Everything I Have Learned About Values

Learning to feel safe, comfortable and loved at the conforming stage of development is an essential prerequisite for mastering the integrating stage of development later in life.

At the beginning of this stage of development, the child may resort to temper tantrums to get its needs met. The young infant has not yet learned how to separate itself from its needs. Neither has it learned that the people it depends on for its survival and safety also have needs.

After that, throughout his or her life, this person will seek to control what is happening in their environment to make sure they get their needs get met. Such a person will be cautious and vigilant and tend to micro-manage whatever is going on around them that might affect their well-being.

Gradually the baby begins to link its reaction to its sensations and the response it gets. It realizes that through its reactions it is able, or as the case may be, not able, to control its sense of well-being. If its needs are “magically” met, it feels in control of its world. If its needs are not met, it does not feel in control of its world.

With wisdom comes the ability to see the big picture. W

You have to give up your self-critical thoughts and overcome your limiting beliefs if you want to go on growing and developing.

You have to be able to move with the times, go with the flow and live in the moment, if you want to survive and thrive.

There are three matching values between the low- and high-entropy leaders: commitment, accessible and ambitious. High entropy leaders display four potentially limiting values: controlling, demanding, long hours and authoritarian. Low entropy leaders display no potentially limiting values. High-entropy leaders feel they have to control, demand and use their power in an authoritarian way to get what they want. They also work long hours. Low-entropy leaders achieve high performance through collaborative working, staying open to new ideas, communicating well, bringing humour and fun to their work, being enthusiastic about what they are doing and maintaining a positive attitude.

Trust is the key to building a high performing culture. Trust begins at the top. The leaders have to be able to trust each other, and the employees have to be able to trust their leaders. Trust builds internal cohesion, increases cultural health (reduces the Cultural Entropy score) and enables the organization to build strong partnerships.
The process of building internal cohesion begins with the leadership team. The leadership team can be regarded as a cultural fractal of the whole organization. If you don’t have internal cohesion in the leadership team, you will not have internal cohesion in the rest of the organization. The only way to build internal cohesion in a leadership team is to create a climate of trust.18
Leaders build trust when they live in alignment with their most deeply held values. Consequently, the first requirement of leaders is to know how to lead themselves—master their subconscious fears so they can live with integrity.19

The main difference between positive and potentially limiting values is that positive values come from a place of caring for self or caring for others, whereas potentially limiting values come from the ego’s fears about not being able to get its survival, safety or security needs met. In other words, potentially limiting values are self-serving. They make my needs a priority over your needs.