Word Count: 783 Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:23 AM
Walking the Talk: How to Live Up to Your Values
Leaders, consultants, human resources departments, business books and professional journals all place great emphasis on the importance of mission, vision, values and corporate culture in organisations.
Talk is cheap. Mission, vision, values: the words roll off the tongue so easily. Walking the talk however, is a very different proposition, as anyone who has tried to manage organizational behaviour knows well. What resources we spend revisiting the meaning of these words in our organisations, strategizing around them and trying to align people with them!
The problem with these words and our aspirations around them is that what you say about them is irrelevant. It is what you do about them that counts.
Take three of the most common leadership values. Virtually all organisations talk of showing respect for the people who are their stakeholders. They also talk of the importance of developing and utilizing teams to their full potential, and of seeking to delight customers.
Now consider the behaviours that people throughout an organisation must exhibit if they are to live up to these values.
The first value is that of showing respect for others. There many culturally specific ways of showing respect but the most universal way of doing so is to listen. It is easy to listen to someone whom you know and like, when you know them to be wise, informed and with interesting and useful things to say.
How different it is when you try to listen to someone whose beliefs, values or opinions you know to be very different from your own, and when you hold feelings of disapproval or disagreement about them!
How well do you think you listen? What would people around you say about how well you listen? How well do you listen to the youngest or newest member of your team; to irate customers; or when you just KNOW what someone is going to say, and that they are wrong?
You can choose not to listen. But if you do not listen, then you cannot claim to be living the value of respect.
Growing high performing teams means allowing people freedom to perform and giving them feedback on how they are doing. Every leader and manager knows how important these functions are and yet in the course of a career few employees would say that the perennial question: How am I doing, has often been answered honestly and constructively.
Does your organisation walk the talk of developing your people? How frequently and honestly do you give feedback? Have you ever glossed over feedback and coaching to get to disciplinary action? If you are not giving regular, constructive feedback to your people you cannot claim to be helping them grow and develop.
The third value that we often talk about is the need to delight customers by offering excellent service. We talk of relationship marketing and of building a loyal customer base. But we overlook the fact that you cannot develop a relationship with someone if you cannot recognise and acknowledge their feelings!
The value of caring service must be supported by the behaviours that show you actually care! How often have you stood at a customer service desk, under a framed statement of the customer service ambitions of the organisation, seething with frustration and anger at the uncaring behaviour of an agent or clerk?
If you want your organisation to walk the talk of caring for customers, people must use the behaviour that communicates caring.
You show caring by using empathy. How sensitive are you to the feelings of others? Are you willing, and do you have the skill, to acknowledge those feelings? Do the people who deal with customers day to day in your company know how to acknowledge and defuse feelings of confusion, frustration and anger when they encounter them with customers?
In spite of our claims about caring, and our ambitions to offer exceptional service to customers, one hears very little empathy in the course of a typical business day. Few of us walk that talk!
Showing respect, developing people and customer service are three of the most common values that organisations aspire to. How well we succeed in living up to them will be judged on how well we listen, how well we give feedback to people, and the extent to which we acknowledge the feelings of our customers.
Perhaps we need to be a little more circumspect in our talk about values, and recognise that living up to them means walking a demanding path.
About the Author
Maureen Collins trains people how to handle difficult conversations, on difficult topics, with difficult people in her consulting practice, Straight Talk. She has a B.Sc. degree in Psychology from Edinburgh University and over 25 years of consulting experience. She consults in communication in the workplace. In Straight Talk, Get free Straight Talk Tips. http://www.straight-talk.co.za
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