Values: What are yours? Why are they there? How do you serve them daily?

It is normal that you may read this thinking that I'm talking about your organization's values. However, my gut feeling is that you know your organization's values not just that, you serve them by all the decisions you make daily. So, no I have no doubt the majority of people are very clear on their organisations values and how to best serve them, importantly knowing when to say no to something is as important as knowing when to go ahead, so that strategies, processes and procedures all synchronize into a common goal & objective.

No I asked this question of yourself and I don't mean yourself in your life outside work, I don't mean your life inside work, neither do I mean yourself when you're walking the dog or the cat (its true I have seen cats on leashes). I mean your life completely what is your value system and how throughout your 24 hours in every day can you serve that value system? Where are the opportunities within your work environment within your family life, within your relationship with friends within your own headspace? Where are all the opportunities and what will you do with those opportunities to best serve your individual value system.

I have lived & worked across Europe practically every country, with colleagues from more than 60 nations, on the shop floor to my colleagues in the boardroom. I have lead teams across every department in an organization, consulted, mentored and coached Entrepreneurs, Managers, Teams and Organisations and across all that experience the most rare skill/talent/awareness has been Conscious Individual Value System.  

From pursuing a framework of education both professional & academic a schedule of practice & supervised coaching practice I have much more capacity to see the context and support the understanding of the content, of translating skills & knowledge, it didn’t happen by chance I have really invested in this. I say translation because I feel the overwhelming majority of interactions I’ve had, I see the skills & knowledge clear and utilized. Importantly though always within the framework that has the organizations’ objectives at the core of all planning, and not translated to an individual value system, so instead of the external serving your inner value system the tail wags the dog, and what you do has the opportunity to fill in the void of the value. That’s when people start to identify with the role as who they are, not a way of demonstrating their values.

So I’ll ask the question again. Values: What are yours? Why are they there? How do you serve them daily?

It's one of those topics that comes up in most coaching sessions and I can understand why. When a client works with a coach, in my experience there is nearly a sense of ‘now is the time to work on this’. Maybe it is because when you partner with a Qualified, Accredited coach you partner with somebody who is objective, who is not invested in your answer but in how that answer goes on to support new awareness for you. Maybe a client entering a coaching relationship strategically gives themselves the opportunity to be challenged without judgment and to be asked the questions that sometimes are too difficult to ask oneself. Ultimately within the space of 60 or 90 minutes there is huge amount of forward movement on obstacles that have been in people's lives for a very very long time so maybe its an efficiency motivation. What is important is not how you pursue increasing your awareness about your values, but because you know through your organizational focused experience, clear and coherent values supported by congruent actions equals a much happier, enjoyable work environment. Imagine that for yourself, the clarity it will bring. The confidence of decision making. So through what means you decide I urge you to translate that amazing organizational experience to develop your Conscious Individual Value System.