Discover your company values
What are your values? Have you read any of the Brené Brown books? In ‘Dare to lead’ Brené Brown defines a leader like this:
“I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential.” To get there, we have to be really clear about our VALUES, and to make sure we live our values too.
“Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk — we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviours align with those beliefs.”
We believe that spending the time to reflect and dig in to who you are and what you believe helps to strengthen leadership skills. As a business it can also help everyone to understand what are the key values that drive the business forward.
In her book, Brené lists a sheet of core values and asks the reader to choose two core values that define you. A set of values that will hold you accountable to your decision making and actions moving forward.
Here’s Brene’s sheet of values
Try this for a few aspects of your life. First discover your values from a leadership perspective:
Grab a sheet of paper and write down two key values and alongside them reinforce why these are the key values that drive you.
Perhaps you chose Courage and Team Work
When making a decision check back in with these values and ask yourself if the outcome of the decision aligns with these values.
For example: You’re leading a team and you are faced with a client that wants your team to work an extra 4 hours without additional pay. Does saying yes to this align with your values of Courage and Team Work? Either you have the courage to speak to your team and explain the situation, is there a way that everyone can work to make this happen? Or you use your courage to say no to the client because it would negatively impact the team.
Staying true to your values helps you to stay aligned with who you are and can help you to navigate a world and situations that are ever changing.
And now, define your values from a business perspective:
Grab a sheet of paper and write down two key values and alongside them reinforce why these are the key values that drive you.
Perhaps you chose Knowledge and Giving Back
For example, if as a business you make your values clear for the whole team it can become an ethos, which the team uses as their driver as to why they make decisions. Discussing these values in weekly briefings and giving examples as to how they have been used to make decisions only reinforces and cements the values within the team. For example, perhaps as a business you recently decided to donate time to a nearby school. Committing to three talks from staff members of different positions to encourage future generations to work in your field. This could then encourage staff members to use this to make their decisions- and in this case help them to actively pass on their knowledge to those who are new in the company, giving back whilst striving to keep learning from others.
To find out more here are some helpful resources:
‘Operationalizing your values. A step-by-step process for groups and teams’
Dare to Lead: Brave work. Tough conversations. Whole hearts (paperback), Brené Brown
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