Values-Centered Leadership: Walking the Talk

“Organizations have to have values. But so do people. To be effective in
an organization, one’s own values must be compatible with the organization’s
values. They do not need to be the same. But they must be close enough so that they can coexist.” – Peter Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)

“Aligning values, strategies, and management practices may be simple to
understand and simple to talk about, but it is very difficult to actually
implement.” – Charles A. O’Reilly & Jeffrey Pfeffer, Hidden Values (2000)

All organizations have a mission statement and a set of values or guiding
principles. They include such items as Integrity, Customer Service, Quality,
Respect, High Performance, Teamwork, Leadership, and Innovation. Often these words are prominently displayed on plaques, posters, laminated cards, and even screen savers.

But when values are ignored and people don’t live by them, the culture becomes hypocritical. Employees lose respect for the organization’s leaders. It is one more reason people disengage from their work.

When values are put into action, however, people feel energy, enthusiasm, and the drive to go beyond the mediocre. When people connect to company values that resonate with their own personal beliefs, they have even more commitment, higher productivity, and better engagement with customers. The results show up on the bottom line.

Leaders have to take personal responsibility for their organization’s values and for making sure their people share a common set of principles. This is not easy. It is one thing to agree with lofty words and ideals; it is quite another to translate ideals into action. A leader is accountable for ensuring that people not only know the values, but also put them into practice.

How does a leader put values into action? What questions does a leader need to ask himself or herself to clarify what is needed to lead by, with, and through values? Here are six common sense leadership strategies to consider, adapted from the book Leading with Values by Bud Bilanich (2004):

1. Know your values

2. Walk your talk

3. Teach values to your people

4. Remove obstacles to working with values

5. Reward and recognize those who live the values

6. Redirect those who aren’t working with values

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