This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 157 / Values First with Dr. Laura Eigel

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

There are many reasons I love living life from a values first approach – first, it’s something I can connect to on a daily basis. It helps me make decisions, reminds me who I want to be and how I want to show up, provides clarity if someone or something is the right fit for me or vice versa, and I see my values as the roots from which confidence grows. So on this episode of This Is Woman’s Work, we’re going to get YOU connected to YOUR values! Laura Eigel, founder of The Catch Group, a leadership coaching and consulting firm accelerating women into the C-suite, author of Values First: How Knowing Your Core Beliefs Can Get You the Life and Career You Want, and the host of the “You Belong in the C-Suite” podcast, joins me. Known for her direct feedback and passion for living a life guided by her values, she has been an HR executive at Fortune 50 companies, joined the C-suite as a Chief Learning Officer, and now coaches high-achieving women to build fulfilling lives inside and outside the boardroom. When you know and operate from your values, you build trust. With yourself, and with others. You know what to expect. And so do other people. I’m not suggesting it’s always easy to stick to your values, but the more you practice the deeper those values go, the more you embody them, and the clearer you get on WHO YOU ARE, and who you’re not. What do YOU value? And how are you living those values? Connect with Laura and access resources: Website: https://thecatchgroup.com/ LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraeigel/  IG: https://www.instagram.com/thecatchgroup/  Book: Values First - How knowing your core beliefs can get you the life and career you want Boundary Builder on-demand workshop: www.thecatchgroup.com/boundaryworkshop Catch Crew membership: https://thecatchgroup.com/catchcrew/ Building Team Connection  (free resource): https://thecatchgroup.ck.page/teamconnectiontoolkit Values Worksheet: https://thecatchgroup.ck.page/values-worksheet  To join Nicole’s pod (to get all the inside scoops, free stuff, and the occasional rant), click here

I am Nicole Kalil, and I have a little confession to make. I don't now, nor have I ever had a clear vision. I don't have a three-year, five-year, or any other time frame under the sun written vision, and the only ones I've ever had in the past, someone else forced me to write and I was generally unattached to. I know several of you just gasped in horror and imagine for a second how uncomfortable I've been in oh so many business meetings, coaching sessions, meetings with mentors, and all the places where people say having a clear written personal vision is

necessary for success. I mean, let's be real. There are people out there that love nothing more than a good vision. I'm just not one of them. I'm not anti-vision. And if it works for you, you should absolutely have one. It's just not a tool or practice that resonates with me. My experience has been that it felt more like an assignment with expectations that it'd be written in a certain way, that it'd be clear and detailed, and that someone gives me feedback about my vision, which always felt a little counterintuitive to me. I remember writing visions and thinking, how the hell do I know where I want to live or what role I want to be in or exactly

what I want to be doing or who I want to be doing it with? I also remember one vision I did as an assignment for a program I participated in where I got feedback from a mentor that it wasn't clear enough, that he couldn't feel, smell, or taste it. So I did what most mentees would do. And I went back and rewrote it several times until I returned to my mentor with a beautifully written vision that brought tears to his eyes, but meant absolutely nothing to me because I didn't write it for me. I wrote it for him, which is ridiculous if you think about the actual value and purpose of having a vision. I wish I would have done then what I do today. And that is to say writing and having a personal vision doesn't motivate me, doesn't speak to me, but here's what does. While I'm not a vision person, I have figured out some things that do work for me. Things like practicing gratitude,

setting goals, writing down the experience and feelings that I'm looking to create, and a whole host of other things. But one thing that always has worked for me is being clear on my values. Even when I've been completely unsure what's next for me, where I want to be, or who I want to be with personally, professionally, knowing who I am and who I want to be has been the greatest support in making the decisions that led me to living this life and doing the work that I love. So on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about having a values-first approach to life and career. And for all you vision junkies, please know that I'm only trying to offer additional or alternative approaches because at the end of the day, I think we all want the same

thing. And that's for people to know what they want, what's important to them, and to be able to chase their dreams. So I've asked Laura Igle, founder of The Catch Group, a leadership coaching and consulting firm accelerating women into the C-suite, author of Values First, How Knowing Your Core Beliefs Can Get You the Life and Career You Want, and host of the You Belong in the C-suite podcast to join us today. Known for her direct feedback and passion for living a life guided by her values, she has been an HR executive at Fortune 50 companies, joined the C-suite as a chief learning officer, and now coaches high-achieving women to build fulfilling lives inside and outside the boardroom. Laura, thank you so much for being our guest. And I'd love to dive right in by asking why you

believe knowing your core values is so important. Thank you so much for this important conversation and for sharing your thoughts on vision. And I think it's exactly what you said. This is who you are. So your values, a value is a central belief, something that you think is important. And so something that you think is important is for you. And it stands the test of time. Yes, it can iterate and evolve over time and it should. But values to me are a way to make decisions, to ground myself, right? And they're not for other people. Sure, some of my values serve other people because that's what motivates me. But at the end of the day, these are central beliefs, things that I hold of importance

to me. So in your example of your mentor, yeah, that was an example that you were building that for somebody else that was not for you. And so as we think about what is important to us, I think often, especially women, we serve lots of different people. We're trying to make other people comfortable. We're trying to serve all of the roles that we have at work and at home. And I think that knowing and having clarity are sometimes a couple of, are two different things. And so if you ask somebody, Hey, what are, what, what's important to you? They could probably rattle off

a couple of things, but I don't know if they would be able to have, um, and use them in a way, um, to make decisions to say yes or to not and no. And that's why I think it's really important to get clarity on your values and to define them for yourself really, truly to hold yourself center. Yeah. Well, I love that concept of holding ourselves center because everything we do, every interaction we have starts from inside of us and knowing who we want to be, how we want to show up, what's important, I think helps frame everything in a much more valuable way. So you've mentioned a few things that I wanted to circle back on. First, do they evolve? Can they change? Or is who you are who you are and it's just your life's work to figure out what that is or some combination of the two.

So my question is basically, is it our job to figure out what our values are and stay true to them no matter what? And or do these sort of grow and evolve and take shape over the course of our lives? You know, I think it's a little bit of both. Like if I think about, um, who I am, you know, and, and who, what's important to me, absolutely that, um, there's some consistent themes. And so what I find is that you'll probably have multiple themes that are consistent over time. So for me, those are the bigger buckets of values, but the things that define those are the things that evolve over time. I will say though, some people absolutely evolve their values over time. So different life experiences, they discover different things about themselves. And I think it goes down to

how well do you know yourself? As I start this work with women, often they start with, you know, five to seven values because that's kind of the, the magic number, anything more than seven, it's just too much. And it's, it's too overwhelming. And over time they, they, they iterate on them and they say, you know, it's not this, it's really that. And, oh, hey, if I don't have, you know, a value of family, for instance, what is that? Is that bad? Like, so they're trying to, like, they're pressure testing, like, am I a psychopath if I don't have that, right? Or can I possibly admit that to anyone else, right? Exactly. Is it something I'm even willing to admit out loud,

right? And guess what? It's absolutely okay to not have family as your number one value or not have serving others, or it's great to have confidence or power or career advancement, all of those things. I have achievement as one of my top ones. And so, you know, the, I'd say the first, the first kind of iterations, absolutely. You're kind of figuring out what word feels right, what definition feels right. And there's probably a little bit more like, keep it in pencil. These are not written in stone. The other thing I would say is like, just answering the question, what is of central importance to you sometimes feels like a big thing to do. And so I find that some people are just hesitant to do it just because it feels so big. I have a couple of ways that I can help your listeners do that with a free download of

a values worksheet that I found works really well just to understand what's important to me. And then really also recognizing these areas of discomfort. And so as you think about not just like the happy times, the perfect times, the most positive spaces in my life, I also want you to think about what are those moments of discomfort? Because those are the ones where sometimes when we feel conflict, when we feel misaligned, where we feel just like not great in our gut, and those times of discomfort, those are some of the best times for clarity, right? Because there's something wrong your body is telling you or your mind or your heart are telling you something is off. This

doesn't feel right. It might be a moment of anger or frustration or injustice. Any of those kinds of feelings are pointing towards your values, what you think is important. So I want you to pay attention to those things. And so as you get to this idea of five to seven, I want you to give yourself grace and permission to just try a couple of things out and be willing to kind of push on this idea of, are these values for me? Are these values the ones that I should quote unquote have as a, as a person in, you know, different roles. So for myself, you know, I'm a mom, I'm a, a leader. And so sometimes I think, oh, well, should I have more that are for me? So one of the tests I like to have, you need to have at least one. I hope that you can have more, but at least one that is like purely just for you. Sometimes this

shows up for me, mine, it's balance and it's not work-life balance because I don't believe in that. I believe in prioritizing the things that are important to me, but balance feels centered to me. It's making sure I have alone time. I'm an introvert. And so I need that space. So it looks like taking walks. It looks like getting out of my like really loud house sometimes, right? To find that space and feeling like I can set the pace for my week. And so if you look at your values and there's not one like just for you, hopefully there's multiple. But if there's not, then I'd suggest you might need to rethink and you might need to push on those edges. What's holding you back from that? So a lot of what you said speaks to my experience.

I started getting connected to my values in my late 20s from like a purposeful standpoint. I think I had some idea even at a younger age of some things about me that were important or priorities for me. But I give the example of commitment as one of my values and has been from my twenties, how that shows up, how that value plays out in my life has evolved greatly from being, you know, a young, single career oriented woman to being a partner, mom, career oriented woman, you know, so the value didn't change, but the way it shows up and how I live it has evolved.

Similarly, one of my values early on was honesty and that's evolved to authenticity. I know that that doesn't sound like it's totally different, but that was an evolution that became clear to me as I practiced the value of honesty, that authenticity actually resonated. So not a totally different value, but just again, an example of an evolution. And then the last thing I want to say is, and I don't know, I don't, I don't particularly think that there's right or wrong with any of this stuff, as long as it works for you. But one of the things that have sort of evolved is I have four values and three priorities. And the way that I see it is I need to live these values in these three priorities at the highest level. That is how I know I'm living my best life. So for me, my four values are commitment, courage, authenticity, and confidence. And my three priorities are health, my mental, emotional,

physical, spiritual, financial, like whatever you want to call it, but health. And to your point, that's the one that's really for me. And it took me a long time to even have that in my priorities, let alone make it my number one priority, but health, then family. And I include my friends in my family because a lot of my friends are family to me. And then my third one is purpose. And that's for me more specifically in the work that I do. And so the way that I see it is, you know, I need to demonstrate reaction, thoughts, anything that you would want to add or take away from anything I just said. I love it.

And I love that. Most importantly, I love that it works for you. It is very clear that that is something that works for you. And so I would say some people might say, okay, well, are those, what's a priority versus a value? I don't think it matters. I think that all of these kind of run together and they overlap on purpose. And so if there's commonalities across all of your values that you can call priorities, I love that. Not everybody might be able to do that and that's okay too. And so I think there's freedom in the framework, but I think you need to have

some kind of framework. And so I don't have them in a rank order. Some people like to rank them. I don't do that. But I look at them at least quarterly. I probably look at them way more often than that. But like very often, I just do a values check in. Like, what are these? Has anything evolved? Do I need to add anything? Is one more important than another kind of deal, right? But I'm always kind of plugging into them kind of daily.

So this week, right, my husband is traveling. And so I'm doing more, I'm doing more, I'm primary parent on kids stuff. So I know my, my schedule's going to change. Um, and so my regular morning routine is not going to be the same. And I have to figure out how am I going to get balance? How am I going to make sure I still meet my goals for my achievement? Right. But then also family is there too. And so of course that's going to be first because I'm the only one here. So even as I'm scheduling, I'm thinking about, okay, well, how are these going to be met this week? Because if they're not met, I will tell you that I'm not going to be really great at my job.

I'm not going to be, I'm my job. I'm not going to be, I'm going to have a shorter fuse with the kids, all of those kinds of things. And so I try and work them in, in different ways as I'm planning ahead. Um, and then also checking in. So to your point of this works for you, I love that. And I think it's important to figure out how do you know if you're truly living from your values? How might you, I don't know if stress test is the right term, but like, how do you know if these are a guiding, you know, force in your life or just words you share when it's convenient or, or that, you know, make you look good to others. Yeah, absolutely. So within my book, I have a values framework and it spells out values. It's an acronym because I love the

acronyms so I can remember all the things. So V is values first. It starts with just clarifying. And then the A is auditing time. And that is where I think you get that key of, okay, what is it? What does this value even mean to me? And then where is it showing up in my life? So there's some guided reflections and worksheets within the book that can actually, you can get an understanding of what even is this? How does it show up? What does it look like? And it's really interesting because you find, I don't know about you, but like, if I'm doing any kind of like assessment of time, my mind always goes to the things I am not doing well, but what is what, um, the gap, right? But what is really interesting in this work is that very often you, you find these surprises

and these insights about, whoa, I do this thing. And that totally aligns with my values. Like you find these like really happy surprises that aren't, they're not coincidence. Like you're spending your time on certain things or you're living or making certain decisions aligned to these things that you really hadn't articulated in a way before. And so as you audit that, that gives you kind of a baseline of, you know, what am I happy about? What am I, what is the gap and what might I need to do to move forward to hold myself accountable to some of these things? And so the L in the values framework is called, is for life boundaries. And that might be, Hey, I need to put some accountability in there for myself. The U is uplifting others. And that's all about how am I modeling this for other people,

especially as a leader, right. For me also, um, for my friends and family as well. Um, I want to be a representation. I want them to know who I am, right. If I'm living authentic, authentically, then I, um, I want to show people what I am, right? If I'm living authentically, then I wanna show people that I'm doing these things and modeling them and giving them permission to do it too. The E is for experiencing conflict. And that's where we wanna do these check-ins to kind of see like, what's happening here? So often for me, it's less conflict with the outside.

It's more conflict with myself. And so sometimes it's like this idea of achievement that I've always I've always prioritized. So now my goal is to create the right pace and and those kinds of things to prioritize more of the rest, more of the balance, more of the things that I want to do for myself. And that's a really important check-in that I'm doing there. And so they're usually aligned to different behaviors, right? So if I'm not getting my workout in, if I'm not doing something new, if I'm not reading, then I can see kind of on at least the quarterly, but usually I'm thinking about some of these things weekly. And then the S in the values framework is for sustainability. And it's all about that evolution and how I am, you know, really setting myself up for success. So it's doing those quarterly check-ins. It's asking a friend. It's checking in with, you know, your mentor or your manager potentially at work as, as you do. And so there it's that accountability and, and again, giving yourself grace to evolve. You should, and making sure that

you're actually using some of these things in the daily and the long-term. Thank you for sharing that framework. Super helpful. And it brought to mind something, I can't even remember who it was, but somewhere along the way, somebody suggested that we should all be walking billboards for our values, meaning we're living them so fully and so truly that other people, you know, when they describe you or when they mention you or give you a compliment, oftentimes it's correlated to your values. And I always loved that idea, the idea that I'd become a walking billboard for who I am and what I stand for and what's important to me. So I really like that. It tied into what you were talking about, about modeling, you know, for your family and the people around you. I also have noticed for the vast majority

of my life, I thought of my values as how I show up, what's important to me, but it sort of evolved into my values are both who I am, but also who I attract. So like I told you earlier, commitment is one of my values. And in my dating life, I was always very committed, but it took a coach at one point going, yeah, but you're attracting people and staying with people who aren't committed to you. So what is that about? I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not living my value if it's just me that's doing it, but I'm not holding to the value with the people, the situations, the environments that I put myself in.

Any thoughts or reactions on that? Yeah, I love that. And I think it's, I think that's where the life boundaries come in. And so first of all, it's a self-awareness and that's always hard, right? Like you can say, I am committed. It's hard to hold other people accountable to things that are important to you, but you can with different boundaries. And so in that example, what does that look like?

Are you excusing different behavior? Are you being more forgiving than you need to be, right? And so for that, I would say you're not going to change somebody, but what you tolerate might become more aligned to your values, right? And so in that situation, it's less about controlling other people. It's more about what is okay for you. And in that example, then you need to have somebody that is at least as committed as you are. Right. And so what are those signs and what do you look for and what does that mean? And then you get to make that decision.

Right. Right. And on who you let into your life and who you don't. And so as I think about boundaries, often we think about like a wall or like permission or like this black and white thing. And when I really think about it, I love to think of this idea of boundaries are a way to care for your values, right? So if I'm caring for my values, I care about who I'm letting in. I'm caring about who I trust. I care about all those kinds of things. And again, it centers you. It centers back to you prioritizing what's important to you and how other people treat you. Yeah. Well said. I want to close by asking some of the, and I don't want to call them mistakes, because I go back to, if it works for you, then great, keep it. Who cares what anyone else says?

But sometimes I see people do this, and it wouldn't work for me. I'm curious your thoughts on it. So one is mistaking a value for a wish. Example for me, I am not a very patient person. It's something I've had to work on the entirety of my life, but patience isn't one of my values. It's something I work on and an opportunity. I sometimes see people put values in where I know them and I'm like, I don't really see that. It sounds more like a hope or a wish. Thoughts there. Should they be aspirational or should they be current or both? I like the idea of being present and current. I think there's lots of ways that you can get better at different things.

Another, not mistake, but another thing that I see people do too is having like different work and personal values. That was going to be the exact second one that I was going do too, is having like different work and, and personal values. That was going to be the exact second one that I was going to bring up is having this different set of values for different areas of your life that never resonated with me, but was curious about your thoughts too. Yeah. And in that, I say you are a whole person, right? You are you where you show up. Now, obviously there's going to be like different psychological safety that I don't want you to have to show up if you're not safe in a certain way and be quote unquote, your authentic self everywhere, if it's not safe for you to do so, but you are a whole person. I will say that, you know, there's certain values that come up for me that more resonate with me

for work. So mine of, you of, you know, uh, achievement we talked about and then growth and development, but also sometimes advocacy show up at work. Um, and some of my more quote unquote, personal ones are balance and family, but all of them run together. And I, that is, that is who I am at the core. I'm working because of my family and because of the impact I want to make on the world and advocating for people. So I just don't think you have to separate yourself because I think we separate ourselves and compartmentalize ourselves in lots of different ways. So that's one thing that I encourage you to do is to try out just having one set of values. And I think the other thing is just to,

you don't, it doesn't have to be aspirational. You can wish that you were a certain way, right? But what I also think as, as a, as a leadership coach is that, you know, some of the things that we should get better at are not our weaknesses. We should be using our strengths and even, and even more, because I'm not going to make a really big impact if I'm impatient, which I am, by the way, if I'm impatient, I'm not going to over time, I'm not going to be ever the most patient person. That's just not going to happen. I might get a little bit better and a little bit better and that's fine, but I don't need to have patience as my value to do that. And so I would say probably less aspirational, more current, and as holistic as possible.

I'm so glad you said that. I am a big believer in focusing on our strengths. And I think of our weaknesses or biggest opportunities, my goal is always make them not a roadblock, not an obstacle for what I want, but I'm never going to turn them into a strength. Like on a scale of one to 10, my patients, you know, maybe started out as a one and I've gotten it to a two or a three, but it's how do I make my lack of patience a non-issue or a not obstacle or have it not get in the way of my goals versus

changing who I am or turning that into some value, which will never ultimately get lived. And I will never be a walking billboard for patients. So Laura, thank you. I can't believe we're at time. I have so many other questions I could ask you, but one of them was going to be some tips about identifying your values, which I skipped over because I know you have an offer for our listeners. So if you're listening and you want to either rebuild your values or start from scratch, Laura has a values worksheet on her website, which is thecatchgroup.com. We'll put that and all the other ways that you can find Laura in show notes, but go to thecatchgroup.com and look for the values worksheet. Great way to build or sort of spot check your values.

Laura, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you so much. All right. Well, friends, whether you're a vision person or not, I'd encourage you to test out if you're a values person. There are so many reasons I love being clear on

and living life from a values first approach. First, it's something I can connect to on a daily basis. It helps me make decisions, reminds me who I want to be and how I want to show up, provides clarity if someone or something is the right fit for me or vice versa. And I see my values as the roots from which my confidence grows from. When I know and operate for my values, I build trust with myself and with others. I know what to expect and so do other people. It creates predictability and my friends,

predictability creates trust. I'm not suggesting it's always easy to stick to your values, but the more you practice, the deeper those values go, the more you embody them and the clearer you get on who you are and who you're not. What do you value? And how are you living those values? Knowing the answers is how you know

you're doing woman's work.