Subtitled “A Little Story About the Values That Guide Us”, this is a short parable of a young professional at a career crossroads who discovers his core values through a mentor guiding him through the process. By aligning his work and community with his values, he becomes more energized and impactful.
I’ve heard values as a compass discussed many times, and even recommended them as a guide to manage your time. And yet, for some reason, this story hit home with me as I have been feeling adrift, so this reminder to reconnect with my values was helpful.
I also liked the simple reflection exercise used to discover one’s values. The five questions to start the discovery process:
- In what nonwork environments are you highly engaged, and why?
- In what professional roles or jobs have you done your best work, and why?
- What help, advice, or qualities do others come to you for?
- When have you been disengaged in a personal or professional setting, and why?
- What qualities in other people do you struggle with most?
Once you have a response to each question, identify keywords or phrases that appear repeatedly. For the negative questions 4 and 5, write down the opposite of the words used.
Now you have a collection of words and phrases. “The more frequently a theme or keyword appears in your answers, the more likely it is to be part of a core value. As you group similar keywords and answers, the themes that represent your core values will begin to emerge. Then you can begin to craft each of those themes into potential values.”
Don’t stress too much about the exact phrasing, just identify the larger themes that are emerging from the words and answers. Once you have a draft set of words or phrases, he adds four questions to validate your early results:
- Can you use your core value to make a decision?
- Does the opposite of your core value cause discomfort if you think about it?
- Is the core value a phrase rather than a single word?
- Can you objectively rate yourself on it?
The first two questions are to validate whether your values cover the right theme – will the value help you make decisions on how you spend time each day and on major life decisions? If it’s not specific enough to be actionable, or if it’s not important enough to provoke a strong emotion, it’s not important enough to be a core value.
The second two questions are to validate whether your values have the right wording. Rather than use single words like “Integrity” or “Trust”, the author recommends converting values into measurable phrases, because integrity can mean different things to different people, whereas specific phrases are clear about the actions that exemplify the desired value.
When I went through the exercise for myself, I thought it would be easy because I literally wrote a book on making choices with conscious intention in accordance with one’s values. And yet it took some reflection to answer the questions thoughtfully and pick out the emerging themes. Here’s what I ended up with after the first draft:
- Respect: Support and appreciate others (and myself!)
- Impact: Progress with conscious intention (You Have A Choice!)
- Integrity: Transparent honesty (say what I mean and mean what I say)
I tried to force “connect with courage and vulnerability” to be one of my values, but it didn’t quite connect in the same way, and I realized that it serves more as a future aspiration, rather than a value that has guided my choices thus far. I’m pretty pleased with the resulting set of values, and think I’m doing reasonably well at using them to guide my life, although I can always improve (especially at the conscious intention part, as per the other book I summarized recently).
If you’re at a life crossroads and are wondering where you want to go from here, this is a quick read and the values exercise is helpful in creating some actionable phrases to guide your decisions. I’d love to hear what you think if you try the exercise!
