Finding Footing in Core Values
Being clear gives me something to stand on.
Being clear gives me something to stand on.
Sometimes it feels like there is no ground beneath my feet. Floating or falling feel the same when life happens. When confronted with inevitable challenges, I call forth what I value to help me navigate to a solution, providing the necessary ground to root my next action.
Events will call upon us to define who we are and what we stand for. Life demands that we choose how we will express our core values. The spring and early summer of 2020 was such a time in my life. I experienced a sudden and overwhelming sense of groundlessness when the pandemic changed everything about how we lived. The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic threw our daily routines into question, giving us little solid ground to stand on. Then, following the murder of George Floyd, I came face to face with a lack of social awareness and realized just how many of my long-held “assumptions” about race were rooted in ignorance and white supremacy.
This double whammy left me searching for solid, reliable truths. Was there anything firm I could stand upon?
While not in the least where I expected it, I began to find some footing in Brene Brown’s excellent book on leadership, Dare to Lead. Two sections of the book are related to identifying personal values, providing me stability in this time of groundlessness. Brene reminds us that we may lose sight of our values in times of challenge, struggle, fear. When we lose sight, our experience of the haters and critic’s voices seem much louder. She says, “We forget our values. Or, frequently, we don’t even know what they are or how to name them. If we do not have clarity of values, if we don’t have anywhere else to look or focus, if we don’t have the light up above to remind you why you’re here, the cynics and the critics can bring us to our knees.” (p185).
As I wrestled with the challenges of the global pandemic and witnessed pain in communities, I lost focus, and as a result, the voices of those who yelled the loudest seemed to dominate. Brene gives a simple exercise to help us begin examining our values and giving us language for them. Providing us, as Brene says, “a North Star in times of darkness.”
Working through the exercise (which I highly recommend) forced me to examine and question what I want to stand for. Brene’s activity encourages us not to indulge in the commonly held fantasy that we are one version of ourselves at work, another at home, and another with friends. Instead, if we dig in and examine our core values, they will be present in every area of our lives.
Jerry Colonna, author of Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up, writes that the idea that we have a “work self” is fiction. There is only us in all our complexity and messiness. It’s the not-so-subtle truth that underlies Jon Kabot-Zinn’s book, Wherever You Go, There You Are.”
After working through the exercise, I found two values that resonated with me. While subjective and entirely personal, they are what is true for me. My two central values are wisdom and kindness. I agree with Brown that all of the other values I might hold are rooted in these two cores.
Further on in her book, Brown talks about the importance of translating values into actual behaviors. Otherwise, we’ve just created elaborate sticky notes for our desks. She says our professed values are no more valuable than “A cat poster. Total BS.” (I remember seeing offices with cat posters hanging on walls proclaiming, “hang on!” A nice sentiment. Not very helpful when the world is on fire.)
When faced with a challenging situation, I can now ask myself, “what’s the right thing to do that is in alignment with my values?” Amidst any groundlessness in life, I can find footing in my core values. Before I cast my lot in any direction, I can examine what wisdom demands in this situation. How can I honor kindness in the current context? The values don’t provide easy, flash card-ready answers. I must examine and reflect within myself. They also don’t guarantee I’ll do the right thing — we’re always working with limited information (that’s one of the reasons core values are so important). Situations are complex, and we can only act based on the information currently available to us. However, when forced to reconcile the outcomes of my actions, if I’ve weighed the action against my values, I can be confident that my actions were in alignment with my values. This assessment is true even if the outcome didn’t result in the way I’d predicted (does it ever?).
More than a year after the turmoil of spring 2020 — I am in a better position because I have clarified my values. I’ve also learned that the chaos of spring 2020 was not an anomaly. The intensity was simply a variation on a theme. Life is challenging at all times. Putting my head in the sand is no longer an acceptable approach. Through articulating values, I’ve given myself a tool to help navigate the constantly evolving changes and challenges.
I’ve continued working with my core values and have identified second-tier values that provide more breadth to the structure. I see them as scaffolding to support the original core values. Wisdom and kindness contain these second-tier values within their scope but articulating these additional values is helpful. In addition to wisdom and kindness, I’ve added justice, courage, and love.
When the critics raise their voices to a yell, and the groundlessness seems about to swallow me up — I can lean on my values for support.