Tell Me Your Heroes And I’ll Tell You Your Values
Identify your heroes to get insight into your values.
What you cherish most in your heroes are likely the values with which you identify most.
Your heroes likely are not aware of the impact they had on your life. Reach out to them with gratitude.
A fulfilled and authentic life is one where you stay true to your values.
If you walk along the United States Military Academy at West Point grounds, you will see twelve granite benches. Each one has a virtue carved into it. Words such as compassion, courage, dedication, determination, discipline, dignity, loyalty, perseverance, integrity, responsibility, honest, trust, and service are all inscribed on the benches’ side. Most people would say these are part of their core ideals. If asked what your values are, can you honestly answer that you hold all twelve to be of equal value?
Which values do you consider the most important? For what do you stand? For what will you fight? Answer those questions honestly, and you will get clarity on your values. The problem is that when you ask people what is important to them, you will get synthetic responses. They will emphatically state that the values of honesty, integrity, and perseverance are of paramount importance, but what have they done to exemplify that is what they most value? When it comes down to it, how can you get clarity on your core beliefs?
Ayse Birsel, designer and author of Design the Life You Love, found a creative way to identify your actual values and core beliefs. Her workshops utilize design thinking, a process to creatively and empathically deconstruct and then reconstruct a product, idea, or program while challenging assumptions and keeping the end-user in mind at all times. In the process, you shed what does not align with your goal and keep what resonates with you most.
Birsel has used this innovative practice to help people identify the goals which bring them the most fulfillment. One of the initial steps in her unique process is to determine what you stand for and hold dear and embed that into whatever you design.
One of the initial steps in Birsel’s process is to list your heroes, the people you hold in the highest regard. You might have met them, or they can be people who you admire from afar. List their names and then reflect on why they are your role models. What is it about them that you admire? When you think of them, what stands out most? List their characteristics that deeply resonate with you.
Consider what about their personality or presence you respect. If you had to label it, what would you call it? Do you see any part of your personality in your heroes?
The process of listing your role models is a very creative way to get you to identify your true values. What is remarkable is that when listing your heroes’ characteristics that you most admire and respect, most people do not recognize that they are talking about their own values. We try and emulate our role models, whether we realize it or not.
If you are not yet replicating your heroes’ most favorable characteristics, consider what is holding you back. How can you be more like those you respect the most? You have it in you; you just need to find a medium to bring it to fruition.
Birsel has done this simple exercise with everyone from Fortune 500 CEOs to business school deans. This exact activity led people to pivot and do work they love in a manner they found inspiring. This new focus on work related to their values caused them to shed feelings of dread and burnout as they focused on what they genuinely enjoy doing. Clarity is especially needed now as people find themselves in a position where they want or need to pivot due to the pandemic. When your core values align with your work, anything is possible.
At the start of the pandemic, Birsel sat down with Marshall Goldsmith, the number one executive coach, who found himself suddenly grounded. He lived a life on the road, coaching every major CEO, and was not used to his new reality. Birsel coached him through the process and found a way to move his focus away from his current situation and toward a plan to do something he loved. This exercise ultimately led to the Knowledge Philanthropy project, where Goldsmith is giving away his intellectual property.
Sanyin Siang believes in the power of heroes and their ability to help us live a life of significance. As the founding executive director of the Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, she uses Birsel’s hero exercise with her business students. She asks them to focus on the people who were heroes in their life. She then takes it a step further and encourages them to reach out to those who they consider heroes, as they likely do not know the impact they had. Whatever they said or did to them, in their mind, it was likely an insignificant act which they probably do not remember. This activity led to phone calls to third-grade teachers, military officers, and other unsung heroes. “When we think of others as heroes, it becomes generative,” says Siang.
If you want to know your values, list your heroes and figure out what it is about them that you value so deeply. Now try and be like your heroes.