I was reviewing my list of values from an assessment I took about a year ago. I always find it interesting to go back and look at what the results were at that time and if they still resonate with me. Here are my top 5 values: Helping Others Succeed, Learning/Knowledge, Coaching, Customer Service and Problem Solving. Anyone who knows me should not be surprised by this list at all. It is absolutely who I am and how I live my life. I will share a little bit more about why these values are true for me.
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Helping Others Succeed – this is why I got into coaching, but it is also what I have been doing throughout my life both personally and professionally. There is nothing better than seeing my clients achieve their potential through coaching.
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Learning/Knowledge – learning new things is something that I have always done, but never thought about it as a value. I read books, listen to multiple podcasts, subscribe to blogs, watch TED talks, and follow various social media sites . Yes, even as I type this I think I may be doing too much, but I love it!
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Coaching – this applies from my time of working at Kraft to now starting my own coaching business. I love working with individuals and teams to see them work well together and learn about their own leadership.
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Customer Service – I worked in Customer Service for many years and it has always been a passion of mine. When I work with companies, I try to work through the proper processes and generally have a lot of patience before I get irritated and have no other choice but to escalate to the top of the house. I just know too much about what good customer service should look like. If I complain and it improves a process that is broken which resolves it, then I am happy.
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Problem Solving – I enjoy solving problems. I think working in IT all those years just ingrained it in me and I continue to leverage what I learned even today.
Values are not only good for individuals to know, but organizations also use them. It helps an organization define itself and shows what it stands for as a company. It helps an individual to see what is important in their life and what they believe in. Are you willing to stand up and fight when your values are compromised? Values help provide guidelines for you when you are making big decisions, trying to determine what is important to you, decide on a career and choose your relationships. I love this quote by Mahatma Gandhi in the blog post picture. It shows how important your values are to where you are going and to achieving your destiny.
If you would like to figure out your values, here is a link to a free values card choice exercise that helps you narrow down the choices to get you to a top 5 values list: http://media.capella.edu/CourseMedia/CPLU1100_CPL5100/WorkValuesCardSort/workValues.html
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