Core Values

 

Proper values based upon absolute truth is the next quality that Brady and Woodward include in the Trilateral Leadership Ledger's factor of Character.

YourDictionary.com defines core values as: ... the fundamental beliefs of a person or organization. These guiding principles dictate behavior and can help people understand the difference between right and wrong. Core values also help companies [and leaders] to determine if they are on the right path and fulfilling their goals by creating an unwavering guide. 

Leader's are guided by their values and effective leaders have a value system that guides them in a positive direction.  A leader's value system serves as a moral compass.  Far too often leaders either lose sight of their values or had misplaced values from the start.  History is full of implosions due to distorted values: Enron; WorldCom; Volkswagen; Lehman Brothers; Martha Stewart; Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker; Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby; and the list goes on.  At some point each had a breakdown of their moral compass and either ignored their values and/or had misaligned values.

There are those who will argue that values are relative and ask the question "whose values?".  I would argue that there is a universal set of values that transcend religious, political, and personal ideologies.

As a faculty member at a regional university I have, on multiple occasions, presented at local, state, regional, national, and international conferences.  I have had the privilege of presenting at an international conference in the Peoples Republic of China on several occasions.  At one of the conferences I presented a paper on Howard Gardner's "The Ethical Mind" taken from his book Five Minds for the Future.  I make no claim to be any kind of expert on ethics or brain function or psychology.  Since early in my career, I have been a follower of Howard Gardner, who is best know for his theory of Multiple Intelligences.  I ran across his work on the five minds and was intrigued from a leadership perspective.  So, I presented my paper and it went well and I was feeling pretty good about the presentation until my friend and colleague, who was is Chinese and was in charge of securing the international scholars for the conference, came up to me and shared that one of the conference attendees wanted to meet with me in private to discuss my paper.  He was a dean at one of the universities in China and his field of study was ethics.  WOW!  Now I am feeling like I am in way over my head and am asking myself 'what have I gotten myself into?".  I took the meeting (it would have been rude not to and would have had multiple implications if I hadn't) and was expecting a polite 10-15 minute exchange and then I would be on my way.  Well over an hour later we were still chatting.  For some reason, we clicked.  I had the leadership perspective; he had the ethics perspective.  I had the western, American, democracy and individualism perspective; he had the eastern, Chinese, communism, collectivism perspective.  And yet, we agreed that ethics and morals mattered and that the there was in fact a universal capital "T" truth that transcended national, political, and ideological perspectives and that they were NOT relative.  While I freely acknowledge that this example is only two individuals from a world population of billions, it struck me that the odds that the two of us would randomly meet and agree were, in fact, minimal.  It had a profound effect on my thinking.  Ethics, morals, and values matter and they are not relative.

Effective leaders must have and follow a moral compass that includes a strong set of proper positive values that are based upon an absolute Truth.

Chris Brady & Orrin Woodward: "Launching a Leadership Revolution."  Business Plus. New York. p.96

Howard Gardner: "Five Minds for the Future."  Harvard Business Review Press. Brighton, MA.