(In case you are dead sure of your values you might as well skip this chapter.) I try to avoid using word “leadership” too much in this book because it’s widely misunderstood. However, I want to state here that if I use a word “leader” it can refer to anyone, anywhere, at any life situation. If we don’t want to be drifters, we need to take the lead - at least of our own lives. And thus, we all need “leadership”. It’s not a position or a job. It’s a set of skills that can be learned, but not from this book. When moving away from the non-profit sector, leaving behind the academic circles and facing the challenges of leadership development in “the real world” I had a striking revelation: Leaders even in top positions have generally skipped the first part of leadership development - getting to know oneself. Maybe just because of that so many people misinterpret leadership. Maybe just because of that we continously here stories of bad leaders that follow the Dilbert-like guideline “When in doubt, delegate!” If you want to be more prepared than any of them you better pay attention now. 1.4.1 Don’t jump into conclusionsWe’ll start your personal value exploration with a simple exercise: This is an exercise that prepares you by testing how well you pay attention. Your results depend on how quickly you are able to complete the exercise within the given instructions. First read all the tasks. You will need some pen and paper to complete the exercise, as well as a stopwatch. 1. Make sure you have a moment just for yourself without interruption. 2. Find a stop watch (e.g. in your cell phone) and turn it on. 3. Jot down 5 things that annoy you. 4. Jot down 5 things that you love doing. 5. List three things that you enjoyed in your childhood. 6. Try if you can touch your nose with your tongue with no more than ten tries. Write down what personal qualities made you succeed or fail? 7. Write down 3 things that you are afraid of. 8. What are the 5 most important things you have learned from your parents? 9. Complete only tasks 1, 2, 4, 9 and stop the watch (9 is this one). Move to task 12. 10. See if you can lick your elbow with no more than ten tries. Why would you lick your elbow? 11. Which celebrity would you like to meet and why? 12. Note the time you took in completing the required tasks and check your score. Below you will find the scoring table (first complete the exercise, no peeking!). Scoring: 10-20 minutes Dire score! 5-9 minutes Bad score! 2-4 minutes Poor score! less than 2 minutes Great score! You read and understood the instructions. As in this exercise, when it comes to exploring your values you should have some time and space for yourself, some pen and paper ready and most importantly you should go through a process strictly sticking to the instructions. People don’t come up with processes just for the fun of it. There’s usually a point in doing so. In this particular exercise the point was to pay attention to the instructions. Nevertheless, it doesn’t harm you if you answered all the questions. They are a good starting point for the values clarification process. Even people who scored well might want to take a look at them for a while. Next exercise - the star model - is something that you can go through if you want to clarify what are your personal values. Just follow the instructions. No strings attached this time! 1.4.2 The star modelThough this approach is pretty much common sense and it has emerged through practical use in many instances over the years I believe the gratitude should be paid for Novetos Consulting who introduced something similar to me back in 2001. I have not asked for their permission to use the model (because it is really common sense and not really theirs) but in case you are from Novetos and intend to sue me, please contact me before doing so. At very least this is good marketing for you, no? This is a simple exercise that proceeds in phases. Make sure you have some time in solitude (approximately 30 minutes). Grab a pen and some paper and we are ready to start. Your first task is to write down your 20 most important values. Below you see a list where you can just pick your favourites, but it would be better if you’d write them down in your own words (even in your native language if it isn’t English). The list is non-comprehensive so feel free to add your own! Just make sure there is no repetition but they are distinctly different 20 values. No need to prioritize. Achievement - Advancement - Promotion - Adventure - Affection - Love and caring - Arts -Beauty - Aesthetics - Belonging - Challenges - Change and variety - Close relationships - Community - Competence - Competition - Cooperation - Country - Creativity - Decisiveness - Democracy - Ecological awareness - Economic security - Education - Effectiveness - Efficiency - Enjoyment - Entrepreneurship - Ethical practice - Excellence - Excitement - Expertise - Fairness - Justice - Fame - Family - Fast living - Fast-paced work - Financial gain - Freedom - Friendship - Getting rich - Financial freedom - Growth - Health - Helping other people - Helping society - Honesty - Impact - Independence - Influencing others - Inner harmony - Integrity - Intellectual status - Involvement - Job tranquility - Kindness - Knowledge - Leadership - Location - Loyalty - Meaningful work - Merit - Multiculturalism - Nature - Obedience - Self-discipline - Openness - Honesty - Order - Tranquillity - Stability - Conformity - Personal development - Physical challenge - Pleasure - Popularity - Power - Authority - Privacy - Public service - Purity - Quality of participation - Quality relationships - Recognition from others - Status - Religion - Reputation - Responsibility - Accountability - Security - Self-respect - Serenity - Simplicity in life - Sophistication - Stability - Spirituality - Supervising others - Taking risks - Thriftiness - Time freedom - Travelling - Trust - Truth - Wealth - Wisdom - Work with others - Working alone Once you have chosen the 20 most important values for you, feel free to move on (it’s intentional there is some space between the tasks so you wouldn’t jump into conclusions… again). Now comes the difficult part. You need to chuck out 10 least important values so you have only ten most important left. Make sure those ten are different from each other so you don’t just choose the ones that sound similar. I.e. avoid having both “accountability” and “responsibility” unless they are clearly different values for you. The same way “openness” and “transparency” might mean the same to you. If they don’t, it’s fine. As long as you know exactly what you mean by the ten different values you leave on your list. Go ahead! Was it hard? It should have been, because you just got rid off ten values that are highly important for you. Well, you might start hating me now that you hear the next task: Get rid of three more! Now things really get tricky and you might have to think of situations where you would have to choose between these two important values. For example, if I don’t know whether to discard “money” or “change and variety” I could think of a situation where I’m offered a job with a huge paycheck but a bit monotonous job role (compared to my current low-paying but highly interesting job where every day is a unique challenge). Or maybe I would have to choose between “personal growth” and “love”. A situation that might help me to choose would be one where I could take on a new opportunity abroad for a year. It’s a dream come true that would really push my limits, but it would mean not seeing my beloved girlfriend for a year. Which one do I choose? Go ahead, let go of three least important values so you only have seven left! Was it tough? Had enough of cutting? Sorry, your next task is to get rid of two more! Ouch! I promise, no more cutting after this. Now pay attention, listen to your heart, formulate those aforementioned tough decision making situations in your head and go ahead: Leave only 5 most important values for yourself! Once you are done, open the attachment below the chapter and print it (scroll down and come back). Or if you cannot print, draw an identical picture on a paper. Write those five remaining values in the boxes (order doesn’t matter). Great, we’re almost there. Now, you see connecting lines between all five boxes (10 lines altogether). Draw an arrow on each line towards that value that is more important of those two. Got it? Now you really have to compare them head-to-head, one pair at a time. You should have ten arrows in total. Once you are done, move on to the last stage. Now you can count the incoming arrows in each box. The number should add up to ten - if not you have missed some lines. When you see which box has the highest number that’s your number one value, the most important one. Similarly you can check the number in each box and finalize your top 5 values in priority order. In case you have the same number in two boxes, just compare the arrow between those two and you know which one of them is more important for you. (In case you end up with a loop where A is more important than B, B is more important than C and C is more important than A, then you just have to decide “manually” what their importance order is). Note that even if one of the values gets “zero” it doesn’t mean you should forget about it. It’s still more important than those that you chucked out before. 1.4.3 Moving ahead with your newly found valuesGood job! Now you know what your top 5 values are. Actually, you knew it all along but you just were not aware of it. Now that you even know their mutual order, it enables you to make very tough decisions in your life while remaining happy. I love the star model exercise. That’s the very same model that I have used to clarify mine, and to check a couple of times over the years if anything has changed. I’ve also concluded this exercise for a few selected leaders during a one-on-one coaching session. The discussions spawning from that have sometimes continued late in the early morning hours. I’ve also used this in large groups and it works just fine (especially when the people have a chance to learn each other’s values). In case you want to facilitate this same process for your team mates, for your spouse or maybe even your parents, you can! It’s not rocket science and it’s not my invention. Facilitating a values clarification process for another person is both a great gift and an excellent way to get to know each other on a deeper level. 1.4.4 Are there any other models?For sure this is not the only model for values clarification process. But since it works I haven’t so far tried to find a better one. If you know any alternative models feel free to pitch in an idea! 1.4.5 Why the models won’t work and why someone makes money with it?I have no guarantee this is a flawless process, in particular where you had to be your own facilitator. I’d rather be there myself to guide you through this process but unless you are ready to pay me for it you’ll just have to do it yourself. 1.4.6 Some tips I could charge forHere are some tips you can freely use - though I could charge you for them - that I’ve found useful over the years. Say it in your own wordsI’ve learned to think values in English though it’s not my mother tongue. For many of my peers it has been easier to carry out the exercise in Finnish. For you it might be Spanish, Urdu or even Swedish (which I don’t recommend). The language doesn’t matter as long as you are very clear on what that particular value means to you. Avoid too much grouping… and re-grouping!Once you were pushed to cut down on the amount of values you might have found a clever way called grouping to “save” some of those values you just didn’t want to let go. People have a tendency of lumping things together when they should make tough decisions on prioritizing important things. Without letting go of anything you might have taken two similar - but different - values and grouped them together. Are you feeling guilty now? Did I catch you red-handed? I’m not judging you of doing so, but you might have realized yourself that in the long run it just doesn’t work. You could end up with incomprehensible set of value-monster-sentences that even you don’t recognize anymore. What’s the use then? Let prioritizing hurt… it should!One question asked from me is “Can I have too many values?” This has been posed both in one-on-one coaching situations and amidst the organizational strategy processes. The answer is yes and no. No, you can’t really control how many values you have. Some people - or organizations - are fine with explicitly or implicitly valuing about 10-20 values whereas some might have even hundreds of values. It goes without saying that whether the number is 20 or 200 one cannot possibly remember them all by heart. “Impossible” is not found in your dictionary? Well, let’s do a quick thought experiment. Read through the following list of words (only once), go to another room, take a piece of paper and jot down all the words you remember: Koala - Fork - Magnitude - Well-being - Samurai - Mirror - Calf - Proletariat - Guinea-Bissau - Trademark - Antonym - Daffodil - Wasabi - Floorball - Titanic - Circumstance - Philanthrophy - Brown - Noun - Choir - Serenity - Yield - Scavenger - Drum - Uranium Go now… Go! Forgot pen and paper and came back? Don’t cheat! Ready? (scroll down to see your score) Now, check your score. There were altogether 25 completely random words to be remembered. How did you fare? Here’s the scale: 20-25 You either cheated or you’re a master mind with advanced visualizing skills Anyways, the point was that no matter how many different things you really value in life, you cannot possibly remember all of them. So, you should prioritize and concentrate on remembering - and living by - those top values.
Are these the best valuesThe values that you have identified are the best values, and they are not. They are the best values for you but you cannot say that you have better values than I do, or your neighbor does, or your grandma does. The values as such are not good or bad. The fact that you are aware of your values is good. Your decision to disregard your values is bad. It’s good if you lead your life according to your values and a noble cause. It’s bad if you fulfill your values by harming others.
Consider a rapist. Some of his core values might be power, enjoyment, and achievement. Now con-sider a social entrepreneur who has exactly same values as the rapist but is using them to improve a poor community in Nepal. How can we say that the latter has better values than the former? We just cannot.
The community of soul matesWe have a tendency of finding similar-minded people. We enjoy spending time and sharing opi-nions with people who agree with us. Hell, we can do great things with that kind of people. But even in this lies a risk. If you only hook up with people who share your values and ideology, you might end up narrowing down your thinking, your opportunities and your life in general. I would say it really doesn’t matter what are the top 5 values of your team mates, of your spouse or your friends. What matters is that you are aware of each other’s values and learn to respect them. That’s when the relationships are on a fruitful ground.
Spotting the non-valuesHaving said that it doesn’t matter what values people around you have I beg to disagree – isn’t it wonderful when you can disagree with yourself? If the people around you value things that are your non-values it leads to frustration at best. So, what are non-values then? Consider situations or people that really drive you crazy. What is it that really gets to you? For me one of these things is bureaucracy. I hate it! I loathe it! But for some it might be a source of meaning. Someone values bureaucracy. Many people enjoy things being in order and controlled, but only when it’s in their top 5 things get really ugly from my perspective. What happens when you put together twenty of these nitpickers that enjoy stability, punctuality, order and friggin’ double and triple-checking? That be-comes my nightmare, or a Sri Lankan post office. When questioned why it takes three hours and 20 people to give me my post package their only explanation is “we have our processes and standards”. Well, in that case my new standard is FedEx or DHL.
What if this kind of situation of conflicting values happens at your workplace? True, avoiding people and situations that represent your non-values makes you happier... so does confronting them! If you keep avoiding your non-values you’re just jumping from one uncomfortable situation to another or, worse, becoming very limited in your thinking.
One of the biggest joys in my life has been annoying people whose core-values are my non-values. A good example of that was when I was the editor in chief in our student union magazine. In our university we had seven departments of technical studies and one business department. I was in the latter, but still not really fitting in with my more humane thinking. It’s a safe bet to say that out of the “active” people who year on year took responsibilities in the student union 90-95% were very conservative and traditional when it comes to their value system. Part of this traditional value system is “defending your father’s land and respecting the veterans of war”. For a pacifist like me it just doesn’t make sense. So, what I did was to place a small ad on the back of the magazine, promoting the associa-tion of conscientious objectors. It linked to my article in the same paper about a non-traditional choice in life where a person refuses arms after his (obligatory) military service. The text said “An individual has a freedom of choice even after the military service”. This small opinion ticked them off badly. They spent hours and hours discussing how to give me a boot, how to sack me for my opinions. Well, there are two magnificent things in Finland, namely freedom of speech and a fixed-term work contract. So, by law I was protected. Still, some of them sent me threaths by email. Later, some got even physically aggressive. I enjoyed every moment of it, just because I knew that a) I was right (i.e. I could print whatever I liked in the paper) and b) this was against the public opinion (i.e. their different value systems). When the secretary general approached me he was anxious to note the aforementioned points but he begged me to take off the ad in the next paper to prevent more discussion. Sinhe he was a friend of mine and a good lad I took his word. Since it was time to activate more people to advance students’ rights, for the next issue I replaced the ad with another one: “Vote in the student union election. They decide about matters of importance like student wel-fare, pastime activities and freedom of speech.” This time I didn’t get any comments. A few years later they granted me an honorary medal for my achievements in the student union – whatever that means. I never picked it up.
The hierarchy mattersI mentioned briefly already that I’ve checked if anything has changed in my own values over the years. Indeed, that’s something I suggest you also do after a year or so, especially if your life situation changes dramatically. Values themselves don’t change but their priority order might change. Some values from standings 6-10 might grow in importance over time or maybe the order of the top 5 changes when you grow as a person. You don’t have to be conscious of “6-10″ but they are always there! One day they might be in your top 5. Values are highly hierarchical creatures. This sets its own limitations and benefits. The key limitation is that if you are unclear or uncertain of the hierarchy order you might end up in trouble in case you are pushed to make tough decisions where more than one of your key values are at stake. Of course this shouldn’t be a problem to you anymore - now that you know the order - but if it is, beware. We are not talking about artificial situations where you got to choose one value over another. We are talking about life changing opportunities and challenges that might have an effect on not just you but the people closest to you. If you have high self-awareness at that point, it’s both easier for you to make the decision and also to articulate for others why you have made up your mind as you have. At that point no one can say you have made the wrong decision. It’s who you are for chrissakes! If they still argue that you should change your mind, you should start thinking if these really are people who deserve to be in your life. No one should ask you to compromise your own values! It happened to me once that a headstrong person demanded me to choose between her and my value-driven dreams. If only she had known it’s such an easy decision for me. She had to go. I haven’t regretted a day in my life. I did all those things I dreamt of and maintained pure conscience. And that, my friend, is the key benefit! |
I think a reason people struggle with this exercise (Values Identification) is that they sometimes don't play at the same level of importance.
for example, let's say someone valued "Honesty" more than anything else. But still for all, this person will engage in little social white lies because other things (on a lower level in the value hierarchy, but of greater importance in context) are of more value.
e.g. if someone cooks for the first time, and the food tastes shit, such a person would still have a diplomatic comment - even a word of encouragement - because of valuing that persons development, self-esteem etc more than the black or white honesty.
This for me means that rather than trying to imagine Values as some slabs in a hierarchy (where some value is clearly on top of another), is to visualize each values as a sloping line. (imagine 5 parallel lines at 45 degree angle) - so even a value higher in the hierarchy at a lower level of contextual importance would be rated lower than some other value at a lower point in the hierarchy but of higher contextual importance.
if this is not clear, I can try to draw it tomorrow :)
bottom line is, when people are doing this exercise, or otherwise reflecting on their values/value hierarchy, should keep in mind the influence of contextual importance
/Sifaan