Getting On Track With Your Values

When you ask someone about their values, you often get some stock answers, about integrity, authenticity, honesty. Often these are the values we have picked up, the things that we ‘should’ value. While I am not disagreeing that these are often in the mix, it's useful to know what values you hold deeply. How we align with our values affects how we live our life.

When we describe ‘our’ values, we are talking about what is important to us. They are the principles that give significance and meaning to our lives. Knowing your values gives you a clearer picture of how you create your own reality, how you interact with others and reason your understanding. Then progressing to being curious about other people's values will provide you with an appreciation of their personal reality.

Our values inform our beliefs and together these define how we perceive life, the choices we make, our actions and the behaviour we show. Our reality is based on constructs we have created through our experiences; values and beliefs are influenced by our experience of these constructs and inform our future paradigms. Providing what we hold to be true, the way in which we see and experience the world.?

Our values are unique and therefore our lens by which we view and perceive them is unique too.

Your values

We operate with a web of values, generally between 10 and 20 that interplay with each other. Another important factor is that not all values are equal; we prioritise them, under pressure some values trump or force out others. Values also change overtime as we attain our goals, our reality and needs change, as does our view and understanding of the world.

Values hold three forms:?

Foundation Values – these are our grounding values – if threatened they are likely to cause a stress response and start taking high levels of energy.?

Focus Values - describe our present worldview; affect our decision-making and how we interact. We deploy proactive energy on these conscious values.??

Future Values, these are underdevelopment and form our aspirations, they motivate growth and change and provide drive.

Our values change over time as we attain and grow; focus values may become foundation values and future values can become focus values. We therefore need to actively maintain our understanding and awareness of our values and how they influence us.

By understanding our own values we will have a clearer picture of what we feel and why we interpret people and events in certain ways. This knowledge also enables us to make informed decisions about actions and life decisions. Ultimately we can influence and prioritise our values by taking conscious action, reflection and challenging our world view which influences the way we interact and live our lives.

Values at work

If you are working or spending time with people whose values do not align with your own you will feel it, levels of stress increase, coupled with a sense of being out of your comfort zone. In a work environment creativity and productivity will fall where there is a misalignment of values. For leaders, one of the key skills you need is to be able to understand and work with other people's values.? Being able to gauge and work with the different values in your team can really affect performance and engagement levels.

Shared values are a key consideration for teams wanting to achieve higher levels of performance. Given we know our values inform our views and our decisions, in a team environment they support individuals acting cohesively and guide group and individual behaviour towards a common purpose. Team values must be in balance with personal values forming? a framework that bonds. As with personal values, team and organisation value requirements are transient.

Working on our values delivers

When there is a misalignment of values you see, hear and feel it.? When we are aligned with our values, life holds greater meaning, we feel a sense of achievement and motivation. When we know about our values we understand why and what we believe and how that affects us. We can make proactive choices.

Understanding our values makes us more accepting of others and we are able to understand and appreciate differences. Where we share values we form stronger and more meaningful relationships. We can also deal more effectively with difficult and stressful situations? by understanding our responses.??

Research shows that people who work mapping their values and beliefs achieve increased awareness, control and improved decision-making. Individuals achieve greater levels of wellbeing, control and motivation. Understanding priority values transforms understanding and enables informed decisions and working with these can create significant sustained change. Ultimately working with values impacts the belief system that underpins how we understand the world, how we behave and the decisions we take.

As you take some time off over Christmas, reflecting on your values could be a really useful area of inquiry. If you would like a process to do so, please let me know.