Why I Have My Values

And how I decide on them

We change every day. We changed every day when he [Steve Jobs] was here, and we’ve been changing every day since he’s not been here. But the core, the values in the core remain the same as they were in ’98, as they were in ’05, as they were in ’10. I don’t think the values should change. But everything else can change.

— Tim Cook, CEO of Apple

One great thing about spending life outside of my comfort zone is that I’ve learned to hold nothing sacred except for values — my personal values, my company’s values and my customers’ values.

— Nick, Francis, Co-founder of Help Scout

In many stages of my life, I have been told that I need to have personal values. Most of the times, it was during leadership and development workshops in school.

Gradually, I felt that the idea of personal values is a bit cliche. Just like the topic of passion. So I brushed it aside and have not really thought about it.

Something happened yesterday brought me back to the topic of values. As I was thinking about the issue, I started to think about personal values.

Why should I have personal values? What are my personal values? How do I decide on what my personal values are?

So I gave the topic more thought and went to read up a little.

What Are Personal Values?

Firstly, what are personal values? I feel that personal values are standards or principles that one believes in.

When things are going according to my personal values or what I believe, I would go “Yeah, that’s the right way to do it.” in my mind.

And when things don’t, I would think “Hmm, I’m not quite sure if that’s how it should be done.” or “I don’t think that’s quite right.”.

Here are 2 definitions of personal values that I found online which I like:

Values are what you stand for in life — they are often things that you are for or against — what you believe in and are willing to support and stand up for.

Values are a major motivating force for people because they categorise how people attach meaning, worth and importance to things. When a person’s values are matched, they feel complete and satisfied. If values are not met, there is a sense of dissatisfaction, unease or incongruity. This is something to bear in mind during persuasion and negotiation.

So why should I (or we) have personal values?

Helps With Decision Making

From my quick research online, the main theme that keeps coming up is that having personal values helps with decision making. Personal values influences many aspects of our lives such as how we think, what we say, how we act, how we interact with others and so on. When we know what our personal values are, decisions become easier. This is especially so for decisions that do not have a clear cut answer.

It’s not hard to decide when you know what your values are. — Roy E. Disney

To avoid sounding too lofty, I would try to explain this with a personal experience:

Last year when I was helping my friend manage his startup’s Twitter account, I had a brilliant (I thought it was brilliant) idea. I would approach his competitors’ customers who complained on Twitter and sympathise with their situation. I did that hoping that they would consider my friend’s service the next time they want something similar. Brilliant?

Apparently not. Within a day, one of the competitors emailed a complaint to my friend and my friend informed me. It was only then that I realised what I did was not very right.

Whether it is right or wrong is very debatable.

My friend said that his co-founders would probably feel that there was nothing wrong with the tactic.

However, from my friend’s point of view, he felt that that was not the right way of running a business. Market share should be earned and not robbed from others. While it might be hard, well-earned customers would follow and love the company more.

So how do I decide which opinion to listen to for something like this without an obvious right or wrong? I fall back onto my beliefs and personal values.

How would I like to run my business? How would I feel when another company does the same thing to my company? What kind of entrepreneur do I want to be seen as? What kind of person do I want to be seen as?

I gave it some thought and concluded that I value the virtue of uprightness. So my friend is right; what I did was not very ethical.

Now, whenever I face similar situations again, I would be able to make decisions more easily by looking at my personal values. Should I adopt that unethical strategy? Nope because it is against my personal values!

How I Decide On My Values

I am still working on what my personal values are as I have not been thinking about them until lately. There were principles that I stand for, but I just didn’t clearly define them into terms like “Integrity”, “Uprightness”, etc. Nevertheless, I thought that it would be good for me to share how I decide on my personal values too.

Learn Through Experiences

One of my methods to decide on my personal values is to learn through experiences. The story that I narrated above was a valuable learning experience for me. Going through that, I learnt about what I value, which translate to my personal value.

I believe that when we are put in a situation where it is difficult to decide what is right and what is wrong, we would gain a better understanding of our beliefs, and in turn, personal values.

My Guideline

Apart from learning through experience, I have a simple guideline:

己所不欲，勿施于人.

This is a Chinese proverb, which means to not do onto others what you do not want others to do onto you. A similar saying would be “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.

Would I want a competitor to use unethical ways to rob my company’s market share? Nope. Then I shall not do that to others too. Even if I were to have a competitor that does that, I would not retaliate using the same way as it is against my personal value.

Just to echo what Tim Cook said, everything can change, but I don’t think values should.

What are your values and how did you decide on your values? I would love to chat with you on Twitter. I’m @alfred_lua on Twitter ☺

(This is my 9th blog post of my 30in30 challenge — 30 blog posts in 30 days. Through this challenge, I hope to feel comfortable and more confident with writing and become better at writing.

This post would be reposted on my personal blog, www.AlfredLua.com.)