Why Are Core Values So Important? Here's the Full Story
Do you wonder how you can keep your life or business organized to achieve your goals? Getting good grades or money, having skilled staff, and rallying to achieve your goals without instilling core values may not always cut it. First, you must set a foundation of core values, including certain principles and philosophies.
But why are core values so important? These short, precise, powerful words (sentiments) shape your identity and drive you to success. Book a complimentary 30-minute call to get a strategy for your life today.
What Are Core Values?
Core values are philosophies and principles that you use to lay down your life or business plans and ambitions. They guide and shape your behavior, actions, decisions, and attitude. It's easy to identify how you'd like your life to shape up if you plot your values effectively.
Such values include:
Honesty
Self-drive
Passion
Trust
Accountability
Humility
Integrity
Transparency
Boldness
Teamwork
These values help you align your life professionally, emotionally, and physically.
Personal Core Values
Personal core values define you and bring meaning to your life decisions. They help you build your social, professional, and emotional life. Knowing your core values allows you to thrive in life by making correct decisions and executing your life plan.
How can you identify core values? First, scan your life for challenges and life experiences. Next, understand which values propelled you through these situations successfully. Then, analyze and examine the people you admire and determine which values matter most to them.
Write down a list of core values you draw from these steps to identify what resonates with your lifestyle. From your list of values, identify your core values by categorizing them as professional, personal, and social. It helps you understand what matters most and how to use these values to better your decision-making, planning, and behavior.
Organizational Core Values
Organizational core values allow a company to base its operations on the selected values to build a culture and structure. These values help the employees to focus and be more productive to increase the company's success.
Some organizational core values include honesty, accountability, growth, responsibility, and leadership, for example.
Organizational values guide the company's employees on how they should handle the customers, management, and their colleagues. This framework allows people to accommodate and understand each other for a successful workplace.
Why Are Core Values So Important?
Core values mold your behavior, thoughts, and actions. They stir your deep desires and beliefs, making you confident in yourself and your abilities. You'll make more informed decisions if you align your decision with what you stand for.
Here are some reasons why core values are essential.
They Determine the Company's Distinctives
Company core values help you define your brand identity. It builds your reputation because everyone in the company understands and is in sync with how they react, handle, and work in different situations. Personal core values help you to stand out in your professional field as you'll align your tasks and responsibilities as per your values.
They Dictate Personal Involvement and Alignment
Core values help you define your limits and curve your career path. They allow you to align yourself to professional options that will benefit your career and overall life. In addition, it enables you to make your personality shine when interviewing for a job, distinguishing you from other applicants.
Companies can also identify the best applicants by questioning the interviewees on some of their core values. Again, it helps with the onboarding process and transitioning for the employees.
They Communicate What Is Important
Core values are the perfect window for people to see what matters most to you and the company. These values allow people to interact, gel seamlessly, and communicate effectively in a business or personal setup.
They Influence Overall Behavior
Personal core values help you understand your purpose, which changes your behavior. As a result, you'll be more conscious of the choices and decisions you make in your life. Companies can also moderate how employees and the management act and behaves within the workplace if they have defined core values and a company structure.
They Inspire People
Knowing your core values makes you reflect on your actions. As a result, you'll be motivated to align your career and personal life to what you believe, making you more confident to take on life challenges, leadership tasks, and other career options.
They Contribute to the Overall Success of the Organization
A company's core values influence its structure and culture, affecting its productivity and success. You'll be more organized and coordinated if every employee aligns themselves with the core values.
They Shape the Organizational Culture
Core values create a foundation for your organizational culture. When people understand and align their actions and behavior to the core values, there will be a unified way of working successfully.
They Help You Find Purpose
Personal core values help you believe in yourself and balance different perspectives with objectivity. You'll understand what matters most to you and how to channel and align it to your path.
How To Strengthen Your Team's Core Values?
Emphasizing your company's core values helps your staff mesh and work together for improved results. Here is how you can strengthen your team's core values.
Recognize Employees for Demonstrating Core Values
Recognizing employees who demonstrate your company's core values increases their productivity level. So, using different rewards in this program further reinforces your company's core values' importance. In addition, it helps them see how the company is more harmonious and successful with their compliance.
Employees will also understand how these values impact their personal and company success, motivating them to identify and align their core values. Choose a transparent approach where the employees know how you recognize those who use the core values to impact their work.
Frequently Communicate Core Values
How your employees perceive the company's core values affects its impact on the company's success. With personal core values, you continue to evolve, adjust, and interpret how the values influence your success.
Do you wonder why companies post their values on the office walls? Reinforcing company values requires a more hands-on approach. Arrange for several value exercises, like sharing, that show what makes the core values essential and how they impact the overall business position.
Let them see these values' impact and real-time usage to encourage them to practice them too. Communicate with the employees about your expectations on how they interpret these core values. Remind them during meetings or arrange special meet-ups where you can elaborate on the company's core values.
Be their role model and align and use your company's core values to achieve the company goals. It shows them that it is a practical idea that they can incorporate into their operations.
Consider the Core Values When Hiring, In Ongoing Development, Onboarding, and During Retention
Using your core values as a benchmark in the company's activities aligns your team to the company's core values. Start by hiring people whose core values rhyme with your values and ambitions.
It's easy to assimilate an employee who already stands by the same principles your company has. Also, it helps the employee fit into your company's setup. In addition, remind and stress the core values during the onboarding process. It's more time-consuming for employees to relearn new values after finishing the onboarding process.
Explain your core values and how they impact the business activities and their success. Then, use different platforms to pass the company's ideas and values.
Be creative and think of ways to keep the employees focused on the company's values. For example, you can hold meetings where you discuss the team's successes in displaying one of the core values. This way, the entire team can understand the value's purpose and how it benefits the stakeholders.
How Can You Incorporate Core Values Into Employee Hiring, Onboarding, Ongoing Development, and Retention?
Most companies incorporate their core values in the hiring process by choosing candidates who share the same core values as the company. Talent teams highlight the company's values in the qualifications needed to sieve out incompatible candidates. In addition, they evaluate candidates along company lines during hiring to see if they fit the company culture.
The onboarding and development process has constant reminders and value reinforcements to ensure the employees understand and internalize the core values. Ensure you communicate and encourage employees to incorporate the core values in their daily activities.
Organize regular fun meetings to engage the team members on your core values. Use games, videos, and team-building activities to help them understand these core values.
Core Values: The Foundation of a Great Team
A unified company stems from an organized company culture, which results from your company's core values. Spell out your organizational core values and let your staff in on them to help you carry your company's plan to success. The key to success is to have your team learn and practice these values.