How to improve your leadership effectiveness – Workshop 2: What I Value from Work

In last week’s workshop we began by exploring the 1st of the 5 Leadership Principles that form the foundation to our understanding of what it takes to be an effective leader. That is:

Principle 1: Learning about leadership is at it’s heart, learning about self – it’s about developing a heightened level of self awareness.

Over the next couple of weeks you will have the opportunity to develop your level of self awareness by exploring the following:

1. Your Values
2. Your Strengths
3. Your Emotional Intelligence
4. Your Learning Styles
5. Your Thinking Preferences   

I hope you gained some insight from taking the time to reflect on your Life Values and the extent to which you believe your choices are consistent with what you value in and from life.

This week let’s continue our learning journey towards developing a level of Self Awareness and explore what you value from Work. Click on the link below and reflect on your current work circumstances and rank order the 20 items from 1 (What I value most from work) to 20 (What I value least from work). After you have completed the exercise, give thought to the following questions:

1. To what extent to my present work circumstances enable me to adequately meet my 5 most important Work values?
2. What changes do I need to make to ensure my 5 most important Work values are best met?
3. Give thought to what your team members value most from work. Don’t assume, find out by asking them. Invite them to complete the template and have the discussion. You’ll be amazed!

In answering questions 1 & 2 above, should you conclude that what you value most from work is currently met, the question you need to ask yourself is, what do I need to do to ensure my top 5 work values continue to be met?

Should you conclude that your top 5 work values are not adequately met, the question you need to ask yourself is, what do I need to do to change the situation?  Remember you have only 2 choices: to either do something or to do nothing about it. It’s your choice.

Just one more point, as a leader be mindful of the judgments you make about others who do not share similar work values to you. For example you may value having power and influence over others as most important and a team member or colleague may value work/life balance as most important. This does not mean they contribute less. In fact they may add greater value because they feel more aligned to what is most important to them from work.  

Next week we’ll take the next step in developing our self awareness and explore what you value from your Career.

I look forward to hearing from you – share you thoughts on what you got from completing this exercise. Or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask – I’ll get back to you