Let Your Values Guide You

Values constitute your personal “bottom line.” They influence every aspect of your life—for example, your moral judgments, commitments, and personal and group goals—and the way you respond to others. They serve as guides to action and set the parameters for the decisions you make, consciously and subconsciously. They tell you when to say yes and when to say no. They also help you explain the choices you make and why you make them. You seldom consider or act on options that run counter to your value system. If you do, it's generally with a sense of compliance rather than commitment.

Alan Yap was hitting a wall trying to balance all his interests—and not making the most of any of them—until he took some time to think deeply about his values. Doing so helped clarify his priorities, leading him to eliminate some activities and commit more fully to others. For example, he decided to run for a leadership position in the business fraternity Alpha Kappa Psi. Upon being elected, Alan said that he struggled with finding an approach to leading the organization. He had to find his voice and figure out “How do I want to be known as a leader?” He decided “that the best way to lead was through what I valued.” All the critical decisions a leader makes involve values.

Alan's experience illustrates how values are the signposts in your leadership journey. They supply you with a compass by which to navigate the course of your daily life. Clarity of values is essential to knowing which way is north, south, east, and west. The clearer you are about your values, the easier it is for you and for everyone else in your group to stay on the chosen path and commit to it. This kind of guidance is especially needed in difficult and uncertain times. When there are daily challenges that can throw you off course, it's crucial that you have some signs that tell you where you are.

Personal values drive commitment. Clear personal values drive motivation and productivity. People who are very clear about their values are more likely to stick around and work harder than those who don't have an internal compass to guide them through uncertainty. It's how you determine if the work you are doing, the group or organization you are in, fits you.

There comes a point when you recognize that what you are doing is or is not a good fit with your values and beliefs. Even if you didn't know the specific values of the organization, you see how the group behaves and performs. You won't stick around a place (or a project, or a team) when you feel in your heart and in your soul that you don't belong. This is a major reason why some people don't stay very long in groups they've joined. Commitment is based on alignment with personal values, who you are, and what you are about. People who are clearest about personal values are better prepared to make choices based on principle—including deciding whether the principles of the organization fit with their own.

Say It in Your Own Words

People can only speak the truth when speaking in their own true voice. If you only mimic what others are saying, no one can make a commitment to you because they don't know who you are and what you believe in.

The techniques and tools that fill the pages of leadership books—including this one—are not substitutes for knowing what matters to you. Once you have the words you want to say, you must also give voice to those words. You must be able to express yourself so that everyone knows that you are the one who's speaking and not someone else.

You'll find a lot of science and empirical data to support the importance of each of The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. Keep in mind, however, that leadership is also an art, and just as with any other art form—whether it's painting, music, dancing, acting, or writing—leadership is a means of personal expression. To become a credible leader, you have to learn to express yourself in ways that are uniquely your own. Jacob Philpott provides a useful example.

After his freshman year in college, Jacob applied for a residential advisor (RA) position for the Upward Bound Program (UB). UB is a federally funded educational program created for high school students who come from diverse, low-income families and are the first generation to go to college. Jacob had participated in the program as a high school student, and he told us, “My experience was so enriching I knew I wanted to come back and serve as an RA.” During the interview process when he was asked why he wanted to work in the program, he simply answered from his own experience: “I wanted to help prepare the participants for college and provide them with an even better experience than my own while working on a great team.”

My motivation for taking on the role was heavily tied to my core values. The core values that I wanted to share encouraged advancement via individual determination and included management of time and money, work ethic, study skills, and responsibility with freedom. The core values that I wanted to share with the team of RAs, which were imparted to the participants as well, were giving back, being a role model, tutoring with the Socratic method, and creating a connection with the participants.

Jacob's reflections underscore how being clear about your values helps you find your voice and be able to express yourself in your own unique way. There's a genuineness that comes through when you can hear yourself using language and words that are your own rather than someone else's. For example, Jacob told us, on the very first day of the program, “I was given another opportunity to find my voice.”

We got everyone together for an introduction and to discuss our goals for the summer. I took that opportunity to share a story about my experience in the program, values I learned, and the skills that were reinforced which helped me get through college.

All the participants and other RAs had a chance to share their stories. Although each of these stories was unique to its teller, they carried common themes around building connections with people, growing, learning, and stepping outside of one's comfort zone. “I had clarified my values and found my voice,” said Jacob, and “this enabled me to share my story and gave others the courage to share their own stories. The shared values that came from this experience guided us through the rest of the summer.”

Like Jacob, you cannot lead out of someone else's values or words. You cannot lead out of someone else's experience. You can only lead out of your own. Unless it's your style, your manner, your words, it's not you—it's just an act. People don't follow your title or your technique. They follow you. If you're not the genuine article, can you honestly expect others to want to follow? To be a leader, you've got to awaken to the fact that you don't have to copy someone else, you don't have to read a script written by someone else, and you don't have to imitate someone else's style. Instead, you are free to choose what you want to express and the way you want to express it. In fact, you have a responsibility to others to express yourself in an authentic manner, in a way they would immediately recognize as yours.

Give People Reasons to Care

Although it's important that leaders forthrightly articulate the principles for which they stand, the values leaders espouse must be consistent with the aspirations of those who follow them. Leaders who advocate values that aren't representative of the group won't be able to get people to act as one. There must be a shared understanding of mutual expectations. Leaders must be able to gain consensus on a common cause and a common set of principles. They must be able to maintain a community of shared values. In this way, a leader's promise is also an organization's promise, regardless of whether the organization is a project team of two, an intramural slow-pitch softball team of ten, a fraternity of one hundred, a campus of seven thousand, a company of twenty thousand, or a town of two hundred thousand. Unless there's agreement about which promises to keep, the organization, its members, and its leaders risk losing credibility.

Recognition of shared values provides people with a common language. When individual, group, and organizational values are in sync, that unity generates tremendous energy. Commitment, enthusiasm, and drive intensify. People have reasons for caring about what they are doing. When individuals care deeply about what they are doing, they are more effective and satisfied. They stay committed to the group, are more engaged in what's going on, and are more likely to participate actively. They experience less frustration with the task or the group.

The quality and accuracy of communication within the group, along with the integrity of the decision-making process, increase when people feel part of a team with the same values. Confidence in one another grows; stress and worry are reduced. People work harder and are more creative because they become fully engaged in what they are doing. We know that when there is solid understanding of how an individual's values and those of the group are aligned, there is considerably greater productivity and success for everyone involved.

Exemplary student leaders spend time with their group talking about values. Too few groups in schools and classrooms spend enough time doing this. It tends to take place as a single occurrence, at the beginning of the school year or when a group is first formed or new members are brought in. Frequent and continuing conversations reminding people why they care about what they are doing renew commitment and help people feel that they are on the same team. When people are clear about the leader's values, about their own values, and about shared values, they know what's expected of them. This understanding increases their ability to make choices, enables them to better handle challenging situations, and enhances understanding and appreciation of the choices others make.

Having frequent and ongoing conversations with the people in your group reinforces what is important to the group as well as to the individuals in it. Think about a time when you joined an organization as a new member. Did anyone talk to you about what the group stood for? Did you ask the question, “What is important to this group?” If you did, was the answer very clear? If you didn't, how did you know what the group was all about? The group's values will guide everything it does, and therefore it is essential to spend time, regularly, talking about those values. We know this can be initially challenging for any leader.

Consider the experience of Kara Koser when she was an RA at a major urban university. She was trying to figure out how she could best meet the needs of her diverse resident population. With so many people on her floor, she wasn't sure what activity she could ever propose that would be of sufficient interest to everyone. She realized that she first had to listen inward, to herself, and then take the time to listen to others. Listening required patience. Kara slowly understood that some people find it intimidating to talk about what is important to them, and it takes time for them to become comfortable sharing. Kara adopted an approach she called “leading out front and leading from the back.” What this meant to her was both sharing her own viewpoints and intently listening to what others were thinking and talking about, and hearing what was important to them. “The difference in this type of leading was subtle,” Kara said, “but both approaches were important because they were done with the interests of the group—in my case, my floor residents—in mind.”

Kara didn't give up trying to have conversations with her residents about what they needed and wanted. The more they talked, the more they became comfortable sharing their ideas and visions. Kara regularly worked to create an environment where people could freely and easily contribute. She encouraged her residents, knowing that if she could be respectful of the values of others while at the same time not diminishing her voice, the light would shine on the best solution for all. These conversations enabled the residents to develop a greater sense of community and discover their shared values as they got to know each other better and, subsequently, how they wanted to spend their time together.

Forge Unity, Don't Force It

When leaders seek consensus around shared values, those who follow them are more positive and productive. You cannot mandate unity; instead, you forge it by involving people in the process, making them feel that you are genuinely interested in their perspectives and that they can speak freely with you. For them to be open to sharing their ideas and aspirations, they must believe that you'll be caring and constructive in searching for common ground.

By encouraging ongoing discussion about the common values of the group, leaders avoid the pitfall of people wasting time and energy trying to figure out what they're supposed to do. When people are unsure about their roles, they tend to lose focus or draw the group off topic; they may stop participating or leave the group altogether. The energy that goes into dealing with incompatible values, through arguments or misunderstandings, takes its toll on both the effectiveness of the leader and the activity level of the group. “What are our core principles?” and “What do we believe in?” are far from simple questions. Even with commonly identified values, there may be little agreement on the meaning of values statements. For example, one study reported 185 different behavioral expectations about the value of integrity alone.²

Yi Song told us about one of her class projects at a Chinese university, where she was randomly assigned to a team of people she did not know. Judging from their introductions to one another, Song felt that they had few things in common. They didn't all have the same major, were from different states or countries, and had diverse hobbies and interests. Song suggested that they identify what they valued the most from the team: “Let's each grab a pen and paper and write down five characteristics that we see as most important for working together as a team.” After they had finished writing, they shared what they had written and the reasons they had chosen those values, along with examples showing why the values were important. Song told us how this action and discussion affected her and the team:

Through the individual value-sharing process, we found some common characteristics––responsibility, being punctual, efficiency, good quality of work, and sense of humor––and these shared values served as the guides that led our actions for the rest the semester.

It was a great way to integrate individual values into the group's shared values. Since the shared values were decided by our entire group, everyone understood them, felt like they fit in, and were more willing to follow the shared values.

As Song's experience demonstrates, shared values emerge from a process, not a pronouncement. Leaders can't impose their values on the group's members; instead, they must actively involve people in creating shared values. Ownership of values increases exponentially when leaders actively engage a broad range of people in their development. Shared values are the result of listening, appreciating, building consensus, and resolving conflicts. For people to understand the values and come to agree with them, they must participate in the process. Unity can never be forced.

Fervently shared values are much more than advertising slogans. They are strongly supported and broadly endorsed beliefs about what's important to the people who hold them. People must be able to enumerate the values and have common interpretations of how to practice those values. They must know what their values will look like in action and how their efforts directly contribute to the larger success of the group. On Song's team, for example, being a responsible team member meant that each person would put in the best effort on all the work he or she was assigned to do. Being punctual meant not being late for team meetings and thus showing respect for one's teammates by not wasting their time.

Having everyone on the same page when it comes to values has many benefits. It ensures consistency in what the group says and what it does. The result is high individual credibility and an excellent reputation for the group, further preparing people to discuss values and expectations when recruiting, selecting, and orienting new members. Whenever new members join your group, whether at the beginning of a term or in the middle of the year, knowing what the group stands for and talking openly about it helps everyone make more informed decisions about their engagement with the group. Having everyone aligned about shared values builds commitment and community, and that is precisely what leaders ultimately hope to do in pursuit of a common vision.

Reflect

Model the Way begins with the commitment to clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values. Think about this commitment and record your responses to these questions:

1. What is the most important idea or lesson about exemplary leadership that you learned from this chapter?

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2. What changes do you need to make in your leadership to better Clarify Values?

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3. Review the suggestions in the following section on what you can do to take action to Clarify Values. After you have reflected on what you learned and what you need to improve, record your plan here for taking at least one action that will help you become a better leader:

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Take Action

Here are some things you can do to solidify your commitment to Clarify Values:

• Reflect on the values that guide your actions, and be able to express what they mean in your own words.
• Ask others to describe why they choose to be involved in the things they are and why they care about those things.
• Create opportunities for people to talk about individual values with others in the group.
• Ask the group to identify the common values that are revealed in discussions of individual values.
• Find ways to make the shared values visible, which helps ensure that people adhere to them.
• Periodically review the group's shared values to make certain that they are still salient; make adjustments and reconfirm as necessary.
• Be clear about how you will communicate what the group stands for when someone new comes into the group, and ensure that others in the group are on the same page.