are are trying to make a point like, “Let me give you some advice”, which we hope that they will take.

Imagine that we were to split our time today just evenly between taking and giving and how much better our workplaces would be? The real question is how much giving will we do today? Do we have certain activities and times where we can shift the emphasis and see if others around us can see us trying to give to them, versus taking from them? At the end of today count what percentage of your day was about giving. God tells us to give and give not begrudgingly and if we do we will be blessed. That in itself is a gift worth taking.

Reference: Deuteronomy 15:10