Recently, I've been asked what's the single word that describes my leadership style. I paused, wondering how I could encapsulate everything in just one word. But then I knew: Empowerment.

I believe in empowering people. In giving them the authority to shape their own path, transforming them from passive recipients into active agents who proactively drive their work, their life, and their career.

Empowerment is my value. It isn't my only value, but it's probably my most important one. It drives my decisions, guides my actions, and shapes how I work with my teams. It even shapes me, because I also want to be empowered.

This conversation made me wonder. What are other values that I hold? And how important are values for leaders?

Why do leaders need values?

Throughout my career, I've navigated countless changes. In consulting, every month brought something unexpected - refactoring legacy banking systems one week, running on-site technical training in India the next. Later, switching to product companies meant learning entirely new domains, surviving organisational pivots, weathering layoffs, celebrating promotions, and managing career shifts. I've faced chaos and uncertainty many times.

While my values naturally evolved, they became my compass through all this turbulence. They helped me decide not just what to do, but how to do things right. How to stay true to myself.

Over the years, we all make thousands of big and small decisions. Since the right choice is rarely obvious, values serve as our guide to decisions that align with our beliefs.

Your Values Build Trust and Shape Your Teams

The most important and valuable feedback I received throughout my career was that my teams trust me.

Why did they trust me? Because they knew I respected them and was honest with them. They knew I would openly celebrate our wins, but I'd be just as transparent about our failures. I will eagerly give credit where credit is due, and with the same eagerness and candour, I will point out issues and discuss what needs to be improved.

When we faced tough situations, whether as a team or as an organisation, I would not leave them in the dark or feed them empty corporate speak. I would openly discuss what is happening and give them as much context as I can. By consistently staying true to transparent communication and treating people with respect regardless of their role or background, through both good times and difficult ones, I was able to earn their trust.

People need to know what their leaders stand for and that they can count on their consistent behaviour. Without clear values, leaders come across as unpredictable or opportunistic. This is not the type of person that you want to trust.

Your values shape who you hire and who actually thrives on your team. When I interview candidates, I'm not just looking at skills. I'm trying to understand what they value and whether we're compatible.

For example, if empowerment is central to how I manage, but I hire someone who prefers being told exactly what to do, we're going to clash. If I value transparency but bring on a manager who likes to "massage the message" when reporting up to leadership, that's a recipe for disaster. I've made these mistakes before, and the results were always regrettable.

Surrounding yourself with people who share similar values makes work not just more efficient, but honestly, more enjoyable.

This means that not everyone will be a perfect match, and that's okay.

Your Values Define Your Organisation

Values guide individuals, but more importantly, values shape entire organisations and their cultures.

Consider Jeff Bezos and the foundational value he built Amazon upon:

There are many ways to centre a business. You can be competitor-focused, product-focused, technology-focused, or business model-focused. In my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality.

Customer obsession, Amazon's most important value, is engraved in the very core of the company. It's not only a crucial part of their hiring process, but it also defines how they work on all levels of the organisation. Like the famous Working Backwards product development method, where every new product or feature must start from customer needs. Product Managers define features by writing Press Releases and FAQs for future users, rather than traditional Product Requirements Definitions. User is in the centre from the very first step.

This customer obsession created a unique culture in Amazon, dramatically different from, for example, Google, which traditionally put technology and engineers on a pedestal. Two different core values resulted in two entirely different companies.

Your Values Help You Scale

In my post on Teams' Autonomy, I've mentioned the importance of keeping teams aligned through a shared goal - a North Star. Leading through alignment and shared goals is an important aspect of making your teams autonomous and is absolutely critical when you scale your organisation.

When you're a startup with 10 people, everyone can be in the same room for important decisions. Leadership's vision and values are communicated directly. But what happens when you have 100 employees? 200? 1000?

You can't be in every room. You can't approve every decision. You can't personally guide every person. This is where most organisations break down. They either become bureaucratic bottlenecks with endless approval chains or they lose coherence and descend into chaos.

That's where values come in. As Amazon puts it, their leadership principles "help foster autonomous decision making as the company scales, and help leaders lead beyond their immediate line of sight".

In simple terms, a shared set of values allows leaders to make aligned decisions independently. When they understand and internalise the same set of principles, they will naturally align their thinking and their decisions with the organisation's values.

You cannot be in every meeting. But the values you set - and deliberately hire for - can be.

What Makes a Good Value?

Not every belief is a value. Real values have to mean something. They should give you momentum, show direction, and inspire action. "Be innovative" isn't a value; it's just a vague aspiration that sounds nice on a poster.

My hot take is that values should be at least somewhat controversial. There should be some people who disagree with you. The question is, are you willing to defend your values when that happens? Are you willing to choose the harder path because it aligns with what you believe?

"Working hard to maximise shareholder profits" might make you employee of the month, but it's not a value. It's just doing your job. "I speak up when people aren't being treated fairly" is a value. It might get you in trouble sometimes, but you do it anyway because you believe it's right.

If you're willing to compromise or negotiate on something, it's a preference, not a value. Values are the non-negotiable principles that guide your behaviour, especially when it's hard to do the right thing.

Actions, not just words

Many companies plaster their walls and fill their PowerPoint slides with beautiful values they claim to follow. Unfortunately, their reality often tells a different story. The more colourful their walls are, the bigger the letters proclaiming how "Courageous" and "Caring" they are, the harsher their actual culture tends to be.

Values are defined by consistent actions. By protecting what you care for and by making hard decisions when it matters.

People aren't naive. They see your actions and what drives them. If you claim to be caring but ruthlessly exploit people to squeeze out more profit, they see right through it. If you say you value courage but shut down anyone who raises concerns, people quickly figure out what your real values are. And they adjust accordingly.

To shape your environment according to your values, they must be consistently embedded in everything you do. In the processes you create, in your hiring decisions, and in how you handle conflicts. They become an invisible yet impactful foundation for everything you do.

Linear is famously obsessed with the quality and user experience of its application. So what? You might ask. Everyone cares about quality. No. Everyone claims they care about quality, but in reality, quality is always pushed down by a new shiny feature or squeezing a bit more profit.

Linear actually lives by its values. Their quality obsession isn't just empty words. It's reflected in their strict zero-bugs policy, which is embedded into every aspect of their operations, from delivery to hiring. They put bugs first during planning and maintain strict SLAs on resolution times. They've built dedicated triage processes and hold weekly reviews to track how effectively they eliminate user-reported issues. They openly praise and celebrate even the smallest quality improvements they make.

Is it easy? Absolutely not. To clear their bug backlog, they froze all product development for three weeks. Prioritising bugs means constantly stretching their teams and deprioritising other work. But those hard choices send a powerful message to their teams, their hires, and their customers. And that message resonates deeply with everyone who has experienced how beautiful their product is.

When your values truly permeate every aspect of your organisation, you don't need big, flashy letters on the walls. Your actions speak loud enough.

What Type of Leader Do you want to be?

So, when was the last time you actually thought about your values?

Try this exercise: Find some quiet time to write down the most important values that resonate with you. Focus not on what you do now, but on what type of person and leader you want to be. What ideal will you strive for? Don't go too wide. Stick to two, maybe three values at most.

Be specific. One-word values are usually too generic. Courage? What do you mean by that? Courage to do what, exactly?

For each potential value, ask yourself these questions:

• Would I defend this even if it cost me something? (promotion, popularity, short-term gains)
• Can I give a specific example of when I've acted on this principle?
• Would some reasonable people disagree with this approach?
• Does this guide my behaviour in difficult situations, not just easy ones?

Once you have your values, think about how they should show up in your work:

• Design, planning, and delivery - How do your values influence what you build and how you prioritise?
• People management, communication, and hiring - What behaviours do you expect? What questions do you ask candidates?
• Daily work - meetings, team ceremonies, decision-making processes
• Relationships - with your reports, peers, and managers
• Conflict resolution - How do your values guide you when tensions arise?

Do your values already form the foundation for these activities? What would need to change to make that happen? Once you know the answer, start doing it. Step by step, consistently, moving toward that goal.

Start actually living by your values and become the leader you want to be.