In my earlier article, The Building Blocks for Success, I introduced five foundational activities that every manager, regardless of experience level, will need to perform. They are:
- Establishing a set of personal values
- Clearly defining your objectives
- Organizing and allocating available resources
- Developing a plan to achieve the objectives
- Monitoring progress toward the objectives
In this article, I want to go deeper into the first building block – establishing a set of personal values. There are three key points I want to explore with you:
- Our individual values directly influence our behavior and our decisions, which influence how others perceive and interact with you.
- We learn our basic values early in life, but can change and adopt new values throughout our lives.
- By choosing to act differently we can reinforce new values that we want to develop.
Why are personal values important?
The short answer is that your values are reflected in your actions – what other people, including your employees and your boss, see. Your values also influence your decisions – often the ones that impact your employees, peers and other stakeholders. Your actions and your decisions influence how other people interact with you. If you display honesty and empathy, people will respond differently than if you appear duplicitous or indifferent.
I believe there are three values that should be part of any manager’s set: integrity, honesty and empathy. If you can’t be trusted to deliver on your commitments (integrity) and communicate honestly with the people you work with, then any success you have will be short-lived. Without the ability to empathize with your employees, you won’t be able to establish working relationships based on trust, a necessary part of any successful team.
As a manager, you depend on others to do the work that delivers your results. To do this, you must establish good working relationships with your employees, peers and partners. One foundation for these relationships is trust. If you are presenting values of integrity, honesty and empathy, you will more likely be perceived as trustworthy by others.
While I place great emphasis on integrity, honesty and empathy, you may find that a different set of values best fits your situation.
Where do our values come from?
Whether you have intentionally decided on a set of values or not, you have them. They are shaped by your earliest experiences in life. They can be reshaped by unexpected changes we encounter – life-changing moments. But they can also be consciously chosen, learned and practiced.
Early experiences.
Our values are defined and shaped by our experiences as we grow up. As children we move from passive observation to active experimentation as we develop our personal value system. The sociologist Morris Massey described three major periods during which we develop our values:
- The Imprint Period, up to age seven, where we absorb everything around us and accept it as true.
- The Modeling Period, from age eight to thirteen, where we copy behaviors of others, “trying on” values to see how they fit.
- The Socialization Period, from 13 to 21, where we begin to develop our individual value set, possibly moving away from what we learned earlier.
I think Massey’s definitions provide a useful way to think about how our values are shaped by our environment. As small children, we learn values from our parents or other close family members. From our earliest moments we are observing and learning from them. We see how they act and hear how they talk. Early on we develop an initial sense of right and wrong.
As we grow older, we begin to learn from others in our childhood environments – friends, teachers, coaches, religious leaders. By observing, we learn those behaviors that get rewarded by the society around us. We begin to emulate the behaviors that we see get rewarded with smiles, praise, attention…and money. We adopt the behaviors and values that make us feel good and accepted.
As young adults, seeking to define our identity in the world, we may move away from the values we learned in our family units and pay more attention to our peers and to the messages we receive from social media and society. Our early sense of right and wrong may be replaced by new learning about “here’s what it takes to get along or survive here, right, wrong or indifferent”.
We enter our adult lives with a value system that reflects our early experience, a multitude of influences and some decisions about which values are relevant to the environment in which we live.
Life-changing moments
For some people there are defining moments that shape their values. Massey and others have referred to these as “significant emotional events” (SEEs) – “an experience that is so mentally arresting that it becomes a catalyst for you to consider, examine and possibly change your initial values or value system”. They are events that force you to change the way you think, feel and behave. These events can be positive or negative.
Positive SEEs include marriage, the birth of a child or a job promotion. They may result in new values and behaviors that motivate you to higher levels of success or happiness. Negative, and sometimes traumatic SEEs include divorce, illness, death of a loved one or a family financial crisis. These events can have long-lasting effects on a person’s ability to relate well to others and to the broader world.
Most of us have heard stories about life-changing moments from others. There are many stories about how people reacted to the 9/11 attacks by enlisting in the military to serve. Their stories usually center around a newfound awareness of the importance of service to country or patriotism, though some are motivated by feelings of revenge or retribution, as in “I’m going to avenge the attack on my country!”
Other people see natural disasters or encounter human suffering and respond with a new sense of purpose or a life mission. One of my friends was so distressed by the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 that she now spends several months each year volunteering with a non-profit group dedicated to improving healthcare in a remote village.
Conscious choice, learning and practice
So our values are learned through early life influences as well as through responses to life-changing events. Everyone will have the former, many people will have the latter. For some people, the values they learn or adopt through those experiences will be sufficient to guide their lives. But other people – and I’ll put most managers in this group – need to periodically assess our values and make decisions about which ones to keep and which ones to replace.
Making a choice to strengthen a current value or adopt a new one allows us to consider the corollary to the earlier point that our values influence our behavior and decisions. I believe that the opposite is also true – that our behavior reinforces our values. David Brooks, in his book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life*, illustrates the idea this way:
Every action you take, every thought you have, changes you, even if just a little, making you a little more elevated or a little more degraded. If you do a series of good deeds, the habit of other-centeredness becomes gradually engraved into your life. It becomes easier to do good deeds down the line. If you lie or behave callously or cruelly toward someone, your personality degrades, and it is easier for you to do something even worse later on. As the criminologists say, the people who commit murder don’t start there. They have to walk through a lot of doors before they get to the point where they can take another human life.1
That example ends on a rather dark note, but we can take away the positive point of ingraining the value through habits. Simply put, if I want to develop the value of honesty, I can do so by acting like an honest person. By behaving in a way that reflects the value, I reinforce it in my value system. Early on, this will require concentration and deliberate choice, but over time that way of behaving becomes more natural, more habitual. I no longer have to think about it, because I have incorporated it in my set of personal values, which now guide my actions.
Adopting new values and learning new behaviors
Establishing a set of personal values, the first building block for success, is an intentional act. It’s not passively absorbing the values of others around you. It’s not a lightning flash of determination in the face of hardship. It’s a conscious process of reflection, decision and action.
Reflection = Identifying and evaluating your current values.
Decision = Making choices about the values you wish to retain and the ones you want to replace.
Action = Taking steps to learn and practice the behaviors associated with the new values (or existing ones).
This is not a process that will generate results overnight, but it is one that you can start immediately and begin to practice in small increments, gaining confidence as you go.
Reflection
A first step is to identify your values. If you have never thought about your values, this may seem difficult. Some values may be deeply embedded in your awareness, but never brought to light. You have them, but you can’t see them, name them, or articulate them. How do you make them visible? Here is a suggestion.
Find a quiet spot where you can think without distraction. Bring paper and a pen and consider these questions:
- Who were / are the most influential people in my past or present? Why?
- What is it about them that made an impact on me? What part of their character or behavior did I want to emulate? What have I adopted, whether I consciously decided to or not?
- Am I happy with the values I took from them? Why or why not?
- Will these values serve me well in my present situation and in the future? Why or why not?
- Are my current values appropriate for my work environment? Do they align with the type of manager I aspire to be? 2
Put your answers away for a day or two. Allow yourself time to think about them. Then come back, review and revise, if needed, and move on to the next step.
Decision
Now that you have thought about your current values and identified a need for changes or improvements, you can now start to make decisions about where to focus your efforts. Consider these questions to help set your course:
- Which of my current values do I need to reinforce or strengthen?
- What new values do I want to add?
- What have I read or seen that illustrates those new values?
- Who do I know that embodies the values I would like to emulate? Why? How do they act that’s different from how I act?
If you have difficulty answering the last three questions, you may want to take some time to do further study. This could include revisiting the teachings of your religious tradition. It might mean reading biographies or watching videos of people you admire or who were successful in your field. It could also mean engaging a coach to help you clarify your ideas and develop a better sense of direction.
Action
Taking action means changing your behavior so that you act in a way that reflects your values. You will be creating a feedback loop that helps make the new behavior a habit. You will use new behavior to reinforce your new values. Consider these questions:
- What are the behaviors that reflect the values you think are most important? For example, how do people demonstrate integrity?
- How does that compare to your own behavior?
- If you see a difference, what changes do you need to make to how you act to be more in alignment with the value you want to demonstrate?
Now you can take action:
- Write it down. Make a commitment on paper, starting with the most important item on your list. “I will demonstrate <value> through my my day-to-day actions by doing <list the specific actions you will take>.”
- Focus your awareness on your new or changed value for 30 days. Use the new value as you consider how to present yourself at work. Use it as a criteria as you make decisions. “How would my honest friend react in this situation?”
- Find a small object that can be a touchstone to remind you of the value and the behavior you want to reinforce. An example in recent American history were the small bracelets with the inscription “WWJD”, reminding those who wanted to reinforce their brand of Christian faith to think about “What would Jesus do?”. In this case it’s “WSID” – “What should I do?” Your touchstone could be a rubber band or new bracelet on your wrist. It could also be something like a golf tee or an oversized coin carried in your pocket or purse – noticeable to you but not visible to others.
- Enlist an “accountability partner”, just like in an exercise program. Find someone you trust – a family member or close colleague – and ask them to provide feedback when they see your behaviors match the value you want to adopt or reinforce. You also want their feedback when they see behavior that doesn’t match your values.
- (Optional) Tell others. Let your staff know. Your boss and peers, too. Enlist their help and support. I’ve listed this as optional because while I think it’s important, I also know that this might make some people uncomfortable. Maybe it’s not something you broadcast, but you simply invite a few people to support you.
- Reflect, again. Set aside a few minutes each day to assess your actions. What worked, what didn’t, what changes are needed?
Conclusion
Establishing a set of personal values, like many other aspects of a manager’s role, will not be an overnight activity, especially if you challenge yourself to incorporate new values and learn new behaviors. Practicing those behaviors to make them habitual will take time and effort. The payoff, however, is a set of values that you have consciously selected, that provide a solid foundation for your actions, that inform your decision making and the help you create positive working relationships with employees, peers and your manager.
To your success,
Mike
Join the discussion…
How have your values changed since you became a manager?
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Footnotes
1 David Brooks, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life*(New York, Random House, 2019), xxxi.
2 In thinking about values in relation to career aspirations, I am not suggesting a purely opportunistic or disingenuous approach. It’s not about saying “My company rewards ethical behavior, so I’ll mimic the behavior of others so I can get ahead, but I don’t really believe it.” That would be an interesting premise for a movie. You can guess the plot line: Young man desires to get ahead by being duplicitous. Gains success and wealth, but is eventually found out. Risks losing love and acceptance. Realizes the error of his ways. Repents. Adopts a new course. Gives up the money but gets the girl (or guy). Lives happily ever after. The end.
You’re welcome. I want screenwriting credit when you make the film.
* This link is direct to Amazon.com. At the time of this writing (March), I receive no affiliate payment if you buy a copy. If that changes in the future, I’ll let you know.