Purpose stands to business as values stand to a person: it is the WHY of actions. And it gets complicated when we are asked to consider external values. Company, industry, employees, cultural… Partner, kids, family, friends…
Where is the starting point? Self-awareness.
How can we consider external values if we do not know ours? Are you aware of your three most important personal values?
From there we can move up and down: up to identity (WHO) and purpose, down to capabilities (HOW) and actions (WHAT).
That’s the essence of coaching: self-awareness leading to authenticity.
Self-awareness is even more important than alignment and makes it less relevant, so less reasons to force or look for alignment. Because being conscious gives us and anyone else around us the chance to consider when adapting. Your partner or your company, for example.
Self-awareness also stimulates empathy and resilience. As much as its presence triggers positive effects, its absence has many negative consequences, mainly because we have no direction and our actions have no guide nor sense. Random. We react instead of act.
Whilst we wait patiently for the educational system to change and start focusing on creating self-awareness, we would be better making a virtue of necessity. Wouldn’t we?
Ps. And if we know our most important values, are they driving our behaviors and decisions?
Here an interesting article “How Values Factor Into Leadership and Learning”