Welcome to the first episode of the Self-Leadership series. Each week, I’ll share a toolbox to help you to grow your self-leadership. In this post, you’ll find six steps to discover your core values and live up to them.

Why focusing on values?

To effectively lead yourself, you need to be clear on who you are and what your core values are. Values reveal what you stand for and affect the way you think, the decisions you make, how you behave and how you react to events and people in your life. Values often rule us under the conscious level. Just reflect about the last time you said or did something in a very spontaneous and automatic way and that you regretted immediately? Or think about some behaviours you have adopted unintentionally from your parents and that emerged automatically? How much do you know your values?

When you know your values, you can consciously choose to act in full alignment with them. When acting in full alignment with your values, you experience greater fulfillment and achieve the outcomes you want with ease and a sense of calm centeredness.

Here are some practical exercises and guidelines to identify your core values and live in alignment with them.

Step 1: Data collection

Your life is a record of your values. Your values guide your decisions and affect your choices and reactions. By asking a few specific questions about your life, you can identify the values that shape who you are and how you feel.

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobodies are the same but you leave them all over everything you do.”
Elvis Presley

Exercise 1: Self-reflection questions

To start with, have a look to below questions and answer them honestly and without judgment. Remember that your consciousness does not have all the answers. It’s therefore key to create a space for new ideas and insights to emerge. An open mental and emotional state is an essential first step before reflecting on below questions.

If I had to interview your relatives and/or friends, what would they say about what matters most to you?
What values do you admire in other people? What do you like to see in others?
Think of a good friend. Think of him/her in a challenging situation. What qualities do you appreciate in him/her in such a situation?
Think of a good friend. Think of him/her in a happy situation. What qualities do you appreciate in him/her in such a situation?
Think of yourself in a challenging situation. What qualities do others recognise in such a situation?
Think of yourself in a happy situation. What qualities do others recognise in such a situation?
What is important to you?
What drives you ? Why do you get up in the morning?
Who are your role models? What do you like or admire in them?
What makes you happy?
What keeps you up at night?
What are you doing when you are at your best?
Why are you bothered by what bothers you?
What really makes you angry?
What motivates you?
Beyond your need for food, shelter and community, what do you need to feel fulfilled?
What cause would you sacrifice or suffer for? Why is this so important to you?
You are 70 years old and look back to your life. What will you be happy about? What do you want to be known for?
You are attending your own funerals and are listening to what people say about you. What would they say? What would make you proud? What would make you feel uncomfortable?

To further discover the implicit values of some of your answers, ask yourself "why" for each of your answers. For example, why did this behaviour make you angry? Why do you like the X, Y, Z qualities of others? The answers to these questions converge to values.

For instance, you might get angry when you see people sending text messages and driving. By thinking more about why this bothers you, you may end up with a "lack of responsibility" and a "lack of interest in others". "Responsibility" and "interest in others” would then be part of your list of values.

Exercise 2 : Peak moment and bad moment

Think of a peak time in your life, a time of extreme pleasure or adventure, learning or satisfaction, peace or well-being.

Peak experiences are when:

You are not aware of the passing time because it goes so fast and you are so absorbed.
You are aware that you are doing the thing you were born to do.
It is easy and effortless.
There is a basic pleasure in the moment and just thinking about it now creates a feeling of warmth.
Everything is going well, you know it will be a success.
There is a kind of joy and fun in the activity; it is serious but fun.
There is no doubt about yourself.
You use all your skills and abilities you have learned and been born with.

Identify 3 or 4 peak moments of your life, ideally from both your professional and personal life. What was it about this moment or experience that made it so powerful? Put yourself back in that time, and be aware of all around you. What do you see? Hear? Taste? Smell? Feel? Who was there? What happened? What was your part in what happened? What was special about that? What makes it so important? What feelings do you associate with the experience? What thoughts are emerging? What emotions are you experiencing?

Write down all the key words/phrases that come up when you are telling your story. Now repeat it for a second experience etc.Once completed for the different experiences, review the words and highlight the top ten words/phrases for you.

Now think back to a dramatic event, moment or period in your life, a time when you felt completely dishonored, unloved, disempowered. Describe this time, with as many pertinent details as possible. Why was it so dramatic? What aspects of that time do you never want to experience again? Put yourself back in that time, and be aware of all around you. What do you see? Hear? Taste? Which values were not honoured in those situations?

Exercise 3 : List of values

Now combine all the answers of exercise 1 and 2 into your master list of values.

You can also have a look at the list of values and check if any other resonates to you and ensure you didn’t miss any important to you. If so, add them to your list.

Step 2: Analyse your values

Taking your values list, ask the following questions for each value:

What do I mean with this ... (value)?
What does this value mean to me? Often an obvious value has deep meaning behind it that may uncover deeper core values.

You might end up with a list of 30 to 40 values. In the next steps we’ll refine them and look for your core values.

Step 3 : Sort out your values

Your next step is to sort out your values under related themes. Values like learning, growth, and development relate to each other. For each group of values, select a word that best describes the central theme of each group. For example, values like transparency, integrity and honesty would fall under the label “integrity”.

You can eventually do this exercise by using post-it notes you can move around. Once sorted out, keep the related values visible to give context to the themes you have defined.

Step 4: Identify your core values

You might now have a more sizable list of values. You can now prioritize them in order of importance.

To do so, ask yourself the following questions:

What values are essential to my life?
What values represent my most basic way of being?

This requires a bit more time and reflection, and you may need to do this step in multiple sittings. After doing one round of ranking put it aside. Revisit your ranking the next day and see how it sits with you. Then, go through the process again.

Write down your top 10 values and then further filter them to your top 5 values. For most people this is the hardest part.

Now put them in order of importance, starting with the most important one. These are your core values. Core values are your foundational beliefs, ways to think and act that are more important to you than anything else.

“Your core values are the deeply held beliefs that authentically describe your soul.”
John C. Maxwell

Step 5: Test your values

Once you’ve completed your list of core values, walk away from them and revisit them the next day after a good night’s sleep. Review your list:

How do they make you feel?
Do you feel they are consistent with who you are?
Are they personal to you?
Do you see any values that feel inconsistent with your identity (as if they belong to someone else, like an authority figure or society) and not you?

Check your priority ranking. Do you feel like your values are in the right order of importance?

Make any tweaks and changes as necessary.

Step 6: Live up to your core values

In this last step, let’s have a look into how you can achieve greater satisfaction of your values in both your working life and your personal life.

“Great people have great values and great ethics.” Jeffrey Gitomer

For each of your core values, describe 3-5 behaviours that people would see if you were living by those values. Describe a set of behaviours or actions that best reflect what this value means to you. For each of your core values, I recommend 1-3 guiding principles that bring it to life. Write the guiding principle in a simple way that would make it easy for you to explain it to a child (and thus easy to remember)

Example: Responsibility

I keep my commitments
I am not living above my financial resources.
I don’t make excuses

Example : creativity

I seek out problems to solve
I challenge the status quo
I embrace change

Find out more on self-leadership, read my dedicated blog post.

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