Transcript
Values. What are they? How do we define them? Do they matter? If you are working in corporate America, you’ve probably seen a list of your company’s mission, vision, and values. You may have even participated in workshops to better understand them. But have you done that for yourself? Do you know what you value? Have you taken the time to explore your own understanding of what really matters to you and why?

Welcome to the values workshop on 92,000 Hours. I’m your host, Annalisa Holcombe. After a long break and a special episode on grief, we’re resuming our workshop series. We began back in 2022 with episodes on trust, vulnerability, identity, and fear. If you haven’t engaged with those workshops yet, I encourage you to do so. These lessons build on one another and will help you to know and understand yourself and to put that knowledge to work in your life, your relationships, your work, and your decision-making.

I love to engage in conversations about values with people. This workshop is always interesting because we begin with a broad question about values themselves. What is a value? What do you value? Do you know? How do you define values? Are these concepts something you talked about with your family explicitly as you were growing up? Or were there ways in which your parents or siblings acted that led you to infer what their values were? What were your childhood experiences related to the concept of values?

I encourage you to take a moment and think about those questions. Get out a piece of paper and write down your answers. Having a better understanding of your early lessons in values – or even the lack of them – will help you to understand what you value today even more.

Next, let’s get to work. This workshop really does require some homework and some activity on your end. We’ve created a companion worksheet for this episode, which can be found on our blog: www.connectioncollaborative.com/blog. There you will find our values and priorities worksheet. Take a look and find the link to the values index cards. You’ll need these to complete this workshop. This takes some prep, but it will be worth your time.

First, print out the values card sheet, and even though this takes some time, cut the paper into individual values cards. You can do this exercise virtually, and it will work, but there is something about taking the time to do this tangible process that works to put you into a place to do concentrate on this effort better.

Now, once you have a big pile of cards, it is time to get to work. Set a timer for 5 minutes and get to work “sorting” this stack of values. Put them into three stacks:
Values that are very important to me
Values that are somewhat important to me
Values that are not important to me

You can use the blank cards to write in your own value if you don’t find the one you want listed. But this is important. Don’t overthink this. Stick with the 5 minute timer rule and work to get down to three piles. Once you have those, stop, take a minute and have a look. How did that feel? Did you learn anything about yourself from that sorting exercise? What can you tell about yourself by simply looking at the size of the different piles – from very important, to somewhat important, to not important? Which pile has the most cards? Why do you think that is? Did you find that there were words that you didn’t consider values in those stacks? Were there values that matter to you that were missing? If there were, use the blank cards that were provided to write down the values that you think should be on the list.

Second, take all the cards from the not important and somewhat important piles and set them aside. You’re not going to need these. Let’s focus on the “very important” pile. Set a time for 5 minutes again. Now use that limited time to narrow them down to 10.

Now take a look at your pile. These are your top 10 values! What do you learn about yourself from looking at these? But wait, we’re not done. Set the timer AGAIN. This time for 2 minutes. Now, narrow these top 5 values down to 3. This is usually the part where my workshop participants would groan. This is hard. But its worth doing. These are your top 5 values! Now, how do they differ from your top 10? How much harder was it to eliminate half of them to get them down to 5?

But we’re not done. Set the timer again for 2 minutes. I think I can actually hear you groaning now. Yep. Let’s get you down to your top 3 values. Take those 2 minutes. I’ll wait.

You now have the three core values that matter the most to you. Do they resonate? If you shared them with a loved one right now, would they nod their head and say yes – those absolutely make sense. You may have noticed that as you had to remove some of the values in order to prioritize others, you started to make choices about how you would define the three values that were left. You may have found some overlap or a way to include some value ideas in your definitions of other values. For example, you may have found yourself choosing between family and love, but in doing so you reasoned that you’d keep family, because love was embedded in your definition of family. Your own definitions of these top 3 values and your perspective on why they matter is important.

So now you should take the time to write down your own definition of each of your top 3 values. In our second episode ever of 92,000 Hours, our guest Dick Chapman talked about his top three values at the beginning of the episode. He knew them well and understood why they mattered to him. He even had them in priority order: humor, relationships and joy. He then told a story about how his core value of humor has helped him through really rough times, but has also led to him leaving not only a job but an industry because there just wasn’t a good fit for the kind of humor and levity he needed to be happy.

Understanding your values, really understanding them – is not just a fun exercise. It is vital. Don’t treat this like a quiz in a magazine or on social media. Give this the effort it deserves. When you know your core values, how YOU define them, and why – you will have a superpower that can guide you through your life. I use my core values all the time – and especially in situations in which I find myself thinking . . . hmm… something feels off here. Why am I uncomfortable? You can check in to see if the situation, the workplace, the team, the relationship isn’t aligned with your core values.

If you know me personally, or have listened to this podcast for long, you probably won’t be surprised to hear my top 3 values: authenticity, wisdom, and passion. The way I define these changes just slightly over time (sometimes its love, sometimes its passion – sometimes its wisdom, sometimes its knowledge, sometimes its humor instead). But authenticity is always there. Being me – and being comfortable with authentically being me – is one of the main reasons my husband said he wanted to marry me. That core value was both evident and attractive to him. And honestly? Think about the individuals you are attracted to – as friends, partners, leaders . . . what are the values that they have that you find attractive? What are the values that drew you to them in the first place? What does that tell you about your own values?

I have found that when I am in a culture or team or environment that feels inauthentic – where people are conforming or seem to fear their own ability to speak up or express themselves, my alarm bells go off. Because I have done the work on my core values, I can use them to run a quick check of the situation. Am I uncomfortable here because I can’t be authentic or because I can see that other people are not? Or is this about wisdom – are we not using our collective wisdom in our decision-making? Are we not honoring the wisdom of the people who are experiencing things that matter to our work? Or is this about passion? Do I not feel passionate about this? Are others around me clearly not passionate about the work? Is anyone just phoning it in?

These are important questions for me ask myself when I find myself with that feeling of discomfort. That something just isn’t quite right. Because I’ve done the work on my values, I have a shorthand and a quick way to assess the situation in order to find clarity. As a result, I’ve been able to move forward faster, assess problems better, and sometimes even leave – but with the knowledge of why I was leaving.

Core values can seem fun to do as an exercise, but they are vital to living a full, meaningful, and intentional life.

Look again at your core values. And the definitions of them that you have written. You should feel like you know the person reflected back at you in those values. Now think about your day to day life. How are those 3 core values showing up for you every day? Are they? If they’re not, can you pinpoint why? And if so, what will you do about that misalignment? Do you see those core values reflected in some way in your workplace? In your friends? In your family? Really think about it. What do the answers to those questions mean to you?

Core values serve as our guides during time of conflict or confusion. They give us a direction and keep us on the path that’s right and authentic for us. They help us make decisions that honor what’s worthwhile to us and who we are as individuals. And, they give us a big-picture sense of purpose.

We hope this workshop has been helpful for you. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve prepared a companion worksheet on our blog. You’ll really need it for this one. You can find it at www.connectioncollaborative.com/blog. And we’d love to hear from you. How did this go for you? What were your top 3 values? Send me an email at annalisa@connectioncollaborative.com, or drop us a line on our social media. You can find us at Connection Collaborative on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – and coming soon to Tiktok!

Next time, we’ll focus on direction and priorities. We hope you join us.