Tying Everything to Our Values

As Cindy and I worked to learn and understand what each member of our Executive Leadership Elite Think Tank had as core values for their organizations, we had intense conversations with all of them regarding how they kept those values in front of their teams; how often and in what setting did they cover the values, and in what application? Like most executives, each one we talked with had far more to-do items than time to accomplish them, causing this type of intentional dialogue around core values to take a back seat to more urgent issues.

Through those conversations, though, we were able to gain clarity around the behaviors each of them felt best demonstrated the values for their respective organization. In many cases, we were able to discuss scenarios involving the performance of their various team members, be that exemplary or subpar. We used those opportunities to dig into how that performance tied to or went against any of the stated values. Talking through specific situations that were fresh on their minds allowed us to help them crystalize what they expected for each team member and how they could use each example when talking about their organization’s values with their entire team.

This slight change in our approach caused those clients to develop clarity around the behaviors involved in living out their values, but it also provided us with a deeper understanding for how having common values with each of those executives contributed to the stronger working relationship we had developed with them. More and more, we realized that the closer our values aligned with the individual we were working with, the better the results were that we achieved through that relationship! Looking back over our entire careers, we could easily see that this same thing had happened all along, whether we recognized it at the time or not.

In August 2003, John Maxwell published a book called There’s No Such Thing as “Business” Ethics. I remember him teaching a lesson on that idea around that time, sharing how he initially turned his publisher down when they asked him to write something on “Business Ethics.” When they pressed him on why he wouldn’t write on the topic, he said “There’s no such thing as ‘business ethics’; there’s just ethics. You either have them or you don’t.” I’ll circle back to ethics soon. For now, I’ll just share that I believe one of the most important things we can do with our values, in our professional or our personal lives, is make sure we have a clear understanding of the exact behavior necessary to uphold them. When we have this in place, and we’re able to keep it top of mind in our own routine, we have a much better chance of providing that same clarity for the team members counting on us for leadership. Then, we’ll only need to make slight changes in what we do daily to keep those values front and center. I’ll share a simple example of how Cindy and I have worked to do this next, and later on we’ll work through some specific steps any leader can take to make this part of what they do daily.