Values-Based Leadership For Dummies

Management Articles

The Quad — Four Generations Operating in the Workforce Today

Having insight into your audience’s wants and desires will help you comprehend the factors that lead to their perceptions of authority, leadership, values, virtues, and work ethics. These are mobilizing factors. Here, you gain that insight by breaking down the workforce into the beautiful Quad — the four generations currently operating in the workforce today. During adolescence, people make determinations about what is cool, healthy, natural, and worth their time; sexuality emerges, and passion and ambition start to pique their interest. Opinions based on outside influences create the framework to ultimately determine what they want. The formative years also play a large part in determining how people will view the world. Their perceptions and reactions to different stimuli, such as how their parents raised them, current events, music, politics, and so on, create opportunities to draw conclusions on safety, security, money, career, government, and so on. These outside factors create their mindset and way of being in the world. Although no two people will react the same, general conclusions about generations can be derived.

Listen with an open mind. Don’t judge. Be aware of what may be your own preconceived notions of who and what each generation in the Quad represents.

The Quad is a reflection of our society — fatigued by empty promises, unaligned values, and the inability to trust authority. They want more. The good news is that they are willing to give more. You can’t change history or their life experiences, but there are some things you can do to change their experience right now. That starts with you, not them. Welcome to values-based leadership.

Management Articles

The Escalator Effect of Values-Based Leadership

Values-based leadership (VBL) continues the evolution of how we choose to engage in business. It’s the next step in the integration of one of the initial Conscious Capitalism principles: Business is good, noble, and heroic because it provides ethical opportunities for everyone. VBL expands on Conscious Capitalism using a specific, yet customizable, set of values as the platform for norms of doing business with others and internally. Each step in this leadership model leads to an organization that performs at maximum capacity. Within each of the five sectors, specific tasks, actions, and behaviors need to be instituted. This is the starting point of your journey. Here is an overview of what each sector means:

• Values-Based Principles: There is a difference between what’s implied and what’s expected. Clarity on which principles are selected by each leader for themselves and their organizations is the foundation for the process.
• Character of Leadership: You’ll hear me say many times that character can’t be faked. It can be evolved and directed in more constructive ways, but it’s not something you can fake, not for long. It is who you are. On our journey, I’ll show you how, where, and why you need to expand on who you are to become the leader others really need and want right now.
• Building an Environment of Trust: This is the part of your company culture that’s crucial — without it, you’ll fail. Trust in the leadership, one another, and the path you’re all on together will determine how productive your teams will be. Simply put, if they don’t trust you, they most certainly won’t follow you, at least not wholeheartedly.
• Employees Engaged: Either they’re part of the process and the organization’s success, or they aren’t. Your willingness to invest in them will speak volumes to them. That investment comes in a variety of applications, such as training, development, benefits, perks, and simply making them part of the process.
• Performing at Maximum Capacity: The first four elements bring us to this point. Let’s reverse the thought process. Engaged employees who are actively involved in the company’s success are working from a place of trust. They are all in. This was achieved because the leader has led by example with clarity, consistency, and empathy. People love working with people who they truly believe have their best interests at heart, and not just the bottom line.

Management Articles

Changing To a Values-Based Leadership Approach

Sometimes staying the course and holding steady are great. But at some point, everyone must upgrade their systems, thinking, and ways of being to continue to be viable. There’s a concept in nature called bifurcation. Bifurcation is a process that nature takes to renew itself. Usually it involves a disruption or inflammation that precipitates a split, a morphing into two. For example, deep forests are prone to fires. Within the forest are types of trees, spores, and other flora that require excessive heat for them to reproduce. With fire, they grow and multiply. Without it, they rot and die. One branch of possibility becomes life-affirming as a result of the disruption, and the other (without the disruption) could lead to the species becoming extinct. When you apply bifurcation to business, you see that normal disruptions happen, and as a result — for example, the market crash in 2008 or massive corruption scandals — the system is forced to make a choice: review, reflect, and enact change, or do nothing at all, as illustrated in the figure below. Doing nothing often results in the company petering out into extinction. Many companies and their leadership have taken this route. Not all disruptions or course corrections are a result of such large issues. Consider the following as potential signs that a change is needed in the leadership approach:

• Excessive competition: While competition will occur, overly aggressive and destructive or disruptive behavior will crumble teams. The attributes and principles of values-based leadership become the remedy.
• Exclusions and exceptions: Creating an environment where only some people need to follow the rules disrupts the level playing field of fairness where everyone has access to opportunities.
• Excessive gossip and rumors: These are key indicators that there is a lack of communication and lack of trust seeping into the organization.
• Team failure: Teams fail to work together to reach their goals.
• Us versus them: When teams, managers, and leaders are pitted against one another, progress is inhibited.
• Employee turnover: High levels of turnover create gaps in wisdom and continuity in the organization.
• The decline of trust and motivation: These elements create the foundation where people work together for the greater good of all involved.
• Lack of ownership: Leaders and employees who aren’t tapped into the vision, mission, or purpose for the organization’s work create apathy.
• Stagnation: Lack of innovation in processes, problem solving, products, services, production, sourcing, and technology causes a great deal of frustration for employees.

What’s scary is when leaders either refuse to see they have a problem or don’t care enough to make any changes. That, inevitably, leads to extinction — dismissal of leadership and potentially the failure of the company.

• Is what I’m doing about me — or about them?
• Who is this serving — me or them?
• Am I setting up a culture that evolves around me — or around us?