The 5 Essential Values

There are 5 essential values to focus on to ensure we are all in the best space to do anything.

The five values are:

Belief: We have to believe in everything we do

Honesty: We have to offload the moment things feel off

Balance: We must prioritise ourselves and manage our conditions

Agile Structure: We must value all structure and help it evolve

Inclusiveness: We must value everyone and everything to build forward

These words alone hopefully give some idea of the sentiment captured in each one of these values, however there is a depth, potentially a lifetime, of learning to each one of these dimensions. They can be summarised as simply as above and yet the complexity in dominating each value and making sure each is equally in focus takes continuous reflection, assessment and adjustment.

Why are the 5 Essential Values Important

The 5 essential values are important as they:

• Lay the foundation for individual inner strength and understanding: Life is complex and yet we can simplify our outlook with these five areas of focus. Do we believe in the things we do enough? If not, why are we doing them? Recognising the essential nature of prioritising ourselves and others doing the same, and not ever feeling the need to judge or be judged as to what that looks like. We are all beautifully different. There is no brighter light than the shining within people when they are at the maximum of the five values. Get on the journey by just starting to understand the essential nature of each of the values – this is the first place to start.
• Lay the foundation for total collaboration: When we have people who feel they are at odds with each other, one wants one thing the other wants a different thing, it can feel we are at odds with people. At worst in can result in huge aggression and violence. The truth is there is a very basic energy in all of us: “The need to improve our environment”, this can look very selfish when we only consider ourselves and immensely benevolent when we only consider others, both are at opposite ends of the scale and not ideal. The trick is recognising we all want better, and finding constantly how we achieve that together. Recognising if we don’t work together, this is basic, this is taking ourselves to our infant selves. The only position for an advanced individual is constant collaboration. Seeking why others want something that feels bad to you, because remember they will only want it to better their environment, now how do you find something that works for everyone?
• Lay the foundation for thriving in everything we all do all of the time: A lot of us fall into the trap of believing we drift through life; or survive. This is not good enough… for you… for us all… for our world! Life is a brilliance, it’s a miracle on so many different levels. It is there to be enjoyed, admired, absorbed and loved. Life is life. It is that pure energy of just loving being here and feeling so lucky to have the consciousness you do. Why do we settle for the drift then, the one foot in front of another? Fear is the answer. Not a paralysing fear – but the fear of getting things wrong, the fear of mistakes, the fear of looking different, the fear of standing out, the fear of not achieving things, the fear of not conforming and living a life with all the possessions others have, these basic foundations for a lot of the constraints we all feel in every walk of life. Sadly we are all victims of ourselves. Breaking free of all constraints of fear isn’t a turn key solution – but it is in the 5 essential values, constantly checking are you doing those five behaviours. Writing this now, I know I still find moments of conformity, not because I believe but because I fear standing out or letting someone down, or offending or upsetting someone. We all do it, and it isn’t wrong, nothing ever is, we are constantly trying to improve our environment, remember. But what would be better is reflecting and working out the things you hold back on, why were they important? How can you still deliver them by not upsetting someone or standing out (if that is important). The five values will offer you a constant foundation to reflect and build from. The name of the game is maximising all of them all of the time – a maximum balance, it is a life journey though.

Are you ready to start the journey?

What is Belief about in the Five Essential Values

Of all the values belief is more often than not spoken about first, but why? It is where the energy comes from. It is probably the easiest to understand almost fully quite quickly. We usually do an exercise with teams talking about the following:

Q. What would you do if I came running up the street and asked you to give me your wallet?

Reflect, what would you do? Would you give me your wallet? How might you react? Maybe to really strike home, write down what you’d do. Explore the emotions. Ok now next part.

Q. What would you do if I came running up the street and asked you to give me your wallet as I needed a taxi?

Again, reflect, what would you do? Same activity but with a little more context. Has your behaviour changed? Do you give me the wallet? How does it feel?

Ok last part

Q. What would you do if I came running up the street and asked you to give me your wallet as I needed a taxi because I needed to get to hospital as my 13 year old son and was bleeding very heavily.

A very basic illustration and sorry to be so graphic, but hopefully it helps examine your emotional changes and potentially the reaction to the request. Does it? What would you do in the scenario? Really imagine it and imagine what you’d do, maybe write it down to illustrate where you are with this.

The usual reaction goes from, in the first scenario, no way anyone is getting my wallet, the se=cond scenario potentially giving the amount for a taxi all the way to I’ll get my car and drive you, call an ambulance or help the child directly in the third example, does that sound right? Is it close to where you were?

The main point here is – it is always the same action being requested. All you have is more context. You are always being asked for the wallet and depending on the context you either believe less and refuse to react or believe 100% and start firing on all cylinders contributing to the end result, does that make sense?

This is the power of belief. The more we believe in things, the more proactive, the more resilient and the more we apply ourselves. Does that make sense?

The mind blowing part is we are in control of how much we believe in everything. But that understanding is something you learn and see the further down the line you go with this. 

Has this helped understand how you see belief? Can you see that if we want to do things amazingly well all the time, we first have to believe in them 100%? I know it is a little stretch to fully see that, but hopefully when you do one of our 5 essential value questionnaires you’ll understand why there is a self reflective question as to “how important is believing in everything you do” and the importance of understanding whether you see it as essential, because if you don’t there is still more to explore before you can help others. Believing in things 100% is essential if we want to do things well and glow for others around us. Does that all sound right?

On to the next value then…

What is Honesty about in the Five Essential Values

Honesty is a duty for all of us to respect our brain. Sounds a bit weird, but hear me out. 

We seem to have an inner function in our brain which triggers emotions based on some very deep intuitions – remember the “need to improve our environment” . We may not always be able to explain the emotions fully but the important thing is recognising the importance of the brain triggering the emotions and starting to offload. Sometimes these emotions may be strong emotional responses, this is where I’d suggest “Better out than in” although that comes with a huge caveat – anger, violence etc. is never good – however I’d rather know someone is angry than not know anything, otherwise, how can we help and learn? Right? There is constant education needed even in myself to control myself better and not allow emotional outbursts but I never lose sight of the essential nature of exploring the trigger of the emotions with everyone, there is usually gold in there where we can all learn and grow from. This is the miracle of the brain, it is not always clear where the emotion comes from but if you take the time and dig there is usually something you’d have never thought of sitting in there which can enhance everything we do, does this make sense?

If you can recognise this, this is the start of the journey of honesty. Recognising emotions not as anything other than the result of brains recognising something is off and we need to address it. Creating individuals around you who recognise this, creating environments supportive of this. Never trampling down on emotions just helping them to be channelled, does that make sense?

Respect the brain! Remember – life journey – we won’t get it right all the time but if we can start to value every bit of emotion in us and around us – we are certainly on the path. 

Encourage yourself and everyone around you to offload the moment things occur or feel off. If you don’t, things sit in us and feel off and affect us – we are less positive, less confident… maybe just a little bit less, but less all the same – be full – offload.

On to the next value…

What is Balance about in the Five Essential Values

This is perhaps the most personal, and potentially the one you should be strongest about in a way. It is the easiest to drop off. We can remove any focus on ourselves and dedicate ourselves to all the causes around us – but is it sustainable? Does it feel good? For some it may. There may be great fulfilment and great pleasure from focusing on everyone but oneself, but this isn’t the case for all of us. We are all different and what gives us energy varies from one to another. This is part of our life journey, gradually working out the things that give us energy and the things that don’t. The important things is to never undervalue the importance of focusing on yourself and prioritising the things that give you energy, the things that you enjoy.

Understand and prioritise your conditions – do you like a good long lunch? Do you enjoy chatting with friends? Do you like to spend time zoning out on the Xbox? Do you love good food and drink?

When we suppress our fun, our outlet, our small joys, the things that we like, the things that we feel are important to us; we stop exposing ourselves to spaces that give us energy and recharge our energy. Understand the things that feel important to you, don’t dismiss them blindly because they feel selfish, explore why they are important, discuss them with those around you and get everyone on board understanding they are important to you and will help you boost your energy. 

Remember prioritising yourself (Balance) is part of five values and each one must be maximised with equal focus on the other four values. We must be prioritising ourselves whilst valuing everyone and everything around you (Inclusiveness), offloading the moment things feel off (Honesty), remembering what we are trying to achieve together (Belief) and what it requires to get there (Agile Structure).

Does that all sound reasonable? If any of this doesn’t remember to reach out team@tribe365.co

What is Agile Structure about in the Five Essential Values

Agile Structure is one of the least clear from the name, and potentially it is equally complex in practice, not because of the understanding but potentially because of the constant effort to pull back and stop yourself falling into negative spaces with Agile Structure.

Initially the space was all about structure/direction. However after years of pulling this value apart there is a heavy weight on valuing structure for being essential in the journey of the ability to improve, if we don’t measure things how can we know we are getting better? If we don’t understand the structure of things, how can we measure? 

Most of us spend our lives fighting structure, potentially I am one of those people. But the resistance doesn’t come from the existence of structure, in fact I love and marvel at beautifully  crafted structure which makes things simple and allows achievement for all. Resistance comes from a feeling of how unsuitable the structure feels and the feeling of inability to interact and help it evolve. 

To understand why there may be such potentially volatile relationships with structure we have to remember the two laws of human action – we only do what we believe in and we only do what we choose to do. Whenever this feels under threat, ie. people are telling us to do things and we can’t see why (Belief) or we don’t believe in the way forward (Agile Structure), or we have other priorities (Balance) or we are valuing others input and it is equally under threat (Inclusiveness) or we don’t feel we can offload the moment things feel off (Honesty) then we start pushing back. 

With structure, for instance a rigid schedule at school, it presents an immediate likelihood of being pushed back against because it is fixed and doesn’t allow individuals to make their decisions and meet the five values, or not immediately, does that make sense?

The prevalence of structure can evoke resistance in itself. How we adjust that is in ourselves.

The first part to remember is we all are here to improve our environment, no matter who we are. Basic necessity. People cannot be born and sit and do nothing. We have an innate need to make improvements to our environment. So we are all, whatever we are doing, always trying to improve or environment. Does that make sense? The next thing to consider is that structure is the result of people trying to put in place measures that allow things to be the best result possible, does that make sense? If so, that covers off why we should value all structure.

The next part to remember is that none of us enjoys doing things in conflict with the five values. To overcome this we must always remember that structure must, not should, not could be, structure must always be interactable. This means that actively we understand all structure must be configured to enjoy the engagement of everyone, there must be constant healthy options to help it evolve. If not structure potentially presents itself as irrelevant and therefore useless in the act of helping maintain the best possible results. We must always check everyone is comfortable with the structure we present and we must always help it evolve. We must all value all structure as a product of people trying to get things right and find ways of helping it improve further. Does this all make sense?

Structure is critical to improvement, if we don’t have structure we can’t improve. Embrace all structure around you and find ways to help it constantly evolve.

What is Inclusiveness about in the Five Essential Values

This is probably the most beautiful value. You must see everyone and everything only as a hugely positive potential to build forwards; this is 100% true if you always want the best possible outcomes with everything you’ve got at your disposal.

Remember, we are all pre-configured to want to improve our environments. If you can accept this, can you? Then if so, isn’t everything a product of everyone trying to create the best they could with what they had? 

Bounce into a constant default of recognising whatever has happened or whatever exists was a result of people trying to do their best with what they had. Your duty is to constantly press the reset button if things feel like they are wrong or have gone wrong and remember everything went wherever it did because people will have been doing what seemed right to them. Don’t waste time with bitterness, regret, anger, frustration and/or any other negative emotion. It slows us down. Reset. Where should things be going forwards? how do we get there? get everyone involved; remember for the best possible outcomes everyone and everything must be utilised to the max, right?

This is a constant trial. If you can constantly recognise negative emotion as a sign you are probably starting to dwell and judge,and slow down, when in fact you are wasting time and valuable resource to get things moving in better directions, don’t waste time.

Does this make sense so far?

One part we rarely address is why we must involve everyone. Why should we get everyone involved? Well there are very few certainties in life. Here is one. If you are in an emergency and there are four of you and you only involve 2 people and the one left out has all the answers, where will you end up? Sadly this happens all the time, not deliberately but because we don’t value the involvement of others enough. If you live and breathe the idea that only with everyone’s contribution can you be certain you did the best then you have a chance. The moment you exclude anyone that chance diminishes very rapidly.

Ok, so now you have a better understanding of the 5 values, so what?

Have you come to the understanding each one is essential? I hope so. If not, feel free to explore at team@tribe365.co. If you do believe the 5 values are essential then where next?

The short answer is… measure them. Remember without structure we can’t improve

I understand the 5 values and accept they are important, now what?

Hopefully from the sections above it has positioned you in a space where you can see the values are important, maybe even essential, has it? If not, reach out to us and start a conversation team@tribe365.co if so, great, you are on the journey – welcome!

You understand they are important, now you need to start reflecting more and more about the things you do. Reflect, Reflect, Reflect:

• Do you believe in whatever you are doing fully? Why do you do the things you do?
• Are you prioritising yourself and managing your priorities with everyone?
• Are you offloading the moment things feel off?
• Are you valuing structure, making sure it exists and helping it evolve?
• Are you making the most of everyone and everything around you to build forwards?

The more we reflect the better we become at understanding. It’s easy to start reflecting as an individual, getting good at it takes time, potentially a lifetime.

The good news is that as individuals we actually have the values from our earliest years, it’s just through conditioning it is likely we all lost sight a little of the most important aspects of our inner core:

Are The Five Essential Values hard to develop

From childhood we actually had a huge amount of these values naturally built into us. To get better at them we need to simply prioritise them and maintain constant reflection.

Are you there? Can you see the importance of the values? Are you going to prioritise them and them alone? But what about other behaviours that are taught to us? Great question. 

How do the 5 values work with other behavioural focus?

There is so much that is out there to prioritise behaviorally. Nothing will be wrong. The only thing I can promise you without hesitation is that if any one of the 5 essential values is off slightly things will be flawed. The 5 essential behaviours are essential, without them every bit of activity you do in anything will have gaps. You must dominate these 5 essential values and then focusing on any other space is likely to benefit you 100%. Without this work everything is flawed. Does that make sense?

The 5 essential values are open source to benefit everyone

We have developed as much free material as possible to allow as high a level interaction globally to allow everyone to start understanding the essential nature of pulling together. There will always be different ways of seeing things, but one thing unites us all as humans, we all want better, and that alone should constantly allow us to find common ground.

Greed, power and all the other less attractive inner behaviours do result in increased likelihood of friction, however being someone who strives to constantly pull back and recognise that those behaviours are most likely to be driven by a need to build better for whichever individual or group of individuals and drive conversations understanding how we may build better together must be the only way forward if we want to create the best going forwards.

The more people we can facilitate recognising the essential nature of only pulling together (Inclusiveness) and valuing ourselves 100% (Balance) and believing in everything we do (Belief), whilst valuing structure and making sure it constantly evolves (Agile Structure) and prioritising and facilitating honesty at every level and in everyone (Honesty), we know we’ll create a better world for everyone. This is what we believe in.

Hopefully that allows you to join us on a journey not just yourself but starting to think about “how do I facilitate teams and organisations full of the 5 essential values?”, has it?

How to get teams and organisations full of the 5 essential values

The first thing is making sure someone at the top of an organisation believes in the essential nature in the 5 values. They are not nice to have. They are everything that will facilitate all the great things for growth and everything good you want in an organisation (retention, performance, innovation, resilience, proactivity etc.).

The main pathway we’d do would be:

1. Measure: Click here to check the survey link.
2. Review
3. Adjust
4. Repeat….

Measure the 5 Essential Values

At Tribe365 ® we have created a free survey which allows you to see where we are with the values, individually, as teams and as an organisation; the survey is built with a view that you are in a team within an organisation. The survey is here: Survey link.

Review the 5 Essential Values

At Tribe365 ® we have created a free survey which allows you to see where we are with the values, individually, as teams and as an organisation. Run the survey and review the data as to where you are getting with the values as individuals, as teams and as an organisation.

Adjust the 5 Essential Values

Remember everything is about balance. With the results from the survey the only certainty is you have a clearer idea of where you can focus on first.

Adjust the 5 essential values

Remember everything is about balance. With the results from the survey the only certainty is you have a clearer idea of where you can focus on first.

About Tribe365

We create organisations, leaders and individuals who pull together the strongest teams which deliver the best outcomes with minimum resources. A prevalence of the 5 essential values (Belief, Agile Structure, Balance, Honesty and Inclusiveness) creates environments and individuals full of energy, resilience, speed, innovation, growth and constant improvement. We have been working in this space since 2016 and pride ourselves on delivering effective, scaleable and accessible solutions driving for cultural transformation globally, delivering a world where everyone “pulls together”.