Defining Our Values

Behavioral Examples That Define Our Values

We’ve looked at how things can go really wrong without strong organizational values in place and how easy it can be to fall short of providing a picture of those values for everyone on our teams. We’ve also dug into how, even with specific values listed in various places throughout our office, we can’t assume everyone will have the same level of understanding. And to show just how often we provide our folks with feedback that lacks the detail they need to improve subpar performance or repeat what they’re doing well, I challenged you to think about the evaluations you’ve received (or given) that didn’t include a single example of actual behavior. While each of these are common, providing solid behavioral examples that define our values doesn’t have to be this way! It’s not complicated and it doesn’t require us to transform into some sort of super hero. All we need to do is provide a visible example and share that with our teams consistently.

Make no mistake, I do believe this is something each of us can build into our daily routines fairly simply. That said, I’m certainly not suggesting it will be easy… The challenge is to know what WE need to do to live out those values. It’s one thing to memorize the words or even spout off the definitions occasionally, but knowing exactly how we exemplify them through our own behavior will require us to become quite a bit more intimate with our core values than simply stating them in front of a group. Quite honestly, putting the intentional thought into how our behaviors model our values should be the most difficult part of the process. As leaders, we likely have the most discretion in how we executive the tasks we’re responsible for - and I’d hope how we’ve decided to take that action is indeed in line with what we’ve defined as our values.

With those dots connected, our next step should fall right in line: we need to be sure we’re explaining why we do what we do. Hold tight though, this ain’t about bragging on ourselves. It’s about making (and keeping) our values part of our team’s regular conversations. A few years ago, while a good friend of ours served as general manager for a heavy equipment company, he helped his team latch onto a mantra of “Customers for Life.” Each time someone in the office asked for help, the coworker providing the assistance would provide them with what they needed and repeat the phrase for everyone to hear. When a customer called for support, one of the first things you’d hear after the call ended was the team member sharing, “Customers for Life” as they hung up the phone. 

In leading our teams, we have opportunities each day to build our values into our conversations. When we tie those values to actions we’re taking, we’ve started the process of providing behavioral examples that define our core values. With this as a starting point, our next step should be detailing how the work our team members are doing connects to those values.

Make It About Values, Not Us…

Highlighting our own behavior to provide examples that define our values certainly helps us build those values into the conversations we have with our teams, but don’t mistake this as a suggestion to be boastful about how amazing we are; it’s anything but that! 

Not long after starting our business, Cindy and I were leading a small group through an extensive study of John Maxwell’s book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. Following nearly every idea we discussed as a group, one participant asked what would keep someone from using it to manipulate others. After talking through this at least a half a dozen times, I couldn’t take any more. Truth be told, I had never considered using anything we were covering with the group to take advantage of someone. If you’re even remotely familiar with Maxwell’s work, you know that’s definitely not something he’d ever so much as imply. My final response was something like, “the only ones who would use this to be manipulative are the ones who are just plain manipulative!” That was the last it was brought up. I had clearly pissed off that participant, and I no longer cared!

What I learned through dealing with that participant over the year or so that followed was that they were very willing to spin things in a way that would manipulate a situation for their own benefit, and apparently very suspicious that others were just as willing to reciprocate. If our approach to highlighting our own behaviors as examples for defining our values is to shine a light on ourselves and manipulate our teams, for personal gain over the team as a whole, then we probably have more folks complying with us because they have to than people following us because they want to. But when sharing those examples serves as a foundation that will serve our team members even more than it serves us, they’ll be far more receptive when we work to explain how their behaviors connect with those same core values.

In so many of the organizations we’ve worked for (and with) over the years, Cindy and I have seen incredibly skilled team members be promoted to supervisory and management roles - and they’ve absolutely earned those promotions! That was the main reason we created our Emerging Leader Development course; to help bridge the gap between their technical expertise and the skills they’d need to truly lead their teams as effectively as they had achieved results on their own. But even the ones with the broadest technical experience had rarely mastered every single role they’d be responsible for managing in their new position. And in some cases, we saw those supervisors and managers take on responsibility for positions they had no experience in personally. A harsh reality we’ll all have to face as we take on more and more as we lead is that we won’t always be the best at every task we need to ensure gets done - and it’s not reasonable to feel like we should be. That said, we will need to become competent in everything we’re charged with overseeing. And when we accomplish that, learning the behaviors necessary to successfully complete each task, we can tie our organization’s core values to those behaviors in nearly any conversation we have with our teams, individually and in group settings.

While this may sound daunting at first, that’s not my intent. As we’re intentional about starting this process, it can become part of our routine over time. It will likely be awkward at first and tough to remember at times, but eventually we can develop it into a habit. In addition to tying behaviors to values in our general conversations, we also need to be sure this is a focal point in each of our formal conversations with our teams.

A Part of Every Conversation

Make no mistake, providing behavioral examples that define our core values doesn’t have to be through some elaborate presentation for the world to see, or even done with a nifty slideshow in small groups. It’s far more important that we exemplify the appropriate behaviors personally and that we recognize our team members for doing so in their roles. While putting either of these practices in place may feel overwhelming initially, being consistent with them matters far more than how flashy we are with the rollout! In The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth, John Maxwell says this about the value of being consistent: “The sooner you make the transition to becoming intentional about your personal growth, the better it will be for you, because growth compounds and accelerates if you remain intentional about it.” I’m very willing to make the same argument for being consistent in talking about and modeling our values; it will indeed compound and accelerate when you’re intentional about it!

By using our own example in conversations occasionally and working to applaud our team members for exemplifying values in our routine interaction with them, we’re laying a solid foundation for the role those values play in the organization. Our next step should be weaving our values into every formal conversation we have with our teams.

Earlier, I shared how much value comes from providing specific examples during a performance evaluation - rather than simply pointing to the dot we’ve filled in showing “meets requirements.” As we detail the behaviors we’ve seen them use that led to whatever score we’ve given them, we have a great opportunity to tie those behaviors back to our company’s core values. Whether their work exceeded requirements, met requirements, or needs improvement, we’d do well to connect their action to a specific value and explain how they’re living up to or falling short of that value. If we’ve been talking about our values consistently in general conversations, this may just end up being a natural part of our conversation.

One last but critical place we need to be intentional about discussing our values is during any type of corrective action conversation. I realize these are difficult discussions for every leader, mainly because leaders care about the people they’re responsible for, but speaking to how the behaviors calling for this type of conversation are not aligned with our values while providing detail showing what the expected change needs to look like can go a long way toward actually correcting the action instead of only being a punitive measure that pushes someone out the door. As I detailed in What’s KILLING Your Profitability?, turnover is far too expensive not to do all we can to help someone change when possible.

I’m not suggesting any of this will be easy or will magically fall into place overnight. But as we take small, consistent steps to provide detailed examples so everyone on our teams know and understand what’s involved (and expected) with living out our values, we’ll remove that costly ambiguity and we’ll be closer to having that strong foundation for our organization to grow from. And that will help us avoid issues in nearly every area of our business. We’ll look at some of those next to emphasize how much it matters to be sure our values are more than just words in the handbook…