Learning About Values Alignment

Values alignment is an emergent property in organizations that have a critical mass of people with a common language of values and clarity about how their personal values, personal vision/mission and goals align with the desired values, mission/vision and goals of the organization.

He told us the importance of values alignment among all the employees and I could attest that we are all well aware of the values of our company and we are all keen on practicing it.

This Article Includes:
What is Value Alignment
Reconstructing your Values
How to Start Living With Your Values
Mind Mapping for Value Alignment
Application of Aligning Values to Coaching Approach
Tools that can be used for Values Assessment
How to Benefit from Value Alignment:
Value Alignment Reduces Stress
Value Alignment Helps In the Success of your Business

What is Value Alignment?

MVF Knowledge Base.com defined values alignment as “an emergent property in organizations that have a critical mass of people with a common language of values and clarity about how their values, personal vision/mission, and goals align with the desired values, mission/vision, and goals of the organization”

In my life coach training program, I learned that aligning your life with your values can be simply described as finding or achieving personal growth. It may sound simple but it truly is a lot complex than it sounds.

Personal growth is a continuous journey of self-discovery to help us lead lives that are empowered, meaningful, and impactful. This can be achieved by understanding and evaluating oneself through investing a lot of time, energy, and money.

This then results in a personal evolution that was rooted in:

• shedding off our learned conditioned reaction patterns,
• cultivating a greater sense of self-acceptance and self-compassion,
• learning new habits, and
• our discovery of the true essence of ourselves.

Our introspection allows us to be aware of the things that we want in our life, thus making us powerful as we set our eyes and path towards our purpose and impact that we want to leave as an imprint in this life.

You would know that you have finally achieved a level of personal growth when you feel and believe that you can achieve success in any area of life that you want, and when you have finally let go of all the self-sabotaging and self-defeating thoughts, behaviors, and patterns that once consumed you. It is when we commit to this newfound discovery in ourselves that we become powerful creators of our destiny.

Living according to our highest values, we get to experience an increased sense of self-worth and you will realize that there are a lot of possibilities and opportunities in store for you that you have not explored yet.

A heightened sense of self-worth in the presence of a handful of opportunities and possibilities makes us energized. This pushes us to pursue challenges that inspire and motivates us, thus maximizing our capabilities and most likely taps our inner genius and creativity.

My online coach certification course taught us that before you can live according to your values, you must be able to specify them first. Determining core values is the crucial first step in our journey into self-discovery and self-empowerment and in committing to living a created and inspired life full of purpose, meaning, and joy. Later in this article are some tools and details on how you can discover your core values.

How Do I Align My Life With My Values?

It is not enough that you know and you can specify your core values, you also have to recognize that not every value that you have can help you get closer to the meaning, fulfillment, and happiness that you are hoping for in your life.

Through life coach training I learned about the process of reconstruction that you can apply for the values that don’t seem to benefit you. This reconstruction of values will help you achieve and set your path towards the “future” that you are hoping for.

Reconstructing Your Values

The following are three questions that you can ask yourself to help you figure out what values will make you happy: What are the things that you choose to do in your life? You have to evaluate the activities that you free in your life. These may be Assuming cultural, spiritual, artistic, or athletic activities, specifying these activities is the first step for you to identify the values that create you are practicing and can help you later compare the values that you want or need. In what activities do you find your passion or you love participating in? There is no better clue to what you deeply value than activities such as these. What activities, experiences, and people cause you to feel deeply engaged and connected with? This absorption can only occur when your values and life are one. When you have answered these questions, you can now look deeper and identify the values that they have underneath. An example from my online coach certification course would be Rima, an IT engineer, she enjoyed cooking and baking since she was young, but her parents both being in the IT business and career told her that getting an IT course would benefit her more in the future. When she answered the above questions, she realized that her love for the kitchen-work was the only thing in her life that she felt a deep connection with. Through careful consideration of her values, Rima discovered that the inspiration of creation and the physical expression of her creativity was the fundamental values that she was never able to express in her career. With this insight Rima was able to more actively pursue this passion with greater clearness and determination, and, for the first time in her life, felt greater alignment between her values and her life, and found a greater sense of balance and contentment. The most important part of reconstructing your values is reframing the value of success, it should be consistent with your true values. Being out of synch with your definition of success can drive you into the pit of defining success according to popular culture, for example, wealth, status, popularity, and physical appearance, this definition of success may be temporary, fleeting, and fragile. Through our certified coaching course I learned that when you can align your definition of success according to the life value that you believe in, you become more realistic and may find success even in the smallest and simplest of things, thus helping you savor and create a more meaningful life in your everyday life.

How to Start Living Your Values

Identifying and specifying the values that make you happy is, yes, easy as it sounds! The real challenge comes in when you have to start learning to embrace those values and as you live your everyday life following them. Believe me, it is hard to kill the old ways, “values” and thought patterns, and as we know, habits are truly hard to break. The current life you have of which you find imbalance and/or dissatisfaction is like a ‘habit’ which is familiar, predictable, automatic, and comfortable for you. Your ways have been deeply ingrained, and truth is, you cannot just change it in an instant! As mentioned in our online coach certification program, not all the values that you’ve had are beneficial to you, sometimes you have to discard some to be able to live up to a value that would help you. You can be unhappy about your current state but the thought of change may make you feel intimidated due to uncertainty and instability, you know how change can be terrifying! But the trick is.. you have to choose to have the change! You must stand by your wakeup call that what you have now is no longer acceptable, commit to your decision that enough is enough! When you oblige yourself to slowly learn to stick and live by your new/ reconstructed values, you will find it easier to commit to that change. It will also be easier because living your values will be self-rewarding; participating in activities and experiences, and being with people that are consistent with your new values will bring you freedom, balance, and happiness. You also have to think about how much of your life do you want to change. Do you want to start anew, a career overhaul? Remember that living your new values does not mean discarding everything from your old life. Do know that few people can afford to quit their jobs and become starving artists or some such equivalent. But that does not mean that you can’t make meaningful changes in your life that will allow you to align your values and life and find happiness. Through life coach training we were taught that without those big changes, we can still start our values through two simple things:

• First, you have to keep in mind that values alignment is more about emphasizing a greater commitment to activities, experiences, and people that express the values that give your life meaning and happiness.

Living your values is not about coming up with a great life or career overhaul, it is simply about living with the things, people, thoughts, and activities that give meaning to your life.

• Second, you have to identify the imbalance that is present in your current life, these are the unhealthy values that you may have adopted growing up and in your culture.

The presence of these imbalances may have brought you to your success, but as you look at it closely, these unhealthy values have deprived you of happiness. Living your values means reducing the weight of the unhealthy values and placing greater weight on the side of the scale that holds your new values. By doing so, you place more emphasis on activities, experiences, and people that you truly value and that bring you happiness. An example would be Raji, a civil engineer who has a fascination with playing the guitar. Growing up he has learned every technique but his father discouraged him to pursue his love of music since it cannot “pay decently and the only way to make it to scenes is having great talent and contacts”. Raji became a successful engineer but had always felt rather discontented. When he was coached about aligning his values to aid him in his pursuit of happiness, he realized that what he loved most about music was the challenge of understanding the theory behind, techniques and making them comprehensible to others. He also recognized that he has always wanted to help young people, but, up to the present, had only done so by donating money to educational programs. Now that he had realized that it was time for a change, and knowing he couldn’t just quit his job and become a music teacher. He had a family to support and a comfortable lifestyle that he enjoyed—the proverbial “golden handcuffs.” So, he found a way to balance his family and career with activities that were in synch with his newly realized values. He enrolled in music and mentoring class to help him in his plan of volunteering to teach musical instruments to high school students once a week. Soon enough he signed up for a volunteer teaching position at an orphanage and he soon found the happiness he longed for!

Five-Phase Mind Mapping for Value Alignment

This guide to 5-phase mind-mapping, for values alignment, is written by Samuel Johns a triathlete and a life coach:

First Phase: MIND MAPPING / OPEN REFLECTION ON YOUR EXPERIENCES

There are two mind-mapping exercises that you can do. You may need to allow time for this.

• Mind Mapping Exercise 1

Recall the memories or moments which made you feel like you are at your happiest or that you are at your fullest self.

These are the things and moments that made you feel and realize that full connection to yourself, the times that you felt most engaged and alive in the present moment.

• Mind Mapping Exercise 2 (this mind mapping activity is best done with more time so you can go deeper)

Recall the memories or moments which made you feel like you are NOT at your happiest or that you are NOT at your fullest self, like when you have doubts, insecurities, and hesitation.

These are the times that made you feel like you are not fully connected to who you are and the moment, times that made you feel uncomfortable in your skin.

Second Phase: CATEGORIZING MIND MAPS INTO ‘VALUE’ WORDS

Once you have specified the experiences and moments, take a step back and look at it in a general way to help you reflect. From this perspective, try to assign words that are most likely associated with that experience as a value.

For example, you may assign the “value” word creativity for the times that you loved doing woodwork. Try to create as many categories as you need or that you can see arising from your experiences. Conduct this exercise for both mind maps.

Once you have a list of categories, spend some time to reflect on them and how these categories align and show up in your day to day life and the environment you currently live in. No need to dwell here too long, yet take a moment to reflect.

Third Phase: DEFINING YOUR FIVE CORE VALUES
Now you likely have a list of categories or ‘value’ words coming from your mind maps. In this phase, we’re going sit and refine the list of values down to your 5 core values.
Time for the process of elimination: If you have 20, start with removing 10 from the list by comparing each against each other and seeing which one is more important to you. Then start again with the remaining 10 to cut down to your 5 most important values.
Note: This exercise is not saying that the value words being removed are not apart of your life, they’re just not as important to you as the other ones.

Fourth Phase: OPTIONAL ALIGNMENT OF VALUES WITH CURRENT LIVING
How do these values, experiences, and moments align with who you are at the present?
How do you spend your time and where you want to be going?
Does your current environment support / enable you to experience and live following your values?
What would you like to spend more time reflecting on and learning more about?

Fifth Phase: INTEGRATION INTO DAILY LIFE (USING YOUR CORE VALUES AS A DECISION MATRIX)
You now have to use and integrate the five core values that you have identified. You have to look at the changes that it brought, the change in your happiness, or meaning in life.

Application of Aligning Values to Coaching Approach

If you are a coach, Aubrey Rebello, a mentor, and an executive coach, and the former CEO of Tatas and Bayer, emphasized that your values should be aligned to your coaching approach. As an example, he related an experience he had with a family-managed organization. According to him, “If you are not in sync with a family organization’s values and the way they want to conduct business then you should decline the offer of work. You could not, for instance, offer coaching, or counseling (thinking of an American TV series, the Sopranos) to a mafia family.” Influence is an important aspect of a good coach-client rapport. How you behave with your client is influenced by how you are attuned to your values; how your clients choose to act on your suggestions and in your conversations is also influenced by their values. The two of you need to see with a distinct parameter or perspective for you to understand how to effectively approach the problem that they have. According to Rebello, the following are some of the ways for you to check if your values are aligned with your client:

1. It is important to have those initial conversations and do your due diligence before accepting the assignment.
2. It is necessary to check out and confirm whether there are sufficient overlapping values (personally, professionally, family, business) from which a potentially positive relationship will emerge that will result in positive returns for the organization.
3. With the psychological contract in place, it becomes more of the approach to contracting that lays out the process and intention of how the coaching engagement will evolve.

Tools that can be used for Values Assessment

A research paper by Chris Porter, a counselor, and coach, written for the International Coaching Academy has enumerated different direct and indirect strategies that are used in our online coach certification program for values alignment. Direct Strategies:

1. The VIA Signature Strengths assessment by Dr. Martin Seligman offers 24 strengths, together with associated values. The free survey can be accessed through viacharacter.com
2. Other strength assessments such as LIFO (behavioral survey with feedback)
3. Neurosemantic tools, Neurolinguistic Programming patterns, linguistic structures such as the Milton and meta-model.
4. Creating a hierarchy of your values
5. Sort cards such as Gary Cohen’s value clarification game asking clients their values and for examples of what they value
6. Value Lists
7. Comparison of client lists of what is important to him/her and how he/she spends time.
8. Visioning Exercises

Indirect Strategies: “Discovering them through the journey” “Allowing clients to discuss what’s important and meaningful for them” “Trying to understand why they are excited about their life” Exploring whether a value comes “from within them or from an outside source” “Talking about dreams” Uncovering success stories and what values were being honored to achieve success. Eliciting past decisions and “what went into the decisions”. Eliciting priorities to see “what’s most important to work on” Invite reflection regarding how a goal or decision will impact their life’s journey or mission. “Supporting reflection on what aspects of their current life is either supporting or working against their values” Questions: “probing questions into who they are” and “fleshing out through questioning” Questioning based on Socratic dialogue “Noticing when values come up and point them out later”

How to Benefit from Value Alignment

There are personal benefits of values alignment as mention in the early part of this article, and it also helps companies improve their workplace culture, not only does it help reduce stress but also helps aid the success of the company.

Value Alignment Reduces Stress

Work stress is the most common problem that organizations want to solve, thus resulting in plenty of researches on how to alleviate stress in the workplace. The most common factor that brings up stress is a lack of job fit. Stress from lack of job fit was found to be preventable as long as there is value alignment in the employees and their working environment. In our certified coaching program, we were told that what we should be looking at is not how important value alignment is but rather how to implement and foster value alignment. Value alignment is the most simple and sustainable way to prevent stress, increase engagement, and improve productivity in the modern workplace. I found this four-step stress reduction guide through value alignment:

1. Understand how your organization uses their values in action.

Before you could understand how the organization uses its values, you must first look at how attuned you are to your values. Values are emotionally-driven. When employees know their values they also get attuned to their emotions. If one’s values conflict with the organization, there is what we call values trade-off. Values trade-off creates an emotional reaction from your employees, if negative emotions continue to run high, relationships become vulnerable that can thus result in stress or a dip in well-being. Here is an example of a trade-off: an employee is working with a team and he was tasked with an assignment which can only be done for two weekends; his values puts importance on family care and considers weekends as a time for them. The employee is now in a situation that he is to decide whether he will accept the task, delegate it, or let down the team. In one of the chapters in our life coach training, we were told that in an organization, creating a values-friendly work environment means it is critical for employees to first understand and embrace the kind and quality of performance that they are committing to and the caliber of values transparency they are accepting—and in turn gather the appropriate support. As for the mentioned example situation above, the following may help in aligning the values of the employee and the organization:

1. It is either the employee should have been aware that the organization has occasional instances that require weekend work (because of their organization value that emphasizes work commitment) or,
2. The employee may hopefully be allowed to bring it up to the team to either delegate it or maybe have an option to decline the task.

Step 2: Value differences among people in the organization should be recognized and a hierarchy is needed to help in value alignment People have their own set of values, so how does one go about with the presence of conflicting values? It has been mentioned previously that values are emotionally-driven, and a conflict between values can lead to stress, and derailed work effort. This does not mean that you should strive to cultivate total values alignment in your organization. First of all, it is impossible. And secondly, it is healthy to have people who have different values together. Although differing values can result in conflict, it also keeps the organization strong and balanced. Those differences are needed for the different roles in the organization or company. But to create a workplace culture that is productive, positive, and one that eliminates stress you should identify at most four to five values that your group can focus on and align with intentionally and consistently. These values should be about how people in the organization are expected to relate, interact, and how they need to be treated for them to achieve engagement and come up with their best outputs. However, values should be differentiated from morals. Values are ideas that should influence how people will behave. Morals are the ideas that guide people how they are expected to behave. Pick four to five values that the people in your organization share, this will help the employees concentrate and show them what is expected of them. You can now curate your core values from these so everyone knows the appropriate behavior for their workplace and the work ethics that are expected from them. Having individual personal values, helps the company merge one’s values and the company vision to make a collective value that will set out a clear behavioral expectation. Do this work, and you will give your organization a tremendous competitive advantage. By nailing down your core, shared values, and correlated valued behaviors, you establish your rules of engagement. You erase all doubt about how the work will get done in your workplace, and acknowledge what stress-inducing behavior won’t be tolerated. Step 3: Create tools and means to remember your values and be aligned with them. From Step 2, you now have laid out concrete shared values, you can now start drafting a constitution that contains your team’s purpose (other than work and earning), the values and the expected behaviors you have agreed upon, and your group’s strategies and goals. Like a deal to be sealed, everyone will have to sign it from the big executives down to the last on the hierarchy. The more that the signing is public and transparent, the more meaning it will have. This signed constitution can now serve as your groups’ reference point and also help check everyone’s performance, both behavioral and technical. With this constitution in hand, performance evaluation can use values-based metrics. With these values in writing, people in the organization can now help everyone celebrate their successes and give out a reward for values-aligned behaviors. This is important. In our cutthroat marketplace and the incivility that’s currently running rampant, there will be many situations that challenge people to live your shared values. When they rise to the challenge, lift them, publicly. Thank them for contributing to your values-aligned, stress-purging culture. People will only take your values-work seriously if you and your leadership team model these values and behaviors in every interaction, making how the work gets done as critical as the results. Step 4: Measure and monitor your results, keep in check your valued behaviors. Now that there are a tool and resource for everyone to keep their values aligned, everyone should now consistently ensure that values on stay top of their mind. Sixty to 70 percent of your time and energy (and that of your leadership team) should be spent on modeling, coaching, monitoring, and further strengthening your values-based culture. If you redirect the majority of your focus to your culture, you’ll experience a profound shift in the vibrancy and productivity of your workplace. As a result, systemic organizational stress will dissolve. Your people (and you!) will become more positive, purposeful, and productive. Results and profits will follow suit. Simply put, by prioritizing the building of a values-based, stress-purging culture, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Value Alignment Helps In the Success of your Business

One of the factors that influence employee satisfaction is the employee’s awareness of value alignment as it gives them a deeper understanding of the company’s purpose and sets out their guiding principles thus creating and increasing the employee’s work engagement.

Cristian Grossman, a CEO, and co-founder of Beekeeper provided three ways to use value alignment to increase employee engagement and achieve business goals, these were also mentioned in our certified coaching program regarding business management:

1. Value alignment should start from the top executives.

The leaders should first know and be aware of the values that they want for the organization. Values they should have a firm grasp of those core values because employees would want to see their leaders believing and exhibiting, embodying the values to their core.

These company values should be a lot more than a few sentences on a website. Leaders should be an example of what the company represents like when a company believes that community service is an important value, the leaders should be the first to organize service events for the community.

Grossman created this list of four steps to help executives in value alignment:

1. Know your values
2. Model those values
3. Communicate your values
4. Celebrate those employees who live the company’s core values

Employees become an empowered and engaged workforce when employees understand their company’s value set as it sets them on a clearer path of how to perform their job. They become better problem solvers, more autonomous, and more productive.

Grossman suggests making sure the managers are aligned with the core values of the company as they’ll directly impact value alignment with their employees.

2. Through recognition of their engagement, employees’ values can be aligned.
   Some workers would ask “what value do I bring to the company?”One of the biggest reasons employees feel disconnected from their employers is not understanding the part they play in a company’s mission. Workers often want to know, It’s your job to let them know.

   One of the best ways to ensure the alignment of personal and organizational values is to recognize employees who exemplify those company values and recognition can come in the following forms:

   1. Mentions
   You can try to publicly recognize your employees who appreciate and display company values through company-wide communication, like a newsletter, an email, pr praise during a meeting.

   2. Rewards
   Rewards like small bonuses it doesn’t always have to be monetary. It can be a bonus vacation day or a special parking spot.

   3. Promotions
   Recognize exemplary employees which the future leaders of your business. It’s always best for organizations to hire and promote from within. Employees who embrace and model values have the tools to support your mission and grow in your organization.Recognizing those stellar employees who demonstrate company values will inspire others to embrace those values, too.
   

3. Recalibrate values regularly.
   Now and then, companies should evaluate, redefine, and adapt values. It may sound counterintuitive, but if company values seem too far from team values, it might be time to redefine them. Improving company culture means you have to make your values relevant to every generation.

   An example of this recalibration was exercised by Aetna which was an example in our online coach certification program. “Aetna, the healthcare company, decided to solicit internal feedback directly from employees to guide the updates they made to the company values. By bringing employees into the process, they became more invested in the company’s values and their work. Employees were able to feel truly engaged and understand how the company values impact them.”
   
   – Only 27% of employees feel strongly about the values of their employer and employees need to be lined up into company values this can be done through getting feedback. The following lists up the importance of feedback:

   – Increase feelings of inclusion

   – Create a more well-rounded value set from a diverse group of people

   – Build employee engagement by creating a sense of ownership over their culture

   – While there are many ways of increasing employee engagement, striving to align company values with team values may very well be one of the most effective methods.
   
   Our online coach certification program topic about values alignment not only opened my mind to the possibilities of improving myself personally and as an employee. I hope it will help you too!