For decades, leadership advice has emphasized the importance of “leading with your values.” In general, this is good advice: it helps build trust and navigate moral puzzles, grounds leaders in authenticity, aids decision-making, and aligns personal and organizational purpose. Values help us focus on what genuinely matters and provide direction and motivation for making change. But there’s a shadow side of values we don’t often talk about.
When values are rigid, this can unearth unintended consequences. Consider the manager who holds on so tightly to a personal value that they become entrenched and immovable; the leader who insists “my values” equals “our values,” alienating others; the team member who insists that their personal values be honored regardless of organizational values. 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 slide into overaccommodation, integrity into inflexibility; accountability into blame. The same qualities that drive excellence can create dysfunction. In an increasingly polarized world, I’ve seen this paradox gain momentum through my coaching with leaders across industries and continents. To address it, I’m sharing three practical strategies leaders can use to navigate these tensions and reap the full benefit of values at work.
1. Rethink Values as a Series of Relationships
The continual process of cultivating, enacting and acknowledging values can be seen as a series of relationships in three dimensions:
- how we cultivate a value within ourselves
- how we enact that value with others
- how we recognize and receive that value from others.
Like a three-legged stool, these relationships need to be equal and balanced.
A client of mine, Allison – VP of Strategy at a global communications company – came to coaching frustrated and indignant after being passed over for promotion. Allison said she “worked extremely hard! Always over-delivered!” but she felt under-appreciated, and now faced a crisis of values.
I asked her to identify which of her values felt violated, and to explain what that value meant to her. Allison said “fairness,” meant : “My work should speak for itself!” and “Promotion should be based on merit!” Because of Allison’s narrow and rigid interpretation of fairness as a reward only conferred by others, she hadn’t explored how she could work with her values differently to achieve her goal.
I invited Allison to do a powerful exercise I call the Three-Legged Stool. I explained that a value needs three equal ‘legs’ – or balanced relationships – to function well:
a) Your relationship with your value (Self-Self): how you find ways to give the value to yourself.
I asked Allison to score how well she demonstrated fairness to herself, on a scale of 0-10. Allison rated herself ‘1’, explaining that ‘fairness’ had trapped her in an endless cycle of working hard (within her control), for external reward (out of her control) – leaving her powerless to achieve what she wanted.
To redress the power balance and address Allison’s lopsided self-self relationship, we explored what fairness applied inwards might look like. Bringing in another value – curiosity – opened up alternative strategies for Allison to be fair to herself and gain promotion: by advocating for herself, her work and her ambitions; tapping into her networks and leveraging her allies; setting a time limit for her advancement goal. By identifying actions she could take, Allison assuaged her sense of a values violation, changed her fairness equation to her advantage, and had a greater sense of agency in doing so.
b) The relationship between your value and other/s (Self-Other): how far an understanding of values is shared between oneself and another/the team/organization (on a scale of 0-10).
Allison hadn’t sought clarification or common ground between her understanding of fairness and the organization’s, and she wasn’t even sure if fairness was a corporate value, so gave this 0/10.
Allison was overinvesting in a value-based strategy of hard work that her organization did not sufficiently recognize nor prioritize for promotion. Allison concluded, “I need to seek clarification on my company’s values, and understand what they require for career advancement.”
c) The relationship between others’ expression of the value and yours (Other-Self): how open you are to receiving other interpretations/expressions of a particular value. On a scale of 0-10, how far do you welcome the value in various forms?
At first, Allison wasn’t open to any ‘fairness’ that didn’t mean promotion in exchange for hard work. After discussion, she was conscious that other people might recognize ‘fairness’ in opportunities to collaborate, train, or network – although Allison disagreed. She rated this leg 2/10.
Not only did Allison’s stool have very short legs – it was lopsided, and so was her leadership. By viewing her values as a series of relationships:
a) Self-self: Allison’s more agentic understanding of fairness that included acts of fairness towards herself enabled her to identify key networking and visibility strategies and enact a time boundary that helped her land a senior role in a new company: an act of empowerment and fairness to herself.
b) Self-other: In her job interview, she explored shared understanding and values alignment.
c) Other-self: Being open to receiving other interpretations of fairness allowed Allison to negotiate a compensation package that she considered fair and made her feel valued.
In clinging to a unidimensional understanding of what a value means and how it can be expressed, we risk disempowering ourselves. Seeing our values as a series of relationships brings in nuance, balance, agency and alternative ways forward.
2. Combine Values, Ability and Tools
There are shadowy implications of leading exclusively with your values, and insisting that “my values” equals “y/our values” risks alienating others. Values alone won’t get results: you also need to bring in the requisite skills and tools to achieve the desired outcomes. Greg, a senior planning expert in a Ministry of Education, experienced this.
In keeping with his strongly held value of honoring people’s time, Greg reached out to a local NGO representative, offering to mention them in a media briefing to acknowledge their recent help with a new education plan. Greg expected this to be a quick, friendly chat, but to his surprise, the rep countered with a much bigger ask – wanting payment. Feeling cornered and rushed, Greg agreed, then walked away feeling “resentful and taken advantage of” for “just trying to do the right thing and lead from my values!”
Greg’s challenge in leading from his values relied on an untested assumption that his own values were sufficient (and even shared by others) – and that values alone were enough to complete this process.
I led Greg through an exercise I call Leadership VAT (Values, Ability, Tools):
Values:
What value/s do you want/need to use? What other values are at play, or might matter to the other person? How far are they aligned?
– For Greg, equity was his prime value. But he hadn’t thought about the NGO representative’s values, nor that they might be motivated by something other than good will. In reality, not only were two different value systems at work: they were far apart.
Ability:
What ability or skills are needed to make this a successful relationship or process? Or, what skill were you missing in your most difficult relationship/process?
– Under stress, Greg felt pressured into agreeing with the NGO rep. Before starting a chat that became a negotiation he was unprepared for, Greg could have better prepared by calling on several key skills. He could have started by gathering intelligence through empathy—seeking to understand his partner’s perspective and uncovering shared interests and opportunities for mutual benefit. Exercising emotional intelligence, specifically, reflecting on the source of his own stress could have allowed him to lean into that tension to identify underlying needs and apply self-regulation techniques. Remembering his higher purpose—expanding educational access in rural areas—could have helped him stay grounded and focused on the bigger picture, while maintaining adaptability and creativity to navigate challenges as they arose. Finally, by approaching the conversation with clear intention, Greg could have practiced assertive yet respectful communication to express expectations unambiguously.
Tools:
What practical tools would help you to lead and operationalize your values? (E.g. checklists, apps, post-action review, reflective practice).
– Greg had approached this as a values-based chat – he hadn’t anticipated a negotiation, so he hadn’t prepared a list of intelligence to gather and questions to ask. He needed to utilise his negotiation and communication tools. Greg decided to develop a checklist to prepare for conversations, no matter how informal, and expand his negotiation toolkit.
Combining values, ability and tools was pivotal for Greg. He learned to enter situations with curiosity about potentially different values systems and with practical resources to navigate them. Together, values, ability and tools enable leaders to navigate tension, preserve relationships, and reach outcomes that serve everyone’s interests.
3. Situate Values in Context
Part of our work as a leader is to illustrate how individual, team, and organizational values can work together and be expressed. But what happens when someone insists their personal value must be honored, regardless of other people’s or organizational values?
Maria, Director at a large professional services company, encountered this when one of her direct reports, Sam, insisted on “sharing his truth.” His bluntness and negative criticism proved disruptive to Maria and the team, but Sam simply reasoned that honesty was one of his core values that “deserves respect.”
Maria was struggling to get Sam to recognize his entrenchment and its impact, and to find a way for him to honor his value without causing conflict. I suggested she use the 5 Es Values Flexercise with Sam:
1. Express the Value:
– What is the value that feels non-negotiable?
– Why is this value so important?
– When this value is honored, what’s the positive outcome for you? … And for others?
Maria reported that this was great for opening up a potentially volatile conversation in a positive way, and it really got Sam thinking about the effects and outcomes for others.
2. Examine the Impact:
- What happens when you strongly insist on this value? How does it affect your colleagues, team or organization when you hold this as a non-negotiable?
- What might the unintended consequences be?
- What about other values at work – individuals’, organizational – how do we balance these?
Sam reflected on his recent ‘share’ – “Taylor’s incompetent and doesn’t know what she’s doing” – and its impact. Sam recognized a series of unintended consequences – Taylor’s hurt feelings; the team’s increasing frustration, psychological insecurity and reticence to work with him, and the extra work for Maria: “cleaning up” after him. He also realized ‘feeling safe’ and ‘collaboration’ are core team values, and balance is needed.
3. Evaluate your Flexibility:
On a scale where 0 = “I completely abandon this value” and 10 = “I enforce this value rigidly, no exceptions,”
- Where do you usually stand?
- What would it look like if you shifted just 1–2 points down the scale?
Sam initially wore his 9/10 as a badge of honor and integrity.
He was only able to explore loosening its hold after they went through the next step, which surfaces practical behaviors that honor the value while allowing space for other perspectives:
4. Explore Integrity/Openness Options:
- What are two ways you could live this value without imposing it on others?
- How could you respect your value and remain open to different approaches?
Maria asked Sam to identify other ways to elevate performance, instead of his alienating “truth-bombing”. Sam identified “listening in entirety before weighing in;” noting down his objections for himself; avoiding categorical criticism, and asking two thought-provoking, non-loaded questions for every proposed critique.
5. Experiment & Reflect:
– Experiment with holding the value more lightly in the coming week.
– Choose one small way to honor the value with more flexibility.
– Next time, reflect: “What changed for me, and for others?”
Sam reported that listening was “painful,” but noting his objectives forced him to listen. Reformulating objections into questions allowed him to share more constructively with colleagues.
On Values
Values are essential to leadership. But they do have a shadow side. Held too tightly, they become rigid and impassable; applied without question, they become naïve, even disempowering, and enacted without balance, they become divisive. Values exist in a context and series of relationships; so when values don’t align, open communication and mutual understanding are key. Seeking common ground and balancing expectations while respecting personal beliefs creates the space for values to support individuals, teams and organizations to thrive.
Values are not commandments written in stone, and part of our leadership work is to recognize how to work with values that are plural, contextual, and relational. This is how we navigate the shadow side of values while illuminating an authentic and sustainable way forward.
An abridged version of this articles is available on Psychology Today.
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