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What Is Your High-Value-Driver in Business?

May 29, 2012 by Lizabeth Phelps

I was at a retreat about 14 years ago, where we were asked to make a list of our top 20 values. What mattered most to us and what ideals we shaped our lives around. I don’t have that list anymore, but I remember the exercise vividly. You may actually want to do the exercise as you read along, making sure not to read faster than you write. So, top 20 values.

Then, the facilitator asked us to remove 5. This was manageable and I remember the ah-ha I received from forcing the cream to the top. This was the solid 15 ideals I lived by.

Then, he asked us to remove 5 more. Ugh. But again, do-able. Can you see the next move? Yup, another 5. That one was impossible. Are you kidding me? I’m supposed to narrow all that matters most to me down to 5 words??? We all groaned and whined, certain that we were compromising or sacrificing as we chopped away. Then, the gauntlet fell, the moment of reckoning was offered to us: Take everything away but one.

It’s that single answer—that single word—that I remember so crisply 14 years later. And it revealed, without question, my true north star. It was THE value that had driven me since I was at least ten, when I’d asked a veterinarian my father knew if I could “shadow” him for the day and then came home and drafted a written test for myself and assessed my learning.

It is the single word that has driven my success in business and my success as an expert (two different things); what has driven my choice in mates and friends…and the leaving of mates and friends. It’s what has driven my parenting style; my spiritual journey. And that same value, that same word, is—though I’ve never done an official survey—the top value of my students and clients. My high-value driver is the same as those who pay me…as it can only be; we attract who we are. And as it really, should be. We should live with, clink glasses with, raise, and work with only those who value what we value.

What was my word? “Growing.”

I can’t do anything and not grow. I am highly self-reflective; intensely curious about things that capture my attention; I would far rather improve myself than be “right”. And I want the world to grow. I want extreme growth for my students, so they go out and bring growth to the world.

Whittling away what didn’t matter most for me was excruciating in the moment of that exercise, but what it revealed was precious and priceless: my high-value driver—why I do what I do. When things get choppy at home with friends or family, it is my value in “growth” that enables me to calm the waters. I seek to improve things, rather than let them be. And when things get funky in business, it is my high-value driver that pulls me through. I am here to grow myself, grow others and grow the world. Any outcome less than that will do me harm, truly, and so I’ll do whatever it takes, overcome all hard-spots to fulfill it.

So, what is your high-value driver in your business? What is the single word that conveys what you must do, and why you do it?