E004: Personal Values

Hey. Welcome back episode four of the world of work podcast, the WoW podcast. The Wow podcast. Hello, James. Hi James. How's your week been? Yeah, my week's been good. I've done a few good things, seen a few good people, worked on a few projects. Have made me happy. I've met some really interesting people, actually, this week in the charitable sector. So, yeah, it's all pretty interesting. Good. How about you? You've been busy. I've done

my usual brilliant talent. I've taken on fast enough. Yeah, too much, and I've also written my first academic essay,

and this was going to be essay that I was not writing until the deadline. And guess what? Yeah, just 11 last night. So yes. So it's been a big week for me, but excited to be talking about these are two of my favorite This is one of my favorite topics, yeah, yeah. So personal values, right? I mean, that's what we're going to be focusing on, yeah, I think it's something that we both really quite connect with. I mean, it's like, I think the fact that we've both chosen to pursue a way of working as we have, and in pursuing our own careers and working independently and working in a field that helps people, I think, brings to life. How value driven we both are in terms of what we're going to do today, we're going to do same as ever. So we'll have a discussion of some definitions for you up front, definitions about our values related. We'll then go into our research, round up a list of a week for you as well, another exciting list of the week, some stories from the coalface and then some final thoughts and checking out.

So should we jump straight into some definitions? Do you want to let's definitions? Great. So we've had a look at some of the basic terminology that'd be really useful for people to understand when they're thinking for the first time about values. Let's

start with basics, values, principles or standards of behavior. I always prefer the second part of the definition, which is one's judgment of what is important in life. Yeah, I think that's how it was described to me as a growing up. I think it's something that resonates with quite a lot of people. Yeah. I think, I think that kind of does what it says. It's, you know, the stuff that you value about the world, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I used to when I was younger. People talk a little bit about personal ideals as well, and that's kind of part of values as well. I think absolutely

self awareness, which we're probably putting in here, because it's so relevant to being able to understand your own values. And so the definition there around conscious knowledge of one's own character and feelings. Yeah, I think you could easily rewrite that as conscious knowledge of one's own values. Yeah, I totally agree. I think, I think actually, the more you start thinking about values, the more you realize how much of your behavior is constructed around them. It really is. And when we spoke about

emotional intelligence, we talked a little bit about knowing how you respond under different emotions. And I think that's all part of that's all part of self awareness. So you know your values. You know how you respond in different situations, if your values are triggered, and certainly from my perspective in the work that I do, it's probably my favorite bit, is when people start to uncover their values and really challenge whether things they've long held as thought, what they thought their values were, right from young youth something, it turns out, actually, yeah, maybe if they still held true, yeah. And that's when you really feel that you can help people to some extent and make a difference and support people when they go through that sort of enlightened light bulb type, I refer to them as aha moments, yeah, light bulb moments as well, yeah. The moments, the moments that someone sits there and goes, Yeah, and you can actually see it right? If you're doing something for a room, you don't even need to be speaking to the individual. You'll just see somebody just have that moment where their brain says, Oh, this is a big thing, exactly. So these two terms I'm not so familiar with, they're new to me, which is really nice. So one is terminal values, the idea that these are goals that we work towards and are viewed as most desirable. They are desirable states of existence. Yeah, they are the goals that we would like to achieve during our lifetime. Yeah, which sounds incredibly grand, but makes total sense. Yeah, it's a destination type goal, right? Yeah. And I think they the idea of terminal values makes a lot of sense when we look at the next definition as well, which is instrumental values. So instrumental values talk about our preferred methods of behavior, and they're the sort of means to the end. So the terminal values are, where do we want to be? You know, what are the things that we think would fulfill us? Should we get to where we want?

To be. And these are things like, you know, peace in the world and quality, yeah, yeah. And the instrumental, or, how do we want to get there? Yeah? And it might be through, you know, being kind or being focused, or different behavioral things, yeah. And I think it's a really helpful distinction, that distinction between

what's the equilibrium, or the place you're trying to be, versus how you're going to get there. And then career values, which actually is quite often refer to as work values, and they are the subset of your beliefs that are related to your occupation and job. And I,

yeah, I'll come to it, but I question that distinction well. So for me, one of the reasons that there's some there's a bit of a distinction for your career values is that your values are ideal and they're things that you want to aspire to, but sometimes in relation to work, they're pragmatic. Other things that get involved as well. So for me, some things that fit into things like career values are

driven via your other values, but it's things like, well, what are the career opportunities for my partner, right? So, so that affects my career decision, and it means that it might limit the things that, if I just followed my own values and my career would would be things I perceived, yeah, so I and it's interesting, isn't it, because I don't,

for me, I think those are probably all linked. Yeah? Dig down. They were linked to you probably have values around family, around work, life balance, or about creating a harmonious Yeah. And so yeah, I agree. It's not that. It's not that I disagree with distinction. It's that I suspect they're all linked. Yeah. And I agree that underlying all of it is your values. I think that the idea of career values is useful because it gives people something that's maybe a bit more accessible or usable in the immediate term. Careers. Yeah, no, that makes, that makes really good sense. Certainly, when I do values workshops, sometimes it feels really heavy. Yeah, we've never talked about this stuff. Yeah, really intrusive. Yeah, to manage it quite carefully, you're lifting up a lot of rocks. That is not a phrase I've heard before in terms of that, and it is really accurate. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. Okay, so talking about career values, two distinctions here, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic, the actual tasks involved in a practicing your occupation or doing a job. So things like helping others, doing challenging work, being a great leader, yeah, sort of day to day. What are you actually doing when you're at your desk or that kind of stuff? Yeah? And extrinsic values, concerned with the byproducts of an occupational job, which is an interesting phrase,

it's the stuff that you get out of your work. It's the stuff that, as I tend to put it, floats your boat,

but things like high earnings recognition and job security, yeah, and it always scares me how little

people understand extrinsic values of their teams. Always surprise me. They assume that what motivates them, absolutely, absolutely, and that's like the next step of self awareness, isn't it? You know what motivates you, but you better understand that you're not the same as everybody else. It's a really extraordinary thing, I find. Yeah, so personal values are unique. That's, that's a lot of what's important of them. This is, this is your set of values, and everyone will have slightly different values, and you can't enforce your values on someone else. It just won't work like that. You can make, you can set up a policy process that makes people comply with your values, if you're in charge, but no one, no one can take on your values and work like that, yeah,

unless we get into talking about things like really serious influence and politics and behavioral change and then, then I

started values, yeah. Do you think? Do you believe they change over your lifetime? I think that they do change over your lifetime. I think they change as a result of the experiences that you have, but they also change as a result of the situations that you're in. So I guess really, it feels to me like I've just said that your terminal values change because of where you are, and your instrumental values change because of what you've been through. So I think they both changed. It's really interesting. I've read some research recently. I've read some research recently, some early researchers, yes, they didn't, and then there's this been flurry of much more accurate research, I think, which is, of course, they change when you become a parent, I was gonna say, key life moments, right? The world shifts forever when you have someone who's unwell in your life, when you are and I think you're right other. The other side of it is if you go through a particularly poorly managed restructure, for example, sometimes it will bring to light things that you feel have fundamentally changed the way you do the world. Yeah, yeah. And another example of that type of thing is if you maybe have a role model who ends up not being who you thought they were, and you based your behaviors on them, you might think, well, you know, maybe that value that I adhere to isn't going to help me become who I want to be. So I once had a person who crafted their entire values and managed to figure out exactly what they were by looking at things they hate about other people, yeah, which I was like, okay, that's one way of doing it. And. But that was just the way they thought about the world. Yeah, so personal values are

really key, I think, and clearly we're both fairly passionate about it. Should we jump into some research around it? Let's have a research round up. James alrighty, time for some research round up. So first thing to check out here, when I was looking into this is that it's, in some ways, it's hard to separate personal values from a lot of the other areas that I think we'll cover at different points in time. So you know, things like motivation comes in a lot when you think about values, because a lot of values drive people's motivations. Things like personality theories, if you look at your Myers, Briggs type stuff, a lot of that's about trying to, you know, put a lens on personal values and behaviors and things like that. So there's a lot of crossover. So it's just worth being aware of that. The other thing that I wanted to touch on, that I think you've seen in the past is

this idea of a personality ethic and character ethic, and it's sort of tangentially linked to this, so I think it's worth touching on. And if anyone's read Stephen COVID work or seen him speak a bit, he touches on this. And in a nutshell, what he says is that if you look at leadership theory and leadership development, writing, but for about the first 150, years of industry, really, so running up until about 1920 a lot of the focus was on how people could be better at what he calls the character ethic, which is a bit below the iceberg in terms of what's visible so what's Really inside you. So how do you understand and develop and improve and get clarity over things like your sense of integrity, your fidelity, courage, compassion, contribution, responsibility, justice and things like that, and that's what a lot of development focus was on. And then from about 1920

a new stream of management and development work came out, which he calls the personality ethic. And this is about focusing on the stuff that is the upper part of the iceberg, if you will, of a bit but the rest of the world sees.

So this is about changing the way that you present yourself, as opposed to changing what is underlying that you that you are to present as a person. So by focusing on how you present to the world,

you can have some sort of shortcuts in relation to your development, and make it appear that you're developed. So in here, we've got things like how you dress as part of your personality, the language that you use, how you present, the types of things you say to others, some of your behaviors. And I just think that distinction between personality and character is really important. And for me, the work that we do on values and trying to help people understand and work in a way that's aligned to their values really fits with that character ethic piece. And I think that's really important. I think

it really frustrates me, actually, when I look at leadership work and it is focused on the stuff that you would define and COVID design for personality, because my belief is that pretty much anyone can help you take your existing character and translate it to be meaningful, absolutely. But if you haven't got the underlying tools to understand who you are and what you're trying to achieve, and actually be a little bit self critical about are these the right thing. You might not like what you see, but you've got to work with then all you're effectively doing is helping someone sell something that's not true Absolutely, and that, I guess you know, not to sound meta, but that then frustrates my values. Yeah. Why would you do that? You know? Yeah, but I agree. I agree. It's just, it's just a better spend. It's a better spend of your time looking at your own. It's a real investment, isn't it?

And we'll touch on it a bit later. But I think if you focus on your core values, it's, it's cheesy, but you know being true to yourself means that you're not, you're not being something, but you're not It's life's just simpler if you don't have to carry the baggage of creating a personality that's not real. Well, I would I mean, we were talking about this earlier, but I would argue that's where I've seen mental health issues crop out totally. You are pretending, and it is, I mean, ultimately, what you're talking about is presenting a character that is not fundamental.

At some point when you're under periods of stress, it's going to manifest yourself in different ways. And I would argue that politicians, it happens to quite a lot, because they're forced to be held to this really unrealistic concept expectation this person is, I mean, you know, you only have to look at trees made field of weak comments to look at what the expectations the world are. At some point that toll is going to involve something pretty large, yeah, even just the mental energy of trying to remember who you're meant to be, must sap your mental faculties so you can't be as good at what you rather they were working on running the country. Yeah? Then yeah, and adopting a power stance,

right? So the third thing that I want to touch on, in terms of research Roundup, is a guy.

Of Milton Rakesh, Rakesh, R, O, K, E, A, C, H, rock each I don't I'm not sure. Anyway, the late 60s, he did a lot of work on personal values, and it's his work that defined the terminal and instrumental values that we talked about in the introduction. And some other people have tried to look through and maybe restructure them, regroup and come up with other things, but they've not really been successful. And all I wanted to do here was just run through his list of terminal values and his list of instrumental values so you can see the types of things that are here. So terminal values, again, this is the end state that we aspire to. You can see if any of these are things that press a button for you that you relate to. And there's actually an activity that you can do in relation to trying to order these and prioritize them for yourself to discover your own values. Anyway, the terminal values that he uses in his exercises are as follows, a world at peace, free of war and conflict, family security, taking care of loved ones, freedom, independence and choice, equality, brotherhood, equal opportunity for all, self respect, self esteem, happiness, being connectedness as a contentedness, wisdom, a mature understanding of life, national security, so but protection from attack, salvation, which is about A saved eternal life, true friendship, which is close companionship, a sense of accomplishment, a lasting contribution, inner harmony, which is freedom from inner conflict, a comfortable life, a prosperous life, mature love, sexual and spiritual intimacy, a world of beauty, so beauty of nature, in the arts, pleasure, an enjoyable, leisurely life. I like leisurely made me smile,

social recognition, so respect and admiration, and then an exciting life, a stimulating, active life. So those are, you know, 18 terminal values that he believes most people can allocate their, you know, their ideal world into bundle self,

instrumental values. I'll run through these for you as well. That's another 18. So again, this is the journey. On your journey, what are the things that you believe are valuable ways of doing things or things you want to adhere to? So we start ambitious, being hard working and aspiring, broad minded, being open minded, capable, being competent and effective, cheerful, being light hearted and joyful, clean, being neat and tidy, courageous, standing up for your beliefs, forgiving, willing to pardon others, helpful, working for the welfare of others. Honest, sincere and truthful, imaginative, being daring and creative, independent, being self reliant and self sufficient, intellectual, being intelligent and reflectively, like the way I stumbled trying to read intellectual. It's

funny, isn't it, logical, being consistent and rational, loving, affectionate and tender, obedient, dutiful and respectful, polite, courteous and well mannered, responsible, dependable and reliable and self controlled, being restrained and self disciplined.

Yeah? So that is 36 different words for you. So somewhere along, I stopped listening and started trying to work out what, yeah, and interestingly, the first person I thought about was my dad, and I was, I wonder what dad would do. Yeah,

I don't know why. I just maybe he'd mentioned you through the processor. Well, I'm pretty sure not, but

yeah, I think I really like the way he's constructed those lists, and I really like the things they cover. And I think, in a world and it's not to get all deep, but in a world where we are increasingly

going to a place of trying to find people who think like us and be very angry about people who don't think like that, think like us, I think, and I think the reason I mentioned politics earlier is because I always think values comes up when we were going through the referendum for Brexit, for example, my family was quite divided. It boiled down to a completely different

opinion about terminal values. It is, yeah, politics is about terminal values, don't I couldn't get my head around why. So I get why my brothers disagreed. One of my brothers disagreed with me. I got it, yeah, but no one else in the family could, and that's what frustrated me. Yeah, I was angry with him for disagreeing with me, but I was far more angry at the rest of the family for not giving him his rights, yeah, to feel differently about things, and that's self awareness and emotional intelligence. I mean, thank you. But it is also

that thing. Well, it's not that much, it's not that much. It's not that much of those intelligence because I couldn't figure out how to get them to, you know, but you could see it. I mean, you could see it's not good at teaching that. And I think, I think that's why I get really heavy and about this stuff, and that's why I put it in every program that I do. So everything I do in my work, if I feel the the group of people at the end of.

That I'm working with doesn't fully understand their own values. I will always do this piece of work with them. Yeah? And I'll tell you what the number of them that go home and do it with their partner, of course? Yeah. I've got a game for you, yeah. Let's look into your soul. I have to, I have to always, always do this exercise with a warning, health warning sign at the bottom that says, Do not come back to me, having done it with your partner and discovered that you've got different values, and ask me what it is. Yeah.

Cool. So those are the values anyway. You can, we'll put them up on the web. You can, you can look at them, or you can find them somewhere else. And there are different activities that you can go through. But essentially, what you do is you try and order them and see which ones come out on top, and then the ones that are at the top of your main I use and have a little bit of a reflection on them. Yeah. Most importantly, when things irk you with other personal relationships, or when you disagree with people, yeah, have a little thing back and go, is this? Is this? Because, actually, deep down, we have different beliefs, yeah? And it's the world's full of different people, yeah, but being aware of it, other people have different beliefs. And let's face it, if we were all only obsessed with happiness, that would be a good thing. I don't know, but certainly it would be. It would be in a different world from Momba, yeah, I kind of like the uncomfortable life as a terminal value. That just seems nice, right? Just, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I think that one is,

I think in, certainly in this country, over the last couple of decades, I feel like you'd have to apologize if that's what you want. Yeah, no, we were increasingly striving in terms of values that we put out as admirable values. I believe, you know, my parents generation, that was exactly what it was that was the aspiration, was to create a family life that was comfortable and not literally, quite literally, not uncomfortable. Yeah, yeah.

All right. So we talked about the importance of living as your values. What do you think some times might be, or instances might be where you find it hard to live as your values? What are some situations you might be put in where that happens, and what do you think the impacts are on you? That's such a big question. So the things I've seen and things I've experienced

where people really struggle is where an organ Well, one of the most obvious is where organization values clash with your personal values. So if your organizer, if your organization, is passionate about being

the hardest working in the industry, and actually you, as a manager, your value is at its heart. Work life balance for your team, you're going to struggle, yeah, and I think, I

think that's where I've seen clashes for people and in a, I mean, not sound familiar, but somewhat in a turmoil, because they've taken this job, particularly where organizations change, and they're going through change themselves, and they're learning and they're getting excited about it. I think that's challenging. What about you? I think that's that's one when you were talking about that, something that popped into my mind was something that's a bit difficult, I think, in organizations, is when the values that you espouse aren't the values that you actually embody in your organization. I think that causes confusion. It's a slightly different point. But I think you see a lot of organizations where they say, you know, we empower people, we challenge stuff, and we work well together, or whatever derivation of those you tend to see, but in reality, that's not what's valued at all. So that's really interesting. So two things on that. One is, I was with someone the other day who said, I wouldn't mind if teamwork wasn't their value, but it is, and they're not doing it. Yeah. They were like, don't, don't have the value. Yes, you really mean it. And then the other thing that I just I

thought was really, really interesting was we were talking about values and corporate values, and this particular organization

had gone very well meaningly So far down the road of one value. And in this way, it was entrepreneurship. They're encouraging their staff to take autonomy over their work and go off and try stuff, which is a lovely, nice value. The problem is, soon as someone writes that value down and someone gets put in a job to help that happen. Yeah, it got a bit over the top. And actually what happened is a lot of their early career staff were really feeling cut adrift by them from their managers. Yes, because their managers were sitting there going, No, I have to let them be entrepreneurial. Please help me. I'm terrified here. You're empowered to make all the mistakes you can. And I think, I think for me, that was,

that was where values can be really good, but it was actually, you know, causing some some challenges. I think the other question you asked is, How do you know if it's, what are the signs you're looking for? Yeah, you might see that. I think mental health is an obvious one, feeling under under extreme stress, and you can't put your finger on it, yeah? And I think it's a massive one. I think you you mentioned earlier, and I think it's really interesting, you have trouble making decisions, yeah, I think that's so true. I haven't thought about that, yeah, but your compass isn't really working. You don't well, it is, but it's got two poles. Yeah, that's, yeah, exactly.

Because that's a great, great way. Well, it's a brilliant metaphor that you've used, because it is, it's literally being dragged in multiple directions. And I think, I think the most, the most common time I see that is where someone has a really clear understanding of their own value, about family, yeah? What? Life Balance. And they also are deeply loyal, and they're hard working, yeah? And they are really struggling because they know the organization might be going through a tough time, and it's not forever, yeah, but they also know that this, this, I'm using my hand, which is no help.

Bit on the other side is that they have a responsibility outside of that, outside of that work. And I Yeah, it's a really hard one to navigate, because there isn't a right answer for it. So I want to just really quickly jump into a very slight side topic, which is about something by a guy called David McClelland. He talks about an acquired needs theory of motivation, and we will do something more about it later on. But he fundamentally says that people have three underlying sort of needs. They've got a need for achievement, a need for power, or a need for what he calls affiliation, which is kind of being part of a group and all that kind of stuff. And I think that's another good way to think about values. And when you talk about times when you're

when you're in a position where you can't really live with your values, or your feel you're not, I think those three

natural needs are a good way to think about that. So if you have a need for affiliation as a leader, for example, if that's one of your underlying values, but you're in a position where you need to take actions that aren't necessarily beneficial for your people, that puts you in a really conflicted place. So particularly if you're leading change, leading restructuring, then people with high affiliation needs. Will find that very difficult from a values perspective, and that leads to terminal and it's funny, use that example, because I've seen exactly that. I've worked with a CEO who's a fabulous man, but he believes in immersing himself in his team, and that's how he does. He believes, if he drives culture, everything else is fine. Yeah, the problem is, when restructuring some force on you for other reasons, yeah, you've got to make and also, he was very much the belief it has to be on him. He can involve other people in the decision, on the way, but it has to be of his responsibility. And I think, I think that was tough. His board, though, came to his rescue, which is rare, but true. Yeah, it's good, and it's good that he had good people to help him. So if you're not living by your values, it can be hard. You know, decision making can be a bit hard. You kind of feel a bit empty, or you feel like you're doing stuff and it's not giving you the payoff that you want. And I will flip that though, yeah, okay, in the sense that if you are struggling at work and you're not sure, and someone says to you, go do this values exercise and see if you can figure it out, the relief that you sometimes see in people when they realize they're not doing anything wrong. It's not they've suddenly become bad at their job. It's not something that they can't manage stress and they can't manage difficult situations. It's actually something very basic and very cool, yeah, yeah, the relief they got, oh, I get it now. And there's such a sense of, okay, I can manage this. I actually understand what's going on here. Yeah, I had an interesting chat to some people who, you know, deliver leadership training. And what they actually said is that for some of their training or coaching, or, you know, whatever makes you want to, want to talk about, they actually sort of slightly disclose to the organizations that they deliver for that I expect some of their people to leave as a result of going through these types of exercises. And the numbers aren't high, but sometimes people will look at low values and really get close and to themselves and thought about self awareness and decide it's time for another career. Well, it's interesting. You should mention that because I was in a conversation with someone the other day, and we were talking about what happens when you're doing that, and then someone comes back to you for advice as part of a coaching program, yeah? And they're looking for advice, leave them. And I think that's why it's a really important conversation, if you do this kind of work, to have it up front, yes, yeah. Is this what you're looking for? Yeah? And you're actually looking for people to move on where they're ready, yeah, exactly. It's part of your contracting process with an organization. Yeah. Okay, so that's personal values, career values. Have a little mini Look at that. So I just thought it was worth saying something quickly. Something quickly here we said earlier, we think career values are maybe a little bit more accessible. So if somebody you know, if you're mentoring, somebody, coaching somebody, have a direct report or yourself looking at what you want to do with your career, it's worth thinking about those intrinsic and extrinsic definitions that we talked about earlier. There's a lot of overlap between your career values and your and your sort of underlying personal values. And there's some exercises that you can do, and we'll probably touch on them a little bit more later, but essentially, a lot of the exercises are something like, here's a list of 50 values. Figure out which ones are most valuable for you and which ones you don't care about, and which ones you tolerate, and that helps you prioritize. And that is things like, you know, as I said earlier, can my partner have a nice career where I am How much do I need to contribute? Will I earn enough? Do I get good work life balance? Do I get to solve good problems? Do I work for an organization I can be proud of? Can I make a difference to society? Will I be rich? Whatever? There's all this. There.

As you go through, you prioritize them. And that's a fairly simple I think we should definitely do an episode on that at some point. Yeah, we can do that. The other one that I like is Edgar Schein, who I think we've talked about a little bit before, he talks about career anchors. And really these career anchors is, it's another exercise. There's a questionnaire you go through and that tells you the types of things that you find you'll always go back to in your career. So it's just another way to think about the things but that are important to you. And we'll do an exercise on, sorry, an episode on on those at some point as well. Well, we love Edgar. I think we can start, yeah, I know he's I'm gonna get a poster. I'm gonna get an Edgar poster. I have. So there's a guy, guy does a lot of writing. I think his name is Gareth Hall. Okay, around

careers, I, I am definitely developing an academic crush on him. That's funny. I think he's like, think he might even be around, yeah,

I still, I have a thing for his writing. Yeah, cool. Okay, so I think that is our research round up, taken care of. Do you want to, do you want to say a little bit about our list of the week? Sure. So the way we've approached the list of the week this week is to give you five steps to find your values. Yeah? And I think the it's really interesting that we both thought of this as the way to use we do like our prep independently. Just so you guys know, yeah, we come together and see what happens. And we both do a very similar exercise, and we were both like, let's just use it for that. Because just just to say, I probably do this exercise x, this exercise myself every couple of years, yeah, I touch base with it. And sometimes I'll look at my old list, and sometimes I won't, and I find it really, really useful, because I find it

it helps me just figure out if I'm shifting and what's going on and how validates it really validates baselines, affirms whatever. So we've broken it down to a five step process, and what I would say as well is that if you do it yourself, and you're confident and competent. It's a really, really great team learning experience. It is. It can make people a little bit uncomfortable. Yeah, you need to know your team. No team. You need to know that it's you might want to get facilitator into it, yeah, you need to make it very fun and informal and not remember that. You know, there is no wrong to it, yeah, but it is. It's a lovely way to build a team. It is. It is talk about getting to know people. It's the look on people's faces when they start reading them out and they're like, these are nothing like anybody else's. Yeah. So on five, five steps towards this process I'm gonna start us off. So the first step is positive exploration, and that's putting your positive hat on and looking back at the times when you've been at your best, the things that you're most proud of, compliments that you've received and that have meant something, and that's really important. And looking at the people you hold as role models if you're really struggling, really great piece of advice was look back at personal development plans and see what tips are, what people have said about you that's been positive. Look back at emails we've had thank yous, yeah, because that's a really flip through, and we know what about this? I met someone the other day who keeps a little email folder of all the positives they get, not because of this. And I was just like, What lovely things well I did when I left my last organization. This is totally cheesy, but I think it was kind of helpful. I asked a lot of the people that I good relationships and that I cared about, and, you know, whatever, while I was there, to write me a sort of, like a little, even note, a positive message for me about some of the things that they thought my future might hold, but based on things they knew about me. So I actually got them all, and they're all on, like little business card type size things. And so I got a little picture of people, and then a little nice message. And I put them all up over my office. So if I get a bit uncertain of myself, which happens sometimes, I can go and do that, have a little read through. It's my little. It's my little, it's my cheerleading section. Oh, I love that. So that was a little, okay, so definitely, that's another thing we should talk about. How you celebrate success, yeah. So step one, what you're looking for, it's called positive exploration. What you're looking for is where you've been at your best and you've felt really good about it,

and where other people that you admire have been at their best, and why you admire them actually, role models helps quite a lot. The second step is negative exploration,

which is where maybe you haven't been at your best, where you're really disappointed you've fallen short, where you've had negative feedback. And again, that's like, negative feedback you care about. Like, sometimes I get negative feedback. We all know

that, and it's, I think one of the phrases you use is times you've let yourself down, yeah. And I think that's a really disappointed in yourself. And I think the important question is not, what did you do for this exercise? The important question is, why did you feel that way? Yeah, what is it about what you did? Because chances are what you've done is you've accidentally let yourself down and. Of your values, yeah, you have

and then the third step for a hand over to James is what we're referring to, is known exploration, so spending a few minutes looking back over your life journey, your friends, your family, maybe the community you live in, and where you want to end up in life, and what you think a good future outcome would be, and who you'd like to be as a person. And it's a really big question, thinking about how those thoughts make you feel, yeah, and thinking about painting a picture. And quite often I talk about painting pictures, what does that life look like, and who are you at your best? Yeah, yeah. So like another kind of exercise or on some other stuff is, you know, you write your own epitaph, or that kind of stuff. So, okay, so for years, yeah, I used to turn, I used to have a turn of phrase. I never used this in training, okay, okay. But with the what I want on my Greystone, yeah, yeah, totally. And so for one of them, was, was always she made us laugh so hard we had to leave the room, great. And I was like, That, is it my success. That's perfect page. And it really helped me understand that something I like is that I make people laugh. Yeah, to me, I felt guilty back so long. Felt like that was not like a proper value. And then I was like, Oh, of course it is so. So just going back over the first three which is very much an internal exercise, which is and a reflective exercise, positive exploration, negative exploration, and then known exploration. And then James, do you want to take? Yeah, yeah. So when we do this exercise, I tend to find, well, I'd be curious on your number. I tend to find sort of like people find maybe 20 to 40 values, but they've come up with, what's your sort of view I'd find for whatever number I give them, they come up with 10 more. That is absolutely okay, not scientific, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened. Yeah, and I tend to not specify numbers. I just kind of let them go. I always give a number, yeah, no matter how much to change it, yeah, it always comes out. I would like negative five, please, and number five anyway. So I find people tend to come up with about 20 to 40 values by by going through this, and that's great. And you know, our sense of selves are as complex, and we've got to rent values, but we want to be fairly clear, and we want to condense it down. So I usually try and get people to condense their total list down to, you know, three to six core values and and sometimes I'd maybe refer to these as ordinal values, you know, whatever things. But you kind of steer yourself by and I think trying to get down to that, that number is good. There are a couple of different ways to do that. One of the things we use in facilitation a lot, I think it's actually called something like associative mapping or something but thematic analysis, yeah, basically you put stuff in a group and give it a name, right? I mean, that's what it is. You move all your little all your little post its or whatever you have together. So for this exercise, what we tend to get people to do is to say, Okay, well, well, you've got your values, look through them and try and cluster them into things that you think are associated. So if you've got working collaboratively and building great relationships. Maybe separate values, maybe go into a bundle, and maybe you'll find some others and go through and group everything until you've got, you know, four or five, six groups, and then review what's in that group and give that group a name. So you might find that you've got building great relationships, collaborating, you know, making people happy, helping others. And you might group all of those together and give that an overall name, like, you know, effectively working with others or making people happy or whatever. But the point is, you come up with a name, name for that one. And if you do that for all your groups, you'll end up with,

you know, targeting, sort of 3456, core values. And then you need to make sure that you're happy with them and prioritize them a little bit. Another way that sometimes people do this when they've got a big list of values is instead of grouping them, they might just try and go straight to prioritizing them. And that's a bit of a harder exercise. And you can do that by discarding your bottom five and then starting again discard another bottom five. Or there's another exercise, but I find really useful when I'm looking at sort of complex things, but I'm trying to trying to prioritize, and that's a paired comparison. The

way I refer to it when I'm talking to people is boxy, gritty thing. No, no, we talk about it. If you've watched the voice, it's the battle. Oh, right, okay, yeah, I've never seen voice,

but I can imagine totally put the two values up in your head. Someone comes to for your advice, and think about what sort of advice you would give them. For example, you know, maybe they've got, they're not very well, and they don't want to share it with their family, but they're thinking about, you know, and you're trying to figure out difference in honesty and loyalty, yeah, yeah, honesty and truth or integrity, kindness or whatever. And it's always a really, we talk about the battle, yeah, battle to out, and who's, yeah, exactly that, exactly that, Battle Royale, if you've got 20 to 40 of them, um, yeah, that would be my one caveat. If you've got 20 to 40, stick to the thematic stuff. Yeah. So that's grouping and condensing. Is activity number.

For and then the last activity in our list of a week is around reviewing and reflecting. So now that you've got your core values, or you think you've got them, you really need to step back and reflect on them, and that'll help you both ensure that they're right for you. It'll help develop your self awareness, and it'll make it a bit easier for you to communicate and explain them to other people as well, which is helpful. So when you have your values, it's worth looking at each of them and saying, you know, what emotion does this value make me feel if I think about loyalty, what kind of emotional response do I get? How might I describe what loyalty means to me?

Questions like, you know, what action could I take that would demonstrate loyalty. You know, what are behaviors that embody that? And also, who can you think of? Are there role models out there that you think are representative of the values that you've got? So that bit of reflection helps you, as

I said, develop your self awareness, but gives you the language to communicate with others and gets you comfortable with expressing yourself in this way, which is sometimes, sometimes helpful, particularly if you're doing things like giving feedback or having developmental conversations. Yeah, I am. I tend to get this exercise done on index cards, yeah, right at the top, right the definition underneath right role model, and then flip it over and write things that people can accidentally do to really, oh yeah, frustrate them. Yeah? Things that just needle you, right, yeah, things that needle you. And you know probably you're reacting around somebody turns up two minutes late. Wow. So whatever conversation things that you probably need to manage your behavior around, because, you know it frustrates you, but you also know someone isn't doing it, yeah, deliberately depressing, yeah. Like, punctuation is probably a really great example, to some extent, of some people's values. You know, the errant apostrophe for some people is a red rag, and it's, you know, that sets values.

So I think, having reviewed all those, for me, the last, last thing to do is a little bit of a sense check is around. Do you feel that you're living with values? And if you're not what needs to change, and maybe you want to speak to a mentor about it. Maybe you want to do some reflection, whatever as ever, taking some action is helpful. But I think trying to step back and do that is good. So that's the list of a week. So it's the five steps that you can undertake individually or maybe as a bit of a team exercise to uncover your values. So step one, positive exploration. Step two, negative exploration. Step three, known exploration. Step four, grouping and condensing, and then step five, reviewing and reflecting. So there we go. That's list of a week taking bias. It's like my favorite, yeah, it's fun to do a list, but some exercise, I think we can do a bit more of that in where appropriate, and gives people some tools to use. Excellent So where are we now? We are on to stories from a coalface brackets keyboard, that's what I read in my notes, coalface brackets keyboard, I think we're making it a bit more contemporary possibly contemporary, possibly also, I was feeling a bit guilty, like our work is so tough, we're down fine, but so I was going to start with

an experience that I had around values, where it was quite it was personal. Actually. This is not about working with other people. This was about me and how I was quite early in my career. And I've always been into this kind of area of personal development, this whole values thing, partially because when I was younger, I was I was really struggling with finding direction and stuff, and I felt a bit out of step with some, some of my peer group, yeah. And so I was working for this organization that I loved, and I loved this organization, it was I was so passionate about, yeah, and I love the people who work there, and they were going through restructure, and

the process wasn't right. It wasn't wrong, but it wasn't right, yeah, and I felt really strongly that my team were, were they weren't being treated unfairly.

They were being treated without respect. Yeah. And so one of my absolute, my values, and it is so hard wired, is standing up for people who are less, less kind of equality, or whatever it is. It's about, it's about using your power, yeah, effectively, and

and I, and also about demonstrating that to them. Yeah is really important, I think. And I called HR out in front of them, and it wasn't pretty, yeah. And they also brilliant, God love HR, the girl who was working there was a lovely lady, totally misunderstood, and thought she was like, you know, you're not part of the restructure. And I was like, Yes, I do, yeah, but I'm still standing up for these other people, because they need someone to speak up, and they're clearly too fine too, yeah.

And for me, the piece of the values that was so important was I had about two minutes to make that decision, and in that.

Two Minutes, my thought process was what matters most in my life, yeah, the job, this organization, in this course that I feel incredibly passionate about, yeah, or my responsibility to these group of people. And it was, and as soon as that process had gone through, it didn't even take me to something, maybe 10 seconds to know that what I was going to do. And it was, it's not that it wasn't. It was hard to find that it was the right thing to do. The bit that mattered was very quickly I could shortcut through, what's the impact on me? Don't matter, yeah. Don't matter in this situation, yeah. And so I kind of increasingly like the phrase we used earlier, which was ordinal values, you know, you know. And that's, that's an ordinal value for you. I mean, it just drives the direction that you go in. And I think that's that's a really good example

in terms of, I guess, stories from me, from the from a keyboard, or COVID face, I've got a couple of a similar bunch of years when you're saying that, something that popped into my mind was,

I've managed people who've been through mental health related issues. And when that starts in large organizations, there is quite often a process that kicks off right? So if somebody initiates a stress related absence, and you need to undertake a series of processes as somebody who's leaving or managing people in that instance, and in one of the one of the times when this happens happened, I actually didn't do it right, because one of the first steps, or an early step, is around arranging,

arranging an occupational health visit, and doing all that kind of stuff. And I, for me, I didn't think that was the right thing for a person. I thought that by doing that at that time, I would make things worse, right? So for me, there I was in a conflict of values between my desire to do the right thing for the person and the desire to do the right thing for the organization and procedurally and comply and all that stuff. So I didn't do it right. And, you know, obviously the conversation was I put myself at risk. I do all that kind of stuff. But for me, it was a similar type of situation, and for me, a person one.

So that's a sort of values based decision in reality that I thought was interesting. Another one, slightly less serious than that, is working for organizations, large organizations, where you work in this sort of HRE type role or development culture, all that stuff. You you find that a lot of people approach you because they want to work where you work. And I've never happened in lots of roles, but I think it happens more in the sort of softer people focus type roles. And I think a lot of people who approach you they don't know what's really involved in the role and the difficulties and complexities and stuff, but they're drawn to it, and the reasons that I think they're drawn to it tend to be values based, and I don't think they necessarily know that, but I think people who value working with others, helping others, and that type of stuff, want to work in that type of so there is a great piece of research I was reading for my academic, yeah, and it's about career changes, the role of calling, so the concept of calling and how it aligns to your values, okay? And so how, and it's and it uses something called job crafting, okay? Job crafting is where you've gone into a job for very practical reasons, but you start to adapt your job to fulfill your motivations and your values perfect. And so, for example, it's people. So for example, there's a great example of a girl who said, I think that's me in our group, and she's an engineer, yeah, who has put her hands up, and they've got cultural issues between their engineers, administration style engineers. Keep getting like, keep losing them. Because no one, no one, is nice to the women in the office, yeah, effectively, the way she described Yeah. And they are women, yeah, and, and she's put her hand up and said, Send me on the the Organizational Psychology masters, and I'll come back and as an engineer, try and help Yeah. And she was like, That's me. That's literally what I've done. I'm changing my role, I'm keeping my engineer hat, but I'm taking on this whole other piece of work as part of that so that I can fulfill this part of me that really thinks that we need to be, we need to be much nicer to each other. And it was in one I was saying earlier, French was aha moment. We all got to see and we were like that. That's what we want to do. I love it when an aha moment slips out, right? It's like a leaky face of our harness. Yeah? So, so I love, and I love that concept of job crafting. If you don't love your job, how can you craft it or change it to fit your values? And can you work with your organization to do that? Yeah, good. Well, there's some stories. There some some lighter ones and some less light ones. Any final thoughts or tips from you, Ron,

my tip, and I'm only giving you a different one to yours, because I know what yours is. But my tip for this week would be to managers, if you are struggling to like someone in your team do this exercise,

or if you are struggling to understand why someone who is very competent behaves in a way that frustrates you do this exercise. I've had several incidents with members.

My team that I haven't talked about today because it's not fair on them, but with various members of my teams that this has fundamentally changed the way we've related to each other, we still they don't. I'm not sure they still ever liked me, but they definitely got me and I got them, yeah, and it just improved our work relationships beyond measure. And it was a one hour, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of lot of payback for the time you get into this one, your return on investment is pretty good. Oh, James,

okay, my top tip on this one is actually go easy on yourself about the whole thing. I think that you can do a values exercise and think, Oh, my God, I need to be all these things.

Or this is for real. Me, I now need to pursue all of that. And I, you know, values change, but, but also, you know, for a lot of people, it's a bit of a luxury. You know, people need to put food on the table. They need to live near their families. They've got caring responsibilities, whatever. There's a whole mix of things that people have in the world that sometimes mean they can't, you know, follow the value of living in the sunshine and not doing much work that they might have discovered in themselves.

So you know, it's good to find your values and to aim towards them, but it's a lifelong journey. So be aware that, you know, pursuing your values can be a bit of a luxury, and if that's the situation you find yourself in. Really don't beat yourself up about it. You know, sometimes everyone needs to do something to get through I would, if like, as I say, that hadn't been yours, it would have been mine. And the one thing I would add on that is use your knowledge of those values to give you comfort if you have to act against them. Yeah. So if you know those are your values, and you're being asked to do something, and you've made the decision that you are going to do it because it fits with what you need to do right now. Remember, it's not who you are. And I actually find that that sometimes helps this idea that you go, this is just one tiny piece of thing that I'm going to do, but it doesn't reflect on, yeah, I'm on a journey somewhere, but I need to, yeah, there's some stuff I have to do on the way, yeah, and speak to people about it, if you need to maybe find a coach or a mentor. Oh,