Do your leaders and team members know exactly how great corporate citizens are supposed to behave in your workplace today? Values set the stage for workplace inspiration but values expectations without observable, tangible, measurable behaviors fail to create an environment of trust, dignity, and respect.

Let’s look at performance management. Leaders have trouble inspiring a team and team members to consistent performance without clear goals. Yet simply having clear goals doesn’t guarantee consistent high performance.

Effective leaders use a variety of performance-alignment behaviors – modeling, engaging, observing, monitoring, coaching, re-directing, celebrating progress, etc. – to ensure teams deliver on performance goals.

Those same practices can ensure teams align with desired valued behaviors while pursuing their goals in the workplace.

In fact, once values standards and behaviors are published and communicated, scrutiny of valued behaviors increases, drastically. Leaders’ every plan, decision, and action are placed “under the magnifying glass” by other leaders and team members.

If team members can find examples of leaders’ behaving in ways that are inconsistent with the new valued behaviors, their resistance to the change grows stronger. They express their frustration with the new values “demands” because this or that happened, “which is clearly not aligned with the new values.”

Here’s an example from one of my culture clients. About six months into this client’s culture refinement efforts, the division president and three of his direct reports went to a conference. The president decided to take his wife on the trip – at his own expense – and spend a couple of days after the conference to enjoy a little downtime with his spouse.