Living Your Values: Why Company Values Are Your Most Powerful Leadership Tool

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Hello team,

Early in my leadership journey, I worked at a company that had "customer obsession" painted in huge letters across the cafeteria wall. During a product review, I watched our VP shut down an engineer who suggested delaying a feature to fix critical usability issues. "We ship on time here," he said. "That's how we win."

The engineer never spoke up again. The feature shipped broken. Customers complained for months. And everyone learned that "customer obsession" was just a slogan—when it conflicted with convenience, it lost.

This week, let's talk about why company values matter so much to your effectiveness as a leader—and how to actually live them.

Most companies have values. They're on the website, in the handbook, printed on posters. They sound good: Innovation. Integrity. Excellence. Collaboration. Respect. But walk through those same companies and you'll often find a massive gap between what's written and what's real.

Here's what I've learned: company values don't fail because they're poorly written. They fail because leaders don't use them.

When leaders ignore values in their decisions, everyone notices. When leaders reference values only in prepared remarks but abandon them under pressure, people learn the truth: values are performative, not operational. They're marketing copy, not operating principles.

The cost of this gap is enormous:

Decision paralysis. Without real values to guide them, teams don't know how to make trade-offs. Every decision becomes political rather than principled. People spend energy managing up instead of doing what's right.

Cynicism. Nothing breeds organizational cynicism faster than hypocrisy. When leaders say one thing and do another, trust evaporates. People become disengaged because they've learned that authenticity doesn't matter here.

Talent loss. High performers leave organizations where stated values don't match lived reality. They came for the mission and the culture you advertised, and they leave when they discover it was fiction.

Here's the reframe that changed how I lead: values aren't aspirational statements. They're decision-making frameworks.

When you're facing a difficult choice, values tell you which way to lean. When stakeholders want different things, values help you prioritize. When the easy path conflicts with the right path, values give you the backbone to choose difficulty.

I learned this during a particularly painful quarter years ago. We had a critical deadline and a team member who wasn't performing. The expedient choice was to work around him and deal with it later. But one of our values was "direct and candid feedback." I had the hard conversation immediately. It was uncomfortable, but it was right. He eventually thanked me for not letting him fail publicly.

Values give you clarity in the fog:

When a client asks you to cut corners, integrity tells you what to say. When your team is exhausted and you're deciding whether to push harder, respect for people tells you what to do. When you're choosing between the safe option and the innovative one, your values about risk and learning point the direction.

Leaders who lean on values make faster, more confident decisions because they're not reinventing their operating principles in every situation. They have guardrails.

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1. Reference values explicitly in decisions. Don't just make calls—explain them through the lens of values. "We're going to delay this launch because our value of quality means we don't ship things we're not proud of." When people see values driving actual decisions, they start believing they're real.

2. Make values visible in how you spend your time. If collaboration is a value but you never create space for it in meetings, people learn it's not real. If learning is a value but you don't invest in development, it rings hollow. Your calendar is a values statement—make sure it matches your words.

3. Hold yourself accountable first. The fastest way to kill values is to enforce them on others while exempting yourself. If respect is a value, you don't get to be dismissive in meetings. If transparency is a value, you don't get to withhold information. Model the behavior before you expect it.

4. Reward and recognize values alignment. When you see someone making the hard choice because it aligned with values, spotlight it. When someone lives a value under pressure, celebrate them. You're teaching everyone what actually matters. If all your recognition goes to outcomes regardless of how they were achieved, you're telling people that values are optional.

Values are easy when they're easy. The real question is what happens when living your values costs something.

I remember a situation years back where we'd made a commitment to a customer, but fulfilling it meant our team would miss their quarterly goals. The goals were tied to bonuses. I had a choice: quietly scale back our commitment and hit numbers, or honor our word and explain the impact to leadership.

We honored our word. I took the heat. And my team saw that "integrity" meant something even when it was inconvenient.

That's the moment values become real—when they're tested and they hold. When people see you sacrifice the expedient for the principled, they learn the culture is genuine. They start making the same choices themselves.

The opposite is also true. When you abandon values under pressure, you teach people that values are situational. And once that lesson is learned, the culture is broken.

Here's the bottom line: as a leader, you are the interpreter and enforcer of company values. Your team doesn't experience values through posters or all-hands presentations—they experience them through you.

When you reference values in decisions, people learn to use them. When you model them consistently, people emulate them. When you hold people accountable to them, they become real operating principles instead of aspirational fluff.

The culture you build isn't defined by what you say about values. It's defined by what you do when values conflict with convenience, pressure, or personal interest.

Your team is watching. Make sure what they see matches what you claim to believe.

Until next week, Your Leadership Partner

In the premium section below, I share the frameworks I use to ensure values aren't just words but actual operating principles:

These aren't philosophical exercises—they're practical tools for making values operational in your daily leadership.