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In my last post, I suggested an exercise to help us identify our personal values. When we are able to understand and articulate what we value most in life, we can use this information to create a life worth living, one that we treasure because we are acting in accord with our values. But what does it mean to live our values?
Let’s say that one of the things we value is excitement in life; nothing over the top, but maybe the kind of excitement we get from playing team sports or going kayaking. If we find ourselves able to do things that allow us to have the excitement we value, we are living our values (at least this one). On the other hand, if we instead get up everyday, go to work, come home, watch TV until bed (arguably NOT exciting) we are not living the value of excitement.
Another example that is more to the point would be if we highly value having a family. When we take the time, effort and energy needed to create and maintain a thriving family life, we are living our value of having a family. However, when work gets in the way; we miss our daughter’s soccer game or our son’s concert at school because we are working late to finish a project, we are not living the value of having a family.
Living Your Values
When we say that we value something in life but our deeds and actions contradict those values, others notice that we are inconsistent and are less likely to follow us since we have a credibility problem. When we are living a life that is inconsistent with our values we feel miserable and sometimes don’t even know why. We all intuitively know what we value, but if we haven’t take the time to reflect and articulate exactly what those values are, it can be hard to recognize when we aren’t living our values.
For instance, valuing excitement in life can mean something different to each of us. Some folks get excitement from reading, others from sky diving. It’s all a matter of degrees. Likewise, the value in having a family can also mean different things to different folks. It may be that I value having a family because of the love, pride and joy that I feel from the actions of the each member of the family. Or it may be that I value having a family so that I have someone to love me and revel in my accomplishments (a sort of built in fan club). We need to be able to reflect on our values in order to identify exactly what they mean to us. Then we are able to recognize if we are living our values.
Sometimes we feel like we aren’t able to live our values. Sometimes we get overburdened by life; someone gets ill, we lose our job, we have money problems. We find ourselves doing anything we can to just survive. This is when we find ourselves making life decisions without regard for our own values and we do things that compromise those values, even if only in a small way. These are the times when it is most important to be clear about what we value. Certainly when times are tough it is hard to make the “right” decisions. But when we make decisions based on our values we can stay true to ourselves and in the end those will be the “right” decisions.
How To Live Your Values
Here are four things you can do to make sure you are living your values:
Clearly identify your values: Follow the steps I’ve identified here.
Describe how you are living each value: For each value that you identify, take the time to write down in explicit detail actions that you are taking on a day-to-day basis that are examples of living that value.
Describe how you are not living each value: For each value that you identify, take the time to write down in explicit detail actions that you are taking on a day-to-day basis that are examples of clearly not living that value.
Identify the gap: Look at the actions from both lists. When you look at your actions that are inconsistent with your values which is more important to you, the actions or the values? If the actions are more important, you’ll need to rethink your values. If your values are more important than you’ll need to change your actions.
When we are able to live a life that is consistent with our values, we are happier and more fulfilled which shows in the way we conduct ourselves. When our actions are in line with our values we have the confidence to know that the decisions we are making are the “right” ones for us.
Leader’s Reflection: Knowing our own personal values is important, but more important is being able to live a life that is in accord with our values. When we are living our values, others see us as consistent and our life can become a model for those that share our values.
Firstly I think the opening of your blog is great. It seems to set the tone for the rest of your writing. On the questions of values I applaud you. And the work you did with your MBA students excellent. In my work as an executive coach I believe that one needs to start with leadership of themselves first then leadership of others. And then leadership of the organization. The best place to start is values. It is amazing how you can excellence decision making in an organization if the leader has done an assessment of their values. Eventually, hopefully they will help establish operating values in their business, verses stated values – you know the ones on the wall. I have developed with a team of programmers a value assessment that any one can take at no cost. I did it for my clients and then decided that I could share it with the world. What is amazing to me is which top four values keep coming up. You can see those on the site if your interested. the site is http://www.ceotest.com. The interesting part about listening to feedback from those that take the assessment (seems more like a game) is that how frustrated people get when they have to choose between values. That tension that is created is on purpose. We ask people to do both sorting of their values and prioritizing of their values. In reading your article the exercise you recommend sounds terrific and would be a great follow-up to this assessment because it may enlarge the possible values that the person struggles to define.
Thanks for stopping by Gary. I think you are right on when you suggest that hopefully leaders who know their own values will establish operating values in their business, but something that is much more than the stated values stuck up on the wall. I’m planning to examine this in another post later.