Lecture 4
Model the way: Clarifying
Values and setting the example.
Find Your Voice
• THE FIRST STEP YOU MUST TAKE ALONG THE PATH to
becoming an exemplary leader is to discover your personal
values and beliefs.
• You must define a set of principles that guide your
decisions and actions and find a way to express them in
your own words, not in someone else's.
• You must find your voice.
Find Your Voice
Exemplary leadership does not come from the outside
in. It comes from the inside out. Just imagine this
scene. Someone walks into the room right now and
announces to you and your colleagues, “Hi, I’m your
new leader.” At that very moment, right away, what do
you want to know from this person?
Find your Voice
Research shows that people would like to ask or know:
▶ What are your values?
▶ What do you like to do in your free time?
▶ What do you stand for and believe in?
▶ How do you make decisions?
▶ Why do you want to do this job?
▶ What qualifies you for this job?
▶ What do you believe e (e.g., about this field, this time in history, how
people should be treated, about family, health, wealth, etc.)
Find your Voice
• Before you can become a credible leader—one who connects “what
you say” with “what you do”—you first have to find your authentic
voice, the most genuine expression of who you are.
• If you don’t find your voice, you’ll end up with a vocabulary that
belongs to someone else, mouthing words written by some
speechwriter or mimicking the language of some other leader who is
nothing like you at all.
• If the words you speak are not your words but someone else’s, you
will not, in the long term, be able to be consistent in word and deed.
You will not have the integrity to lead
Find your Voice: Articulate Your
Leadership Philosophy
• To find your voice, you have to
discover what you care about,
what defines you, and what
makes you who you are.
• You have to explore your inner
self.
• You can only be authentic when
you lead according to the
principles that matter most to
you.
Find your Voice: Let Your Values
Guide You
• After seven years of rigorous
research, a landmark study of the
observations from more than 100
CEOs and over 8,000 employees
found that leaders who were clear
about their values delivered as much
as five times greater returns for their
organizations than leaders of weak
character.
Find your Voice: Express Yourself
• Leadership is an art, and just as with any other art
form—whether it’s painting, playing music,
dancing, acting, or writing—leadership is a means
of personal expression. To become a credible
leader, you must learn to express yourself in ways
that are uniquely your own
Anne Lamott tells would-be writers
And the truth of your experience can only come
through in your own voice. If it is wrapped in
someone else’s voice, we readers are suspicious, as
if you are dressed up in someone else’s clothes.
Find your Voice: Find Commitment
Through Clarifying Values
• Only when leaders discover and clarify what they expect of themselves
can they expect others to follow. Your ability to easily explain your
actions and reasoning allows others to connect the values and the path
they need to take in their actions. Intrinsic cohesion results in external
alignment
• Quadrant 1 are those managers who are not very
clear about their personal values or those of their
organization. In quadrant 2 are those who are
relatively clear about their organization’s values but
not very clear about their personal values. Found in
quadrant 3 are those clear about both personal and
organizational values, and in quadrant 4 are those
managers clear about their personal values but not
very clear about the organization’s values.
Affirm Shared Values
• In becoming an exemplary leader, you have to transition from “what I
believe” to “what we believe.”
• People are most loyal and committed when they believe that their
organization’s values align with their personal values.
• The quality and accuracy of communication and the integrity of the
decision-making process increase when people feel they share significant
values with their colleagues.
• Leaders need to help guide people in finding that common ground
Affirm Shared Values: Shared Values
Make a Difference
• When leaders seek consensus around shared values, constituents are
more positive and productive.
• People who report that their senior managers engage in dialogue
regarding common values feel a significantly stronger sense of personal
effectiveness.
• Studies show that high-performing companies align and enact their values
throughout the organization, and that organizations with a strong
corporate culture based on shared values outperform other firms by a
huge margin
Affirm Shared Values: Forge Unity,
Don’t Force It
• You cannot mandate unity; instead, you forge it by involving people in the
process, making them feel that you are genuinely interested in their
perspectives and that they can speak freely with you.
• No matter how extensive top management’s support of shared values is,
leaders can’t impose their values on organizational members.
• Shared values are the result of listening, appreciating, building consensus, and
practicing conflict resolution.
• People must participate in the process. That means you need to provide
opportunities for people to ask questions, clarify their own values, determine if
they can live their values in the organization, and come to the decision about
the fit between their own values and the values of the organization.
Live the Shared Values
• Leaders are their organizations’
ambassadors of shared values.
• Their mission is to represent the values and
standards to the rest of the world, and
their moral obligation is to serve the values
to the best of their abilities.
• People watch your every action, and
they’re determining if you’re serious about
what you say.
• You need to be conscious of your choices
and the actions you take because they
signal priorities that others use to conclude
whether you’re doing what you say.
Live the Shared Values: Spend Your
Time and Attention Wisely
• How you spend your time is the single clearest indicator to
others of what’s important to you. Spending time on what
you say is important shows that you’re putting your
resources and energy behind your espoused value.
• If you say that you’re focused on customers (or clients,
patients, students or voters), then you should be spending
your time with them.
• If diversity, equity, and inclusion are critical, then make
sure they are part of recruitment, selection, and retention
efforts.
• If innovation is essential, you should be visiting the labs
and participating in online open-source discussions.
• When you spend time doing the things you say you value,
you earn the trust of others.
Live the Shared Values: Use Relevant
Language
• Try talking about an organization for a day without using the words
employee, manager, boss, supervisor, subordinate, or hierarchy.
• You may find this exercise nearly impossible unless you’ve been part of
organizations that use other terms—terms such as associates, team
members, or partners.
• The corporate lexicon can easily trap people into a particular way of
thinking about roles and relationships.
Live the Shared Values: Use Relevant
Language
• Exemplary leaders understand and are
attentive to language because they appreciate
the power of words.
• Words don’t just give voice to one’s mindset
and beliefs; they also evoke images of what
people hope to create with others and how
they expect people to behave.
• Positive words strengthen areas in the frontal
lobes, promoting the brain’s cognitive
functioning and building resiliency.
• Conversely, hostile language and angry words
send alarm signals to the brain as protection
against any threats to survival and partially
shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers in
Live the Shared Values: Seek
Feedback
• The feedback process strikes at a tension between two
basic human needs: the need to learn and grow versus
being accepted just the way you are.
• Consequently, even what seems like a mild, gentle, or
relatively harmless suggestion can leave a person feeling
angry, anxious, poorly treated, or profoundly threatened.
• One major reason that most people, and especially those
in leadership positions, aren’t proactive in asking for
feedback is their fear of feeling exposed—exposed as not
being perfect, as not knowing everything, as lacking self-
confidence, as not being as good at leadership as they
should be, as not being up to the task
Teach Others to Model the Values:
Tell Stories
• Critical incidents create important teachable
moments. They offer leaders the occasion in real-
time to demonstrate what’s valued and what’s not.
They become “stories” that are passed down,
whether around the base from one generation to
another, as demonstrated within most every family.
• Stories are another way that leaders pass on lessons
about shared values and impress upon others the
importance of being on the same page.
• Stories are a powerful tool for teaching people
what’s important and what’s not, what works and
what doesn’t, and what is and what could be
Teach Others to Model the Values: Formally
Reinforce the Behaviors You Want Repeated
• Measurement and feedback are absolutely essential
to increasing efforts to improve performance.
• Leaders can add clear performance measures that
evaluate how well people are doing on these values
(e.g., quality, customer service, innovation, respect
for others, etc.).
• One highly innovative company, for example,
measures turnover by division units every ninety days
to make certain that each manager is paying attention
to retention and providing a workplace that makes
people want to stay.