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Do you know what you really value?<\/p>\n
If someone were to come up to you this very moment and ask you what your core behavioral values were, could you immediately answer the question?<\/p>\n
I was recently speaking at a conference and took 140 professionals through a simple, yet powerful, values clarification process using CRG\u2019s Values Preference Indicator<\/em><\/strong> assessment. In just a few minutes, participants knew more about what motivated total strangers than individuals beside whom they had worked for years.<\/p>\n Values are different from vision and purpose; they are best described as behavioral needs and standards that contribute to your fulfillment, engagement and overall peace in your life.<\/p>\n Not only is values clarification<\/em><\/strong> important to interacting and working with others, but it also has the greatest impact for you, both personally and internally.<\/p>\n What about values congruence<\/em><\/strong>?<\/p>\n Have you ever met someone who said their family was very important to them (a value), but you knew that they never spent any time with them? Or an employer who identified honesty as a value in doing business, but whose business behavior was without ethics or integrity?<\/p>\n What credibility did those people have with those around them? Questionable, at best, but over and above this outside lack of credibility is the internal price these individuals pay by not being congruent.<\/p>\n When you are not clear about your values or when your actions contradict your stated beliefs, you short-change yourself in the areas of your own credibility, performance and confidence. You set up an inner conflict within yourself.<\/p>\n 1. You must be clear about your core values. Your values guide your decisions and behavior and can bring you mental and emotional freedom.<\/p>\n 2. Values should not be for sale; they must be non-negotiable. If your values have a price, I contend they are not really your core values.<\/p>\n In the workshops, we conduct using CRG\u2019s Values Preference Indicator (VPI)<\/u><\/a>, we asked individuals to identify their Top 7 values from a predetermined list of 21.<\/p>\n Many participants wanted to choose more than 7. Therein lies the power of this process. The reality is that people\u2019s decision-making priorities are based on placing one value above another. And you can\u2019t give top priority to all 21 values. Choices must be made.<\/p>\n Some participants wanted all 21 values in the top spot. Others believed they didn\u2019t need to clarify or confirm their top values.<\/p>\n With the recent group of 140 attendees, it was obvious who had previously given thought to the hierarchy of their values and who had not. Those who had not were restless, uneasy and less content.<\/p>\n After the individuals ranked their Top 7 values, we asked them to share their lists (called List A) within their small groups\u2014but with a twist. At the end of the exercise, we asked participants to restate in order the Top 7 values of the person sitting next to them. Most were unsuccessful with this simple request. Why? Values are inherently personal and important only to the individual who makes it a value.<\/p>\n In the third part of our Values Preference Indicator<\/u><\/a> (VPI),<\/u> assessment we asked participants to rank each value against every other value five times, using a scoring matrix. This process requires individuals to make over 300 decisions in just a few minutes.<\/p>\n Would it surprise you to know that, in many cases, the second list created by the forced choice process was different from the previous list just created through \u201cwindow shopping\u201d but still using the same 21 values?<\/p>\n Based on feedback from thousands of participants who have completed CRG\u2019s Values Preference Indicator<\/u><\/a> (VPI),<\/u> we have identified the two most common reasons for this discrepancy:<\/p>\n