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V is for Values Turned Into Behaviours
Welcome! This article is part of an A–Z series where I’m sharing reflections on the patterns I keep seeing in teams, leadership and workplace culture.
Not theory. Not tips. Just observations from real working life.
I've been thinking about organisational values lately.
Particularly how much time businesses can spend deciding what their values should be, and how little time they sometimes spend thinking about what those values actually mean in practice.
Respect. Integrity. Collaboration. Accountability. Trust. All lovely words.
And I have actually seen some beautifully presented values over the years. On websites, in handbooks, on office walls.
But here's what I find interesting.
You can have respect written on the wall, but if people regularly interrupt one another in meetings, what does respect actually mean?
You can say you value collaboration, but if departments are working against each other rather than together, are people really experiencing it?
And you can have accountability as a value, but if nobody takes responsibility when things go wrong, what's the point?
I don't think the problem is necessarily the values themselves.
I think it's that we sometimes assume agreeing on a word means we've agreed on what it looks like. And those are two very different things.
Do we actually mean the same thing?
Take respect, for example, what does being respectful look like to you?
For some people, it's about being honest and direct, even when the conversation is uncomfortable.
For others, it's about listening, considering people's feelings and making sure everyone has a voice.
Someone else might see respect as trusting them to get on with their job without interference.
And another person might think it's about being prepared, following through on commitments and not wasting people's time.
All perfectly reasonable definitions of the word.
But imagine putting those people into a meeting where they disagree about something.
One person challenges an idea directly because they believe honesty is respectful, another thinks the challenge could have been handled more sensitively.
One person asks lots of questions because they want to understand, someone else feels as though their judgement is being questioned.
Nobody necessarily has bad intentions, but everyone is working from their own understanding of what respect looks like.
And this is what I find fascinating about behaviour.
We can genuinely believe we're demonstrating a value while someone else is experiencing the complete opposite, so perhaps agreeing that respect matters isn't enough.
Perhaps we need to have a conversation about what we actually expect from one another.
The numbers suggest there's quite a gap
Research from Nottingham Trent University, published in 2025, found that only 18% of employees felt their organisation's stated values or external image were strongly aligned with its actual culture. The research, involving more than 1,170 managers and employees across UK organisations, also found that 25% felt their leader's behaviour didn't reflect the values portrayed externally.
Those figures really made me think.
Because that's a significant gap between what organisations say they stand for and what people experience when they come to work, and I wonder how much of that gap comes down to behaviour?
We might genuinely believe that we're creating a respectful, collaborative and supportive culture.
But what happens when someone challenges a decision? Or a mistake is made?
What happens when two departments have competing priorities? Or a senior leader behaves in a way that wouldn't be acceptable from anyone else?
Because people notice those things, and if what they experience doesn't match what they're being told, I suspect they'll believe the behaviour long before they believe the words.
Values are easy until they're tested
I think this is where values become really interesting.
It's relatively easy to demonstrate collaboration when everyone agrees or talk about fairness when there's nothing difficult to decide.
And it's easy to be supportive when everything's going well, but what happens when things get uncomfortable?
If we value honesty, are we prepared to hear something we don't like?
If we value accountability, can we admit when we've got something wrong?
If we value fairness, are we willing to challenge behaviour even when it's coming from someone senior or particularly good at their job?
And if we value wellbeing, what happens when someone tells us their workload is becoming unmanageable?
I think values are really tested in those moments, not when we're talking about them.
When living by them means making a choice that might be difficult.
Because there's not much point telling people that respect is important if disrespectful behaviour is regularly overlooked. And I think that's something leaders need to be particularly aware of.
What we tolerate becomes part of the culture
One of the things I've noticed in organisations is how quickly people learn what is and isn't acceptable.
Not necessarily because someone has explained it to them, but because they've watched what happens.
They see who gets challenged and who doesn't, they notice whether leaders follow the same expectations as everyone else, they notice what gets recognised, what gets ignored and what people seem to get away with and eventually, those observations start shaping their own behaviour.
My belief is that fairness is particularly important here.
Because if we're going to agree on how people should behave, surely those expectations need to apply to everyone? Otherwise, what are we really saying?
That respect matters, unless you're senior enough? That accountability matters, unless you deliver great results? That collaboration matters, unless your department has more influence than another?
I really don't think that's the message most organisations intend to send, but sometimes it's the message people receive.
The behaviour we allow can say far more about our culture than the values we promote.
Turning words into something people can actually use
For me, this is where the real work begins.
Not with another set of values, but with conversations about what the existing ones mean.
For example if collaboration is one of our values, what should people actually be doing?
Is it sharing information before someone has to chase for it, or involving colleagues in decisions that affect them. Perhaps it's being willing to ask for help rather than struggling alone or challenging an idea because you want the best outcome, rather than simply agreeing to keep the peace.
If accountability matters, what does that look like? Taking responsibility for decisions? Following through on commitments? Acknowledging mistakes? Or having conversations when something isn't working?
These are the things people can recognise and more importantly, they're things we can have conversations about.
Because there's a big difference between telling someone, "You're not a team player," and saying, "We agreed that collaboration means involving people in decisions that affect their work. Can we talk about what happened?"
One labels the person, the other focuses on behaviour. And I think that's a much more useful place to start.
Values shouldn't be a one-off exercise
I've seen organisations put enormous effort into developing their values; workshops, discussions, word clouds, away days.
And those conversations can be really valuable. But what happens afterwards?
Do the values influence how people are recruited and welcomed into the business or are they reflected in how managers give feedback? Do they help people make decisions or are they part of performance conversations?
And perhaps most importantly, are leaders demonstrating them?
Because if the values are launched and then everyone goes back to working exactly as they did before, what has actually changed?
I don't think values should be something people have to keep referring to on a poster, they should become part of how things are done.
Not because everyone needs to behave in exactly the same way. We're human, and our differences are valuable.
But because we should have a shared understanding of what people can expect from one another and that's how values start becoming useful.
So, V is for Values Turned into Behaviour
Organisations don't necessarily need more values, they need to become better at bringing the ones they already have to life.
Because respect isn't just a word, it's how we treat people when we disagree.
Collaboration isn't just something we say we believe in it's how we work with others when our priorities are different.
And accountability isn't just about holding people responsible, it's also about being willing to take responsibility ourselves.
For me, values only really become meaningful when people can recognise them in the everyday experience of working in an organisation, in conversations, in decisions, in how mistakes are handled and in what happens when someone's behaviour doesn't reflect what we've agreed matters.
So here's the question I keep coming back to:
If someone joined your organisation tomorrow and nobody told them what your values were, would they be able to work them out from the way people behave?
Because if the answer is no, perhaps we don't need to spend more time finding the right words.
Perhaps we need to spend more time thinking about what we're doing with them.
And that's a very different conversation.
If this resonated, it’s probably because you’re seeing it too.
Philippa x
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