Assessing job candidates is a growing industry as organizations look for ways to reduce the risks of making poor hiring decisions. The risks can be considerable. Some estimates have put the cost of a bad hire as one-and-a-half to three times their annual salary. Assessments of job competencies, leadership abilities, and personality are routinely used to try and ensure a good person/job/organization fit. Increasingly, personal values systems assessments are also being used as a way to ensure alignment between the candidate’s values and the organization’s culture.
Values Guide Behavior
Value systems can be likened to complex belief systems about what is desirable and important, and what is not. These value systems represent core intelligences that guide behaviour. Such values impact on life choices, by acting as a decision-making framework. A system for assessing and reporting on personal values was put forward by C. Graves and refined and popularised by D. Beck and C. Cowan who used the following color codes to denote different valuing systems.
* People with Purple Values System value respect for “clan” rules, allegiances, and leaders.
* People with Red Values System value control, discipline and energy.
* People with Blue Values System value structure, control, and order.
* People with Orange Values System value an entrepreneurial approach, results and personal success.
* People with Green Values System value a sensitive, humanistic, approach and relationships.
* People with Yellow Values System value learning and the integration of complex systems.
* People with Turquoise Values System value a holistic approach to interlocking life forces.
Most people have a combination of these values systems in varying degrees, however many people are not fully aware of how their values guide their behaviour. Values systems are not necessarily stable throughout life and they develop in response to environmental factors and tend to change, depending on fluctuations in external circumstances. An individual will accept or reject certain value systems (in whole or in part) and by measuring the level of this acceptance or rejection one can develop a values profile for that individual.
When Personal and Organizational Values Collide: A Case Study
An example of how personal values can clash with the organization’s culture and impact a team and organization can be illustrated through the case of a Chief Financial Officer of a mid-sized services company. The CFO had been in place for just over a year but things were not going well. He was continually at odds with the CEO and they just did not seem to be able to come to agreement on the important issues.
This was a clear case of clashing values systems. The CFO had come from a Fortune 100 conservative, highly structured environment and his personal values system (red/blue) was aligned with that culture. When he joined the new company he found a very different highly entrepreneurial values culture in place that was driven by the personal values systems of the CEO and top leadership team in the organization, which was predominantly yellow/orange and it just did not work out. The new CFO found it impossible to get on the same “wave length” with the CEO and the other members of the senior team. It was still a shock; however, when after struggling to make it work for over a year, the CEO informed the CFO that his services were no longer needed by the company.
Conclusion
Accurately measuring an individual’s value system and contrasting this with the organization’s culture can be helpful in diagnosing performance issues or, as in the case with hiring, predicting future issues. The Values Orientation (VO) Assessment is a validated on-line assessment that has been used in hundreds or organizations internationally to generate this data and to help make better hiring decisions, or to diagnose problem situations where a clash of values may be causing conflict resulting in dysfunctional relationships.
