Uniting Your Team with Values: A Roadmap for Leaders

"It's good to be the king." - Mel Brooks, "History of the World"

I am the eldest of five, so it goes without saying that I'm a natural-born bossy pants. Leading came naturally. Responsibility was never earned, it was just given. Moving into leadership at work was a continuation of this norm. But why did I want to lead? At some point, saying, "Because mom left me in charge, that's why," doesn't work. My management fell flat: no one was inspired. No one excelled. I myself had several poor bosses in the past so I knew where all the bodies of lousy management were buried. But knowing what not to do didn't inform me what to do. I had this vague notion that I was a good person. I loved work and wanted to inspire my people to love it too. But I couldn't translate that into an actionable plan until I got clear on what my values really were.

Values help in not only setting up your team planning, but also in the darker moments of leadership. When caught up in the daily grind and minutia of leading a team, it can be hard to remember the big picture and why you do what you do. But for any leader to succeed, you must remain moored to your values and use them to lead your team in both sunny (planned) and stormy (unplanned) weather.

In this piece, we'll dive into how understanding my values transformed my journey, why I feel that it's an essential leadership exercise, and the roadmap to do so. We will also look at how you can help your team identify their core values before concluding with an explanation of why creating a personal mission statement or mantra is so important for motivation. Lastly, we'll gaze into the future and unveil what's in store for our series on crafting a pragmatic managerial approach rooted in core values.

Inside every lousy manager is a good one waiting to get out.

Early in my career, I had the misfortune of having an awful creative director. Absolutely ruthless. I cataloged her every misstep and could recite them like a line from Anchorman. I vowed that I'd never make any of my direct reports feel like they were in a corner with no way out. Fast forward a few years, and I finally managed a junior designer. And I was brutal and crushed his hope. How did I get here?

There's a vast gray area between aspiration and action. I relied on a wish to bridge the gap between wanting to be a good manager and being a good manager. But you need hard work, not wishful thinking, to connect who you want to be to reality.

The moment you embrace that you are a perpetual work-in-progress, all that hard work starts to bring focus to a plan: identify what matters. And when you know what matters, it gives you direction when making tough decisions. They will be your Northstar when navigating the frustrations of agency life.

Why bother?

Determining your core values helps you align those with your company's mission. It becomes the backbone for how you manage your team. I don't advocate using the same values to unify. Values are personal - they are my values. They are your values. But I believe they can provide intersecting points of value alignment that help build and improve trust, respect, and collaboration among team members. Leaders should be candid in expressing their values and provide a safe and encouraging environment for their colleagues to do the same. This will allow everyone to know their priorities and respect each other's differences.

They also provide a common language for teams: instead of attacking each other's ideas, team members can understand and appreciate each other's perspectives and approach conflicts with mutual respect. It's like an interpersonal Rosetta Stone that helps ensure everyone is on the same page - and the same project.

The Life-Changing Magic of Values

Ready to get started? Good - this is the easy part: find a list of values. There are a million of them. I like this one here. I personally use the strategy of going with your gut. Pick out all the ones that speak to you. You'll likely have around 20, but we want to reduce it to 5-8. Channel your inner Marie Kondo by reflecting on the chosen ones. What is their importance to you? Which ones spark joy? Some may actually be synonyms - weed those out and keep the word that inspires.

Now write them down. Where? Everywhere. These values should resonate with how you lead yourself and your team. You're gonna want them in a place where they'll always be visible – this could be pinned up in an office or saved on your computer desktop. You want to use them when making decisions or communicating with others. So the more places, the better!

If you want to level up, it's also beneficial to have a personal mission statement or mantra based on these core values. This statement should capture who you are as a leader and what you believe in while motivating and inspiring you. A strong mission statement will bring clarity and focus to your goals while directing day-to-day decision-making.

Knowing your values make you more awesome.

Having your values - the traits that matter to you - front and center allowed me to make clear decisions and be more effective in my role. I created a plan of action that aligned with my values, so staying motivated and on track was much easier. And it improved my relationships with colleagues, friends, and family members. But their real value (ahem) was in getting me through the hard times. When you are stressed and overwhelmed, that's when you can crack. It's easy to slip and fall into lousy manager habits. My values were my Northstar - they were the better “me” helping the stressed “me”.

For example, do you have a problem with a co-worker? Instead of searching for stock advice, use your values and the FHA Journal (sorry, shameless self-promo. But they all work together. Just sayin’) to work through and maneuver based on who and what you want to be as a leader. Use these tools to help get you there.

Share the love - Help your team identify their values.

Once you are comfortable with your values - you utilize them daily and have real-world examples of how they helped you - share the exercise with your team. However remember: this is an exercise for their personal growth. So encourage them to share, while letting them know they don't have to. But, as a manager, you should share yours. Be vulnerable.

Now the magic can happen. Companies have values and/or mission statements. However, creating employee engagement around these is always a struggle (especially in creative roles). They might not feel that their values mesh with the agency's because people's values are generally nebulous and ill-defined. But when you sit down and identify them, you may find points of intersection between your and your company's values that would have remained hidden before. Invite your team to look for this alignment.

For example: Let's take a simple business goal to increase sales by 10%. These are great business goals. However, if you're in a creative agency, they're usually met with "meh" by the creative team. But if you have a designer who has identified the value of "compassion," she could align this value with what hitting that financial goal could mean: the company stays afloat, and her co-workers have job security. It's now an intersecting point of value between the agency and her.

And just as you have created your own mantra/mission statement, give your team the same guidance so they can make theirs. Using values to develop a mantra/mission statement is like individual flowers compared to a bouquet: It's even more impressive when you weave the individual values into a cohesive and uplifting phrase.

For example, when Apple CEO Tim Cook took over from Steve Jobs in 2011, he created a new mission statement for his leadership: "We believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently." Because everyone at Apple knew this, it allowed them to align their values to his and have a shared purpose of challenging convention and striving for excellence.

Values - the Lego plate in a more cohesive managerial approach

Teams are made of individuals trying to work at something approaching unity. As any Lego enthusiast would tell you, the best way to build is to put all of those individual blocks onto a plate: that large, flat Lego that forms the base of the build. Values are an agency's plate. They provide a unifying theme and guide our behaviors and interactions in a way that helps us feel better and more fulfilled.

Values go beyond words. They reach deep into our meaning and interpretation of ourselves and become our essential "me." They are who we are and who we aspire to be. They are our best selves. And we help achieve our best selves when we keep them front and center, able to guide us in all our dilemmas.

So go forth and learn your values! Why? Because mom left me in charge, that's why.

In upcoming blog posts, we'll explore how to take our team's values and use them to help them thrive and achieve their full potential.