Driving Values: Why aligning with them is a key factor in your personal and professional success.
Aligning with your driving values is like fine tuning a radio…. If you aren’t tuned in, the sound quality is unclear and messages can get lost in translation causing confusion and hesitation.
Your driving values are what motivate you to act a certain way. They are the fundamental beliefs, principles or accepted standards that guide your behaviour, decisions and actions. They represent the essence of who you are and what you stand for. Core values are deeply ingrained and play a crucial role in shaping your character and influencing the choices you make. They are the catalyst that inspires you in determining what to prioritise, who you want to be, how you interact with people and how you present yourself to the world.
When you are living in alignment with your driving values, you will experience benefits across all areas of your life.
Below are some examples of how creating synergy between your driving values and how you live your life will benefit you:
Effective Decision-Making
Consistency in Behaviour
Prioritisation of Goals
Maintaining Healthy Relationships
Career Satisfaction
Resilience in Challenges
Personal Growth & Development
Enhanced Well-being
Living in alignment with your core values is associated with a greater sense of fulfilment and well-being. When your actions and choices resonate with your values, you are more likely to experience a meaningful and satisfying life.
Aligning Personal Core Values & Business Core Values
When you create a business, one of the key drivers of the culture you manifest and the story you tell your customers about what you stand for are the core company values. Values act as guideposts, principles and standards that help you to attract and retain the right talent to your organisation.
For founding business owners who play an active role within their business, the alignment of their personal core values with the culture of the business is highly significant and can have a profound impact on various aspects of the organisation.
Why is it important to your success to align personal and business values?
Authenticity & Trust
Employee Engagement & Morale
Attracting the Right Talent
Decision-Making Consistency
Customer Relations
Resilience in Challenges
Innovation & Creativity
Long-Term Success
Social Responsibility & Impact
Aligning a business owner’s core values with the culture of the business is essential for creating a healthy, sustainable and purpose-driven organisation. It not only positively influences internal dynamics but also has external benefits, such as attracting the right talent and building trust with customers and partners.
The Congruence of your Goals and Values
Imagine using the wrong map to get you to where you are trying to go – how likely is it that you will get there successfully?
Have you ever had that feeling that things are just off? You’re working hard but don’t seem to be making progress? Things feel slow or stuck and you feel tired, frustrated and confused? You aren’t sure if you are focussing on the right things?
Or you have trouble feeling confident about making decisions about significant things, leading to procrastination, either slow paced or no change and sometimes continuation of unhappy situations?
We often believe that if we aren’t achieving what we want, we need to work harder, put in longer hours, do more stuff, spend more money…..am I right?
You’ve probably tried all that and not only are you not achieving what you want to, you’re losing motivation to continue and are close to giving up on your dream. Your goal is starting to feel impossible, and you don’t know what to do next.
Or you simply aren’t sure what your goal should be, you’ve tried taking approaches that you’ve seen other people and businesses have success with but they haven’t worked for you.
You know you’d like something to change but how and where to start feels overwhelming.
Consider this….
As your values are your expression of self - they need to be honoured and upheld for you to feel aligned. If your goals do not mirror your values, you will create an incongruence and they will never be successfully achieved!
Living in a way that is inconsistent with your core values can lead to a sense of inner conflict, dissatisfaction, and even stress.
For founding business owners, when they do not make a point of aligning their business values with their personal values, not only can it lead to a personal feeling of dissonance and dissatisfaction but will almost certainly lead to a more widespread feeling of disconnection throughout their business and with their customers.
Below are some common feelings and experiences that you may encounter when you are not aligned with your core values:
Dissonance
There may be a sense of cognitive dissonance, which is the discomfort that arises when there is a mismatch between your driving values and your actions. This can create internal tension and unease.
Difficulty making Decisions
Living without clear connection to your core values can lead to a lack of confidence in making important decisions. You may remain in unhappy situations like jobs or relationships for elongated periods of time.
Lack of Fulfilment
When your actions and choices do not align with your driving values, you may feel a lack of fulfilment or a sense that something important is missing from your life.
Uncertainty
Living without a clear connection to your core values can lead to a sense of uncertainty about your purpose and direction. You may feel adrift or without a solid foundation, you may change your views, opinions, goals and interests often and depending on the company you keep.
Stress and Anxiety
The incongruence between your values and your actions can contribute to stress and anxiety. This can be particularly pronounced in situations where you feel pressure to conform to external expectations that conflict with your values.
Regret
Over time, living in a way that contradicts your core values can lead to feelings of regret and envy. This regret may stem from the realisation that you’ve compromised on what truly matters to you, resulting in missed opportunities and/or delayed results.
Difficulty in Relationships
Misalignment with core values can affect relationships. It may be challenging to connect with others authentically when there’s a disconnect between you core values and your behaviour. You may struggle to identify, share and honour your personal boundaries.
Lack of Motivation
When your goals are not aligned with your values, you may experience a lack of motivation and enthusiasm. Living authentically in accordance with your values tends to fuel a sense of purpose and drive.
These feelings can also be applied within the workplace from an employee and customer perspective.
Recognising these feelings and understanding the source of the discomfort can be an important step toward realignment. It may involve reflecting on your values, reassessing your priorities, and making intentional choices that bring your life/business into closer alignment with what truly matters to you.
Making changes to live more in line with your core values can lead to a greater sense of authenticity, purpose, business success and well-being.
How I can help….
Connecting with your values allows you to illuminate your strengths but also your blind spots. There is power in acknowledging what doesn’t work because it unveils a path that leads you right to what does work.
Transforming your SUPERBLOCKERS into SUPERPOWERS!!
You may find it difficult to express what your values are. You may not have given yourself the time or space to reflect on them before and that may be why you are struggling to successfully achieve your goals.
Whether in life or business, I adopt a values-led coaching style and built in to all my coaching packages is an approach designed to uncover the beauty of what makes you tick and connect you with the values that drive you and your actions - Your ‘north star’.
Once you have identified or realigned with your driving values, we will:
Create boundaries and rituals that acknowledge, protect and honour your values.
Identify the indicators that tell you when you are not aligned with your values.
Create congruence with your values and goals.
Through the coaching journey, you will get to a place of deeply understanding yourself, what your driving values are and how to accept them. You will learn how to align these insights with your goals (whether in life, business or both) to create a blueprint for direction, motivation, authenticity and success.
