Episode 824 Values Come First
[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 824 of the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:07] Gina Johnson: [00:00:07] I'm Gina Johnson from synergy mindset coaching. I encourage you to find your own journey from surviving to thriving. And one way to be inspired to do that is by listening to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.
[00:00:23]Scott Maderer: [00:00:23] end of the day. It's hard to not just identify your values, but then to live them out. Use those to drive how you serve others, use those to drive your mission. Use those to drive your vision. Use those to drive your action and your belief. All of this fits together. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast.
[00:00:51] If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures [00:01:00] for your true column in the inspired stewardship podcast, who will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.
[00:01:13]In today's episode about investing in others through student, your talent. I talk with you about why values come before action or belief. I also share why values even come before vision and why only out of values does service actually I'm at all. You've heard me talk about developing your talent and one of the best ways to do that is through books.
[00:01:35] But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your way to developing [00:02:00] your talents via audible.
[00:02:02] That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. So back on Monday, Stacy and I talked a lot about values and how being rooted in what your values are, is really important. And this is true, whether you're an individual or whether you're a company, if you're a business owner, if you're talking about your family values, it doesn't matter what level you're talking about within a profit or a nonprofit, a church.
[00:02:37]A community of any sort, a BNI in any sort of group that gets together before you can decide what your vision is and what your mission is and what you stand for and what you want to do. You need to come up with your values, these come before action, and they even come before belief. [00:03:00] You can't believe in what you stand for.
[00:03:03] If you haven't come up. With the values that you stand for. You're the all expression as if you don't stand for anything, then you'll fall for everything. And it's true. Before you can begin putting in action and becoming what you believe you are and having that belief come true and reinforcing that. And we've talked before about how action and belief or a feedback loop.
[00:03:28] I believe under lying. All of that as a foundation is spending the time and the energy to really identify your values. The truth is that a lot of times people want to skip this step because it feels woo. And it feels soft. It doesn't feel like something that you can really put down and pay attention to and measure any sort of way.
[00:03:51]I'm a hard science guy. I love measurement. I like to see the results of what I do. But at first, whenever I thought about creating a [00:04:00] value statement and thinking about what are the things that I really stand for, that felt squishy. It didn't feel concrete, but what I've discovered over time is if you spend the time and the energy identifying, what are your core values, what do you value?
[00:04:17] What do you stand for? What is it that is the most important to you? If you had somebody come up and put a gun to your head, what are the things that you would draw a line in the sand and you would actually be willing to die because they're so important to you. The truth is when you identify those things, then, and only then can you really begin to set a vision and a mission for where you're going?
[00:04:47] Because only out of value. Does the mission come and the vision come, you have to identify those first, the vision of where you want to go in the mission [00:05:00] of what and who do you want to serve when you get there comes out of a statement of value. If you value honesty and integrity, it's going to affect not only what your mission and values are, but then also how you execute them.
[00:05:15] Because the truth is serving others is hard. Having an other focus is hard. Service doesn't come out of selfishness. Service comes out of selflessness. Service comes from when we sit out and find the way to value what other people are doing. Service comes out of having a strong statement of values or the lack of service comes from that as well.
[00:05:44] If what's most important to you and your company is the bottom line and you'll sacrifice everything to make a buck, then that will show up in what you do, because the truth is then you will act in that way. You will be [00:06:00] going out of your way to cut corners, to sacrifice, quality, to go faster than you should to cut costs in every place so that you can make as much money as possible.
[00:06:11] And I would argue that what happens a lot of times is because we haven't done our work in value setting and we haven't articulated that and made it clear to all of the people around us, then values crop up and come to fill the void. And those selfish values are the easiest ones to fill the void with.
[00:06:32] But I think most people, if you ask them what they value, they'll tell you, they value things like honesty, integrity, quality, these sorts of things. But for so many organizations and people that becomes a lip service, that's not about what they really truly value it's about what they just say. They value at the end of the day, it's hard to not just identify your values, but then to live them [00:07:00] out.
[00:07:01] Use those to drive how you serve others, use those to drive your mission. Use those to drive your vision, use those to drive your action and your belief. All of this fits together. And it's not easy. Really figuring out what our values are, is hard. You can buy these cards called value cards, where you start out with a set of about 50 cards.
[00:07:27] And your first job is to cut it down to which of these are the top 20 values that you really have. And then you take that list of 20 and you cut it into 10. And then from that list of 10, you cut it into five. And from those value cards, you've identified what are the top five values that you stand for above all others?
[00:07:46] If you do this with a group, you can then compare those values. You can compare what's your top five, what's my top five. And you can begin to look for patterns within a group or an organization. It takes [00:08:00] time and it takes effort and it takes buy-in and it takes believing that it's valuable. But it truly does change how you operate.
[00:08:10] If you need some help generating that list of values, you can, of course, Google and search for them online. Or you can reach out to me and hall help you with a starter list that will get you started on figuring out what are the things you value above all others. Thanks for listening.
[00:08:27]thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you liked this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/talent and sign up.
[00:08:54] For our five week series on the stewardship of talent, or if you're [00:09:00] in the U S you can text four, four, two, two, two talent tips. That's talent tips to four four, two, two, two, and get those tips until next time, invest your time, your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.