Chris reflects on how your behaviour can showcase your organisation’s values.
The way you behave at work can reflect your values and ethical principles. Behaviour, for me, is about the actions and decisions I make, the interactions I have with colleagues, clients and partners, and how I handle conflicts and challenges.
Behaviours can give you an insight into a person’s character, their integrity and commitment to follow through with their values, i.e. do you walk your talk?
I believe that when character, integrity, truth and respect are all aligned, then the behaviours that are influenced by that can positively change the effectiveness of teams.
I’ve focused on five key examples where I believe your behaviour at work can reflect your values.
1. Integrity and honesty
These two are intertwined. Acting honestly in whatever you do can demonstrate that commitment to integrity. Being truthful and transparent in your communication, and honouring agreements can avoid the manipulative insincerity that’s chatted about in radical candor.
During lockdown, I worked with a supplier who decided to delve into their accounts to see how they could claw back extra money. Right at the heart of lockdown when we were at our lowest, they came back to me with some imaginative bill that dated back seven years. It shocked me being on that Zoom call when they landed it because they were doing exceptionally well during lockdown and my own business was struggling. I wasn’t making any revenue at all. Needless to say, I don’t work with that company anymore… I paid the bill and said my piece. For me, this showed a lack of integrity within that company. True honesty and integrity between two organisations bolsters the relationship.
2. Fairness and treating others with respect
Regardless of their position, background, biases, etc. everyone deserves equality. If you’re a right-handed person, do you ever think about left-handed people? Left-handed people may work for you. Do you cater for them? What about scissors in the office, can openers in the kitchen, writing in spiral-bound notebooks? All items which don’t even cross my mind as a right-handed person. Respect and fairness is listening to diverse perspectives and offering equal opportunities.
3. Accountability and responsibility
When it comes to responsibility, are you ‘response-able’? Are you able to respond? I’m specifically splitting that phrase up because it brings more of a practical approach to taking ownership of it. If you have a culture where people take ownership, they’ll hold their hands up, admit they’ve ‘dropped the ball’ and made a mistake. That’s ok and shows accountability.
4. Trust and reliability
This goes hand in glove with responsibility as well. When I’m facilitating workshops, I ask people to fill a ‘trust jar’ with marbles. Throughout the workshop anything they see that they feel builds trust or accountability, they add a marble to the ‘trust jar’. At the end of the session, I ask the team what dismantles trust or what brings trust down. They respond with comments such as being lied to, bullied, harassed, or being shouted at. At this point, I kick the jar over and let the marbles spill out everywhere. The outcome is that we collect trust in droplets, but we can lose it in buckets. In addition, we can sit around and talk about how the marbles were spilled, who kicked the marbles over, who destroyed the trust. We can talk about the drama of it. Alternatively, all of us together can help put the marbles back in the jar. This builds trust and accountability in your team.
5. Social awareness
What’s the impact of your actions at work? Are you aware that the things you do and say have a social influence? Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence model may help you here.
I believe that you truly need to keep an eye on how your values are on show and have an emotional intelligence part to your day. Take time in the moment to reflect and ask those questions of yourself and others; how do I show up? What do you see from me that’s impacted positively and not so positively as well?
Leaders make mistakes; allow them to make mistakes and explore how they change, then you’ll start seeing other aspects of the organisation dramatically change as well.
As your values evolve so can your behaviours. I believe humans can change, it’s just the decision to change that can take a while. If you’re able to forgive (true forgiveness is about being able to say thank you for the experience), move on and let go of personal history then the way you behave at work and at home can grow and change too, becoming a progressive relationship.
Our Rambutan values greatly reflect these five examples. How does your behaviour and your organisation’s values relate to these examples?