Matching values
What constitutes the way in which you are operating? – your own ‘ripple effect’ which is an amalgamation of all your moods, thoughts, actions, beliefs, concepts, goals, aspirations, ideals or values.
Consider also the complete total of your ripple effect upon all those around you every day.
There has been much interest generated favouring values-based as opposed to competency-based questions at interviews. The reason being that values-based interview questions can give a good indication of whether that, what drives a potential employee to work matches or configures to the same way in which the interviewer themselves is driven to work and so that being a good result.
Or is it?
Drivers to success and the effects
Looking at the above question – how has the drive to acquire things such as money, status, education, jobs, positions, professions or careers affected the one conducting the interview (the interviewer), and – is this necessarily a good thing when considering what that ‘value’ has cost the interviewer who has invested in it - personally, professionally, mentally, health and relationship wise.
What is determined as being a ‘successful value’/driver which matches the interviewer’s own could actually be aiding towards consequences such as stress, anxious or erratic work behaviours which all lead to a strain and depletion not just upon the employee but also the company with inefficient (low or poor quality) productivity being produced or other effects such as sickness, lateness, absenteeism, high turnover of staff etc.
If the money driver/value typical in sales organisations is heavily promoted and pushed for under the guise of it being ‘of value’ to the hiring organisation or team, then although there may be short-term gains with high revenues being produced, so too can there be long-term pains with the above mentioned adverse effects.
So is such a ‘value’ so great?
Employer responsibility
The responsibility and integrity of an organisation lies in registering how having employee’s values can affect or infect - for if the way in which someone is producing work or revenues is generating company profits but this is achieved to the detriment of the employee and others round them - should that action not be reviewed, stopped and re-adjusted - so that the employee receives support and mentoring to correct the imbalance way they are working and producing?
Instead what occurs is the firing and re-hiring of another when those targets are not delivered, with employees and new recruits working in fear of losing their jobs and learning that high-revenue producing-but-stressed-employees = the answer in ‘getting ahead’ in the organisation. As such individuals are the ones reaping the rewards via promotion to manager or director – even though the way in which they are operating (which is based upon their values) is adversely affecting team dynamics resulting in disharmonious behaviours such as aggression, mood swings, irritability, arrogance, and other emotional episodes.
Value questions
Value questions are a great indication into understanding the reasons why we work, and also - the ways in which we go about our work, and whether this matches or not the organisation’s fit or core values. But responsibility must be taken by the employer to ensure that as a company it is not instilling and promoting ill-behaviours, patterns of working or attitudes that lead to burn out and inefficiencies from its staff that then infiltrate the entire organisation.
When interviewing with values-based questions in mind it's important to register what is driving us personally and whether this is truly successful and not just based solely on the resulting financial abundance, but in addition that that result or sales figure abundance has been generated with balance, harmony and efficiency both at work - and also at home.
Success does not = disharmony
Being a success, or being successful is given immense importance and our success is seen or regarded by what we do or produce, our job title, status, position, company, university or school we went to etc. In other words – an end result/goal/target or box ticked. An end result with which we become labelled and identified with both by ourselves and others as being ‘who we are in the world’, so when we do not have the ‘end result’ we can easily feel overwhelmed, deflated, disillusioned, depressed, a failure - no longer ‘a success’.
We enjoy talking or even showing off to others about what it took to get our end result - the long hours, countless meetings, 12+ hour days, working all weekend, or doing 6 day weeks for months on end, networking into the night, the shady dealings, backstabbing, conflict, cheating or lying. But what we tend to not speak about is the extent and harm of this experienced upon ourselves - sleepless nights, insomnia, anxiousness, ulcers, stress, back pain, stomach pain, migraines, marriage, relationship or family breakdown etc.
Today - success in the workplace is based upon the end result, but actually how that success is derived is not really noted or considered. If we are honest, for most of us achieving success has been at the expense or sell-out of self.
Why the sell-out to self?
So why do we sell ourselves out? – for all the things we think we get back, or for all the things which we allow to hook us such as power, status, position, prestige or money, wealth, assets - so that we can look good, be accepted , impress or show to others our worth in the world/society. But take all of this away and what is left, realised or felt is that ‘all of that’, was ‘not it’.
Being a success label - at what cost?
In the sell-out to selves at all costs to achieve an array of end results, true regard for self is non-existent. If we had true regard, respect and care for self, (love for self) – then why do we so easily choose things that tax, harm, expend, exhaust, conflict us? It is in the absence of the aforementioned that such things occur and hence why the disservice to self that is then experienced, and felt by all.
And - it provides reason why it is so easy for us to compromise pushing ourselves to do what is unnatural or disharmonious - all so that we reach our success.
Mostly, the way of working and operating to be a success - has been without of care or regard - love for self. Big life events such as the loss of a job, a breakdown at home or at work or illness for example can all be times when we do stop and reflect upon our situation – if we choose to that is. If honesty is present, what we arrive at is - that without our job, job title and position, or our company, career, relationship etc - that there is not much else to our lives and that without them a sense of nothingness, sense of bereft or worthlessness with our confidence taken a knock.
Once stopped in our tracks we can feel the consuming physical exhaustion - exhaustion from all the efforts we made towards our label of ‘being a success’.
True drivers to true success
With the above as a thought - what if the value-driver was first to respect, value, regard (love) ourselves first while delivering that sales target, launching another business, changing jobs? That way we would choose not to expend, over extend, tax, reduce, exhaust, saying yes all the time etc - but rather choose to preserve, cherish, appreciate and learn when to say no to things, people, situations that pull upon us and create the strain of disharmony that leads to the overwhelm we experience.
So when hiring, perhaps emphasis is to be placed upon interview questions such as - ‘how, or in what ways do you take regard or care of yourself’ and ‘how is this regard or care manifesting on a daily basis – what does it look like?’ – for in their answers will be found useful insight into how the new recruit lives and thus in turn importantly so for any employer, how they will operate in your job/your team/your company - which can become the right blueprint for other new hires to follow, or not as the case may be.