Investing in Others
to Multiply Our Blessings
I'd like you to take a moment and ask yourself a couple of questions:
1.
What HAVE you done today for someone else?
2.
What CAN you do today for someone else?
At Penmarc Inspired Spaces, we believe that generosity is something we GET to do, not something we HAVE to do. There is a ripple effect that happens with Generosity. The littlest action can change the tone of a day and inspire generosity to the next person. We are excited that we get to invest in others whether it is in our employees or our community.
Our Purpose
At Penmarc Inspired Spaces, our purpose is to multiply the blessings and opportunities that have been placed in our trust.
We strive for excellence in our work and set the bar at being the best in the industry. We do that by integrating our core values into all aspects of our organization.
In looking at how we Invest in Others, our core value of Grace through Generosity gets the spotlight. This value is defined as positively impacting our employees and the greater community through servant leadership and selfless giving.
In thinking about this ripple effect of generosity I want to emphasize that generosity is not just about money or giving monetarily. Grace through Generosity and Investing in Others takes on different forms.
We break it down into Gratitude, Servant Leadership, Philanthropy, and Developing Others.
Gratitude
Gratitude in our Weekly Meetings
Shout-Out Wall
Gratitude Journals
1. Our Executive meetings each week start with sharing one thing that we are grateful for before we get into our meeting topic.
It helps us start off in a good mood and the smiles and laughter that occur during that portion of the meeting are definitely contagious.
2. We have a Shout-Out board where our employees recognize and give thanks to peers and it is so fun to see one comment lead others to join in on the praise as they realize that person helped them too.
3. And lastly, we encourage gratitude journaling which encourages jotting down 3 things you are grateful for each day. If I’m in a slump, I quickly write down a few things, and amazingly my attitude turns around.
Servant Leadership
Getting Your Hands Dirty
When you build up people around you, you build a team that you can rely on, that you can trust and you find joy in seeing them grow and develop in their careers.
I have cleaned toilets in a really nasty warehouse, I have driven forklifts, I have broken down pallets, swept, set merchandise, and anything else we asked our employees to do. I have worked in warehouses that were so hot that my shirt was dripping with sweat and I literally had to go to the bathroom, take it off, wring it out, and put it back on. But I didn’t leave our team to work there while I sat in the air conditioning. We worked alongside them and felt the same heat together to get the job done.
Being in the field helped us to also set the tone for what success looks like. We set the expectations for our fit and finish and how a project should be documented and executed.
We have our own expectations for what success is and we define it as doing the best you can no matter what you are doing. Whether you are sweeping floors or the CEO, if you are doing the best you can at your job and proud of the work you are doing, that is success.
Philanthropy
Whenever Generosity is mentioned, one seems to always jump to money. We do donate a lot monetarily at Rosewood. In fact, it is how we actually gauge and measure our success each year. If we are able to give more than we did the year before, it was a successful year. We do give in different ways.
One of the ways we donate monetarily is to charities.
I’m going to share a story real quick about one of our employees that was really touching. Each quarter, we like to do these team-building events and a couple of years ago, we created a scavenger hunt downtown where we broke up into 10 groups and had to find certain landmarks and there was an action involved in each destination that correlated to our values. The final destination was for each group to hand a check that we gave them to the CEO of Raleigh Rescue Mission.
At the end of the event, one of our employees came up to me and said, “I’m feeling some crazy emotions right now after this event today. I am a product of Raleigh Rescue Mission. My mom and I had to stay there for a while when I was a child and it was surreal coming back like this today and being a part of this donation to help people in the same situation we were in.”
Her words were so moving and it really gave more fuel to our desire to give to our community.
Another way we give monetarily is to Scholarships. Our hopes with these scholarships are to make a significant enough difference in a student’s life that they will recall the generosity given that helped them through school that perhaps they will work to achieve that goal themselves one day.
And lastly, we give our employees the ability to give. Each month we ask a different employee to select a charity that is meaningful to them and we make a donation to that charity in their honor and we feature it in our monthly newsletter.
Developing Others
Each year, we have 1-2 students from Campbell University intern with us over the summer. These are rising seniors and we purposely move them around each department and company within the Rosewood family of companies to give them experience in all aspects of a business.
Here in these pictures is Zach Brewer who was an intern and also earned a scholarship through us while at Campbell. Zach has gone on to continue running his own business called Sole Proprieties and in an email, he sent to me, he stated:
“My internship with Rosewood taught me how to work with others to solve problems and think like a business-minded individual. In the classroom, you have group case studies that give you a taste of what it’s like working in the real world, but spending a summer solving problems with others prepares you tremendously for the workplace environment.
I was also able to shadow management and learn how such a large company is run efficiently.
Since we opened our brick and mortar store in May, I’ve been able to apply lessons I learned from my internship to my company, despite it being in a completely different field.”
We love hearing how an internship with us helped these students in their careers later on. It’s been a joy to follow up on our interns and see how they are progressing in their careers.
In addition to interns, which brings people into our work environment, we focus on developing our own employees as well. We created Rosewood Academy which provides opportunities for professional growth at no cost to our employees.
We have online classes they can take through Wake Tech for certifications on courses such as Excel, Business Writing, Management Skills, and even Photoshop. We celebrate each time an employee completes a course.
As a part of Rosewood Academy, Campbell hosts a monthly series for us called Leadership Live. Dr. Fubara leads this for us and does an incredible job setting up guest speakers and providing our team access to collegiate professors to provide management skills in an array of topics.
This year for example we had topics related to Employee Engagement, Personal finance, Internet Safety, Business Writing, Professionalism, and this quarter the transformative power of gratitude.
Now that we have discovered how Penmarc Inspired Spaces invests in others, I’d like to go back to the first two questions: What have I done today for someone else, and What can I do today for someone else. Grab a piece of paper or a notebook and write down your answers. Underneath that, jot down three things you are grateful for today.
In closing, simple acts of generosity can ripple through others in ways you may not even know but can have a lasting impression. We all have something to give whether it's words, sharing your belongings, money, or even your influence.
I hope you go out today and multiply the gifts that have been given to you.