The Impact of Values Clarity on Commitment
Sedlock, group vice president for operations at Aéropostale, a global specialty retailer of casual apparel and accessories, echoes this observation: “I love to come to work here. I can’t think of a day in twenty years that I didn’t want to wake up and go to work.” She explains that when you share the company’s values, you “want to come to work, work hard, and achieve the goals that the organization has set.”
Workplace and organizational commitment are based on align- ment with personal values and who you are and what you are about. People who are clearest about personal values are better prepared to make choices based on principle—including deciding whether the principles of the organization fit with their own!
AFFIRM SHARED VALUES
Leadership is not simply about your own values. It’s also about the values of your constituents. Just as your own values drive your com- mitment to the organization, their personal values drive their commitment. Your constituents will be significantly more engaged in a place where they believe they can stay true to their beliefs. Although clarifying your own values is essential, understanding the values of others and building alignment around values that everyone can share are equally critical.
Shared values are the foundational pillars for building produc- tive and genuine working relationships. Credible leaders honor the diversity of their many constituencies, but they also stress their common values. Leaders build on agreement. They don’t try to get everyone to be in accord on everything. This goal is unrealistic, perhaps even impossible. Moreover, to achieve it would negate the very advantages of diversity. But to take the first step and then a
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G E second and then a third, people must have some common core of
understanding. After all, if there’s no agreement about values, then what exactly are the leader and everyone else going to model? If disagreements over fundamental values continue, the result is intense conflict, false expectations, and diminished capacity.6 Leaders ensure that everyone is aligned through the process of affirming shared values––uncovering, reinforcing, and holding one another account- able to what “we” value.
Hilary Hall told us about how her manager helped people examine their own values and how this built a foundation of shared values that resulted in a spirit of camaraderie and common purpose. At General Electric, Hilary was on a multinational internal audit team, which consisted of a German, two Americans, a Belarusian, and an Indian:
At the beginning of the audit, before we even began work, our manager had us all complete a questionnaire, which included topics such as where we grew up, favorite food, hobbies, and so on. There were also questions that dug a little deeper and asked us about the type of work we liked and did not like, how we liked to work, the role we usually played on teams, and what we respected in managers and teammates. After completing the questionnaires individually, we gathered as a group and shared our responses.
At the time, I thought of the exercise as a team icebreaker, a chance for us to get to know one another and build a sense of camaraderie, especially since we came from different corners of the globe. Why else would I need to know that Matt enjoys eating Mexican food, or likes to kick around ideas before having to make a decision? Reflecting on the experience now, I understand that the exercise was more than just an icebreaker; our manager was aligning the team around a common set of
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values––both personal and professional––and showing the team what was important to him, too. This was especially imperative since internal audit work was often stressful, extremely deadline oriented, and required us to be at the work site for two weeks at a time. It was a demanding work environ- ment, and I believe our success as individual auditors was contingent on our success as a team, which begins with mutual respect and trust.
Hilary was clear that if the team members had not aligned themselves around common values, their effectiveness as a team, as well as their manager’s credibility, would have suffered. They could have easily lost touch with one another and worked according to their own individual standards, which would have resulted in uneven motivation and commitment toward common work goals. “From this experience,” says Hilary,
I have learned that a good leader takes the time to break the ice and know his or her team on a personal level, but a great leader goes one step further and learns about each person’s values, how they build trust, and what is core to their motivation and drive. They then share the team’s values, as well as their own, and align the team around a strong focal point for working together toward a shared goal (or goals).
Research confirms Hilary’s experience. Organizations with a strong corporate culture based on a foundation of shared values outperform other firms by a huge margin. Their revenue and rate of job creation grow faster, and their profit performance and stock price are significantly higher. Furthermore, studies of public sector organizations support the importance of shared values to organiza- tional effectiveness. Within successful agencies and departments,
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G E considerable agreement, as well as intense feeling, is found among
employees and managers about the importance of their values and about how those values should best be implemented.7
In our own research, we’ve found that shared values make a significant and positive difference in work attitudes and commit- ment.8 For instance, shared values
• Foster strong feelings of personal effectiveness • Promote high levels of company loyalty • Facilitate consensus about key organizational goals and
stakeholders • Encourage ethical behavior • Promote strong norms about working hard and caring • Reduce levels of job stress and tension • Foster pride in the company • Facilitate understanding about job expectations • Foster teamwork and esprit de corps
Periodically taking the organization’s pulse to check for values clarity and consensus is well worthwhile. It renews commitment. It engages the institution in discussing values (such as diversity, acces- sibility, sustainability, and so on) that are more relevant to a changing constituency. Once people are clear about the leader’s values, about their own values, and about shared values, they know what’s expected of them and how they can count on others. With this clarity, they can manage higher levels of stress and better handle the often con- flicting demands of work and their personal lives.
Give People Reasons to Care
Important as it is that leaders forthrightly articulate the principles for which they stand, the values leaders espouse must be consistent
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with the aspirations of their constituents. Leaders who advocate values that aren’t representative of the collective won’t be able to mobilize people to act as one. There has to be a shared understanding of what’s expected. Leaders must be able to gain consensus on a common cause and a common set of principles. They must be able to build and affirm a community of shared values.
It’s vitally important that leaders and constituents arrive at con- sensus on shared values, because once they are articulated, those values become a pledge to employees, customers, clients, business partners, and other constituents. They are a promise to people that everyone in the organization will do what the values prescribe. Regardless of whether the organization is a team of two, an agency of two hundred, a school of two thousand, a company of twenty thousand, or a community of two hundred thousand, shared values are the ground rules for making decisions and taking action. Unless there’s agreement on these principles, leaders, constituents, and their organizations risk losing credibility.
Recognition of shared values provides people with a common language. Tremendous energy is generated when individual, group, and organizational values are in synch. Commitment, enthusiasm, and drive are intensified. People have reasons for caring about their work. When individuals care about what they are doing, they are more effective and satisfied. They experience less stress and tension. Shared values are the internal compasses that enable people to act both independently and interdependently.
Nicole Matouk was a student records analyst at Stanford Law School when the school implemented a major transition from the semester to the quarter system. Because of all the preparations that needed to be made in advance of the transition (such as overhauling the computer systems) and because of the quarter system itself, which required an additional term of work, by the end of the school year, everyone was exhausted and in need of encouragement. The
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G E associate dean sent an email to the people working in the registrar’s
office, asking for their feedback about the transition and inviting them to meet with her over coffee and talk informally about the transition process.
Everyone had the opportunity to speak about the topics he or she felt strongly about, and all were given equal and ample time to express themselves. No one felt pressured, and the staff felt free to express their opinions without any fear of retribution. The dean asked questions about how they could make their jobs more efficient and which new systems could be implemented to make procedures easier for both the students and the staff. Nicole went on to explain that
The dean’s questions kept us from taking a bath in the negative emotions we were feeling, and they helped us refocus on our goals as an office. She used these questions to affirm our shared values. The dean didn’t have to struggle to think of the ques- tions she wanted to ask, or how she would connect what we were discussing to our goals; her values were guiding her questions. As we talked, I could tell she was leading me in a certain direction, but it didn’t seem manipulative. This was so much more powerful to me than reading about the values in the handbook. I was generating the answers to her questions, so I felt this is what I believe, not just what I am supposed to agree with.
Not only did this meeting help our team to individually generate answers that were in line with our values and the office’s values, it helped us to affirm our shared values as an office. We came out of that meeting more united and with the knowledge that we were all working to achieve the same thing, instead of pulling against each other for time and attention.
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Nicole’s experience reaffirms that people are more loyal when they believe that their values and those of the organization are aligned. The quality and accuracy of communication, and the integ- rity of the decision-making process, increase when people feel part of the same team. They are more creative because they become immersed in what they are doing. Our research, along with the find- ings of others, clearly reveals that when there’s congruence between individual values and organizational values, there’s significant payoff for leaders and their organizations.9
We found that nearly two-thirds of people surveyed felt that organizations, and their leaders, should be spending more time talking about values.10 The Trustmark Companies take this message seriously. They put their entire organization (twenty-five hundred employees) through an internal leader-led “Values Experience” during which people had the chance to think about their values and reflect on how their values guided their actions.11 Feedback from this experience was so positive that Trustmark continues to give people the opportunity to share their values in unique ways. For example, on each floor of the company atrium, they post yards and yards of white paper for employees to write about, draw, and otherwise depict their values. Trustmark also instituted a “WeekEND Message” in which senior leaders throughout the organization volunteer to write an article to share. Each Friday, via email, they convey their thoughts and ideas, focused on their top five values. Leaders at every level are reaching out to others with stories that speak to their values.
Through conversations and discussions, like those at Trustmark, leaders renew commitment by reminding people why they care about what they are doing, and these exchanges reinforce feelings that everyone is on the same team (especially critical in distributed workplaces). Once people are clear about the leader’s values, about their own values, and about shared values, they know what’s expected
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G E of them. This clarity enriches their ability to make choices, enables
them to better handle stressful situations, and enhances understand- ing and appreciation of the choices made by others.