The Exercise That Started It
More than twenty years ago, I was drifting. On the surface, everything looked fine. Career moving forward, hitting my targets, earning praise for my work. Inside, I felt a growing frustration. Work kept pulling me in directions that didn’t feel right, and I couldn’t figure out why.
Vicki Flier Hudson, my executive coach at the time and now a friend, gave me an exercise during one of our sessions. “Write down three to five qualities that have been true of you for as long as you can remember,” she said. Then she asked me to draw a circle around them and picture those qualities lifting off the page and settling back into me, since that’s where they’d always lived.
I did it. And she said something I’ll always remember.
“The thing about these core qualities is they’ve been with you since you have any memory, and they’ll be with you till the day you die. They can flex, but they can’t really be broken by external circumstances.”
At the time, I thought we were talking about values. Years later, I understood we were talking about something deeper. These weren’t values I admired from a distance or hoped to grow into. They were qualities that had already been shaping my decisions, my relationships, and my sense of purpose, long before I had a name for them.
They were my values. Or as I’d come to think of them: my V-AL-UES.
The Afternoon It Got a Name
The exercise planted something. The name came later, in Vicki’s home office.
Late afternoon sun angled through the windows. I vented about something at work that didn’t feel fair: some decision my company had made or some action that contradicted what its brand said it stood for. I can’t remember the specific complaint anymore. It doesn’t matter. Vicki had been hearing the same type of complaint from me for weeks.
Then she said something that showed she wasn’t only listening, she was looking for patterns. Her words made me stop talking and sit back in my chair.
“Al, what I’m hearing isn’t an issue with the company’s values. It’s with your values.”
She paused. Then repeated it with a different emphasis.
“Al’s values. V-AL-UES.”
That word hung in the air for a beat, then two. It’s stayed with me ever since.
A Pattern She Saw and I Couldn’t
I loved the company I worked for when I joined. Its brand values resonated with me: refreshing, dynamic, straightforward, friendly, honest. I finally felt like I’d found a place that matched what I cared about.
The friction showed up years later. A decision here. An action there. Patterns in how the company treated some parts of the world versus others. The disparity was sharp enough that colleagues split the map into the headquarters country and “the rest of the world.” More than two hundred countries made up that “rest.” The framing felt like the opposite of the values on the wall.
I raised it with my leadership. I talked it through with colleagues. Making little progress, I brought the frustration to Vicki.
For several early sessions I kept the conversation guarded. Her curiosity won my trust, and one session I unloaded. Different examples, same complaint. The company wasn’t living up to its values. By the third or fourth session, she’d heard the pattern clearly enough to hand it back to me. Reframed.
What Landed
Here’s what landed: the company’s values were their own. Mine were mine. They overlapped, but they weren’t identical. The gap I’d been pointing at had two contributors, not one. The company wasn’t living up to its stated values, sure. But it also wasn’t living up to my V-AL-UES, the ones I’d never named, even to myself.
That realization was both eye-opening and humbling. No wonder the company wasn’t measuring up. I’d been holding it to a standard I’d never spoken out loud.
I felt it in my gut before my head caught up. The way a truth lands when it’s the one you needed to hear.
The “Say-Do” Scorecard
Managing the frustration without losing my mind or my job needed a strategy. So I built a spreadsheet and called it my “Say-Do” scorecard. The columns were simple: What the company said or decided, the date, the action that didn’t match, and a note about the gap.
I never showed the spreadsheet to anyone or used it as evidence. The point wasn’t to weaponize it. Naming the gap on a page, in my own hand, took the heat out of my frustration. I could see the pattern and release it instead of carrying it.
The scorecard was doing more than managing my emotions, though. It was measuring the distance between my V-AL-UES and the company’s behavior. It also taught me a question I’d build a program around later.
The Cryptic Call
The cuts came deep and fast. I was the last member of the global communications team based in my country when my role was eliminated. The call came on a regular workday.
I was in my home office. My leader invited me to a call with a cryptic topic and no agenda. When I joined, she and an HR representative were together in a conference room overseas. I could hear the emotion in my leader’s voice as she began to speak. I let her get through the opening before I interrupted.
“I can save us all some time here. I’m familiar with what you’re going to say. I wrote the talking points and developed the FAQs.”
I’d authored the language for the layoff being read to me. There’s an irony in that worth noting once, then leaving alone.
Here’s what the moment taught me about my V-AL-UES. Losing the job didn’t shake the qualities Vicki had me circle years earlier. It proved her right. Honesty, fairness, and candor didn’t leave when the role did. The company could eliminate my position. It couldn’t touch my values. When your worth is anchored to who you are rather than where you work, a layoff stings, but it can’t define you.
A Better Filter
Before I looked for what came next, I added a second layer to the V-AL-UES lens: Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. Start with Why. Understand the why of an organization, and you understand whether your purpose and theirs align or are at least compatible. V-AL-UES plus purpose became my filter, and brand and title slid down the list.
The filter earned its keep almost immediately. In one final-round interview for a role with a different company, the head of HR told me the culture welcomed candor and that she appreciated feedback herself. So I gently pointed out a few typos in some LinkedIn recommendations she’d given, thinking she’d appreciate presenting herself in the best way. Her demeanor changed instantly. The answers got short. The room got cool. I didn’t get that job, and that was a good thing. My V-AL-UES flagged the gap before I ever signed on.
The next opportunity told a different story. In a final interview, I met a senior executive I’d support in the role and asked hard questions about a major reorganization the company had just pushed through. He answered candidly, walking me through the process, giving both the human and the communications sides. He wasn’t reading from a script. His character showed through.
That leader modeled what I’d later call Lead with Light: how we lead matters as much as what we achieve. My V-AL-UES said yes. That’s the role I accepted.
When the Scorecard Went Public
The spreadsheet I’d built before had only been for me. About two years into the new role, the same instinct showed up in a form that I realized the whole company could use.
The company ran a robust feedback engine of surveys, focus groups, and skip-level meetings. One year, 80% of employees agreed they had enough opportunities to give two-way feedback. A strong number. But only 66% agreed the company acted on the feedback they gave. A fourteen-point gap between having a voice and feeling heard.
That gap was the challenge we faced. Employees provided feedback and the company acted on it, but employees couldn’t always see the connection. So we drew a clear line for them. What employees said went in one column. What the company did went in the other. Cause and effect, side by side.
The same instinct that built a private scorecard built a public program. Both started from one question: are we doing what we said we’d do? Once, that question tracked the gap between my V-AL-UES and a company’s behavior. Now it closed the gap between a company’s promises and its people.
For how we built that program, read Listen Like You Mean It.
Parting Thoughts
Two lessons stayed with me from that afternoon in Vicki’s office.
Your frustration with a company may be about you, not just them.
When the gap between what a company says and does shows up in your gut, pay attention. Then check whether you’re holding the company to its values or to your own. The honest answer is usually both. Naming the difference is where the change starts.
Track the “Say-Do” gap.
The act of tracking changes how you see the situation. You don’t have to weaponize it. You don’t have to share it. You’re looking for patterns, not ammunition. The patterns will tell you whether to stay, change your approach, or go.
I never lost the “Say-Do” instinct. It’s changed jobs with me since. The leaders I admire most work to close their own “Say-Do” gap every day. They aren’t perfect. Leading with Light is about progress, not perfection.
Here’s the truth I wish I’d learned earlier.
Your values were with you before any job, and they’ll outlast every position you hold. Name them, honor them, and let them lead. When you do, you stop waiting for a company to hand you what you’ve stood for all along.
Be clear. Be kind. Lead with Light! ✨
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