Your Values Guide You In Business and In Life

Your values guide you in business and life, and the undefeated boxer you’ve never heard of.

The key reason you haven’t is probably because the fight happened in 1989 and definitely was not for a world title. I trained for two years at Tony Mundine’s gym. Tony, a boxing legend, won Australian titles across 3 different weight divisions from 1969 to 1980. Alex Tui, former world kickboxing champion and I sparred a few times and I certainly discovered that he hit hard and had a durable jaw.

So it’s fight night. The man in my corner is Billy Duluth, another sparring partner and professional boxer. The bell goes. It’s a blur. In the second round the other fighter gets dazed and his eyes go glassy so the referee gives him a standing eight count. The fight continues and then the bell goes. We go back to our corners.

Then it happened. Billy looks me in the eye and eagerly said “You can knock this bloke out!” I look back at Billy, say nothing, but think “I just want the other guy and me to get through this”. At that moment I realised that boxing wasn’t for me, but the fight didn’t magically stop. When the final bell came it was left to the judges. I won on points. My opponent and I embraced in mutual respect and then I went to hug my cornerman Billy.

Conflict with personal values

It took me two years of training all the way to sitting in my corner getting ready for Round 3 to work out that I really didn’t get fulfilment out of hitting people. A slow learner perhaps. In that moment when Billy was urging me to knock the other man out, my mind was telling me that the most important thing was that no one got hurt. My personal values had been challenged and it had happened at a very challenging time, midway through the fight. But Billy didn’t know this, because I had never told him.

In business, leaders often need to ask people to do difficult things. But when they ask them to do something that runs against personal values, the pushback is inevitable. That’s why understanding our personal values and the personal values of our teams matters so much. It affects how we engage, how we perform, and ultimately how we and our teams succeed.

Are you on your right path?

In our work environment, as in life, we want to be sure the path we are on is the right one. We want to make sure that the skills we are developing and the things we are doing are appropriate to what we really want to achieve, to help us get to where we really want to go. Otherwise, you could be like the fighter who’s done the training, who’s winning the fight but who does not want to deliver the knockout blow.

Understanding the values of your team members, and your own values

Understanding the values that drive people and the thoughts that hold them back is key to getting the most out of individuals, teams and yourself. At Stoke we’re a team of seasoned campaigners, including former Directors and General Managers who’ve faced our fair share of challenges, in business and in life.

If you’re a leader looking to better understand the personal values that drive your team and yourself, if you want to build a high performing team and stronger leaders to deliver on your business objectives, we’d love to help. Contact us.

We also have a few other stories to tell, but trust me, they’re not all about boxing.

Dan Kery

Stoke Consulting

Drawing from a successful executive career across engineering, sales, planning, management recruitment and operations management, Dan brings insightful and diverse thinking to help clients. Coaching leaders in globally recognised methods of decision making, problem solving, priority alignment and project management, he has a knack for enabling the truly best ideas to move from ambitions to outcomes.