Values-Centered Leadership:
Walking the Talk
Nov.Dec04-36
© 2004 Patsi Krakoff
“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 21 st 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.
“We judge ourselves by our intentions. The rest of the world judges us by our actions.” – Eric Harvey
Strategies for Leading with Values in Action
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?
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