Introduction
As mentioned in a previous blog, authentic leadership is all about being real. There are a few things worse in the corporate world than a fake, false, or inauthentic leader who lives by subject-focused thinking. This leadership style revolves around key characteristics such as self-awareness, transparency, being value-driven, balanced processing, and genuine relationships. It creates a culture of trust and psychological safety, encourages employee engagement and motivation, helps leaders navigate challenges with integrity, and leads to long-term success and meaningful impact. Authentic leaders inspire trust and loyalty in their teams by leading with honesty and a deep sense of purpose.
One way this occurs is through a strong commitment to core values. This article explains what it means to define core values.
What Are Core Values?
Core values are the fundamental beliefs and guiding principles that shape a person’s behavior, decisions, and actions. They represent what is most important to someone and act as a compass when faced with choices, especially in challenging situations. In leadership, core values influence how decisions are made, how challenges are approached, and how relationships are nurtured.
Core values provide a sense of clarity and consistency that enables leaders to make choices aligned with their principles rather than reacting impulsively under pressure. When in alignment, decisions and values can promote integrity and authenticity. For example, honesty leads a leader to admit mistakes openly; empathy guides a leader to prioritize employee well-being in organizational changes; and respect leads to decisions that promote inclusivity and fairness within a team.
Personal values differ from leadership values, though. While they are often related, the difference lies in their application and scope.
Personal values are held by individuals based on their life experiences, culture, and upbringing. Often including qualities like loyalty, compassion, and respect for others, personal values govern a person’s behavior in their private life and influence their interactions with family, friends, and their community.
On the other hand, leadership values are a subset of personal values specifically applied in the professional context of leading others. They focus on creating an ethical, inclusive, and productive environment within an organization by guiding how a leader builds relationships with their team, makes decisions, and addresses conflict. This could include valuing collaboration within their leadership role by encouraging team members to share ideas and work together towards a common goal.
Some influential leaders who have demonstrated strong core values include Nelson Mandela, who placed an emphasis on valuing equality, justice, and forgiveness; Oprah Winfrey, who values empathy, empowerment, and integrity; and Howard Schultz, who finds his core values in inclusivity, sustainability, and community. For further elaboration, Mandela’s leadership was rooted in the value of justice and equality for all, a commitment that enabled him to lead South Africa through a period of healing, reconciliation, and transformation. Oprah provides a powerful example of leadership with empathy and empowerment by using her platform to inspire and help others find their voices, all while maintaining integrity in her personal and professional life. Lastly, Schultz built Starbucks into a global brand by fostering a culture of inclusivity and community, focusing on providing fair wages and benefits to employees, and committing to environmental sustainability through sourcing practices and social initiatives.
These leaders, among others, show how core values guide their actions and inspire others to follow them. Their leadership reflects their commitment to principles that go beyond just making a profit or achieving goals—they are about creating a positive, lasting impact.
Why Core Values Matter in Leadership
Ultimately, core values act as a leader’s moral compass, shaping how they lead, how employees experience the workplace, and how the outside world perceives the organization. A leader’s core values, such as integrity, empathy, and innovation, result in different leadership styles.
For example, integrity manifests itself as ethical leadership. A leader who values integrity leads with honesty and fairness, promoting ethical decision-making, transparency, and accountability. This can be seen in Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, who transformed the company’s culture by fostering humility and a growth mindset, encouraging employees to embrace learning rather than a fixed “know-it-all” attitude.
Another value, empathy, translates into servant leadership. An empathetic leader prioritizes putting people first and focusing on their team’s growth through active listening, supporting employee well-being, and fostering collaboration. Jacinda Ardern, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, demonstrated this through compassionate leadership during times of crisis, such as the Christchurch mosque attacks, by focusing on unity and support.
Also, innovation as a core value comes across as transformational leadership, or leaders who prioritize creativity and adaptability to challenge the status quo and encourage risk-taking, experimentation, and forward-thinking strategies.
These core values set the tone for the workplace environment, influencing employee engagement, collaboration, and overall morale. Other examples of values include transparency, diversity and inclusion, and work-life balance. When it comes to valuing transparency, the workplace culture will subsequently emphasize open communication, feedback, and trust. Regarding diversity and inclusion, hiring practices and processes will reflect fairness, and employees will feel seen and heard. In terms of work-life balance, this will translate to a company implementing flexible work schedules and mental health support programs. When core values are deeply embedded in a company’s culture, employees align with them, leading to higher job satisfaction and productivity.
Value-driven leadership, no matter the values at hand, directly impacts the establishment of trust and credibility. Trust and credibility are the pillars of strong leadership, and they are built through consistency in values and actions. When leaders adhere to their core values, they gain the confidence of their team, customers, and stakeholders.
Ways to display value-driven leadership include maintaining consistency between words and actions, fair and ethical decision-making, and openness and vulnerability. This directly results in higher employee retention, a stronger brand reputation, and better crisis management.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Your Core Values
The first and foremost step to defining your core values is to reflect on your personal beliefs and experiences. By starting with deep self-reflection, you uncover what truly matters to you. Rather than just what sounds good or what you think you should value, you uncover the principles that genuinely drive your decisions, actions, and leadership style.
To start your self-reflection, take time to reflect on key aspects of your life and leadership journey. Ask yourself: What motivates you in both your work and personal life? What aspects of leadership feel the most fulfilling to you? What do you stand for? What behaviors or attitudes do you strongly admire in others? When have you felt most aligned with your values? When have you felt truly proud of your actions, even if they were difficult? What frustrates or upsets you?
Our values often emerge from both positive and negative personal experiences. Whether early influences, career challenges, or successes and failures, these experiences have deeply impacted you. For example, a leader who grew up in a family that valued hard work and perseverance might find that these values define their leadership style, while someone who experienced a toxic workplace culture may value transparency and inclusivity as a leader.
A common mistake in defining core values is choosing values that sound good but don’t actually guide real decisions. The difference lies in authentic versus aspirational values.
Authentic values are principles you already live by that shape your choices, actions, and leadership consistently, while aspirational values are values you admire and wish to embody but don’t yet consistently act upon. These can be distinguished by pointing out real-life examples of times you acted on a value, which suggests it is authentic, versus something you strive toward but may not fully embody in challenging situations, or aspirational.
While aspirational values play an active role in having a growth mindset, it is key to differentiate between the two to recognize which values need more intentional effort to establish.
Once you’ve identified your top core values, the next step is to align them with your leadership style and integrate them into your daily decisions, communication, and team culture.
Align Your Values with Your Leadership Style
A leader’s core values act as an internal compass, guiding every decision they make, from strategic business choices to daily interactions with their team. When values are clear, leaders make decisions with confidence, consistency, and integrity, fostering trust and stability within their organization. Their values shape their decision-making and team interactions.
Values shape decision-making by providing clarity in tough situations, ensuring consistency, and preventing ethical dilemmas. In other words, leaders with well-defined values rely on them as guiding principles to reach their long-term mission rather than compromising on ethics for short-term gain. This creates predictability, which builds a sense of trust between employees and leadership. In terms of shaping team interactions, values foster a positive work culture, build stronger relationships, and encourage accountability.
By integrating core values into decision-making and team interactions, leaders create more ethical, engaged, and high-performing organizations. Whether through integrity, empathy, or purpose, values shape not just what a leader does but how they do it, ultimately defining their impact.
Communicate and Reinforce Your Values
Once you have identified your core values, the next step is to actively communicate and reinforce them in your leadership style, workplace culture, and daily decisions. Your team needs to see them in action consistently in order to establish trust and credibility.
The most effective way to communicate your values is to lead by example through living them out daily. This provides cues to your team on how to behave, make decisions, and approach challenges. This can be done by aligning business and leadership choices with your values despite occasional difficulty, consistently upholding your values in every situation even when inconvenient, acknowledging mistakes and course-correcting when you fall short of your values, and celebrating team members who embody company values at work.
Furthermore, your values should be woven into the fabric of your workplace culture and decision-making processes, not just written in a handbook or displayed on a wall. This starts during the hiring and onboarding process by ensuring you hire people who align with your values. Once hired, initiate team meetings by reinforcing values through storytelling, employee recognition, or connecting decisions to company values. Employees who exemplify the company’s core values—rather than simply hitting performance targets—should be rewarded and highlighted for their accomplishments.
When leaders consistently model and reinforce their values, employees feel more engaged and motivated, trust and credibility grow within the organization, and decision-making becomes more aligned with long-term vision as opposed to short-term gain. Essentially, your values define your leadership, so you must live them, embed them in your company culture, and continuously reinforce them through communication and action.
Conclusion
Core values are the foundation of authentic leadership. They guide decision-making, shape workplace culture, and influence how leaders interact with their teams. Leaders who clearly define and consistently uphold their values build trust, credibility, and a strong sense of purpose within their organizations.
Now that you understand the role of core values in leadership, take the time to reflect on your own. What drives your decisions and actions as a leader? What values do you want your team or organization to embody? Are you consistently leading in alignment with these values?
For more insights on defining your core values, check out Jack Perry’s You Have to Lead Yourself Before You Lead Others today!
