Why Think about Values?

The values your organisation adopts can be key in helping your employees and clients understand what you stand for. They can provide a common purpose.

Similarly, our own values underpin who we are, what we stand for and how we operate.

Values are beliefs, attitudes and behaviour and will reflect what you / your organisation is about.

The Benefits of Organisational Values

Your values help differentiate you from your competitors. They can make you stand out.

For example The Disney Company promotes the following values to their workers: optimism, innovation, decency, quality, community and storytelling.

This is a very specific combination of values, which represents the brand well.

Communicating Company Values

Sometimes employees aren’t aware of what their company’s values are.

By improving employee communication and pressing home our values at every opportunity as well as “walking the talk” we can help employees understand what we are about.

Are your current values working? Do they reflect the organisation? Maybe it is time to make a change.

Personal Core Values

Think about your core values.

Does the way you interact with your team fit with your own values?

Are your core values reflected in the company culture?

Maybe you enjoy a good work/life balance – but are you enabling the same for your team? Or vice versa?

Are you asking employees to cut corners when integrity is one of your own core values?

Are there contradictions?

Perhaps coaching can assist you in finding what your true core values are.

Attracting Top Talent

Potential employees whose own values match ours are also more likely to want to join our organisation.

Today’s talent may value flexibility, integrity, transparency, collaboration, fairness or keeping promises to customers, for example.

Talking about values when recruiting can help both parties understand whether there is a good values fit.

Innocent Drinks have the following values: natural, entrepreneurial, responsible and generous. This perfectly sums up what they stand for, very simply.

Employee Engagement

Encouraging our employees to think about values when making decisions can ensure they are part of our company DNA.

It takes effort to stay loyal to values and can give an employee self-respect as well as aiding engagement and retention.

When a person’s values and those of the organisation they’re working in are mismatched, this can create disengagement and attrition.

What are Your Values? Where to Start?

Knowing our own values is worthwhile, but many people have never spent time thinking about theirs.

When we think about situations we’ve found difficult, often it’s because one or more of our values have been compromised.

To discover our values, it’s worth thinking back over our experience and the situations we’ve faced to help figure them out.

– Would you prioritise delivering a quality project over meeting a project deadline, for example?

Other people can help us work them out, from their experience of us, too.

Values exercises are often useful in coaching, when an individual has a bigger goal they want to attain like a career change, a life change or overcoming burnout.

If you found this article helpful and want to know more about coaching to help identify your values, then do get in touch.