What are Values?

"How are values critical to leadership - and what are my own personal values"

Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses. In my personal opinion, what makes up a value is your strengths and how you use them. A strength is only as useful as you allow it to be. In example, if you are a leader and consider yourself to be careful and patient, than taking your time on a project would give you a higher rate of success. But procrastinating and putting a project off to the side will mean that you are enclosing the time period that you will be done in, which in return goes against your attributes of being careful and patient because you will be in more of a rush to meet the deadline.

            To me, values are your best attributes in which can be used to further yourself. Nobody has the exact same values and people work different in different environments. This is why it’s impossible to be a perfectly rounded human being. If you are loud, you’re not quiet. If you have never gotten a B in your life and study too much (my roommate), than you’re most likely very knowledgeable but have to sacrifice nights going out where you become socialable and get your face out there. It’s all personal preference and we may not even realize all of our given values. Really, values are ever changing as you grow up and have different experiences. Even with that said, I don’t think there could ever be a person to have absolutely no values. Anybody with a brain has some sort of thought about personal goals or even a way to describe themselves.

            When thinking about how values were shown in class, I immediately thought about the group activity where you were with two other people and one person was a listener and one was the recorder. As people were telling their stories, there was a list of adjectives on the board saying things like “wisdom”, “questionable”, and “energetic”. You were able to compare little details of the story to these words and almost get to know the person a little bit. The stories dealt with emotion and honesty, which could be a value right there. Being honest is something that most people want to be known for but not something everyone can achieve. Its like the saying “trust takes a lifetime to build, but a second to destroy”. People remember. If you mess up bad and lie about something, you may be labeled as disloyal in that persons head forever. In conclusion, stick to the values you hold most closely to you because you’ll be happier that way.

-Dave Reardon-