712: Clarifying Values for a Workplace People Love, with Anne Chow

Summary

Podcast Summary: Coaching for Leaders
Episode 712: Clarifying Values for a Workplace People Love, with Anne Chow
Release Date: December 9, 2024

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Introduction

In Episode 712 of Coaching for Leaders, host Dave Stachowiak delves into the critical topic of clarifying workplace values with guest Anne Chow. Anne Chow, the former CEO of AT&T Business and the first woman of color to hold that position in AT&T's 140-year history, brings her extensive leadership experience to the conversation. With a background that includes leading a $35 billion global operating unit and serving on several prestigious boards, Anne offers invaluable insights into establishing and aligning organizational values to foster a thriving workplace culture.

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The Importance of Values in Leadership

Dave Stachowiak opens the discussion by emphasizing the centrality of values in leadership. He notes, "Values are central to how we show up, how we interact, how we behave in the workplace, the culture of our teams" (00:00). However, he acknowledges the challenge leaders face in defining and implementing these values effectively.

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Anne Chow’s Personal Experience with Values

Anne Chow shares a poignant story from her tenure at AT&T Business that underscores the importance of upholding values, even in difficult situations.

Anne Chow recounts, "One of our fundamental values that we had established as a team was respect... Nothing in my mind would warrant this kind of language in a professional setting" (02:24). She describes an intense interaction with a disgruntled Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a key client account. Despite the client's aggressive and unprofessional behavior, Anne chose to uphold the organization's value of respect, requesting a more professional dialogue. This decision, although it led to the loss of a million-dollar account, reinforced trust and respect within her team. She reflects, "I earned an immense amount of trust and respect from my team because they knew that I had their back" (07:12).

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Distinguishing Values from Ideology

A critical distinction Anne makes is between values and ideology.

Anne Chow explains, "Values are the guiding principles of your life... Your ideology represents your beliefs" (09:52). While values are universal principles that guide behavior and decision-making within an organization, ideology encompasses personal beliefs shaped by various factors like upbringing, religion, and politics. Anne warns against conflating the two, emphasizing that diverse ideologies within a team can foster innovation and prevent echo chambers. She states, "Common ideology is not what you're going for as a leader. You're actually going for common values" (12:30).

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Indicators of Overemphasis on Ideology

When leaders prioritize common ideology over shared values, it can lead to homogeneity and stifle diverse perspectives. Anne Chow suggests using human resources as a strategic partner to ensure team diversity and mitigate unconscious biases (14:06). She recommends visual assessments of team composition and actively seeking diverse backgrounds and experiences to enrich the team's collective expertise.

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Process for Clarifying Organizational Values

Anne outlines a structured, multi-step process for clarifying and implementing values within an organization:

1. Individual Brainstorming:

   • Anne Chow advises starting with individual brainstorming to avoid groupthink and ensure diverse input. She emphasizes, "This dynamic of group think and group dynamics can overshadow valuable perspectives" (17:26).

2. Consolidation and Multivoting:

   • After collecting individual inputs, the next step is to consolidate ideas and identify common themes through multivoting. Anne describes using sticky notes for participants to vote on their top three values, highlighting themes like trust, integrity, ethics, and character (21:49).

3. Prioritizing Core and Aspirational Values:

   • Anne underscores the importance of distinguishing between core values (currently embodied principles) and aspirational values (desired future principles). She notes, "Core values guide your actions today... Aspirational values are what you aspire to have, but you don't yet have" (24:43).

4. Measurement and Behavioral Alignment:

   • Implementing metrics to measure behaviors against defined values ensures accountability and continuous improvement. Anne highlights an example of a company rebuilding trust with its union workforce through regular trust surveys and action planning (26:44).

5. Regular Review and Updating:

   • Values should be revisited and refreshed regularly as part of the strategic planning process to ensure they remain aligned with the organization's evolving goals. Anne emphasizes, "Your culture is an integral part of your strategy" (29:43).

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Measuring Behaviors Against Values

Anne insists on the necessity of measuring behaviors to uphold values. She states, "You can only monitor, manage and improve what you can measure" (26:31). By implementing regular surveys and performance metrics, organizations can track adherence to values like trust and integrity. For instance, measuring the speed of collective bargaining agreements can indicate the level of trust between management and union employees.

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Continuous Review and Cultural Alignment

Anne advocates for integrating values into the strategic planning cycle, ensuring that cultural alignment is maintained alongside financial and operational objectives. She advises leaders to assess whether their current values support their strategic goals and to make adjustments as necessary. "If the values do not serve us well to enable success against that financial, operational, that strategic plan, then you just course correct and adjust" (30:24).

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Evolving Perspectives on Generational Diversity

Towards the end of the episode, Anne shares her evolving thoughts on generational diversity in the workplace. Initially, she acknowledged common stereotypes about younger generations but has since recognized the importance of understanding individual values over generational labels. "Gen Z grew up in a very, very different time... they still want to work on meaningful work. It just shows up in a different way" (32:38).

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Conclusion and Additional Resources

Dave wraps up the conversation by recommending related podcast episodes that delve deeper into creating team guidelines, discovering others' values, and preventing teams from repeating mistakes. He encourages listeners to explore these resources to further enhance their leadership and organizational culture. Additionally, Dave promotes the Coaching for Leaders membership for access to a comprehensive library of episodes and exclusive content.

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Notable Quotes

• Dave Stachowiak: "Values are central to how we show up, how we interact, how we behave in the workplace, the culture of our teams" (00:00).

• Anne Chow: "Nothing in my mind would warrant this kind of language in a professional setting" (07:12).

• Anne Chow: "Common ideology is not what you're going for as a leader. You're actually going for common values" (12:30).

• Anne Chow: "You can only monitor, manage and improve what you can measure" (26:31).

• Anne Chow: "Gen Z grew up in a very, very different time... they still want to work on meaningful work. It just shows up in a different way" (32:38).

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Related Episodes

1. Episode 192: How to Create Team Guidelines with Susan Gerke

   • Discusses step-by-step processes for establishing team values and guidelines.

2. Episode 616: How to Discover What Others Value with Joe Hart

   • Explores effective methods for uncovering colleagues' values through active listening and thoughtful questioning.

3. Episode 660: How to Prevent a Team from Repeating Mistakes with Robert Cujo Teschner

   • Covers the importance of debriefing and learning from past experiences to enhance future team performance.

For more insights and to access these episodes, visit CoachingforLeaders.com.

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Final Thoughts

Episode 712 of Coaching for Leaders offers a comprehensive exploration of the role of values in building a workplace culture that people love. Anne Chow's real-world experiences and strategic approaches provide actionable guidance for leaders aiming to clarify, implement, and sustain their organizational values. By distinguishing between values and ideology, measuring behavioral alignment, and fostering continuous cultural alignment, leaders can cultivate environments that not only achieve strategic objectives but also resonate deeply with their teams.

Transcript

[Dave Stahoviak]

We all know the importance of values, but it's often hard to know where to begin when clarifying them with a team. In this episode, how to align on values that support a great culture and move towards a vision. This is Coaching for leaders episode 712 produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I'm your host, Dave Stahoviak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. Think A word that so many leaders think about, have heard, know the importance of is the word values. It is central to how we show up, how we interact, how we behave in the workplace, the culture of our teams. And yet it is one of those words that's so hard for us to wrap our heads around and to have a good starting point for how do we establish and benefit from the values that are so important to our teams. Today I'm so pleased to be able to welcome such an experienced leader who will help us to paint the picture a bit of where do we begin with values and how do we help values to work for us? I'm so pleased to welcome Ann Jonathan Chow. She was the CEO of AT&T business and the first woman of color CEO in AT&T's 140 year plus history. Responsible for leading a $35 billion global operating unit of over 35,000 people. She was named to Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business twice and today serves on a number of boards including Franklin Covey, 3M and CSX. She is the author of Lead Bigger the Transformative Power of Inclusion. Ann, what a pleasure to have you on.

[Ann Chow]

Thank you so much Dave. It is my pleasure to be here with all of you.

[Dave Stahoviak]

There's so many really beautiful stories you share in the book. It's one of the things I loved reading through it and one story grabbed my attention in particular that you start at the beginning of the chapter about values of dealing with a situation where you were trying to retain the business of a disgruntled client. And I was wondering if you could share that story with us.

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks Dave. This is one of, I think one of the deepest memories of my, of my 30 plus year career. You know, I've spent a huge portion of my career working with clients in client facing roles, whether that was in sales or in service. And in this particular story I was leading a sales organization, you know, and we've all heard the adage, no matter what business we're in or know how big our business is. The customer is always right. And many of us actually pride ourselves on leading organizations and creating cultures that are customer centric. In this case, my team was working with a client, and we had not done a good job with them in the past. In fact, we had made several errors in terms of how we serviced them, how we supported them. So much so that we had actually gone and changed out the entire account team. My team was having trouble with a key executive decision maker. He was the Chief Information Officer cio. And they asked me to come in as the executive on the relationship to see if I could help them make progress with him because their book of business was up for renewal and it wasn't a huge client, but it wasn't a small one. Other, they did over a million dollars a year in business with us. I'll never forget that first meeting. We got together in a session, myself, this executive, the cio, both of our teams, we went through our opening in terms of our apologies, our commitment to do better in our renewal proposal, talked about the support we would provide. And this client proceeded to unleash a set of profanities in a high level of aggression. In fact, I still have goosebumps when I think about it in language that I have quite frankly never heard in a professional setting. I was quite taken aback. It was clear that this was kind of how he had spoken with my team because he was very, very comfortable doing it. And I chucked this session up to, well, maybe he had to grandson, maybe he had to in front of me. The executive on our end put us in our place. So I tried a different strategy. I set up a one on one meeting with him thereafter. And you went through a similar calibration. And he proceeded to be even more aggressive in this one on one conversation, this one on one meeting, using language like you slipped me a mickey, which was an implication that. And I didn't even know what that meant at the time, Dave, truth be told. But it was an implication that we were deceiving him all along. And I let him rant for a little bit. And it was very clear to me in this one on one discussion that he. This was his style. This was his approach now preceding all of this. I will tell you, Dave, that as the leader of this organization, of this sales organization, one of our fundamental values that we had established as a team was respect. Respect for our client, respect for our partners, respect for each other, and respect for ourselves. Respect also happens to be a personal value of mine. Too. And in this discussion with this client where I was being berated and barraged, some of it, by the way, at the substance of it, we had failed him in our execution, in our relationship, but nothing in my mind would warrant this kind of language in a professional setting. So at the end of his rant, I proceeded to request of him that we elevate our conversation, that we handle each other in a more professional manner, and that if we were to move forward as partners, which we were certainly committed to doing, that I would ask that he apply respect to how he talked to me, but importantly how he talked to our collective team members. He was sort of reconciled at the end of that call. We ended the call. What proceeded to happen, he clearly didn't like what I said. But what happened was we actually lost that business over time, which hurt, right? It hurt us as a sales team. It made it all the more difficult to make our numbers that year. But it was a demonstration of at the time. And I look at it back, look back at that experience clinically. It was all about me upholding our professional values as an organization and as a team, but also staying true to my personal values, which also included respect. I didn't realize what that action, in my case, as a leader of the team, would do, but I earned an immense amount of trust and respect from my team because they knew that I had their back, that there was nothing more important than the respect for ourselves and the respect for each other. And that there was, in fact, a line in the sand to be drawn, even with a customer, right? Even with an existing customer, that I was willing as their leader to stand on our principles and the importance of respect as a core value. And what was really, really interesting about it was that a couple of months later, six months later, that customer, that client, was actually fired from his company. I can only imagine it was behavioral related and we had an opportunity to come back into the customer relationship. I look back on that though, Dave, and this is a story about an experience about personal and professional values. When I think about values, it's often abstract, as you pointed out. We talk about it, but we don't really talk about it in the business environment. And I think it's actually often easier to start with an understanding of your personal values, because especially today, day post pandemic, I think we as individuals would all say that we would prefer to work in an environment where the professional values of an organization better align with our personal values. And this was a case where it was very, very clear to me what the right thing to do was because it was both personally appropriate and also professionally appropriate as it relates to living the values that we stated.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Thank you for sharing the story. And as I think about it, I think, like, how many of us wish and desire to be the kind of leader that you were in that moment and that you are of, like, being able to, in the midst of a very difficult situation, to stand for what was right, the long term and the values. And I also, like, think back to situations I've been in and heard from clients over the years of, like when you're in that moment when there's dollars on the line, when there's numbers that aren't going to be hit because you make a decision like that, it is so hard, the temptation is so strong to just say, well, maybe in this situation, like, we can, we can navigate around it. And I think you said something there that was really key to. I suspect what helped make this work in that situation for you is that you had already decided with the team of, like, one of the key values of, of helping people be safe and respect in the organization. And I suspect that because you define that in advance, it made it a bit easier to make that call when you needed to.

[Ann Chow]

Yes, very much so. You know, I've always said that one of the key roles of a leader, right. If you choose to be a leader, your job is to ensure one of the key aspects of your role is to ensure that your values, the professional values of your team, of your organization, of your company are stated, understood and lived. Right. It's not just enough to have some nice mantra or hangings on the wall. You have to make sure that the behaviors are actually lived not only by yourself, but all of those around you. Which means you have to hold yourself and others accountable for embodying those values.

[Dave Stahoviak]

There are a couple of key distinctions that you highlight in the book that I just think are so critical for this. And one, one of the distinctions is values versus ideology. And I think oftentimes we confuse these. Tell me about that distinction.

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, absolutely. So think of values as the guiding principles of your life. First of all, I mentioned a moment ago that sometimes it's easier to start the discussion around values personally because we all have a set of personal values that guide our actions and our decisions and even our words. Right. At times, those values might be if we think about them personally. Right. If I ask you to name your five, you know, five of your personal values, I suspect that one would be family, one would be integrity or trust. One might be community for some it's faith, right? And so, you know, so for some it's service. So we, we all have personal values. Now what professional values are, are the pillars of the culture of your organization and team as a leader. So these are the guiding principles in the context of work that guide again your decisions, your actions and your behaviors. That's what your values are. They form your culture. So we as leaders, as people on teams, we want to work in an environment where the alignment of values aligns with ours, right? Who wants to work in an organization if a key value is integrity, where ethics are not upheld to the highest level? Now here's the difference between values and ideology, Dave, and I'm so glad you brought this up because this to me is one of the key points that is a nuance that is so critical, but is in some ways being confused, I think in facets of our society and world today and also in business, which is your ideology is different than your values. It represents your beliefs. Now, there are no two people in this entire world who are exactly the same. Even identical twins, while they may be the same on a DNA level, they have not had the same experiences and skills development. And so they do not share the same heart or the same mind, right? And so no two people's beliefs are exactly the same. Our beliefs are shaped by so many things. How we were raised, where we were raised, the media that we watch or listen to, the friends we have. Sometimes ideology is shaped by our religion, by our politics. It may be shaped by our workplace, right? And our ideology represent our beliefs. It would be impossible to build a team, nor is it desirable, by the way, to build a team that has the exact same ideology. Why is that? Because the definition of leading bigger, the definition of true inclusive leadership is about widening your perspective to have greater performance and impact. Every great leader knows that you want to surround yourself with a diversity of thought, a diversity of perspective, that you want to complement your weaknesses with others strengths. And so seeking common and striving for common values is different than seeking and striving for a common, common ideology. If you are seeking common ideology, if you can envision this, you would be creating an echo chamber that was so large that you would not hear and see what is happening in the marketplace in terms of trends, what might be happening in terms of innovation, technological changes, societal changes. And so common ideology is not what you're going for as a leader. You're actually going for common values. So that is why it is so important, Dave, to understand the difference between values and ideology. And how you embrace them as a bigger leader.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Thinking about the person who may not have always may not have thought much about that distinction, which I think is probably a lot of us actually in practice. What would be an indicator if I'm leading a team that maybe I'm over indexing a bit on common ideology versus thinking about really from a value standpoint?

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This is where I have always, as a leader, used my human resources team as a key partner. Right. I think it's really, really important to constantly assess the slate of people who work for you and with you. Right. You know, whenever I would be going out to staff a new role on my team, I would do immense amount of due diligence with HR at my side on. Okay, what are the backgrounds of the people that I've got? What are they demographically, generationally, tenure wise? What kind of experience do they bring to the table? What kind of functional expertise do they have? And what is it that I am looking for to add diversification, add vitality into my team with a new hire? Right. So it is all of the above, Dave. You know, one of the. One of the most simple things to do is, you know, is even a visual check. Right. I'm a huge fan of this. Right. After all, we are all people, right? Have you. Have you kind of pulled together a visual of your entire executive team, your entire team? You know, do you tend to have people who are. Have gone to the same kinds of school, the same kinds of degrees? You know, have you looked at your board in a way, critically speaking, as it relates to various different demographics, tenure, experience set. Right. You know, what kinds of experiences are you looking for to bring in a different point of view? Right. And what practical experiences do others have? So it is about checking yourself over and over again, but also having an external party. And I always use human resources as a key partner of mine because oftentimes we are blinded by our unconscious bias. Right. We each of us as humans, we have this desire to be comfortable and lean towards what is more common to us. We like to find common ground, which is a natural human instinct. But sometimes that innate desire leads to inadvertent bias, whether it's confirmation bias or affinity bias, where we tend to like people who are like us, whether it's personality style or otherwise. So those are just some of the tips that I would say that you should apply to yourself and the teams that you lead and the teams that you are looking to create and develop to ensure that they are the most, I would say, strategic and Diverse in the biggest kind of way to help you achieve your, your objectives.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Indeed. Yeah. One of the things that I found so useful in thinking about your writing on values is just some of the how to do it. Because I think, like, when we think about a word like values, it's, it's one of those things, like we all really understand the importance of. I think we appreciate that that's really critical and yet we don't really know where to start. Like, how do we actually begin that. And I love some of the invitations you make on just a bit of a process for doing this. And there's a few steps you outline. And one of the starting points is asking stakeholders to do some brainstorming individually. And one of the points you make at the starting point is that you want to get a diverse group of people together to do this. And not necessarily, you don't necessarily want to ask for volunteers either, do you?

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, no, Right, right, right. And Dave, the reason for that is you will naturally get the extroverts, right? You will naturally get the people who volunteer for everything, who like to use their voice, who like to use their influence, and you will not necessarily get a, I would say a balanced mixture of perspectives. Right. And again, remember my, my anchor on leading bigger, my anchor on inclusive leadership is all about widening your perspective, widening your perspective by surrounding yourself with different people, different information sources, different data sources than you would normally seek. Right? So, yes, that first step of asking stakeholders to brainstorm individually requires that you be thoughtful about the selection that it is truly reflective of your priority set of stakeholders. So of course it's going to be members from your workforce, right? I mean, the members of your workforce, whether they're employees or contractors or gig workers or key partners or key distributors, that workforce has to be the primary group where your values are stated, understood and lived. Right? Because they are your business. Right? They, your people are your business. Every business is a people business. The reason why I say this first step you want to do individually is just the dynamic of group think and group dynamics. Even if you've done a great job at selecting, let's say, 10 people who are a excellent cross section of your stakeholders, there will be dominant personalities in a meeting dynamic. So really, in order to get the best, most thoughtful commentary from people, as a starting point, you want to do that individually. And so that's why I say you don't want to start out in a group conversation. I think this is actually a mistake that a lot of people make. And then, and then again, the dominant Personalities, the dominant roles. Right. Let's say you have a customer in that group, you know it's going to be inherent in your workforce's behavior to defer to that customer and have that customer's voice be the most dominant voice. If you were to start in a group.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah, indeed. And I'm curious what you invite people to do individually because this is like, again, one of those things, like values. Like, okay, where do I start with this? Like thinking about this as a, as a. From myself first. When you're making that invitation for people to brainstorm individually, what are you inviting them to do?

[Ann Chow]

Yeah. So first of all, when I do this, I start with the purpose and strategy of the business, right? So what's the purpose? Why do we exist and getting people grounded on that? Because if everybody understands and is aligned with that purpose, then the question around values that you ask them is what kind of foundation of a culture do you want to have? What are the key attributes of how we work together that will enable our success the most? What are the things about how we work together and what's the compass for our behavior? What's the compass for how we interact with each other? What's the compass with how we interact internally and externally? What are the characteristics that we feel are so important for every single member of our team to embody and to live on a day to day basis in order for us to be most successful. Right. In order for us to meet our goals, in order for us to deliver upon that purpose. Right. And I'll give them examples. Right. When this seems abstract to people, I always bring them back to think about your personal values. Right. It's very, it's very easy for each of us to think in our heads about what are our personal values. Right. It's who we are. They represent who we are, they guide our actions. They make us us. So then I just take people to. So all I'm asking are then what are the professional values that you want that you would be proud to embrace? Right. That make us us as a team, that make us us as an organization, that make us us as a company. Right? That's where you start. And when you articulate it that way, we all have personal values. So start there and then expand that to your desired professional values in being part of this team.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah. What a nice place to start. Because like you said, we all know that. So if you use that as a starting point, that then starts to cascade to, okay, how do I want that to show up in the workplace? And then when you do bring people together for the group discussion. What does that look like?

[Ann Chow]

Yeah. So I, this is going to show the fact that I am a proud Gen Xer Dave. So when I bring them together, this is sort of back in the day, if I could be so bold to say, you know, I'm a big fan of the, you know, of the post it, the sticky note. But I'm a big, I'm a big fan of multivoting, right? So when you bring them together, which is that second step, you kind of consolidate, you kind of consolidate everybody's input and you'll see some themes, right? One common theme that I've seen when I've done this exercise, follow this process, is some form of trust, integrity, ethics, character will come through. In fact, almost every single time I've done this with a team of mine, those four words show up. They are all around a similar theme, which is about integrity or it is about respect, it is about ethics, it is about character, right? The character of us as individuals, but the character of us as an organization and as a team. So you'll see when you do this, you'll see ways that will naturally consolidate some of these into certain categories, right? Teamwork and collaboration are another one, right. That, that are similar in nature. And then I use those sticky notes with everybody to multivote. The process that I've used, which is I think is maybe old school now is, you know, everybody gets three post its and you vote on your top three, right? And then you start seeing trends that come out of which ones are the most popular ones. Namely, where are people already aligned versus where they're not. Now some folks may stop the multi voting there, but what I like to do is also take the tail, right? Which is those value categories that didn't receive a lot of votes and I asked the handful of people who, who voted on those to talk about them and to talk about why those were particularly important in their exercise. To make sure that I'm giving voice to not only the ones that are clearly the most popular, the most aligned, but also to make sure that we're not missing something, right? Because there are always words behind the words, there's always something more behind it. And you want to give people voice to make sure that they have articulated why this was so important. And in fact on a scale basis, it's not that as an example that let's say inclusion isn't a core value, but maybe it doesn't rise up to the top five that you want to codify, right? Maybe you know, Maybe, maybe sustainability is not actually a core value. It's an aspirational one because we're not actually quite there yet. And so you may want to reframe it differently when you're boiling this down, you know, for ultimately what you want to project and embody across the organization. So this is where leadership discretion and leadership qualification comes in, is in that step of synthesizing the results and helping do some prioritization and categorization against your core values versus your aspirational ones.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah, indeed. And I think that leads right into the next step, which is gut checking your decision against reality. Right. And you write, there's a difference between aspirational values and values you simply aren't living up to, which is a sign of small leadership, which usually shows up in data and performance over time. You've made that distinction between core and aspirational values. And there is a gut check that needs to happen here of, like, what are truly things that are aspirational values versus what are things that we're just not doing? Right.

[Ann Chow]

Yes, absolutely. In fact, I'm working with a client right now who is very, very clear about their core values and aspirational values. They know that their core values, our safety, our inclusion, our ethics, but they also know. Right. And they are weighing these values all equally. Right. So these are the values of the company. They know their aspirational values are innovation and service because they know they have to elevate the level of service they're providing out there in the marketplace. Right. I think that's really quite enlightened, if you will. Right. So, and so that's kind of the call that you've got to make. And again, to reinforce what are your core values? The core values are the ones that you embody today. They guide your actions today. They make your organization your organization. They define, they serve as the pillars of your culture today. Your aspirational values are exactly that, what you aspire to have, but you don't yet have common ones that tend to be in this aspirational category are innovation. Right. Maybe operational excellence, if your performance is not where it's intended to be, maybe customer excellence if you've typically been in an inwardly focused organization and you have to do better as it relates to the marketplace. Right. So those are just some sort of helpful definitions and grounding on the difference between core and aspirational values for those listening here.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah. And then as you move into them, it's measuring behaviors against the values. What's an example of something you've seen where Someone has done that well or an organization has done that well.

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so first of all, the whole idea of measurement and measuring your behaviors against your values is paramount, right. Coming from an engineering background, I have this belief that it is always a combination of science and serendipity, whether it's your career, whether it's where you at personally, professionally. But I also have this belief fundamentally that you can only manage and monitor and importantly improve what you can measure. Right. When you think about it, right. So it's a pretty strong statement on my part. Right. You can only monitor, manage and improve what you can measure. Right. So you must be able to measure your behaviors against values. An example of a company that's, that's, that's doing this very well as it relates to making sure that they measure a value is around trust, right? This is a company that is largely comprised of union workforce, right? Your frontline workforce. And there has historically been a chasm of trust between management and union craft employees. So the leadership, the senior, most leadership in this, in this company, including the board, is highly committed to bringing those relationships together, to rebuilding trust in a very profound and measured way, to the point of measurements. The measurements include actual trust surveys that go out to all employees on a regular basis, action planning on addressing those areas of trust, whether it's more training and development, more active communication to elevate the level of trust between union and management employees. Other key measurements around how is this working is the speed at which, you know, you, you come up with agreements around collective bargaining, right? Does your union go on strike? Do they work without a contract, or are you able to up with contracts that are win win, right? To show your commitment to each other because you know how important each other are to moving the business forward, right? So that is an example of doing it well, not just saying that trust is a foundational value, a core value, but measuring trust in many ways, right? And that's drilled down not just at a corporate level, but by geography, by job title, by management functional hierarchy, so that the management team is actually monitoring, managing and focusing on improving trust in all facets of their relationships with their people.

[Dave Stahoviak]

So often we go through a process like this. We do a good or at least a decent job of identifying what's important and outlining them and even starting to measure. And we don't ever come back and do a review. And one of the key things you invite us to do is to review and update your values and metrics and to do that on some regular basis. What, what's One way that looks that makes that be valuable for an organization.

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, absolutely. Now, now, now, David, this is the last step. If you envision in this virtuous cycle of reinforcing, calibrating, refreshing your values right, on a regular basis, my belief as to why this last step, which is the circular step, which brings you back to step one again is important is this, remember what I said before, which is your values are the foundational pillars of your culture and your culture is an integral part of your strategy. It's not different than your strategy. If you're not thinking of your culture as part of your strategy, you're making a mistake. We all heard that adage, culture eats strategy for breakfast, right?

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah.

[Ann Chow]

We also all have no doubt heard the stat and the facts around the biggest failure of M and A are culture related. Whether they're people related, leadership related or otherwise, or goals misalignment, that's all in your culture. So this is why you must revisit and review your values on a regular basis and your performance against the metrics. It's because no meter would think, hey, you know what? I get to set a strategy today and I don't have to think about that strategy ever again, right? That's almost like that's, that's an idiotic statement, right, that I'm making. I set my strategy once, right? And every business that I know that I've been part of re looks at their strategy at least once a year, right? And that strategy may be a three year strategy, a five year strategy, a ten year strategy, right? But there's a constant calibration against your strategy. So that's how I would simply think about it, right? Integral to your strategy are your financial plans, your operational plans. It should also include your cultural plan, which then ties back to your values which underpin that culture. And what that looks like is simply it's done as part of the strategic planning process. You may go through that strategic planning process, get clear on your financial objectives, short and long term. Get clear, clear on your financial, your operational objectives and metrics, both short and long term. That third and last key piece is that cultural. The cultural plan, right? Which gets to your values. Do the values that I, that I have today, do they serve us well? Are they sufficient to enable success against that financial, operational, that strategic plan? If yes, both at the core and aspirational level, then you can keep your values the same and just think about how to refresh them in the context of your updated strategy. If no, then you just course correct and adjust.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Yeah. Indeed, I am curious as you have put together just such a helpful framework of thinking about this from a leadership lens and you've shared this book with so many now and been speaking and consulting to organizations. I'm curious what, if anything, in doing this last couple years have you changed your mind on?

[Ann Chow]

Yeah, yeah, Dave, I think one of the areas that I have definitely changed my mind on or and you know, I would say evolve my thinking on, is this notion of generational diversity. Right. I even popped up a reference to a study that I read about the millennial and Gen Z workforce, right. In terms of their alignment with purpose and their alignment with values. I probably fell into the trap when I first embarked on writing this book. I fell into the camp of more generalized. Right. I had generational beliefs and I am the proud mom of two Gen Z daughters. So as a Gen Xer, right? I mean, I have lived as a parent sort of overseeing and supporting the lives of my two Gen Z daughters. One of who is in the workplace, hopefully one. One of who will be of whom will be entering at some point next year after she graduates. So how I've evolved my point of view around this is I actually think that there's a lazy behavior of leaders and I was being lazy on this. That puts generation like that looks at the workforce generationally into buckets, right? Oh, well. And this is actually an exercise I do with some of my students that I've done in some keynotes here. What's the one word that pops into your head when you think of Gen Z? Inevitably, words like lazy, entitled, not committed, right? Don't like to come into the office, come up. And as I've become more evolved, spoken to more people, learned more about people, sometimes I think that we overgeneralize that generation is the reason for an attribute as opposed to realizing, you know what, Gen Z grew up in a very, very different time. The tools in which they had, how they think about work is fundamentally different. But at the core of it, they still want to work on meaningful work. It just shows up in a different way way. And we as leaders should not take the lazy route of classifying people because of generation. So that's what I've learned.

[Dave Stahoviak]

Anne Chow is the author of Lead the Transformative Power of Inclusion. Ann, thank you so much for this work. I so appreciate it.

[Ann Chow]

Thanks Dave. It was wonderful speaking with you.

[Dave Stahoviak]

If this conversation was helpful to you, three related episodes, I'd recommend one of them is episode 192, how to create Team Guidelines. Susan Gerke was my guest on that episode. And we talked through the how to that Ann and I discussed a bit in this conversation. When you get that group together and have that conversation, how do you actually do that step by step? We talked about the big picture in this conversation. But in episode 192, Susan and I walk through the details, whether it's values, whether it's creating team guidelines or expectations, how to actually do that step by step. Episode 192, for more on that, also recommended episode 616, how to discover what others value. Joe Hart was my guest on that episode. CEO of Dale Carnegie. We talked about when you're in the situation where maybe you're getting to know a new team member or a colleague or a peer, or it's someone that maybe you've known for a while, but you don't really know that much about them and what they value, how do you actually go about that? Well, it's not just walking up to them and saying, what are your values? That'd be a little awkward, right? And most people, even if they answer that question, genuinely have a hard time answering that question. Joe and I actually talk through what are the kinds of ways you can find out what others value? By following the process, by listening well and by asking the right questions. Episode 616, exactly how to do that step by step. And then finally, I'd recommend episode 660, how to Prevent a team from repeating mistakes. Robert Cujo Teschner was my guest on that episode. Former head of debriefing for the U.S. air Force. We talked about the process of the debrief and how important it is for teams in almost every organization to do better. Some many of us do not ever do that. We set up a project, we execute on it, we look at the results, and then we move on to the next thing. But we don't think about what we need to do to revisit. So we learn the mistakes to not repeat them in the future. So important for values, but critical for almost every aspect of organizational life. We Talk in episode 660 exactly where to begin. On beginning to do a bit of a debrief. I've been doing that in our business over the last year and it's made a big difference. On starting to debrief things inspired by Cujo's message last year. Again, that's episode 660. All of those episodes you can find on the coaching4leaders.com website. And if you have not done so before, I'd invite you today to set up your free [e-mail] the reason you'd like to do that is because it's going to give you access to the entire library of episodes that I've aired since 2011, searchable by topic. Now, all of those episodes are freely available on all the podcast apps anywhere and you can easily track them down, but you can't always find the topic you're looking for on the podcast apps. That's why we have created the free membership. One of many reasons. So you can easily access what's relevant to you right now. And one of the topic areas inside the episode library is values you can find in addition to the episodes I just mentioned many other episodes that relate to our conversation today. It is one of the key benefits inside of your free membership. So if you don't have it set up already, just go over to coaching4leaders.com and you can set that up. One of the questions that I've been getting a lot in the last six months or so is, well, you've talked a bit about AI on the show. How are you using AI? Well, just in the last week I actually sat down and wrote out a journal entry a day detailed overview of the four key ways that I'm using AI in my own work right now. It was the topic of one of my recent journal entries and it got sent out to all of our Coaching for Leaders plus members. If you'd like to get not only that, but also each journal entry that I'm writing every single week delivered to your inbox, just go over to Coaching for Leaders plus to find out more on my weekly entries directly from me on something from a recent episode or something from my work or something that I think is going to be helpful to you right now to move you forward in your leadership. All of that is part of one of the benefits Inside Coaching for Leaders Plus. To go over and find out about Coaching for Leaders plus, you can simply go to Coaching 4 Leaders Plus. That will take you right there for more information and benefits about everything inside the membership. And thank you for all of you who are members of Coaching for Leaders. Boss Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. I'll look forward to having you back this next coming Monday for our next conversation. Have a great week and see you back Monday.