Core Values and Your Happiness at Work

Core values are an important pillar of your joy, satisfaction and fulfilment at work. Their misalignment with the values of your work and organisation causes cognitive dissonance with all its negative effects on your state of mind and emotions. These negative effects exist even if you are not aware of your core values; they act at a subconscious level. To solve the problem, you need to bring your core values to the light first. 

Psychology Today defines core values as "a person's principles or standards of behaviour or one's judgement of what is important in life".

In their book "Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life", Ken Blanchard and Jesse Stoner define personal values as 

deeply held beliefs that certain qualities are desirable. They define what is right or fundamentally important to each of us. They provide guidelines for our choices and activities.

Core values influence our behaviours, relationships, personal development, professional life, results, success and happiness in work and everyday life. Values exist whether you recognise them or not. Values respond to the question "What are the principles that guide your life, your actions and behaviours?" They determine how we act and behave on our journey to live according to our mission and turn our vision into reality. 

Some questions your values answer:

• What makes a good person?
• What do you consider right, correct, good, etc?
• What is important to you?
• What is non-negotiable to you?
• What's the most important to me in my life, my work, my relationships, etc.?

How are core values formed?

We acquire the majority of core values by the age of 5-7 under the influence of social environmental factors, such as family, the education system, community, culture, and society.

• Family: You are most impressionable as a child. Your early familial experiences with your parents, relatives and/or caregivers influence your sense of self and what is important to you.
• Education system: Your teachers, the teaching curriculum content and classmates play an important role in forming and reinforcing certain beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. According to the study results presented in the article "How are personal values formed? Discover the joy of a life aligned" by Maggie Wooll, "the moral influence of the teachers makes the education system one of the most efficient institutions to teach human values to the next generations." 
• Community: interacting with community members, you notice positive and negative reactions to your attitudes and behaviours. This will teach you lessons about what is right and wrong, shaping your values.
• Culture, religion and society: Your culture and society have their own set of dominant beliefs for their members. You don't have to accept them, but they set the ground for your moral development and integration in society.

Why are values important?

Core values touch every aspect of your life. Knowing them and living in accordance with them will help you live authentically and be yourself.

There are several aspects of your life where values are important and help you.

• Setting goals: Values help you set goals in accordance with what is really important to you and with your guiding principles, so that you remain authentic to yourself on your journey towards your goal and when you achieve it. When your goal is aligned with your core values, it is more likely that you'll take consistent actions to achieve that goal. You do not sabotage yourself due to the cognitive dissonance you experience because of the contradiction between your goal and fundamental values.
• Making decisions: Your values can guide your decision-making process. They help you discern whether something is acceptable to you and you consider it correct. When you make decisions aligned with your core values, you feel like your truest self.
• Facing challenges: A challenge is actually an excellent test for your values, their degree of strength and solidity, as well as the degree of alignment with them in your life and its different areas. They can also help you make decisions in challenging situations and take action. In such situations, you might experience a conflict between your own values and what others, the "world" expects you to do or what the world considers correct, rational, acceptable, etc. Who is going to win, others' expectations or your values? It depends on how true you are to yourself, how solid your values are, what their ranking is and what your non-negotiables are.
• Relationships: Values help decide who you want to associate with in the long term. They are the basis for setting boundaries, establishing healthy human bonds, developing quality relationships and finding a like-minded social network. Coupled with assertiveness, they help you communicate your needs in the workplace, in family and in your other relationships. These all can improve your well-being.
• Increase satisfaction: Deciding and acting according to your core values makes you feel more satisfied with your choices, actions, behaviours and their results.
• Improve self-awareness: When you know your core values, you better understand who you are, what drives you and how you align with or differ from other people. The awareness you gain through connecting to your personal values helps you stay true to yourself, make better decisions, invest in your personal and professional development, strengthen or terminate relationships depending on your value alignment, increase your confidence, and better control your emotions.
• Be a change agent: When your core values conflict with society's values, you can become an agent of change if you have the necessary courage, confidence, self-belief, a well-defined life purpose and a bigger vision for your life.  

Personal Values impact your work life and the joy, satisfaction and fulfilment you experience at work. 

Personal values influence who you are. They also shape what kind of employee, leader or entrepreneur you are.

When your employer's values and the perceived values behind your work are not aligned with your core values, you experience cognitive dissonance while performing your tasks. This will lead to feelings of dissatisfaction and unfulfillment in the long term. You will experience the negative effects even if you are not aware of your core values. They still exist and guide your behaviour, but at an unconscious level. You cannot pinpoint a cause for your work-related negative feelings.

Core values guide your behaviour and attitude at work, how you perform your tasks, build and maintain professional relationships and relate to people at work. If you work in a leadership position, your values influence your leadership style.

If you are a business owner, it is important to align the values of your business with your core values. You cannot build a business and successfully sell products or services that represent values in contradiction with your own values. It might work for a while, but you'll feel uncomfortable and untrue. These negative feelings will impact the way you show up in your business and represent it. You will come across as unauthentic to present and potential customers.

For example, if loyalty is your value, you might be more dependable at work, a more trustworthy employee or business partner. Honesty as a core value means you are a collaborative team player who presents personal views and opinions honestly and offers constructive criticism to help coworkers grow.

Other important values related to work could be confidence, determination, and perseverance. 

What are your core values that directly influence how you relate to your work and your happiness at work?