A number of years ago, a mentor of mine once asked what my personal values were and how they impacted the way I lead. After more than 20 years of leading people and teams, I was almost embarrassed to admit that I had never taken the time to identify what they were and how they shaped me. While my company’s values resonated with me for the most part, no one had ever asked me about my personal values and their connection to my specific leadership approach and style.
I knew I had a set of guiding values, but I had never taken the time to reflect, evaluate, and intentionally connect them to how I wanted to lead both at work and home. Thus began a process of self-reflection that not only helped shape the type of leader, husband, father, and friend I wanted to be, but ultimately led to changing my career and living the life that I love today.
Great leadership always begins with you.
While there are many skillsets and attributes that relate to leadership, it’s your unique personality, characteristics, gifts, and yes, your values, that are your ticket to becoming the kind of leader you want to be. By working to understand who you truly are and the motivations that drive you, you can begin to shape a clear and compelling vision for the exceptional leader you want to become.
Take time to reflect on your personal values.
Begin by making a list of absolutely every value, ideal, and personal standard that comes to mind. To kickstart your thinking, check out this list of more than 100 values created by Brene Brown. Next, highlight the ones from the list that resonate most with your personal style, not what you think a good leader should be.
Challenge yourself to be authentic. Pair it down to ten values, and then prioritize the top five. This should take you some time, as does all foundational work. Ask yourself how you are honoring those five values and how you can live them more fully.
Now, put them into action. What steps do you need to take to begin aligning your leadership style with your top five values? Be specific and intentional each day. Hold yourself accountable by reflecting at the end of each week how well you lived them. Watch what happens as you genuinely move forward in your leadership journey.
The mission of Transcend is to transform executives and the companies they lead, and often it begins by working to understand who you are and what your values are.
There is incredible freedom, discovery, and power that comes with understanding the value of your values and integrating them into everything you do.
Coaching affords even the strongest leaders their greatest opportunity for personal and professional growth. My purpose is to leverage my years of executive experience and leadership across multiple business areas to inspire my clients to lean into their strengths, identify limiting behaviors and pursue transformational growth that will produce positive, tangible results for the organization.
