Eight Questions to Explore if Your Actions Are Aligned with Your Values

Sometimes our values are values in theory, rather than values in fact. You can tell whether company values are supported and adopted by how people act.

Rose, a manager in HR, was asked to interview a person for an opening on their team by her director. After concluding the interview, Rose indicated that the candidate would not be a good fit for their company.

Unhappy with her response, the director asked other team members to interview the same candidate, hoping they would back up his choice. But they didn’t. Everyone agreed: the person wasn’t a good fit.

The director hired the person anyway.

Two months later, Rose had documented several performance issues that the director’s hire was committing. She submitted her findings to the director. The director held a meeting with the members of his team that worked directly with the person in question. Team members offered detailed information about the performance of the person in question that corroborated Rose’s documentation.

Three weeks later, Rose was fired.

When she asked “why,” she was told, ‘Your performance no longer fits the culture of the company.” Her team members were shocked–then confused. And then, fearful.

The irony? The company had been trying to create a culture of openness, honesty, and collaboration. But as Rose told me, the outcome of her experience was the opposite: distrust, low motivation, fear, and silence.  

Somewhere between  the company boardroom vision and the day-to-day, something went off track. People said one thing but did another.

People notice.

The result?

Trust erodes.

Credibility takes a hit.

Morale suffers.

The culture weakens.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not your mission statement that defines you. It’s your behavior.

If you’re a leader—and you’re brave enough to take a look—here are eight questions to help you explore whether your actions are truly aligned with your stated values.

What values does my leadership reflect?

It is important to deliberately identify the values that will guide your leadership. Failure to identify specific values increases the likelihood that you will be caught without a clear purpose behind your actions. You might ask yourself, “If someone shadowed me for a week, what values would they say I actually lead by?” If you have identified a number of values to guide your leadership, you might ask yourself, “Of those values, where do you most often fall short?”

Do I send mixed signals between what I say and how I act?

This is pretty ease to do when work becomes so hectic that work priorities change. Often there is a gap between intention and execution. When that happens, people will not assume that you’re busy or that priorities have changed, they will assume you are insincere. Over time they will come to distrust you, and they will stop listening to you. In alignment with the question above, you might ask yourself, “Have I made commitments to my team that I haven’t followed through on? Or “Do I ask others to do, that I’m unwilling to do myself?”

What type of culture around communication do my actions create?

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I talk about “openness”—but shut down differing views?
• Do I emphasize “teamwork and collaboration”—but make decisions without involving others?
• Do I preach “accountability”—but avoid giving constructive feedback when it is warranted?”
• Do I encourage “receiving feedback”—but never ask others what I can do better?
• Do I encourage “engagement”—but never recognize others or express appreciation for others’ contributions?

How we communicate with others reflects the values that we have about people and the work they do. Those values are more than something that is placed on the wall or spoken about in meetings. Values are reflected in the way people behave when no one is watching. But everyone is watching, and their observations of your behavior become the cues to what they will do.