The Number 1 Mistake With Values

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common, common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode. Hey and welcome to this second episode of the Leaders Kit Bag in this four part miniseries on core values. In the last episode I spoke to you about what core values are and why they really matter to us as leaders, but more importantly, why they matter to those that we've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. In today's episode I'm going to talk to you about leadership, the number one trap or the number one mistake I see people making when trying to work out their own value set. This trap is including what Dr. John Demartini calls social idealisms in their values list. Simply put, a social idealism is a value that we think we should have, a value that we think should be on our list. An example of a social idealism could be honesty and this is one that I see a lot in my leadership training courses. One of the things I'll talk about early is the research from Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner from their book the Leadership Challenge. You can learn more in the podcast episode I did with them. And over 35 years the number one thing they've found that that people look for in an admired leader is honesty. Now, having had that conversation with the group, we then move on sometime later to talk about core values. And so many people will put honesty on their values list. Unless I caveat it and say you don't have to have honesty on your values list. But they think they should have it on there. So it creeps in to their values list. Another one could be family. You don't have to have family on your values list. All well and good I hear you say, but why does it matter? Does it matter? Yes, it matters a great deal. If you have a social idealism or someone else's value on your values list, it means you are using what we call an external comparator. You are Judging yourself against other people's standards. And that starts to activate the amygdala. It puts us in a fight or flight situation. The subconscious thinking is, what if I fail to live up to this value? What if I get found out? What if people realize this isn't my true value? And that means we're having to do a lot of emotional regulation. Now here is the real problem with this. Emotional regulation is a process that is managed, that is conducted by a part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex. It's also the prefrontal cortex that us knowledge workers, US leaders, use for nearly every task we perform and every decision we make at work. And in any given day. We've got a limited or finite amount of cognitive brain power or firepower. And if we're using a lot of that cognitive bandwidth to regulate our emotions, it means we've got less brain power available to do the job we are paid to do. So by all means, have one or two aspirational values on your values list. So long as they are yours. So long as they are values that you really want to live up to yourself, that's fine. Do not though, have values on your own values list that are social idealisms that you think should be on there because you're setting yourself up to fail. That's it for this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. As always, I hope it's been useful. If you are enjoying this set around values and you want to know more, you can click the link that accompanies this episode and download a free values toolkit. They'll help you identify your own values and there's even a task in there that you can do with your team to help build connection and make sure that the whole team are clearer on each other's values. And one other thing, if you've not seen it already, do have a look at my socials or website and take a look at Ben in your pocket. It is my AI clone that is coming later this year which is on demand instant access to my 20 plus years of experience. Think of it as ChatGPT. That is totally secure but based only on my knowledge, expertise and experience, you'll be able to find a link across all my social medias to a wait list. If you want to register your interest and be one of the very first people to get access to it and some exclusive discounts. That's it for this episode folks. Until next time, look after yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And as always, until next time, lead on.