The work isn’t crafting values; it’s living them.
Values show up in calendars, promotions, and confrontations.
What’s your system for aligning behaviors with commitments? When did your last meeting compare convictions with actions?
Leaders huddle in conference rooms debating definitions, grammar, and punctuation. Daily practice is all that counts.
The power of the work is in the living, not the writing.
Schedule Quarterly Alignment Meetings
- What stories prove our ideals are real?
- What daily behaviors show how we treat each other?
- What recurring problems reveal drift from our principles?
- Who best models our standards?
- How do promotions reinforce what we believe?
- What behaviors must we confront?
- What are we willing to lose to honor our convictions?
Bonus: How do we answer, “We don’t do that here?”
Leaders organize people around shared beliefs. Write at the top of every performance review: Words without behavior are drivel.
Values Action Item
Create a rotating role: Chief Values Officer (CVO). Assign them on a quarterly basis for every team. Leaders bring organizational values to life.
- The CVO plugs into existing structures. They don’t create committees or meetings.
- CVOs don’t report on “Culture.” They report on behaviors and decisions.
- Give the CVO immunity to call out drift without fear of retribution.
What can leaders do to protect against organizational drift?
How to Experience the Vitality of Being True to Yourself
Strategy Execution | HBS Online
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Previously Published on leadershipfreak with Creative Commons License
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At The Good Men Project, we are glad to share selected work from Leadership Freak, a publication focused on leadership, workplace relationships, communication, and the everyday habits that shape how people work together. We do not believe the workplace is a separate sphere from the rest of life. The way people lead, listen, praise, correct, and share power at work affects families, mental health, dignity, and the wider culture people carry home with them at the end of the day.
That is one reason this kind of writing matters to us. Reimagining masculinity also means reimagining work: what we reward, what we normalize, what we ask people to sacrifice, and whether leadership is measured by control or by care. We are interested in workplaces where people are treated equitably, where leadership is more humane and less performative, and where success does not automatically require giving away your health, your relationships, or your sense of security. Advice on leadership may seem small compared with those larger goals, but culture often changes through repeated daily behavior. How people treat one another in ordinary moments matters. It matters a lot.
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