Values Awareness

Kerstin: So welcome everybody to the fourth day of this ALIVE Leadership Summit. I’m your host, Kerstin Weibull Lundberg and I’m also the founder and owner of the Leadership Method. By now you probably learned that to be an ALIVE leader is not only about living and breathing, it’s about to be the leader who inspires performance, your own, others and the organization. In this ALIVE Leadership Summit, we’ve been discussing five steps you need to be an inspiring and ALIVE leader and that is authenticity, listening skills, intentional presence and value awareness, what we were going to talk to about today, and it’s also energy.

Values is really something really exciting topic I think. You hear a lot about how the most successful leaders and organizations consciously choose to lead by core values and promote successful attitudes and behaviors. Today, I have with me an expert in this area. It is Richi Gill. So very, you’re welcome, Richie to be here with us today.

Richi: My pleasure to be here.

Kerstin: Richi, he’s the founding partner and also a masterful teacher at Axialent. He’s also managing director and chief culture officer. So here comes the core values. So let me just tell you about Axialent, it’s a global leader in business transformation services for organizations looking for profit, to move beyond profit actually.

Richi: Move away.

Kerstin: Yeah. That Richi, he’s been working more than 20 years in different global organization and have a lot of extensive experience in leadership development, organizational effectiveness in the corporate world. During his time with Axialent, he worked with senior leaders in their team’s coaching and that facilitating these, significantly improving their own and their organization’s performance. He’s is a real culture expert really. So I’m so glad to have you here with me today and to talk about core values. I’m really curious about what is core values for you. Where do they come from?

Richi: Well, thank you Kerstin for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here and sharing this fantastic space with you. So as a definition, I would explain it with a metaphor. There are many ways of training leaders new skills and that’s possible and we are all for that. I mean, we believe in skill building as a way of mastering and accomplishing things that you couldn’t accomplish before. Now, there are certain aspects of leadership that in order to learn new skills, you have to kind of shift the way you look at the world. Because if you don’t, you’re going to build skills on making the technology analogy, on an old platform, you’re going to try to build new programs that probably won’t run.

So when you talk about core values, what I interpret is for it to be the kind of the human platform on which you’re going to build the new leadership skills that are required for this VUCA world so to speak. What’s very interesting is the VUCA world is a world that’s exponential that’s very fast and that’s turning at an ever increasing speed. While you have this fast world around you that you have to deal with, the more you have this world, the more important it is. You have a set of still center that holds you present and in the moment so you can deal with this world. That’s what I call the core values, the still center that allows you to show up as a leader, as a caring leader, as a leader that can build on the team skills, that can elicit the best of everybody in the team, that can inspire people, that can listen to people. Actually, they can do all the other skills that you will find in ALIVE leaders.

Kerstin: So where do those core values come from?

Richi: Well, that’s a pretty deep question and it’s really philosophical. We like to say with our clients that we are very flexible in almost any approach to leadership. We prefer flexibility over rigidity, over … We prefer curiosity over certainty. We prefer leaders that take unconditional responsibility versus leaders that will blame the world for what’s happening to them because that gives you power and then when you blame the world, you get innocence but you lose your power. At the same time, that we are flexible in the manifestation of those behaviors. We are pretty inflexible on those core values so to speak.

So for example, as I told you before, we believe that curiosity is better than certainty because certainty shuts down the opportunity, the doors for learning. While curiosity reminds you or you remind yourself that there could be things that you’re missing because there’s so many inputs that you’re getting all the time, it’s an infinite number for inputs and you could be missing stuff and then you could be building your own story that has blind spots. But then if you’re curious, you can be open to some other people, illuminating those blind spots and then you can co-create something with the other that didn’t exist before.

Now, if you are certain getting into a conversation, it’s very difficult. For example, one of the core attitudes like you mentioned before is listening. So how can you listen intentionally with empathy, with intention if you are certain about the answer? It’s very difficult. I want to be clear that we are not very flexible on that. So if people prefer certainty over curiosity or being a victim and blaming others rather than being a player and taking the ownership of the situation you’re suffering for, then we are not a good fit for you because we don’t know how to teach that.

Kerstin: So one can say that your values are curiosity, uncertainty and flexibility?

Richi:I would say yeah, curiosity, uncertainty, flexibility. We like to speak a lot one of our values. Being lovingly challenge each other as a way of putting the light of consciousness on whatever is not working at the moment but doing it from a place of presuming benevolence and presuming good intent from the other and bring this compassion and wisdom into the workplace. One of my favorite teachers who I learned a lot of this material with is Fred Kofman and Fred likes to say … Actually Jeff Weiner who’s the COO of LinkedIn, he says that compassion without wisdom is foolishness but then wisdom without compassion is too hard and then you cannot deliver your message so it’s both.

It’s a feminine aspect of leadership which is compassion and listening and opening up to new stories and then there is the masculine aspect of leadership which is more the wisdom, that focus, the go for it, the assertiveness. So all that creates what we call a loving challenge as one our core values.

Kerstin: I like that. Loving challenge, great. So now we’re talking about personal values and company values. So what would you say is the major difference between the two?

Richi: Well, I would say that, of course, companies are made of people and you need personal values like these values we’re speaking about being more of a player than a victim, being more a learner than a knower. We call that the archetype of the curious leader, we call it a learner and then the archetype of the certain leader, of the arrogant leader, we call it the knower or the know it all in other cultures. You need those values, the value of being able to listen, to listen without judgment, not to buy your own stories. Because that’s the biggest danger or challenge a leader has to work on. The more successful we are, the more we are rewarded in this, at least in the Western world, for having the right answers.

When you start believing your answers, you start believing your own stories and then when you believe your own stories, you forget that they are stories and then you believe that you are talking about the world and not about your story of the world. Then when you believe you’re talking about the world then you become certain and then you become a knower. So that’s the biggest challenge. Now, those are individual values. When you work with teams, you need the collective values as it overlay the individual values. So for example, in the same way as in football, you notice that I am not American because I say for me football is real football, it’s not American football.

Kerstin: We say the same.

Richi: They call it soccer. You’re talking about football. So in football, to make a play, you need several players. You cannot put a play together with one player. Now, for the players to run a play, you need players that have the individual skills, that they know how to kick the ball, how to hit the ball with the head, how to dribble, how to make a pass. Now, you cannot put together a play with one player. So in the teams, it’s the same. So for example, being able to talk about any topic, the ability to have difficult conversations, the ability to not have elephants in the room, the ability to bring the dead moose from under the table and put it on top of the table and talk about it. For that, you need several people.

You cannot do that with just one leader, the ability to collaborate. The ability to subordinate your subsystem to the bigger good or to the system. Because if you want to optimize the subsystem, when we play and this is what we teach the teams we’re working with, if everybody tries to optimize his or her subsystem, what happens is you sub-optimize the system. So in order to optimize the system, you have to sub-optimize the subsystems. For that, leaders have to be willing to let go of what’s good for their own piece of the system. It’s kind of a sacrifice for the bigger good.

Now, if leaders are not willing to make sacrifices which the word sacrificing I think is a very beautiful word because it means to make sacred. So if you are not willing to make sacred at the service of something bigger than your subsystem then you will never be a top performing team. You can be a good team. You can even be a very good team. Now, if you want to move from good to great, you have to bring those traits into the team. Those are values that are particular to teams and not so much to people.

Kerstin: So what you’re saying is that you have to have your own personal values but for the good, you may have to sacrifice a part of your own values, personal values to align with the company values.

Richi: Well, that would be true for some kind of values. Yes, I can’t mention it in that sense but I do agree with what you say. We can go back to that because I think that’s a very interesting topic. I was thinking more in what’s good for me in terms of outcome in this system, what would align for my area, for my budget, for my people, for my resources. Sometimes, resources are by definition limited and there are always more project than resources. So we have to decide how to allocate resources in the way that’s best for the team. Sometimes, that will mean that I would underserved in my request for resources because the resources will go somewhere else and it’s not my area. At the same time, I’m willing to support that because I believe that’s the best for the team. That’s what I mean when I’m sub-optimizing my own outcome at the service of the bigger outcome for the team. Does that make sense?

Kerstin: Yeah, it makes sense.

Richi: Now, in terms of values. It’s very interesting. For example, when we are discussing values with my clients and we do an exercise around values. Every time you ask about honesty for example, I would say everybody raises their hand because everybody thinks honesty is an important value. It’s a value that people hold dear to their hearts, speaking of the truth, not lying, not deceiving other people. Nobody will disagree with that. Now, and then I offer a challenging situation. You are robbed. You’re hold at gunpoint in the door of your home and there are some criminals that show up with you and you have your two inside your home. You’re at the door of your home. They ask you, is anybody home. So the question is would you tell the truth? Because if you say honesty is a very important value for you. Then most people say, “Well, I would be happy to lie because protecting my children is a value that supersedes being honest all the time.”

So it’s not about value but more how do you choose between values when they come into conflict. For me, that creates the rating or the ranking of values and what’s more important for you. In our philosophy, of course taking care of each other, that freedom is of the values we hold at the top of our scale because we do believe in free will. We do believe in unconditional responsibility. We believe that you ultimately at the end of the day, you are the master of your own destiny and that supersedes almost any value. So sometimes, company values and personal values are not completely totally aligned. Now, it may happen and you can live with that. You can live with that because you can sub-optimize. They may ask you to do something that maybe you would not do if it was your own life and it were your choice, it was your money, it was your company. Maybe you will make a different choice.

You don’t think it’s the best choice for the company, at the same time, because you have a contract that you want … There are many things that you value about the company you’re working for, you choose to sub-optimize your own choice of values and you choose to go along with what your boss is suggesting that you do. However, that is not conflicting with some very basic values. So if he would tell you, “Go and lie to the client,” and you cannot do that, well, maybe you’re going to quit. Maybe you’re even going to file a suit against the company because they all right deceiving clients. There are some things you will not do and there are some things that maybe they’re not your first choice and yet you can live with them and you choose to sub-optimize because you love the company and you love what the company stands for and that’s more important than honoring that particular value of yours at that particular moment in time.

Kerstin: I understand. That’s good words. I like that. I mean, value is not an easy subject. I mean, like you said, it’s prioritizing the values and it’s also knowing what are my values. How do you feel about that? Do people, are they really conscious about their own values? Are companies conscious? What is awareness?

Richi: Well, that’s a very interesting question because we struggle like everybody. Because I think the most difficult thing in living a conscious life or conducting a conscious business is how do you stay conscious when you are triggered or when you are facing all the demands of the context, of the environment. That is not an easy answer because I would say that’s subtle and difficult part. How do you press the pause button at a certain moment to go from what you call under the line to above the line and able to notice? Because the problem is when you don’t notice. It’s like you lose something, you lose your pen and then you’re going to look for your pen. So losing the pen is not the problem because you can look for it. Now, the problem is when you forget that you lost your pen. Because when you forgot that you lost your pen, you stop looking for it.

So when you become blind to your blindness then you don’t even question yourself whether what you’re doing is aligned with your values. Is this the way I want to show up? How does it feel for me? How might I be coming across to the other person? What might be the impact of what I’m saying with the other person? To be able to hit the pause button and ask yourself that question, that’s the most, I would say that’s the most significant shift in a leadership, in a leader’s awareness so then he or she can have choices. Before that, you have no choice. The way we explain it is moving from the stories having you, to you having the stories. You can take that perspective and take a step back and realize you have a story then you can question the story.

But before that, the story has story. It’s like you are inside the story and the story is like an invisible dogma that runs your life. So you find yourself doing things. Sometimes, when people are learning to live by their values and to show up moment by moment as conscious leaders, what happens is … Maybe you’ve got this experience too Kerstin, that people do stuff and after the fact, they realize it was not what they intended to do. That was not what they would have felt proud of doing because now they have a different awareness that they maybe learned with us or they learned by reading a book or doing some practices. So what happens is it gets worst before it gets better because you are as unskillful as before but now you know it. So now, on top of your unskillfulness, you become angry or frustrated with yourself because you’re unskillful.

So it takes time to build a skill and that’s something that we also bring into the workplace. It takes no time to become aware of the possibilities and to … I mean, you and I are having a conversation right now and we are agreeing on certain things and this is instantaneous. Now, if we want to build some of the skills that are based on these principles, that takes time and practice and it has a log time. If you’re not compassionate with yourself and if you’re not … If you don’t take yourself lightly, it’s very difficult to walk this path, because if you beat yourself up and many of the leaders we work with are very high perfectionist in them and that is a very big enemy of learning. If you cannot make a fool of yourself in a good way. Like little children that they are not embarrassed about making mistakes, well, the same thing applies to adults. If you can make fun of yourself and be happy about making mistakes then everything works. If you cannot, then it’s very difficult.

Kerstin: So maybe that’s the missing link. You’re talking about feeling happy, angry and frustrated. It’s the feelings.

Richi: Yes. Yes.

Kerstin: So how do you know when you’re not true to your core values?

Richi: Well, in our philosophy, we speak about the head. This is the gate. The gate of cognition is the gate through which we communicate with most of our clients. Because they’re very smart people, very intelligent. They’re senior leaders. It’s very difficult senior leaders that are not cognitively very smart. So normally we encounter very, very smart people. Now the head is a necessary yet not sufficient condition from our perspective. So we speak about the head, the heart, the gut and the hands. So if you want to know whether you’re facing a situation that cognitively is not so clear because there is contradictory information coming both ways, of you can find more information but you would always have incomplete information.

But then you have to ask yourself, deep in your heart and in your gut, how does this feel with me, how does this land in my center? Do I feel like smiling when I think about this alternative? Or does it not land well with me? Well, that doesn’t sound very scientific but if you think about how you make many of the most important choices in your life, you pay a lot of attention to your heart and to your gut. Then you have the hands which is the ability to execute. Because in our philosophy, creating a network or creating an organization of impeccable commitments, where people will say what they will and they do as they say is an incredible difference in building a conscious organization.

For me, part of my core values is to honor my commitments. So if I tell you I’m going to be on a certain time for meeting with you, I honor that time. If I need more time, I’ll let you know ahead of time so that what’s happened today for example, we had a commitment for 2, but I did not just show up 10 minutes, I’ll let you know beforehand so you know what to expect. What’s behind that is not only the coordination of actions because you’re a busy woman and you have to know how to manage your time and how to allocate your time. That’s very important. But even more important than that, beneath that, at a deeper level is the trust between us. If I do as I say, you start to trust me. Then if I don’t do as I say, you lose trust in me. If I do it enough times, probably you won’t want to work with me any longer.

Then even deeper than that is the integrity of the person. We say what when you honor a commitment, this sounds like maybe a little esoteric but it’s like an instant karma, when you honor your word, when you do what you say you would do, you become that person. You don’t need anybody to tell you that because you know. You know, you made a promise and you are under promise even if your boss doesn’t congratulate you or even if your boss doesn’t complain with you because you did not honor a promise. You know that you honored your work or you did not honor your word. So being in integrity with our commitment, with our promise is the deepest level of creating, of coordinating actions. So for us, coordination, trust and integrity are three aspects of impeccability in commitment and I will take that and that has to do with the hands, the ability to execute because the only thing that changes the state of a business or the state of your life is when you do something.

Because we can talk ourselves to death about certain issues but then if we don’t do something and very pragmatically when we talk about that, we say, who is going to do what by when. When there’s crystal clarity in an organization about that and then people honor that, we tell them, “Look, just do that and your culture is going to change because you’re going to feel that impeccability inside of you.”

Kerstin: I like that. Head, heart, gut and hands.

Richi: Head, the heart, the guts and the hands.

Kerstin: I’m curious because it has to do with feelings. Do you speak to your manager, the leaders, can you speak to them about how it feels to be out of your, or not in your core values or deviate in a way?

Richi: Well, we like to talk about emotions as something that’s core to leadership because the way we talk about emotions paradoxically is a very cognitive approach to emotions. Let me explain. Something happens in the world and that triggers a story in you about that. So example, you are walking in the wild and you hear a roar. So your emotional state before the roar probably a state of relaxation, of just paying attention to the chirping of the birds, the leaves of the trees, the breeze in your eyes, in your face, the sunshine, after the roar, you’re in a totally different emotional state. You’re probably looking for routes to escape, is there a tree that I can climb, is there a place where I can protect, is there a branch that I can use as a weapon? You are in the same place and the only difference is now you heard a roar.

Now, you are just a hiker. Now, imagine, instead of a hiker, you are a hunter that’s looking for a prey. Before the roar, you might be maybe bored or saying, “Well, this is not going to be such a good day,” and after the roar, you’re thrilling with excitement, because now, now it’s happening, so now something amazing is going to happen for you. So it’s not the situation. It’s the story you tell yourself about the situation that triggers the emotion. So when we work with emotions in companies, the first thing we say is the emotion is absolutely consistent with the story the person is telling herself about what’s happening. So you never challenge the emotion. Because we, at least, we try to teach our clients and our consultants. If I were you, if I were telling myself that story, I would be feeling that exact same emotion.

What happens, Kerstin, in companies normally is that leaders, they shy away from emotions. They don’t like emotions. Those don’t belong in the workplace. We don’t believe that. We believe that is pure, poor leadership to be polite. So we believe that emotions bring up very powerful information that will help the team if you can be with your emotions. So whenever someone becomes emotional, you just hold the space. You don’t try to pull the people out of the emotion. Once the person feels accepted and that it’s okay to become emotional, to become sad or to be become angry or afraid or whatever it is that happens, then you can start to inquire into the story that’s behind the emotions.

Many times, the story is a story that when you start questioning the story, you’ll see, “Oh well, now that I think about it, I may do something about that. When you realize that there is something you can do about that, that emotional state is then transmuted into positive energy, into an energy of excitement, of something you can do about it. But we totally welcome the emotions at the workplace because we believe that emotions are a core part of who you are as a leader and it’s impossible not to lead with emotions. It’s impossible.

So how can we use the emotions as Neale Walsch who wrote the Conversations With God. He has a saying that I love, he says, “You have to pay attention to the emotions because emotions are the language of the soul.” So whenever you are emotional, there is a deep truth that’s leading to you in that moment. Many times the tears that you’re shedding is a window to inquire into what’s important to you right now, what do you care about so much that brings those tears to your ears. It’s so easy to make the question. What’s not easy as I said before is the ability to press the pause button and realize that you can ask a question because if you don’t ask a question, then it’s impossible. If you ask it, it’s obvious.

Kerstin: I can really see how that goes together with values because there is an emotion.

Richi: Value through your emotions. When a value of yours feels at risk or violated or you lose something valuable for you, that triggers emotions. Then the emotions of the past that you think you lost something valuable or they can be emotions of the future. So for example, fear is an emotion that’s related to the future. This fear has an archetypal story. The story of fear is something bad might happen. When you have that story, you become afraid, you become anxious. So what’s the strategy to deal with fear, well, after you have accepted the emotion, opened a space for the emotion to be there without judgment, then you can analyze is there something you can do to prepare yourself for the future, can you mitigate the damage and then you engage with the person in that conversation about the future.

Then same thing if it’s a conversation of the past. For example sadness is an emotion that has to do with an event of the past, something valuable was lost and that triggers sadness. Then it’s interesting because anger, the way we define it. Now, I’m not pretending to know the definition of anger but the way we define anger is sadness, something bad happened in the past plus a judgment that you have that that should not have happened. When you have the judgment that that should not have happened, so on top of sadness, you build anger.

So imagine, somebody very dear to you dies suddenly. Maybe at first you become angry, I mean, why did he have to go? God, why? Why did you create this situation? Then you’re angry about the injustice. But then when anger subsides, what remains is sadness. Sadness is anger without the judgment.

Kerstin: So that’s really interesting. I like to hear that. When you work in culture, changing culture or how do work … How does values come in in that work?

Richi: Well, we have a process to work in culture with companies. Normally we would start with a diagnostic. We call it holding up a mirror. We interview people and we do quantitative tools and we do qualitative interviews. We interview people about values amongst other things. We interview them about behaviors which is a way culture shows up, manifests but also about the underlying principles behind the behaviors. Those are pointers to the values that people hold dear. From those interviews and from the quantitative tools we use, we derived some conclusions around what’s important and what’s expected from people in an organization. Then what we normally do is that is a situation that as we say in our culture methodology, a problem is not a coaching opportunity.

What is a coaching opportunity is when the problem that you’re facing is not what you want. So if you don’t like your problem we have to understand, so what would you like? What would you like to have happened? So normally we would run two kinds of quantitative diagnostics with our clients. We would run a current picture of the organization and then when we do the first workshop, we work with the leadership team normally or with the board or with the executive committee to put together what they call the ideal culture which is what would you like to be expected from your people rather than what is expected today. That creates the gap. That creates the opportunity to work. We build what we call the frontal charts.

So for example, you want to move from a culture of show and tell to a culture of mutual learning for example and that’s a big shift in itself, to move from show and tell to mutual learning, something very deep has to shift because remember that show and tell normally is what has made this company successful for a long time. So you have to offer a way of letting go of that, not actually letting go, how can you build on top of that so then you can become a mutual learning organization rather than a unilateral control organization.

Then we have methodologies that we use to bring those values alive, to understand what they are. So do you like them? We ask the question, I mean, do you like it, if you like it then please, by all means, continue doing the same. You don’t have to take my advise if you like what you’re doing, if you like what you’re getting. Now, if you don’t like what you’re doing, if you don’t like what you’re getting, if it doesn’t feel right for you, head, heart, guts and hands, if it doesn’t feel right for you, then you might consider something different. Then we have a case where we worked together in creating that new culture. But it has to come from the clients.

Kerstin: Their core values.

Richi: Their core values and their desire to embody or to display a different kind of values because they believe that’s going to be good for the business. It’s going to be good for the people. It’s going to be good for themselves.

Kerstin:  Thank you, that’s really, really interesting. So just as a last question since our listeners are leaders or leaders to become. What are the advice you would like to give them with regards to values?

Richi: I have this belief that almost we all want the same. People just want to be happy. They want to live a good life. If you’re a leader and if you’re responsible for leading others and for creating states of wellbeing and growth and professional growth for others, I would not give them an advise on values because I trust that if they can create their right space then those values will emerge and they will look for them. It’s a little bit counterintuitive. Instead of you having to go and look for your values, just open a space, sit with yourself and then what’s right for you in the moment is going to find you. The toughest thing is to get yourself out of your own way because many times, we become our biggest enemies because we believe that we have to make it happen.

The answer is it’s like I don’t know if you remember the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance where Will Smith is a coach and he’s coaching a golfer that wants to become professional. At one point of the movie, he says, “Look, there are an infinite of number of plays you can play here and the right move, the right play is looking for you and it will find you if you just get yourself out of the way.” I would recommend the leaders to engage in some kind of self-awareness practice, that they can learn to sit five or 10 minutes with themselves, just paying attention to the breath or finding their center and being able to open the space because as we said many times during this interview, if you’re able to hit the pause button, then everything we discuss is possible.

If you are unable to press the pause button, you are going down the rabbit hole with Alice and then there’s nothing you can do. There’s absolutely nothing you can do because you are unconscious. So for me, the biggest challenge is how can you move from under the line to above the line. For me, that boils down to being able to do it in the heat of the moment. Can you take a breath? Can you take a breath before responding to that conversation or that evil that made you angry? Can you not hit the send button and be with yourself and reflect what you want to have happened, what you want to bring in this conversation? What’s the best outcome you want? How can you make it good for everybody in the system? How can you help the other person grow? These are very simple questions and very meaningful questions and yet they’re impossible if you cannot stay conscious. So, my advice to the leaders is learn how to stay conscious. That’s the most simple yet illusive piece of leadership for me.

Kerstin: Thank you very much, Richi. Those are really, really powerful and profound words. Really, really good. So?

Richi: Well, I’m happy I’m contributing to this program. I hope people feel inspired and they start doing things. But then they become theirs and they’re out there in the world and then there’s more people spreading the word that it is possible to bring a more conscious business and then a more conscious world through business.

Kerstin: Thank you. Thank you dear listeners for being with us today. We’re not finished yet. Tomorrow we’ll have another day on energy so I hope to see you then. Bye.

Richi: Bye. Thank you.