Sometimes I get asked what practicality living your values have. So I thought I’d give an example – or, if I wanted to use more business-like terms, a case study.
During one of the workshops I’ve recently run on living your values in business, one person gained insight on what to do with her website. She had already started creating her website. However, she knew it wasn’t quite sitting right. During the workshop, the participants followed a process which led to them not only working out what their 4 to 6 core values were, but also how the other values that were important to them supported/interacted with these core values.
They were then encouraged to consider how their new-found awareness about their values might help them in a recent/current work-related situation. This particular person suddenly appreciated that a key purpose of her website is to start the process of helping people to trust her. So far her coaching clients have been referred to her by strong recommendation or already knew her – in other words, they already had a strong base of trust. People meeting her for the first time on her website wouldn’t have that background knowledge. So obvious, yet it hadn’t struck her until working with her values.
Through discussion she started to work out how this could be accomplished – e.g. through showing her own fallibility and include examples of her own mistakes, describing her own experience of using the same process and giving examples of the results achieved with past clients. This openness not only would help people to get to know her as a whole being but also it fitted in with her values! Great result eh?!
When she first started drafting her website she had assumed she had to show how good she was. Now she recognises the value of demonstrating her humanity within it all.
How can your own core values support you with one of your work situations?