How to grow as a leader: Find your values
In Essential qualities of amazing leaders I presented my current working definition of a leader—any leader, in any context—with five essential qualities that define an effective, influential leader. This is the second in a series of four articles diving deeper into the first of the essential qualities for a leader.
A leader formulates a vision that is aligned with their values and beliefs.
Working our way from the end of that statement to the start. In How to grow as a leader: Uncover your beliefs, we discussed core beliefs with practical tips for inner techniques to begin exploring your beliefs. Today we’ll look at values: what they are, why they matter, and how to learn more about the values at your core.
Finding our values
What is a value?
Like beliefs, values live within us, subconsciously, where we may not notice how they drive our behaviors. And like beliefs, values are essentially a pattern in the brain, a familiar, well-trod road that feels comfortable.
At its simplest, a value is a judgment of worth about an idea.
Let’s look at an example. Consider Jessica, who holds the belief that shee must always be productive to be good and worthy; on the flip side, she believes that when she spends her time on “unproductive” activities like hobbies or relaxation, she’s “wasting” her time, and that leads to bad outcomes. Because there’s a value judgment (good vs. bad or worthy vs. unworthy), Jessica’s belief has become a value.
Like beliefs, values aren’t necessarily wrong or bad. However, you might recognize Jessica’s productivity value as inaccurate and unhelpful. Consider the possible outcomes for Jessica. She may find that she’s starting work early and finishing her days late, that she feels like there’s never enough time to get everything done, that she’s less connected with friends and family, that she no longer has a sense of what inspires and motivates her, that she feels out of control or helpless, that she experiences increasing frustration and anger.
It might seem obvious to us that Jessica’s value about productivity and goodness is not helping her, that the behaviors resulting from it are making her miserable. But for Jessica, this value is not at a conscious level. She may not perceive that this value about hyper-productivity is at the root of her stress.
What do we do with our values?
Just like we can change and shift our beliefs, we can also move and evolve our values. This happens naturally already. For example, after you have a child, your values about work may evolve, because you have new values coming to life about children and parenting and family.
The real power is in consciously shifting our values, so that they help us to feel successful and fulfilled. This is why wise leaders learn how to uncover their values, to bring them to a conscious level. Wise leaders respond to their values intentionally rather than allowing them to silently influence their behaviors.
So what can Jessica do?
Discover what her values are. The Inner tools in practice section below offers a couple of inner techniques for this.
Explore how her values affect her behaviors. Are the outcomes working for her?
Set inner cues to consciously observe her values in action, intentionally lean into the ones that can help or set aside ones that aren’t helpful in the context.
Inner tools in practice
As with beliefs, ideation (or brainstorming) can be helpful in uncovering your core values, and there are many worksheets and tools online to help.
Values Compass from PsychKit gives a quick assessment for exploration.
How to Find Your Core Values by Empower Process goes a little deeper and continues with additional exploration.
Notice the recommendation to work quickly, without overthinking or pressuring yourself to write a Great Big Manifesto (GBM). Your immediate goal is more like the Sh*tty First Draft (SFD) of Anne Lamott: quick and dirty and very vulnerable and real as a result.
Ideation session for values
If you want to do the ideation (or brainstorming) on your own rather than through an online tool, that’s perfectly fine. In fact, after using tools, you may want to tailor your session for the values you’ve identified.
You should keep this session short; it should take 10 to 15 minutes max. You’ll need a timer and either pencil and paper or your favorite note-taking app.
You’ll also need one or two prompts for your exploration. I recommend recording them at the top of your page, so that your attention stays on the ideation task as you slow down. Here are some for getting started, and you can mix and match, remix, or outright change the prompts so that they work best for your context.
Think of a time you felt truly fulfilled. What values were you (or others) honoring in that moment?
Did you think of several times of fulfillment? What did they have in common, in terms of the values being honored? How did they differ?
What are your pet peeves? Consider what it is that irritates you.
Think of a few people you love or admire and why they’re important to you. If it helps, think of who you consider a hero. What are the characteristics they have that you find meaningful and important in them?
Consider moments when you’ve had very strong emotions, something made you really glad, or something pissed you the heck off. What is it that triggered the emotion?
Once you’ve got your prompts, it’s time to get to work!
Set a timer for 5-8 minutes.
Respond to the prompts. Avoid distractions and rabbitholes.
When the timer goes off, set it aside. You’ll review and reflect on your findings later.
Reflection
Now that you have a list of your values, how do you feel about them? This 15 to 20 minute session will help you assess your values and how they affect your life.
A day or two after your ideation session, return to your list for reflection. If you want to make yourself a neat copy of your values before you start, go for it. You’ll need your list(s) from brainstorming, and you’ll want pen/paper or your note-taking app as before.
Set a timer for no more than 15 to 20 minutes.
As you review each value, ask yourself some reflection questions: What does this value look like in my life? Are there certain things I often do because I have this value? Are there things I never do because I have the value? How does this value expand my influence and vision? What does it cost me to hold this value? How do I feel about this value? Am I 100% for it, am I not sure, or do I think I may change it?
Jot your answers down quickly as you work through your values. It’s okay to feel tentative about them. Try to get something down for each value.
Don’t try to brainstorm new values while you do this reflection. If you think of a value you didn’t consider before, then go ahead and put it down so it doesn’t get lost. Your focus in this session is just reviewing your list of values and reflecting on them. The action of writing down your values may give you a breakthrough… or it may not. We’ll talk more about taking the next steps in this exploration in future articles. What counts is that you’ve gotten started!
Wrapping up
We opened with just one of the essential qualities of a vital, influential leader, and in this article, we focused on just one concept from that quality.
A leader formulates a vision that is aligned with their values and beliefs.
Beliefs and values are closely related, and the key lesson to keep in mind is that they are typically subconscious patterns in the brain. Just like beliefs show up in our behaviors, our values are reflected in behaviors as well. And just like beliefs, our values can change and evolve.
Then we introduced two inner tools for finding and reflecting on our values. Did it surprise you that they were so similar to the inner tools we used for exploring our beliefs?
After you try one of the tools, please feel free to leave a comment about how it went. Was it easy or difficult? Did you learn something amazing, or did it seem like a waste of time? Did you try something a little different, maybe a variation on the tool?
And stay tuned for the next article about vision, which will come out in 3 to 4 days. See you in the comments!