This popular article was included in Australia’s ‘Motivational Speakers’ magazine and looks at ‘Why higher quality values will produce higher quality goals’.
Forbes states that 65% of companies will establish a vision and cast it but less than 15% will ever fully become aligned with the vision.
If that’s the case then leaders don’t have a goal-setting problem they have a goal alignment problem. And if we look at motivational drivers, it’s easy to see that “what we focus on is a result of what we value most”.
Most people overestimate the importance of the big picture goal and underestimate the power of daily rituals that will serve their tomorrow.
There is an old proverb that says “you cannot put new wine into old wineskins for the wineskin will burst and therefore ruin all the new wine.”
And if right now, you are in a season of transition – then your “wineskin” needs to be upgraded with new leadership values.
This means you will be firmly anchored in a heightened state to make more decisions, faster decisions and more strategic decisions on a daily basis that will streamline the achievement of your vision.
The challenge for marketplace leaders is that they have been educated to associate values with ‘company values’ or ‘brand values’ and haven’t been taught to elicit leadership values. Which begs the question, how will you successfully keep up with the demands of the marketplace if your own leadership values are not congruent with where your organisation is heading?
The advantage of using values is that it is ‘evidence-based’ which allows you to reconcile your current values with what they should be by assessing:
- Language – what words you use or don’t use;
- Associations – who you associate with or avoid;
- Education – what you are learning or not learning;
- Environment – what your environment says and doesn’t say about what matters most to you;
Leadership values are specifically created by yourself and can be seasonal to help you align your mindset, strategic thinking, and daily rituals with the goals of your organisation in this next phase.
It’s like upgrading your car to meet the needs of a growing family – it needs to be constantly upgraded so you can keep up with the demands.
Some values like excellence, integrity, commitment or consistency and so forth simply are part and parcel of your job as a leader (and should already be in your values set). It’s like breathing – it simply a given that those are values expected of you as a leader.
For instance, if the preparation is a new value you are training yourself to adopt, then carving out time to prepare for your next day will come easily to you and you won’t have a problem with ‘time management.’
We all operate from a set of values – but only those who are consciously aware of them and who operate out of those values consistently will also adopting new skills, such as:
- Faster decision making;
- Lower stress levels;
- Greater influence over teams;
- Better communication; and
- Heightened strategic thinking.
As the celebrated ice hockey player Wayne Gretsky said ‘a good hockey player plays where the puck is while a great player plays where the puck is going to be’.
Since 1995 Ilse J Strauss has had influential leadership roles in Multi-National corporations in corporate management, business ownership and facilitating emerging leaders in the marketplace. Her company PurposeSYNC International has highly trained facilitators located in Australia and Africa stepping leaders through values alignment programs.
