Over the years, I have seen values play a pivotal role in shaping individuals and communities. I truly believe that mine have shaped me, can you not say them same? I take the view that values serve as guiding principles that influence decision-making, behaviour, and relationships. But understand that not everyone’s values will align with my own, but that’s ok.
Values provide a moral compass, bring integrity, purpose, and a sense of identity. They contribute to personal fulfilment and are essential for building an ethical foundation in both our personal and professional lives. Some are born with us from an early age, others are shaped by our roles in a personal or professional capacity and others are by choice.
Why do values matter?
Values matter because they shape an identity and help others decide who they are drawn to. They guide decision-making, influence core behaviours and act as beacon to others in an often unspoken manner – demonstrating your personality. My core values, and those of who I choose to work with often shape who I align myself with and ultimately who I spend my valuable time with.
In my opinion, our values uncover what truly matters and influences our behaviour, whilst guiding our path to a purposeful and authentic life.
So let me share my objective and underpinning values with you.
My objective
To be the most respected source of guidance, support and inspiration for entrepreneurs looking to successfully start, develop or grow their own business.
My values
- Inspirational: committed to inspire and provide confidence
- Honest & Truthful: providing support that can be trusted
- Dedicated: to my clients success and as defined by our clients
- Respectful: respect in others’ skills, ability and commitment with no personal judgement
- Challenging: to challenge ourselves and our clients to improve. Open to challenge myself
- Innovative: to be creative in my thinking and original in my ideas, as one size does not fit all
- Results driven: focused on solutions and impact
- Plain English: provide simple and clear explanations, personalising my language and avoiding high level jargon
- First Class: providing a first class experience, to exceed expectations, at every touch point
- Share my passion: I commit to share my passion for entrepreneurship and success in business.
How do you clarify your own values?
With a little self-examination you can dig down to your core values, but you may have been given clues from people you have worked or lived with in the past…
To help you define your values, try thinking back to the last crisis you had – how did you react? What did you do afterwards? How did it make you feel? Try the same exercise the last time someone you know had a crisis, now think about the same questions in a different context – a celebration, an altercation, giving or asking for advice, helping an animal…
Your values are something that are shaped through experience and time and the good news is, you can continue to develop them and adopt new ones. But just as with business improvement, you can’t go through self-improvement without knowing your starting point and understanding where you want to end up.
You can read more about me and my values on my ‘About’ page, and if you don’t see me living these values every day, please do remind me.
NB: You might enjoy the books, ‘Personality Isn’t Permanent’ by Benjamin Hardy, or Mark Manson’s ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a ****’