HOW YOUR VALUES DETERMINE THE SUCCESS OF YOUR PROJECT

Welcome to the Project Mindset Podcast, where we combine the science of project management and transformational leadership. I am your host, Thea Brockmeyer, project expert, international leadership mindset coach for top executives, and trusted advisor to business owners for over 20 years. My goal is helping you stepping up from being an expert to becoming the leader that makes big projects happen, seeing your infinite potential, achieving the results in business and life that your heart desires. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Let's begin now.

Hello, my wonderful friends, Thea here, and today I'm going to share with you something about values, how values help us to attract the right clients, and how values are a symbol of our energy And every single level of our energy reflects in our business and our projects and our project teams. So if you want to attract different people, different clients, like the Law of Attraction, it works like this: if you know the value set of your ideal clients, then, and you know your own, then you know what you have to change to attract those, right? Because we attract people who are like we are. Can you see values? No, not really. So that makes it so difficult. And there are so many exercises. And actually, I want to share in this podcast a little bit about how we do that, what I found out in my research, because I was always striving to help my clients to get that done, and what I learned about myself, right? So let's dive into this about the values. I became obsessed with this topic of values, reading books about this, and probably you heard about Ego is the Enemy, when I was diving into strategy consulting. Not like the big 5 like McKinsey or Boston Consulting, I met them on my way, but I had the pleasure really to work for large corporations and be invited as a strategy consultant with my team, right? So first time when it happened, I was so scared because I wanted to deliver a good result. I knew I'm good in workshops and I can really facilitate the engagement of everybody. I was really comfortable with that, but When I called a friend of mine who studied at Harvard and I said, "Look, Josh, I have to do this workshop. I got that. We won that tender and now it's up to us to provide best results. Hmm, how do I start? I know how to create a vision and how to facilitate a vision, mission, strategy workshop somehow, but I'm kind of feeling it has to be something more here and the challenge." And he said to me, "You know what? You have to start with values." I said, "Okay, okay." I knew a kind of the definition of values because I heard about that. Okay, there is values, but I wasn't really deep into that. And so this is what I want to share with you. I was then searching for the best way how to do that value facilitation process in our strategy process with that client. It was a big telecommunication company. And actually, finally, we got an exercise we used for that, which was cards. And we had a pile of cards with 100 different values. And you can download them. We have that as a freebie for you. And yes, and then you go to www.projectleaderacademy.com/values, right? And then you can or in our blog you will find it as well. Now, you can do that. We asked the people to write down their values, gave them worksheets, and then we asked them as well to sort out and to figure out what are the 10 most important values. First, everybody for himself, then to talk in small groups at 6, and to agree in every group about the 10 most important values and what do they mean. So to explain them. So for example, what means honesty, right, for us? Or what means the value striving or being compassionate for us? How will we live that value? How do we see that value? Who are we, right? And finally, we agreed then with the group. We had been, I think, 40 people of the management. It was a broader team workshop. We picked up 6 values. We really condensed it. Yeah, you see, it's a little bit a kind of, okay, what we guess and what we feel. And I believe it's a good process because we have to take decisions, right? We have the decision-making rounds. And yeah, if you want to have that more in detail, we changed the tables and we mixed up the people. So, it really was a good mix, how to condense that process to values. But however, this process, I was not so happy. And as we know that beliefs and attitudes and values can make us stuck and that these patterns— because values are actually patterns in ourselves and every decision is driven by our values. So we will decide basically upon our values how we behave. In difficult situations. And so we have to understand our values. And I came across a really cool system which I use today when I do these workshops or these processes, and I use that in change processes for companies and as well for myself when— or for projects when we want to make core values for project teams. So everybody in the big project team is working, or when you want to grow sales, you want to sell more, definitely you have to be somebody different. You have to have a different decision-making process. So you need different values. Now let's have a look what I found out. I found out that there is— that you can measure values and that there has been research about this. Now probably you heard about Maslow's pyramid. We used a lot. But then there was, at the same time when Abraham Maslow was developing the pyramid, which you find on our blog post as well, Clare Graves developed a system about spiral dynamics. That means that we have level of consciousness and that we are evolving. Hey, how good is that? That's really cool because sometimes I hear people saying, oh, the people, the mankind has never is never learning from the mistakes. But according to the spiral dynamics, our level of consciousness is developing, and, um, as well, our level of energy is developing. So there is a lot of growth.

And a good friend of mine today, Rainer Krumm, developed, based on the first 6 levels which were described by Clare Graves, the 9-level systems.

And we can really see these individual stages and use them. What are my levels? What is my value system? What is my team value system or the big organization? And that can be measured.

So basically, the first level they describe, you can imagine a staircase, a staircase of 9 floors, right?

And we are in the bottom now. And that level is beige. Ron Cohen and Ken Wilbur.

So there are some colors to this, and the color code is international now developed, and Rainer used that as well.

And the first level actually is the survival personality.

It means really we are pretty animalistic and concerned with our own survival only. It's like a little baby that is hungry and wants to eat, or we find that let's say, in a very simple level where people are just taking that and fighting. But the level 2, actually, since thousands of years, the human mankind lives in tribes or at least strives to connect to others and to find safety, like in this Maslow pyramid. And that means the people are concerned with the tribe as well and with the needs of others. So in that tribe, actually, we don't take the decision so much because there is one person, the king or the lord, taking the decisions for everybody and taking care of everybody. And you are protected.

Now, I think it's very important for us to understand these different levels, because if we have different people, it's good to understand how much of consciousness on each level is driving the behavior of our friends, right? So if the people have to eat, like in the first level, and they have belonging, like at Maslow's pyramid as well. And the next level, the red, the person is concerned with self-promotion or with the ego. You know, this person's ego is growing. And not everybody, sure, but it can be very big. And some of these people are there, yeah, forgetting about the tribe. They are going away because the ego for them is more important than this we, this community. So they become— they go out of their comfort zone. And sometimes today we observe this as well. They're not just going out of their comfort zone, not just being lonely, but they don't fight back and they're just fighting for their idea and losing the connection to the tribe. We find that in a lot of ego-driven entrepreneurs and a lot of people get, and companies get stuck in this. You find that when people are fighting, when they're using, yeah, not just in war, even just, you know, fighting over nothing and being very stubborn and having a fixed mindset. And if you want to grow your company, let's say you have a big ego because everything has to be your way, and even people try to prove that other ways are wrong. And in the beginning it's like this, then you can't really grow because there is no place for other people, there is no place for we. And it shows very nice if we want to grow our little business or we want to grow a little project and we want to we need help of others, we need to build systems. And here we have to grow into a blue personality. We get to have to get more of that energy. And at that level, we have systems, rules, regulations, and that provides a kind of security. These rules and regulations for the people we work with. And sure, we all in our projects or in our business will set up a system and rules and procedures and processes. And you find that in large corporations, you find that in government, right? And that is really cool. But then comes a certain time or a certain level where the environment changes and our processes probably are not anymore feasible. Are not matching the best, are not the best match for our environment because everything is changing. So here we go, and probably the environment, or if we want to grow and to make more business, we need to change these processes. But here comes, and that we always want to keep what we have, and it is depending on how long are we in that stage and what is our level of consciousness. We might get very, very stuck in that blue level. And we find that today that a lot of large corporations who had very cool processes and were very efficient are just now in the process of— yeah, they have to break up these processes, they have to change these processes. And that brings a lot of confusion, right, for the people there. And change is really hurting and why do they take that away? Nobody really gets it. Nobody really even can explain it. And not everything which people are trying to introduce is immediately functioning because to build such, you know, cool systems does not go from one month. You know, you just don't have a 2-day workshop and have the systems implemented. It takes time and habits at least take 21 days or more time or even a year.

And in large corporations much more.

Yes, the same as everything is so fast changing. So we need on the one hand to keep systems, but on the other hand, we want to strive for flexibility, for success, being strategic and seeking more abundance.

And that is—

people are going outside, but not as they have been in the red level, fighting and really becoming so big in their ego. But people are on the higher we go on that staircase and that building, we can integrate the lower levels.

So if we come to the orange level, the next, where we strive for success, we get some, let's say, a long rope where we still are connected to our blue and organization.

But we can let people go. We have some guiding simple principles, some values which make them loyal and loyal to our organization. But different mindset, not just being stubborn and doing A to Z, but looking and adapting flexible to the client's mindset out there.

And these are our salespeople today who are very successful, but who are kind salespeople, who are applying the win-win approach of negotiation principles, right?

Not win-lose, which we have at this, maybe for Thea Brockmeyer, the red level where I said we have this big ego. In negotiations, we have the win-lose. I want to win and I don't care. And here we have really the win-win mindset already. So at that level, there is a different—

at each level we have in the system different values which represent that level that I will share in a free masterclass you can join.

Just to go to www.projectleaderacademy.com/values. There's a free masterclass and I will explain more in depth all these different characteristics and values which belong to each level and represent them.

And so you can see how much you are living each value today, right?

Yeah.

And then we have the next level because even if you are, let's say, a consultant or a sales rep and traveling. It's pretty lonely and a lot of people strive for participation as a whole, being a part of a community. And companies who are more orange, okay, they're flexible, they're adapting to their client needs. But did you know that in companies where they have this cooperative style, the cooperation, which is called green, NGOs for example, where it's not the hierarchy maybe like we had that in traditional companies. They're growing faster than traditional companies. So this teamwork and everything which we have in project teams where we don't have these fixed hierarchies, we are much more flexible, right? We are growing, we are more effective. This "we" mentality, we work, we have these— not only WeWork, but really this we, that everybody feels being part of it, part of that purpose, part of that movement, part of that tribe. This is something that is a big, big motivator for many people and pulling really the team together without really having that particular leader. But we have to lead in that as well. It depends what level are your people on. And it's important to balance all these energy levels with our consciousness and being conscious about what is required in which situation, right? Because different situations will require different reactions from us.

We cannot say, oh, we are just flying on that green, green level and we don't care because we have always to integrate all the levels below. So still we have to make sure people have to eat, right? So, and if you hire somebody who has his safety needs have just not been met for some reasons, we have to look at how can we integrate him and how can we raise his level of consciousness and make him joining our rules and our values on that green level, for example, right? And it's not that the higher we go on that floor, it's better. We have to look for our situations because If you are in a region where it's war or if you are working in an environment where you have a lot of people who have that red consciousness, we're fighting, you have to be able to protect yourself, right? We have to learn that. And whether you like it or not, then you have to change your environment. And this is why a lot of people— okay, we have refugees, they go away, or we have people who are want to be more flexible, they want to grow, and the fixed mindset and fixed processes and following just fixed rules in these blue organizations they don't like anymore. They feel like in a cage, so they want to be more free. This is why they leave. And the thing they find today out, oh, I have to be an entrepreneur, but then, you know, you come up the ladder and you have to build your own systems, a kind of Just to be aware of, it is a process, but it can be sure more fun, and with all that consciousness, we can do that in a very positive way. Now let's move on. Level 6, green, we said, now it's going on. Even then, people go to the next, next level. Let's say we are coming to a higher building with the level yellow, and this personality, We are into systems thinking and we can even entertain multiple perspectives. So on beyond that green, we are a person when you have a high yellow values here, then with your energy you can feel into this needs of all the other levels. Imagine you understand that we need systems. You understand that we need to fight sometimes for our people, for our team, and get out your ego. We understand that we sometimes being just a part of our team and not being, not showing up as a leader, but being part of that team. Or we know that we have to be passionate and very flexible as on the orange level. So we imagine you really can change your energy depending on the situation, right? And yeah, and then comes the next level where you not anymore focus so much on your own, but you come to the level turquoise, which is more holistic, and you're focusing on the well-being of bigger organizations, or like Mother Teresa, you know, or Martin Luther King. So you determine your life and work towards bigger purposes than your own life or your own company. Yeah, so that is something. When you say now, Thea, where is level 9? 9 is coral, and it's not yet described very much, but it's like you will transcend boundaries and you break new ground. You use your— you will motivate people with your charisma. And but it's again more you as a person than just being—

maybe it's people who are doing very successful podcasts today.

Could be that they're like with Thea Brockmeyer motivating us. Yeah.

So, what we do in our workshops today, what I do in project management, I really, when I have a team or with our stakeholders, we try to make a kind of awareness so we have a model we can talk about and to see that we get a transparency about our values and we get on the same page. We understand how to create shared values, what is most important for us. And we can really make it visible. And what is very interesting, a good friend of mine— I'm doing assessments sometimes and coach them in a leadership coaching group.

She wanted to— oh, I want to work for an NGO. So this high green level, right? That is important. That is inspiring.

We are we.

I don't have to fight. And she had always conflicts on her workplace. But what is interesting, when I looked at her value level, that she had that conflict in herself. So that was this red one where people are aggressive, fighting, conflicting. That was very high showing up in her system, in her results. And that is actually interesting that what we are having inside of us, we are reflecting in our outside. So here I found it so powerful. It was an eye-opener for me to see that, right? And sure, her environment and our environment can influence our own behavior. And maybe it was due to all the conflicts she had in that workplace, and maybe it was due to that environment that she had there in that company, and she was striving to change that. And I wish her that her new workplace She will have much more fun and she can adapt that. But I think it's important for us to be aware of that and to have a look once we see, oh, that's so high. What is the reason? Is it just because of all the others? And here we come to the question: are we determined by just our environment, or what can we do to change? And actually, we as humans, I understand we are so powerful that we can change our beliefs, we can change our values, we can decide, hmm, okay, this is what's inside me as well. So I'm reflecting that environment or the environment reflects me. However, I cannot just wait until there is another environment. I can change that inside of myself. And this is something which is interesting and which is very easy when you do it with a coach, when you want to transform your mindset. And that helps us to go from failure to success. And you can really transform your own sense of personal value. And that is what we do in coaching programs, right? But as well, when we do team programs, we do match what are our team values, where do we want to be. And what is good about the tool, you have all these value lists for the different levels that we can say, hmm, ah, this is where we want to go. Okay, so we find the keywords, we describe the behavior, we become very specific about how do we think that value should, could look like in our daily life, in our habits, in our words. And then we can really go there and jump into that, you know, imagine that, visualize that, work with mantras, work with meditation. But first we create a clear picture of these values that drives us. And then we look who can help us or where we can get the environment that we can copy easy from or where we find role models for who lives these values. So that makes it much easier to step into these new shoes, right? Yeah, so this is basically how we do that. And in individual coaching or group coaching, where we check in regularly with teams, we can really help the team as well. It's interesting for recruiting because when you have a good culture, maybe you have never measured it, but it's cool to say, oh, this is our culture we have today. Mm-hmm, this is the picture. And then you can match very easily every new applicant. Oh, how does he match this culture? And is that the culture we want? So basically, it's just a tool that helps us to talk about it, make it visible and tangible. And you go there much faster. We take out the guesswork of this value process and get some measurable results. So this is how I work. And imagine this Maslow pyramid. Where we have basically— he was developing his system the same time when Professor Graves was developing this value systems in the hierarchy of needs. So basically you have the physiological needs like food, water, and shelter, and sleep. And then in the very first level, on the second step, you have the safety needs for security, your job, your health, your environment. Then you have the next level, this belongingness and love and need for strong bonds and relationships. And then the next comes already the self-confidence, respect, reputation. And then the next is self-actualization. So being somebody who is doing something for other people, right? So that could be here, this turquoise level or the integrator. And if we're looking at these pyramids or these staircase models, Whatever we say, when we want to create something, when we want to lead, and when we want to change something, living with purpose, leading projects, making dreams a reality, building teams, we have to imagine this pyramid or staircase bottom up. Because we have to change, we have to be that strong, we need that much consciousness about all this process, all these different steps. That we can say, "OK, I change my mind and then I can create all these other levels. I can as much as I need and I can integrate them into my process." Then I can support all the other people on these levels, right? Because I exactly know, "Oh, he's like this and he has these needs and this is his motivation and these are his values." So, Like attracts like, and I invite you at least to watch the free masterclass so you get a little bit more, or you can read it on the blog. I will make a blog post about this as well. Then you can read about the levels. So the level— the first is again belonging to a tribe and a weak clan mentality. Once the first is— sorry, the first is physiological needs. That's the level beige, right? Then the level purple is belonging to a tribe. And yeah, being safe and having health and security. The next level is your power and having the level of ego, I always say. So you are doing something, your ambition, but as well there is a negative consequences maybe where you step over other people. The next level is the structure where you build processes and you obey the rules.

You have law. That's the blue level.

The next level is the orange level. So you are in a kind of autonomy and logic is more important and being efficient is important. And then the next level is the cooperation, the consensus, the we, the tribe mentality. And then that is the green. And then the next level is the yellow, where you can integrate all perspectives below, where you are able to switch between them and use them as needed for your purposes. And then you come to something which is larger than just you, your own company. That's the level Turquoise, where you are doing something for a bigger purpose outside yourself, and you are doing something maybe for, yeah, world big projects. And but you're able always to integrate and to match all these other levels, right? And then we are looking for coral, which is still not so well described because we are evolving. If we look in many countries, we are still, um, in this level— red, purple, maximum blue. And if we are evolving like an entrepreneur, we are evolving in the very beginning. We need a lot of red energy, we need a lot of ego, and then we have to to go and build structures, and that means we have to change ourselves. So if you wish to get some support, because we have to get— yeah, change our mental state as well, and we have to adapt, feel welcome to check in for a coaching session. Just send a DM, send an email to hello@projectleaderacademy.com, and I will send you a link. Thank you for watching today, and I wish you wonderful values!

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