LinkedIn Connections and Followers. Facebook Friends and Groups. Communities. Movements. Clubs. Circles. Partners. Couples. Tribes.
People are social creatures. We socialize. We create couples, and partnerships. We join the groups. We join communities. We join the companies. I wanted to say we join the countries. But that is a different topic.
In essence, we create tribes or join someone else’s tribe, usually in hopes of the good, some mutual goal, belief, interest, trust, etc. Historically, in tribes, we survived. Standing back-to-back, protecting each other and our families from the enemy tribes.
Who is your tribe? How did you choose the one?
It happened, we met and got in love… We share similar interests… We share common values… We have the same goals… We program the same language… We practice Iyengar yoga… We love flying jets…
This is what generally makes a tribe. Similarities. And trust… If there is no trust, it is not a tribe but a bunch of people.
Is the tribe you are in, actually your tribe? What tells you, that you belong there?
Let’s take a company you work for.
I found a method to match an individual with a company. I wanted to say “to match with the party”, i.e. “the line of the party and the government” as people used to say in Soviet times.
The term “politically correct” was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the Communist Party line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists and was meant to separate Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance. — Wikipedia
HRs call it the Core Values.
The Core Values
You may have seen the words, such as Integrity, Growth, etc. I was never taking them seriously. To me, they were some abstract words hanging on the walls in frames… I used to call them propaganda.
Propaganda. Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, is used to promote a political cause or point of view.
However, there is a meaning.
The mission, vision, and core values are the essence of almost any established company’s philosophy. They are the ingredients of the company belief system, helping navigate the masses of people in the same direction, and helping to get rid of those ones incompatible, incompatible with the system. Basically, there is no big difference between a company and a state. A company is a little state or kingdom with its laws/rules, and values, i.e. tools to maintain control or boundaries, avoid anarchy, and support integrity and sustainability in the long term.
When the core values of the company do not match with your own ones, at a certain point you may experience various outcomes: misunderstandings, confrontations, burnouts, not being willing to work there, etc.
Therefore, it is important to know your core values, so that they would become filters of your choice, the choice of which tribe you join and which you do not.
What actually are your core values?
If you do not know them, let us do an exercise and identify your core values. It may take 5-10 minutes of your time.
Here is a list of the words that may help you:
- Acceptance
- Adventure
- Affection
- Appreciation
- Balance
- Beauty
- Be-True
- Caring
- Change
- Commonality
- Communication
- Compassion
- Connection
- Contentment (be sure)
- Contributing
- Cooperation
- Creativity
- Enjoyment
- Entertain
- Entrepreneurial
- Excitement
- Faith
- Family
- Finesse
- Forgiveness
- Freedom
- Friendship
- Fun
- Fun-loving
- Generosity
- Giving People a Chance
- Goodness
- Grace
- Gratitude
- Happiness
- Harmony
- Home
- Honesty
- Humor
- Innovation
- Intelligence
- Invention
- Involvement
- Justice
- Kindness
- Knowledge
- Leadership
- Learning
- Love
- Loyalty
- Openness
- Patience
- Peace
- Personal development
- Pride in Your Work
- Professionalism
- Prosperity
- Quality
- Reciprocity
- Relationship
- Renewal
- Respect
- Self-respect
- Spiritualism
- Teamwork
- Trusting Your Gut
- Willingness
- Wisdom
Feel free to add your own.
Let us do some manipulations with these words:
- Order them by priority, moving the most important ones to the top.
- Choose the top 10.
- Order them again.
- Choose the top 5.
- Order them again.
- Choose the top 3. These are your core values.
Look at the resulting list and compare it with your company’s. How are they compatible? To what degree?
I am not saying, you have to leave the company if your core values are different. But it is good to be informed and having clarity on what you both stand for or where you might get an issue.
I personally doubt the majority of people ever think about these things.
I think you should know which flags you stand under, and which principles and morale you agree to accept and support, be that the country, the company, the community, the group, the partnership, or the beloved ones. The Tribe. So that one day you do not find yourself in the middle of the fire.
It is not necessarily all that black and white if you, for example, mix your work and private life. It may seem multidimensional and, therefore, complex. However, you can make it easier for yourself by distinguishing (“separating flies from cutlets”) when and based on what conditions you support each tribe. It is about following your own principles, and your path and setting up healthy boundaries so that you can maintain a healthy relationship with whoever.
Do you trust each other?