Liz Truss this morning said in interview that there are more important things to focus on than whether Boris Johnson broke lockdown rules.
This debacle is a treasure trove of lessons on values, on apologies, and on leadership.
Values
I tell all companies I work with to get their values in place, and to make them explicit. Often, it’s met by leaders half-heartedly. A side-show. For the website. Fluff.
But those same leaders discover the power of values when they have difficult conversations about destructive behaviours. Many a team member claims, sometimes rightly, that they’ve met targets {“But Johnson has handled Covid well for the country!”}, but leave a wake of destruction, unhappiness, chaos and resignations in their wake.
Explicitly articulated values allow us to challenge those behaviours in a tangible way. They give us something concrete to talk about.
Apologies
{But Johnson apologised, Truss assured us, so just move on.}
We all make mistakes, and apologising is vital. Provided it’s from remorse at having done what we did, rather than at being caught.
But repeated often enough, it stops being about the specific “mistake”. Then apologies aren’t enough. It’s about our values not being right for that job or company.
{Or government.}
Leadership
Which brings me to my last point. If you’re in a leadership role – Prime Minister, CEO, senior anything – how you do values carries weight. If you articulate a set of values, you’d better demonstrate them if you want them to be worth more than the fancy HTML that got them on your website.
A couple of weeks ago, I heard a radio caller (“Terry”, but I won’t hold that against him!) speaking in defence of Johnson. On what grounds?
Because “everyone does it”.
And there Terry gave the clearest articulation of why leaders \*have\* to demonstrate values. Because if they don’t, they give every Terry license to ignore them with “everyone does it”.
But more positively, as a leader, if you don’t actively use values, you’re missing the greatest trick.
The toughest part of leadership is decisions. The more senior you are, the tougher the decisions, and the bigger their impact. It’s why many people don’t want leadership roles.
Here’s where values shine. Because the greatest enabler of good decision-making, and the greatest gift you can give your leadership team is a set of values to lean on. Your decisions reflect what you deem most important. Your values.
Which brings me back to where I started. The “It’s not the important thing” defence. Repeated lockdown violations. Repeated farcical protestations of ignorance. Convoluted explanations. Gathering, not party; work, not social; my team, not me (way to throw your team under a bus); 10 people, not 30; only 10 or 25 minutes.
It’s precisely that pattern that makes this the most important thing. How can we trust anyone to make big decisions on “important things” if the core value that underpins them is self-preservation?
How we can support you
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