I remember standing in the checkout line of a supermarket in New York City last year when something over the cashier’s shoulder caught my attention.
As someone who works in team culture every day, I was drawn to the giant wall, lit and elegantly decorated with “Our Core Values”.
The thought ran through my mind: somebody has spent a lot of money on this.
I can still remember all the values. I had a lot of time to read them while I was trapped, stagnant in the “express” line.
“Satisfy and Delight our customers”
I was neither satisfied nor delighted by the whole experience there.
“I’m not angry about the wall, and I’m not angry at values either.”
Values get a bad rap, but they serve a purpose. The problem is when we assume things like this do more than they do.
In the study behind Let’s Talk Culture, almost half of people leaders (49%) strongly agreed their values were clearly communicated. Just 36% strongly agreed the values were more than words, with the behavioural expectations clearly defined. And worse, fewer than 3 in 10 strongly agreed their leaders demonstrated them.
Communicated is not the same as defined. Defined is not the same as demonstrated.
If asked, most leaders I’ve worked with could tell me their values. What they will often struggle to tell me is how ‘respect’ shows up under pressure. Or how it tells people which way to go in a hard decision. Or how it anchors the room when two people disagree.
And if they could, it rarely sounds the same as when I ask their team. People are left guessing, and when they are, they often guess differently.
Guesswork is exhausting.
The clarification conversation is the missing conversation, one of the six I suggest that leaders can lead to shape culture by design. It has one job: turn a value into a behaviour specific enough that you could point at it.
Respect means five things to five people until somebody defines it. ‘We value collaboration’ is an aspiration. ‘Every new project has a clear owner and a list of contributors’ is something you can see and hold each other to.
You likely don’t need new values.
It’s a conversation, not a rewrite. You need time to sit with your team and ask, for each word on that wall, what does this look like here, with us, when it’s hard, when we need to make decisions, when we’re working together?
Then write down what they say, in their words (not yours). The words a team chooses for itself get repeated. The words handed down get left on read.
Try this. Pick one value. Only one. Ask your team for three behaviours they would expect to see if that value was in the room with you, and one they would expect not to see. You’ll achieve more in your culture in twenty minutes than a wall ever could.