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How One’s WHY Impacts the WHAT. When Minor Changes Matter.

October 8th, 2024

I’ve just spent several hours changing a single word on mch’s branding, marketing, presentation materials and documentation. Instead of describing my work as one of, ‘staff development’, I changed it to ‘people development’. Why did I bother to make such a change? Where did the insight to do so come from?

The answers to both can be found in the Source of Leadership Programme I deliver. A guiding premise of the programme is that leadership is a never-ending quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop oneself. To this end, an early exercise in the programme involves finding what Simon Sinek terms your, ‘WHY’. Essentially, this involves completing the following sentence;

‘My WHY is to [Insert the contribution you want to make in the world here] so that [Insert the impact you perceive your contribution will make here].

For a summary of Sinek’s work, and guidance on completing this sentence, click here.

In the Source of Leadership Programme, I raise the prospect that participants may generate multiple WHYs initially, with a personal WHY and a professional WHY being the most common. By way of example, I share the following personal and professional WHYs I generated for myself and my organisation;

Personal ‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother and friend I can be.’

Work/mch: positive impact ‘To help individuals, teams and organisations reach their full potential so they can achieve the positive impact they want to have on the world.’

I deliver the Source of Leadership Programme annually and always try to approach each exercise with a fresh pair of eyes (or more accurately a pair of eyes with a year’s more experience and reflective practice). In practical terms, this typically means I do the exercise myself in advance of facilitating it for participants. Doing so this year, I was struck by:

1. The multiple roles I have.
2. How artificial it seems to separate my professional roles from my personal ones: whilst some roles may be more important than others, they are all part of who I am.
3. The fact that given I only have one set of values, perhaps I only have one WHY.

With these insights, my provisional, overarching WHY became;

‘To live my values so that I can be the best father, partner, son, brother, friend, colleague, mentor, trainer and facilitator I can be.’

These insights also explain why I felt it was appropriate to change ‘staff development’ to ‘people development’ in all of mch’s materials. My ultimate aim is not just to develop a person as a member of staff, but as a human being. This is what draws me to the type of training I deliver. The utility of the likes of emotional intelligence, mindset, resilience, management and leadership training is not confined to the workplace. These topics are equally valuable outside of work. Although there can be an understandable desire to compartmentalise life, the ‘buckets’ we create for ourselves often prove quite transparent and porous - one impacts on the others. This perspective is supported by the extended feedback I receive from participants six to 12 months after their training formally ends. One of the most common qualitative comments goes something like;

‘Whilst the training was useful at work, it’s also had a really positive impact on my relationship with my partner/son/daughter/friend/mum/dad/sister/brother.’

So what’s the ‘So What?’ to all of this? I believe there is one general and one specific ‘So What?’. The general one is that no matter how experienced you are, there can be real value in repeating the same reflective exercises, provided you can do so with genuine curiosity. The specific is that discernment is likely to serve you well, if like me, your WHY is based on the roles you have. Given that your WHY is intrinsically linked to your identity, if you start to attach your identity to a role, the question that’s then worth asking is;

‘Who would I be if that role no longer existed?’

A while ago, I was faced with this reality when a separation led to my role as ‘partner’ no longer existing. Given the multiple roles I have, the loss was felt, but did not lead to any sort of identity crisis. However, it did make me appreciate that all my roles could come to an end at any point. If that were to happen, who would I be then? This is a question I’m reflecting upon, and it may lead to a further iteration of my WHY. If so, it would be a fitting illustration of the never-ending leadership quest to know yourself, be yourself and manage the creative tension that comes from trying to be at peace with oneself whilst also striving to develop.

For an overview of the Source of Leadership Programme mentioned in this blog, click here.

Wicked Problems: How Values Both Create Tension and Offer a Way Forward

July 18th, 2023

I have written previously about the importance of values: both personal and organisational. Clarifying and prioritising values forms a key part of mch’s advanced leadership programmes such as its Source of Leadership. Their inclusion stems from the finding that clarity of values helps with decision making. The relevance to leadership becomes apparent if you subscribe to the following definition;

‘Leadership is about deciding what to do and then articulating the decision well to those who matter.’

Another key advocate of values is Brené Brown. In her book, Dare to Lead, she sets the challenge of not only identifying your values, but prioritising them, so that one value trumps all others. In my view, the importance of this exercise stems from the reality that life is messy. It’s uncertain, complex and often ambiguous. Consequently, situations can arise where upholding one value comes at the cost of not upholding another.

I’ve found prioritising my values a very difficult exercise: I started doing so in early 2021 and have yet to reach a consistent answer. In early 2023, I was reminded of the exercise and why it’s important. In early March, I was practicing my usual routine of yoga, exercises and a walk every morning, together with running three to four times a week and cycling once a week. By the end of March, I could barely walk 200m. My balance, strength and suppleness had disappeared. My fine motor skills were compromised, such that I could barely write or type. I had constant pins and needles in my hands and feet, which made sleep difficult. Furthermore, I didn’t know why any of this was happening.

To cut a long story short, towards the end of April, I was sitting across the table from a couple of neurologists at my local hospital. To try and diagnose the problem and thus (hopefully) develop a treatment plan, three tests were scheduled. The test with the longest wait could be done (quicker) privately, or through the publicly funded National Health Service (NHS). Done privately, the test would still be done in a public hospital and performed by a doctor who also worked for the NHS. Fortuitously, I had sufficient savings to afford a private test.

Cue a tension between two of my core values: health and equality. Going private was the obvious decision if I was to prioritise health. Being seen in weeks, rather than months would enable a quicker diagnosis, ending the uncertainty and allowing treatment to start sooner. However, if the specialist did not test me privately, it’s very unlikely that they would spend that time twiddling their thumbs. Instead, they would have more capacity for their NHS work. Thus, in my view, prioritising equality would mean choosing to wait along with most other patients. Given the limited number of specialists, it was hard not to conclude that accessing provision privately comes at the cost of increased waiting times for NHS patients. In the end, I waited and was seen on the NHS. I was comfortable living my value of equality, at the expense of health, by waiting a couple of months, rather than a couple of weeks. However, would I have been comfortable if the wait had been four months, or six months, or a year?

In my view, the scenario I faced is an example of a ‘wicked’ problem: one with no clear solution, regardless of the level of knowledge and expertise that can be brought to bear. With wicked problems there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer and its often difficult to even classify options as better or worse than one another. In the event of ‘better’ options emerging, their status as ‘better’ can be very fleeting, as there are numerous competing variables and the significance of each is often continually changing. Wicked problems are invariably fluid. When the educationalist, Laurence J. Peter, was quoted as saying that;

‘Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.’

I believe he was referring to wicked problems.

Some may say that wicked problems illustrate the limits to which values can help with decision making. On reflection though, once I’d received all the facts and expertise I could, I think values, together with my intuition, offered the only way to make decisions I was comfortable with. Furthermore, I believe another core value was underpinning my decision making and, in some ways, arbitrating the tension between my values of health and equality. That value is integrity. To me integrity is being honest and truthful to oneself. I like the researcher, Brené Brown’s definition of integrity;

‘Integrity is choosing courage over comfort …. it’s practicing your values, not just professing them.’

With my scenario, integrity provided clarity in relation to how I would discern ‘success’, when the ‘story’ which was my illness came to an end one way or another. Regardless of the diagnosis and subsequent impact on my life, success would be recalling the decisions I made and then being comfortable looking at myself in the mirror, because I’d been honest with myself about what was most important and I’d acted accordingly when each decision needed taking. Crucially, I believe integrity and its ‘signpost for success’, would have enabled me to be more at ease with changing my mind, if key variables, like waiting times, had changed significantly.

I hope you do not have to go through a similar experience to get clear on your values. Do you know your values though? Can you prioritise them? The following links can help identify your values:

https://www.mindtools.com/a5eygum/what-are-your-values

The above link asks you to consider times when you were happiest, proudest and most fulfilled. It also features a list of common values that you may find helpful to select from.

https://www.lifevaluesinventory.org/

This link allows you to take a free questionnaire designed to identify your values.

Having identified your values, I would encourage you to embark on Brené Brown’s challenge to identify your number one value. Considering scenarios that test one value against another is often an effective (albeit challenging) way to do so. In my case, perhaps integrity is a higher value to me than either health or equality. Or perhaps the relative importance of values is situational. I wonder what Brené Brown’s view would be on that?!

All the best with your journey.

Aligning Organisational Values with Your Personal Ones

January 8th, 2021

In my adolescence and early adulthood, I developed a series of core values that I felt would stand me in good stead for life. They were as follows:

• Service: Equipping myself for life, not just for my own benefit, but for the whole community.
• Balance: Balancing work with life outside of work. Trying hard, without becoming a fanatic. Knowing when enough is enough.
• Equality: Endeavouring to create equality of worth and opportunity and striving to ensure that these are not inhibited by any inequality of resources.
• Fun/Positivity: Life’s too short to commit myself to careers or activities that I don’t enjoy.
• Health: Emotional, mental, physical and societal health enable life to be lived to the full.
• Integrity: Telling myself the truth. Am I really living my values if I proceed in this way?
• Relationships: Relationships bring the most purpose to my life: very little of any true worth is done completely on my own, or impacts only me.
• Quality: If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. If I live all my other values, this value should take care of itself.

When I founded mch in 2005, it seemed obvious to me that the company’s values should align with my personal ones. On its inception though, I chose only to declare publicly three of the above values as company values:

1. Balance
2. Integrity
3. Quality

I took the view that these were the most relevant to my company and the values that clients would be most interested in. By 2008, my values-based approach to business gained sufficient attention that I was asked to write a short article for a regional enterprise network on how values can inform business. An edited extract of this article can be viewed below.

Fast forward to 2018 and, while my values remained constant, a considerable amount had changed in both my personal and professional life. A notable change was that I had started a relationship with someone who also led a company. A period of turmoil ensued as I felt that the way they were leading their business was in conflict with some of my personal values. In particular, my partner’s organisation was distributing resources in ways I found difficult to reconcile. I felt that their organisation was perpetuating the inequalities of opportunity that exist in society. Essentially, I found it very hard to separate the personal from the professional. Indeed, I began to appreciate that there really wasn’t a separation of my personal and professional values. Although I had only listed three professional/company values on my company’s website, the other five personal values had informed, and continued to inform, my professional practice.

In particular, I was reminded of just how much the value of equality had shaped my career choices. For example, my initial decision for mch to serve charitable organisations and social enterprises was, in part, driven by a desire to provide a level of support and expertise that such organisations wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford. My subsequent decision to selectively serve some private sector organisations was, in part, taken to cross-subsidise some of mch’s work with charities and assist society more broadly e.g. through enabling increased volunteering and charitable donations. Furthermore, a key motivator in taking on the role of Chief Executive of Rumbalara, the indigenous sporting and community development organisation in Australia, was to assist a community that had been deprived of equality of opportunity.

The experience with my partner also strengthened my view that so much of my own situation and success stemmed from an inequality of opportunity. The biggest contributors to my good fortune were nothing to do with anything I had done. Yes, I have worked hard throughout my career and have tried to make the most of opportunities. However, the greatest opportunities have arisen on account of being born in a country where I had access to free education and from being born into a loving and supportive family. My innate intelligence is nothing of my own doing either, and even my work ethic is likely to have been influenced by the cultural environments I have found myself in. The result is that from an early age, I have felt that I am already a winner in the lottery of life. Consequently, I have tried to find careers and adopt a lifestyle that utilises the skills I’ve been lucky enough to develop, to help others win too.

A key outcome of this experience has been to be more public about mch’s broader values and to use my business to promote them. For example, the value of equality informs the pricing of mch’s online courses and the appeal to support equality of opportunity in learning and development that features within them. I’ve also experienced the positive impact that can come from engaging with organisations with differing values. In addition to clarifying what’s really important, experiencing differing perspectives can help bring about positive changes in thinking and acting.

Original mch Values Article