Uncovering Your Personal Values

I wrote in a previous post about the need for personal values.

I recommend starting with the values Integrity, Hard Work, and Excellence...

... NOT!!!!

Too many organizations use copy-and-paste values like "Integrity," "Hard Work," "Innovation"... BARF! Don't replicate this for your personal values. These are nearly meaningless.

I'm not saying you can't value Integrity or Hard Work. But ask yourself:

• Does Integrity get you up in the morning?
• Does Integrity or Hard Word differentiate you from all of the other honest hardworking people out there?
• Can you make money just DOING integrity?

Patrick Lencioni calls Integrity a Permission to Play value - you just have to have it to get in the door. Without Integrity, you can't start, do not pass "Go" -- it's game over. But it's not a core value that drives your primary choices. It's just how you do things.

Questions to ask yourself

To find your real action-guiding values, start by asking yourself these questions:

• What jobs have I loved the most and why?
• What projects and tasks have I excelled the most at?
• What tasks cause me to get lost in the pleasure of doing them?
• What things, if they happened in a job or if they were main tasks in a job, would be a Hell No for me?
• What are things I would do if I knew I could make a living doing them?
• What are things I would do even if I COULDN'T make a living doing them?
• What are things I keep going back to over and over again in my life and which have made me feel big-hearted and excited?
• What were the drivers of me leaving or being terminated from past jobs?
• Where have I received the most recognition and accolades in previous jobs?

The answers to these questions will help illuminate your values.

Other things you can do

• Take Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius assessment to find out your work preferences
• Take the Big Five (aka OCEAN) personality test
• Ask other people to describe the things that you seem to love

For me, here are some of the ways that I'd answer these:

• I loved jobs and projects where I did a lot of teaching.
• I love to write.
• I love to understand issues, analyze data and I have done projects at work where these made me really stand out.
• I love acting like a sort of internal consultant - developing company core values, mentoring, diagnosing problems and strategizing solutions in planning meetings.
• I love meeting with others to solve problems and facilitating discussions.
• Teaching people how to do their work has always been really fun and rewarding for me.
• I got lost in projects where I created communication and analyzed data.
• I did NOT like the box-checking, detail oriented work as much as other things.
• I did not like it when the environment was continually disharmonious.

Draft some values

Now, draft some values for yourself based on these real-world examples. Try to include a verb if you can, and keep it to 5 or fewer. Some examples to get you started:

• Recognizing patterns
• Perfecting processes
• Making spaces beautiful
• Protecting others
• Inspiring others

An important tip: Do not feel like you have to get this right immediately. Getting some draft values is GREAT! Getting just a little bit closer to knowing what drives you is 80% of the work. You can revisit this list any time and update it as things become clearer.

In a future post on this topic, I'll discuss applying your values.

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