Finding the right people to invest with and build your team around is very important for being a successful entrepreneur. But it’s not a walk in the park.
Want to know how to attract quality partners who can help you achieve your goals? The answer is by establishing a list of core values.
It’s important to surround yourself with quality partners and team members and the first way to start doing that is by forming your own list of core values. These will help you make decisions, attract partners, and hire the right people.
Building your list of core values sounds a little intimidating and can seem a bit daunting, but in this article, I’ll give you some ideas for constructing your core values and how to use them in your day-to-day life.
How to Determine Your Core Values
I’ve followed this process to figure out my family’s core values and I’ve also used it in my business. There are 3 easy steps to determine your core values:
- Pick Your Theme
- Create Headers
- Add Description
Let’s take a look at the first one:
Pick Your Theme
First, go online or come up with your own list of adjectives, about 90 of them. This will be the list that your core values will be selected from.
From that list of 90 adjectives, pick out the top 4 or 5 words that you think best describes you. If you’re doing this with your team, have them select their 4 or 5 words from the same list you are.
Next, look for common themes among the different members and group them. Let’s say you and your team go through this step and come up with the following adjectives:
- Teamwork / Contribution
- Integrity
- Excellence / Accountability
- Efficiency / Hard Work
Those adjectives are now the themes for your core values. As you can see, there are 4 themes. They’re the foundation for building your list of core values.
What’s next?
Create Headers
In this step you’re going to take your themes and translate them into more memorable words or phrases. The reason for this is that, sure you have a good list of themes, but no one is going to remember them.
To help you understand what I mean, let’s take the list of themes in the previous step and make headers for them:
- Make a Difference (Teamwork and Contribution)
- Do What You Say (Integrity)
- Do Your Best (Excellence and Accountability)
- Get Stuff Done (Efficiency and Hard Work)
Take your themes and turn them into short, simple, and memorable phrases. From there you move to the next step.
Add Description
The description should be 4 to 8 sentences that describe what YOU mean by your themes and headers. Some people might have different definitions of teamwork and contribution than you. So it’s important to remember that it’s always best to be clear.
Unlike the headers, you don’t have to memorize the descriptions. These are just to clarify what you mean by your values, so when you post them, people will associate the descriptions with your values.
Let’s take a look at our headers and make short descriptions for them:
Make a Difference. Work together to help others achieve their goals and become the best versions of themselves. Listen and communicate respectfully and efficiently to help resolve conflicts.
Do What You Say. This transcends everything. If you say you’re going to do something, do it. Follow through on all commitments regardless of personal cost. Doing what you say you’re going to do is absolutely critical.
Do Your Best. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Expectations for performance are nothing short of the best. Always look for ways to improve and have a high standard for excellence.
Get Stuff Done. Look for the best path to get the best results and be willing to go the extra mile to get things done. Use all available resources to produce the results you want. Don’t sit on your hands waiting for instructions. When problems arise, propose viable solutions through creative and strategic thinking.
The descriptions for your core values will be more detailed and specific. The descriptions are there to inform others what you mean by each of your values.
How To Use Your Core Values
After you make your list of core values, don’t just put it on a poster on your wall somewhere. Make them come alive.
Use them for day-to-day operations and start incorporating them into team meetings. They will act like rules whenever a task is started or delegated. “Am I getting stuff done? Is this my best work?”
You can also use your core values as a checklist to measure employees, team members, or partners against.
When hiring, see if the candidate shares any of your values or has additional ones that can complement yours. Or if after you’ve made your list and realized that some people aren’t adhering to it or might be a problem in the future, you’ll know to let them go.
It can be used both ways.
Not only can your values attract the right kind of partners for you, but they can also show you when you need to part ways with people.
Regardless of where or how you use your list of core values, it’s a very powerful concept that can guide you through many different situations.
I’ve used it in my family when we’ve needed to make important decisions. It’s really helped us through many different scenarios.
Follow this process and you’ll clarify what’s important to you so you can attract partners, team members, and others.
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