I watched the target intently. I could see the picture rise and fall in my sights as I breathed, the crosshairs tracking a vertical line as my lungs expanded and contracted. Having positioned myself carefully, I aligned my body so that I naturally achieved my point of aim. My rifle was held securely, nicely balanced, but without any tension in my muscles. Feeling calm and focused, I let the crosshairs sink once again, then held my breath as they came to rest on the centre of the target. I increased the pressure on the trigger, never letting the crosshairs move from their position. There was a jolt, as the shot released, but the rifle settled back into position, aligned to the midpoint of the target. I was hundreds of metres away, but I knew that I had hit it dead centre. I knew because I had applied my marksmanship principles, and everything had been in balance. It felt right.

Understanding and applying principles

Target shooting can be very satisfying but, as I found out in my military training, that does not mean that it is easy. That is because even though the principles of shooting are simple, maintaining those standards takes focus and practice. In that way, shooting is a metaphor for other areas of life. Even when we know the theory of how to do something the practice can be hard.

It is particularly hard if we do not know the fundamentals in the first place. Without understanding the key principles of shooting I might never have become a good marksman, no matter how much I tried. As Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool point out in their book Peak, there is an important difference between practice and effective practice. If we want to get better, we need to focus on doing things correctly, according to the appropriate standards.

So, what are the right standards? How do we know the principles to live by? This is the focus of this series on understanding values. The more I teach decision-making, facilitate leadership courses, or coach people through life’s challenges, the more I see the importance of understanding and acting upon our personal values.

The need for balance and alignment

Much of the importance of values comes down to balance. There are so many reasons that we need balance in life. Whichever aspect of our existence you look at – such as work, relationships, or health – it is a lack of balance that causes problems.

We need alignment in each area of our lives in order to flourish. To lead we need integrity; a boss needs to walk the talk if they are to be truly effective. To make effective decisions we need to make sure our choices fit our values. It is similar to our wellbeing; to be happy our expectations cannot be too far removed from reality. Our self-esteem is also dependent upon balance. We need to behave in line with our principles and live up to our standards. This is why it is so important to know our values and understand how to monitor them.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

Brian Tracy

How to work out your values and monitor your principles

I regularly take time out to re-examine my values and reflect on them to make sure they are captured accurately and to measure how I am doing against my principles. I also tend to look at my principles first before I go about setting goals. As with target shooting, you must point in the right general direction before you home in on a specific target.

It may be that you already have a clear idea of your values, or it could be that you have never really considered your personal principles. Either way, here is a good exercise to go through to identify, refine and test your ideals. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Identify a long list of values

2. Prioritise the list

3. Assess your principles against your actions

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1. Identify a long list of values 

First, write out a long list of words that sum up your personal values. There is no limit on how many phrases to use at this stage. It is worth doing some brainstorming and thinking about the words that best sum up your principles. The choice of words is important as our interpretation of language is nuanced and personal. The terms you choose must connect with you and express both your head and your heart.

Remember, as noted in my earlier post on why what we value matters,

• Values are principles. They are ideals, truths, or propositions that we aspire to.
• Values are standards. They are the formal and informal precepts, regulations, and rules we live by.
• Values are judgements. They are the benchmark, the plumbline, the compass that informs our decision-making.
• Values are beliefs. They are the tenets, convictions, and ideas we put our faith in.
• Values are priorities. They are our motivations, the things that take precedence, that we give importance to and affect how we use our resources.

Once you have a list, or if you are struggling to think of the right words, then you can use example inventories of popular principles as a prompt. You can find such examples in What Are Your Personal Values where I have listed over 150 common values.

2. Prioritise the list 

Once you have a comprehensive list of values the next thing to do is to prioritise the list. Initially whittle it down to ten, then aim for five or fewer. The reason to do this is to identify the most important principles, the ones that dominate your decisions and behaviours. To do this you may want to take your initial list and score each value out of ten. If you still need to reduce the list then do direct comparisons between the words you have chosen, ask yourself, if I had to choose between x and y which would be the most important?

Once you have your top five values then take some time to write out what they mean to you. As mentioned earlier, the exact meaning of a term can be very individual so write out a short sentence to define what that standard means in terms of informing your actions and decisions. This is very important. The value does not exist as just a conceptual ideal, it must be understood in relation to your thinking and behaviour.

3. Assess your principles against your actions  

The next step is then to assess each of your top principles against your actions. Here you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Reflect on your day, your week, your month and give yourself a score from 0-10 in terms of how close you lived up to your standards. Also, reflect on other big life moments and decisions, or when you were particularly happy or sad, how did you align with your values at those key times?

Examining the gap between the values we espouse, and our actual behaviour can be very revealing. Here are some common things to look for:

Continual misalignment

If there is a continual misalignment then we must ask ourselves if we really hold to that principle. It might be that we think we value something because it is a standard upheld by our culture, family, or organisation. It may well be a good precept, but it may not drive us personally. If that is the case, you might want to go back to the prioritisation exercise and see if there are other values that better describe your actual choices.

Temporary misalignment

Often, we find that we have strayed from our principles in a particular choice or fallen short of our principles in a given situation. This is not a long-term trend, more of a temporary blip. These can leave us feeling unhappy or anxious until we resolve the issue. Once you have identified the instance where there was a problem you can reflect on what you need to do to bring things back on track. Is there a decision that needs to be changed, a relationship that needs to be mended, or a goal that needs to be set? Whatever it is, work out what action will restore your balance.

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Apply your principles and maintain your aim

If you want to achieve your aim it is not enough just to know what your target is. You are unlikely to hit the target if you are facing the wrong way. Therefore, you need to know your guiding principles if you truly want to succeed.

Whether you want to achieve a goal, get a better balance in life, develop as a good leader, or improve your decision-making, all these things are dependent upon understanding your personal values. The better you understand your own standards, the happier and more effective you will be.

So, take some time to:

1. Identify a long list of values
2. Prioritise the list
3. Assess your principles against your actions

Seeing how close you align with your principles is foundational to creating a meaningful plan for any self-improvement. So, check your values today but then frequently take time to see how you are measuring up to your standards.

Apply your principles, maintain your aim, and you will hit the target!

Individual, Group and Global Values Explained

I am fascinated by the concept of values and their different types; particularly how they affect our character, decision-making and leadership. The more I explore this topic and implement the lessons, the more I am convinced of the importance of understanding principles at every level, from the individual to the global.

In my own learning journey, I have discovered the impact of knowing my core values and applying that to my life choices. As a coach, I have witnessed the transformation that exploring personal values can have; seeing people gain a deeper understanding of themselves and others.  As a leader, I have seen the impact of leading authentically, by my principles, and the transformation of groups into high-performing teams, when they properly understand and behave according to their shared values.

I have also witnessed first-hand the friction when people breach universal values on the international stage and the terrible conflict that results. Now, as we live through yet another terrible war in Ukraine, it is important to reflect on what these values are and how we should respond. Not only that, there are other crises, such as environmental change – wicked problems – that require a principled approach if we are ever going to tackle them.

An overview of what values are

This specific post looks at the different levels of values and brings together the differing perspectives, paradigms, and insights that I have shared in the most recent ten articles in my Leadership Unlocked column. This post provides an overview of the topic as well as embedded hyperlinks to help you explore in more depth any area that particularly piques your interest.

The different types of values

Firstly, we should ask the question, what are values? Among other things, values are principles, standards, judgements, beliefs, and priorities. They are things we give worth, a concept that is explored in How We All Worship Something (and Why That’s Important).

Broadly, values can be categorised into three types:

• Personal values
• Corporate values
• Universal values

These different types of values tend to overlap and have some commonalities but the way these values are expressed and prioritised is often subtly different at each level. These can be visualised as overlapping spheres or ellipses, as in the diagram below.

Different typoes of values and how they overlap

Let’s look at each type of value in turn:

Personal values

Personal values are the specific combination of values that best reflect our character and preferences. For example, these could be compassion, courage, honesty, or any number of other virtues. For me, adventure and inquisitiveness are core personal values.

Finding your personal values is an important part of self-awareness. As the Greek philosophers said, the starting point of wisdom is to know thyself. Self-inquiry is the start of self-improvement, as explained in Why Socrates is the Father of Self Improvement.

Our values reflect our sense of identity. If we are not true to our values we become inauthentic – an imposter – as explored in How to Smash Imposter Syndrome: Don’t Be a Job Title.

Understanding our personal values is also important in terms of mental health and physical wellbeing. Our values help us to gauge our performance and energy levels, as seen in Burnout Prevention: How to Monitor the Essentials.

And once we find our personal values, we become better at achieving things; we align ourselves to our values to achieve our targets. In other words, to achieve your aim you need to know and apply your principles.

But it does not stop there. We need to constantly re-examine our values. We change and our situation changes. These changes can cause misalignments between ourselves and these actions. This can lead to feelings of frustration and unhappiness, as I have experienced and shared in My Mid-life Crisis and How to Re-find Happiness.

Corporate values

Corporate values are the precepts we hold in common within a family, team, organisation, or people group. These are the principles that bind a group of people together for a particular purpose.

Many organisations have statements that include values such as integrity, creativity, and collaboration. These values should be visible in the behaviour of an organisation, as explained by the Iceberg Model of culture.

If organisations don’t take their values and culture into account then things can go very wrong, especially when they are implementing change programmes, as explained in How to Stop Culture Eating Your Strategy for Breakfast.

Universal values

Universal values are core virtues that transcend individuals, organisations, and national borders. Examples of these would include those enshrined in the United Nations Charter, such as peace, freedom, equal rights, and human dignity.

We often examine values through a very personal lens, and this is important, but this can often limit our ideas of success, both in time and level of impact. Values or virtues should help us define what achievement really means. This success goes beyond just us as individuals as none of us can live a life without interacting with and influencing others. Therefore, we cannot examine values in isolation. Personal values are nothing without the context of corporate and universal values.

There can often be a difference between how we try to sell ourselves – through our CV or on social media – and what really matters when we consider the perspective of universal values. What does success actually mean in this life? The author David Brooks challenges the question “what do I want from life?” and asks another question, “what does life ask of me?” This challenging idea is explored further in What is the Difference Between Eulogy Virtues and Resume Values.

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How values can reveal your personal purpose

Here is another way to look at the three types of values (personal, corporate, and universal) intersect. This time we have three overlapping circles.

Where values overlap can give us insight to our purpose

Each of us has a unique expression of how and where these circles meet. When you have explored and understood each different sphere you should have a better idea of where and how the values overlap.

Why is that important? Well, this intersection can give us a great insight into the specific role we can play, and the special impact that we can bring to the world. We may not feel we can change the whole world, but we can certainly change our world; the environment and the community we live in. This opportunity, where our values align and can bring the greatest impact, can reveal our personal or life purpose.

So, what is that place for you?