Know Your Values

Living by strong values is essential to growing as a person, and in turn becoming a good leader. In order to live and breathe your values, you first need to know them.

While I’ve been fortunate to work with a few brilliant leaders and know lots of good humans, self-awareness of and personal accountability for values are strengths too many people seem to lack – including some of the leaders who need them most. This is my opinion, and evidence conflicts, but I would cite several phenomena such as: political corruption, corporate scandals, greenwashing, the epidemic of violence against women, ghosting in hiring and dating, and quiet quitting. In various ways, they demonstrate people’s unwillingness or inability to take accountability for their actions.

It’s perhaps unsurprising given our working and social environments. Despite significant progress on values, many businesses still prioritise profit over people, hard skills over soft skills, policy over practice, appearance over impact, and short-term results over long-term strategy. Meanwhile, in our personal lives, we’re subject to the increasing domination of social media; alongside the decline of organised religion, the rise of identity politics, and the erosion of trust in institutions that historically promoted and defended collective values in society: government, the police, universities, the press, etc. Most of the linked sources refer to UK research, but similar trends are occurring in the US, Europe, and much of the developed world.

I’m certainly not calling for a return to “the good old days” (whenever they were!), but when collective values are absent at a societal level and individualism proliferates, it can lower moral standards and leave people vulnerable: to being exploited for profit by corporations, and for power by interest groups, demagogues and influencers using propaganda and misinformation. Look at the increase in politically motivated violence, and the dangerous rise of Andrew Tate. I believe individual values can be an antidote to this ill, as long as those values are meaningful and authentic; not based solely on political affiliations, identity characteristics or personal gain. For instance, many Gen Zs have strong values around sustainability and racial justice. A good test of the authenticity of your values is whether you’re prepared to stand by them when doing so goes against your personal or group interest, even the thought of which would likely make a large number of politicians, advocates and business executives squirm.

One of the first things I was taught in the British Army, at the beginning of officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, was the mnemonic CDRILS: courage, discipline, respect for others, integrity, loyalty and selfless commitment.

Soldiers are judged on our attitudes and behaviours relative to these values, and I’ve literally seen military careers made or broken by exemplifying or betraying them. Deviation from the values, especially integrity and moral courage to do the right thing, is considered a risk to life and limb; the more senior a position you command, the higher the standard of adherence expected and the greater the penalty for deviation. I’m not claiming nobody strays in the military; anecdotally though, I know of several transgressions that rightly ended careers e.g. lying or sexual harassment, which in some civilian organisations I’ve observed would have been brushed under the carpet.

As a junior officer, I was required to attend trials and courts martial, write reports and give evidence for disciplinary proceedings, and generally uphold the values and standards of my unit and the Army as a whole. I obviously didn’t choose the values, although I did choose to apply to the organisation which holds them, but I did study and challenge and practice them until they became ingrained in an authentic sense – such that they still resonate to this day. Although my time in Afghanistan passed without major incident, and I was fortunate to bring all my men home in one piece, I was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to uphold those values.

I’ve learnt the hard way that whenever I compromise my values, things go badly wrong. Rarely have I deviated from my values professionally, and thankfully never with serious consequences, but I can think of a situation where I sacrificed one personal relationship for the sake of another to placate someone close to me. I ignored the fact the decision went against my values, and ended up regretting it. Knowing and living your values allows you to trust your gut, and thereby avoid making such errors, remembering that the right thing to do isn’t always the easiest – sometimes it’s the most challenging course of action.

My friend, coach Nicola Twiston Davies, sent me an early Christmas present 2 years ago: a “play sheet” (what fun!) to help me bring some focus to my values; or, as it turned out, choose a new set of values to replace those I’d subconsciously clung on to since leaving the Army a decade ago. Identity loss is a big thing for those who’ve served, and moving on healthily entails a process of grieving and adaptation.

Since then, having experienced the transformative power of choosing and defining my own personal values, I’ve incorporated value-setting into my mentoring work.

My 5 core values are:

1) Integrity
This underpins all my other values; probably since I was a child and most certainly since my Army days. I define it as: doing the right thing, even when nobody’s looking.

2) Self-awareness
Striving to understand my behaviours, and the impact I have on others; both positive and – more important to recognise and mitigate against – negative.

3) Growth
Investing in my development as a leader, partner, friend, brother, son, citizen and human – physically, mentally and emotionally.

4) Fairness
Ensuring equality of opportunity, especially for those in my charge, and protecting the rights of those less fortunate or more vulnerable than me.

5) Pleasure
Appreciating life’s simple pleasures, maintaining humour in adversity, and prioritising wellbeing and enjoyment over status and material gain. This one may strike you as uncharacteristic, precisely because it’s a deliberate counterbalance to prevent me spending all my time working, doing self-development and helping other people!

What are your values, and how do they serve you? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Core Values Exercise

Here’s an exercise I designed to identify, prioritise and define your own values in as little as 15 minutes. It’s the first thing I ask new mentees to do, before we have our initial deep dive session, since these values become the moral foundation underlying their vision, strategy and actions going forward. As a community member, you can ask for help with completing the exercise and request a downloadable PDF version.