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Exploring the values criteria used to make decisions and evaluate actions.
Author Maria Noone
Values are concepts or mental constructs that represent what is important to us. They are the sum of our preferences and priorities. Preferences indicate what we would rather have in our lives than do without, while priorities show how important each preference is in relation to one another. Values serve as personal conditions and benchmarks that help us determine what matters most in our lives. They provide the criteria we use to make decisions and evaluate our actions.
To fully understand our values, it's important to contextualise them within different areas of life, such as work, career, family, relationships, health, fitness, personal growth, religion, and spirituality. We rely on our values every day to distinguish right from wrong and to guide our choices, ensuring that our lives are meaningful and satisfying.
Our values are shaped by our life experiences across various contexts, including education, social and cultural environments, family dynamics, friendships, ethnic backgrounds, community involvement, religion, and political influences. These values guide us internally, helping us determine what aligns with our beliefs and priorities. They serve as a powerful motivator for our actions and behaviour.
Values can be shared within various networks, such as among work colleagues, friends, family, and social or ethnic communities. Additionally, some values may be unique to you. These values can relate to your character—for instance, a desire to manage others—or to your basic survival needs, such as food, shelter, and safety. They may also be influenced by your understanding of your social context, including how your relationships and environment function.
Some values can remain constant throughout our lives, while others may evolve as we gain more life experiences and change our perspectives on the world around us. For instance, the values a teenager holds about physical health may differ significantly when they become elderly. Additionally, we might change our values through reflection, the need to compromise, or in order to align with prevailing values.
Differentiating values from beliefs and attitudes
Beliefs are closely related to values, but they are distinct concepts. Beliefs refer to the convictions, opinions, certainties, or confidence we have about what we consider to be true, regardless of whether there is concrete evidence to support those beliefs. For example, someone may believe that the Earth is flat. Attitudes, on the other hand, reflect how we express our thoughts and feelings; they encompass what we say and do, stemming from the values and beliefs we hold.
Values in organisations
Most organisations establish a set of values that employees are expected to uphold, believe in, and practice. One benefit of this approach is that it creates a common foundation for a diverse group of people to work together and understand the expected behaviours. It aligns everyone on the same page and sets a standard set of principles for all. However, the challenge lies in harmonising the existing diversity and ensuring that employees have an authentic connection to those values. Organisational values can be included in recruitment processes, recognition programmes, feedback systems, patient and community stakeholder engagement, staff development planning, position descriptions, annual reviews, and much more.
Values as leaders
Individuals in leadership positions arrive at their roles for various reasons, and the organisations they work for typically have a defined set of values and behaviours for staff to align with. From the organisation's perspective, these values guide leaders in how they perform their duties. Additionally, leaders possess core personal values that they express through their behaviour. Common leadership values include trust, honesty, direction, delegation, accountability, effective communication, confidence, commitment, a positive attitude, creativity, innovation, and technical expertise.
Values Conflicts
Values conflicts arise when individuals encounter differences in lifestyles, values, and identities. This can include differing religious beliefs, contrasting views on child-rearing, disagreements about acceptable language in the workplace, and conflicting priorities among self, team, community, and family. People might also experience internal value clashes—for example, valuing team support by staying late to cover shifts when understaffed, while also cherishing family time and wanting to be home to meet those commitments. When such conflicts occur between people, it requires a willingness to listen to others' perspectives, an openness to learning, a desire to understand, and, in some cases, a readiness to make compromises. In some cases, effective conflict management or mediation. When a conflict of values occurs within oneself, it requires needing to prioritise choices, impact and outcomes.
Explore your leadership values and behaviours
We will explore your core leadership values, understand their significance to you, and examine how you demonstrate them in your role. Using the process below you will identify your top five core leadership values, their meanings and importance, and the behaviours that arise from them. List these onto a spare piece of paper.
Consider the following from your leadership practice and context:
Reflect on what is central to you in your role as a leader. A time that is memorable and a positive example of your leadership. For example, consider what you do, how you go about your responsibilities, what seems to matter most, interactions with others, key motivations. Write down the keywords on a piece of paper. “What is important to you about your leadership role?” or “What about your leadership role do you value?”
Sort these values into an order of importance. The most important value goes at the top, the next most important value beneath that and so on. “Of the listed values, which are most important to you?”
Establish the criteria of the top five values. Reflect on what is most important about each value, and/or what it means when that value exists. Use one of the following questions or use two if you have more time. “What is most important to you about that value?” or “What does this value mean to you?” or “How do you know when this value is present?” or conversely, “How do you know when this is missing?”
Reflect on the types of behaviours and/or activities you undertake when this value is present. Include behaviours that are useful (or not) – whichever is applicable to your situation. “Write 2-3 behaviours that you do when this value is present in your work.”
For each set of values and behaviours combined, now reflect on the associated beliefs you may hold about those. One belief is sufficient for this exercise, explore more if you have the time. “The underlying belief is…..”
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