How Discovering and Sharing my Values Brought Clarity to my Work

A breakdown of my newly discovered values and the behaviors that support and hinder my living out my values.

This posting expresses the views and opinions of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yext and its affiliates, employees, officers, directors or representatives.

This article is the overflow article from another article from last week. Feel free to check that out to understand the process that got us here.

After going through the exercise, our team had a collective set of values that I’m really proud to share: Order, Development, Inclusion, Practicality, Generosity, Gratitude, Openness, Trust, Efficiency, Creativity, Positivity, Nurturing, Personal Fulfillment, Happiness. I don’t want to speak to others’ values, but I’d love to elaborate on my chosen values and the behaviors associated with them.

It was a tortuous couple of hours and days deciding on which words I wanted to assign to myself. Brené Brown provided a long list of words to start with, but I struggled to find the just right words within it. I really wanted to reach out to my partner and run ideas by her, but was on a 6 hour flight, leaving me alone to wrestle with the options. I thought about what I felt drove me, and when I felt most comfortable. Gratitude and Compassion for others are a huge part of who I am, but I couldn’t map them to all of the decisions I tend to make. I enjoy teaching others, which maps, but I also enjoy board games, and single player video games, which didn’t align with either potential value. I swapped Gratitude for Control to incorporate my love for board games, where you have a structured interaction with others, but it didn’t really feel like it captured me “at my best.” The word itself has negative connotations of micro-managing and power-grabbing. I thought harder and after several days found Order to touch on the same feeling I get while playing games, without all the negative associations.

After that, I revisited Compassion. It felt a little too generic, and I didn’t feel it fully aligned with me. Something else was driving my compassionate behavior, and there were other crucial behaviors of who I was that weren’t accounted for yet. After another week of pondering on and off, on my train ride to work one morning I realized that Development, the drive to make things better, drove my interactions with my work and those around me. Now, let’s dive into my final reasoning behind these two values, Order and Development.

Order perfectly captures my love of board games, passion for improving processes, and interest in understanding patterns. I am energized by planning and structure and am made uncomfortable by chaos.

I channel Order when I’m at home with friends (pre-quarantine), and we break out a cooperative board game to play together. One of my friends hasn’t played before, so I walk through the rules, using game pieces as visual aids to explain the different concepts. We enjoy the quality time together strategizing how to beat the game, leaning on each others’ character’s strengths. The new player is able to contribute and help us win as a team.

Development is the other half of who I am, at my core. I am driven and excited by personal and peer development. I love the feeling of mastering combat against a specific enemy in a video game, or teaching a new concept to a coworker.

While directing the entire onboarding experience for my team’s new hire, I sit down to review a specific subject, the deliverables our team is responsible for. I work through my agenda of topics to cover, and am able to answer clarifying questions as we walk through. At the end of the training session, the new hire says the session was extremely helpful and exposed them to certain subjects that hadn’t yet been touched on in their other trainings so far.

It felt great to see everyone taking the exercise seriously, and arriving at some really genuine realizations about themselves. This exercise was a true exercise in vulnerability, and I gained valuable insights about my peers and their motivators. Personally, I appreciated the opportunity to introspect and realign myself with my job and extracurriculars. It is more impactful to make decisions driven by my values, and having those explicitly stated to guide me as I continue to navigate adulthood.

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