The Power of Values
All of us want to run faster. All of us want to make more money, be more fulfilled and work with people who we love working with. But, rarely do we get to have this kind of total package in our work environment.
While training for an international company with nearly 600 people I was responsible for, I discovered a supervisor working with me who just could not ratchet down her loud protest of just about everything, every week, every day. I tried to decode her issues and direct her toward a thriving work experience. What I realized was this... she has no set values to manage by. She just got a job to escape her crappy neighborhood and family, "her words".
That was valiant and praise worthy. I honored her for getting out of the rat race of aimless drugs, crime and dysfunction by taking a job and working a job. But, now that she had been there for nearly ten years, her production was ok, but not great, and her attitude was just set in stone, hard, cold, pessimistic stone.
Not everyone has this story but most people I speak with struggle to enjoy their work and really struggle with a way to find peace about how things develop at work. When pay, benefits, team dynamics, a boss, a co worker or even your actual work seem to drag you down, how can you figure things out so that you can stay healthy, strong, thriving, happy and productive?
Values: Values are the personal and professional guardrails that keep you heading in the right direction. Think of a Top Fuel Drag Racing car. They can do a quarter mile in under 6 seconds and exceed 300 miles per hour. They thrive at the highest levels because they are built for one thing, speed. However, the truth is, they cannot reach their potential without the guardrails on each side of the quarter mile strip they race down. They have to see where they are going and have solid boundaries to keep them headed in the right direction.
Values: Values are the guardrails that point us forward and keep us safe. When you determine what your values are, then build filters that you watch and listen with. When those filters sound an alarm telling you a value is out of alignment, pay attention to it.
Once, while coaching a basketball team of high school boys I experienced a breach in the value system I believed in and built into the team. One boy violated the value several times. This was more than a rule. We had shared values that made us unified in essence, not just rules to follow. Once I saw he was doing more than breaking a rule, but in fact, he was breaking the culture of our team by stomping on the values we had set up and practiced. We escalated the problem and brought parents in. We jumped into it hard and let everyone know, this is not going to happen.
Otherwise, the team would have fallen apart and experience a crash at some point, a crash at the fundamental and foundational level. We would have leaked integrity and become an empty shell trying to put unity inside. Values help to sold that problem. If your value is living by truth and transparency, which I think is a good idea, then anything that undermines that set of values should be considered an attack.
If you have personal and professional values, like honesty or open communication, protect them and don't let a co worker, a boss, a team or an organization violate that for the sake of a paycheck. Stand tall and be who you are created to be, with your values and beliefs. This way you make the best contribution to society and become the most productive version of yourself. Making money, having fame, fun and fortune, all take a back seat to honest fulfillment inside the safe boundaries of your set of values.