After six years generalising as a practitioner in values-base leadership, I have begun growing my profile as a consultant and authority on the subject of values as The Values Differentiator: Speaker, Activist and Values Evangelist.
My video podcast, A Show of Values, co-hosted by John Verrico, my teammate in Maxwell Leadership, launched with a trailer in December 2022 and will broadcast its first full episode in January 2023.
What I do
I am as committed to the original vision of ‘Make Your Marque’ as I ever was: cultivating happier people and happier workplaces, and leaders who leave a positive imprint uniquely them on the world and the people around them.
Only my starting point now, as The Values Differentiator™, is the values themselves.
Knowing what I know now about the power of values to drive our behaviour and shape our results, this approach makes more sense to me. Why dive headlong into a values-based leadership programme that tries to build better on damaged foundations?
As The Values Differentiator™, I partner with leaders to repair – or rebuild and reset – the values foundations of their organisation – and sometimes, if required, their personal lives if their lives are adversely impacting their leadership ability or credibility.
Together we build a sound foundation for sustainable growth, stability, competitive advantage and ethical legacy.
Their Values Differentiator.
It’s what flows from the values, not the values themselves.
That’s where my skill and my value lies and why it pays to hire me to facilitate this exercise, rather than trying to do it in-house.
Why I do it
My interest in values began in 2016 when I was introduced by my leadership teacher and mentor, Dr John C Maxwell, to the work of Kouzes and Posner, the authors of ‘The Leadership Challenge’. I bought ‘The Leadership Challenge’, and began bolting values workshops onto my Maxwell Mastermind programmes.
Values – good, bad or absent – inform every function, not just PR. For example, they are the bedrock of effective marketing and the connection that converts into custom. Today, when consumers are more consciously aware of values and ethics in relation to the causes they care about, where they shop and who they bank with, the words of Steve Jobs, spoken on the unveiling of the ‘Think Different’ campaign, are more relevant than ever:
“To me, marketing is about values. It’s a very complicated world… it’s a very noisy world… and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.
Now Apple, fortunately, is one of the half a dozen best brands in the world […] one of the greats of the greats… but even a great brand is going to need investment and caring if it’s going to retain its relevance and vitality.”
So, if you want your business or brand to retain its relevance and vitality, or it’s already started to lose its relevance and market share, before spending thousands on market research, start closer to home and get back to your values.
Warning: Don’t choose values you think your consumers want to hear if you’re not committed to them – not unless you want to lose their trust and risk a damaged reputation.
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