The Values of Value - Part 1 defined values, trust and how letting go is a vehicle for high performance primarily driven by conviction and emotions. Part 2 continues exploring how values promote agile leaders, teams, and cultures as well as the neuroscience and psychology supporting implementing a values-based ecosystem.
Letting go, Leadership, and Culture
Letting go signals that leaders are not responsible for every variable. Leadership sets the vision and enables the pieces to come together. Otherwise, the working assumption is leaders are responsible for outcomes, and this places pressure to lead from an outcome-oriented mindset risking vision stability, when leading is more about behavior economics. High performance leaders understand they are not responsible for outcomes, rather the integrity of the ecosystem producing outcomes. High performance leadership is an art - connecting a variety of beliefs into a values hierarchy serving as the backbone to culture. A strong backbone fuels performance despite ecosystem fluctuations across individuals and environment(s) In essence, culture becomes what you tolerate.
When high performance teams share the same backbone, they become adaptive, resilient, and regenerate the ecosystem. Ecosystems are complex, relational and need to be agile in adapting to convergent and divergent signals. A high performance ecosystem is not sustainable when derived from reverse engineering outcomes. High performance ecosystems/cultures thrive and find new pathways for continuous improvement and excellence honoring value alignment. The result is a team navigates contraction and expansion upwards through responding vs reacting and driven from internal strength vs being driven by fear.
Science and Art
In sport psychology, there’s a well-known term called “intrinsic motivation.” In short, intrinsic motivation is the internal state powering disciplined decisions towards the pursuit of a goal. Extensive personality psychology research correlates this “will” with several sub-facets of the Big 5. Some people are wired to behave and respond in a more directed and driven manner, regardless of environment or external variables. These types of traits, which are inherently part of their character, are state traits - meaning the trait exists independent of other factors. A person consciously and/or unconsciously will consistently act from these traits. Neuroscience teaches us neuro plasticity enables individuals, through various techniques, to prune, rewire, and establish new and existing traits as state traits. The basic premise behind neuro plasticity implies authorship, an opportunity to exercise principles of self-determination: autonomy and agency.
Neuropsychology also demonstrates when practicing imagery – visualizing with emotions, clarity and vividness – the brain cannot distinguish real from imagined emotions, and the body responds as if the event occurred. Elite athletes often integrate imagery into their training because when clear and vivid visualization is paired with emotion, the brain fires neurotransmitters and the body physiologically respond to as if the event is occurring. This brain/body coherent energy reveals the emotional conviction of values, sending a chemical signal to througout the body, and those present also sense.
High performance is part science, part art. Science provides the “how” and “why.” Self-awareness unlocks the artistic “what” as the ability to recognize and interpret meaning informing one’s response. Self-awareness not only identifies strengths and opportunities, self-awareness spotlights values. Without core values, we diminish intrinsic motivation, prompting decisions which are reactive, inconsistent, and fear based.
Operating From Anxiety and Calling It Productivity
Think about when a seed is planted. Without first assessing the soil’s fertility, resource expenditure (time, energy, money) increases for an unknown probability of success. If the seed harvests, there is no clear understanding of what nurtured the growth, and hence the reverse engineering from the outcome state sets the process on an infinite loop, chasing unknowns. The upfront investment in the soil’s health informs what elements will be needed to generate a hearty harvest for current and future seasons, decrease risk and improve ROI. Elements are akin to values. Through conscious curation, focusing on what sustains and nurtures an ecosystem will mitigate risk, enable responsive vs reactive decisions-making, and more quickly foster trust in the process. Designed with integrity to what matters stabilizes the highs and lows associated with foreseen and unforeseen ebbs and flows, while remaining receptive to new opportunities.
Heart / Mind Coherence: Flow State
High performers understand trust is a form of courage. Trust in the art and science requires believing from both the heart (body) and the mind. Body and mind need to be in coherence in order to generate true conviction and emotions. We’ve all experienced tell ourselves something, but our body doesn’t believe Or taking action and trying to convince the brain to go along. Heart - mind coherence is known as “flow” or “flow state” and often a missing factor in consistent high performance. People achieve greatness without being in flow-state. However, the energy expenditure is much greater, without stability, and the duration is limited - leaning towards burnout rather than sustained excellence.
Heart-mind coherence is a measure of the ecosystem’s integrity., reflecting the resonance between leadership’s and individuals’ values. Values serve as a self-awareness audit and courage to configure internal state traits and motivation. Investing in establishing value hierarchies speeds time to trust between people and their environment and can establish new, relevant leading KPIs and metrics. For example Capability Quotient (CQ) quantifies the qualitative traits valued by teams and organizations. CQ can be standardized to compliment internal units of metrics and grading scales. Learn more about CQ by clicking here.
Upcoming articles will dive deeper into quantifying values and creating advanced analytics tied to ROI, as well as looking at the psychological principles behind behavior economics.