Lead with your values

The importance of core values

How often do we reflect on our values? 

Are we clear on what they are and why they are essential to who we are?  

Are we living according to our core values or compromising them in our desire for success, recognition, or to win? 

By choosing to embrace and practice good values every day, you choose the higher course in life. And your life goes in a direction that you will always feel good about. You may not always get what you desire, but you will always be the person you desire to be. 

— John Maxwell

If we don’t function from a set of core values, then what informs our daily decisions and behaviour?

A person's values are central to their sense of identity, their sense of who they are. Values stem from our deeply held beliefs and, as such, inform our behaviour and our decisions — big or small. When our external behaviour doesn’t align with our internal values, there’s discord — a disconnection between head and heart.

Core values manifest as choices based on understanding what is truly important to us and why so that our decisions stem from a place of authenticity. Every decision reinforces our core values, and who we are choosing to be.

Knowing, understanding and honouring our values brings synergy to our life purpose and direction. Determining core values can be the pathway to deep and abiding satisfaction, joy and meaningful contributions to our community. 

I think it is possible that we may soon even define therapy as a search for values, because ultimately the search for identity is, in essence, the search for one’s own intrinsic, authentic values’.

— Abraham Maslow

As we value, so we lead

A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses their core values, their basic identity...One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.

— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

There are many effective models that can shape our leadership style — conscious, transformational, adaptive, servant — all manner of approaches to bring out the best leader in us. Yet no advantage can be gained from any leadership model if there are no sustaining values. Where we sometimes fall short is not behaving in a way that upholds our values. 

Richard Barrett, author of Building a values-driven organization, defines values-based leadership as ‘... a way of making authentic decisions that builds the trust and commitment of employees and customers’. He says that leaders who are attuned to their core values: 

• make better choices that are comfortable for them to act on 

• are likely to build better, more trusting, less stressful relationships with followers 

• are more likely to feel aligned with their 'authentic self'.

An organisation’s culture is a reflection of its leader’s values. It’s the shadow they cast on those around them. The values we hold deeply guide our behaviour toward a new set of possible actions. Leaders should draw on their own and their followers' values for direction, inspiration and motivation. Clarity about your core values is essential to becoming the most effective leader you can be. 

Adapted from an article by Jewel Kinch-Thomas