Emily Parker spoke to Lorene Phillips about her book '29 Keys To Unlocking Your Faith At Work And Win!', unpacking what it means to have a right attitude, and the importance of investing into your family as well as your career.

Lorene: In every aspect. I even see it before I get into the workplace and that's something that I hopefully try to communicate in my book, that God is interested in all the details of our lives. Work is just an extension of some of the things that I do, another space that I navigate in, and in God's eyes it is all the same. I think that once I took down that barrier of thinking that He was only interested in certain aspects of my life, I had the freedom to embrace Him in every area of my life. It becomes evident in terms of how I deal with stress, worry and anxiety, how I deal with failure or success on the job, and certainly how I relate to my team members and other individuals that I work with.

Emily: What led you to write the book?

Lorene: I always knew I was going to write this book. In my early days I wanted to be a literature teacher, and learned that I really liked writing.

I have been so privileged to have been given the gift of mentorship early on and it is an honour for me to be able to extend the same gift of mentorship to others. There are so many people that I will never meet, and I just felt that by putting my key principles in a book, then those people would be able to access it.

I stay away from talking about things that I have not experienced. What I tried to do was to put together these 29 principles or keys that I believe have tremendously impacted how I have developed as a woman, mother and wife, and how my career has developed in what is conceivably a very tough industry.

The book is deliberately written in a way that it is for the busy professional, the busy mum, the busy individual who just wants to get to the point and know exactly what they need to do, to up their game in the workplace.

Emily: Looking at the 29 keys, which is your favourite one?

Lorene: I would say the first one is attitude. I really believe that if you have the right attitude you can go a long way.

Emily: What is the key you've found hardest to grasp over time, but you really feel you've got a handle on it now?

Lorene: I would say probably family and marriage. That actually is the last key in the book and was not one of the keys I initially had on my list, because I was trying to keep it more work-related. My husband said to me, "Why isn't there something in there about marriage? If you don't have a great husband that can support you in your career, that's a huge part", and he was absolutely right. So, I added it as the 29th key.

I think it's important but hard being able to maintain a healthy and happy family and marriage throughout a very demanding and successful career. I have learned that you need to be intentional and creative about how to make that happen. In one of the companies that I worked for, if you travelled over a certain number of hours you were allowed business class travel. I asked if I could take my husband along, and both travel premier economy. That meant that I could have two tickets for less than the price of a business class ticket, saving the company money. My boss thought it was a great idea. So, if work started on a Monday, my husband and I would leave on a Saturday and then he'd fly back home on the Monday, but we'd get a weekend to spend together, and it is something that we both looked forward to.

Emily: It is great that work was on board with getting involved in that. Do you feel like it's something that you've been able to model to your colleagues in terms of investing in relationships?

Lorene: Definitely. An example of this is what we are doing this weekend. My team has organised a three day trip to Italy, hosting various clients with exciting events. My boss and his wife, my husband and I and other work colleagues are going there the weekend before to spend some time together, before we get ready for the event.

I think it's also good for my children, now young men, to see that your work is not just your life but an important part of your life. When my eldest son was a teenager, he would come on trips with me as well, so it has been a great opportunity to share some of the benefits of work in terms of being able to travel to some amazing places with my family. My son ended up coming to university in the UK due to some of the exposure that he'd had, and some of the things that he'd experienced.