Honoring the Values in Our Best Selves
We’ve all seen them—values posted in the lobby, printed in annual reports, or displayed on the company website, with words like Integrity, Innovation, Teamwork, Respect.
BUT—Do we feel them in action?
Guiding Principles, or Values, are only powerful when they move beyond aspiration and become how we work together, when they live in the everyday actions, decisions, and relationships of a team.
That transformation—from words to wisdom—is leadership’s greatest cultural opportunity.
What Guiding Principles Do
When truly lived, Guiding Principles serve as more than inspirational ideas. They become the operating system for how work gets done and how people treat one another. They:
- Guide decision-making on both personal and organizational levels
- Clarify the boundaries of healthy relationships
- Offer a shared language for addressing interpersonal or systemic conflict
- Support learning, teaching, and accountability
- Identify behaviors that leadership will affirm or address
- Reflect intrinsic feelings—what feels right even under stress
- Permit team members to help course-correct the organization when it is losing its way
These are identity standards, not policies or strategies. They don’t flex with the market. They don’t change based on the audience. And they don’t need justification. They are who we are at our best—together.
Finding the Right Principles for Your Team
Many organizations mistake generic values for Guiding Principles. But true principles are already present—in the stories of your team’s proudest moments, greatest breakthroughs, and strongest collaborations.
We find that storytelling and facilitated reflection help teams surface the four or five core principles that consistently show up when they are achieving Peak Performance. Not buzzwords. Not boardroom lingo. Real behaviors that people recognize and respect. And once they’re identified, they become the foundation for:
- hiring and onboarding
- recognition and feedback
- conflict resolution
- leadership development
- cultural renewal
They don’t just sit on a wall—they shape our identity, culture, and brand.
Principles Require Reinforcement to Stick
Living by shared principles doesn’t mean perfection—it means commitment. It’s the daily, imperfect work of coming back to what we’ve said matters most.
Leadership’s role is to model, reward, and protect these principles, especially when pressure mounts. That means:
- Making hard decisions that uphold values, not just metrics
- Addressing behavior that undermines trust, even when performance is high
- Celebrating not just what gets done, but how it gets done
Culture reinforcement and teaching happen every day.
Are Your Principles Real or Laminated?
Here’s a simple test:
- Can your team name your guiding principles—without looking them up?
- Do they show up in how meetings are run, how feedback is given, and how decisions are made?
- Are the emphasized and exemplified in a new employee’s first 30 days?
If the answer is yes, you’re leading with wisdom, not just words.
That is the kind of leadership that makes sustainable success possible.