Four Ways to Help Employees Live Your Core Values

A strong cultural foundation is integral to the health of your organization, and what drives the culture comes down to your people. How do employees know if they’re making the right decisions for your company, customers, and fellow team members? It’s key that their actions align with the organization’s core values. As leaders, it is your very important role to communicate and live by these core values. 

Managers can’t micromanage every decision their employees make. But, by communicating exactly the company values most, leaders empower their teams to take confident action. These core values drive everything you do, and they communicate to the world—including prospective talent—what you stand for. 

1. Empower your team to model the core values.

Because the key to core values is to drive behavior, the CEO and other top leaders must protect and steward them. 

People tend to learn and contribute best when they can be involved in the process. By including your senior team in the core value-creation process, you can ensure the core values will truly be crystal clear to them and that they feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

This understanding creates buy-in and momentum from the top to disseminate to every level of the organization. 

2. Repeat your core values. Often.

Discussing the core values sparingly runs the risk of an “out of sight, out of mind” thought process. To ensure the entire team is rowing together as one, it’s critical to practice the core values every day: 

• Discuss core values in every business strategy meeting, every customer experience discussion, and every employee review. 

• Place physical artifacts around your office space that show your core values as daily reminders to the employees. 

• Establish a repeatable cadence to celebrate individuals in your organization who are doing a great job with their core values. Use emotional stories that are relatable and which help to convey your values. 

These actions ensure a strong cultural experience tied to the core values—where core values can drive discussions and are always available to reference. Most importantly, individuals are routinely celebrated for contributing to a positive culture. 

3. Hire and retain using your core values. 

Your company isn’t built on any one individual, and you need people who share similar values to prioritize the good of the collective. Building your core values into the job descriptions and interview process plants the seeds for smart hires. The people who align with the company’s core values will be more fulfilled in the long term. 

This means not hiring the star sales rep who violates your core values just because you think they’ll boost your numbers. If they truly value different things than your company, they’ll be happier at another organization anyway.

The flip side of this is that you need to be willing to set free those employees who don’t embody your core values. If they’re a core value violator, they’ll bring down your culture and be harmful to your organization in the long run.

4. Your core values apply to your clients, too. 

We want to share how core values can truly help your company with this example from Ethan’s company, PFD Group, where our core values are:

• Grow to give: We take on a growth-and-learning mindset, so we’re best equipped to support our clients’ ability to grow and scale their impact. We strive to have a servant- leader mentality so that we’re able to approach everything with humility and to best serve others.

• Create value: We serve as the trusted guide for the CEO and their leadership team through finding better ways, providing exceptional service, anticipating needs, and seeing around the curves.

• Communicate proactively: We lean in and have the conversation so that there are no surprises.

• Invest in our team and community: We’re better together. We mentor and serve each other, and we steward the lives around us.

• Be the confidant: We nurture a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. When our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges.

These core values are more than just statements; they are a way of creating trust for employees and clients at our company. Each one of our clients, partners, and prospective clients is made aware of our core values and how these values will drive their experience with our team. 

Not all prospects share our core values, and in those cases, we connect them with other coaches who are better suited to assist them in their growth journey. 

The time to establish and begin living your core values is now; this will set the foundation for your future investments and growth.

We talk more about creating your company’s cultural foundation in our new book, The Mentorship Engine, which you can check out here. To learn more about how we can support you and your senior team or company, reach out to us today.