On Paper
Level 1. Scores 0 to 25. Your values are preferred, not yet chosen.
You know what you value, or at least you know what you would like to. What you could not do, when asked, was point to a decision in the last month where any of your top five cost you something. That is what On Paper means. The values are real as a description of who you would like to be. They are not yet showing up in what you do when it is expensive.
This is not hypocrisy, and once the benchmark publishes you will see how many leaders land here. It is what values look like before they have been tested. A value that has never cost you anything has not been chosen yet. It has been preferred, which is different. Most people's lists contain three or four preferences and one value, and the evidence questions are how you tell them apart.
Look at your five and find the one you answered "yes" to, if there was one. That one is real. It is probably the one you would have been least likely to put on a company poster, and the one that explains a decision your team found surprising. Start from there.
The value I know is real on my own list is people over process. It shows in my decisions more than in anything I say about it. The one that cost the most: a potential investor made comments about the women on my leadership team. I passed on the deal. It cost the company months of runway. I slept fine.
Sleeping fine is how I knew. A preference would have negotiated with itself. It would have found a reason the money mattered more this time. A value does not do the arithmetic. It makes the decision, and then you find out what it cost.
One thing to do this month. Pick the value at the top of your list and find the next decision where it will cost you something. There will be one; there always is. Make the decision the value says to make, and notice what it costs. Then take this quiz again in ninety days. If the value moves from "no" to "yes", it has become one.
There is no shame in an On Paper result. There is a problem in staying there while telling your team the values matter, because they can see the decisions.
Next step: the framework this site uses puts purpose after action, not before it, for exactly this reason. Read why on the ADAPT framework page.
Next step
The other results
- Half LivedSome of your values are real and some are on the poster.
- In UseMost of your values are in your decisions. Check the order.
- LivedYour values are in your decisions. Are they the company's?
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Core Values Quiz for Leaders, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.