Values Under Pressure
Hey there,
Last week I wrote about the low hum. What it feels like to be out of alignment with your own values and not be able to name why work suddenly feels like wearing somebody else’s coat.
Several of you wrote back with the same question. What if the job is the problem and I cannot leave?
Fair. Most people cannot leave. Mortgage, insurance, two years until vesting, a kid who just started at a school you fought to get into. “Find a company that matches your values” is advice from people who never had to make a car payment. Here is what I actually believe, after twenty five years in corporate. You do not need the whole job to match your values. You need one place inside it where you refuse to bend.
One. Held completely. Mine is honesty, and not the blunt kind people love to praise. The kind that stays kind. I had a team member who was not pulling their weight. Everyone around them could feel it before I said a word. I did not sugarcoat it, and I did not ambush them either. I sat down, told them exactly where the gap was, and stayed in the room while they felt it. Truth, delivered with enough empathy that they could hear it instead of just defend against it. That conversation cost me a very long twenty minutes. It bought me a team member who trusted every word I said afterward. It changed how the rest of the team saw me too. They had been watching that gap as long as I had, wondering if I would do anything about it. When I finally did, quietly and without theater, that is when they decided what kind of leader I was. Firm when it counted. Fair even when fair was the harder option.
Notice what I did not do. I did not wait a quarter hoping it would fix itself. I did not let my own discomfort talk me out of the conversation. I picked clear and kind, held both at once, and let the moment be a little uncomfortable instead of a little dishonest.
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Leaders get this backwards all the time. They think authenticity means full transparency, about everything, always. It is not. Authenticity is knowing the one thing you will not trade and being consistent about it for years, until people can set a clock by it. Consistency reads as character. Not intensity.
No one tells you this part. When you pick your line and hold it, it will not feel brave. It will feel awkward and scary. You will say the honest thing, the room goes quiet for half a second, and you drive home certain you torched something. Then two weeks later somebody stops by and tells you something true, because they decided you were safe. That gap between the awkward moment and the payoff is where most people quit and go back to blending in.
I learned how to do everything scared. That is not a slogan, that is the actual mechanism. The fear does not leave first. You go first. So here is your one thing this week.
Pick your one. Not five values on a card. One thing you will not do, stated plainly enough that you would recognize a violation the second it is in front of you. Not, “I value honesty.” Something closer to “I do not present a number I cannot defend.” Or I do not let somebody find out about a decision that affects them from anyone but me. Write it somewhere you will see it before meetings.
Then hold it the next time it costs you something small. Small is the entire training. Nobody holds the line at the big moment who has not practiced at the little ones. I always say, your calendar is not a democracy, and neither is your character. Somebody will try to spend both.
If you want help figuring out which line is actually yours, and what it is going to cost you to hold it, hit reply. That is a conversation worth having before the moment shows up, not after. Bet on the jockey, not the horse.
I am cheering you on,
Donna Oard, PCC
