The Value of Values
In the same way it’s important to revisit your community agreements in authentic ways, regrounding in your values is a way to ensure your organization is leading with integrity. Far from a filler activity, identifying and naming your values is a foundational practice that builds the strong character of people and the organizations people create.
If you had a chance to listen to Episode 3 of our podcast, Operationalizing Your Values, you heard Lindsey Fuller share the hypothetical story of a beautiful sustainability structure of co-directors leading an organization. Co-directorship or co-principalships can be a powerful move to lighten the individual load, but there are some potential pitfalls and one of them is related to values. Imagine a scenario in which one of the leaders wants limited board involvement because they value independence and autonomy. The other wants an evaluation system for leaders because their core value is around accountability and integrity. With these different values at play the co-leaders come into conflict about how to proceed.
The value of values is that if left unexplored, leaders are likely to clash without context. There are gaping holes in their conversation because the individual values of the leaders have not been shared. Without this context of values, the conflict can easily turn personal, and even if it doesn’t, it will impact the sustainable resolution.
Instead, we suggest a process by which leaders in an organization are given the opportunity to explore and articulate their top 3-5 values, share with their co-leaders, and then look for alignment. It would be unusual for there to be perfect alignment; you aren’t going to agree on everything. But through this process, you will be able to see what your decision-making and organization more broadly is grounded on. You’ll have the opportunity to prioritize and create shared values.
The value of values is that they can become a guidepost to any and all decisions when things get hard (and remember, things will get hard). It’s worth it to take the time upfront to find out what is core to you and what is core to your team. Your intuition’s fuel comes from your core values, so maintaining the conduit to intuition lies in explicitly bringing your values to the work.
Get your copy of a Teaching Well approved List of Values here!
