The Magic of Knowing Your Values
original recording: August 12, 2021 (below is a transcription of the video)
Hello and welcome to this Coaching Moment Conversation!
If you're watching the replay, welcome! I love for these to be interactive, so feel free to share comments. If you're watching the replay from my website, you can always jump over to Facebook and join in the comments even after the fact - I will certainly be checking those too!
If you've never been to one of my Coaching Moment Conversations before, let me do a quick introduction. My name is Angie Robinson and I am a Leadership Coach and a Team Development Consultant. I help leaders and teams maximize their confidence and performance and increase self-awareness, removing the barriers that get in their way and get the results are looking for. I do that through one-on-one coaching, group coaching and team development/leadership development workshops. I also do Life Coaching. So that is a little bit about who I am. I'll give you a little work history too. I have my own business. I’ve had my own coaching and consulting practice for about three years. But prior to that I spent over twenty years in corporate America working for a few different organizations.
I have an undergrad in Hospitality and Tourism Management and a Master's Degree in Organizational Development and Change Leadership. I spent most of my career in Human Resources leadership roles, and so I have the experience of working with leaders and teams in an H.R. capacity, but also having my own team. Since the age of 18, with my very first job, I was a manager and I've had direct reports all along. I have both ends of the spectrum from an experience standpoint, all the while growing my career, starting a family, being a mom, just kind of wearing all those different hats. And so that is what I can bring to the table.
I am also a huge Disney lover. I like to point that out because it is a bit of who I am and it's where I draw inspiration for my business. It's in my messaging, it's in the way I approach things. I think it's important to honor some of the things that make you who you are, which is exactly what we're talking about today.
This is the fourth episode of Coaching Moment Conversations. If you have missed the other three, you can certainly go back and check them out in the videos here on Facebook and or on my website. I have them all posted there as well. The first one I talked about was the Magic of Self-Awareness. That really goes deeper into why I think self-awareness is so important. It's very foundational.
The second one Coaching Moment Conversation was the Magic of Curiosity and then finally the Magic of Compassion. These are all, in my mind, skills that are super important to all humans, but I really focus on leadership. All things that are really important if you want to be the best leader or entrepreneur that you can be.
I say that self-awareness is really pixie dust for making the most of our lives, making the most of our jobs and of our businesses…of pretty much everything.
Although I focus on leaders and teams the most, there is an integration, right? We are all one person wearing many different hats and self-awareness is really foundational to our success overall.
All right. So let's get into the Magic of Knowing Your Values.
When I say “values”, what does that mean?
I'm just giving you the dictionary definition of values. Basically, they are a person's principles or standards of behavior, one's judgment of what's important in life. And it's a solid core of who you are and what you believe in.
Now, if you work for an organization or have worked for an organization before, you know that many, many organizations have values, or they usually call them ‘core values’. Typically, companies create these values for many different reasons. Right? It's really to solidify what the company believes and how they want their customers and their employees to experience them, ways that they want their teams to resonate with them. They also use values to guide in all their decision making, in their strategic planning and their execution of their business plans.
Not all companies have them, but most do. I know in companies that I've worked for; I've helped create core values. And I have a client right now that we just finished doing their values. It's really complex on an organizational level, but important. That same kind of thought process and methodology that companies use, individuals can use. So, if you are a leader or an entrepreneur, you can go through the exact same process to determine what your core values are. What's important to you that can help direct and guide. So that's what we're going to talk about - how to do that as a leader and why it's important.
How do you think being clear on your values makes a difference in your leadership and in your life?
I'll share some of my ways. If you have other thoughts, please share them. I always love to hear what other people have to say as well.
Values provide guidance on decision making. They provide guidance on behaviors. How do I want to show up? How do I want to behave? I've talked about this in past episodes before on how we have kind of the logical brain and the monkey brain or our emotional brain. When we're in situations, it can be really easy to default to that more emotional/backside of the brain when we show up. That triggers and we might show up in a way that we don't want to. If we're really clear and aware of what our beliefs are, what the core convictions or the core values that we have are, we can then just align quickly to say, is the way I'm showing up aligned with my values?
Also - our values provide checks and balances. So, again, we can make sure that we're always aligning the things that we're doing with what those values are.
One of the biggest benefits I see is that it really can reduce and minimize complexity, stress and anxiety. We all know when something feels off, when we're doing something that we're not quite sure it's the right thing to do or we have reacted in a way that we might regret a little bit later. And that can become stressful, and anxiety ridden. And that's something that typically has something to do with a misalignment of our values. And when we're aware of that, we can quickly make that determination and course-correct, to help minimize some of that anxiety and stress.
Those are some of the reasons that I believe that knowing your core values can make a difference to you as an individual. But also it benefits your team - the people that you are influencing, the people that you were leading. It also benefits them when you are clear on your values. It allows us as a leader to lead with a clear vision and clear goals. If we're clear in our vision and our goals, we can then portray that to our team and then they have clear guidance.
Maybe you’ve worked for someone or an organization before where messages were muddled – where maybe you didn’t know why you were doing what you were doing. That is really disengaging. It's hard to work under that condition and to be the best that you can be. When there's clarity from your leader on their mission and goals and you know what you can do - you can move forward. It helps the teams in that way.
It creates transparency. When you as a leader or a person are clear about your core values, you show up more authentically, more as yourself, which naturally leads to transparency. When there is transparency with the leader, as I'm sure you know, it really builds trust, right? People trust leaders who are authentic and transparent. That trust leads to greater productivity, higher engagement, better results, just a better place to be. By you being clear with your values and sharing that with your teams, you're creating a culture and environment that people want to be in.
And the final thing that I think it does for teams is that it creates consistency. When I'm really clear as a leader on what my values are and set direction and goals based on that - there's consistency. I know what to expect as an employee.
Here’s a question from the comments: “so core values allow for a common voice?” That is a great question. Core values DO allow for a common voice - but all to be sometimes perceived differently. Right? It's not about putting people or things in a box, but it does allow consistency and direction and clarity.
How do I discover what my values are?
Have you ever gone through an exercise as an individual to figure out your values? Let me know what you've done. I love hearing about different ideas, but I'm going to share with you a few things that I'm thinking of.
Number one is to just notice. Notice every day as you're going about your duties or having your conversations and you’re doing your work. Notice what gets you excited. Like – “What that person said really resonates with me.” And on the opposite side, what are the things that kind of make you crazy, that sets your emotions off, that that you don't feel good about. And you can start to uncover some feelings in those. When you're noticing those things, you can start to uncover what some of your values might be.
Another thing you can do is complete a personality profiles or use personality tools (which I talk about a lot because I love them - I think they're amazing). There are really good ones out there and there are really not so good ones out there. Theirs is the Enneagram, Myers Briggs, DiSC and StrengthsFinder (but that’s more about strengths, less on values). The one that I love the most is Insights Discovery. You get a twenty some page profile chock full of goodness. Insights Discovery is what I use in in my practice. I use it in all of my one-on-one coaching, and I do team workshops with this. When you read through these profiles, they are not meant to be like a textbook of exactly of who you are, but they really provide a lot of insight into your preferences, your blind spots, your communication styles, all those types of things. And when you dig into them, you start to uncover some themes that would provide you some insight into what really you hold deep down in your core.
The other way that you can figure out what your values are is through these exercises. What I’ve developed is a three-page worksheet can help you discover what your values are. It's an exercise that you can walk through and it doesn't mean that you can't have a lot of values, but you really want to hone in on those top ones.
If you are interested in doing this, this is a guided exercise. You can go to my website at www.angie-robinson.com/coaching-resources. I have a few different free resources for you there. Just scroll down and find Discover your Values and you can download that worksheet and take some time for yourself. Maybe it's a fifteen-minute exercise that you go through to work on yourself and your own values.
A question from the comments: “Blind spots - what are those?” Good question. Blind spots are the things about us that we don't know about us. Other people see them, but we don't see them. We think we know everything about ourselves, but the way that people perceive us or the way that the world perceives us is usually somewhat different than what we know. And those would be considered blind spots, things we don't know that others do.
I always tell people like when they do things like a personality profile, they'll go through it and they'll read all these things about themselves and they'll usually think “man, this thing is in my brain - how does it know all this about me?” But they'll be one or two little phrases in there that they don’t agree with. And I always suggest they ask a partner, a spouse or a close friend to read that statement and see what they say. Oftentimes the come back and say “well, yeah, you are totally like that.” That is a blind spot. We all have them - so no judging.
When I launched my business, I went through this exercise and I determined what my top values are. Now, again, I have way more than this for sure that I really have a strong conviction about. But these are my top three that really, really stood out that I wanted to highlight to help me make decisions and help me interact and make connections with my clients and how I'm going to use them, you know, in marketing and all of those things.
They are story, truth and authenticity. And then I added some action words and value statements to them. When you do come up with your values, you want to create value statements to go with them so you can articulate how are they going to show up and what do they really mean. If someone wants to understand what story means to me - they can see what I believe about that. What I believe about that might be different than you.
I will say I just went through this exercise again a couple days ago in preparation for this and realized that I might have to revisit this and maybe even add one or two to my top list. Point being, it's a great thing to revisit every once in a while as life goes on, as we get promoted, as we age, as we get more wisdom, as big life events happen to us. Things can shift as well as we become more aware of maybe biases that we have, our values can certainly shift. It's a good idea just to do this exercise every once in a while.
What do you do when you are clear on your values?
If you don't do anything with it, it's all for naught. So, this is the key. This is the important part - you do something with them. And for those of you who have worked with me before, you know that so much of it is mindset work. It's no different here with this.
Be open to vulnerability.
Like I mentioned before, when you are clear on your values and you communicate them, you lead from them. You let them help guide you and guide your behaviors. It does open up transparency, which leads to vulnerability. You might be letting people see you for who you really are, much more deeply in a way that you haven't before, especially if you're a leader. If you lead from your core values, that's going to be known. And that's going to allow you, I guess, to be seen a little bit more open, which leads to vulnerability. And that can get uncomfortable. But I’m telling you it will create more trust and loyalty and dedication and all the things I mentioned before. You just have to be aware of it that if you get uncomfortable, that might be the time to just get comfortable with the uncomfortable. That's where the magic will happen.
Communicate your values.
I know with the teams that I've led (and I'm thinking in particular, the last time that I had an H.R. team that I worked with), I was very clear on what my values were and where we're going to how we were going to implement them or use them to help guide what we did, how we talk with employees, how we lead engagement within our organization. Being clear with my team so they could have some clear direction and understanding.
Check expectations.
Just because my values are, for example, these four things doesn’t mean that I expect my team or others around me to adopt those same values as their top values. They're individuals. They're going to have theirs as well. The point of you or us knowing our values, leading from them and letting them help us with decisions is for us.
You might influence other people, but you can't force others to adopt your values. It's a great time for people to check their own and they can decide if they're aligned. And then you kind of go from there, but you don't want to make assumptions or try to force That's not the point of it. You have to step back and check those expectations as well.
Notice discomfort.
If you notice something going on again, a decision that you made, something that you did and you just don't feel good about it - notice if there is discomfort. It's a great time to check in with yourself, check for misalignment. What would I do differently next time? Rather than burying it under the rug, use it as an opportunity to course correct for yourself or decide what kind of decision you'll make next time.
Live into them.
One of the things with organizations when they decide it's time for us to establish core values or to reimagine them or re-communicate them, my question always is, what is your level of commitment to living into them? Because nothing is worse than when the values are just words on the wall. If you have communicated values but all the actions, all the behaviors, all the decisions are misaligned with them, that is the worst thing you can do. That is true for yourself as well, for you, as leader, for you, as a person. If you are not living into your values, then then don't even communicate them. Because when there's that misalignment that is going to lead to the opposite of everything I talked about. That's going to lead to the distrust, demotivation, and disengagement.
Stay accountable.
Stay accountable to yourself or maybe it's an accountability partner. Maybe you have a peer in your organization that you check each other all the time and give permission to call each other out if something's not aligned. Or you work with the coach. Somebody like what I do, working one-on-one with a coach is a great way to keep yourself accountable as well, because, again, when we get in the thick of things, you don't always recognize what we're doing, what we're saying, how our behaving, having that kind of third-party objective person can challenge you on that.
So that is what I have today. If there are any other questions or comments for those of you that are live, you certainly can pop them in there. Again, f you're watching the replay, do so as well, because I will be checking them. I love talking about this kind of stuff, but I certainly don't know everything. So different thoughts and perspectives, always welcome.
I'll end it here with a quote from Roy E. Disney, who was Walt Disney's nephew, who said, simply, “It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.” True words, Roy.
Thank you so much for joining. I'd love to stay connected. You can visit my website at www.angie-robinson.com. I have all kinds of things going on there. I've got free resources for you there. I have replays of all the Coaching Moment Conversations. I have my Monday Magic messages, which is an email that goes out every Monday to my subscribers that takes a Disney quote and I break it down and apply it to leadership and life situations. Those can come right your inbox if you'd like to subscribe. Otherwise, they're all going to be on my website. You can read blog posts; you can schedule a free consultation to talk about how we can work together or a discovery coaching call. And follow me on the socials - LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook.
I would love if you shared this with anybody that you think you know might benefit from it or share my website with them as well. And that is it. Thank you. You all have got this. You're awesome and amazing. Keep up that self-awareness work and we'll see you next time. Thanks!