Company values: tell a clear and personal story

Values are worthless unless they are wholly understood and evident in the workplace.

A 2011 article on the business of communicating values declares: “If a company doesn’t take the time and effort to communicate its values in a meaningful way, then it’s like the old tree falling in the forest cliche. It makes a big splash, but no one is around to appreciate its impact.”

When companies go through transformation, it normally involves an announcement of new values or a reinvigoration of existing values.

In many instances the company values are perfectly fine, the problem is that they are not clearly understood among employees or in many cases are invisible.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, believes many executives become consumed by producing multiple drafts of vision statements about company values or purpose and, consequently, spend nowhere near enough time trying to align their organisations with the values and visions already in place.

Without making the values personal, employees will not connect and engage with them. They will simply end up being words on a poster or coffee mug.

Values are worthless unless they are wholly understood and evident in the workplace, subsequently driving decisions and behaviours across the business.

SBS chief executive Michael Ebeid embodies the modern leader who understands the importance of making company values personal. He believes it is important for him to relate personally to the corporate values so he can make them mean something to his employees.

Ebeid says his most effective leadership moments happen when he can share his beliefs or experiences to convey what they stand for with his employees and their audiences.

Ebeid is one of a growing number of chief executives who realise the importance of communicating personal values by using storytelling to achieve this goal.

Leaders who do this generate significantly more passion and enthusiasm than those who talk to a PowerPoint deck of bullet points or carefully scripted speeches with approved wording from their support team.

Hisham El-Ansary is managing director of BUPA Health Services and is a strong advocate of taking values seriously and making them personal.

In the past few years BUPA has used storytelling to help personalise the values throughout the organisation.

El-Ansary says that while this is not an easy accomplishment, it is clear that if BUPA wants to be seen as an authentic company it must have leaders who are prepared to communicate in an authentic way. He also says it has taken the corporate world a long time to realise jargon does not resonate with anyone, and using stories is far more effective.

Ebeid and El-Ansary have shown confidence in the power of storytelling as an excellent approach to demonstrate what really matters in an organisation. Chief executives and senior executives who do not take communicating values seriously should not expect their senior leaders or employees to do so.

If they are not prepared to get personal when communicating their commitment, they should also expect very low engagement across the organisation.

For this reason, taking company values seriously and having the courage to share personal stories that align with specific standards will result in higher employee engagement and connection to the company values.

Gabrielle Dolan is the author of Storytelling for Job Interviews.