Clarifying Your Values
August 13, 2026 | By David M. Wagner
I’ve previously written about the clarity that stems from identifying your core values as a leader, team, or organization.
Your values guide how you’ll approach difficult decisions, individually and collectively:
Does accepting a sponsorship from that problematic organization create conflict with your commitment to equity? Time to turn it down.
Does that candidate for your open position share your team’s dedication to collaboration? They'll likely fit in with the culture.
Are there questions about whether the design of your new program matches the quality you’re known for? See if changes can be made to pass your standards.
But how do you decide what your values are in the first place – and also ensure that your team shares the same understanding of what they mean?
After all, abstractions like “quality,” “collaboration,” “equity,” and “community,” (common values I’ve encountered!) can leave a lot of room for interpretation.
Here’s how to transform the idea of “values” from a list of general, ill-defined words into a meaningful framework for guiding your team’s decisions.
What Values Are (and What They Aren’t)
While the importance of “values” is touted in just about every book on leadership I’ve ever read, few provide a compelling definition.
So without getting too wrapped up in semantics, I’ll suggest this as a working description:
Values are standards of behavior that arise from your core beliefs.
If you believe everyone deserves to be treated fairly, and you hold yourself and others accountable for treating people differently based on arbitrary characteristics, then some form of “fairness” is likely a personal value of yours.
Organizational values work the same way.
Claiming an organizational value implies that the value reflects a shared belief and that your team is committed, collectively, to enforcing behaviors that align with that belief.
I want to point out that while core beliefs give rise to values, they are distinct. Not every core belief drives behavior.
For example, your team may share core beliefs about what people deserve (say, “safe, accessible, and affordable drinking water”) – beliefs that underpin your vision, mission, and perhaps your theory of change.
Those elements of your strategy will also inform your key decisions, yet they are not standards of behavior. Values identify how you commit to acting.
Values Discovery
A common exercise for identifying values is to show someone a list of terms, ask, “which if these are most important to you?,” and then invite them to rewrite the value as a short phrase, in their own words.
It’s not a bad approach. I’ve facilitated similar exercises.
But I think we can improve upon it, especially for identifying organizational (shared) values.
Build values from shared beliefs. As described above, values derive from core beliefs. Have your team respond to a prompt such as, “What’s an important belief you think your teammates all share?” and compare answers.
Once you’ve converged on some candidate shared beliefs, note which are beliefs about the way the world is/should be (which impact vision, mission, and program design) and which are beliefs about personal and team behavior.
Use that latter group to identify candidate behaviors.
Identify what’s required to “fit in” at your organization. A prompt I will often use in strategy surveys is to fill in the blank: “Our best employees, board members, and supporters all share a commitment to __________.”
Those key characteristics or commitments help describe your organizational culture, which itself is a reflection of your values. Use the results of that prompt to seed some ideas for candidate values.
Values Refinement and Testing
At this point, you’ll likely have a list of some of those big, abstract ideas.
Here are some prompts for turning that list into a set of (useful) core values:
“What would it look like in practice to fully commit to this value?” Consider all parts of your operations. Play around with scenarios that might test each value. For example, if “fairness” is a candidate value, how would fully committing to fairness impact your employment policies? Your program designs? Your donor appreciation practices? Thinking it through in practice can help refine (and eliminate) candidate values.
“Are we already committed to this value, or is it something we wish were true?” As a follow-up to the previous prompt, it helps to distinguish current values (those principles to which your organization already exhibits commitment) from what Paterick Lencioni terms aspirational values (principles we agree are necessary, but aren’t practicing…yet). In The Advantage, Lencioni suggests this test: current values are the ones you are willing to be punished for adhering to (see: that sponsorship you turned down back in the beginning).
“Does this value distinguish our standards of behavior from our peers?” Lencioni also suggests separating core values (2 to 3 distinguishing commitments) from “permission-to-play” values (foundational or baseline principles that need to be true for anyone to take you seriously). Depending on your mission area, values like “integrity” and “community” might be foundational – rather than distinct to your organization. They’re still important! It can just help to note them separately from what sets your organization apart.
“When (something happens), we will (response with these behaviors).” Once you have refined and narrowed your list of candidate values, revisit the first prompt and the kinds of scenarios that are likely to, or already have, tested the remaining values. Use this prompt to describe specific behaviors that demonstrate the value in practice. For instance: “When we notice some individuals or ideas are not given air time in important discussions, we will pause the conversation to ensure they are heard before moving on” (inclusion might be the core value).
By following these prompts, you’ll have a clearer idea of what values are core to your organization’s identity, which describe higher aspirations you’ll commit to achieving, which are foundational for any organization in your space, and which are not actually important in practice.
You’ll also have the start of a behavior-based description of each core value for fostering shared understanding and commitment to those values.
Values don’t have to be abstract or nebulous. At their best, they set clear expectations for how your team will act and make decisions, guided by shared beliefs. Need a hand defining yours? Let’s chat!