Being a coach, the term value has become an integral part of my vocabulary, so much so that I feel it drops of my mouth a couple thousand times each day. As I watch people around me do stuff each day, my mind would subconsciously want to know the value of their action. However, thankfully I have managed to somehow keep the question limited to my actions and limit all the data my mind needs to process each day.
As much as this has been helpful, the value conversation keeps coming up as part of my engagement with my clients and people. The more I question the value of something, the more I realize that what we value defines how people act.
As a consultant, I do a lot of travel. Coming home at the end of the week, carrying the baggage of all the good and bad that has occurred during the week, one thing that used to impact me the most was the condition of my house. If my family room was a mess or the game room had stuff lying all around, I know and my family knows that I won’t be very happy. So on the day of my arrival home, some effort is spent on ensuring that the house is in order. This does not mean that the house was that way all week long. It is a weekend phenomenon. What is worth noticing is that something that I value has changed how my kids reach on the day I come home but it has not necessarily influenced them to keep the house in order all week long. They want to keep the noise away when I am around.
There are similar observations that I have from the companies and teams I have coached. If the leader values is a good looking power point (green) status report, that is what the everyone spends all the time creating. What is worst is how it impacts how managers apply control on their teams to make sure things stay green. They don’t want to be exposed and vulnerability is not an option. Additionally, this causes decision making to happen not where the skills are because value is not based on trust but the force that is exerted to produce what the leader cares about.
So if you are a leader (not a manager), what is valuable to you or maybe a better question is, what is it like working for you? When your teams talk about value, do they talk about power points or the product we are trying to build or the service that your customer cares about. Think about it because what you say will impact how people think, behave, eat, drink and sleep.
BTW, my weekends are now spent cleaning up the house. If that is valuable for me, I got to make it happen and hopefully will inspire them.
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