Are They Really Your Company Values?

I challenge you to find a company in the modern world who doesn't have some set of values defined for their business. Some are simply lists written sporadically on client-facing documents, and others have them proudly emblazoned everywhere for employees and customers to see.

The greater challenge would be to actually find companies who truly live by these values and have sewn them into the very fabric of how they operate, how they make decisions and how they behave within the business. What a company says it does Vs what they actually do are often two very different things.

Now there are plenty of far more experienced consultants in this area that can help companies articulate and shape what these values are and why they are unique to a company. However, my role as an Executive Coach is to help leaders and leadership teams understand what their personal values are and how they align to the wider organisation. And more importantly when they find misalignment, that they can use their influence within the company to actively do something about it.

The first step on this journey with my clients is to help them bring awareness to their emotional inner state and work more consciously. What does this actually mean? Well when you’re consciously present at work, you’re aware of two aspects of your moment to moment experience. What’s going on around you and what’s going on within you. Therefore mindful work means to be consciously present in what you’re doing, while you’re doing it, as well as managing your mental and emotional state.

Creating a space in my sessions with clients and teams I help them reflect. By bringing awareness to this and tuning into how their environment at work is making them feel. We can then start to establish what's going on at a cultural level and whether the true values of the business, i.e. how people treat and interact with one another, is actually in line with the way in which the company thinks its people behave. 

So often, there is a deep disconnect between these two things. Although we ‘think’ our way around work every day. The stuff that truly matters to our happiness and enjoyment at work isn’t solved via our grey matter. It’s through the parts of ourselves that we are taught to switch off, i.e. our guts and our hearts. It’s here where the true barometers of a company's culture really lie, and it’s here where I help clients tune out all the thinking and get under the surface of what's really going on for them and the organisations that they lead. 

Ultimately my work is to help leaders understand and get comfortable with the feelings and emotions that are driving their behaviors. And then to support them to become effective, emotionally healthy leaders able to consciously choose behaviors that enable them to lead successful businesses and teams.