Values – yay or nay?
Values – yay or nay?
I think absolutely, with some caveats.
After all, if you’ve got the right values in place for your company and your culture, they really can be a game changer and provide a framework for building trust throughout the organisation.
What I often find is that when a company leader approaches me about leadership training because performance/results/growth isn’t where it needs to be, s/he is surprised at how much focus I put on getting the right values in place. After a big of digging, it often transpires that yes, company values exist but in reality they are little more than words on a website; a tick box exercise.
Values are only really effective when there is total clarity around what behaviours feed into each value AND when non compliance to those behaviours is effectively challenged.
So often, I read on a company website ‘we live and breathe our values’. Really? How often are people measured against the values? How many of your staff are thinking about the behaviours which support the values? How often are the values mentioned in a typical day?
Tell you what, when you DO have total clarity around the behaviours which feed into each value AND you have a Senior Leadership Team who both role model AND challenge non compliance to those bevaviours, you’ll start seeing some magic happen.
And that magic might involve losing some people who aren’t aligned to your values. Short term pain for long term gain I say, because if we reward only on performance and ignore toxic behaviour, you’re rewarding the very people who are holding your company back.
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