Values-Based Leadership

Any business reflects the values on which it is founded. If you’re the leader of an established brand, then it’s likely your values led you to this point. You’ve done your best to hire employees who share these principles, which, of course, have been the basis of your work.  This should not be an early part of the business cycle. You should remember to live your values every day, and periodically hit “refresh” to remember who you are and what you want to bring to the company.

Make sure your core values remain relevant and honestly consider whether they’re withstanding the test of time. Ask yourself:

• Have they felt the effects of erosion with each passing year?
• Can your employees recite them?
• Can you recite them?
• Do you and your company actively live them?

By having your values as the core of your business, it means potentially changing the way you run things from time to time. Do your core principles entail a willingness to sacrifice a percentage of revenue? Faithfully adhering to your tenets is a major commitment, but once you’ve committed to them, your business will function through them. Take time and think about what your values are, as a person, and what your overall goal is in your venture.

It’s important to discover who you are and what makes you a great founder, great leader and great CEO. Your values will reflect the way you lead and, in turn, the way you run a company. The best way to hold the line on your company’s core values is to have selected those which are congruent with your personal beliefs. This prevents dissonance in your businesses trajectory for success.

Ask a parent the most important thing they teach their children and the answer will be those treasured guidelines that are meant to follow kids through to adulthood, which will have a place in the hearts and minds of the next generation. A company should be grown the same way, with a set of values that is followed throughout the company’s life. So, before you decide to become an entrepreneur, a leader or a CEO, decide what your core values are and how they will affect the business you’d want to run.

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Randy H. Nelson

Author and Serial Entrepreneur at The Decision Center

• has a long history of entrepreneurial leadership, stemming from his educational, military and business backgrounds. He has founded and built three successful businesses over the past 30+ years. He has written three best-selling books on entrepreneurship and leadership, and now seeks to help entrepreneurs and CEO’s everywhere through his coaching and growth advisory practice at The Decision Center in Garner, NC.

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