It can happen after only a few minutes of conversation with someone. Your stomach clenches, your heart rate might accelerate, and you start to fidget. You feel uncomfortable and want to escape the conversation. So do you have food poisoning? Nope, worse. You have a core values mismatch.
Successful business owners know few things matter more than surrounding themselves with the โrightโ people. That can mean employees, clients, vendors, investors, peer groups โ anyone with whom they share their time and energy. Being around people who share their values helps them build deeper trust, lead better, and grow faster. Everything around them just works!
Core Values in Your Business โ Employees
Core values are timeless guiding principles. They can define both your culture and the type of people working there. When applied in your organization, they attract like-minded people and weed out people who simply donโt fit the culture. Once you have your core values in place, you should use them for all hiring, firing, promoting, and rewarding decisions.
One of the core values in my business is โDo the Right Thing.โ All EOS Implementersยฎ and EOS Worldwide employees share this and four other values. And I deeply believe in all of them.
One day I discovered that an employee hadnโt been following the process we agreed upon in handling a step in the sales funnel. When I asked her about it, she replied: โI didnโt think youโd notice.โ
That triggered such a powerful reaction in me! I immediately realized she didnโt align with โDo the Right Thingโ as a value. Needless to say, she did not last long after that incident with our organization.
If you have a core values mismatch with an employee, you probably already know it. And so does your team. And that mismatch causes uncomfortable tension for everyone.
For example, do you discuss the same person in meetings over and over and over again? Or do you avoid talking to them or come away from conversations with a sinking feeling in your gut?
You know why. I find if I have an unreasonably emotional reaction to someone, I immediately see a lousy core value fit.
Core Values in Your Business โ Vendors & Clients
Choosing who you work with outside of your team matters too. Your clients and vendors donโt need to share the exact same values as you, but they should reasonably align.
If my company believes in โHelp First,โ I donโt want to work with organizations that favor โGrab with Both Hands.โ That wouldnโt make a good fit for either of us. For example, I wonโt work with organizations that I believe take unfair advantage of people or engage in predatory practices.
On the other hand, collaborating with companies that share my values feels incredibly gratifying and productive. I enjoy working with companies that take care of the people who support them and deliver on commitments. They want to make sure everyone feels good and brings their best energy to the relationship. They allow everyone to do their best work and help us create a high-performing team.
Resolving a Core Values Mismatch
Even if you choose your people with care, at some point youโll find yourself stuck in a core values mismatch. When it happens, youโll know it in your gut. Below I suggest three approaches you can take to move forward.
- Measure Your People
Evaluating people will always feel like a complex and subjective process. The People Analyzerโข tool lets you score each member of your team on how well they fit your core values. It gives you a quantifiable way to articulate what you already know in your bones. The clearer you define the problem, the more quickly you can decide what to do next.
- Enter the Danger
When facing a difficult decision, most people tend to freeze. Our primal brain triggers a fight-or-flight response to protect us when we become fearful. But you wonโt do that. Youโll shift to your prefrontal brain, where you can be open and honest about the problem.
- Take Action
I bet you already know what you have to do, and youโre just procrastinating doing it. Many leaders struggle to avoid making bad decisions and taking far too long to make good ones. Decide right now that you wonโt let this core values mismatch drain your energy and stall your progress any longer.
Where do you go from here? EOSยฎ founder Gino Wickman shares several options in this video on addressing personnel issues. They include reshuffling the roles to find a better fit, having a โlast chanceโ conversation, or termination. But whatever you do, donโt ignore the problem.
