Developing & Branding Your Personal Competitive Advantage

Living Your Values

Before you make any tough decision in life, you way them against your core values.  Easy enough in theory.  My challenge to you is do you live your values?  I know, we all just said, “sure I do”. 

In a closer look, what are your core values?  Have you written them down?  Okay, now look at your behavior and perception from others – can others state your core values by your actions and does that match with what you wrote down?  Let’s address a few wildly mentioned values made by people:

Family: yet studies show that the average dad spends well under an hour a day with the kids.

Health: look around.

Community: we step up in a time of need!  What else?     

Recognition: for what?

You are unique because in addition to some common values shared by many, you have other values that drive your decision and life.  What are they? 

It is not until you truly understand and live your values before you can make decisions of fit with people and companies.  Have you noticed you or others adopting values of others, like your employer.  On that note, some companies make it easy to understand who they are and in some cases there are examples and proof.  Here are a few top of mind that have dedicated values stated on websites - see the values section of these websites:

Marathon Oil ; Microsoft

 ; Perot Systems; Bank of the West; Volvo; GE

These are examples that I think of because they are well known brand names and there is documentation of doing what they say they value and frankly easy to find the value statements.  There are scores of more well known and lesser known businesses that also state and live their values and are easily found in mission and vision statements. 

Can you see that is would be easier to decide if this is the right environment for you? 

Leadership branding is not only a reflection of the CEO in these companies; they are just the most visible person.  Team leads, and employees up and down must live the values for the culture to be authentic.  Hiring the right people and paying close attention to change is the answer to sustaining the values the CEO lives on behalf of the company.   

Would it be beneficial to your individual brand if others could choose you based on character – your values and action?