Values Attract. And Values Repel.

I had all sorts of jobs when I was a student. I worked in shops. I worked in call centres. I had stints as a gardener, a cleaner, and a painter and decorator. From my sixteenth birthday to the time that I left university I got a good variety of work experience under my belt. I was taught from a young age that there wouldn’t be any handouts – if I wanted my own money then I had to work for it. So I did.

My favourite was a summer gardening job. I loved taking responsibility for the majority of the hanging baskets in my hometown, watching the flowers in them grow to the point that the baskets themselves were no longer visible. My boss said that in his many years in the job he’d never seen them looking so good! I took pride in my work and appreciated the autonomy, stewardship and sense of accomplishment that the job gave me. It aligned well with my values.

At the other end of the spectrum was a telesales job. The tone was set soon after starting my first shift, as the new recruits were taught by a wizened, worldly tutor to approach the job with the mindset that, “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.” The phrase was repeated a few times. It provoked an internal question: “Have we actually got anything valuable to offer people or are we just trying to trick them?” Although I didn’t do any of the latter, I had a successful shift by the numbers. But the whole thing didn’t feel right to me – the prevailing ethos, mindset, and assumed meaning of success in the place were too distant from my values. I felt like I was in the wrong place and decided that I actually had no problem with feeling like that at all. I quit after that first shift following a courteous conversation with my line manager. There were no hard feelings on either side.

The contrasting experiences from my student jobs speak to a simple but profound truth: values attract but they also repel. It is easier than ever for people to either join us or walk away from us, which is why it’s so important that we take ownership of our values.

The Genius of Steve Jobs

Part of the genius of Steve Jobs was found in how he understood and appreciated the value of values and the importance of getting values right. His understanding of the attractive nature of values was exceptional. Some of the most frequently shared footage of Steve Jobs on social media comes from his keynote speech at the launch of Apple’s iconic Think different. ad campaign in 1997. In that speech he shared his philosophy on values.

Jobs appreciated the centrality of values to marketing. He knew that in a noisy world, in which people’s attention is limited, there’s only so much that they will remember about you. He understood that people don’t just want to know what it is that you make or do, but also what you stand for. And he believed that whereas many things will change – markets, technology etc. – values, particularly core values, shouldn’t change.

Apple's core value, according to Jobs: "That people with passion can change the world for the better." The Think different. ad said nothing about computers. Instead, it communicated Apple’s core values “by honoring those people (dead or alive) who have changed the world.” It sought to attract those with whom its purpose and core values resonated. And it was a tremendous success.

“Our customers want to know, who is Apple and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?” – Steve Jobs

Values are Foundational to Relationships

Research has shown shared values to be a powerful driver behind customers’ brand relationships. One study, cited in HBR, found that among customers who said they had a brand relationship, 64% gave shared values as the primary reason – “far and away the largest driver.”

Research from EY illustrates how companies that embrace and are fully aligned to purpose are “doing better than the rest in surviving and thriving in today’s volatile and unpredictable global economy.” When asked within the research how organisational purpose helps their businesses, executives’ three most common responses were that it helps to: 1) build greater customer loyalty; 2) preserve brand value and reputation; and 3) attract and retain top talent. Interestingly, 59% of the executives said that their organisation’s purpose was “very important” to their personal job satisfaction, followed by 37% who said that it was “somewhat important” within the EY poll. This suggests that purpose, the ultimate core value, is central to many business leaders’ own relationships with the organisations that they lead.

An organisation’s values underpin its culture. As Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg note in How Google Works, it is important for business leaders in particular to be intentional in building a culture that is fit for purpose early on in the life of the company: “Once established, company culture is very difficult to change, because early on in a company's life a self-selection tendency sets in. People who believe in the same things the company does will be drawn to work there, while people who don’t won’t.” Schmidt and Rosenberg suggest that business leaders prioritise company culture, building it on what the core team cares about, what it believes, who it wants to be, and how it wants to act and make decisions.

The right values will attract the right people.

“People like us do things like this.” – Seth Godin

The Flip Side

While we may genuinely believe that our values are noble and worthy, not everyone else will. Although appealing to some, our values will repel others. Not everyone sees things the way that we see them, or believes what we believe. A strong illustration of this is found in Nike’s choice of Colin Kaepernick, NFL footballer turned activist, as the face of its 30th anniversary Just do it campaign.

As a player, Kaepernick had decided to kneel during the playing of the national anthem to protest police violence, becoming a polarising figure in the process. His protest stirred up strong emotions on both sides of the debate. Those in favour of the protest would champion the cause of social justice, while those on the other side would instead condemn what they perceived to be an unpatriotic act. Kaepernick’s protests effectively ended his NFL career. Accordingly, Nike’s billboard ads showed his face behind the words: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

Nike faced immediate backlash to the campaign, not least from President Trump who called it “a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent.” Angry customers who turned against Nike due to its endorsement of Kaepernick took to social media to share videos of them burning Nike sports gear under the hashtags #JustBurnIt and #BoycottNike. And yet in spite of the backlash, Nike’s controversial campaign has been deemed a success, providing an excellent example of the simultaneously attractive and repellent nature of values.

Besides marketing campaigns, consider some of the reactions to Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, following the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. Some analysts and western politicians have blamed the Crown Prince for Khashoggi’s murder. In the aftermath of the murder many government and business leaders withdrew from the then imminent Riyadh investment forum (“Davos in the desert”), including Jamie Dimon, Arianna Huffington and Richard Branson to name a few. Contrast those withdrawals, then, with Vladimir Putin’s conspicuously warm greetingof the Crown Prince at a recent G20 meeting in Buenos Aires – hands clasping together with broad, laughing smiles. Of course, other world leaders continue to do business with the Crown Prince following Khashoggi’s murder, but Mr Putin’s greeting seemed to communicate something more fundamental. Strongmen of the world, unite!

“There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees that are falsehoods on the other.” – Blaise Pascal

So What?

There are many examples and stories from my own life that I could share to illustrate the attractive and repellent nature of values: the binding effect of shared values when I served as a missionary in Madagascar with people from very different backgrounds to my own; the time that I left a friendship group upon rediscovering my core values while at university; and the values that bind my wife and I together as soulmates, notwithstanding our many differences in taste.

Our values determine who we, as individuals, will attract and repel. They also determine who we will be attracted to and repelled by. When it comes to building meaningful relationships with others, values is the only game in town.

Who do your values attract? And who do they repel?

Lacking awareness of who we’re attracting and who we’re repelling could be costly. Purposefully attracting the right people to our cause and chosen path, on the other hand, could be extremely valuable.

My closing invitation is simple: block out some time in your schedule; reflect on what is really most important to you – what you’re striving for and what you stand for – reassess; and begin to design and then live your life according to those things that are fundamentally most important to you – your values.