You make decisions to keep yourself and your team comfortable. We all do it. It’s human nature. We all subconsciously protect ourselves from change because we fear that change will overwhelm and overcome us. But let me ask you...
Did you become an executive just so you could hide out?
Here are five steps you can take to help your leadership team face its fears and make values-based decisions during periods of change:
Establish your team’s core values.
Fear is a rotten filter if you want to make strong decisions during times of change or times of opportunity. Instead of fear, your team can choose to make decisions according to your shared values – to what you actually believe is most meaningful, sustainable and stimulating.
What are your team’s core values? You’re not all showing up every day just to make money and get promoted. You could do that anywhere, for less stress. The people on your team don’t want to be safe. They want to wow their customers and make a statement in your company. They want to be remembered as the A-team in your company’s lore – as legends.
You can make the choice to tap into the core values motivating your leaders. Values naturally drive human behavior when they aren’t being covered over by fear.
Dig deeper than your change dynamics and the fear they are giving rise to. Drill down and discover what lights your leaders’ and team members' fire. What is their ideal when it comes to how you all work together and what you achieve?
Does your team value…
- Creativity?
- Compassion?
- Innovation?
- Well-being?
- Wisdom?
- Impact?
You can decide to engage a process of identifying the four to five core values you and your senior leaders share. These are the beliefs upon which you will not compromise, even as you move through significant change and fear rears its ugly head.
Define your values behaviorally so they are observable, tangible and measurable.
Today, most companies have a list of shared values. They print these values up on posters and believe that they’ve built a values-aligned culture. Unfortunately, they’ve only taken the first step.
To get your values working for you, you’ve got to choose to define them behaviorally. After all, you can only perceive if people are living their values or not through their observable behaviors.
Within your leadership team, forge agreement around what it looks like to hold true to your values, day n and day out. What three to four behaviors for each value will you practice with one another as change unfolds and fear threatens to take over? Be concrete and concise. Leave no wiggle room.
Set the standard for values-based decision making.
Once you have your values and valued behaviors defined, make the choice to codify them. Put them into an Organizational Constitution that every team member publicly signs, including you. Liberate your leaders to make decisions according to your team’s shared values, even when rapid change pressures them to do otherwise.
Your leaders and team members will appreciate you for this liberation – for unshackling them from fear and empowering them to live according to their most cherished beliefs.
Pinpoint where the fear of change has trumped your values in the past.
Your new Organizational Constitution gives you a tool to root out fear-based decision making and replace it with values-based decision making. You get a rock-solid filter through which to assess past decisions and formulate better choices for the future.
Use your Organizational Constitution to analyze your team’s decisions systematically. Pinpoint the times when your decisions weren’t driven by your values, but by fear. Lift these examples up. Learn from them. Create a safe space to talk about the emotional and operational effects of allowing fear to trump your values.
How did teamwork take a hit? And what about the ripple effect? When fear clouded your team’s perspective, how did the rest of your company suffer?
In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”
Model values-based decision making courageously.
What will be different for your team in the future as it learns to face its fears and adopt your Organizational Constitution as its decision making filter?
That depends on you.
Are you committed to model the values-based decision making you desire from others? It’s not always easy. You will face pushback. You may be pressured to “bend” your values for the “good of the company” — for the sake of “growth,” “job creation” and “profits.”
I’ve been in the leadership development field for over 35 years. Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen it all. Leaders get pressured to make decisions they don’t actually believe in all the time. This is especially true during major change initiatives, when so many other sacrifices have to be made. A leader’s values – even a team’s values – can seem unimportant as corporations retool themselves to be more competitive in the global marketplace.
To lead your team to a system of values-based decision making, you must tap into your courage and conviction. You’ll need to model the way, to show your team members that you will uphold your team’s values while also being a “team player” for the company.
Do you know your leadership team’s core values? Have you defined those values behaviorally? If not, then that’s your first step.
