Where Values Reveal Themselves (On Values Part 1)

This is an article about values, not value. The value(x) approach is concerned with value, yet I often encounter confusion between the two. Rather than trying to resolve that confusion with a neat definition, I think it can be useful to look more closely at each concept and how they show up in everyday life.

This is the first of three articles doing that work. Here, I explore values through my own experience of recognising what mine are. In the second, I look directly at what values and value elements have in common and what makes them different. The third explores situations where the two intersect, which is often where the distinction becomes particularly interesting.

To get us started, here is a working definition: Values are beliefs or principles that people hold about what is right, important, or desirable. They develop from a young age and are reasonably stable across a lifetime. They help guide judgement, social priorities, and behaviour. Their expression can be affected by circumstances, while the underlying values are generally less dependent on context.

My understanding about what my values mean to me and how they express themselves in different situations, that aspect evolves over time. However, the fact that there are values central to what I perceive as my identity and my way of being, that is stable.

When explaining concepts, I find it helpful to have actual examples that ground the conceptual stuff in everyday living. So I will share some of my core critical values as I have come to recognise them through lived moments. Sometimes they have revealed themselves through friction, and other times through the ease that comes when how I act feels consonant with what I believe.

My core critical values

I have given a (sub)set of my core values these names.

• Honesty
• Sovereignty
• Grace
• Conservation
• Competency
• Integrity

These words might mean something different to you, so read on to learn from examples that explain what meaning these hold for me. Under each heading I have included a list of synonyms, antonyms and related words, that all feed into the key word I selected.

Honesty

[the opposite of betrayal, deceit and misinformation]

When a friend sought to introduce me to a “work opportunity,” I asked for context. She dodged specifics, urging me to “just meet him.” When the man arrived for a meeting at my home, I discovered he was an Amway salesman, aiming to recruit me. I felt deceived. If I’d known what he was about, I would never have agreed to meet.

I struggle with the idea that someone who holds relevant information might actively choose not to share it, especially when it shapes my ability to make decisions. That feels like betrayal. For me, honesty can mean not withholding knowledge when it matters.

Sovereignty

[self-determination, agency]

One Christmas, extended family didn’t invite us to Christmas Day lunch as they had previously said they would. Turns out they had assumed we wouldn’t come without our dog, and they already had enough dogs around. They made that choice on our behalf, denying us any input or ability to negotiate a workable option.

Sovereignty, to me, is having a say in matters that affect me. If they’d asked, we would have arranged care for the dog. Instead, they assumed and I had no voice in a decision about my participation.

Grace

[empathy, thoughtfulness, discretion, humour, kindness, emotional intelligence, strategic compassion]

While passing a young family in the airport terminal, I saw a toddler melting down over not being allowed to go into the Lego store. The parents looked frazzled and bystanders rolled their eyes. I smiled and joked about the child’s passion for Lego. The parents smiled back and for a moment there was relief in their eyes.

Grace, for me, means seeing beyond my own experience and to see others without judgment. I want others to feel they can be human around me, flaws and all, without needing to apologise for life’s messy moments.

Conservation

[sharing, flow, sufficiency, equity; stewardship, resourcefulness; the opposite of waste, excess, blockages, extraction, depravation, poverty]

This one is a little more challenging to explain. I notice this value often in situations of excess or waste. At a meal, when there is far more food than can be eaten, I think about what will be thrown out. When offered a paper bag for a purchase, I will decline so I don’t have the burden of decisions or actions in disposing of it.

It also shapes how I show up around others. When I stay at a friend’s house or hotel, I aim to have the lightest footprint possible. I’ll take pillows and blankets off the bed that I won’t use, and place on a chair so they don’t need to be washed.

And it shows up in exchange. I struggle when I am asked to pay more for a service than the value I feel I am receiving. Like I am asked to waste my money. It is not about minimising cost but about proportion of cost for return.

Across all of these, there is a common thread. I am attentive to what is used, what is left behind, and what happens next. For me, conservation is about avoiding excess and waste, taking responsibility for consequences of use and consumption, and providing things in proportion to what is needed.

Competency

[professionalism, responsibility, discipline, intelligence, self-sufficiency, growing, learning, improving, better than before, potential, excellence; the opposite of a lack of consideration, attention, or application of skill or doing a poor job]

I don’t like being associated with work that doesn’t demonstrate the level of competency I would expect from the people responsible for it. This is amplified if I have recommended or promoted their work to others.

I have sometimes been told that my standards are too high, or that I expect perfection. I find that interesting because what I think I am expecting is usually much more basic: that the work is done properly and to the standard reasonably required. I don’t expect everything to be exceptional. I do expect people to be competent at what they have taken responsibility for doing.

This value often shows up when I am dealing with service providers and not getting acceptable service. I am paying for competent expertise, yet often find myself doing additional research, chasing answers, or solving problems they have stepped away from. The work I have delegated partly comes back to me, along with the stress. At a minimum, I expect the work to be done well without my need to contribute beyond an initial brief.

In a recent house renovation, an electrician stood out. He explained that any work on the meter board required bringing it up to code, which went beyond his original brief and quote. He then went further. Knowing we planned to renovate the kitchen, he identified constraints that would affect future appliance choices. It was information we did not know to ask for and it saved us from costly mistakes.

Competency matters to me because it is about taking responsibility for what you are capable of. It means applying your knowledge and skills with appropriate care and attention. It means continuing to learn and improve to address capability gaps and strengthen existing capability.

Integrity

[quality, fairness, excellence, alignment, accountability, managed expectations, principled, respect, loyalty in relationship=alignment to code of friendship]

When I say to someone, “let’s catch up,” I mean it. I will follow through, reach out, and suggest a time. For me, those words are not casual. They express an intention that I now have some responsibility to act upon.

I have been caught out by this because other people can use the same words differently. Months pass, nothing happens, and I realise I had taken seriously something they had said casually.

I notice the same tension in much bigger situations. When a business tells me how it operates, I expect the experience to have integrity with that representation.

A company transporting my dog internationally described its facilities as offering a pet hotel experience. Its website showed a lovely waiting area that looked rather like a human hotel lobby. The reality was a series of animal cages in a dark room with no natural light. Whatever definition of “pet hotel” might technically accommodate both, the representation and reality did not align for me.

I use words as commitments to reality. When I say what I intend to do, I expect my actions to make those words true. I also look for that consistency in other people and organisations. For me, integrity is the alignment between intention, words, representations, and what actually happens.

What knowing my values gives me

These core values do not make me “right”, and they do not make others “wrong”. They help me understand my reactions, my actions, and the expectations I have of myself and others.

They also say something about my identity. They reflect who I understand myself to be, how I want to live, and how I want others to experience me. There is a consistency across time in this. Circumstances and behaviour can change, yet I still want to recognise myself in how I act.

Understanding values also helps me make sense of other people. Sometimes my values clash with theirs. When someone’s Generosity creates excess, for example, I might feel tension with my Conservation value. Their Generosity might be as core to them as Conservation is to me. Neither of us is necessarily wrong. We may both be acting in alignment with something deeply important to us. Recognising this can foster understanding and bridge relationships, even when values collide. It does not necessarily remove the tension or resolve the difference. It does give me another way to understand what might be sitting underneath it.

Finding your own values

I did not sit down and decide my values in advance. They revealed themselves, often in moments of frustration where there was a breach of something that mattered. Those moments are enlightening!

If you are looking to understand your own values, you might start there:

• Where do you feel friction?
• Where do you feel at ease?
• What do you admire in others?
• What are you offended by in the actions of others? (or ashamed by in your own actions?)
• What do you protect, even when it is inconvenient?

Your answers will probably not look like mine. The words and explanations will be different, such is the personal and subjective nature of values.

More than the words

The words I use for my values are only labels. A word like ‘Integrity’ or ‘Grace’ can never fully capture what sits behind it or what that value means to me. The substance comes from how I live it. I look to honour mine in my choices, align my actions with them, and activate them in how I show up with others.

This also gives us another way to understand what values are. They have a particular grammar in how we think, talk, and act with them. That becomes useful in the next article, where I put values alongside value elements and explore what they share, and what makes them different.

Author
Helen Palmer, Founder of value(x) hub, has been intentional about developing value-literacy to use across multiple contexts over past decades. She is passionate about clarifying the concepts of value and values.

Photo by Dina Makhmutova on Unsplash