Effectively using values to care for the context and provide focus to a team or organization has two major steps: 1) clarifying and prioritizing shared values; 2) living and behaving according to those aspirations. Both can be very difficult leadership acts.

Here are some ways to clarifying and prioritizing shared values:

• If your management team hasn't developed an explicit set of core values, this is the place to start. Here's what you're after:
   
• Three to four words or short phrases (five words or less) that you can use as "verbal pegs" to cluster or summarize many of the related values at the top of your values hierarchy.
• Words or short phrases that are easy to understand and meaningful to your team and organization.
• Broad understanding and ownership of the core values by everyone on your team or in your organization.
   

Your team's shared values should represent a blend of those principles from your past that you want to preserve and the beliefs that your team will need to share as you look to your preferred future. Looking at the past respects and builds on your organization's heritage, successes, and strengths. It helps to turn resistance to change into confidence and energy for facing the future. To look at future values, you're examining the underside of your team or organization's vision. To make the picture of your preferred future reality calls for a different set of priorities about what's really important.

Debating and developing your core values should follow the development of your shared vision. Values clarification can be a painful process. But it doesn't have to be long and drawn out. If you have a skilled facilitator lead you, it's common to have a rough version of your team's shared values words or short phrases within a few hours. That's because shared values aren't created they're uncovered or articulated.

• Once your team has developed your core values, we've found the following exercise is a useful way to further debate, try them on for size, and start management teams into the most important part of values — living them. You can break into three groups or do this as a large group brainstorming and discussion exercise.

  Here's the exercise using three groups (for the large group discussion, do these in the same way and order): 1) One group brainstorms a list of ways to visibly signal each value to the rest of the organization. These must be specific such as "meet with our distributors to get their ideas and feedback." Not motherhood generalities like "communicate better." 2) Another group discusses ways that the team and/or individuals on the team, often inadvertently violate each value. 3) The last group looks at ways the team and individuals on it can get feedback from others in the organization on how well they are living the values.

  Now everyone gets back together to hear and discuss each group's perspectives. Action plans and next steps conclude the process.
   

• Unless you're trying to build an old-fashioned command and control organization culture, you need wide debate, discussion, and ownership of a set of shared core values. This consensus building process can take a fair bit of time and energy. It's usually best combined with discussions of the organization's vision, and an outline of, or invitation to input to, the organization improvement plans and process. Some organizations have started with blank sheets of paper and invited the dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people throughout their organization to articulate the organization's core values.
   

As you try to articulate your espoused or aspired values, don't allow yourself to fall into the trap of "we're not living this way now so it can't be a value." Like visioning, you're trying to describe where you want to be. Once you know what you want to become, then you can work on making these lived values.

You never know when someone
May catch a dream from you.
You never know when a little word
Or something you may do
May open up the windows
Of a mind that seeks the light...
The way you live may not matter at all,
But you never know, it might.

Jack Welch has been widely called one of the most effective corporate leaders of his time. During his time as CEO of GE he transformed into one of the world's largest, most profitable, and dynamic companies. World renowned for leadership development, Welch declares simply, "If you can't energize others, you can't be a leader." He makes a vital point. The way too many so-called leaders energize others is often by leaving the room. Highly effective leaders energize others. That energy mobilizes people to action.

Far too many people try mobilizing and energizing by using different combinations of fear or greed. It's the lazy way out. These are superficial approaches that usually create major long-term problems. In my organization consulting, I am often asked for the "how-to" of improving morale or motivation. But low motivation or morale are symptoms of much deeper problems.

The problem is rooted in combinations of Victimitis, inauthentic leadership, low levels of passion and commitment, lack of soul and meaning, weak energy levels, values misalignment, or fuzzy focus. The only person I can motivate is me. People should be paid fairly and profit or gain sharing programs are powerful ways to build partnerships and ownership. However, leading with incentives or punishments to "motivate" others is often seen as manipulative. This reduces the value of doing the task for its own reward or robs work of its meaning. The key is building high-energy environments or experiences that inspire and mobilize people to action. That's tough work. There are no "cookie cutter" programs that can be dropped in to do it.

We are either part of the energy problem or part of its solution. There is no neutral zone. We are either net takers or net contributors of energy to others. We need to ask those we're trying to lead or influence about our energy leadership. It is much less effective to force changes on others and overcome their resistance than to work collaboratively to build change partnerships.

There are many factors that mobilize and energize others. A key factor is appreciation, recognition, thanks, and celebration. These successful feelings are addictive. We all want to feel like winners making progress that's being noticed. Our verbal communication skills also play a vital part in how effectively we can mobilize and energize others. Another key factor is participation and teamwork. Working together toward shared goals is very energizing.

Someone once said to the bestselling author and television pastor, Robert Schuller, "I hope you live to see all your dreams fulfilled." He replied, "I hope not, because if I live and all my dreams are fulfilled, I'm dead. It's unfulfilled dreams that keep you alive."

Hope is one of the most powerful sources of energy ever known to humankind. Without hope, we slip from living to just existing. Hope charges our spirit and draws us forward to a better tomorrow. Hope helps us see beyond the problems to the possibilities. Hope gives life meaning. Hope helps us take responsibility for our choices. Hope stretches us and energizes our continuous growth and development. Hope urges us to go against the odds and do what everyone knows can't be done.

All the great achievements and tiny triumphs recorded through the history of civilization began as a hope, a dream, in someone's mind. An ancient Chinese proverb teaches, "Happiness is someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for."

"False hope" is an oxymoron; the two words don't belong together. Hope can't be false. It might be unfulfilled, but it can't be false. If hope makes me try a little longer, strive a little further, live a little more, dream a little clearer, or raise my expectations a little higher, how can it be false?

But in the face of despair, negativity, and feelings of helplessness, being hopeful is hard work. It's easier to reflect the temperature of a negative environment and be a pessimist. It doesn't take as much effort to give up hope and become a victim. Then it's somebody else's fault. It doesn't take much courage to be a cynic that sees things only as they are, not as they could be.

A leader brings hope. That doesn't mean putting on rose-colored glasses, painting on a happy face, and avoiding problems by spouting clich

Highly energized cultures are charged with hopefulness and optimism. It's the dynamic power that mobilizes individuals and teams to make the improbable possible. It's the mark of a leader.