Why You Need PERSONAL Values

Are you a job seeker?

Are you a professional?

Are you a human being who wants to live without regrets?

Do you have a pulse in your body?!?!

If so, then you NEED to know what you stand for and why. This means knowing your values.

What are values?

Values are what you VALUE. Duh! End of blog post and time for a cocktail!

Seriously, values are things that drive you in all areas of your life. They are things that make you unique. They are specific and practical.

One thing I believe is that the best values are action oriented. This is different from how other people think about values. I think values should have a verb somewhere in them because for me, values are things you do.

VALUES DERIVE from an EMOTIONAL CONNECTION + A DRIVE TO ACT

Why action oriented values?

Values help you decide how to spend your time. They help you decide who to spend time with. They help you make decisions about what to DO.

Common values like "Excellence" or "Integrity" are adjectives, not behaviors. You can do things WITH integrity or WITH excellence, but you can't DO excellence.

Story that never happened:

Hiring Manager: Um, yes thanks for coming in to interview today. I am looking for someone to do Excellence and Integrity.

You: Oh, yes I do Excellence and Integrity really well. What else is part of this job?

Hiring Manager: Well, nothing really. We just need you to sit at your desk and be Excellent and of course, equally importantly, do Integrity.

You: OK sure, sounds great. Tell me, what will I be doing day to day?

Hiring Manager: Um, just the Excellence and Integrity. Those are the main duties. Our Integrity sales were through the roof last year, so demand is high. We are looking to create a new product line called Excellence, and we think everyone will want some. Packaging is our main challenge, but we have people working on that.

You: (silence)

Hiring Manager: Yeah, I don't really know what this means, either.

Here are some characteristics of personal values:

• The most useful ones are action oriented not descriptive
• They are behaviors that are part of your life at work, at home - everywhere
• They drive your choices in your free time
• They are like AIR to you - not living them is like NOT BREATHING
• They give you ENERGY and add value to your life
• They are things that differentiate you from most others (hint, Integrity can't be a value - everyone wants to be honest)

For an example, here are my personal values:

• Creating understanding
• Cultivating growth
• Being of service
• Fostering harmony

It can be helpful to draw associated behaviors and tasks you love as a result of these values:

• Learning, analyzing issues, and sharing knowledge
• Mentoring others
• Leading teams
• Working with people and organizations that love to grow and improve
• Creating peace and harmony with others by mediating conflict
• Improving psychological safety and inclusion at work

Why you need values

Values are your touchstone back to yourself.

It's easy to forget why you're doing this thing called life.

It's easy to chase rabbit trails in your career that lead you off track.

It's easy to get involved in relationships which feel somewhat comforting but which don't really provide deep and lasting value.

Values are what bring your life back into focus in these situations.

Here's a story:

One of the things I LOVE to do is grow and help improve things and others. I also get excited to share knowledge and I love to be around others who love learning, too. Lastly, I love to understand issues and turn them into actionable plans.

So when the following things happened in a job:

• I was told I could not have access to a commonly used data warehouse, even though I was a senior staff member and this was not unusual at all (a violation of value to gain and create understanding)
• I was given no latitude to make simple process improvements (a violation of my value related to growth and improvement)
• My manager completely failed to understand why I wanted to present a training to to the team I led on a personal development topic (a violation of my value related to sharing knowledge)

So, was it a surprise when this job did not work out? Completely not.

Could I have predicted this outcome before I started the job? Maybe so -- by asking more values-based questions in the interview process.

In future posts, I'll discuss how to both FIND and APPLY your own personal values.

Mike Lyons is an HR professional and consultant in the Austin, TX area. He can be found on LinkedIn.