18 essential leadership values
Steve Jobs brought Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy and turned it into a billion-dollar empire. “Coach K” of Duke University fame is one of the winningest coaches in all of college basketball. Julius Caesar personally led the Roman armies into battle again and again.
Have these great leaders discovered something the rest of us haven’t?
They recognize that your values create your world. Leadership values, like personal values, affect all of your decisions in the workplace. They allow you to inspire others, influence decisions and have a positive impact on your organization.
There’s no magic formula to becoming an inspirational leader like Jobs or Buffet. All you have to do is get in touch with your leadership core values.
Leadership core values
Everyone has different values. They’re based on our past experiences, our habits and even the ways our brains are wired. But there are three important values of a leader that you must master in order to inspire and influence others.
Service
Servant leadership means that everything you do is rooted in serving a greater good. Those who embody service leadership values have discovered their purpose in life and won’t let anything get in their way. They want to do good in the world, because they know that is what brings a life of meaning and true fulfillment.
Passion
Do you wake up each morning excited to start the day? Or do you hit the snooze button and wish for five more minutes? If you answered “yes” to waking up excited, you’ve discovered one of the most important values of a leader. Passion is what allows us to live each and every day with energy and commitment and encourage others to do the same.
Vision
Tony says, “Focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.” This is the essence of having a crystal-clear vision. Your leadership vision gives you a deep belief in yourself that helps you stay focused and bounce back from adversity. It allows you to emanate confidence. And it’s what ultimately inspires others to follow you.
Leadership values list
Along with service, vision and passion, great leaders can have many other powerful values that guide their decisions and lives. This leadership values list can get you thinking about which ones you hold.
• Integrity • Honesty • Authenticity
• Empathy • Influence • Humility
• Confidence • Commitment • Communication
• Growth • Optimism, • Resilience
• Adaptability • Creativity • Innovation
How to develop your leadership values
Knowing your leadership core values is an essential part of being an effective leader. When you’re in touch with your values – and live them every day – you’ll make better decisions, build trust in the workplace and inspire others to follow your example.
Determine your leadership style
All great leadership is servant leadership. Your specific leadership style is a combination of service with your other values. Democratic leaders will hold empathy and communication as leadership core values, while visionaries value creativity and innovation. Affiliative leaders may value loyalty and harmony, while pacesetting leaders will appreciate hard work and responsibility. Once you determine your foundational leadership values, you can learn to incorporate other values to become a better leader.
Examine your decisions
Pay more attention to the decisions you make day to day. Why did you make that decision? Connect it back to one of the values above or one of your own values. Also look at which decisions were easy, and which were more difficult. The difficult decisions probably didn’t relate as easily to your leadership core values. If you were able to make a decision quickly and it left you feeling satisfied, chances are it just “felt right.” That’s because your leadership values guided you.
Reflect on past experiences
Examine your actions and decisions outside of the workplace as well. Think back on key moments in your life where you felt extreme emotion: happiness or sadness, pride or embarrassment, fulfillment or emptiness. Why do you think you felt that way? On occasions you felt positive emotions, you were likely living in line with your core values. If you felt negatively, you weren’t able to align your values with your experience. These personal values will overlap with your leadership values, providing valuable insights.
Write it down
Start by making your own personal leadership values list. Write down each value that matters to you, then group the similar values together, making no more than five groups. For example, honesty, integrity and authenticity may go together, or optimism, resilience and adaptability. Choose one word from each group that is most important to you. You now have a list of your five leadership core values.
Apply your leadership values
As you encounter new experiences and challenges, you have the tools to reflect on your leadership values and apply them to your decision-making. If your values align with those of your workplace, you’ll find plenty of ways to apply them. If they don’t, you’ll have an opportunity to bring new insights and inspiration and create a more positive and open company culture.
Read to live your leadership values?
Take Tony Robbins’ Business Identity Quiz to determine your leadership style and learn how to leverage your natural talents and values to achieve more at work.