MY go-to definition of leadership is “helping others do better.” I use it because it is simple, inclusive, and focused on the practical impact leaders have.
Leadership is ultimately about having a positive effect on other people, teams, and organizations. But my best advice for achieving that starts by looking inward. By leading oneself—what I call ‘personal leadership’—a leader is better able to affect others positively.
In more than three decades of research and teaching on leadership, the most powerful tool for personal leadership that I have come across is to leverage the leader’s own values. Doing this requires an upfront investment by the leader in work to clarify their top values, and an ongoing effort to keep those values salient and accessible, so they can be recalled at key leadership moments.
Below, I offer concise advice on how to build this tool by clarifying your own values. But first, I’ll share some of my favorite evidence that the tool works.
How Do You “Be Authentic?”
Authenticity has been called the gold standard of leadership. Everybody wants it in themselves and in the people they follow. But just how do you ‘be authentic?’ If I asked you to be authentic, what should you do?
I found one answer to this question through an experiment with my colleagues Yoonjin Choi and Sheena Iyengar. We studied how mid-career managers communicated with their teams by asking them to write and deliver a motivational speech to a camera.
For half of the leaders, randomly selected, we presented them with a summary they had previously created in a workshop of their own top values. We asked them to keep their values in mind when they wrote their speech; we emphasized that they did not need to talk about their values unless they chose to.
After the subjects recorded their speech, we asked them how they felt. Those who had been reminded of their own values reported feeling more authentic. Feeling authentic is nice, but does it translate into more effective leadership? It does, as we learned when we had the speeches evaluated by other managers and by communications experts.
Those audience members did not know that some speakers had been asked to think about their values. Nevertheless, the audience rated the values-alert speakers as being more authentic. And they reported higher trust in those speakers. Would you like to be viewed as more authentic and more trustworthy by others? Keep your values top of mind. Here’s how to do it.
Clarify Your Values
I’ve taken more than ten thousand leaders from around the world through interactive workshops to help them clarify their top values. At the heart of the process is a simple truth: values are principles of evaluation. Through them, we decide whether a person, an idea, or a project is good, bad, or important.
If you reflect on something you view as good and important and ask why, your answers will point to your values. Try this: Think of someone you view as an outstanding leader. Now ask yourself what about that person’s leadership best explains why you view them so positively. Try to identify a single word (such as “empathy”), but if you need a couple of words (such as “good communication”), that is OK.
If you see this person as a truly outstanding leader, there will be more than one positive quality you attribute to them, so ask yourself what else makes them outstanding in your view. Repeat that question two more times, until you have four answers.
These answers point to values you hold. You can refine them further and make them more useful as a tool, with one more step that aims to zero in more precisely on the exact words that best describe your values.
For each of your four values, identify some synonyms. A chatbot can be useful for this step; if one of your answers to the reflection was “excellence,” you might ask it to give you six synonyms for excellence. Say one of the synonyms is ‘quality.’ Ask yourself: If I had to choose between ‘excellence’ and ‘quality,’ which would I choose? If your answer is excellence, ask the question again, replacing quality with the next synonym. If your answer is ‘quality,’ treat it as the better expression of your value and compare it with the next synonym.
Go through this process for each of your four values. You’ll finish with a list of four values that are each very important to you.
Put Your Values Within Reach
Now you have a list of your top values, like the ones the leaders in our experiment used to tap into their authenticity and build trust. To turn that list into a tool, make it concrete in a form you can consult at key leadership moments.
Many leaders who have gone through my values workshop keep their values on a card in their wallet. Others save them as a picture or note on their phone. Still others put them on a handy object, like a coffee mug.
The key is to keep your values close at hand, so you can consult them when you want to be at your best as a leader. Beyond authenticity and trust, evidence suggests that thinking about your values can also make you happier, more ethical, more resilient, more open, and more motivated.
When your values are clear and close at hand, leading yourself becomes the first step in helping others do better.
Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas.
