Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It: Why People Demand it

Use Shared Values to Make a Difference

Shared values are the foundation for building productive and genuine working relationships. While credible leaders honor the diversity of their many constituencies, they also stress their commonalities. Each and every member of the organization certainly has unique needs, and leaders attend to those, but to function as a unit, team members must have a strong sense of the values and norms that bind them together. For people to work together effectively, they must agree on a few fundamentals. They need some common core of understanding to build community.

Shared values are the internal compasses that enable people to act independently and interdependently. Shared values provide groups with a common reference ...