Connecting Company Values with Our Values

EPISODE 44

[INTRODUCTION]
Cristina: Hello, hello, hello. This is Cristina. We are continuing our values-focused month, a month focused on values. After our great two episodes with Laurie to discover her values, we decided to dedicate an episode where Alex and I get to share our values. We go through our personal ones, what they mean to us, and then we find alignment with our company wants. As the founders of the companies, our company values are ours. They can't really be separated from our personal ones. We always want to make sure that they are aligned with ourselves, as well as with each other, and with what the company's mission and vision are. Hope you really enjoyed this episode.

Alex: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex: And this is Alex Cullimore.

HOSTS: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex: Hello, and welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. This week, we're mixing it up a little bit. We actually have no guests with us. Last week, and actually, the last two weeks, we got to talk to Laurie a little bit and unpack some of her values, and get to the bottom of what it means to go find your own values and start applying that to life. We thought, we'd cover quickly both, Cristina and I’s personal values, and we went through the same exercise between each other and how we whittled that down to what is valuable to us, how that forms the company values we have with Siamo and then go through some of that connective tissue that we got into with Sam, got into with Laurie, and we'll go through much more explicitly here. How's it going, Cristina? Feeling good?

Cristina: Yes. It's Friday.

Alex: Yeah.

Cristina: Time to wake up a little bit. Yes, doing good. Starting with the – we're talking about values, and I had to figure out what my values were. Or remind myself. Yes.

Cristina: This is a good exercise we do occasionally, when we figured we'd do this, because we're coming to the end of our first season here with Uncover the Human, we have been releasing since October last year. I believe this will be coming out at the end of September. We'll be on a brief break between seasons, for the beginning of October at least. We thought, we can revisit, reorient, and we'll come back with even more fun stuff in October. We're doing some reflection, self-reflection, as well as some other reflection on the podcast year coming up next week. It's going to be fun.

Today, we're going back to our core topic for most of September at this point, which is values. Let's dig into that a little bit. Cristina, I don't know if you want to start off. We could talk a little bit about some of our personal journey to values here, and some of the ways we got there.

Cristina: Yeah, let's definitely do that. Values is the core topic for September, as in the first word, or first two words of the title of each podcast. I would say, it's probably the core topic of our whole first season. I can't imagine that it won't really change much. We're always going to come back to values.

My personal values journey, the first time I've ever done a values exercise was actually in the AIPAC training. Actually, no. I lied. The first time I've ever done a value exercise was when I started coaching with Nina Cashman, who we've had on the podcast. This was probably 2017 when we did that. She was helping me transition from a more team leader role to a, I guess, hired leadership role. A lot of that was part of me giving away the control over how things are done, and understanding that it's not an easy transition, because when you go from an individual contributor, which I was, a lot of times, you're stepping into a completely new role. In that new role, you have to give up what you used to do, which got you promoted most times.

It's a little bit of a loss of identity. As part of that coaching period, I did my first values exercise with her to figure out what my core values are. That has helped me a ton to come back to how do I make decisions? How do I figure out when I feel disturbance in the force, for a lack of better explanation, where I feel things are not quite aligned, where I'm not at peace? What do I notice when I do feel a piece and authentic? A lot of what we talked with Laurie about. Values is really where it came down to.

Don't ask me what my values were in 2017, because I'm sure I can find the exercise and the Word document, but I do not remember what I decided my top values were. I don't imagine they're very different from my current ones.

Alex: That's a really good point you bring up, because values are a great way to help make larger decisions. It's also a particularly good thing to investigate during periods of transition. It makes sense that you talked about that with Nina, because Nina, when we had her on, was talking about the thing that she loves to coaching specifically, which is coaching through transitions. It's a great time to reevaluate, and you can get this chance to make a different decision when you're making a change. Why not boil that down a little bit, make this based on what you personally want to do?

Another good point, that these are going to change a little bit over time. What is important then is a little bit different than what's important now. There might be some running through lines, but it's always good to reevaluate these, because your life situation is going to change. What you value will change. The example we've always given, it's an easy one to connect to is maybe family wasn't an important part. Then suddenly, you have kids. Now, that's going to be a pretty important part coming forward.

An easy one to note, but there's lots of different things that can change in our lives, that would make a specific time a little bit more towards some values versus others. That's why we're revisiting again, even if we've done this once or twice.

Cristina: Yes. Even as a company, we use our values to make decisions to figure out if we are aligned with the clients and prospective clients that we may be working with. How our timeline, roadmap, anything that we are facing, we use our values to actually talk to that and live through that. We have also revisited our values, at least twice, I guess, this year. It's probably a quarterly thing that it's being done. I heard that actually, Chipotle does that with their leaders.

They asked part of their quarterly review with leaders, is to ask the leaders if they have lived their company values, how and give specific examples. If they haven't, and figure out what the barriers are.

Alex: It's a really good way of making those decisions, because it's too easy. Otherwise, to default to things like, which option is going to either make some more money right now, or it leads to a lot more short-term thinking, if you don't apply this back to something that is more core to you and core to the company. I think it's great that Chipotle is doing that, because that makes sense to both align, not only just to remember and reconnect to what the overall mission is, but it also guides you on, “Hey, what do I want to be doing specifically?” That's what we found in one of the most powerful portions of this is, it's really a good time to self-reflect, think about things that are important to you. Even better, put that into action and decide how you want that to show up in your life.

That's why we went through the exercise we went through with Laurie, where we talked about times where you feel particularly energized and pull some themes from there. It's really helpful to do that with somebody you can be a little bit more open with and be able to talk to about these things with. That's what we did. We went through and boiled our core values down. Once again, feels very much in alignment with everything that we've been working with Siamo, so it's always nice to see that coming through. Then, it gives us a chance to hone that, redirect it and move forward a little bit more directed than before.

Cristina: What I liked about what we did for our company values is that we went personal first, since we are the company, we are the founders, and we make all the decisions at this point. It's not a separation. Understanding what our personal values are at this point in life, after a couple of years, after whatever that’s happened with the pandemic and everything else. To make sure that they still align with the company's values? Because that's another conflict, that it's going to get harder and harder if it's not realized upfront.

Alex: Also, we got to talk about with both Soraya’s journey, which is a few episodes back here, but totally worth the visit, because she talks about going out on her own and rediscovering how to find clients by basing most of our business more on her values and how she wanted to interact with people. Then, we also got to talk about that with Sam Moore, who had went through a very similar journey of he's a solopreneur. He was like, “Well, here's my values. How does this apply to my company?” We're doing this from a duopreneur point of view this time.

Cristina: Yes. Which is important, because as life changes, we have to make sure that what's important to us is still important to the other people in the company, especially co-founders. Is it then aligned? It's a three-way alignment, to Is there a Venn diagram here between my values, your values and the company's values? Is there enough overlap that it makes sense to do things as we do and to continue?

Alex: Yeah. It's a really great way to just align your decisions, because you're going to make them based on something more core. I know, we reiterated that one already, but it really does come down to like, well, how do I want to move forward, Cristina? I'd love to come up with ideas for products and services just all the time, but it's a lot about whittling that down and deciding which ones are the right ones to pursue. It's a lot easier when you have a framework of this – that really does seem like it fits in the middle of the Venn diagram. This is the middle of our three-Venn diagram, or whatever. That can be a really potent way to align exactly what you want to do with overall company goals and business goals.

Cristina: All right, so when did you start your values journey?

Alex: I've done some pieces here and there. The ones that I had tried originally, and I think I got it from Rene Brown’s workbook. She had one and read it. It was a list of 90 values, and you try and pick out ones that feel most important, but you go through them, figure out what that means to you, and try and settle that down to a prioritized list of a few of them. That's another important part that we always discuss. Values can also come in priority. You might feel in conflict when you have three of your four main values in alignment, because the fourth one is actually just really important, and it's currently not available in your situation.

The thing that was always frustrating, I think, with exercises like that was trying to decide out of a list of 90 values, what applies. I think you have to have done a lot of listening to yourself ahead of time, but I hadn't done nearly as much of that work. Doing something more like, what we did with Laurie, where you just talk about, hey, here's something that just – at the time I was really excited, I couldn't even necessarily explain it. Maybe it seems one off, or something very niche, or something that only me in that role at that time would be excited about.

When you talk about those things, and especially when you talk about them at a few different stages in life, it becomes a lot easier to suddenly see the through lines, or to have somebody else look at you and say, “Well, yeah. Here's these three things that I'm hearing you say that seem to be coming up.” That's one thing I really like about it, you get to collaborate on it, you've talked it out loud. It's like rubber ducking your own psyche, so it's fun. That one, I've been connected with a lot more. I like that type of values exercise.

Cristina: Yeah, and I've done the full-on list as well. It's hard, if you haven't done the work upfront to talk through the exciting moments, the frustrating moments coming up with the themes, because usually, you get drawn into what are the values that I'm supposed to have? Family being a big one. If you have a family, then you're like “Well, I'll have to put family on my top values, because otherwise, I'm a bad parent, or a bad spouse.”

Family doesn't need to be in your top values, just because you have a family. It doesn't mean that your family doesn't matter by not putting it in a top value. It just means that you relate to your family and you treat your family based on your other top values, which could be collaboration, trust, learning.

Alex: That's a really important part, I think, bringing it up to you. This easy to find overlap between life domains, your work life, and how that relates with your life and how that relates with your family. Those are more domains of life, whereas values are exactly like what you're saying. It's more of how you're interacting in these different domains. Obviously, your kids might be important to you, but how you're interacting with them is more personal to you, and that's more how you're interacting with the world. That's where values come in handy. That's a great example, too.

The other reason that it's hard, I think for people to start with the list of values, is you get sucked up into what you think the definition is. Values are going to mean a little bit, just like words in general. They all have a slightly different contextual meaning to us based on our own experiences. When it comes to our values, those are so personal to how we think and what we think about. It's worth remembering, hey, this is my definition of what your integrity means to me. This means not only being honest, but also, aligning my words with my actions and things like that. That one might be a little bit different than someone else's interpretation of integrity.

That's the other reason I find the giant list a little bit challenging, because it's too easy to see the words and think of whatever, a more standard, or a dictionary definition of that word is, rather than applying it to what your life might be. You’re like, freedom is a great value that a lot of people have, especially in the entrepreneur space, but what does that really mean? Does that mean you're free to do what you want with your time? Is it freedom the way that we put in all kinds of generally meaningless political advertisements about, we stand for freedom? What does that mean? These are easy to get lost in if you just have the word and you haven't thought about the definition for yourself.

Cristina: Very true. Very good points. I think, what we're going to do next is share what our last figured out personal values are, which is only a couple of weeks. We're pretty current.

Alex: If we did this again tomorrow, though, it's totally different.

Cristina: Yeah. We come back to the same ones.

Alex: By the time, this is really totally different. I guess, we can just go through the list if you'd like. I can share if you want to start off. I can dive right in. The one that comes up to me over and over and over again, every time I’ve done values exercise is curiosity. That's what boils down most. Again, this one comes down to my personal definition of curiosity. It's something that I really enjoyed learning a lot about new topics. I love the exploration of connections of weird and seemingly unrelated topics, or stuff that you just happen to know from other domains. It's really fun to tie those in.

Getting to learn new things, getting to expand and explore is always incredibly important. That's one of the reasons, I think, I love doing this podcast; getting to talk to people, getting to meet all these interesting people with interesting ways of thinking about life. Curiosity just comes through time and time again. It's just, love the learning, love something new and love to be able to apply that to all the other random experiences I've tried to accumulate over the years. See, this would play out in lots of my personal experiences. When I was in college, I took a class from – at least a one-on-one class from every single department that I could get a hold of. That was always super fun. Did linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and visual arts. I think I did a music composition class. It was really fun just to explore all those things, even if my eventual major only had one label on it, I got to do a lot of different stuff, and it was great. The one that always comes back for me seems to be curiosity.

Cristina: Well, I love how it ties to what you did in school. It's definitely a deep, deep seated value. How from external perspective, what does it mean to work with you knowing that one of your values is curiosity. The first thing that comes to mind to me is, let's make sure that he's not in a position of having to do the same thing over and over and over and over, and not learn different things and not learn the connections to different departments, or how it processes works. Or how something that happens in HR may influence ops, or anything like that, because it's against the curiosity. It's a note to self. Make sure that there's variation, make sure that there's the ability to open up and discover new things.

Alex: That's very true. That's a great point about going through values exercises like these too. Especially, nice to do it with another person, or another co-worker, because you get this view into how people interact and what you can do to help support them, as well as just communicate a lot better. It's a lot easier to understand where people are coming from when you know what's important to them.

Cristina: Definitely is. It becomes less of a soul-sucking job, if we can actually work based on our values.

Alex: Yeah. We're always talking about how there's not really a separation between your work self and your life self. This is one of the things that if you can tie these up and be able to work a little bit more authentically in your space, it's way easier. It's way less soul-sucking on both fronts. Then you're not feeling, taking the aggression home, or the frustration home and you're not taking frustration back to work, by the way.

Cristina: Yes, indeed. Well, one of my first ones, one that comes back to – well, they all come back all the time. It's collaboration. That's what I'm calling it this month. Next month, I will have a different name. It could be partnership, it could be connections, it changes. The concept of it, it's always the same. If somebody has a good word for that, please send it to me, because I'm still struggling on the actual words to use.

One of my deep core values, and I noticed this a lot when it's missing, and also, when it's present, but more when it's missing, and I'm actually suffering, is the constant connection with other people; is working with others, collaborating, lifting each other up, finding solutions together, communicating. It's truly the opposite of competition. One of my favorite concepts of all time is the concept of Ubuntu, which boils down to “I am what I am, because we are.” I have found and I have learned that without others, without being able to be with others, communicate, learn from others, I really suffer. I suffer as a human.

I started finding it hard to think through things. I find it hard to make decisions. I find it hard to learn. I go to bed miserable, really. I need the constant connection and not shallow connection, but just deeper connections and just knowing that it's there. There's work that's being done together in life and work and family.

Alex: That's a great point. Ubuntu might actually be exactly the word you're looking for. Maybe that is the value. For those wondering –

Crisrin: Maybe that’s a value. Exactly.

Alex: That is for any Linux developers out there, that is also the name of the common distribution of Linux, it's Ubuntu. I believe it comes from – I think, I looked this up at some point. It was an African word. It refers to the community of how everybody's interacting together, and everybody is one. It's the spirit of everybody, it makes sense that it would be a Linux distribution, too, for people who are into the operating system distributions.

When it comes to working with you, that becomes a very good guidepost for me, because it reminds me “hey, let's be connected.” This is something that just, I'm traditionally not great at, any of my friends and family will tell you, I don't respond well to texts and emails. It just doesn't happen often. This is something I work on, especially and I know this is important with Cristina and this is something I want to do well with and make sure I'm honoring that and we do get to collaborate a lot on lots of things and it's always enjoyable to do so. I try to be, especially forward about this is the connection we have. I don't want to leave any messages unread, or unanswered. Try to keep those at the forefront of mind, to keep the overall community, or creativity and collaboration running.

Cristina: Yeah. Yeah. If I have to think about it, disconnection is my kryptonite. Connection is my sun. Even something as simple as good morning, gives me enough energy to get through most of the day.

Alex: That's actually a really great point, too, that values, when you get to be in alignment, it does provide that energy, and that's one of the reasons it's so important and why it's so easy to once you start to feel the alignment and to feel things that are aligned or not aligned, it's so much easier to start making decisions based on that, because you start to get that connection with the internalized feeling of like, “Oh, right. I just feel much more energetic, post feeling this thing.” Like you're saying, even a good morning, that's a good connection. That's a good reminder of , “Hey, we're here.”

We've joked about the IM messages that we have from years and years ago. We were joking about feeling we didn't exist, or almost wishing we didn't – sometimes when there was too much going on, we would go feel it was invisible. You can do something as small as a good morning that can immediately foil that and create the energy that otherwise, would be more of a negative energy cycle. For a good review on that one, you can check out our episode on the ELI with Lauren Grau. She talks about energy leadership. That one's a great one to think about, when you're moving more positively, when you're feeling a little bit more closed down. Values are a great way of accessing that much wider feeling, much broader, more creative, open approach.

Cristina: They definitely are. What's another one for you, Alex?

Alex: One thing that also comes up a lot, but this is my new label for it this month, and we'll see what the label is next month. I'm calling it innovation, I think, is the way I’d title it. When we met, I was basically working on a team of one and I was working part of the technical side of the company, but I was working on just one project alone. I've done that with a couple other companies since then. I love just doing something that's in the middle, unique and the most fun part is just getting to create something completely new.

That was what's been super fun about doing Siamo. We've done 20 things that have been entirely new and a little bit different. We went towards consulting, but bridged that with more coaching, and we've also done more of podcasting in combination with software product, or developing. It's really fun to lead the charge on something that's new, unique and different, and getting to create something from scratch is a joy. I guess, relates back to curiosity as well. It's something that is new.

Cristina: Very much relates back to curiosity. I think your working genius from the table group showed that up as well. It's not just our interpretation of that, or your interpretation of that. It actually comes up in other assessments, productivity assessments.

Alex: That one's a great one. In case anybody's looking for both another podcast and another assessment to take, the Working Genius by Pat Lencioni’s Table Group. Very fun one. It's not as much a personality assessment. It's more about how you work and what types of work work well for you. They break general patterns of getting a full project done into about six stages, and talk about which ones you best relate to you and which ones you can use to help with. Because everybody is energized generally by some portion of this. If you can get a good team that is well matched in all these six disciplines, you can get a good movement going. That's something that is also important when considering values.

What are your potential blind spots? What are the things that you need help with? Both values and the working genius one can eliminate those. That's a total side note. I'm now off on somebody else's podcast, but.

Cristina: We're not getting paid to sponsor them, but we really like it.

Alex: Yes. That's, I suppose an important message. We do not have a sponsorship with them.

Cristina: No. Maybe one day, Pat.

Alex: Do you recommend?

Cristina: Listen to this. Yes. We're in full support of your Working Genius.

Alex: What's another one for you, Cristina?

Cristina: One that relates to collaboration, so I'll just go in order of how I wrote them. It's inclusion. As part of collaborating and being able to collaborate and connecting, inclusion has to be there. Feeling included, making sure everybody else feels welcome, as their unique selves. They have the freedom to be who they are, to do what they are doing best based on their strengths and values and passions. It's really about how do we make sure that there's diversity and there is equity, and there is belonging, and there's inclusion?

Inclusion is a must step in there. Because again, how can you truly collaborate with somebody if they're not feeling included? How can you make sure that collaboration comes up with the outcomes, the best possible outcomes, if there is no diversity perspectives? There may be token diversity in the room, but if whoever is the token, diverse person doesn't speak up and doesn't feel included, that you're not getting everything that you could possibly be getting. It's part of that invisibility. I can be present, but if I'm not included, then it's almost like gaslighting visibility.

It’s like, coming physically there, but I'm being gaslit by being treated as a – we're not. That's when I always sometimes feel –

Alex: I’m here, but am I?

Cristina: Yeah. Exactly. It's like, “Wait, am I just watching this? Am I here?” I mean, sometimes I joke. It's like, “Oh, I put my invisibility cloak on this morning. That's what's happening in this meeting.”

Alex: That was the subject of many of our original chats on existence. Very funny, we would just sometimes be like, “I'm not totally sure why I was in that meeting.”

Cristina: Yeah. Or I was, but I wasn't allowed to speak, or I was allowed to speak, but nobody was listening. It was like, you’re speaking and you're not really there. A conversation is happening on the side. I’m like, “Am I not here? Hello.”

Alex: This happened, totally, I think, it was inadvertent. It happened on a team’s call. I got invited to some – There's a meeting going on and somebody wanted some input, so I got this invite. I joined the meeting. I don't know if there's some specific way you can invite people, but I couldn't get the audio to connect. I wasn't allowed to type into the chat. It literally said, the chat is disconnected for Alex. Okay, why?

I'm in this room. I can see this, whoever is sharing their screen. They've opened some work that I was working on. They seem to be asking questions about it, but I can't hear anything. They can't hear me. I can't type. I'm getting these questions coming up on the side like, well, what are we going to do about this? I'm like, “I don't know if my computer is dying. I don't know if I've been invited.” I'm living in this weird liminal space between existence and none in a team's room. Yeah, trying to shout at my computer like, “Yes, that's fine. Please continue.” I can't get anything across. I can’t get any of it. It's a weird one. 

I think, inclusion, that was just a random thing that happened very recently. You bring up a good point about invisibility, because that inclusion one is incredibly important. You can access so much potential when people are allowed to speak. It's also incredibly hard to notice if you're not being diligent, when it's not happening. I mean, people seem quiet, and then the meeting is adjourned, and the points of view that were expressed are remembered, but you'd have no idea if there were other ones. There were just some people there who didn't say much. Now, they leave again.

I think, both, a very common one to feel a little bit on the out if you aren't included, but it's also so important. So much potential is unlocked, when you can be much more diligent about seeing people do those things.

Cristina: We talked about it with Duncan, actually, on how inclusion has to be a proactive act as leaders, or anybody. It's not just hey, we asked if anybody had questions. Nobody raised their hands, and only one person did, so we're done. We've created inclusion. You're in the meeting. You're in the room. You're included. I'm like, no. Inclusion is actually proactive. Inclusion is looking around, like you said, and being like, “Okay, who hasn't spoken? Why aren't they speaking? Why are they so quiet?” They were invited to the meeting, so clearly, it's important for them to learn this information. They may or may not have questions. Their questions may even be, “I don't know if I have any questions yet.”

It has to be proactive. It has to be “call on people”. Say you're going to call on people, so it's not the, “Oh, my God,” deer in the headlights. Start the meeting by setting the expectations of like “Hey, it's important that you're here. We want to hear your opinion. As we move along, we're going to ask. We're going to ask what your opinion is. If you have any questions, if you need more time to process it, because there are processors that need to go back and think through it, then we'll have this and this and these ways for you to come back and provide your opinion.” There has to be an actual effort to create inclusion. It's not just a passive, well, they're here. Not my problem if they're not speaking.

Alex: Yeah. That's a really great point, because it does become your problem eventually, anyway, even if you'd like to not take responsibility for it, or you think, well, they should be the ones to speak up. I mean, that's sounds like an okay thought at the time, right up until you've now missed some point of view that is either leading the whole project off on the wrong foot, or you're just slowly shutting somebody out, when you do need and they just aren't going to slowly feel a little bit more left out, burnt out, higher turnover rate, and it's easy to see where over time, that builds up. If you see somebody who particularly doesn't contribute, it's very unlikely, they don't have something to say. It is likely, they don't feel comfortable saying it.

Cristina: Yeah. It's a huge red flag that the space is not psychologically safe.

Alex: Yes.

Cristina: It's just glaring, flashing Las Vegas sign type of thing.

Alex: This big, psychologically unsafe arrow, neon lights.

Cristina: Yes. Do not speak, or there’s going to be consequences.

Alex: You see how that ties to your original – we'll call it the Ubuntu value, the being connected with others. There's that inclusion. It is really inherent in both of those. You like the connection with people and you like the inclusion, and that absolutely makes sense. It actually ties really well into you. I can pretty much merge the last two that I had into one overarching one, which is the same as the theme of this podcast. It's authenticity. Half of that we talked about in the very first episode even. Half of it is the comfort to be yourself and feel it's you're allowed to express and fully be your true self. The other half of that is creating space for others, because I think it's fascinating to see that in others. I want people to have that ability, because I want that ability, too.

I want this to be a much more open space, where there is the ability to connect with other people, to feel there is that actual – you see a person for who they are. It's like having a real conversation, versus small talk. Having some just general, well, what do you do, versus what do you love about this thing that you did, or what's the exciting thing that happened to you recently? Something that's more in depth and just more exciting to connect to and listen to, and that, I guess, goes back to curiosity too. It's just fun to see those parts of people. That requires that level of psychological safety and inclusion.

You can start to see then actually, in that one where that value ties into actions later. I mean, I have the value of authenticity. This means that in a workplace, I need this to be a space where I do those things proactive inclusion, because that connects to the value of everybody gets to be a little bit more authentic. Now, you can already see some of the action items that start to come out of this, even if it's in different life domains.

Cristina: Yeah. It's great, because, I think, Laurie was the one that mentioned this, how values are not linear, and they're not siloed, so they're not pieces that are just orbiting space without any connection. They're more like a spiderweb. They are all connected. It's not too surprising to find that our own core values speak to each other, and need each other. One really relates to the other, and it's part of the other at the same time.

Cristina: Yeah, absolutely.

Cristina: Yeah. Oh, actually, I have a great story.

Alex: Tell it.

Cristina: I went on a wonderful hike yesterday with our friend, Uma. We went up to Indian’s Peak Wilderness, which is a beautiful, beautiful space, right west of Boulder, Colorado, that I didn't even know existed. We ended up starting up the hike with two other women that was there in the parking lot, and we're trying to figure out how to read a map and figure out where the trail actually was. After a couple of false starts, we all looked at each other and realized, “Maybe we should hike together and figure this out. If we get lost, it's four of us, not two of us.” It was deep in the woods, which is why it wasn't that clear.

We ended up hiking with them for two hours, I think, to get to the lake. We never asked each other, at least, for myself and the daughter, the younger one. It was a daughter and a mom combination. Even for the mom, we never asked each other, what do you do? We talked about where we lived, our passions, favorite sports, just things that were about us as humans. It was never the first, or second, or third, or even 15th question is, let me classify you, by figure out what your job is. It was never part of the conversation.

Alex: That's 100% exactly what I'm talking about you. That connection to that level of depth is much more exciting. There is something really fun about that connection. It’s a connection not just when you're here at work, and you're thrown into a project on a team, you maybe haven't worked with much or something and you’re like, “Okay. Well, I'm going to do this part, you're going to do this part. We'll be back here in a week and see if it is done.” That's very much just surface level at best. You're not even talking to the person. You're just talking to the task at that point. When you get to have that more deep conversation, not only is it just more interesting, but way easier to be a collaborative team, to be more open, to have that creativity to find all those opinions. This is where it becomes important to have these things accessed in the workplace, and available to yourself, so you know when to speak up and what to speak up about.

Cristina: Yeah, it's so important. Yes. The description of what you provided, it never works likely. It may work on the surface short-term, but it never really works. There's a lot of long-term redo and rethink, and something went wrong, and we missed a piece. Yet, all those missing pieces and redo, it's because of the beginning, where there was no time taken and invested in actually getting to each other as people and collaborating, instead of just taking a task list and splitting up in four and then, see you in a week.

Alex: Years and years ago, I was put on this, whatever, I wasn’t put in a project. I was just contracting and knew somebody who needed a little bit of help. They've been redoing their website. They had just put their back-end developer either got sick, or had to leave, or something and wasn't able to finish this. There was a little bit of work to finish. There was some integration with Salesforce that wasn't connecting or something.

I'd done plenty of tech work and I was like, “Well, I'd be happy to help, but it sounds like it's only a few hours. I can jump in and do this.” I was in a much more discreet area of the task. There was a whole web team that had done a lot more of the front-end portion of it. I could have totally gone that way, and it started that way and we're like, “Okay. Well, I'll finish this up, and I'll tell you where the code is, so you can go deploy this.”

That was basically, could have been the only interaction I had with that front-end guy, who has done it. We started talking a little bit. I was curious just to know about how he was deploying, and I hadn't seen any of these new front-end tools, that point had been buried in the back-end for a few years before it.

Anyway, long story short, we talked a lot. We asked a lot of questions. Years later, I'm still in touch with him. I visited him. I was in New York at the time, and he was out in California. We've seen him since then. We've gotten to see him. He got married and has a kid now and all kinds of – life has changed dramatically. We could have had just a one-off conversation and truly never known other things about his life. Turns out, we had a whole bunch of other interests.

We were both in computers, but had done acting before. There were just all these weird connections to all kinds of little things that surely would never have happened otherwise. It was a much easier project for it, because it turns out, the deployment ended up being broken for some other reason. We both jumped in on it to collaborate and finish it. It was a success that definitely might not have been, and could have easily just been like, “Well, that's not my problem. Not my job.”

Cristina: Well, and that's exactly what I was thinking, especially since the deployment didn't work out for other reasons, how likely would you have been to jump in and collaborate and figure it out, if it had been that one sentence conversation of like, “Here's your tasks. Call me if you need me, or please don't, because I’ll ghost you when you do.”

Alex: That's like, Ubuntu is the foundation that is so much more important than a task. That connection, and for that exact reason like, who are you going to help out with? Vice versa. The person who has been incredibly rude to you, or has really dismissed you, or somebody who yelled at you for something you don't feel was fair or whatever, it's much harder to even imagine a situation in which you're like, “Oh, let me get out of bed right now and help you,” because I realized that something has gone wrong. You know what I mean? If something goes sideways in the project, it’s like, “Wow, that sucks to be you.” What am I going to do for it? So much easier to hit that button space.

Cristina: Let me get my popcorn and my wine while I watch that fire go off.

Alex: Yeah. That's when you're at the front of the Titanic. Yep, there's definitely an iceberg here, but I want to see what they're going to do about it.

Cristina: Yeah, exactly. From the lifeboat and just get on. Very sad, because it happens too often. It takes so little. That's what it is. It really doesn't take that much to create the collaboration, so that there is – you're there for the good of the collaboration, for the good of the community. The community is always going to be much higher and much greater and can do much bigger things when people are working together, as opposed to in their tiny little swim lanes and silos.

Alex: Always, I think people tend to write it off as if it just sounds nice, and how could that possibly work, but that's exactly why it works. You just have that connection. You want to help the person, because now it's not about the work. We put all these metrics to it about working 40 hours a week, or having whatever title and that means I don't have to do X job, or I only do this portion of it. That's not really, if you think about it, the goal of any company anyway.

I mean, I guess, if your entire company was based on trying to create a rigid hierarchy of people, then you might be moving towards that, I suppose. You probably want to do something, right? You have a service. You have a product. You're trying to deliver something. You're trying to finish projects and make sure that there is some larger goal met. What are the chances that if you've written job descriptions, and everybody is only going to do their job description, that there are no gaps? Do you think your team has fit so well together like puzzle pieces, that you have covered every gap and there's no overlap, and that it would ever work that way? Or would anybody enjoy it? We all did our tiny little piece. We talked to each other as minimally as possible. Now, this thing is out there. Did it work?

Cristina: It fits.

Alex: Did anybody check whether it works? Did anybody check whether that's the right solution? Has anybody told you like, “Oh, this connects to this other thing you might not know about.” Those are the pieces that you miss out on that end up sinking the ship later, even if they seem small at the moment. That's why it's so important to do all these things to make those connections, because it's way too easy for people to think they have to write it off, because they just have to get a task done. You did a great job of explaining exactly why that falls on its face so often.

Who am I getting tasks done for? Do I agree with what they have said? Do I like what they've said? If not, it's a lot harder to be like, “Yeah, I'll definitely help you when the site breaks at 4 in the morning.”

Cristina: First one in line. Actually, that connects pretty well to my next one, which is trust. Trust, and I've again, debated with what to call this. There's truth telling, upholding the truth. It really comes down to truth. Maybe truth is the real word. Trust for me comes from inclusion and collaboration can exist without trust. It really means, there is also no trust without telling the truth. I realize it sounds very absolute, but it's true. I’m making out an absolute statement.

Telling the truth really comes down to having hard conversations with yourself and with others. It's not just truth with others and truth back, but it's also within ourselves, which we are masters at lying to ourselves about situations and things and interpreting and all of that. Those are all not upholding truth, which means it's harder to trust ourselves when we have an instinctive calling, when something instinctive comes up, where it says like, “I'm feeling there's something off here, or my instinct is telling me this.” If you can't tell yourself the truth, can you trust your instinct? Is that even possible? If you don't know what your value is, can you trust your instinct? It's all really connected.

I'm a big believer of telling the truth, no matter how hard it is, because it preserves the relationship, it preserves the collaboration. Whatever it is that happened can be worked out together, if there's truth behind it. If there isn't, then that trust erodes, because not only it erodes for the moment, it erodes for all the past and all the future.

I tell this to my kids. My kids are pretty honest, I would say – nobody's 100% honest, so don't expect that from them either. I'm not 100% honest either, but they're pretty honest, and they're their younger kids, so they don't even have the preconditioning. Or, maybe I shouldn't say this out loud. Don't come home and be like, “Oh, yeah, grandpa gave me four doughnuts today for lunch in celebration.” In the meantime, I'm having a small heart attack. That's who they are.

Then, every once in a while, they'll feel like, “Oh, you just asked me if I brushed my teeth and I know I didn’t. If I tell you that I did, maybe we can just move on into the next thing.” I've told my younger one, who tends to really hate brushing his teeth, so that's where he'll say yes, with this no written all over his face. I keep telling him. I'm like, “You're never going to get in trouble for telling me the truth. I'm never going to get upset. Guarantee, you can call me out if I do. You can tell me, “Mommy, you promised you wouldn't get upset if I told you the truth.” You will get in trouble and I will get upset if you lie. Because if you do, I can't trust you about anything. Then what do I do? Do I follow you? Do I put a camera on you? How am I supposed to know when something is actually happening that I should know about, if I can't trust you to tell me the truth?” That's my summation of trust.

Alex: I think that’s a really great way of describing it. I love the connection to self-truth as well, because that one ends up coming up so often. It's so easy to get into those stories. Something here, you just stop. You're not really being honest with yourself in a number of ways. Always, we're telling some more fabricated, more rationalized story than we would like to believe. We'd like to believe it's the right story. It's the true story. It's always something, some variation that tends to be a little bit self-serving, often a little bit off, or it's trying to protect against something else.

I had a moment a few months back, where I'd been regretting some choice I made eight years ago at a career path. I was trying to say, cite between two things. I was like, “Man, maybe I really should have done the other thing.” I spent about 15 minutes starting to get into the usual mental cycle, if you get into a trap like that. We're here like, “Okay. Well, that probably destroyed everything right after that. There is no way I can recover from this. I can't believe I would have done this. How could I have chosen these things? What are the things that are still okay that I've done? Maybe there's something to be salvaged here.”

You go through this catastrophizing and rationalizing. I stopped after 20 minutes, because I was already tired at the end of the week of a lot of different things going on. I was like, “Well, let's just think about this for a second. Maybe I should have done that. Maybe I should have done something else, but I can't change that now. Maybe it's okay just to sit with the fact that hey, yeah, that might just sucked, and maybe something else should have happened.”

Once I stopped fighting, stopped rationalizing, I felt a little bit sad for a little bit. Then five minutes later, I stopped thinking about it entirely. I'd already started to plan, “Okay. Well, here's what I want to do differently in the future.” I didn't lose what would have probably traditionally been, maybe a couple of hours, maybe a couple days, maybe a month or a year of basically rationalizing and working against that decision. I was just willing to sit and say, “You know what? Honestly, I probably do have some regret over that, and that's okay. I'll just have to have that regret.” Then, it was suddenly so much easier just to let it happen.

It's not easy to get to that space, both in interpersonal communication, as well as with yourself, because we don't want to lose face, even with ourselves. We don't want to feel uncomfortable when our brain is trying to protect us all the time. Truth and trust are important and difficult to come by for that reason.

Cristina: Well, and how much could you trust yourself to make the right decisions, if you started believing those stories that weren't true? It wasn't true that whatever you were telling yourself, that now your whole life is the story, because of the decision you made eight years ago, and you're never going to get to do whatever you want to do, and your whole trajectory is doomed. That's not the truth, capital T, Truth. Yet, if you believe it, if you truly believe that, you can never trust the decision you made in the future, which is where the truth and trust are completely tied together.

Alex: It becomes a capital T, Truth, if you've let yourself be stopped long enough. Then, you go back and tell yourself, “I was right the whole time,” even if you might not have been right and you're only right now, because you told yourself at the time a lie.

Cristina: Yes. Yeah.

Alex: Truth is a great one. It's actually very similar to what we were talking about, who you're going to help? You can help people you can trust and trust comes once you have that initial broken piece of trust. Yeah. I mean, if the person comes back later, and was like, “Look, I was having a really bad day. I'm sorry, I yelled, or lashed out, or said that or whatever.” It's a lot easier to repair that, especially if there's already a basis of a relationship. If it isn't addressed, or it just goes on, or how do you have that trust again? It's not really possible. It's much harder to have an open collaboration at that point, because you're always going to be a little bit on guard.

If you're on guard, you're spending time being on guard. You're spending energy being on guard, that could otherwise, be solving the problem, be helping each other, be figuring out what really does need to happen, or finding something that maybe both parties hadn't even thought of. Now, there's something completely new, something that really changes the game. We'll never know, because we're too busy being on guard and making sure the other person had maybe told the truth this time or not.

Cristina: One of the best quotes I've read recently on trust, is that it's the most expensive thing we have. It takes years to build and one second to lose.

Alex: Yeah.

Cristina: It does. It's true.

Alex: Yeah. I think, Mark Twain says, that trust runs away on a horse, but comes crawling back. It'll disappear in a second, and it takes a long time to come and rebuild.

Cristina: Right. Are we on our last one?

Alex: Yeah. I wrapped my other – the other one that I had was connecting with different people and connecting with other people, but that comes to authenticity for me, because that's where you allow people to connect. It also falls right back to curiosity, because it's really just fun to connect to people and hear their stories, hear what they have to say about life and how they approach it.

Cristina: Excellent. My last one is learning, which is similar to curiosity and everything else. For me, it's the cost of learning, sharing of information, learning by doing, learning from others, learning for myself, so doing the work to figure out what went right, what went wrong, what can I change, how do I want to show up? Just lifelong learning. That's why I love collaboration and connection and inclusion. It's because you just get to learn things you didn't know before. There's so much magic in like, wow, I didn't know that and now I know this person.

Alex: Getting to meet that person, as well as the learning that you get to do, there's something I think about learning is that you get to know something. Then sometimes that makes a connection, either right away with something random, and some other aspect of life, or later down the road. You're like, “Oh, this actually reminds me of this random scenario that I found super interesting, or whatever.” That’s what I love about Ted Talks. There's some random idea that gets crystallized and later you're like, “Oh, actually. This applies to this work situation, I find myself in, or whatever.” It's fun to have that basis of knowledge and gain something new, because you get to make those connections. At least for me, personally, I love doing that. That's the fun part.

Cristina: Next, we came together and defined our company core values, or at least updated our company core values that were already defined. We just had to update them and put a little more meat around them.

Alex: Yeah. Let's go one by one there. Let's start right up at the top. This one, we went back and forth on some of the prioritization here, but I think this one really speaks to the core of everything we want to do and deliver. That is, we support. We want to treat life a little bit more like it is. It is a team sport. It is Ubuntu. It is that connection, and we like to have that leading the supporting. It's where you find the group that comes together that does something that has never been done before.

You've refined that coaching. You stop the unhelpful mental routines. You stop the obstacles, and it's incredibly fun to be a part of. That's what we've worked into a lot of our work, both creating courses, creating our assessments, creating more the podcast itself. This really boils into what we want to do with all of this work.

Cristina: Our second one is we talk it out, which shouldn't be surprising at all, given that we have a podcast. It's not just about talking and listening to the tone of our voices. Talking it out is because one of the concepts that we really like, is that we over-communicate and we aim to over-communicate twice. Communication is one of those things that there's never enough of it. Silence is not golden. Silence is deadly. It really is about providing transparency and discussions and connecting and including everybody, all the necessary parties.

We're not in other people's brains. We don't do what they do. We don't see things the way they see them, and we don't have their skills. We can't assume that a piece of information may not be important for them to know. They can make that choice. Share all information. Then people can discern, “I need this. I don't need that. That's not quite important. This is top priority.” If we have, again, that collaboration and trust and inclusion, we can trust that we can provide all information to everybody. Then, they make the decision on what's needed.

The opposite creates void, and it creates stories that people create in their heads, because the human brain cannot handle not having data, which means not communicating, not creating transparency, then creates all the, “Oh, my God. Alex didn't reply to me, because he hates me,” or whatever possible stories could go through my head. That's when the stories come on. Especially, I've seen it countless times when it comes to change management, that there's always this big thing about like, we don't communicate until we have the solution already figured out and all perfect, and we know exactly what we're saying. I'm like, “No, we communicate that we're building it, and we need their help from the beginning.” We communicate, we're still working on it every other day. Because otherwise, the stories will be created by themselves, and it's way worse than just hearing, “We're working on it.” Yes, we love your opinion. Can you come to this meeting on this date?

Alex: It's classic, like getting ownership as well, because people do need that ownership. They usually have something to say you don't know about. It's like the puzzle pieces we were talking about early. You're not going to cover the full spread. You're not going to the event. There will be gaps. Even when you do communicate, there’ll be gaps. You can at least close these. You can reach out. You can have people help you with the transition and help you with the change that you want to make, if you have that ability to talk it out and not try and just deliver, “Here's what we believe needs to be done. Go do it.”

Cristina: Yeah. When it comes to the workplace, the talking it out includes the hard conversations. It includes the sharing gratitude, the sharing appreciation, it includes the saying good morning. It includes the putting together the resources in the space to be able to do that. One of the things that we do in teams is we use Slack, and we create a team channel. Every morning, whenever somebody gets online, they say, “Good morning.” They don't have to say anything else, if there's nothing else to say for the day. At least, we know, again, I exist. People exist. Wonderful.

Usually, the conversations happen throughout the day. It's that there is communication. When something from a project changes, and I am the one that the client communicates it to, I turn around and communicate to everybody else exactly how I heard it saying, “This is how I heard it. I might have missed things, because I was alone in that meeting, and I won't make that mistake again. This is what I heard, and this is my understanding of it. Now, you know exactly what I know. Nothing more, nothing less. What do we do about it?”

That's where that Ubuntu comes in, that collaboration comes in. Because now, everybody can figure out like, “Oh, that's important to me. That's important to me. Oh, that's important to that person. Unless I do my job, they can't finish their part.”

Alex: That's exactly it. It does come down to the basal, the human communication, like the good mornings, the good connections over even an IM client. Anything is, can still be a great interaction. In addition to that, it's the over communicating and communicating of who's going to be involved with different changes, and making sure everybody has the information they need? Because it's not fair to assume people will do a job without the information for one, it won't work out particularly well and they’ll be playing with it. You're not playing with a full hand at that point. It’s hard to deliver a good product, or good projects. It's definitely hard to get an actual connection with somebody in an actual relationship, where you're going to find a real solution. Rather than just saying, “Well, you said you needed this CRM. I built the CRM. I have no idea what you're going to use with it, but here it is. Good luck.” 

Cristina: Yes. Here’s your CRM.

Alex: That wraps us right into our third value, of we learn, which you can tell from both of our personal values that comes directly from the curiosity and learning, that one is, especially in a space like this, our whole goal is to make a more human workplace to have people allowed to show up as their more authentic selves. Be able to do work that is interesting to them, and connect and collaborate in more genuine and authentic ways. That requires a ton of learning.

There's so much new research all the time to keep up with, that you want to be able to help with. There's so much to learn about people, about individuals. Everyone has their own experiences, and something really incredible to contribute. You have to be able to learn it. You have to be curious about doing it. You have to have done something many times and still, the next time you come to it say, “What might be different this time? What's going to happen that is new? Or what should we do differently? What do we want to do differently from last time?” That’s where learning comes up so much in the business space, especially for the work that we do.

Cristina: The authenticity really around that is everybody learns differently. Understanding each other, so talking it out and supporting people. Help the learning, because now we can understand like, “Oh, this person learns by doing, not by hearing.” Hearing the same concept repeated to them 15 times and then getting frustrated, because they still can’t do it, still not going to resolve it. If they can't do it themselves and touch the technology, or go through the process, or go through the steps, they're still not going to learn it, because that's their learning. preference. That's their way of learning way.

Alex: That's exactly it. You have to have that curiosity to find that and to talk with them about that, and then find out how to best work with that. That's a really great example.

Cristina: The last one is we create space. It's not last, because it's the least important, but maybe, it's because it's the most important. None of the above –

[00:55:41] AC: It’s the most connected as well.

[00:55:41] CA: - can really happen. Yes. None of the above can really happen if the space is not psychologically safe, which we've talked about in the past already. Space needs to exist. One of the examples that comes to mind that you use all the time, Alex, is the glass door policy, which is the non-psychological safe way of saying, “My door is open. Come to me all the time.” Then the first time something happens, you smash your head against the glass door, because it's not really open. It's only open if it's the first question, or it's the right time of the day, or it's the right time of the project, or, I don't know the reasoning why the door is closed.

Alex: I just saw a LinkedIn post from actually, this old co-worker of ours. It was sharing a story, it was very much the epitome of the glass door. It was this person who'd come in, who was leading a team and they talked about how important it is to be kind, to be connected, to help your teammates. We were all thrilled to hear this. We were all working long hours at this point, and glad this was going to be a change, or feel it was going to be way much more open now. I feel like there's going to be some collaboration. Then, he capped off the speech with, “But don't mistake my kindness for, I don't know, being easy or something, or I won't have a fight or something.”

Cristina: Be weak, or something.

Alex: Yeah. What is it? It was something. It was 59 minutes of building up the team, connecting well, establishing as a decent leader all squandered in one last clause. I think kindness is important, but don't think that I'm – I'm not going to let you get away with stuff. It was just some like – there’ll still be a hammer, or something. That was definitely the message that came across. I remember, just openly laughing with a co-worker in the back at that point. We're like, “Oh, all right. Okay. Well, that does feel like it negates what we just spent an hour on, but okay. All right.”

Cristina: Thank you for wasting my time for the last 59 minutes.

Alex: Good to know, this will be lip service all night.

Cristina: Come lead with that. Yes.

Alex: It’s just a funny one, about why space is important, why the glass door policy – I think, people can probably relate to it like, “Come to me with any concerns.” The first concern comes up and they’re like, “Oh, my God. You're killing this project. Why don't you keep it to yourself next time if there's an issue?” You’re like, “Okay. It’s not really an open for –”

Cristina: Or, I've explained it five times. Why do I have to explain it again? Yes.

Alex: We purposely put these core values as actions. We put them as we score, we talk it out, we learn, we create space. We did this, because it allows you to connect back with what you want to be doing. We're making a decision and we're making a decision as a company like, how does this help us support? Sometimes that is even doing things like, turning down projects, which sounds like it's against doing what we support. We want to help people. If people want to help, we want to run projects. It's wonderful, obviously, to keep filling that. If we don't have the availability, or the team available at the time to deliver that project, the most supportive thing we can do is let them know that, and that becomes talking it out. That becomes transparency.

That also relates to how just like our personal values, all of these are connected, and they bounce off of one another. We find it important and we find it useful to suggest core values as actions for that reason. It helps you orient your decisions. You have to remind yourself of what aspect of this you're doing. Even if it is doing things like, turning down a project or saying, “Oh, we won't be able to do that right now.” Taking care of yourself, allows yourself to do things like support. There's times where it's just better to do the thing that seems, and that's why I have 40 thoughts happening. 40 thoughts started here.

That's the other reason that the values that are just a list, I find difficult to do, because if I just looked at are we support and then I had a base level of interpretation of that and didn't understand what we mean by it, it's easy to just think like, “Well, then I better turn myself into a martyr and run myself entirely out of energy, making sure I'm supporting people.” That's not a realistic way of doing it, nor is it actually supportive in the end. In the end, we want to be able to deliver the most support, the most help, and that requires slowing down sometimes. That requires stepping back. That requires having other conversations. That requires taking breaks. Whatever needs to happen, and it's important to flesh those out. We like them as actions. Also, remember just the 360 view of each of these values.

Cristina: That's a very good point. Because the other thing we did is, besides, make them action verbs, not words. We define them. Each one of these has a paragraph that says, “This is what we mean by talking it out. We do mean having hard conversations. We create space means that we always hold the door open, not the glass door, the real door for new perspectives and voices, by listening and understanding and serving.”

There's an actual like, these are the actions we expect of each other. These are the actions that we expect from the people that work with us. From a client perspective, we understand that they have different values, but they do have to be aligned. Working with a client who is not transparent, not a good fit. Yes, we want to help. If it's not a good fit, we're not helping anyone.

Alex: Yeah. We can't help you as effectively. You won't get to help. It's as easy as that. That's another thing that, I guess, we'll just plug ourselves out a little bit on this one. This is one thing we love to do at Siamo. We like to do core value assessments, they tend to be just one-day events, where we go in, we get to talk to a lot of generally, the leadership that started with some of the core values. We can reassess, is this really where we want to be? As well as define paragraphs like these, because getting this definition together, so that it is in the shared vocabulary, and something that everybody can repeat a little bit more, and all the employees are a little bit easier, it's a little easier for them to remember these things off the top of their head.

That becomes important, because it connects that engagement. Everybody can understand how we should be acting. It can also understand when we're a little bit out of that. Then we can, it's easier to create the space to call people on it and know, this is where we're guided, this is how we want this to show up. This is how we want this to be used and utilized. That's something that we found creates a lot of alignment and engagement. It's also just incredibly fun to do, as you can tell by the fact that we've mentioned values 40,000 times over the last year in the podcast.

Cristina: Yes. They're not going away.

Alex: We get to be curious and we get to learn, we get to talk it out. It's great. We get our values right upfront. We love doing core value assessment. That's always been fun – always fun days.

Cristina: Yes, it is. Well, thank you for listening to this, and hope that this inspires you to at least, look into many of the different ways to find your values, or start thinking about them. Get in touch if you would like us to guide you through them.

Alex: Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much for listening. Good luck on your own values’ journeys.

Cristina: Yes. Thank you.

[END OF EPISODE]

Cristina: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast.

Alex: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Laura, and our score creator, Raechel Sherwood.

Cristina: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alex: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always uncover the human.

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