What It Means to Be a Value-Led Business

Are your values hanging on the wall or radiating from your people? More importantly, does it matter? According to business coach, author, and entrepreneur Kimberle Seale, the answer is, “absolutely.”  If you want to withstand the pressures of our rapidly changing world, there should be no question — company values are paramount to success. Kimberle has built her career on how values are mission-critical. She sat down to explain how to incorporate values into your business and use them to attract and retain talent, all while measuring their impact.

Incorporating values into your organization

Being value-led requires building your values into your business operations. Here’s the good news: you can start small. Intentionally set values that align with your culture and your business goals. Then, begin incorporating them at a high level. Find ways to ingrain them in your culture in a casual, non-measured way, such as through:

• Quarterly “values awards”
• Incentive programs based on living out company values

Then, you can begin to measure and incorporate these values into quarterly, monthly, and daily goal setting for your teams. For example, if one of your values is respect, you could implement a program that enables employees to give each other “shout-outs” for showing respect to a client or colleague. Leading with your values means you’re always talking about them without siloing them into some parts of the organization and not others. They’re front and center in the way you think and act.

Values attract talent, even in crisis

Job descriptions, the way your website looks and feels, the demographics of the people that you want to hire and their motivations all matter.

Amid the Great Resignation, organizations are trying everything to find and keep talent. Surprisingly enough, many have overlooked the core of what they’re offering people: their values. And values are what attract and retain great employees. This starts with building values into your organization but needs to continue into the way you represent yourself to the world. Your digital presence, internal policies, job descriptions, and participation in your local community and industry should all reflect your values. For example, if you value continual learning, you could provide generous stipends for employees to use on conferences, courses, and books and emphasize this benefit in your job postings. Looking outside your organization, you could sponsor and host educational events for others in your field. Kimberle explains, “Anything I find about you on the web needs to be written from the talent's perspective if you want to attract them. Job descriptions, the way your website looks and feels, the demographics of the people that you want to hire and their motivations all matter.”

Measuring return on values

As idealistic as it may sound, leading with your values produces measurable results. Take the value of curiosity for example. Kimberle explains, “If everyone in your company is more curious, they’ll seek more opportunities, and more opportunities will actually come to you. You will solve problems even faster. Your revenue and profit will go up faster by changing your values and building them into everything. We can measure that and see the return on your values.”

Your revenue and profit will go up faster by changing your values and building them into everything. We can measure that and see the return on your values.

These value-based actions bolster your culture as well. When values drive your behavior, your organization’s environment will change. An Achievers survey found nearly half of employees say leadership is minimally or not at all committed to improving company culture. Living out your values shows your employees that you mean what you say and inspires them to do the same.