Values that Ensure Everyone Wins

In the final lesson of our Emerging Leader Development course, Cindy opens by challenging participants to consider the real driver behind why they’ve accepted leadership responsibility. She goes on to compare things like power, position, money, and prestige with influence, growth, opportunities, and serving others; the first batch being tied directly to the individual and that other being focused on the teams those individuals lead. Whether we like it or not, our team members depend on us.

Along those same lines, I had a conversation recently with a friend who heads up a state agency dedicated to serving veterans with barriers to employment. He shared a scenario he had just been through where a comment he made in fun to a coworker that he had always interacted well with was received far differently than he ever imagined. Rather than in the spirit of camaraderie he intended, the coworker responded by verbally attacking him, saying that his comment was offensive. He asked if I had experienced anything like this, where someone seemed to be looking for something to be offended by. I explained two separate scenarios. The first being a story I share occasionally where, during a small group session that Cindy and I facilitated soon after starting our business, one of the participants repeatedly asked what would keep someone from using the concepts to manipulate others. After attempting to address their concern kindly several times, my patience wore thin and I drew a line in the sand by stating, “The only way I know to avoid being manipulative is to not be manipulative!” In case you’re wondering, that didn’t please the participant but the question didn’t come up again…

The second scenario dealt with a business owner who was constantly looking for how any service provider he dealt with was trying to “get one over on him.” While I've enjoyed most of the interaction I had with him over the years, I could never understand why he put so much thought into that. There are indeed shady characters out there but those are generally few and far between, and their shenanigans usually stand out like a sore thumb. I realized over time, that as pleasant as he was one-on-one, he was often looking for an angle to get one over on most of the people he dealt with - his team members included. As I discussed both scenarios with my friend, I explained that, at least in my experience, the folks looking for negative in others were often the ones dishing out that same treatment and therefore expected that from anyone they dealt with.

When casting our vision of the legacy we hope to achieve through living out our core values, simple practices are a must. We also need to hold everyone involved accountable to our high expectations. Our consistent example is critical, and that example must be one that clearly demonstrates how modeling our company values serves everyone in the equation; the clients & community we serve, everyone on our team, and lastly, ourselves. When everyone we serve wins, we have a real shot at creating a legacy based on those values - and achieving our organizational purpose!

With all this in place, we’ll wrap things up soon by working through some real-life examples with hopes of providing some clarity of what to - as well as some pitfalls to avoid along the way.