Celebrating Core Values: Reinforcing Behaviors That Shape Your Culture

Last quarter, a senior leader at one of our clients faced a situation that didn't have an easy answer. Rather than defaulting to what was fast or convenient, he leaned into their values. He slowed down, asked better questions, and chose the harder, better path.

The result was an outcome that created real value for the company. But more importantly, it was one of those moments that remind you what your culture is actually made of.

One of the most important jobs a CEO has is stewarding their culture. And in my experience, the best way to do that is by finding the stories of when your people lived your core values and sharing them widely.

Core value awards are how you make that visible. The CEOs who do this consistently show their teams what "great" looks like.

Why Core Value Wins Matter

To be clear: you are not trying to change people's core values. You are identifying the behaviors that reflect your company's values, reinforcing them consistently, and attracting people who naturally live them.

If you do not actively recognize values in action, your culture will default to reinforcing whatever gets results in the short term, often at the expense of long-term alignment.

Core value wins make the invisible visible.

How to Identify Core Value Wins

Look for moments under pressure

Values show up most clearly when something is at stake.

• A leader who chose integrity over speed.

• A team member who prioritized people over profit.

• A decision that reflected long-term stewardship over short-term gain.

These are the stories worth elevating.

Focus on behavior, not just outcomes

Results matter. Behavior is what scales culture.

Instead of highlighting that someone closed a major deal, highlight that they walked away from a misaligned opportunity to uphold your values.

Capture the story while it is fresh

Build the habit of asking what happened, what made it hard, and what value was demonstrated. This creates a steady pipeline of meaningful stories.

How to Reinforce and Scale These Wins

Make it a leadership discipline

Start every leadership meeting with core value wins. Each leader brings one or two examples, a clear connection to a value, and a brief story behind it. This builds alignment at the top.

Teach through stories

When sharing a core value win, describe the situation, the tension, and the decision that was made. The emotional detail is what sticks and gives your team something to model.

Make it visible across the organization

Do not let these stories stay in leadership meetings. Share them in all-hands meetings, internal updates, and quarterly off-sites in a company culture book. Repetition builds clarity.

Create meaningful recognition moments

Take your strongest stories and elevate them further with quarterly core value awards, annual recognition tied to specific values, and peer-nominated awards across teams. Every award should be tied to a real story and a clear behavior.

Final Takeaways

Culture is not what you say. It is what you consistently reinforce and reward. You are not trying to change people. You are building an environment where the right behaviors are recognized, celebrated, and repeated.

Reflection Questions

1. What are one to two core value stories your entire company should hear right now?

2. Are your values being taught through stories or just stated in words?

3. What behaviors are you currently reinforcing, intentionally or unintentionally?

Done well, this practice aligns your team, accelerates execution, and ensures your organization scales in a way that reflects your values, not just your goals.

The PFD Manifesto: A Declaration of Our Commitment to Serving

2020 has undoubtedly been a tumultuous year. Throughout this year, we have been challenged like never before - trying to navigate ever-present circumstances out of our control. At PFD, we think the end of this year is an excellent time to share with you our manifesto. Our manifesto has three elements: our Core Values, our Core Purpose, and our BHAG. By reconnecting with what we stand for as a company and envisioning the big picture of where we are going, it has helped us tremendously with our resiliency. This is because the elements in our manifesto allow us to remain steadfast while continuing to pursue a greater mission despite the uncertainty in the world. Because it has been helpful for us, we want to share what we created with you. Further, as a part of our continued commitment to serving our business community, we wanted to share with you how to create and roll out your own manifesto in your organization as a source of inspiration for your people.

Step 1: Decide the Elements - your Core Values, Core Purpose, and BHAG.

Your first step in creating your manifesto is to create the different elements that go into it. Below, you will see a description of the different elements to include. These elements are tricky, so if you need assistance in creating them, please reach out to us. We would be happy to help.

Manifesto Element I: Core Values

 Your core values ask this question: what are the consistent, accepted behaviors of your team members? The key to core values to drive behavior, and they are utterly meaningless if CEO isn’t protecting and stewarding them. These core values drive everything that we do, and the communicate to the world what we stand for. The purpose of your core values is to empower your employees – they will never not know what to do in a situation because they have very specific values there to guide them in making decisions. Your employees should never get in trouble for following the core values – when they follow them, this means they are self-initiating productive behavior that holds true to the best interest for the company. 

At PFD, our Core Values are:

Grow to Give

We take on a growth and learning mindset so we are best equipped to help our clients ability to grow and scale their impact. We strive to have a servant leader mentality so that we are able to approach everything with humility and to best serve others.

Create Client Value

We serve as the trusted guide for the CEO and their leadership team through finding better ways, providing exceptional service, anticipating needs, and seeing around the curves.

Communicate Proactively

We lean in and have the conversation so that there are no surprises.

Invest in our team and community

We are better together. We mentor and serve each other, and we steward the lives around us.

Be the Confidant

We nurture a culture of confidentiality, trust, and vulnerability. When our clients reach out to us, they share their greatest opportunities and challenges.

Manifesto Element II: The BHAG

The BHAG is a concept from Jim Collins, and it stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Our BHAG creates our North Star that we can use to navigate our companies. It is our 10-to-30 year goal that allows us to have something to work towards, despite the rockiness of the circumstances around us. The importance of the BHAG should not be understated. It creates a compelling mission for the company – an inspiring, unifying focal point that stimulates and energizes the team to make vast progress.

At PFD, our BHAG is to steward a movement, that, no matter where you are born, anything is possible. 

We believe that business can be a force for good in the world around us. We strive to empower the leaders we work with leverage their businesses to make a positive difference in their teams and their communities. We know that the average person will spend 90,000 hours working in their lifetimes, and this gives us tremendous opportunity to create meaningful and empowering workplaces that allow people to get to anywhere they want to go. We know that we can’t do this alone, so we will intentionally spend our time inspiring and empowering workplaces around us to make a meaningful difference in the lives around them.

Manifesto Element III: Core Purpose

The core purpose answers one very specific question: why does your company exist? It’s a very simple concept, but it is critical that everyone in your organization knows the answer to it. If everyone knows what your core purpose is, you are able to keep on track with your strategic vision, because it creates alignment toward your way of being.

At PFD, our Core Purpose is to steward lives. We believe stewardship is a very powerful concept. Simply put: we are blessed to have the resources we have, and we want to leverage those resources to positively impact the lives of the people around us.

Step 2: Design a graphic.  

In this day and age, design is everything. We recommend creating a graphic that shows the manifesto so that it comes alive. Rather than just being words on a document somewhere, we want to create a dynamic image that captures the eye, to draw attention to our team and the world what we stand for.

At PFD, one of our in-house designers, Emmalee created our manifesto. The source file was created in Adobe Illustrator, meaning it is a vector image, so we can make it as big or as small as we like with no pixelation. This makes it very versatile, so we can use our manifesto in many ways, both digitally and in print. If you don’t have a designer on staff, we recommend that you commission a freelance graphic designer to put your manifesto into a graphic. Fiverr.com is a great resource to find people that excel at this sort of work. Make sure to give your designer any brand guidelines as well as the information on the elements that need to be conveyed in your Manifesto.

A source file of the PFD Manifesto in Adobe Illustrator

Step 3: Repeat, repeat repeat.

The final step is to repeat your manifesto – everywhere. Get it printed and hang it in the office. Put it in your digital war room. Reference it at meetings. Repeat these foundational elements so often that your team is making fun of you – that’s how you know it’s starting to sink in.  At PFD, we begin every quarterly and annual offsite with our manifesto to remind the team of who we are and where we are going. Your team should know the core values, core purpose, and BHAG inside and out. What’s more, they should be able to take action to live them. Creating and repeating a manifesto is an incredibly grounding and empowering exercise for everyone, and we have found it to be transformational as we continue to navigate this uncertain world. While there is so much out of our control, we still have the power to decide the people we want to be and to take action to create a better future.

The manifesto is just the first step in creating resilient, growth-oriented business. We believe there is no better time than now to prepare ourselves for a better 2021. We would love to help you shape your future: one where you have the confidence and clarity to scale your business to create a better world around you.

If this mission is resonating with you, we would love to support you and your senior team. We would be happy to talk with you about your strategic plan for the upcoming year. Please reach out to us to schedule a call.