Leading and Living Into Our Values

Leadership is hard.

There are multiple decisions that need to made, projects that need to be managed, feedback that needs to be given and received, and people who are depending on you to meet a variety (and sometimes conflicting) set of wants and needs.

Leaders who have a clearly defined set of values, and live into them each day, are better prepared to navigate the challenges they may face. When leaders find a team or organization that is aligned with these same values, they are also better positioned to experience both joy and success on their journeys.

Leadership is hard, joyful, and rewarding.

In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown defines a value as "a way of being or believing that we hold most important." 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 out intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs."

One of PLH's Book Huddles just completed the process Brené Brown uses to help leaders live into their values (pages 185-197 in Dare to Lead). We were challenged to name our values and narrow them down to only two. We then had to define the behaviors that support these core values and identify the behaviors that are outside our values. Finally, we identified the people in our lives who know our values and support our efforts to put them into action.

Sounds pretty simple. Not so much! The hardest part was narrowing down the values to just two, but Brené is clear about the research related to successful leaders"tethering their behavior to one or two values, and not ten."

When your core values are your guiding light, the decisions you have to make, the projects you have to manage, and the feedback you have to give and receive will all go through your values filter, and you will be clear and confident about your next steps as a result. You will not find yourself wavering, wondering, or worrying because you are simply leading and living into your values.

The more precise we are in the process of naming and defining our values, the easier it will be to choose what is right over what is easy in our most challenging moments as a leader.

In addition to Brené Brown's research on values-driven leadership, the Center for Creative Leadership also has some excellent resources on this topic. One of their latest tools is called the ValueAble Leader Project and it can be accessed for free online.

"Values help us make decisions, shape how we lead, who we lead, and what we choose to lead. The ValueAble Leader Project (VLP)  is a web-based app that helps us explore our values, identify those that are most important, and helps us consider how these values show up in our actions.

ValueAble leaders can identify and articulate their values. They understand how to recognize and honor others’ values. They make life choices and leadership choices that align with their values.

The ValueAble Leader Project is designed to help leaders identify their values and apply these values so they can make a positive difference in themselves and in the world around them."

Exploring your values is an important step on your leadership journey. PLH team members can design a Learning Huddle to explore them with you and help support your efforts to live into those values when making decisions, setting goals, and designing new projects and initiatives.