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Every leader faces moments when technical expertise isn't enough. You have the right experience, the right training, and the right team—but something still feels off. Your decisions don't resonate. Your team seems disconnected. Your leadership feels forced rather than natural.
The missing piece? Understanding your leadership values.
Research shows that leaders who understand their core values make decisions 3.4x more effectively than those who don't. Yet 70% of leadership development programs fail because they focus on skills while ignoring the values foundation that drives authentic leadership.
This guide will help you understand what leadership values are, why they matter, and how to leverage them for more effective, authentic leadership.
Leadership values are the fundamental beliefs that guide how you make decisions, treat people, and approach challenges as a leader. They're different from skills because they explain the "why" behind your actions, not just the "how."
Think of values as your internal GPS system. When you're facing a tough decision with no clear right answer, your values help you navigate. They determine what you prioritize when resources are limited, how you respond during crises, and what kind of culture you create.
Here's what makes leadership values powerful: they're activated during emotional moments. When stress is high and time is short—exactly when leadership matters most—your values become your decision-making compass.
Organizations with strong value alignment see 40% lower turnover and 70% fewer safety incidents. Why? Because when leaders operate from clear values, their teams know what to expect.
The leadership development industry spends $366 billion annually teaching leaders what to do. But here's the problem: skills tell you how to lead, not why to lead.
Consider two managers facing the same situation—budget cuts requiring layoffs. Both have identical training and experience. Yet they make completely different decisions:
The difference isn't their skills—it's their leadership values.
Jim Collins' research on great companies found that the most effective leaders weren't necessarily the most skilled. They were the most authentic. They understood their values and built their leadership approach around them.
This explains why so many leaders feel like they're "playing a role" despite completing multiple leadership programs. When development focuses only on external behaviors without addressing internal values, you get technically correct but inauthentic leadership.
The result? Only 23% of employees strongly agree their manager provides meaningful feedback, showing a widespread disconnect between leadership training and authentic practice.
Understanding leadership values isn't just feel-good psychology—it's backed by decades of research. In fact, just 24% of senior executives believe their current leadership development programs are successful, and only 11% strongly agree they sustainably achieve results.
The breakthrough came from integrating three major research frameworks:
Schwartz Theory of Basic Values identified ten universal values that appear across all cultures. More importantly, it showed that values exist in relationship to each other—some are compatible, others create tension.
Workplace Values Research from Hogan Assessments demonstrated that "values are the key to understanding what people desire and strive to attain" in professional settings.
Meaning and Motivation Studies revealed that values serve as pathways to meaningful work experiences, creating hierarchical structures that guide behavior.
The key insight? Traditional leadership assessments focus on what leaders do, not what motivates them to do it. This creates four critical gaps:
Research reveals that leadership values cluster into three fundamental orientations. Understanding these helps you recognize your natural leadership tendencies and those of your team members.
These leaders excel at creating stability and sustainable systems. They prioritize:
Strengths: Building trust during uncertainty, creating reliable systems, maintaining team stability during change.
Potential blind spots: May resist necessary innovation or move too slowly in rapidly changing environments.
These leaders thrive on achievement and intellectual challenge. They emphasize:
Strengths: Driving change, pushing performance boundaries, achieving ambitious goals.
Potential blind spots: May overlook team well-being or push too hard for results without considering human impact.
These leaders prioritize relationships and meaningful work. They value:
Strengths: Building inclusive cultures, inspiring long-term commitment, creating meaningful work experiences.
Potential blind spots: May struggle with difficult decisions that negatively impact people, even when necessary for business success.
Most effective leaders have elements of all three orientations but lean heavily toward one. Teams with balanced value orientations outperform homogeneous teams by 27% on complex problem-solving tasks.
Within these three orientations, research has identified ten specific values that appear consistently across cultures and industries:
Here's the sophisticated insight: it's not about which values are "better." It's about understanding how your values interact and sometimes conflict.
For example, a leader might score high on both Power (seeking influence) and Community (prioritizing collective well-being). Traditional thinking would see this as contradictory. Values-aware leaders recognize this as a strength—the ability to build coalitions and drive change through inclusive authority.
Leaders who understand their value tensions make 60% fewer poor strategic decisions.
While self-reflection provides valuable insights, formal assessments offer deeper understanding and eliminate blind spots.
Values Card Sorts: Participants rank value statements by importance. Best for team exercises and initial exploration.
Behavioral Questionnaires: Structured assessments that measure how values manifest in workplace behavior. Provide detailed profiles of orientations and potential tensions.
360-Degree Reviews: Colleagues evaluate which values they observe in your leadership behavior. Often reveal gaps between intended and perceived values.
Organizations that integrate values-based assessments into their leadership development efforts see significantly stronger outcomes than those relying on traditional, skill-based approaches. Companies using high-quality assessment tools are more likely to outperform peers and build stronger leadership pipelines.
Understanding your values is just the beginning. The real impact comes from intentionally applying them in your daily leadership practice.
Choose one decision you need to make this week. Before acting, run it through your values filter:
Traditional goals focus only on outcomes. Values-based goals include process elements that reflect how you want to lead:
Sometimes your values will conflict with organizational demands. When this happens:
The most effective teams have diverse but complementary values. Use your understanding of leadership values to:
Research consistently shows that teams with balanced value profiles outperform homogeneous teams by significant margins.
People frequently ask these questions about leadership values:
Leadership is evolving from command-and-control models to influence-based approaches that require authenticity and genuine connection. 63% of employees won't work for companies whose values don't align with their own.
This trend is accelerating four key developments:
The question isn't whether you have leadership values—everyone does. The question is whether you understand them well enough to lead from them intentionally.
Leaders who operate from clear values make more consistent decisions, build stronger relationships, and create more sustainable results. They inspire others not through perfection, but through authenticity.
In a world where trust is scarce and change is constant, values-driven leaders have a critical advantage. They know who they are, what they stand for, and how to make decisions that align with both.
The future belongs to leaders who can bridge the gap between who they are and how they lead. Understanding your leadership values is the first step in that journey.
Ready to discover your leadership values? Start with the practical exercises in this guide, then consider formal assessment tools to deepen your understanding and accelerate your development.
Courtney Quigley is a Senior Solutions Architect at AIIR, based out of Chicago, Illinois. Her role entails helping companies assess executive leadership potential through the interpretation of psychometric, personality, and other assessments. When she’s not working, Courtney likes to rollerskate, sing karaoke, take road trips, and spend time with her friends and family (including her dogs).
