Leadership starts with your core values

Please subscribe to get Maverick insights on how to thrive in a complex, constantly changing world direct to your feed.

Leadership is personal and your core values can change the world. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that who we are and what drives us has an impact on what we do and how others experience our leadership. We have only to look at the world stage to see how the core values of various global leaders have impacted the lives of billions, to recognise that this is true.

Their impact is significant, regardless of whether these leaders run a country, a movement, or an idea. It is how they apply their values with their principles (core values), that helps us discern whether we trust the leader or whether we want to follow or align ourselves with them. We recognise that true leaders do not obscure their values they use them as a tuning fork to discern their next actions and call their tribe towards them.?

Core Values are the first leadership driver

Where your values, principles and morals intersect, is where your leadership driver resides. The Maverick Leadership context for these external, internal motivations is as follows:

• Your values are the internal beliefs that you hold dear.
• Principles are objective rather than subjective, and are not constrained by the culture or organisation that you reside in. Your principles are how you act upon your values.
• Morals consider whether you believe something is good or bad. They are your beliefs that guide your behaviour.
• Ethics are concerned with the concepts of right or wrong. They are a set of rules for behaviour that is imposed by others.

Leadership is personal because we are inherently driven by our values, principles, and morals. It is what you believe in and how you act on those beliefs that influence the leadership experience that you extend to yourself and others.

Effective Maverick Leaders are extremely principled, willing to make a stand (perhaps where others wouldn’t) when they believe that their principles are about to be violated. They are sure of their core values and use them as a tuning fork, regardless of whether their core values attract or repel people.

Their core values tune their leadership and becomes an unerring drive that defines them and amplifies their action. John Maxwell tells us that ‘leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less’, and I espouse that Maverick Leadership is at its core, ‘who you are and what you do’ (the interplay between character, intention and capability). Both of us demonstrating our belief that leadership is personal and how you influence, how you lead, must begin with what you value.

Do you agree?

What we can’t ignore

When we attempt to lead someone, we cannot ignore that we must personalise our leadership towards the individual before us. If we hope to influence them, empower them, and enable them to succeed, we must recognise the unique leadership driver that fuels their thoughts and actions.

Without this consideration we cannot hope to align them and inspire movement.

The individual that we hope to lead or empower to lead others, has a leadership driver that encompasses their core values, ethics, and moral discernment. This we cannot ignore.

Whilst ethics are externally imposed rules about right and wrong behaviour, your ethics are formed from the intersect of your principles and your morals. Organisations expect everyone to follow their ethics (implied or otherwise) and are often perplexed when Maverick Leaders refuse to do so, when they believe those ethics violate their principles or morals. It can be seen as inconvenient when someone makes a principled stand.

Refusing to violate your core values in the pursuit of the greater good is to be admired. We should encourage this intelligent disobedience within everyone. To do so, may stop ethical disasters such as the corporate fraud found at Enron, or the next Social Media backlash, when a discontented customer complains about the poor customer experience they have endured. Which they occurred because of your organisational leadership and the leadership experience of your employees.

The final aspect of your leadership driver is your moral discernment. This is the intersect of your morals (your sense of good or bad) and your values (those beliefs that you hold dear). Both your morals and values are internally devised (although influenced by personal, often childhood experiences).

Leadership is personal and so is your leadership driver. To ignore your leadership driver is to pre-determine a poor leadership experience.

We cannot ignore the need for leadership personalisation without risking cognitive dissonance in those we choose to lead. Whilst cognitive dissonance is neutral (how we interpret and act on the cognitive dissonance is what matters), dissonance caused due to a misalignment of leadership drivers can have unpredictable and uncomfortable consequences.

Since the pandemic began, people everywhere have begun to reconsider whether their life has purpose and meaning and how that relates to the work that they do. They want to be treated with respect by an employer that they trust and by managers who genuinely care for their wellbeing. They want their organisation to work for the greater good and to have autonomy to do meaningful, purposeful work.

They want their core values to be aligned and activated in what they do, at all times. This tsunami of employees taking their first steps to becoming Maverick Leaders, guided by their core values, is liberating for the employee, and often frightening for the organisation.

Frightening because the organisation is not accustomed to really leading (not just saying) from their core values and attracting or repelling those that can or can’t align to them.

A leader who does not know who they are, is not a leader that can lead others. If your organisation is full of leaders who aren’t Maverick Leaders guided proactively by their core values, ethics, and moral discernment, (aligning them to your mission and your employees’ objectives – the bridge between you and them), then you have an organisation that will stagnate, with disengaged employees ready to move on.

Imagine how great your organisation could be if every employee was a Maverick Leader becoming the bridge between you and others, where every employee would be both a spoke and a hub in an organic, autonomous network. A collective that encouraged individuality, diversity of thought, curiosity, and effective execution for the greater good.

Can you imagine what you could create and achieve, on an individual and collective basis?

Leadership is personal and your core values can change the world. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that who we are and what drives us has an impact on what we do and how others experience our leadership. We have only to look at the world stage to see how the core values of various global leaders have impacted the lives of billions, to recognise that this is true.

You can change the world, your organisation, your people and yourself by understanding and accepting your leadership drive and encouraging you and others to integrate it internally within the individual and externally via your actions.

Follow my work on?Twitter?|?Instagram?|?LinkedIn

You can also:

#?subscribe and listen?to my podcast The Maverick Paradox Podcast

# read my book (available on Amazon), The Maverick Paradox: The Secret Power Behind Successful Leaders

# browse my magazine: The Maverick Paradox Magazine

# read the article Leadership is personal