Discovering Your Leadership Values
“When your values are clear to you, making decisions becomes easier.” – Roy E. Disney
Leaders: What do you stand for? What do you live by? What are your values?
Having a confident leadership “voice” is your key to being a successful leader. You make decisions based on what you value. From the clients you engage with, to the employees that you hire, your values are reflected in every facet of your leadership style. And your life.
By identifying and living your core values, you lay the foundation for a grounded and confident leadership approach. Your values encompass your passions, talents and strengths. By defining your values, you determine what matters most to you. And you can determine how your values align, (or not), with those of your community and your organization.
By integrating the Emergenetics Profile into my executive coaching practice, I am able to guide leaders into greater insight and awareness of what is important to them in their life, and, thus, how their values impact their leadership brand.
Identifying Your Values Builds a Foundation of Trust
In the past, many discussions that centered on leadership were focused on the leaders themselves: their personality traits, their motivation and how to coach and develop those team members with potential. Recently, this focus has shifted from the personality traits of a leader to their ability to inspire confidence and build a foundation of trust within their team.
As an executive coach, I know that nothing builds trust more than a leader who lives by their values. Not everyone may agree with your beliefs or how you put them into practice, but you will garner trust and respect by leading via a consistent and core set of practices and values.
Your team will have a better appreciation for your decision-making process. They will understand how you make your decisions and how you communicate your thoughts, insights and feedback. Think of the leaders that you have had in your life. Those leaders who lived by an open set of values were consistent in the way that they managed and dealt with people and situations.
Identifying Your Values Develops Your Credibility
Effective leaders that lead according to their values make an effort to open up and be genuine with their team. Sometimes that is easier said than done. By letting your team know who you are and what you value, you can build and evolve that trust and credibility. Share your values with your team. Tell them how your values will impact the decisions you make. Give brief, concrete examples of how your values have guided you in the past, and share your expectations of the team’s performance going forward. Your Emergenetics Profile provides the strong framework in which to communicate what is important to you and to your team.
Once you begin sharing what is important to you, you begin to create an environment of engagement, mutual trust and respect. You do not need to share everything, but by communicating what is significant to you and what you expect of each other, you enable your team to understand your motivation and eliminate mis-interpretations. This is not about building a team based on “friendships”, it is about building a team of mutual trust, respect and credibility.
Identifying Your Values Provides You with Direction
By identifying your values, you establish a framework by which you make decisions. In today’s social and digital marketplace, where so many things compete for your attention, being able to prioritize what is important for you to spend your time on is critical. Discovering your values via your Emergenetics Profile provides you with an inner GPS to make decisions and assess situations, enabling you to effectively prioritize and focus on the issues that matter most. No matter what role you play.
Identifying Your Values Reveals What You Stand For
Self-discovery is an important aspect of effective leadership. A leader without an identified, clear-cut set of values will be directionless and thus, ineffective. Sort of like a rudder-less ship…just drifting at sea. By defining your values, you allow your team members, your clients—and more importantly, you—to know what you stand for. This enables you to lead from a foundation comprised of integrity, consistency and accountability.
While we live in a society that makes it tempting to pretend to be someone you are not, this will prevent you from gaining the trust of your team, your organization and your clients. Your values set you apart from other leaders. Your values are what make you unique. Discover them. Lead with them. Own them.
Finding your VOICE as a leader does not mean shouting to make an impact…it means using the Emergenetics Profile to reveal your brilliance as a leader by:
- Discovering your critical leadership Values
- Creating a compelling vision to obtain the Outcomes you want
- Influencing your relationships with trust and credibility
- Making decisions that reveal your Courage and confidence to take a stand
- Communicating your overall Expression for lasting impact.
“I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.” – Sidney Poitier
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Larsen
Emergenetics Associate
Certified Professional Performance Coach
Finding Your VOICE as a Leader
Connect on LinkedIn and Twitter
As a senior leadership coach and consultant with over 25 years of experience, Paul has a proven and successful track record in building leadership strength within Fortune 100, start-up, high-tech, and non-profit environments. A leadership veteran of such iconic companies as Charles Schwab, Adobe Systems, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, he is now a trusted advisor & coach to many leaders via his innovative coaching programs.
Paul is a frequent conference speaker and workshop facilitator on “Finding your Voice as a Leader” for companies, associations and universities and is also a member of a number of professional societies. His organizational development work has been featured in the latest book, “Consulting on the Inside” by Bev Scott and B. Kim Barnes.
In addition to a B.A. in History from the University of the Pacific and a M.A. in Human Resources Organizational Development from the University of San Francisco, in his spare time, Paul can be found somewhere in the world helping local communities as a project team member with Global Volunteers.
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