Values, Behavior and Purpose—
Have you ever walked into work knowing that what you did felt like it had purpose? That what you did mattered?
In today’s workplace, it seems rare when a company truly makes you feel welcomed, appreciated and motivated to do your best work. The companies that do, have something in common—they have core values that act as guiding principles that mean something to everyone in their organization.
We often hear about how a company’s vision and mission is important, but to most people in the organization, it may mean little to how they interact with each other day-to-day. That’s because our work behaviors are dictated and shaped by our own personal set of values. At Makr, we can see this difference when we ask a room full of people what values they believe best define their organization—we typically end up with as many values as there are people. Every person will have a different take on what they think their organization believes in.
How we interact daily with each other is based on our own deeply held guiding principles that are the most important to us about the way we work. It’s our sense of right and wrong and how we make decisions. When we are in a group or organization, the collectiveness of our shared values and actions becomes the organization’s culture.
Corporate values when they are viewed as abstract ideas have little collective influence on the real culture of an organization.
In human resources you may hear a lot of talk about the importance of “hiring for fit.” That to create and maintain a strong corporate culture, you hire new employees that will fit best into the perceived culture. This is where many organizations fail themselves and their employees. When values are abstract, people will lean on biases that can influence their actions and decision making. They may not hire for real “fit” but rather hire based on their own personal views of what the culture should be.
An organization where people feel mattered is one that welcomes and fosters strategic diversity—diversity in thoughts, experiences and expertise—to get results that make individuals feel valued for who they are, yet feel like there is a common purpose to the work. It is an organization where individual differences are nurtured, where the company adds value to the people in the organization, where the organization’s purpose is something meaningful and the work is intrinsically rewarding.
Feeling mattered means you pay people for their worth and you don’t make their lives miserable. This isn’t pie in the sky type thinking. The great resignation only emphasizes the importance of employee engagement. When people feel welcome to express themselves and work in an environment that is flexible to their needs, they are going to stay a lot longer than they would otherwise.
Diversity of Thought, Values and Behaviors.
Values are abstract terms — they are concepts, ideas and notions we may believe in. We can value ideas like, trust, respect, honesty, integrity, loyalty and service. However, since they are abstract terms, they can leave a lot of room for interpretation. You may value respect, but what it means to act in a respectful way can be vastly different from one person to another depending on their background and personal culture in which they grew up. This is why values to people in an organization can seem vague or insufficient, everyone may interpret them differently. Even the best organizations who publish a set of values on their website, or espouse them during an employee onboarding experience, have a hard time living them.
Behaviors, on the other hand, are actions. They are far easier to explain and with more clarity. It is easier to teach, model and coach behavior and to give feedback. Behaviors put values into practice.
When we describe an organization’s culture in terms of the values we believe in, most people will feel good about the concept but it may have little influence on a what they do on a daily. When we describe our culture in terms of the behaviors we want to see taking place each day, it resonates with people in a way that influences their actions rather than grappling with a concept.
When we talk about values in this context, where the abstract becomes actionable, we are really stating a person’s set of guiding principles. Principles are beliefs we stand by—they are how we desire to lead and act. They are not empty words, and they’re not popular jargon. They have meaning, and more importantly, they fulfill a purpose for the person and organization. They are actions that people do or don’t take, in the presence or absence of others. Values only matter when they are defined and understood as a set of behaviors.
If we move past vaguely understood values to guiding principles represented as day-to-day behaviors, we can move beyond hiring for “fit” to actual expectations of how people should work together.
Saying that accountability is a value may not get the point across as well as saying that in this organization, accountability means “if I make a mistake, I admit it and I’m open to becoming better.” Defining what each value does and does not look like leaves no room for misinterpretation.
Guiding principles provide organizations with culture alignment. They can be extremely helpful for work at home and innovative organizations. To start, they provide broad parameters for many self-organizing employees — the lack of which could result in a standstill of momentum and decision making chaos. They also provide a common language for making collective meaning.
We make meaning of what we see and hear to evoke certain emotions, which lead to actions. Therefore, if you want to change behavior, you must change the meaning people assign to the behavior. Your organization’s values serve as a common foundation for the collective conscience, and creates your organization’s active culture.
Think about how your guiding principles can really make a difference to your organization. What principles do you currently operate by and what is missing? Involve your organization to help you with building a strong foundational set.
Remember, that we are looking not for the abstract, but for actions. Take each principle and write down the natural set of behaviors and describe them.
If the principle is honesty, some behaviors might include keeping your word (if you can’t meet a deadline, say something early and say the truth about why), not withholding information, sharing everything a client said about your the work, providing all the details to a client, and only work with vendors who are equally honest in their bids.
To make this most meaningful work, build your principles in small group exercises, look to incorporate your work in behavioral change (fixing the now) and setting up your future. Ensure that top leadership is on board with every principle. Behavioral change only happens when leadership and managers model the behaviors you are describing.
In my practice, we seek to build these principles into new employee on-boarding. So that every new employee understands what’s expect of them and how they should act when they are self-directed. When you build a culture based on these types of guiding principles, ensure that they match up with your organizations mission, purpose and business strategy. Taken together, these values should be ones that move your organization forward and will allow your people to make decisions in the absence of a step-by-step guide.
Knowing that the work you are doing has purpose, means that you have great clarity in the organization’s culture and that you feel comfortable knowing the actions (behaviors) you take are making progress towards a common goal that has meaning to you. When you feel that you matter in an organization it means that within the culture you feel that you can bring your own personal diversity of thought within a set of common expectations. This creates a strong culture a high performers.