Value proposition Aligning organization’s beliefs with its people can transform behavior
Companies spend a lot of time and energy developing statements of purpose and values for their people to live by, but often these efforts don’t bring about any change in behavior. It’s little wonder: A recent Gallup poll found that only 27 percent of employees believed in their employer’s stated values. Even fewer know how to tie those values to how they do their jobs.
I recently talked to some experts on organizational culture to hear their take on making stronger connections between personal and organizational values so that employees can align them with daily habits.
Entrepreneur and corporate speaker Michael Crossland has studied the question of values and their effect on businesses. He says: “If we want individuals to align themselves with organization values, first we as leaders need to get our perspective right. Are we being leaders or bosses? A boss says, ‘Go do it’; a leader says, “Let’s do it.’”
When leaders think about how to invest in the success of their team, Crossland says, it changes their perspective about values and purpose and how to reach them. “Leadership is not about what we can get them to do for us. It’s about what we can give back to the team.”
Michael Hahn, the author of “Hero Habits: The Guide to Thriving in Corporate America and in Life,” says: “People usually don’t know how to translate values into something that changes their behavior. Organizations need to look at the beliefs that drive that behavior.”
One of the most important habits to get people and organizations aligned, according to Hahn, is to “choose happiness.”
“We need to recognize and celebrate the people and behaviors that helped get us to where we are,” he says. “Start meetings with a simple question: What do we need to celebrate? When you start with what is working, rather than what isn’t, you fill up that tank of willpower and reserve that enables people
to see themselves as heroic. It’s about enabling rather than disabling people.”
It’s a challenge to change people’s behavior when we don’t understand it, Hahn says.
“One of the biggest mistakes leaders can make is to assume negative intent. We don’t give people opportunities to make a difference because we’re afraid they’ll mess up.”
“We need to assume positive intent,” Hahn says. When more than 70 percent of workers polled by Gallup admit to being disengaged with their work, it’s clear organizations have a challenge when it comes to engaging people.
“As leaders, we need to help people design a winnable game,” Hahn says. “Most people who are struggling have designed a life where they can’t win. They don’t see an opportunity to advance or make a difference. We need to flip that: how can we help people align their skills, talents and behaviors with what the organization needs so they can be fulfilled at work and feel like they’re winning?”
Nataly Kogan is the CEO of Happier, Inc, a learning platform that helps people optimize their emotional health. “One of the interesting things I have found,” she says, “is that there is a disconnect with the values people are writing on a wall and the micro-behaviors, or habits and practices, they’re living in their daily life.”
Kogan says aligning organizational values with personal values can help people see their work as meaningful. “Meaning is the bridge to resilience,” she says. “When we have a sense of meaning and can connect that to what we are doing, it’s one of the core practices or skills of emotional well being.”
Margaret King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis, agrees that employees value meaningful work. “If you provide what people actually need, you create value. The question is, what do they need?”
“It usually isn’t money,” King says. “That’s an outcome. More often, it’s about other things the organization gives them: opportunity, feeling like part of something with meaning. People value being valued.”
Michael Mankins, a partner at Bain & Co., thinks inspiration is the key to helping people discover the meaning of their work. “Leaders need to inspire through communicating shared purpose between the organization and the individual,” he says. “That means treating people fairly and showing them that their work and the work of the organization matters.”
Speaker and author Louis Gravance says inspiration matters because of the emotional nature of work. “Emotions drive many of the decisions we make,” he says. “If companies want employees to internalize values, they need to connect with the feelings or emotions people have about their work. For most people, it’s not what they want to do that matters, it’s what they want to be. What are people’s goals for themselves and how can that be tied to corporate goals?”
According to Samuel Tepper, a digital partner at Salesforce and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University: “If companies first think of what kind of company they’d like to be and then systematically recruit, hire and promote people who align to those values, then everyone wins.”
Most organizations are thinking about it as needing to align people to what the organization values, but perhaps that equation is wrong. Workers may show up for a paycheck, but their behavior is transformed when an organization aligns its values with those of its people.
Aligning organizational values with personal values can help people see their work as meaningful.