EP22 | From Values to Vision: How Karen Helps Leaders Thrive - Karen Benoy Coaching %

EP22 | From Values to Vision: How Karen Helps Leaders Thrive

Culture is an Inside Job: The podcast on building an authentic, engaging, and inspiring culture.

From Values to Vision: How Karen Helps Leaders Thrive | Episode 22

What if uncovering your core values could be the key to navigating life’s toughest challenges?

In this part 2 episode, Karen Benoy Preston, a passionate advocate for values work, returns to share her transformative insights on the power of understanding one’s true values. She guides us through the process of peeling back the layers of our beliefs, distinguishing truths from fears, and making authentic decisions in both personal and professional realms.

Karen emphasizes the vital role a coach plays in this journey, helping individuals move away from borrowed values and toward their genuine core. Together, we explore the importance of self-love as a foundation for loving others and discuss how externalizing our thoughts can bring clarity and reduce mental clutter. Listen in to learn how articulating and aligning your values can pave the way for personal growth and cultural transformation.

 

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Full Transcript

Karen Preston: 

We don’t spend enough time reflecting and holding that space for that reflection and to be willing to go that deep. It is transformational work.

Wendy Roop: 

Welcome back everyone. Today we are going to be diving into more conversations with our friend Karen and our co-host and our co host, and just last time we were just learning a little bit about more about her and we just thought it would be great to go a little bit deeper with that today. And by the way, before we get started, I mean Scott is, you know, got his Peloton outfit on. So shout out to Peloton If you want to be a sponsor for us. We would love to you know, shout out to you more often. So, yeah, sponsor for us, we would love to you know, shout out to you more often.

Scott McGohan: 

So yeah, you know, I have the philosophy in life. If it, you know, you should look good right before you do something. But here’s what’s funny is my peloton’s inside my house, so like I don’t even have anybody around. But I do have. I do have 9000 miles on my Peloton.

Wendy Roop: 

Oh, my goodness.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah, so I do it just about every day.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, and I love it yeah. I do yeah, maybe we can try to do a podcast on our Peloton. Oh we can. Oh yeah, Can you imagine? I actually don’t have one yet, but maybe someday that would be pretty funny.

Scott McGohan: 

Catch my breath.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, we’d all be doing that.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah.

Wendy Roop: 

Karen Hi, how are you?

Karen Preston: 

I am well, thank you Good Excited to be here again today with you guys.

Wendy Roop: 

Yes. So I think what we would love you to share with the audience and a little bit more about is you are and you’ve mentioned this before on our podcasts episodes you are so passionate about values work, and so maybe just tell us a little bit more about the values work that you do, or the work that you do around values with with your clients, and then also maybe some of the impact you know that you’ve seen, and, of course, we’ll pepper in questions from there okay, cool.

Karen Preston: 

Um, let’s see where do I start. Um, so we I may have shared where this all came from, but just having just a quick little flashback to the affinity that I noticed that I had like I just was I could see that that values challenge in someone, and that would be the immediate empowering question. You know in my, in my early days of coaching, that we’re taught to use empowering questions, and so I realized that my questions were leaning toward what is that value, or what’s being challenged here, or what’s getting to the thing behind the thing. Right, it’s often times of values challenge. So what I did was put together a little assessment just to play around with, and asked some coaches to come and participate with me, and I tweaked along the way. You can’t hear this lawnmower in my back, can you?

Wendy Roop: 

No, okay, good Sure can’t.

Karen Preston: 

So we had fun kind of playing in that space to figure out what would make it a powerful assessment. Because it’s not so much you identify your words, that’s the easy part it’s really going into those words and telling the story about those words and holding the space for the stories that’s most impactful and holding the space for the stories that’s most impactful. So that’s really what I honed in on and figured out. What are those most important questions to peel back where there’s fear, and us as coaches, we listen to that, we listen intuitively to what does that sound like? Is there truth in that? Is there fear in that? And I can’t make that judgment, but I can certainly ask how much fear do you hear here in this story, so that my client would then be able to recognize that.

Karen Preston: 

So instead of me calling that out and there’s all kinds of little anecdotal things along the way that I learned Like certain values are more aspirational. Some may have been acquired through our growing up, from our families and our teachers and our coaches, and some may be really truly rooted in fear. But at the end of the day, when we do this work and peeling all that back, there are the core values that are rooted in truths, and it’s a truth for you, but it’s also more in line with universal truths that resonate most with you. And so, when we can find that, we get what I call the be true statement, and that’s how you start to navigate through all of your challenges, all of your decision making, and the more you can lean into that be true statement, that’s authenticity, that’s effortlessness, and what I’ve seen as a result of that work is, when folks might have been struggling with career changes, really using that as their rubric for how to make decisions on where they would fit in best.

Karen Preston: 

When you have some challenges in your life, in your relationships, recognizing truly what is it that’s being challenged and why, you know the process for each one of these value words to peel back on is the same process that we do every day with anything else. Where did this come from? Well, you know taking time to reflect back and ask what about that? So what? Because that’s what can guide us and help us recognize, discerning where is there fear and how do I get to truth. Help us recognize discerning where is their fear and how do I get to truth. So the process itself is fairly simple.

Wendy Roop: 

What is more dynamic is really how the coach shows up for the client, taking them down their own little, holding the space that journey of, of ahas and of cathartic, you know, awareness right, because left, left, on our own right, we can really only go so far, because it’s like don’t know what we don’t know, or we’re not willing to ask ourselves the question that you know someone like you, someone like me, right, we’ll, we’ll ask as coaches, and so that that work is so important, yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

I wonder too and I’m sure you’ve seen this where, like people are, they’re borrowing values. They might’ve borrowed them from their family, from their mom, their dad, but what does it look like when someone borrowed them, versus like they began to own their own so they shed some? Does that make sense?

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, yeah. Well, it shows up in the story. So when I would take them through asking some of my series of questions, you’ll hear the story. And so, in that, the challenge that you know a coach then kind of holds that space for would be how much of this is really yours? How is this holding on to this value impacting you? What might it be costing you?

Karen Preston: 

The other piece that’s interesting is how we might actually have a value. Word, that is our truth, but we are aligned with it from more of a fear-based perspective. And so, for example, communication and connectedness I may have shared this before they were my top values, and rightly so. I mean, communication is really important. As a coach and being a mom of three girls, you got to figure out how to talk to them. Well, we probably should right thing that you know, like I felt a bigger presence than just beyond me, but I, you know, god, universe, all of that, it’s all part of that bigger, bigger tapestry that we all fit into, right. And then yet there was this between me and you kind of thing connectedness also that I would. You know, we dance between, maybe that duality where we show up as a human and then sometimes we show up, more spiritually based. So they, they for sure, are rooted also in some fear.

Karen Preston: 

Because whenever communication isn’t showing up for me mutually, then I feel rejected. And when I feel disconnected from someone and I haven’t reached back into my own you know interconnectedness to that greater thing, I feel abandoned. And so of course it makes sense because you know somewhere in that little Karen’s, you know, growing up she had some of those feelings where she wasn’t good enough. And growing up she had some of those feelings where she wasn’t good enough and felt alone. No-transcript. Someone else’s perfectionistic is one I see a lot. Now, nobody’s going to say that I value perfectionism, but their nuances on how they show up, how their personality type being stickler like, where did that come from? Oftentimes that has been imposed by a parent. So it you know my father’s famous words are better to be thought ignorant than to open up your mouth and leave out all doubt. So if I wasn’t showing up knowing what the heck I was talking about, then I might as well just don’t participate in the conversation, so that puts a stickler on edge absolutely right.

Wendy Roop: 

it’s like, of course, I love that you bring that up because our stories, right we all have our own personal filter and background and experience and the way we were brought up and all of that, of course, affects how our values were, you know, developed.

Scott McGohan: 

So yeah, I think sometimes too, and I appreciate what you said about your dad, but even like my dad is, I always felt like if I had to talk to him I had to have all the details.

Wendy Roop: 

Right.

Scott McGohan: 

Like I couldn’t, and I couldn’t talk to him about the rads or the bangles or sports, Cause he never really watched sports a whole lot. But I say all of that and that sometimes that’s our perception. And then one time I was in the car within him and I was just talking to him about his dad and then his dad’s dad, and then like a really really cool conversation came out and I was like, oh my gosh, like I’ve helped my dad at this distance, at bay for decades, because I thought whatever I had to say had to be super relevant, accurate, profound and almost sound strategic.

Scott McGohan: 

Does that make sense? Sense versus just a random conversation? And like I had to own that side of the street and I’m sure I’ve done the same thing to to taylor, I mean I know I have and, and courtney 100, I’ve probably done it yeah.

Karen Preston: 

So what do we do with that? Right again, we can’t know what we don’t know um you need a t-shirt that says that we can’t know what we don’t know.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah yeah, and then karen can help you.

Karen Preston: 

There you go there, you can help you. Yeah, call karen, yes on the back call. Call your manager. I need to speak.

Scott McGohan: 

Your manager, yeah speak to your manager. Yeah, that’s a good t-shirt, too. That’s a great t-shirt yeah.

Karen Preston: 

So values, um, so many things, things to play around with here. Words like respect such a big word, too big this word would show up as a high value. It was more about how they wanted their value to be treated. So if we kind of got down underneath the word respect and ask, okay, what is what? Do you want to be respected? That that’s the value. Respect isn’t really the value. It’s what you want to be respected, how you want to be respected you’re helping to again peel back that onion and figure out what really.

Wendy Roop: 

Because again, you know, we just think we’ve always had it in our mind or whatever, that this is our value. But when someone starts asking us that question, it it’s like oh yeah, well, maybe that’s really it.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, organizations love to put integrity on their wall, but what does that really mean? How do you walk that talk? And so it really isn’t the integral part of the values work that I do is I do not define any of these words, and I was just recently challenged with one value word and I’ll bring this back to you guys here and see what your thoughts are. The value is love, and while I’ve been very careful not to define how you define, you know I’m not going to tell you Just because I have this values assessment doesn’t mean I’m the beholder of all the definitions of these words. How you define them is a part of your story, right? A part of your story, right? But interestingly, the word love came up that maybe there isn’t. Maybe there is a defined way, universal way, because there is a part of this word that it really is the it’s. It’s like there’s not even a word to describe the word love, right? How do you define it? It?

Wendy Roop: 

just, it’s the core of everything.

Karen Preston: 

So I don’t know what are your thoughts about that.

Scott McGohan: 

As I play this back to you guys now figuring this out. I mean it’s an interesting question because, like I say, like I love ice cream and I love my wife, right, and hopefully I love them in different ways. And then I was watching that show, jane Pauly, good Morning Sunday, you know the one, the sun and there was a country singer that wrote a song. His dad was dying. He was trying to go home to say goodbye to his dad and he said I said goodbye on a, on a, on an iPhone eight. That’s where I said goodbye, cause I didn’t make it. And he said I wrote this song called grief and I was really like, really listening to him and he said grief, all it is, it’s love that simply lost something. I was really like really listening to him and he said grief, all it is, it’s love that simply lost something. And I was like whoa, like that was so beautiful. And sometimes I don’t know, sometimes I want to make things really super complicated, right.

Scott McGohan: 

Maybe, sometimes it’s not as complicated.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, and I really feel like that’s, that’s the word love. I mean, it’s almost like it’s.

Karen Preston: 

it’s as simple or complicated as you would want it to be Right. Yeah Again, anyone can define it for them how it means.

Wendy Roop: 

Right, and it is too I hear what you’re saying, Karen too Like it is, like it’s, it’s like a very feeling value, Like I, you know, you feel it. It’s like, when I think of it, it’s like an affinity for something. Is that the right word? Like yeah, but yeah, I mean gosh, even like what you said, Scott, you know, when you say I love ice cream versus I love my wife, like Right, we use it, just like we use respect, right.

Wendy Roop: 

Yes. So back to why the work that you do is so important in helping people to dive deeper into that. It is to open up that for them. Like, what does that really mean? That can just really be I’ll use the word right life-changing for some people when they can check in with some of those things on that they never really thought or felt about before.

Wendy Roop: 

The other thing I love, the other reason. I love this and I’ve done the values work with Karen, so I’ll speak to that in a second too. But you know, when you talk about defining them, it’s so true we all like, if you and I, you know you and I do both have the value of connection, but if you ask both of us, that might mean might mean something pretty different. So what have you found in your experience? That when you work with you know clients about their values, how it might even make a difference for their family or for their team or for you know, what have you when they are opening up and having those conversations about what their value is and what it means to them?

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, especially when it comes to a relationship, right, whether you’re in a, it’s just the one-to-one relationship or a broader collective with, like you say, family, community, team. You know, I think that’s one of the things that’s so powerful about this work is the availability to have that definition, and that’s the conversation starter, I think. Because if let’s say we were on a team, I think because if let’s say we were on a team and this is my easiest example about how this can be some dissonance between us, how you define punctuality and how you might prefer punctuality and where it might sit for me very low, now it doesn’t mean that we it’s not because I don’t have respect for being on time, I just might define that maybe a little differently, and so I’m going to get you know, I’m going to rub you the wrong way when I’m showing up five minutes late or with my sandwich in my mouth, whenever I do show up, right.

Wendy Roop: 

You’re always willing to share. That, that’s okay.

Karen Preston: 

Yes, I offered you a bite, so I guess that’s the piece there. That that’s important is how do you define this? This is your word, how does it, what does it mean to you and why is that important? Really, really important. For us to now have a conversation around that, um, because now we can level set the playing field. Now I can show up for you. Knowing that this is important to you doesn’t have to be my value, but I have a conscious choice now how I want to show up for you without sacrificing myself. But if it’s something that I would say this is is absolutely not, you’ll never get this from me Then that means we’ve got to find some common something there that will allow us to work together.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, what I heard in that is that whole thing around like you know how can we meet people where they are, how can we meet each other where you know where we are around? So many things. But this is a perfect example of that.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, but we don’t. We’re not having that conversation well enough right In our organizations and our families. That’s right.

Scott McGohan: 

I think if you’re listening too. This is why you need a coach, because if I I haven’t experienced this work, but if I was going to experience it, the first couple of questions you would ask me, I would give you the answer I thought you wanted to hear. But what I see both of you is you’re like you’re just like you’re digging and you’re digging we’re excavating, yeah, yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

But the beautiful part about that and I’ll go back to the word love, because I’m a big believer in this is that we can’t love anybody until we can learn how to love ourselves.

Scott McGohan: 

We just can’t, there’s no capacity. I’m just saying there’s no capacity for it to be able to do that. But when it becomes not my dad’s story or my mom’s story or my company’s story or my wife’s story, my neighborhood, my neighborhood story, and it becomes like all of it becomes my story, then like that’s where really cool stuff happens inside of people. And, um, I had I went to see a psychiatrist. Oh my gosh, I don’t know, 40 years ago.

Karen Preston: 

You’re that old, no 59.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah, so so it probably wasn’t 19. Let’s say I was 25. And here’s what he said. He goes hey look, here’s the deal. He goes, scott, and back then it was like 120 bucks it was a lot. He goes. I’ll keep taking your 120 bucks and you can keep.

Karen Preston: 

You can keep lying to me and I’ll sit here and I’ll take it every week and well start being honest, and then I never went back, yeah when you started being honest, that zip that we had a little blip in in your oh so you said that when you started being honest, you stopped going going. No, I never. We missed it.

Scott McGohan: 

No, I just stopped going.

Karen Preston: 

I was just like yeah, I heard you Too painful to be honest. Too painful to be honest, yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

I’m going to save 120 bucks.

Karen Preston: 

It’s more important to save the money, right yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

Yep, yeah, I keep lying to myself.

Karen Preston: 

Well, that’s the difference, I think, from a coach too is being able to hold that space. I’m not needing to go back into your childhood and ask how you got here. Uh, I just want to know why is that important right now and is that limiting you? Or do we need to do some kind of a recalibration here to get you really ultimately?

Wendy Roop: 

where you want to be, yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

And both of you said something really powerful too, and you said one of the questions you would ask is like what does that cost in you? What does that value cost in you? That’s a pretty interesting question.

Karen Preston: 

I love the cost benefit analysis that came from my business background.

Scott McGohan: 

Like let me pull that.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah.

Karen Preston: 

It makes sense in every it’s a, it’s a. You can’t not ask that question almost in every aspect, right? What’s the future cost of this?

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, and going back to you doing this, you know, values assessment with me, um, it was, it was it, and I’m a coach, right, but I’m a nerd with all of this stuff, but it was. So it’s just really deep work and it’s such important work and I and I do remember that coming up and I can’t remember which value it was around at the time, but I do remember that cost, right, what’s that costing you? Cause you could you know again that cost, or what’s that costing you Cause you could you know again. We’re most coaches are just have this extra sense right, this intuition, where we’re like, yeah, like what’s coming up for you around that value?

Karen Preston: 

Something about that yeah.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, and so again, we’re not walking around having conversations like this on a normal basis, like tell me about your values and you know this on a normal basis, like tell me about your values and you know what’s behind that. So to have someone hold that space for me that I don’t get very often either, where you know you’re asking me those deeper questions, was so helpful. And and there was just such like I wasn’t surprised necessarily by anything, but it again, because it’s not work we typically do on our own it was still an aha moment, right, like, oh yeah, it was just a great reminder of what my values are and how can I continue to, like you said, make decisions based on those values, like heck yes or heck no, and so it’ll be a hell.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, I know, hell, yeah, we can say that here Hell yeah, ain’t no such thing as a hell, maybe.

Wendy Roop: 

That’s right and and you know it’s easy for us to say, but we know it, like we know the difference between that feeling and we also, you know, all of us struggle with that as well. But it’s like when you know that, like hell no or hell yes, so like keep going back to that because it is tied to our values.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, that’s the unapologetic effortlessness you know authenticity, that’s where that lives Truth.

Karen Preston: 

But, what you’re saying is that we don’t spend enough time reflecting and holding that space for that reflection and to be willing to go that deep it is. It is transformational work and on the other side of that work, you now have your roadmap, you now have your, your guardrails, you now have the things that can keep you on that road, your guardrails, you now have the things that can keep you on that road and, and you know, you’re shifting your trajectory, still based on your, you know these guiding principles that now you live by and that makes it so much easier. That’s the effortlessness.

Scott McGohan: 

You know, Wendy, it’s that, it’s that learning circle.

Wendy Roop: 

Yes.

Scott McGohan: 

That if you just do that every day, you clean up every mess you have or every mess you make, and even maybe acknowledge the messes that people made you know on you or to you, and life just gets a little freer. Doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Wendy Roop: 

Hey Scott, for those who have not heard that real quick, because even around our values, I think that learning circle can be so helpful. So just tell us the points of what do we do going through the learning circle.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah, so if you can imagine a circle and it’s cut in half, so on the right side of the circle would be observe, reflect and discuss, and normally what would happen is, let’s just say I was offended by somebody at work or somebody in my life, I would go home the night and I would think about that. So I’d observe and I would think about that uh-oh right, does that make sense?

Scott McGohan: 

wait, yeah, you cut out again cut out again, scott I did observe, observe you would go home tonight and yeah, observe, reflect and discuss, and then you would go home and you would reflect and discuss that in your own noggin, which is not a healthy place to to go yeah, yeah and transformation happens when you go to the left side of the circle which is discuss, and that’s with somebody you trust. Right? This is what happened between the two of you. You can build some accountability, which is the second one which is really around. Hey, what should I do? What could I do?

Wendy Roop: 

Oh, she only froze again, I thought he was just pausing.

Scott McGohan: 

Maybe I’ll just do this.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah.

Karen Preston: 

Right.

Wendy Roop: 

You can psych us out. Yeah, so yeah, keep going, thank you. This is. I think this is helpful for tied to the values piece.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah, just that learning circle, you know in, you know, in recovery it’s. It’s really about inventory, you know, and when I can clean my own side of the street every day, you know, so, taking daily inventory, and I can clean that up and I don’t have to live with a backpack full of resentments and all kinds of stuff in my back, where and cause I’m going to think of it as a trash can. So all of us have a trash can in our life and if it’s heaping over, that’s a problem, because we’re always going to have trash is.

Scott McGohan: 

If I clean that up every day, I’m still going to have trash in my trash can, but there’s room for more trash Is that just room for it and then spiritually, if we can get our hearts and heads around that, then I think that’s when humanity just shows up and you know we get to see everyone’s best.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, what I love about that, and what you shared too, is like even going back to what Karen was sharing, like you know, again giving yourself the opportunity to reflect on what like if to your example. Scott, right, if I’ve been offended. What value did that go against? Exactly Because, again, what?

Karen Preston: 

value was challenged here, absolutely.

Wendy Roop: 

Usually the case, right, and then, after we’ve, you know, had those healthy conversations with someone else, right To say, okay, this is what happened, this is what’s coming up for me. It is, then, making sure you’re taking that action step. What’s something that I can do differently, or be differently, in order for me to change our thoughts and our feelings? Because that’s what’s happening, right, when we’re feeling offended, we’ve got all these, as I call them, little T truths, right, thoughts going through our head about the situation, and it stirred up all these emotions, and what we forget is that we have a choice in that. So, from a values perspective, it’s like, okay, what value got challenged and what little T truths did I have about that person with that value?

Karen Preston: 

And then what’s another way to think about it, right? So I feel like that comes full circle. Maybe three or four weeks that I’ve been bringing more into my coaching conversations. And what’s interesting is that when we keep those little thoughts in our, you know when we’re doing that, even if we are reflecting good job.

Karen Preston: 

But if we’re keeping them inside of us, then we’re only looking at this through a more subjective lens, whereas when you put that outside of you, if you record it, you write it down, you give it to someone else. Now it can be objectified, and we need to be doing that. We need a balance of subjective and objective perspective, because the more we hold onto it, then it’s just going to ruminate and that’s where we become our little tea truths. That may not actually serve us, but if we put it outside of us and look at it now we can discern fear. Now we can say what about that? You never do a journal entry and then look back at it years later and you’re like who wrote that? That wasn’t me, that couldn’t have come from me, but in that moment that was what was happening. So it is important to take it outside of that brain and put it somewhere so that you can really look at it differently. That’s the space that this values work provides as well.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah. So I think we lose our, I think we lose. I think when you do that, um it just, it loses a lot.

Wendy Roop: 

It loses a lot of power, a ton of power especially when we say it out loud, because when we hear ourselves, I mean, it’s one thing to write it down, right, that’s one. When you say it loud, loud, and sometimes, when you hear yourself say it, you’re like can I take that back right?

Karen Preston: 

that makes no sense, or did I mean that right?

Scott McGohan: 

you know, I was in an event and I asked people if they were impacted by certain issues and I I needed you to be brave and I need you to impact. I need you to raise your hand if you’re impacted, so be brave. And so I rose my hand and then everyone, like everyone’s hand went up.

Scott McGohan: 

I’m like, do you feel that tingle, like that nervous tingle and what I believe that shame, like falling from us it’s like it falls away from us and when we can, when we can take that, that power that it holds against us and get rid of it Now I’m going to say this to the listeners again is like you need a coach to help you with that Cause I’m not your guy. I’m a good storyteller, but I don’t have the assets that Karen and Wendy have to be able to like help you with that. But gosh, just the.

Karen Preston: 

I just think the impact you can have on people oh big time Yep.

Wendy Roop: 

Hey, karen, as we wrap this up, I think it’s important I want to ask you, just like one part, two questions. Right? Like number one, what else do you want the listeners? We are talking about culture, right? How do you see your work as a coach impacting culture, just in general or detailed? Whatever you want to share, yeah, Excuse me.

Karen Preston: 

I definitely think that the work can be transformational to help us live our best lives individually, and I see how organizations struggle being in their healthiest and again leaning back into culture, right. So what’s happening in the organization where their values are not aligned is likely because they are. You know, the culture issues that they’re having are likely values related. So we’ve got mergers and acquisitions, we’ve got new leaders, there’s lots of change management happening. We’ve got new leaders. There’s lots of change management happening. All these different aspects in an organization are. It’s time for a values that folks can be guided with in the organization. They’re going to bring their own culture.

Karen Preston: 

We’ve talked about this before. So how do you as an organization, how do you as the leaders of this organization, establish what these core values are and ensure that everyone understands what they mean, how to demonstrate those competencies and behaviors that are aligned with that value, and how regularly are you measuring for that? The other piece is that some of us individually may not fit in with those values, and that’s okay. We just need to figure out what makes it a hell yeah or a hell no for us, and the more we can be authentic, the more we can push into that and figure out is this where I am aligned or not? Change, or it’s, and they’re not aligned and it’s costing the organization, it’s costing you. So what does it? What does it look like for you to really get real with yourself and understand what? What is out of alignment here? What values are being challenged here? So it goes both ways. Um, toxic culture is rampant, and there’s a way to start with values.

Wendy Roop: 

Absolutely.

Karen Preston: 

So I don’t know if did I answer both of your questions.

Wendy Roop: 

I think, I mean, I think so. I think it’s just you know. I just want to make sure that if there’s anything else you know is in your work as a coach that you want people to know about you or your work. You know you have your work as a coach that you want people to know about you or your work. You know you have the opportunity and obviously we have a podcast together so you can talk about it all the time. Yeah, yeah.

Karen Preston: 

Just, I have a to support coaches. I have a certification to support clients. We have the assessment to support teams. We have the opportunity to overlay each other’s values. As a consultant, I come in and support you with your value words to help you get them to be really clear, and so when you put them on your wall, you’ll understand what you know. Everyone will understand what walking their talk looks like.

Scott McGohan: 

I can see all those certificates behind you too.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, there’s like one, two, three, four, five, six, yeah.

Scott McGohan: 

You want to see mine.

Karen Preston: 

Yes.

Scott McGohan: 

Yeah, they’re back there.

Wendy Roop: 

Oh yeah, they’re golf, they’re golf In my house that I just moved into. I have blank bowls right now.

Scott McGohan: 

yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Karen Preston: 

It’s okay.

Wendy Roop: 

You have all these same certificates. Yeah, well, it is. Well, you both are amazing and um, karen, thank you so much for sharing about your very, very important work and again, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to work with you and, um, and just you know, having you hold that space for me and and it was really so helpful, and so we would just invite if we ask the question right, like we always like to ask the question, you know, let’s go inside. So what would you invite our listeners to do, or to be, or to you know what have you when it comes to values work, and then, yeah, just be how to you know what have you when it comes to values, work and anything.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, Just be. How willing are you to go inside and be curious about where that value came from? And is it really yours?

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah, it’s great, scott, anything else?

Scott McGohan: 

No, I would just encourage anybody if they’re considering maybe, maybe getting a coach and leaning into that is um, and it might even take some journaling. So you know what are you afraid of.

Karen Preston: 

Yeah, what is it costing you? Again Like to to not be willing to go deeper.

Scott McGohan: 

You know, I can remember when well you remember Pete Conkwendy, like the first time I like I listed values and sadly they were pretty materialistic, sadly they were pretty materialistic, um, and he was, he was so kind and basically he didn’t say this but you’re a, you’re a, you’re a mess, um, and over time we got to like shed some of those yeah we got to shed some of those and he did that with and you say this a lot wendy, like, like space and grace.

Scott McGohan: 

So he gave me tons of space, tons of grace, and then, at the end of the day, great leaders and you guys do this. Every day is at the end, people will have said and thought I did that myself.

Wendy Roop: 

Yes.

Scott McGohan: 

And then they own it.

Wendy Roop: 

Yeah.

Karen Preston: 

That’s the difference in coaching.

Wendy Roop: 

For sure. That’s what it’s all about. So well. It was great spending time with all of you as listeners as well, and we look forward to seeing you next time. See ya.

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