VALUES EXERCISE
To spur your thinking, here is a list of values excerpted from Stewart Friedman’s Total Leadership: Be a better leader, have a richer life and from Robert Lee and Sara King’s Discovering the Leader in You. Of course, this list is limited (by cultural and other biases); you may also choose terms that don’t appear on this list.
Achievement: a sense of accomplishment or mastery
Advancement: growth, seniority, and promotion resulting from work well done
Adventure: new and challenging opportunities, excitement, risk
Aesthetics: appreciation of beauty in things, ideas, and surroundings
Affiliation: interaction with other people, recognition as a member of a group, belonging
Affluence: high income, financial success, prosperity
Authority: position and power to control events and other people’s activities
Autonomy: ability to act independently with few constraints, self-reliance
Challenge: continually facing complex and demanding tasks and problems
Change and variation: absence of routine, unpredictability
Collaboration: close, cooperative working relationships with groups
Community: serving and supporting a purpose that supersedes personal desires
Competency: demonstrating high proficiency and knowledge
Competition: rivalry with winning as the goal
Courage: willingness to stand up for beliefs
Creativity: discovering, developing, or designing new ideas or things; demonstrating imagination
Diverse perspectives: unusual ideas and opinions that may not seem right or be popular at first
Duty: respect for authority, rules, and regulations
Economic security: steady and secure employment, adequate reward, low risk
Enjoyment: fun, joy, and laughter
Family: spending time with partner, children, parents, extended family
Friendship: close personal relationships with others
Health: physical and mental well-being, vitality
Helping others: helping people attain their goals, providing care and support
Humor: the ability to laugh at myself and at life
Influence: having an impact on the attitudes or opinions of others
Inner harmony: happiness, contentment, being at peace with yourself
Justice: fairness, doing the right thing
Knowledge: the pursuit of understanding, skill, and expertise, continual learning
Location: choice of a place to live that is conducive to a desired lifestyle
Love: involvement in close, affectionate relationships; intimacy
Loyalty: faithfulness; dedication to individuals, traditions, or organizations
Order: stability, routine, predictability, clear lines of authority, standardization
Personal development: dedication to maximizing potential
Physical fitness: staying in shape through physical activity and healthy nutrition
Recognition: positive feedback and public credit for work well done; respect and admiration
Responsibility: dependability, accountability for results
Self-respect: pride, self-esteem, sense of knowing oneself
Spirituality: strong spiritual or religious beliefs, moral fulfillment
Status: being respected for a job or an association with a prestigious group or organization
Trustworthiness: being known as reliable and sincere
Wisdom: sound judgment based on knowledge, experience, and understanding