Values-based Leadership

"Values-based leadership is a leadership style that builds itself on the values of both the leader and their team. It's based on the philosophy that people motivate themselves through the implementation of their personal values in their daily lives. Organisations that follow a shared set of beliefs have employees who are more likely to work together, which in turn increases productivity"

Behaviour 3

An inescapable fact of life is that bad times follow good times. War, global pandemics, badly managed economies and technological change, amongst other factors can, with very little warning, easily derail any project or destabilise any organisation. Values-based leadership is the set of behaviours you will come to most rely on when you, and all around you are asking; Is it all worth it?

When they can’t see a way forward, when the task ahead seems unsurmountable, your team will need to know two things. Firstly, they will introspect. They will reflect on their relationships and experiences and remind themselves why they are continuing to fight. Secondly, they will need to know that they have, and believe in, a sound logical plan, that is in-line with the group’s values and skills and that if they work as a team and choose to continue following the leader they stand the best chance of surviving the bad times and coming through the process even more resilient than before. Indeed, they will become anti-fragile.

Values-based leadership to my mind is about ensuring your leadership is worth following. It is about not just talking the talk but walking the walk. We are more forgiving of failure in others, and ourselves, when we know that we were acting in accordance with a shared set of agreed-upon values, something greater than any individual member of the group. All organisations, cultures, or groups need a set of defining values, in military terminology we would call them our left and right of arc. The space in-between the left and right of arc is our societal accepted zone of tolerance. It allows people to understand what acceptable behaviour is and what is not tolerated.

Linked to any values-based leadership approach is your own or the organisation’s just cause. Remember that any organisation is a reflection of our competing value choices. A just cause is your biggest single motivator. It underpins why any task is worthwhile. An examination of your own values should cause you to question your fitness to serve those in your team as they strive to keep the organisation focused on moving towards realising their just cause.

Your role as a values-based leader is to ensure that everyone in your team with their competing value choices is united in achieving the organisational just cause, and that they see personal and group benefit from aligning their values in its pursuit.