9 Ways to Bring Core Values to Life
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Core Values
Core values are often overlooked or treated as a checkbox exercise in organizations.
Many leadership teams display core values on posters but fail to live them in day-to-day operations.
Core values, when defined and used correctly, should anchor culture and represent non-negotiable behaviors.
The Problem with Core Values
Core values are often not integrated into organizational practice, leading to cynicism.
Example: If leaders in a company can’t recall their own core values, it makes them meaningless.
Solution: Core values must be clearly defined, communicated, and embedded into the organization's actions.
Core Values as Non-Negotiable Behaviors
Core values must be non-negotiable and guide behaviors.
Example: If a company’s core value is respect, but leadership hesitates to act against a top-performing employee who violates this value.
Solution: Leadership must uphold core values consistently, regardless of an employee’s performance/revenue.
Three Tests for Core Values
Fireable Offense Test: Violating a core value should be grounds for dismissal.
Financial Hit Test: The company must be willing to take a financial loss to uphold a core value.
Alive Today Test: Core values must reflect current behavior in the organization, not aspirational ideals.
Nine Ways to Bring Core Values to Life
Talent Assessment: Use core values to assess talent, focusing on both productivity and cultural fit.
Recruiting and Hiring: Hire people who already embody the company’s core values rather than training them to adopt those values later.
Storytelling: Share stories about employees who exemplify core values, helping people remember and internalize them.
Onboarding: Make core values a significant part of onboarding, with leadership (e.g., CEO) taking time to emphasize their importance.
Performance Appraisals: Include core values in performance reviews, rewarding or correcting employees based on how well they live these values.
Recognition: Recognize employees who exemplify core values through informal acknowledgments rather than formal awards.
Quarterly Themes: Introduce quarterly themes focused on one core value at a time, creating contests and challenges around that theme.
Everyday Modeling and Reinforcement: Continuously model and reinforce core values in daily interactions and encourage peer recognition.
Posters and Merchandise: Use posters, mugs, and other items to remind employees of core values—but only after the other steps are in place.
Action Steps
Evaluate where your organization stands: Do you need to create core values, assess them, or bring them to life more effectively?
Implement the nine strategies to ensure that core values become a living, integral part of your organization's culture.
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mike-goldman: When I bring up the idea of core values with leaders and leadership teams, very often I get rolling eyes like, Oh, we're going to talk about that garbage again. And I think there's a good reason for that. And, and I know for the first 15 years of my career, I was probably running one of those guys rolling their eyes because my experience with core values was it was something leadership teams did because they read in a book that it was a good thing to do because some smart consultant recommended they do it.
So they went out like. You know, just checking the box got those core values. We now have the poster on the wall. We will, you know, maybe introduce it with some fanfare. And now we've done our job. And they kind of become a joke to the organization. And I get it.
So in this episode, I want to talk about Nine ways to bring core values to life in an organization.
But I want to spend a little bit more time on the problem.
Two quick stories. One is a client I was working with, man, it must be about 15 years ago. Now we were doing a two day strategic planning session and core values was on the agenda. Their VP, Of HR, when we got to that point in the agenda said, Oh, hold on, we could save some time. She ran out of the conference room, went into their offices, came running back in with the framed poster of their core values, said, we already have these, we don't have to talk about it.
I said, okay. So I took the frame poster, put it against the wall with the core values facing the wall, and I asked the leadership team, the most senior six people in the organization, I said, okay, tell me what your core values are. And they struggled. I think we have something about collaboration or, or is it teamwork?
Or maybe we use the word community. I think there's something in there about honesty or integrity. They didn't know what their core values were. And trust me, if they don't know what they are, nobody else knows what they are or cares. And in fact, some probably look at the poster on the wall. And. Laugh a little bit and think how much wasted time and wasted investment happened to create something that's meaningless.
If.
We define core values in the right way. Core values are not just a plaque on the wall. Core values are a culmination of what's best, what's right, what's most noble about our culture. Core values done the right way anchors your culture. They're not just words and they're not aspirational. Core values represent non negotiable behaviors in the organization.
Another quick story to drive home the point of this idea of non negotiable behaviors is another one of my clients had created. In fact, I helped them create a set of core values and one of them had to do with respect for others within their organization for their clients. And, uh, they called it, you know, we treat everybody like grandma.
So in other words, if you wouldn't say it to your grandmother, you wouldn't say it to anyone else. Well, we were in the midst of something I call the quarterly talent assessment, which if you listen to my podcast, you've probably heard a lot about, and we were talking about a salesperson who is very productive, was bringing in a lot of revenue, was their number two salesperson in the company.
But was yelling and screaming, disrespecting, cursing out the customer service teams and the operations teams on a regular basis, consistently and repeatedly breaking one of these non negotiable core values, non negotiable behaviors. Well, we were talking about this individual and what we needed to do about it.
And the CEO said, Mike, I get where you're trying to go with this, but this is our number two salesperson. Let's move on. I'm not doing anything about this. We need the revenue. This person's bringing in non negotiable. Evidently, if productivity is high enough, that idea of respect, we treat everyone like grandma was pretty damn negotiable.
So as a coach, I gave. The CEO and the rest of the leadership team, what I thought were a few choices. I said, look, either we need to take action with, for this individual to coach. And if they can't get their act together, non negotiable means they don't belong here. If you're not willing to do that,
then I believe the idea of respect should no longer be a core value. Because if you are going to allow some people to get away with blatantly and repeatedly violating a core value and other people not to get away with it, then your core values At best become a hammer you use to hit your low producing folks over the head with, but you let your high producers get away with it.
At worst, they become a joke in the organization and they become a negative thing versus core values ought to be a positive thing. Core value should anchor your organization. Give people behaviors to live up to and be proud of, not be used. Simply as a hammer to hit low producing folks. Now, as it turns out, the leadership team convinced the CEO that this person was actually hurting the people around them.
While they were bringing in a whole lot of revenue, they were actually lowering the performance of the people around them. And when you looked at it that way, they were a negative and not a positive. So they wound up convincing the CEO that this person needed to be. Coached and warned and frankly it didn't work and this person needed to be coached out of the organization and they wondered why they hadn't done it sooner because it lifted everyone up and everybody else thought, why did it take you this long?
There are three tests that I use. When either. creating core values with my clients or testing core values that they may already have in place to make sure that those core values work. And I've already mentioned one of those tests.
one of those tests is, is it a fireable offense? If someone repeatedly and blatantly violates that core value, are you committed? To firing that person. I don't care who they are. If not, then it's not a core value. It might be a nice to have, but it is not a core value. If it's not non negotiable second test, are you willing to take a financial hit to uphold that core value?
That could mean. Again, I'll, I'll keep this idea of respect. I actually had a client back, I had a staffing and recruiting firm for about three years. And one of our core values was similar, was all around respect. And I had a client that was just berating my staffing supervisors. Talking down to them, screaming at them, treating them with zero respect, be willing to take a financial hit meant that I was willing to fire that client.
And I did now, interestingly enough, when I told that client, I could, we could no longer work with her because of the way she was treating my staff.
She ended up opening up to me about all of the challenges she was having and how sorry she was that she took it out on my staff. She wound up being one of our best clients.
So the first test was, Is, is it a fireable offense? The second test is, are you willing to take a financial hit to uphold that core value? And the third test is, is that core value already alive in our organization today? That's an important one. Core values are, are, as I said earlier, what's best, what's right.
What's most noble about your company and your culture. It's not something aspirational. That is a way you hope to behave one day, can't be aspirational and non negotiable at the same time, or you'd have to fire half your team. So it's gotta be alive today. Now, now that I shared kind of what it is and a couple of stories in the three tests, let me take you through what I promised.
I'd take you through is nine ways to bring your core values to life. So it's not just a plaque on the wall. Number one, I already mentioned in.
My last story is use it to assess talent. Again, if you've listened to my podcast, you've heard me talk a dozen times about the idea of the talent density framework and the quarterly talent assessment, but without going into that detail, using Core values.
When you are with your team, talking about the talent within your organization, assessing the talent within your organization, figuring out, you know, who needs coaching, who needs development, what kind of coaching and development they need, who needs to be coached up and who needs to be coached out of the organization.
That's not just about productivity. When we assess performance, learn I believe performance has two components. It's not just productivity. And too often we just look at productivity as my client CEO did when he was talking about that salesperson that he didn't want to take action on. Productivity is one of those components.
The other is culture fit. And I believe core values are the best way to measure, to assess whether someone is living your culture. So number one way to bring your core values to life is use it when you're assessing talent.
Number two is use it in recruiting and hiring. We very often make the mistake of thinking we're going to hire some superstar, bring them on board, train them in our core values so that then they can go live our core values.
That's crazy. We don't train people in our core values so they could live our core values. We hire people that are already living our core values. Now we still may train them on what we call it, our special brand of those core values. What are those behaviors? How do we hold people accountable to those behaviors?
How do we reward people? For those behaviors, but in our recruiting, we need to find ways through our sourcing of talent, our interviewing of talent, our evaluation of talent to make sure folks are living those core values before we hire them. And, and please don't do that. By injecting a question in your interview process that says, you know, by the way, you know, one of our core values is collaboration.
Give me an example of one time that, give me an example of a time you've collaborated. Oh my God. Don't set people up to give you a bullshit answer. Inject ways, things to listen for. If you've got. A core value around not blaming and taking accountability. Well, don't ask someone if they blame or, or how do they define accountability?
Listen, when they're taking you through their different jobs and what they've achieved and, and why they've gone from one job to another, are they taking. All of the credit. And when something went wrong, are they blaming, you know, if you've got a core value around collaboration, are they talking about how they've worked with other team members and how they share the glory or share the blame?
It may not be a specific question, although there are some, it may be things you need to listen for. But the bottom line, however, you creatively do it. We need to make sure that we have a recruiting process that allows us to hire people that are already living our core values. That's number one. I'm sorry.
Number one was talent assessment. Number two was recruiting.
And number three is storytelling. It's one thing to say here are our core values and here's how we define them. And here are the specific behaviors. That's beautiful. That ought to be communicated and repeated often. People remember stories. So the more that you can tell stories about folks that have lived the core values, the more people will remember them.
In fact, there was actually not one of my clients, but client of a good friend of mine who's a coach, um, had a core value. Their core values were names of stories. So one of their core values was we treat everyone like Joe Smith. What the heck does that mean? Now, to the outside world, that means nothing.
Which is fine, because these core values are not meant for marketing on your website. They're meant to build culture internally. So externally, we treat everyone like Joe Smith. What the heck does that mean? But internally, that related to this, to a story. A story of a gentleman who interviewed with the company.
And didn't get the job. His name was Joe Smith. He didn't get the job, but when, while he was being interviewed, he was treated so well, he was treated so kindly. He was made to feel so important that he said, man, I didn't get the job. He was upset. He didn't get the job, but he said, if I ever get the chance to work with that company again, man, I want to work with them.
They were such good people and I just love how they made me feel well, a number of years later in his position at his new company, he actually hired that company as a vendor and became their biggest client, all because of how they treated him when he was being interviewed years before. So everyone you meet is Joe Smith is their way of saying, treat everyone like they're the most important person in the world.
So storytelling about your core values, storytelling to name your core values is a beautiful thing. That's number three.
Number four is onboarding. Now I mentioned onboarding before in more of a negative way where I said you don't bring people on, train them in our core values when you onboard them so they could live your core values.
Certainly not. As I said, we need to hire people that are already live already living our core values. However, during the onboarding process, You absolutely need to spend time, serious time on your core values and how important they are to your organization. One of my clients, about a 500 person company, um, big sales team, and they were bringing on salespeople and service people every week, they had a, uh, about 10 or 12 people that were being hired and they had a whole onboarding and training team that spent a week with these folks.
Training them at a very powerful onboarding program.
The one time someone other than that onboarding and training team did the training was when they talked about core values, when they talked about core values during the onboarding, the CEO walked in the room
that sends a hell of a message that this is not just a throwaway. We didn't just check a box and say, we're, we've got core values. It's important enough that the CEO. Took his valuable time. To talk to these new recruits about core values.
So number four, using it, using an onboarding number five is use it in your performance appraisal process.
Now, again, if you've listened to a lot of my podcast episodes, you know, I believe annual performance reviews, even quarterly performance reviews are the worst invention ever created in business. However, I know a lot of you still use them. So when you are sitting down with one of your direct reports and working with them reviewing their performance and talking about what you should be doing moving forward, which is something everyone should be doing, even though I hate the typical performance review process, of course, that's something you should be doing with your direct reports is holding them accountable, giving them feedback on how they're performing.
Talking about how to best move forward. Core values need to be a big piece of that. Are they living those core values? If they are, let them know how much you appreciate it. They're not, let them know what a problem that is and what they need to do to improve it.
Number six, use core values in recognition.
Recognize people. Now, by the way, let me start off by talking about what I've seen not work very well. Please don't create a monthly core value award. It's kind of like the employee of the month. God, I hate those. And I hate those because they start off with a lot of fanfare. But if you're being honest, the same two or three team members would win that damn award every month.
And you wind up whoever is accountable for selecting who wins the award, the core values award or the. Employee of the month, you wind up saying who hasn't won the award yet and I could make an excuse to give them an award because we don't want them to feel bad. So when I say recognition, it's not that kind of monthly reward or award recognition could be a pat on the back.
Hey, great job in that meeting being. An unbelievable example of our innovation core value could be informal one on one it could be in your monthly town hall saying, Hey, Susan, stand up, let's give Susan a round of applause. Susan, you are such a great example of our collaboration, core value.
And let me tell you all a little story as to why I'm saying that. And then tell the story, that kind of recognition. It's important.
Number seven themes, quarterly themes, one of my clients who's very creative. They happen to be a marketing firm, so they're way more creative than I am. But when they first created their core values and they have four of them each quarter, they created a theme.
About one of the core values and the theme was fun ways to learn about the core values. It was, uh, you know, contest contests about living the core values, ways to, you know, how many stories could we get back from our clients about, you know, living, living our core values.
But there are themes you could set, you know, the theme this quarter is in innovation. Which is one of our core values and we're going to have a contest with how many ideas we can come up with to wow our clients, you know, things like that. So themes are super important.
Number eight is everyday modeling and reinforcement.
And this is actually. I believe the most important one, you could do everything else, but if you never kind of informally talk about the core values, they lose their importance. If someone in a meeting
says over and over again, yeah, I know that's a problem, but that's not, that's not my job. Or something to that idea, pulling that person aside after the meeting and saying, you know, Hey, I'm, I wasn't real pleased with your attitude in that meeting is okay, at least you're confronting them on it, but pulling someone aside after the meeting and say, Hey, you know what, uh, I need to remind you that collaboration.
Or we lift each other up, which is one of my client's core values. We lift each other up is one of our core values. And I got to tell you, I didn't see you living that core value in that meeting. In fact, I saw you doing the opposite. Every time you said, it's not my job. I need you to work on that or the opposite, pulling somebody aside after the meeting and saying, Hey, great job in that meeting is a good thing to say.
But saying, Hey, you know, I've got to tell you, you did a wonderful job at that meeting, living our, you know, measure twice, cut once core value, the way you drilled in and made sure that that was the right answer before we went ahead and, and executed it, man, you are a great example of that core value, and I want to thank you for it.
That's number eight.
And by the way, Also number eight, the everyday modeling and reinforcement. Encourage your team members to participate in that everyday modeling and reinforcement. Doesn't have to be one of your direct reports that you thank for living a core value or talk to about where they're not living a core value.
It could be a peer. In fact, I actually had one of my clients, probably six months after they introduced the core values. They actually created a video. Of team members thanking other team members for living specific core values. That's a beautiful way. To reinforce it. And it's also a beautiful way back to what was it?
Number six around recognition to recognize people. So we've talked about eight of them so far. using them to assess talent. Recruiting was number two. Storytelling was number three. Onboarding was number four. performance appraisals was number five.
Number six was recognition. Number seven was themes. Number eight is everyday modeling and reinforcement.
And number nine is the first thing people normally do. But I saved it for number nine because I think it's one of the last things you should do. And that's the posters and the t shirts and the mugs and the hats and the plaques and all that stuff.
I kind of made fun of those at the beginning of the podcast. But I make fun of those when they're the only thing you do. It needs to be one of the things you do. It is, if you're living all the other eight things we've talked about, if you've got the right core values that, that passed the three tests, then having the plaque on the wall is a pretty damn good reminder.
You know, having a core value on a mug is a pretty good reminder. So those types of things are great to do, but please don't do them first, save them towards the end of the list.
So I hope that helped. And I guess my, my question to you as I wrap up is what actions are you committed to take around core values?
Do you not have core values? And you need to create them. And by the way, I have another core values episode that talks all about how to create core values, something called the mission to Mars exercise. So do you need to create core values if you have created them, but you're not sure they're the right ones?
Do you need to use those three tests? To figure out whether you've got the right core values. And if you've got the right core values, but you're not executing them on them all that way, well, use one of the nine. And lastly, if you have core values, you've been executing on them really well. They're alive in your organization first.
Congratulations. Second, don't stop. And I hope one of my nine ways to bring core values to life could help you move that forward. You know, I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. I hope these nine ways to bring your core values to life helped you get there today. Talk to you next time.