Choices_coverfront-198x300Knowing your Core Values – your true, unchanging, innate nature is one of the most valuable and productive ways to increase your leadership effectiveness. My friend, mentor and teacher, Bea Fields, was generous to include some of my philosophy in her blog, (thanks!) which shows you Five New Ways to Lead — click here. Below are some other thoughts I had in response to what she wrote.

Zappos clearly has spent considerable time creating its Core Values Frog and 10 key principles you can expect from the company/brand.

Whole Foods dedicates a web page to its seven principles that “are the underpinning” of its company culture.

Guiding principles are at the heart of every successful company. They inspire. They invite us to rise up.

So how is it possible that “The majority of American adults say they are not able to use their strengths to do what they do best throughout the day?,” according to a Gallup poll?

Lynn Ellsworth Taylor is a sought-after business turnaround expert and inventor of the Core Values Index™, a key to extraordinary business success. In one of his many books, he writes, “If I don’t know who I am at the innate unchanging level, I cannot fully comprehend how I operate, how I think, what motivates me, what kind of work causes me to be fully engaged, why my highest and best contribution must be. Self knowledge is the cornerstone on which leadership, top performance, and high contribution are built.”

As a representative and facilitator of the Core Values Index, I am privileged to see the positive impact on employers, employees, engagement, performance and profits more and more each day. Since my early days in public affairs with Exxon, puzzled about corporate culture, and devouring the book by Terrance Deal and Allan Kennedy, I have wondered how we can create companies — and the people in them — that thrive. Here is an invitation to learn how you and your company can really have the right person in the right seat. Try the assessment.