A few weeks ago, my team had our first in-person offsite. It’s inexplicably wonderful to meet people in three dimensions whom you’ve come to know in two. Some people closely matched the model I had constructed for them in my imagination. Others were surprising, taller or shorter than expected, unique in their profile, or warmer in person than at a distance.
Before coming together, our manager asked us to complete a Values Exercise from the wonderful Brené Brown. The accompanying podcast is helpful. On its face, the exercise sounds simple: review the list of common values on page 3 and circle the ones that resonate with you. Then, narrow the list down to two core values, the qualities you lean on when life gets hard — the source from which all your other values flow.
If you want to know more about the exercise, listen to the podcast or read Brené’s Book, Dare to Lead. I won’t attempt to improve on her explanations. Instead, I want to talk about the impact of this work, both on me personally and on our team.
The act of thinking through your personal values is powerful enough. It causes you to ask hard questions. Why do I do what I do? What drives me? When I’m offended or wounded, when one of my core values is being disregarded? For example, competence, love, integrity, trust, and excellence are all important values to me. But are they core? Which values most deeply influence my decisions and behaviors? Ultimately, I concluded my core values are wisdom and faith. I love books because I deeply desire wisdom. I talk about books because great wisdom demands to be shared.
Most of the other values I hold roll up under faith. This value has been through the wringer in the last few years but even as institutions and people have disappointed me, I cannot escape the centrality of faith to my values and actions. Your values most certainly will be different, and may come from a different place. The power of the exercise stems from understanding your values and how you live them out.
Brené dives into what it means to live into your values followed by the challenges that arise when we live outside of them. We may sense that something is off, feel deflated or tired, lose our motivation, or dread daily activities. Through this exercise I realized pandemic life changed my routines which impacted how I was living into my values. I was no longer dedicating the time to prayer, meditation, and journaling as I once had. The loss of those reflective moments not only affected my connection with my faith, they removed the opportunity for the wisdom of the day to settle and crystallize in my mind.
Up until now, this sounds more like personal self reflection and therapy than a work exercise. What do our values have to do with our day jobs? It’s a good and important question. When we understand and lean into our values we’re more energized in our work. Our boundaries give us built-in guardrails to help us define the work that matters most.
What does this have to do with our work lives?
Knowing our own values does indeed help us navigate our careers. If you value helping, you will likely gravitate toward projects you believe will benefit a large number of people. When you know your values and chose work that supports them, you will be energized and intrinsically motivated. Conversely, if you have the opportunity to work on a project that doesn’t seem to help anyone, you may decline. It’s not a judgement of the project, it’s an expression of your values.
Don’t mistake me here. Our work often includes tasks that are not energizing. Boring work must be done and every tasks will not fulfill our deepest personal goals. However, when we get the chance, we can look for opportunities that fuel us, lean into them, and decline ones that don’t. Over time, we will develop a portfolio of meaningful work which aligns with our values and can become a true expression of ourselves.
How does this help a team
If you’re engaged in any kind of knowledge work, your job requires a degree of creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. Typically, this also requires you work well with a team. The more you know your team’s values, the more you can lean into their strengths and energize them at the same time.
Consider a situation in which one of your team members values curiosity. As you work on a problem, you discover a system that isn’t working as intended. You’ve checked documentation, you’ve run a few tests and the output makes no sense. Instead of solving it alone, you share your observations with your curious coworker. Their eyes light up, their words come quickly, and they rattle off a series of tests that could be run to explore more deeply. Because they’re energized by curiosity, you have a willing ally in solving your problem. You are not burdening your coworker, you’re providing an opportunity for them to express what they most deeply value.
In conclusion
The last few years have been a struggle on a global scale. We’ve all been required to adjust. Some of those adjustments became permanent, others continue to morph and change with our world. It’s entirely possible that, for many of us, our values have shifted as our world has changed around us. As the dust settles, and we work to build a new way forward, defining our values can help shape our decisions and actions. We are all building our lives, our careers, our futures. We all ought to build in the direction we ultimately want to go.
Thank you. Well said and important to be said