Are your ‘core values’​ collecting dust?

One of our Core Values is “Commitment to Excellence.” That sounds really nice, but what does it mean? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

I love all five of our Core Values, but it occurred to me a couple of years ago that while they are great aspirations, it was hard to really transform them into criteria for which we could be held accountable. After working with our senior leadership team to develop these core values, I immediately said, “These cannot be something that just hangs on the wall and collects dust; we have to bring them to life.” Now, with this new revelation, I knew I had to come up with a way to boil these values down for all of our team members.

Most of my best ideas are shamelessly taken from a good book or podcats. So, after listening to a great #Entreleadership podcast our “Behaviors” were born. Each of our Core Values now has a list of behaviors. These smaller, more tangible concepts support our overarching values. Things like, “resourceful,” “candid,” “compassionate,” “say, I’m sorry,” and “celebrate the wins” are all ways that we can help those philosophical ideas (core values) become more real in our everyday environment. 

We do not expect our team members to remember all of these behaviors. That’s what the 5 Core Values are for. They serve as the overarching themes for us to remember and rally around. We DO want to have a common list of behaviors that we can all agree on and pull from in various instances. One of those times is during our evaluation process. As any good evaluation should, ours incorporates our Core Values. I tell each new team member when they are on-boarded that half of their evaluation will be how they are performing the actual work we hired them to do, and half will be how they are living our Core Values. Unless you work on an island by yourself, they both matter equally. So here’s an example: I sit down with “Bob” at his first evaluation and say, “Bob, you are doing good work, but you are lacking in Commitment to Excellence.” Now, if Bob has been at work on time every day, works overtime, and his quality of work is good, he’s going to think, “what in the hell is this guy talking about?” But instead, if I say, “Bob, you’ve been on time every day, you work overtime when we ask, and your quality of work is good. Those are Behaviors (work ethic, dependable, quality) of our Core Value, Commitment to Excellence. I really appreciate that about you. But, you know Bob, every time we ask you to try something new, you have a bad attitude, and being open-minded is also one of the behaviors to Commitment to Excellence. You can see how these two scenarios are very different. Without the behaviors, we have no good basis to have a conversation with Bob that he can really connect with. Talking about living up to our core values, without connecting them to tangible or practical things, is worse than not having them in the first place. 

Another way we draw on this behavior is during our company-wide weekly meeting. Each Tuesday morning we come together for about 15 minutes. (Yes, the entire company!) In addition to new team member introductions, anniversaries, and other company news, we have our “Core Value Shares.” I encourage our team members to catch their peers living the Core Values and submit those each week. We tie these “attaboys” to the specific behaviors we saw our teammates demonstrating that support our Core Values. This might seem fluffy, but even among a bunch of “tough guys,” we get great participation. 

Whether it is formal instruction in the evaluation process or positive reinforcement through attaboys, I am confident, without a shadow of a doubt, this common language and intentionality around our “Behaviors” has generated authentic employee engagement and helped bring our Core Values to life. 

#forgingahead #ourpeoplemakethedifference #corevalues #bebigactsmall