From lifestyle blogs to business boardrooms, values are everywhere. From a personal perspective, values can be an anchor point when things feel difficult, guiding you through tough times, helping you weigh up options, set boundaries, and make great choices.
There’s much to be said for finding work in which your personal and organisational values align. If you’ve got kindness, creativity, and learning on your list and the organisation you work for – or want to work for – espouses those too, you may be going ‘tick, tick, tick – this is going to be awesome!’ There may also be times when your personal values are misaligned with an organisation – for example, if you value humility, but the only way to get noticed in your organisation is to be boastful.
Here’s an interesting thing about organisations – they’re figments of our imaginations. Bear with me on that statement for a moment. I hear people say things like ‘this organisation is rubbish at…’ or ‘the organisation is really challenging my values…’. Yet, organisations are not sentient beings, they are constructs designed to organise how the work gets done.
An organisation’s values are only as solid as the behaviours of the people who work there, and their interpretations of the organisational values will mingle with their personal values. Their behaviours will be a combination of these, so they’ll be as imperfect and inconsistent as we humans all are.
Values apply within the unique context of a situation, an environment, or a moment in time. In any situation, you may need to dial up one of your values and dial down another, deciding what is contextually appropriate. Perhaps one of the values isn’t relevant to what’s going on; perhaps another isn’t helpful and could cause more issues than it solves. This doesn’t mean you aren’t fully living your values. It means you’re being savvy about how to apply them.
We all know that it would be impossible (and boring) for the 10 people in our team to be totally aligned, so it’s a normal part of groups working together to adapt our approach to values. The diversity of values brought by different people, when shared, understood, and respected, can create a big team win. When this flex and respect is shared by all, it’s likely you’ll find joy.
The bigger challenge comes when we feel we have to move from being adaptable to being totally bent out of shape. When you end up doing values-related backbends, having to lock them away, or being confronted with poor behaviour on a regular basis, that’s when it feels like your workplace is challenging your values. So what steps can you take to address this issue?
1. Get Curious
The first thing to do if you’re feeling this way is to work out what’s really challenging you. Helpful questions to consider might be:
- Is it the behaviours of a specific person?
- Is it the culture that the leadership has set?
- Is it the structure and processes that are getting in the way?
This first step can take some investigation work, so start noticing what’s really going on. Don’t rush this process and jump to conclusions too soon. Noticing the feeling rising in different circumstances and situations will help you understand it at a deeper level.
2. Look Inside
Making assumptions about the values other people hold, by taking clues from the behaviours they demonstrate on the outside, is usually unwise. If you’ve ever heard yourself mumbling phrases like, ‘They clearly don’t care about…,’ then you’ve fallen into that trap. Unless you know someone well, have spent time with them in many, varied situations, and have had those deep conversations about values and principles, you’re unlikely to be able to define what they truly care about. Instead, consider how the investigation work you completed in step one is rubbing up against your personal values, and how they play out for you. When you can pinpoint the source of the friction, it becomes much easier to find a positive path forward.
3. Consider Your Options
The magic of the first two steps is that often we realise that we’ve made a mountain out of a molehill. We’ve been triggered by a situation or behaviour (or by forgetting to eat and getting hangry) that was, in hindsight, totally reasonable and appropriate for the situation. We can then cool our jets and delete the strongly worded resignation letter we’ve been compiling!
If you realise that there is a process, situation, or behaviour that needs addressing, then consider what might be the best approach to take. Perhaps it’s a conversation with someone about how you can solve a tricky issue. Maybe it changes how you approach a specific situation to influence the dynamics. Or you may need to invoke your courage to give someone some kind and direct feedback about how their behaviour is having an impact on you.
It’s also probable that at some point you’ll identify that you were the person whose behaviour was out of kilter with your own or the organisation’s values… in which case, it’s time to do the work.
4. Take Action
Nothing changes unless something changes. If you’ve worked through the steps and choose to do nothing, then you will likely end up in a repeating cycle. If you take steps and do the work, and nothing changes, then you may have decisions to make about whether this is the right organisation for you.
The best case scenario is that your efforts here improve your working relationships, make your workplace a better experience for you (and your colleagues) and, in turn, this enhances your business success.
About the Author
Beth Stallwood is a coach, facilitator, speaker, consultant, author, and the founder of Create WorkJoy. She’s spent 20 years developing her signature practical, passionate approach, and excels at getting to the heart of what’s actually going on – whether that’s for an individual client stuck in WorkGloom or an organisation with a people challenge to solve. Beth is also the author of WorkJoy: A Toolkit for a Better Working Life.
