Developing your Core Values: A Kind Leadership Guild Sneak Peek

So, you’re here because you want to build a better world without burning out! That’s a great goal! But as the person who made “Build a better world without burning out” the kind leadership guild’s tagline, I know it’s also a pretty mushy goal. For instance:

What do you mean by Better?

And Better for Whom?

And what part of the world are you trying to make better?

And that’s not even getting into defining burnout!

The good news is that your core values will give you some clues to those answers, and this month’s course in the kind leadership will teach you how to align your values with what the world needs from you.

Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, where I present short, actionable challenges that empower educational leaders like you to build a better world without burning out. I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to advise a growing community of educational leaders who are ready to transform their school or library’s doubt, dysfunction, and drama into confidence, clarity, and trust. Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but it’s rarely easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around to learn how to create a legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

Today I’ll be sharing the first lesson from this month’s Kind Leadership Guild course on developing your leadership core values. It’s my way of thanking you for being a frequent listener to the Kind Leadership Challenge Podcast, and to give you a free preview of the deeper dives that you can find in the Kind Leadership Guild. To gain access to this and all of my on-demand leadership development courses, you can join the kind leadership guild at kindleadershipguild.com. If you’re listening to this on or around this episode’s release date, Join the guild by the end of the day, January 11th 2024 to take part in our monthly live call where we dig deeper into this month’s course topic and work as a team to find answers to whatever other leadership challenges are causing doubt, dysfunction, and drama in your work. But for now, back to the course.   

Pretty much all leaders through history have set out to build what they considered to be a better world. Some have doane tremendous good. Some have done immeasurable harm. Most landed somewhere in that mushy middle, and maybe didn’t even accomplish much of anything.

In last month’s course on self care, we talked about how you can make sure you have the energy and emotional fortitude to do what you need to do. But what needs doing to build a better world? That is where you need to be tuned into your core values. Once you’ve processed your emotions and turned down the noise in your mind, your core values can tell you what your better world looks like. 

But before we get into the meat of this month’s course, pay attention to what I just said. Or rather what I didn’t say.

I didn’t say you need to create or determine or invent your core values.

You need to tune into your core values.

Because one of the things I’ve discovered about people’s core values, or organization’s core values for that matter is they aren’t something we write down or decide on or get ratified by our school or library’s oversight board. Our true core values, whether we like to admit it or not, are revealed every day in our lives and our choices.  

We all have values we like to display proudly on our walls and in our work journals, like "integrity" or "innovation". But we also have other values that we unthinkingly act on in the heat of a moment, like "I have to win this debate or I'm a bad leader" or "I'm suspicious of Bob because he interrupted me last week". Just because they're not "nice" values doesn't mean they're not our true values, at least in the moment we choose to act from them. It would be lovely if we all really lived totally from those nice lists that are framed on our walls. But we're leaders, not saints, and so we don't. You'll be better served as a leader by living the values that will actually get you and your team to your goals. And as we discussed in the last couse, you can do that by taking a breath, making a plan, and asking yourself--why am i *really* doing this?

Because if we kind leaders are all already living our core values, why haven’t we already built the better world we wish to see? Well, it’s the same reason that I made a resolution to lose weight every January for the batter part of 20 years before I actually DID lose those 90 pounds once and for all. During those 20 years, There were other values that were more important to me like being a good spouse, finishing a masters and a doctorate, building my career, and stress eating yummy bacon cheeseburgers more often than my metabolism to burn off. Once the weight loss thing burbled high enough in my priorities, I decided to make the necessary changes including diet, exercise, and bariatric surgery, and knocked out those 90 pounds in less than a year. I’ve kept the weight off for coming up on a year and a half.  

Which brings me to the truth we will be exploring in this course on clarifying your leadership values. We are always already living our core values, but by learning from the effects of the values we’re living, we can choose to change, revise, or reprioritize those values. In this course, We will explore how to identify and rank the values you are currently living, explore the pros and cons of your current core values, and use what you learn to identify what a better world means to you—and whether you truly value that better world enough to do what is required to make it a reality. To continue on that journey, continue to the next lesson, or if you haven’t already, join the Kind Leadership Guild at Kindleadershipguild.com.

Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge. if you want to get notified every time there’s a new episode, or have a colleague who might find these challenges useful, head over to kindleadershipchallenge.com to learn more. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.