Step 2 – Want to Trade In Your Mask Collection and Establish Your Core Values?

 

What are your core values?

Have you recently sat with yourself to consider this question? It is a strange one for many. You do have core values, even if they are unarticulated. Core Values are your inner guidelines that you aspire to use when you are unclear on what, where, or how to proceed – maybe even helping with the why and the whens of a given endeavor.

In Step 1 – you established your overarching vision and longer range view of yourself. This is largely the ‘why of you’ where the Core Values are the ‘how of you’ and really typify your core operating model in terms of getting things done and of your being you. I’ll recently posted an article on conation as a topic – this really digs into how you proceed tactically with your actions.

For this post however – I’m interested in sharing a framework that will enable you to land on a set of primary operating principles and on a secondary set of operating principles. In my professional and business careers, I’ve always established guiding principles and operating models for any large project spanning more than 3 months – these serve as the beacons for the teams to rally behind – as the projects I typically engage upon are highly ambiguous in terms of the how to get the goal done. Truly entrepreneurial in nature.

Core values and operating principles will guide you on a daily basis, and if you are true to them – your stress levels will be significantly reduced as you execute on the day to day of being and doing you. Core values tie your overarching vision to your daily life, every day.

In one of the first posts, I discussed the linkage between thoughts to words to actions to character to destiny – serious stuff.

Operating principles link up your words as you need to write these things down and regularly review them to ensure they are freshly tattooed and relevant for the current version of yourself. Relevant doesn’t necessarily mean always aligned to your daily being and doing. So the linkages from your word to your character is centered on action. Action is based on a few things and chief among them?

Any guesses?

Core values and operating principles.

This takes the high level thinking and strategic energy and grinds them into your action profile. Quite important, as these will define your character given the guidance they provide to your daily actions/lifestyle.

Most people conduct themselves on a daily basis in certain contexts a certain way, some people even conduct themselves consistently across a few different DOLs. Very few people are so aligned with their inner core principles that they operate consistently regardless of the DOL and of the context they find themselves living in. For example, you have a bud from college that you work with – at work he’s incredibly focused on delivering in a professional manner and generally comes across as an uptight type A – that’s on a good day. Yet, when you catch up with him privately on the phone, he’s incredibly relaxed and prone to bullshitting with you – even while you are at work. Then on the weekends he’s a strong family man doing the Bed, Bath, and Beyond and possible Home Depot run with his wife and 2.5 kids. Nice guy, right? Well, that weekend that he’s got the proverbial hall pass has him ripping it up with some of his ‘prohibited friends’ where he does some very questionable things that are apparently out of character. Know anyone like that? I know quite a few guys that are this incongruent. It is pretty typical here in the US, in my experience.

Well, what if you were different?

• What if you were the same guy at work pitching an idea to your VP in terms of your demeanor and friendliness?
• What if you were as attentive on the home front as you were at work regarding your committed deliverables?
• What if you were as passionate about your girl in front of your family as your friends as complete strangers?
• Do you know anyone like this – where they are the same person in terms of conduct and values at a football game crushing beers as sitting on the sidelines watching a family member play some rec league game?

I can tell you that I do, and I aspire to be someone that lives this way. The people that are this consistent and immovable regardless of their daily circumstance are memorable and rare.

This is what I want to equip you with – this notion of consistency and of peace. Once you establish your core values, really establish them – not just make a list or rip off someone else’s – you will find that your anxiety, stress, and confusion levels drop dramatically.

This is because you know how you will be and how you will do the necessary things even when it is highly dynamic and largely unfamiliar setting you find yourself in. There is no dissonance between the persona you are at work or at church or at the gym. You may be wearing a mask, but it is consistently the same mask instead of the typical collection.

 

Establishing your core values

So how do you do this? I really  found Taylor Pearson’s approach useful. His suggestion was to jumpstart your list with someone else’s list and then as you uncover more about yourself – add to it.

I started with a core statement or two initially, and then found Taylor’s post that cracked open the conversation with myself. Then I began uncovering all sorts of resources online, with a catalog of ‘core principles’ that people had published online. I culled a few sites and found myself with an overwhelming list of core statements, many of which were awesome, but not exactly what I’d lead with.

 

So here’s what I did step by step:

1. Take 15 minutes and write down as many as you can – maybe you only arrive at one or two, that’s fine. Keep those as your starting point.
2. Search the internet to establish a set of core principles based upon online resources, pull those into a singular list. Blogs, religious sites, the Bible, any number of resources are fair game here.
3. Take this internet list and cull out any obvious ones that do not apply to you.
4. Now group the core values from step one into a group called ‘Primary’ and the Internet sourced core values into a group called ‘Secondary’
5. Now cull the Secondary list to see if there are 3-5 statements that really resonate with you as truth for where you are or where you’d like to be. There’s probably a blending of the current and future version of yourself – that blend is key, it is what keeps this list fresh and real. Now that you have your 3-5 ‘top resonance’ items – bring those onto your Primary list.
6. Begin reviewing these Primary operating principles on a daily basis for at least 30 days. These are the immovable principles and core values that power you each an every day.
7. Begin reviewing these Secondary operating principles on a monthly basis for at least 6 months.
8. Review the operating principles once every three months to ensure you are linking your quarterly goals/90 day plans with an eye towards revision. You may find you are adding more items to your secondary pile for the first few quarters, and then you’ll likely find things really start to fall off your primary list and secondary lists as you develop this clarity.

Congrats if you’ve actually landed on a few primary and slew of secondary operating principles. The biggest thing here is that you’ve started, you’ve taken a position of setting some importance to these things, and you are daily reviewing them to ensure that you are living your life in concert with these principles. This brings incredible clarity and it will make you more unusual to those around you.

As I mentioned earlier…

…the people that are unwavering and consistent in their principles stand out in today’s culture.

You can be one of these memorable ones.

Until next time.