We knew the government was going to lose the election, and we knew the opposition was crystal clear about its plans: everything was going to change. The programmes we had developed, refined and rolled out across the country for more than a decade were going to be scrapped overnight or changed beyond recognition. That’s government for you.
Leading a team through this was one of the best lessons in change management I ever had. Two things stand out in my memory: going back to our core values as an impartial civil service, and creating the space for people to navigate the emotional responses that accompany such a major change (I recommend the Kubler Ross Change Curve to help with that).
But even some time after the election, I was struck by the inner struggle that I witnessed in some colleagues as they came to terms with the direction of travel. I had taken up responsibility for one of the flagship reforms the new government was driving, and as I went about building my senior team some of the people I approached said they felt conflicted about the policy. At the time, I was bemused: how could they let their personal views get in the way of serving the government of the day? I suppose I was also questioning their certainty about right and wrong – with so many children still not well-served by the system, shouldn’t we be open to different ways of doing things?
These days I understand this better as I work with so many leaders who are facing these questions of values alignment, whether that’s in government or with their company ethos or leadership. I’ve certainly noticed a younger generation of leaders who are increasingly demanding on this front – they expect alignment on Purpose and feel it keenly when there’s a gap between stated and lived values in their organisations. The pandemic brought this into sharp relief, as the threat led many of us to question what our day-in-day-out activity was all about. And effective DEI efforts rightly challenge the notion that we should all just try to ‘fit in’ with a dominant culture. But I also notice that as we get older this search for meaning and alignment looms larger, perhaps because we start to wonder about our legacy, or because we realise that the title, status and reward we\’ve craved and pursued are not all they\’re cracked up to be once we finally have them.
So what are we to do when we feel that twinge of dissonance, that sense that our values are not being served by our actions? Here are a few suggestions:
✒️Name it. Explore, unearth and define what your values actually are. I don’t mean the glib words that appear in lights by the front desk. Or the nice-sounding words that your think other people would expect or want you to say. Really challenge yourself on this – consider working with someone else to do it. One way is to think about when you’re happiest and when you’re most frustrated and unpack what values are being honoured or suppressed in those moments.
⚖️Score it. Once you’ve refined this list, try scoring how well (or not) you are living those values now. When you’ve identified which values are not being served, try to define what a better score would look like and describe that to yourself in some detail to make it real. So, working remotely might mean the energy I get from my value of ‘Connection with Others’ is not being met, so I score it a 3/10. What could I do differently to get it to a 4 or a 5? What would a 9 look like?
🦄Try it. If you feel out of alignment in work it can be easy to dream of greener pastures. Big bold moves can be great, but they might not give you what you’re yearning for, or they might have downsides you weren’t expecting. Consider what you could do to investigate or explore alternatives. It might be a simple as just talking to people in another department or line of work that you’re curious about, shadowing someone or taking on some non-exec roles. The idea is to test your assumptions and try things on for size. Keep an open mind – you might go shopping for a suit and come home with a hat.
The thing that helped us most back then was having the space to talk about our values, so if you\’re a leader taking people through a big change don\’t forget to attend to this.
What else do you do when things feel out of kilter?
