Leadership Thought #404 – What Do You Stand For?
What do you stand for? This is a question all leaders should be able to answer easily, and yet many struggle to answer. I have been in many organizations where, if you asked, “What does this business stand for?” you would get blank stares. Values are the building blocks of any organization. Without a shared set of beliefs and principles, a company is like a ship without a rudder, adrift in a sea of individual interpretation and situational experience. A ship without a rudder will drift anywhere.
John Mellencamp has a great line in a song: “You have to stand for something or you will fall for anything.” Business, like life in general, is full of temptation. Especially when faced with tough competition or mounting financial pressures, it’s easy to stray and choose what’s convenient. We have all heard the saying, “If you want to learn who someone truly is, give them money and power.” If you don’t know what you stand for, it is more challenging to make difficult decisions, especially under duress.
A leader’s primary job is to provide clear direction and foster an environment that leads to success. You are constantly on stage, and your people watch your every move. They look to you to decipher what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. To ensure everyone in the organization understands the boundaries within which they should operate, it is crucial to instill and codify core beliefs and principles. This mindset includes whom you promote, reward, and publicly acknowledge. Every organization needs a moral compass to stay on the right path. There are no good moral shortcuts to success.
Sadly, the level of private and public leadership we see these days disenchants many of us. Machiavellian tactics are alive and well. Every day, we witness instances where individual leaders prioritize their personal gain over the interests of the company, stakeholders, country, and global community. In this environment, it is easy to become cynical and tempted to succumb to similar behavior ourselves. But if you stand for something more important and live by those beliefs, it can help you avoid these bad habits.
Your principles and values make up the core of who you are. It is easy to lose sight of this fact and become distracted by opportunity. You cannot take back or make amends for certain things in life once they have happened. Regardless of the company’s size or the role’s scale, every leader makes daily choices that reflect their values and impact other people’s lives.
What they choose to say “no” to is much more than what they say “yes” to, especially defining leaders. If you fall into the “ends justify the means” trap, it will come back to haunt you. Actions always have consequences. This is why I often tell my clients that it is essential to know two things: what guides you and what grounds you.
Related articles
- What Do You Stand For – 3 Questions to Help You Find Your Purpose (medium.com)
- Remember who You Are and What You Stand For (forbes.com)
- Leadership, Values and Integrity (claudetoland.com)
- Three Leadership Traits that Never Go Out of Style – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
- The Every Day Leader: Who are YOU? (cathyberggren.com)
