Values

Determining Your Personal Values

/ Ken Blanchard

For the past couple of blogs, I’ve been writing about the three-step process of creating a compelling personal vision. We’ve explored the first step: writing your life purpose. My last blog showed how to complete the second step: envisioning your picture of the future. This week I’ll explain the third and final part of creating a compelling person vision: determining your values.

It’s been said that the most important thing in life is to decide what’s most important, and that’s what determining your values is all about. But what is a value? In Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life, Jesse Stoner and I conclude that:

Values are deeply held beliefs that certain qualities are desirable. They define what is right or fundamentally important to each of us. They provide guidelines for our choices and activities.

Let’s face it, if your personal vision is going to have any real meaning, you have to live it. And where you live your vision is in your values, because values are what guide your behavior on a day-to-day basis.

Select Your Core Values. The first step to determining your values is to write a long list of qualities that have meaning to you. For example:

  • Truth
  • Wisdom
  • Courage
  • Recognition
  • Creativity
  • Honesty
  • Trust
  • Freedom
  • Spirituality
  • Love
  • Success
  • Humor
  • Peace
  • Security
  • Excellence
  • Learning

There are many more, but you get the idea. Once you’ve generated a long list, begin to narrow it down. Hold each value up against the others and see if you can pick out your three to five most important values. Winnowing down your list is important, because research shows that to be memorable and effective, values must be few in number—no more than five.

Define Your Values. The next step in clarifying your values is to define them. Why is this important? Because to be able to live consistently with a value, you must be able to explain what that value means to you.

For example, let’s take a value that has many meanings, like “love.”  I define this value by describing how it feels, as well as how I express it to others:

“I value love. I know I am living by this value anytime I feel loving toward myself and others, anytime I express compassion, anytime I show love to others, and anytime I receive the love of others.”

To give you a better sense of how this works, listed below are my rank-ordered values and how I define them.

Spiritual Peace

Because my mission is to serve, not to be served, spiritual peace is my highest value. I know I am living by this value:

  • Any time I realize I am a child of God and He loves me no matter what I do.
  • Any time I am grateful for my blessings.
  • Any time I pray and feel God’s unconditional love.

Health

This value has moved up in rank since I’ve had 59th anniversary of 21st birthday! I value health and know I am living by this value:

  • Any time I treat my body with love and respect.
  • Any time I exercise.
  • Any time I push my body to expand its present limits.
  • Any time I eat nutritious food.

Love

This had to be one of my values, because I’ve always said, “Love is the answer. What is the question?” I know I am living by this value:

  • Any time I feel loving towards myself and others.
  • Any time I express compassion.
  • Any time I show love to others.
  • Anytime I receive the love of others.

Integrity

My father taught me the importance of integrity. I know I am living by this value:

  • Any time I am honest with myself and others.
  • Any time I walk my talk.

Joy

Businessman and author Fred Smith said, “Real joy…is when you get in the act of forgetfulness about yourself.” This value is so important to me that I named my dog Joy! I know I am living by this value:

  • Any time I let my playful child express itself.
  • Any time I wake up feeling grateful for my blessings, the beauty around me, and the people in my life.
  • Anytime I smile, am happy, laugh, and kid.

Rank Order Your Values.  Think about which values are most important to you and write them down in that order. Listing your values in order of importance will further guide your decision making. If a situation arises where two or more values conflict, you’ll know which action to take, based on the value of highest importance.

Make Your Vision Come Alive. It’s one thing to write a personal vision statement—and another thing to put it into practice. Many years ago, I learned a wonderful lesson from Norman Vincent Peale, my coauthor on the book The Power of Ethical Management. Norman contended that we all have two selves. One is an external, task-oriented self that focuses on getting jobs done. The other is an internal, thoughtful, reflective self. The question Norman always posed was, “Which self wakes up first in the morning?” The answer, of course, is that our external, task-oriented self wakes up first. We leap out of bed, jump in the car, and race from activity to activity.

It’s hard to put our vision into practice when we’re caught in an activity rat race. What we all have to do is find a way to enter our day slowly, so we can awaken our thoughtful, reflective self first in the morning.

I’ve been working on entering my day slowly for many years.  One way I encourage my reflective self to guide me is to read my personal vision statement each morning, to remind myself of my purpose, my picture of the future, and my operating values.  This helps my behavior line up with my good intentions.

At the end of the day I like to pick up my journal and reflect on the day. What did I do that was consistent with my vision? This is an opportunity to praise myself for a job well done. What did I do that was inconsistent with my vision? This is an opportunity to redirect my behavior and possibly make amends for any errors I’ve made.

I hope this series of blogs has inspired you to create your own compelling vision. Having a personal life purpose, a compelling picture of the future, and your own clearly defined values can give you the clarity, inspiration, and motivation you need to make a difference for yourself and the world.

Managing By Values

/ Ken Blanchard

Many years ago, I heard John Naisbitt give a speech on his book Reinventing the Corporation and was intrigued by a concept he called “Fortunate 500” companies. We all know about Fortune 500 companies that are ranked on revenue, profits, and market value. But John defined Fortunate 500 companies as organizations measured by the quality of service available to customers and the quality of life accessible to its employees.

Over the next few years, I worked with several people to put a process to this idea. The result was the book I coauthored with Michael O’Connor, Managing By Values. The three elements of the Managing By Values process are:

  1. Identify your core values
  2. Communicate the core values
  3. Align the values to your business practices

The most important part of this process is to decide what is most important to your company. Once you gain that clarity and define your core values, you must constantly communicate them to your employees. Use the values as a guidebook for how you make decisions and operate on a daily basis to show employees that you are completely committed to them. And make sure that your internal business practices are aligned with your values so individuals and teams can function easily and not hit road blocks because an internal process doesn’t support the values.

When you manage by values, you’ll have delighted customers who keep coming back, inspired employees who give their best each day, owners who enjoy profits made in an ethically fair manner, and suppliers, vendors and distributors who thrive on the mutual trust and respect they feel toward your company.

We certainly found this to be true during the economic downturn of 2008-2009. It became clear to us in February 2009 that we would probably fall, at a minimum, 20 percent short of our revenue goals for the year. The first thought of some was that we would need to downsize—get rid of some of our people. While that would be legal, we didn’t think it was consistent with the rank-ordered values we had at the time. Our #1 value was Ethics—doing the right thing, followed by Relationships—gaining mutual trust and respect with our people, customers, and suppliers; followed by Success—running a profitable, well-run organization. To us, downsizing would focus on our #3 value but miss doing the right thing and damage our relationships with our people. As a result, we involved everyone at an all-company meeting and together figured out how to cut costs with a minimum impact on people’s lives.

Fortunate 500 is a clever play on words but it is actually a very powerful concept—and perhaps even more important now than it was when I first heard about it. Today people, especially millennials entering the workforce, want to know that their work is worthwhile and they are contributing to a bigger cause. If employees share the common values of a company, they can achieve extraordinary results that give their organization a competitive edge.

Walk Your Talk

/ Ken Blanchard

A few weeks ago, my blog focused on leading by values and the importance of communicating your organizational values clearly and constantly. Another critical element for leaders to practice is what I call walking your talk. Leaders must make every effort to become living symbols of their organization’s value system. Walking your talk means that your company values act as a set of guidelines for decision making, problem solving, and general day-to-day business operations.

For this process to work, you need a method of identifying gaps between values and behaviors. One way is to describe what the current situation is and what you want the desired situation to be, and to document action steps for making the change. Let me share an example from our own company.

We used to have a conflict at the end of each month among our sales, accounting, and shipping departments. One day, we brought representatives from each department together to discuss the issue in a fact-finding meeting. What we learned was very interesting.

The cause of the problem was a compensation policy stating that a sale couldn’t be credited to a sales person’s goal until the product had been shipped and billed. Since every sales person received bonuses based on monthly performance, they wanted every order fulfilled by the last day of the month—even the last-minute orders. This put extreme pressure on the shipping and accounting departments. In fact, in some cases people in those departments were working twelve-hour days at month end.

When everybody put the issues and their personal perspectives on the table and began to work on solutions, it actually became quite easy to eliminate the pressure caused by this policy. The group worked together to develop a new solution for dealing with the end-of-the-month workload crunch. And our corporate values provided the framework for the team to work together when solving the issue.

It would have been easy to continue to recognize the revenue at the expense of the people. However, Relationships was a corporate value—and making some people work twelve-hour days wasn’t honoring that value. Our leaders and teams walked their talk and restructured the process to honor both regular working hours and sales goals. The solution recognized the importance of both people and results.

Ignoring this issue would have put corporate values at risk—but using the values to solve the problem fortified their importance.

Think about situations that need to be improved in your organization. Then use your values to drive conversations and do the right thing. Leading by values is a continuous journey—and it is never too late to start walking your talk.

Leading by Values

/ Ken Blanchard

I write and speak a lot about the importance of having strong corporate values. I believe when a company is truly leading by its values, there is only one boss—the values.

In light of this, I challenge you to think about something:  Are you truly leading by your values?

Now, don’t worry, I’m not underestimating your own personal importance as a leader in an organization. I’m asking you to consider whether your organization’s values are ingrained in such a way that they provide guidelines for daily communication, decision making, and problem solving. Do your people use the values consistently to make decisions for the good of the whole organization instead of for one department or individual? Do your people participate in valuable, honest discussions because they know they are operating in a safe environment? Do your people take pride not only in the organization as a whole, but also in their role in the company? Do your people consider the company values to be actual rules of operation, not just suggestions?

One way to ensure that your core values serve your organization well is to communicate them to people clearly and constantly. We recently revised our values at The Ken Blanchard Companies in a collaborative process that invited participation from every person. The values were defined, approved, and announced at an all company meeting.  A dedicated team developed a plan to roll out the values to our people over a period of several months by focusing on one value each month. This helped everyone develop a deeper understanding of each value so that they were able to incorporate the behaviors of the values into their daily actions.

The team used standard communication methods such as creating posters for office walls, plaques for every person’s desk, a document that listed each value along with examples of congruent and incongruent behaviors, and a Facebook group. But they didn’t stop there—they took the launch much further. For example, one of our values is Focus and Clarity. The team arranged for all-company webinars that detailed how to set clear goals and focus on goal achievement.  Then they held an activity where people could learn archery. Believe me, when you are aiming an arrow at a target, you experience the importance of focus and clarity! Each month, creative activities like these have provided a different way for people to embed the respective value into their own belief system.

I encourage you to consider how your company values are communicated to your people. Are they buried away in a manual—or are they a part of everyday conversations, decision making, problem solving, and planning? Leading by values means stating and restating your organization’s values until they become second nature. This creates a secure, nurturing work environment where people thrive—and where values rule.

What Great Leaders Know and Do: It’s All About the Values

/ Ken Blanchard / 4 Comments

Business teamI’ve enjoyed telling you about the elements of the SERVE model from the first book I wrote with Mark Miller, The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. Before I explain the final element, let’s review the first four, which I’ve shared over the past several weeks.

The S in the SERVE model stands for See the Future and points out the importance of having a compelling vision for the future. The first E in the model stands for Engage and Develop Others and focuses on hiring the right people for the right roles and investing in their development. The R stands for Reinvent Continuously and refers to personal reinvention, system and process reinvention, and structural reinvention. And the V in the SERVE model stands for Value Results and Relationships. For many years, leaders thought they had to choose between people and results, but in fact both elements are critical for long-term success.

The final E in the SERVE model stands for Embody the Values. Effective leadership is built on trust. Although there are many ways to build trust, I believe the easiest way is to live consistently by your values. Leaders must establish, articulate, and enforce the core values of their organization. More important, they must model the behaviors that support the values. For example, let’s say being customer focused is your number one value. If you make decisions and take actions that negatively impact the customer experience, you are not embodying that value. This gives people a reason not to trust you, which negatively impacts your effectiveness as a leader. If your decisions and actions always place the customer experience first, you’ll not only honor the values but also build trust with your team.

Remember to walk your talk to build and maintain the trust of your people. When you embody the values, you help shape the organization’s culture. When you don’t, you can damage your own leadership—and the organization.

Are you ready to start working on ways to Embody the Values? Ask yourself these questions:

  • How can I integrate our core organizational values into the way my team operates?
  • What are some ways I can communicate our values to my team over the next thirty days?
  • How can I create greater personal alignment with our values on a daily basis?
  •  How can I recognize and reward people who actively embody the values?

Establishing a leadership culture in an organization takes time and involves continuous, focused work. It starts by establishing an agreed upon leadership point of view. The elements of the SERVE model are a great place for that conversation to begin. Teach the common point of view to all current and emerging leaders. Practice it. Measure it. And model it. And remember—a servant leadership culture begins with you. Good luck on your journey, and let me hear about your progress!