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For decades, leadership advice has emphasized leading with your values. And for good reason—values anchor authenticity, guide decision-making, inspire trust, and help leaders navigate complexity and change. Yet there’s a shadow side of values we don’t often talk about.
When values are held too tightly, they can harden into rigidity, alienate others, or even undermine the very goals they were meant to advance. Applying values too strongly can create a paradox for leaders: how to hold onto values without them becoming vices and how to retain the “value” of values without undermining the service they exist to support.
Every value has a shadow side. Empathy can morph into overaccommodation, integrity into inflexibility, and accountability into blame. The same qualities that fuel excellence can, when overextended, breed dysfunction. Across industries and cultures, I’ve seen this paradox emerge repeatedly: how to hold onto your values without being held hostage by them.
Below are three practical strategies to help leaders navigate these tensions and reap the value of values.
1. Rethink Values as a Series of Relationships
Values function as living relationships that operate across three dimensions:
- Self–Self: How you embody and give that value to yourself.
- Self–Other: How you express that value in relation to others or the organization.
- Other–Self: How you receive and respect others’ expressions of that same value.
Allison, a vice president of strategy at a global communications firm, came to coaching frustrated after being passed over for promotion. “I’ve worked incredibly hard and always over-deliver,” she said. “It’s unfair.” Her defining value—fairness—felt violated.
When we unpacked it, Allison realized she’d equated fairness solely with external recognition—a promotion granted by others. Her self–self relationship with fairness was weak; she wasn’t giving herself fairness, only seeking it from others.
To rebalance, we explored what fairness toward herself might look like. By introducing curiosity—another of her values—she identified new actions that empowered her: advocating for herself, setting time limits for promotion goals, and leveraging her networks. Fairness, reimagined as self-advocacy, restored her agency.
Next, we examined her self–other relationship. Allison had never clarified whether fairness was a corporate value. The organization prized visibility and influence for advancement—criteria she’d overlooked.
Finally, her other–self relationship: How open was she to receiving others’ interpretations of fairness? Initially, not at all. When she recognized that fairness could also mean opportunities—for collaboration, mentoring, or development—she began to see how others’ perspectives could coexist with her own.
Allison applied fairness toward herself to negotiate a promotion and approached her next role with a more nuanced, relational view of values.
When we cling to a single, rigid definition of what our values mean, we risk turning them into traps. Seeing values as a series of relationships invites balance, nuance, and flexibility—and alternative ways forward.
2. Combine Values, Ability, and Tools
Values alone don’t ensure effectiveness—they need to be integrated with abilities and tools. I call this framework “Leadership VAT”: values, ability, tools.
Greg, a senior planning expert in a ministry of education, learned this the hard way. He reached out to an NGO representative for a “friendly chat” that became a tense negotiation when the representative demanded payment. Feeling pressured, Greg agreed—then walked away resentful.
Greg’s mistake was assuming shared values were enough to guide the process.
Using the VAT framework, we explored three components:
- Values: His guiding value was equity, but he hadn’t considered the other party’s interests or values. Two different value systems were operating—and they weren’t aligned.
- Ability: Empathy, emotional intelligence, and assertive communication were missing. Greg realized he needed to gather intelligence about the other person’s interests and manage his stress responses to converse effectively.
- Tools: Greg also lacked preparation. He later developed a negotiation checklist to ensure he entered every discussion with curiosity, preparation, and clarity.
Integrating values with ability and tools allowed Greg to engage others with more skill and alignment, and less resentment.
3. Situate Values in Context
Sometimes the problem isn’t weak values but weaponized ones—when individuals insist their personal value must be honored above all others.
Maria, a director at a large professional services firm, faced this with her team member Sam, whose commitment to “honesty” had become a license for blunt, hurtful criticism. “I’m just telling the truth,” Sam said, “and that deserves respect.”
Maria needed to help Sam preserve his value of honesty while minimizing collateral damage. We used the “5 Es Values Flexercise,” a tool that helps people balance integrity with openness:
- Express the value: What’s the nonnegotiable value? Why does it matter? What positive outcomes does it create?
- Examine the impact: What are the unintended consequences of holding this value too tightly? Sam realized his “truth-telling” was causing hurt, damaging trust, and forcing Maria to mediate conflicts.
- Evaluate flexibility: On a scale of 0 (abandon) to 10 (rigid), where do you stand? What if you moved 1–2 points down? Initially proud of being a “9,” Sam began to see that small flexibility could strengthen—not dilute—his integrity.
- Explore integrity and openness options: How can you live this value without imposing it? Sam experimented with listening fully before speaking, reframing critiques as questions, and taking notes before responding.
- Experiment and reflect: Try it, then notice what changes. To his surprise, colleagues became more receptive once his “honesty” was combined with empathy.
This exercise reminded both Sam and Maria that values are contextual and relational—so when values don’t align, open communication and mutual understanding are key.
The Value of Values
Values are indispensable to leadership—but when held too tightly, they constrict rather than guide. Applied without balance, they turn into blinders; used without skill, they alienate; followed without context, they fragment teams and erode trust.
The most effective leaders understand that values aren’t commandments carved in stone; part of our leadership work is to recognize how to work with values that are plural, contextual, and relational.
