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Why this article is important:

• Defines what matters to you
• Gives you a sense of purpose and mission
• Helps you create culture and direction for your teams and organization
• Makes choices easier
• Provides authenticity
• Helps guide you toward a more meaningful career
• We have more energy and are more fulfilled when aligned with our values 

Finding your why and identifying your core values as a leader

Here’s something they don’t tell you: leadership is hard. Especially if you are striving to be a really good leader. It can be lonely, thankless, and at times frustrating. Knowing why you are doing it, why you put in the extra hours, the extra effort, and the the extra emotion is important.  It is also crucial to not only be clear on your purpose, but also your values. When you need to make the right decisions both in times of prosperity and especially in times of turmoil, your values will be your guide.

Ok, so we say lead with your values. If you know your values, decisions become clear. It becomes easy for people to know if you are part of their tribe, if you are someone they would follow. Great, but um, most of us cannot clearly articulate what those are. Most would probably come up with something generic like “integrity” without knowing what that means in their day to day lives. To be a good leader you must know yourself, you must know what motivates you and what are deal breakers for you. 

In order to understand what your vision clearly is and what principles you want to live by, it will take time and effort to assess and reflect what fundamentally drives you. Here's the guide to help you achieve that effort.

Finding your why, aka define your purpose

“He who has a why can endure any how.” - Frederick Nietzsche, German philosopher

There’s an exercise out there called the Five Whys. It is great for root cause analysis, and it can be great at helping us understand underlying motivation. Digging down to answer your why’s will help identify your passion: Why is it important, why is that significant, why do you believe that, why do you feel strongly about your belief, and why does that matter to you?

Unfortunately, straight up asking "why" directly may not get you the results. Why can illicit a bit of defensiveness and puts the onus on the brain to make the leap from an observable, quantifiable action to the emotional reason. It is very hard if not impossible for the brain to articulate feels. It is much easier to answer with the observable actions and behaviors. The trick is, instead of asking “Why” questions, ask “What” and “How” questions. Rephrasing to more rationale questions helps guide you down that path to your underlying feelings. This technique is called peeling onion. (I’m not sure where the name of this came from, but if done well I do see an emotional response that can lead to a well of tears like you have just peeled an onion.) Here are categories and exercises of What and How questions that can help you peel down to the core of what drives you. 

• Passion. What brings you joy?  Here are a few questions to ask yourself about what motivates you. With each answer, ask a follow-up such as “How did you feel about it?” Or “What about that was most enjoyable for you?” Remember you want to peel back a few layers.  
• What makes you come alive? What endeavors or topics ignites that fire? The last time you had a passionate conversation about something, what were you discussing?
• The last time you woke up and were excited about going to work, what was it your were doing that day that got you motivated? How do you stay motivated?
• Think of moments you are most proud of and that make you smile, either at work or in your personal life. What were you doing? What was memorable about it? Think of the moments that you don't use for bragging, like graduating from college, but moments that felt like small wins that you may not tell anyone about, like completing the 2000 piece puzzle.
• Strengths. What are your strengths? How do you add value? This is an exercise where instead of asking yourself, you get to phone a friend. This exercise is outlined by Simon Sinek in Finding Your Why.  Start by approaching a close friend (not a relative or spouse) and ask them:
• Why are we close friends?
• What is it about me that you consider to be a good friend?
• What is it that makes me a unique friend?
• If you could super-size one thing I do well, what would it be?
• How do I make you feel?
• How would your life be different for you if I wasn’t around?
• Helpful video for this exercise: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF7YLGpOoz8
• Impact. What impact do you want to have on others? Now we are getting to not only what are your traits and actions you provide, but also the where you ideally want to direct those. 
• What matters most to you? How do you want to be remembered?  
• What scares you? What scares you the most? 
• If you had a time machine, and you can go back in time, what would you change about your life? 
• When you look back at your meaningful moments personally or professionally, who were you working to help? 

Now that you have gone through these exercises, go back and review your notes. Notice themes that pop out. Highlight the words that give you an emotional reaction. You are getting close to creating your why, your purpose statement. Now trying creating statements using these themes that fill out one of the following:

• “I want to  (contribution)   so that   (impact)  “
• “I exist to __________ (desired impact) in order to serve __________ (intended audience)”

Identifying your core values

Now that you are getting close to articulating your why, let’s work on clarifying your values that will help guide you in pursuing your passion. Below are three scenarios to help you identify your core values. For each one, take a few minutes to think through the question and write down your responses. Don’t over think it, just free form write. When you are done with all three, go back and review what you wrote. What are common themes? What is underlying that holds true to you? What is fundamental that would be deal breakers if it was not there? Those are your values.  These activities may be easier to do with a pen and paper. Using sticky notes and a blank wall can also help so as you write down one idea, you can put it to the side to focus on the next.  

Peak Moment 

Identify a time when work life could not get any better.  Describe in detail to yourself what that looked like. From the descriptions:

• Which is the most important? 
• What does it mean to you?

Obsession

Think about times of conflict, some of your last arguments. 

• Have you been told, ‘all you care about is ...’? 
• Or you were told that there is something you are “stubborn” about?
• What is the root cause of this obsession or stubbornness? 
• Why is it so important to you?

Anger + Frustration 

Choose a difficult moment at work. Perhaps it was when someone wasn't doing the "right thing" or when you felt the organization has lost its way.

• What made you angry or frustrated? 
• Which of your values was not being honored at the time?
• What did not feel aligned?

Refining your core values

It’s not only important to define the value but it is also important to define how that value turns up and the importance against other factors. Let me start with an example.

Say we identified that “do the right thing” as one of our values. Great, now ask yourself doing what is right for whom? Yourself, your employees, your client, your organization? There are situations when all of those are in alignment and the decision is easy. But more often than not, you will have to balance between those and make decisions that benefits one over the other. In this case it is important to know the order. If doing what is right for your client has a negative impact on your employees, what will you do? If doing what is right for your employee hurts the company’s bottom line, will you still chose to act in favor of the employee? To what degree of impact?  

This may seem like just a creative thought exercise, but this one comes up quite often and may change depending on the situation and organization. For instance, the Marine Corp has very clearly laid out this priority to be unit, corps, God, country in descending order of importance. However, a corporate setting may have a very different priority and may unintentionally change as it grows. A small consulting firm may start out as priority being employee, client, team, leader, organization, corporate. As they grow and put more checks and balances in place, it may start to feel like corporate moves up the order of priority and employee moves down.

Using your core values and purpose

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