How to Identify and Define Values That Your Business Can Actually Live In
Something we’ve noticed is overlooked by many new or growing business owners is creating brand values. You may think since your business is small or because you may not have a team, that means they aren’t important at the moment, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. If you want to ensure you’re developing a clear and concise brand, creating consistent brand awareness, and attracting the right kinds of clients and audience to your business, then you need to identify and define your brand values.
Keep reading as we dive into how to do this, how to create definitions for your values, what it means to live in those values, and much more.
The Importance of Defining Values
Identifying values is a huge key component to creating consistency within your business and standards for how to work in your business. You want to make sure that when the time comes to hire team members (or you may already have them), that they’re also following your values and showing up in their work in those ways.
ESTABLISH THE TONE OF YOUR CLIENT EXPERIENCE
Values aren’t just about how you and your team work in your business. Crafting your values also allows you to also establish your client experience vision and set guidelines for how you want your brand to show up for your clients. This doesn’t mean that all of your values need to be client-facing or client-centric. For example, we have about 10 values that we practice, but only 2 of them are external. We’ll talk more about this next.
How to Identify Your Values
Doing the work and identifying how to show up for these values is the next step that most business owners miss. The first step is to brainstorm a list of qualities, standards, or beliefs that could become your value. Get them all out on paper to try a few on for size, before ultimately dwindling the list down to 4-6 values.
We suggest one of these values be external (meaning it also applies to your clients). You only need about 1-2 client-facing values to encompass how your business can live in the value for your clients. On Team Boss Project, our 2 external values are Life-First and Service-Minded. These really help shape the experience that we create for our clients but are also still applicable to how we work within the business.
LOOKING AT YOUR VALUES AS BEHAVIORS
We think it’s critical when thinking about your values that you look at it from the standpoint of behavior, not only for yourself but for your team members as well. How do you want someone to act or react in a situation versus how would you not want them to act or react? Your values are often things that will back up boundaries that you may have set for yourself (and if you haven’t set boundaries yet, we recommend listening to this podcast episode ASAP). This allows you to lean on your values as backup for how you do or don’t want to do a certain action in your business.
How to Define Your Values
Once you have your values identified, it’s time to define them. Yes, we mean literally creating definitions for each of your values. (Here’s a tip: Don’t use the name of the value in the definition.) You could ask 10 different people what a certain word or phrase means to them and you’d hear 10 different responses. This is where you get to share what this value means to you and why it’s important. Use this script if it’s helpful:
Here at team [BUSINESS NAME] we believe that [VALUE] means [EXPLAIN]. To us, [VALUE] really shows up for us when we think about [SOMETHING] and [ANOTHER THING]. Being about to live [VALUE] really helps us show up [HOW].
For some extra help, here’s our definition of our Life-First value:
On team Boss Project we take a life-first approach by creating balance between seasons of sprints and seasons of rest. We support our team showing up as their best self and encourage rest when signs of overwhelm or burnout begin to show themselves. We know that by honoring our needs for rest, family and personal development that we will be able to show up to work with clarity, motivation and intention. The Boss Project team knows that the only way for rest and productivity to happen is with direct, open and early communication.
Once you define the value it’s time to get super specific on how you, your team, and/or your clients can show up in this value.
How to Define Your Values
Once you have your values identified, it’s time to define them. Yes, we mean literally creating definitions for each of your values. (Here’s a tip: Don’t use the name of the value in the definition.) You could ask 10 different people what a certain word or phrase means to them and you’d hear 10 different responses. This is where you get to share what this value means to you and why it’s important. Use this script if it’s helpful:
Here at team [BUSINESS NAME] we believe that [VALUE] means [EXPLAIN]. To us, [VALUE] really shows up for us when we think about [SOMETHING] and [ANOTHER THING]. Being about to live [VALUE] really helps us show up [HOW].
For some extra help, here’s our definition of our Life-First value:
On team Boss Project we take a life-first approach by creating balance between seasons of sprints and seasons of rest. We support our team showing up as their best self and encourage rest when signs of overwhelm or burnout begin to show themselves. We know that by honoring our needs for rest, family and personal development that we will be able to show up to work with clarity, motivation and intention. The Boss Project team knows that the only way for rest and productivity to happen is with direct, open and early communication.
Once you define the value it’s time to get super specific on how you, your team, and/or your clients can show up in this value.
Living vs. Not Living Within That Value
We highly recommend writing clear examples of what it means to live within each value but also what it means to NOT live within each value. For our team, we have a team playbook that has loads of helpful information, part of it being a breakdown of our values. If there’s any confusion after reading the definition of what each value means, then we provide examples they can follow to really provide a clear understanding of what it means to practice those values.
When coming up with examples of how to live in the value, start each point with an action word. Remember values are focused on behaviors, so consider words like communicating, knowing, taking, being, respecting, protecting, etc. to help back that up.
When coming up with examples of how to not live in the value, you can use this mad-lib script. You should be able to read each bullet as if it’s a continuation of the header:
Those who do NOT show up [VALUE]:
[ACTION] someone could take that goes against value
[BEHAVIOR] someone could act in that goes against value
[MENTALITY] that someone could have that goes against value
[RULE/BOUNDARY] that someone could break that goes against value
Provide Reflective Questions for Each Value
Finally, the last step of this process is to come up with reflective questions that get you, your team or clients thinking about how they can live in this value more fully. It serves as a checks and balance system that makes it easy to bring up in team or client discussions when you’re needing to realign on the value.
You can think about what you would ask yourself if you found yourself not living in this value. What would you need to reflect on to get yourself back on track?
Need More Assistance with Brand Values?
Defining your brand values is just one piece of the puzzle. If you also want to learn how to create an ethical and safe company culture, guiding your team members on how to live in your values, showing up for your clients in those values and sticking to them, and so much more, then we encourage you to apply for the Incubator.
Our clients are working less but making more money, learning how to hire and become an amazing leader, setting healthy boundaries, and crafting a luxury client experience. There’s no commitment when you apply. Once you submit your application, just let us know in our DMs on Instagram so we can get the conversation started!
