Know Your Values
In corporate life, there is unending focus on analytics, insights and getting to know
your customers, consumers and stakeholders. Marketing and Strategy teams globally pore over analytics and insights endlessly to understand the psyche of their customers. Savvy corporate honchos, know that to succeed and navigate the corporate web, you need to know and manage your stakeholders well.
Why are we not spending the same time and effort on getting to really “know” our most important stakeholder – “ourselves”
Organisations that live by their values, have one thing in common. A leadership team that has a strong personal values alignment to the organisational values. Leaders who know their values, understand their beliefs, know what motivates and drives them. They are innately attracted to either be part of or create organisations and teams that have that shared sense of purpose and values. This requires leaders to go within- to know their personal drivers, motivations and values. It is the key to personal success and feeling fulfilled while leading others towards greater possibilities.
Our values are reflected in the way we live our lives. When we in alignment with our values - we have energy and purpose.
Know Your Values: Our values drive us consciously or unconsciously. This is true for people, teams and organisations. The question is how can conscious awareness of our own values, give us insights about our behaviours, our drivers and out motivators?
Our values determine our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. How we show up as leaders for our teams, how we act as peers for our colleagues, how we show up in the world as parents, partners, friends, is all governed by our values.
To know your values, complete John Demartini’s value determination process here.
Our life experiences define our values . Our values come from our life experiences. Think about what are the transformational life experiences you have had (hint: most of them may not be at work!) What was the event? What became important for you? What shifted? What new values became important to you? How did they shape you? What became more/less important to you as a result of this experience?
Our values define us. Our values represent what we stand for, what is important to us and they also guide what would we love to create in the future.
Values in action: Spend some time to reflect on what your values look like in action.
Reflection exercise 1: Reflect on a time where you might have acted in conflict to your values. How did you feel? What was the impact on you?
Reflection exercise 2: Reflect on some big choices that you have made recently and think about how those choices align with your values. When you are in alignment with your values, how does this make you feel?
