Aligning Your Work With Your Core Values
I’ve studied systems dynamics modeling for 3 decades. What I’ve experienced first-hand is when you establish several key core values, you can create an entire self-replicating system for your organization.
I experimented with this idea first with Cheetah Learning where our 3 core values are "Best Friend Customer Service" (treat everyone as you would your best friend), "WOW’em" (elegant delivery with extraordinary results), and "Be a Cheetah" (get things done fast, wherever you are, with whatever you have handy). It’s been a fascinating 15-year success story creating the system of Cheetah Learning with these core values and watching how they continue to self-replicate through every part of the operation.
In this month’s column, I reflect on the core values that drive my own Project Management leadership style. Identifying those core values that drive your own leadership style as a Project Manager will help you thrive through times of change in your organization and, most importantly, will give you enormous freedom to develop into the unique style of leader you want to be.
Here, I review my core values in terms of my "internal environment" as a Project Manager (what puts a spring in my step), and my "external environment" (how I approach and respond to others).
These are the 6 core values that I fall back on, go to, and repeat, over and over and over, which give me the freedom to be the type of Project Manager that enables me to thrive in every situation.
Internal Environment
1. Appreciate What Is.
My first central go-to value is to find ways to respect, enjoy, love, adore and appreciate everything as it is. This includes respecting the power of my own positive and negative feelings. Rather than pass judgment on myself and others, I have learned to respect, enjoy, adore, love, and appreciate all of it. It might actually be easier to extend this level of grace to others, but extending it to myself helps me get along better with me, freeing me to be the best version of myself (and best Project Manager) that I can be.
2. Live Where I Breathe.
Commit to connect to what is, as it is, by consciously living a single point existence rather than getting stuck in nostalgia, regret, hope, and worry. Ruminating about past experiences from the glory days, regrets from past losses, and dreams of future plans hampers my ability to connect with what is, as it is. The more I focus on nostalgia, regrets, and hopes and fears for the future, the less freedom I have to experience what is actually going on right now. Focusing on the present reality keeps our company moving forward, rather than keeping us stuck in nostalgia for how things used to be.
3. Choose My Feelings
Mastering how I choose to feel about my experiences brings me much internal peace. It is my choice how I feel about my various life experiences. No one else gets to choose this for me, nor are they responsible for these feelings either. When you take this approach to Project Management, you are able to quickly move past potentially upsetting roadblocks in your projects in order to find the best and most productive way forward.
External Environment
1. Respect Other’s Unique Life Journey
As I support, respect and trust each person’s journey, it enables me to better respond in a way that is uniquely fitting for who they are and where they are. It is not for me to judge how someone else is living their life. Supporting people in their own personal choices to live their life the best way for them, gives me the freedom to do the same. For Project Managers, adopting this core value gets you out of the trap of micro-managing. When you trust that your team members can complete their projects in their own way, which may not be identical to your way, you open up new possibilities for learning from others and building trust within your organization.
2. Recognize the Impact of My Own Filters
By being more mindful of how my perceptions color how I respond to my current reality, I can see many more options to adjust my responses to various situations. When things don’t go our way in our work lives, it is too easy to believe that your external reality is determining how you react. You are mad because your team member turned in a project plan late, again. When you recognize that you are in control of how you are perceiving your current reality, however, you can shift how you respond to it.
3. Play in Others’ Innate Goodness
Find their inherent positive intent. People rarely show up in life to make others miserable. Most people are generally unaware of how their behavior is perceived, and many others don’t care how others perceive them. They are simply living their lives the way that best suits them — even if it might annoy the living daylights out of me. When I give in to the power of the annoyance and frustration of how I am experiencing another person, I in fact imprison myself in those emotions. When I instead allow myself to play with how I experience the best version of others, I free myself from the annoyance prison. For Project Managers, this attitude opens up worlds of possibilities for how you respond to and engage with "difficult" employees and team members.
To learn more about finding freedom in your own management style in order to live in alignment with your core values, check out Cheetah Learning’s personality-based Project Management courses at www.cheetahlearning.com.
