I have always wondered about the value of values.
Here are some questions for you – What are your values? Do you know the values of your employer? Of your partners? How do you live these values on a daily basis?
I would take a risk and say that most of us would not be able to answer these questions. I have struggled to answer them myself many times. In fact, a lot of times I have only become aware of my employer’s or partners’ values when I have found them to be in conflict of mine, intuitively.
I think you would agree that a lot of us don’t think about the values on a day to day basis. Nor do we think about them when we are seeking employment. We focus more on the role, compensation, and fit with personal needs.
However, each business – public or private – has a certain set of values. They can typically be found in the “About Us” section of the website. We learn about them when we go through orientation as a new employee. After that, the awareness of values differs by organization. Similarly, each of us also have a certain set of values. While we may not always be aware, intuitively, we turn to those values in moments of crisis – or when we have had to make tough decisions. Or when we have been faced with ethical conundrums.
It is exactly in times of crisis, like the one we are facing today, that values become valuable. They become the compass for decision-making. We are seeing a lot of companies announcing paid leave for the impacted, making financial contributions to fight the virus, giving away their services or products for free to support the community. We are seeing these companies live their values of empathy, compassion, purpose. As the crisis deepens, companies will constantly need to turn to their values as they will have to make tough decisions and even choices such as profit or purpose.
It is equally important for us as individuals, and as leaders, to know our personal values. These values define who we are. Needless to say, they act as our internal compass when we need to make difficult decisions. When we act as leaders. And in times of crisis like the one we face today, they allow us to spend our time on the constructive, and not on the destructive.
I recently went through an exercise to identify my own values. They came down to knowledge, creation, compassion, integrity, financial security and family. I am trying to live these values on a daily basis. I find it invaluable that I am able to spend more time with my son who’s a junior in high school and will graduate out of our house in a year. I am reading more, writing more, and fulfilling my value of knowledge. I am trying to do what I can to support our community.
What are your values? Are you living them? How well aligned are those with where you work, where you live, and who you spend time with? And what happens when they are not aligned?
Some people chose to ignore their own values when they’re not aligned with their employers’ or partners’, but this can lead to problems: a fracture in relationships begins to form which inevitably leads to disengagement.
If you face a similar situation, one way to avoid reaching disengagement is to identify your core values, and deciding whether a compromise is valuable.