Values and the power of ONE
I’ve spoken recently to two groups about ‘Values’ and their importance in business. I’ve had all manner of reactions to the topic. Some have said ‘Oh yes we ‘did’ values years ago’ to which I will reply ‘and how did they translate into behaviours and results?’ This question either results in a puzzled stare or a real-life conversation. The puzzled stares usually translate into the fact that this company has agreed on some values; they’ve put the requisite plaque on the wall in reception and on their website, but their values end there. It even surprises some people when I suggest that their values MUST translate into behaviours, otherwise why have them at all? So I want to share three stories from those two presentations.
The first was to a gathering of accountants in NZ. After my presentation one woman shared this story. ‘In our office there are 7 people and 5 of these people have ganged up on one of our team. They are making her life a misery and I don’t know what to do. Do I step in or mind my own business?’ After we had explored her feelings about the situation, I suggested that she say something along the lines of ‘I have difficulty with what is going on here’ or ‘This doesn’t sit well with me’. She doesn’t have to get involved, but for her own peace of mind she does need to put her point of view forward. She was literally experiencing a clash of values.
There’s a lovely saying ‘silence isn’t golden; it’s permission’. We chatted a bit further and she said she felt so much better now she had a sentence she could use. What’s interesting in a case like this, and they are acted out daily in most workplaces, is that if just one person speaks up, usually others will too.
The second situation was the exact opposite. One person talked to me after my session in Sydney to say how proud he was of his company and their values – their number one value being ‘courage’. And he hadn’t realised how unusual this value was in that everyone and anyone in that organisation was given permission and encouragement to call out any behaviours they felt didn’t sit with the rest of their values.
The final story is the one I hear the most. This man stood on the fringes of people who wanted to talk to me after my Sydney session, and you could actually feel his sadness. Eventually I got some time with him over lunch. He told me that he loves his job; gets on really well with the people he works with, but has no respect for the management of the organisation. He acknowledged that they go to regular off sites where they proudly tell everyone they’ve ‘done’ values; they’ve ‘done’ EQ; they’ve ‘done’ 6 Sigma and any other session that is flavour of the month, and it’s all a sham. It simply lets them tick the boxes. They treat their staff like commodities; pay lip service to safety, go offsite for regular long and boozy lunches etc. etc. arrive late, leave early, make no time for their people and if anyone dares to complain about anything, they are immediately black-listed.
I asked how this made him feel. He admitted that he was having health problems; he wasn’t sleeping; he didn’t want to come to work at all; Sunday nights were a torment thinking about Monday and his darkness was affecting his family. My belief when a person reaches this stage in their job or career they have two choices:
- Is to dust off their CV and go elsewhere
- BECOME the values their organisation has defined.
Let me explain. If an organisation has said that safety is their key value, YOU model the behaviour. If you become the person who values safety, others around you will also start to work more safely. At first they may think you are a bit of a nerd or whatever, but bit by bit you will influence others. The same goes if one of the company’s values is ‘professionalism’. What is professionalism to YOU. Model that behaviour, influence others.
It’s a tragedy when organisations and leaders say one thing and do another. It’s sad to hear people at the front end of an organisation being treated this way. In my experience I’ve found that the people at the front end often care more about the organisation than their managers do. Mostly people at the front end are less mobile; they’ve built their lives around a job and the community. They WANT their organisation to succeed and feel let down and even betrayed when they see their leaders behaving badly.
So if you are a leader reading this, please dust off those values and sit with your people to discuss which behaviours match those values; how well you and the team are doing to achieve those standards, and where the team is falling short. Be willing also, to discuss where YOUR behaviours are not up to standard and be willing to become the champion of the values. This is actually a leader’s responsibility.
Back to the accountants. Because this session was a 2 hour workshop rather than a 45 minute I laid down a challenge. At the beginning of the session I had asked which of these accounting firms actually HAD values, and which hadn’t. About 50/50!! At the end of my session I challenged the firms who had no articulated values to go back and work on some; and for the businesses that said they had values I laid down the most courageous challenge. I asked them to ask their staff to rate how well or not, the business reflected their values. 0 = abysmal, our values are a joke through to 10 – we are spot on with our values. Lo and behold a few days later one accountant called me and said he had done exactly that – his people gave the values mid ranking which led to a conversation about why that was. They then negotiated a set of behaviours required from each of them (the owner included) which would get them to a 10. How cool.
My session at the conference was called ‘Courage Under Fire’, which all businesses are if you think about it. So because I absolutely believe in the power of one, I shared with attendees one of my favourite quotes, from Dame Anita Roddick (The Body Shop Founder) who changed the face of business in so many ways. She said:
‘If you think one small person can’t make a difference, try going to bed with a mosquito!’
She was the very first business person to recruit staff to a very unusual value. Every person in her organisation had to be willing to spend one day a month working in the community in some form or other. Oh how business leaders laughed at that crazy idea. And then banks followed her lead and now consumers care very much about doing business with people who give back. Check a few of them out here.
If you work for an organisation that has clearly defined values and lives and breathes them, all hail. If you feel your organisation simply plays lip service to their values, before you decide to walk away, try being the ONE that makes a difference. At worst you may decide that’s too hard and you will leave, but at best, and even during the interim, you could be the change maker in your organisation.
Ann Andrews CSP. Author, speaker, profiler, business mentor
Author: Leaders Behaving Badly: What happens when ordinary people show up, stand up and speak up
Author: Lessons in leadership: 50 ways to avoid falling into the ‘Trump’ trap
PS: For Aucklanders the hard copy version of ‘Leaders Behaving Badly’ can be purchased from Poppies Bookstore in Howick