The Value of Values
Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash
I’ve found values to be an accessible bottoms-up path into the fuzzy world of coaching, leadership, and self exploration. They are concrete and give people a foundational guidepost into a world of intentionality. As with the best guideposts, there’s also analogies and metaphors from the world of technology. Values serve people similar to how design principles (when actively used) serve the product development process.
Values are Design Principles for Your Life
Design principles start from a place of dreaming. We are creating a new thing, whether it’s a company, a product, service, or community. Part of dreaming up the North Star is identifying what we value and how we want life to be different for ourselves and our relationships. The principles can be used generatively to birth new ideas or features; and they can also be used as validation criteria to see if a new feature or design is “on-brand” or fits the product/org. Ben Brignell maintains an awesome open-source resource that dives deeper into design principles and has examples from all over the world. Two examples that I particularly value because I feel are both thoughtful, unique, and actively lived throughout the product / company are Airbnb’s and Greenpeace’s. One failing of design principles is when they are created in an optimistic time of beginnings but once created are ignored and never referred to again, a sad instance of “set and forget.” Out of curiosity I looked up Facebook’s design principles and these are the cautionary tale of something out-dated (“Transparent” 🤭) that’s long been set and forgotten. In fairness, many individual groups, teams and products at Facebook have since established their own individual design principles and those are actively used.
Similar to design principles, creating a draft set of core values, and additional experimental values helps keep you on-track and creates guideposts for your work and life.
Finding Your Values
Getting to a draft set of values can happen with a 30–60 minute block of time.
1. Divergence. Sit with a blank piece of paper and come up with as many words or phrases for things that matter to you. Think about leaders you admire, books/music/movies that you’ve loved and what you identify about the characters. Additionally, think about things that really aggravate you (e.g. perhaps you hate it when people are late and that could lead to a value of timeliness), and qualities that matter to you. Go broad and get to a list of 100 if you can. I’ve included a cheat sheet below.
Table of Values
2. Convergence. Sit with this list and go through and circle the ones that resonate the most. Don’t worry about the number, this is a first pass.
3. Themes. Of the ones you’ve circled, which ones feel similar? Group them together and find a name that feels right for the group. The name could be one of the values in the group or something else. The more unique or distinctive the name can be for you, the easier it’ll be to keep it top of mind. For example, one of my clients has the value of Go beyond, Plus ultra which has personal resonance from an anime series. The value would feel entirely different if it was called 120% or resilience or grit.
4. Focus. Narrow down to your top 5 values. It’s hard to keep track of more than five items. Pick the ones that feel the most important right now. And it’s OK… this is a draft set that can and will change over time.
First Draft
So you have a set of values, great! Take a look at them and see if some feel different. Do some feel like foundational or core values that have been a part of you your entire life?
The first time I did a values exercise was about 10 years ago. This was my first set:
*Adventure/Change
*Challenge
Family
Visionary Leader
Embrace the Moment
The first two — Adventure/Change and Challenge — felt core to me. I’d grown up moving to a different country and culture every 3–4 years of my childhood with my father’s job. I had a love of travel and a fierce need to rise and conquer every challenge. Those two felt foundational.
Family was newer. My relationship with my immediate family — partner and two young daughters — was an emerging part of me. I was also exploring family as community spanning my work team, my friends, and all the circles I belonged to.
It’s OK to have a core / foundational number of values and then have experimental or aspirational ones that you continue to play with. Last year, when I left Facebook and wrote about the process, my values evolved to become:
Adventure
Challenge
Family
Transparency
Dance in This Moment
My earlier value of Embrace the Moment had now evolved to the more evocative Dance in this Moment. It had been liberally stolen from one of the foundational principles of my co-active coach training. Decades ago in college, I had performed as part of a vintage dance ensemble where we would waltz, swing, tango and swirl in all kinds of couples dancing. I still love dancing today. This phase of Dance in This Moment felt like it captured the value and gave it more color & vibrancy, making it easier for me to aspire towards.
Live Your Values
Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk — we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs.—Brene Brown
Values, similar to design principles, become useless if they are set and forgotten about it. Instead, start living with and experimenting with them.
Pick a value you want more of. Some of the values may already be how you live your life— great! Instead, pick one or two that you would like more of in your life and work. For me, my continual one is Dance in This Moment. How do I get closer to my sense of being, of following the flow, of staying present to what is and quiet my go-go-go driven problem-solver who likes to plan & control the future. Pick a value and consider what you might do to honor it in your life and work.
Stretch your values. Take a look at your draft list. Do some of them feel like they’re entirely part of your home list, and others feel part of work? Consider the “home” values and see what they would feel like if you applied them to work; and vice versa. Values tend to become the most true and resonant when they are more universal than siloed in different parts of your life.
Apply values to decision making. Here’s where things get really interesting. Next time you are faced with a non-automatic decision, take out your values and use them as a lens for the decision. For example, if you have values of Autonomy and Freedom, and are in the process of interviewing; then consider each conversation or organization that you talk to. For the role you’re applying for, on a scale of 1–5 how much Autonomy would you have? How much Freedom would you have with your manager? You can apply values to all types of decision-making whether it’s buying a house, dating / relationships, or deciding to embark on a new project. I ultimately left the corporate world because of a values misalignment.
Bottom-Line
Similar to how design principles form the guardrails and core of a product or organization, identifying and living your values is a tool for the intentional life. Values form the foundation for work and life and offer up another perspective on everything from relationships to career to decision-making.
More Resources:
Living Values Everyday: How Values Influence the Way we Work and Live talks about company values, rather than personal values, however, it has good examples of how to infuse them throughout a workplace.
Example of how the value of freedom is expressed differently in people’s work.
Simon Sinek on Why Values Matter. This is using geo-political metaphors but sometimes the metaphor helps to stick it.