25 May The Value of Values: A Saturday Sessions Event
This past Saturday (20 May 2023), Khanya Mncwabe, guided us through an interactive session as we explored how we can go about orienting our values compass.
We shared stories and insights into how our cultures and communities (both personal and professional, past and present) informs how we show up and function in the world today.
Whilst we are so different, we agreed from the stories shared, that as a people, we also have so much in common.
We unpacked the analogy of how compliance, policy and the law (our GPS) neatly maps the terrains of our daily lives. With so many overlapping and intertwining options and decisions one can make, how do we choose which path to take? Which path will lead us astray? This is where our internal compass (our values system) comes into play, pointing us in the direction of our True North.
Our compass helps us to make decisions where the law is either silent or non-prescriptive, and in our professional settings, this helps us enter into relationships with others and evaluate if both our compasses are pointed towards the same True North.
Diversity, Perseverance, Balance, Flexibility, Loyalty, Resilience, Respect, Honesty, Integrity, Learning & Development, and Acceptance were some of the values we delved into and as shared by our audience.
This led us to an important question around contradictions: Are we willing to compromise on our values and accept one in place of the other? When faced with adversity, or when our safety or livelihood is endangered, are we willing to compromise?
We settled that our values evolve as we do and they are not impermeable, but having a good sense of what these are is essential to thriving not just in the working world, but in life in general.