Leadership and Management

Values-based leadership:
which values?

Values-driven leadership popularised an important idea, but often left one difficult question unresolved. A person can hold strong values that are negative, self-serving, inconsistent with others or very different from the values they publicly espouse.

Read the briefing >Why 24 Positive Values? >

The story in 30 seconds

Many leadership approaches encourage individuals and organisations to identify their core values. IOWL argues that this can leave society without continuity or a shared baseline. The Positive Value Leadership response was therefore not simply to say that values matter, but to define a common explicitly Positive Values baseline.

A value is not automatically positive simply because somebody holds it strongly.

The blank-sheet problem

Individuals may value status, power, loyalty, winning or self-interest. Some values can be constructive in one context and harmful when elevated above everything else. A person may also present a positive set of espoused values while their enacted behaviour reveals something different.

Even where every person and organisation selects only positive values, another problem remains. If each independently chooses a different subset, there is no common baseline against which interaction can be understood.

Keystone Module 4 has long used an accounting analogy: if every accountant were free to create a different accounting standard for their own organisation, each might act with good intentions, yet interaction between organisations would become difficult because the common language had disappeared.

PVL does not ask people to abandon their own positive values. It asks them not to begin from a blank sheet.

The IOWL response: a baseline, not a ceiling

IOWL identified 24 Positive Values organised through six Exemplars: Probity, Potency, Planet, People, Perception and Participation. The framework does not claim that these are the only positive values a person or institution may hold. Individuals, teams and organisations can add further positive values in context.

Personal valuesWhat an individual actually values. These may be examined or unexamined, positive or negative, coherent or conflicted.
Espoused valuesWhat a person or organisation says it values. Espousal matters, but does not prove enacted behaviour.
Positive ValuesThe deliberately defined PVL baseline against which judgement, behaviour and development can be examined.

The rationale is continuity without uniformity. People remain culturally, professionally and personally different. The baseline creates a common reference point across those differences.

The framework also resists the idea that one desirable value is enough. Honesty without Humanity can be damaging. Perseverance without Open-Mindedness can become rigidity. Collaboration without Probity can enable collective wrongdoing. Calibre therefore depends on interaction, calibration and context rather than one heroic trait.

Questions worth investigating

  • When organisations publish values statements, how often are those values evidenced in behaviour rather than merely communicated?
  • Does asking leaders to identify their own values solve the problem, or merely make their existing values more explicit?
  • Can a common positive baseline coexist with cultural difference and organisational individuality?
  • What happens when personal values, organisational incentives, professional ethics and governance requirements pull in different directions?

What IOWL is not claiming

The 24 Positive Values are not presented as an exhaustive list of every desirable value, a universal moral ranking of people, a personality typology or a guarantee of future conduct. PVL provides a developmental reference architecture. Its purpose is examination, reflection, application and continuing calibration.

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Editorial working narrative

A deeper version of the story

This is a self-contained narrative written for a journalist or editor who wants to work quickly from the proposition. Copy it into working notes, adapt it, challenge it and follow the source trail above before publication.

IOWL Calibre Briefing - editorial working copy

Values-based leadership has a basic problem: which values?

Leadership programmes routinely ask people and organisations to identify their core values. Positive Value Leadership starts from a more awkward question: what happens when the values they choose are selective, inconsistent, merely espoused, or not positive at all?

Values-based leadership has become one of the most familiar ideas in management. Leaders are encouraged to know their values, organisations publish value statements and recruitment material promises cultures built around integrity, respect, innovation or collaboration. The language is positive. The underlying assumption is rarely examined: which values are actually governing behaviour?

A person can value status, dominance, loyalty to an in-group, winning at any cost or personal advantage. An organisation can publish admirable values while rewarding conduct that contradicts them. Even where every chosen value is positive, different people and institutions can construct entirely different lists and attach different meanings to the same words. The result is a values landscape with aspiration but no common baseline.

That problem sits at the heart of Positive Value Leadership, the framework developed by the Institute of One World Leadership. IOWL's argument is not that existing values-based leadership is wrong to focus on values. It is that asking every individual or organisation to begin with a blank sheet creates avoidable ambiguity. A value is not automatically positive because someone holds it strongly, and an espoused value is not automatically an enacted one.

The institute uses an accounting analogy. Imagine allowing every organisation to design its own accounting standards. Each could do so sincerely and with good intentions, yet comparison and interaction would quickly become difficult because there would be no common language. IOWL argues that values can create a similar problem when everyone is left to select, define and prioritise them independently.

Its response is a baseline rather than a ceiling. Positive Value Leadership identifies 24 defined Positive Values organised through six Exemplars: Probity, Potency, Planet, People, Perception and Participation. Individuals, teams and organisations can add other positive values. They do not, however, begin from nothing. The purpose is to create enough commonality for shared understanding while preserving contextual difference.

The distinction between personal, espoused and Positive Values is important. Personal values are what a person actually values and may be constructive, conflicted or negative. Espoused values are what a person or institution says it values. Positive Values in the IOWL model are a defined developmental reference set against which judgement and behaviour can be examined. That architecture is intended to reduce the opportunity for the word 'values' to mean whatever is convenient at the time.

IOWL also rejects the idea that any single positive value is sufficient. Honesty without humanity can become needlessly destructive. Perseverance without open-mindedness can become stubbornness. Loyalty without probity can protect wrongdoing. The model therefore treats Calibre as something emerging from the interaction and calibration of values in context rather than from possession of a favourite virtue.

The framework then connects values to a wider Axiological Pyramid. Personal values sit beneath socially shaped morals, organisational commitments, professional ethics, governance and external compliance. The proposition is not that upper layers are unnecessary. It is that every layer ultimately depends on human interpretation and judgement. A rule can prohibit conduct. It cannot guarantee what a person will decide when the rule is silent, ambiguous or inconvenient.

That is why IOWL's work moved beyond naming values into development, reflection and assessment. Its courses are designed to move from awareness through interaction, influence, ingestion, impact and internalisation, with Reflection, Reinforcement and Rigour operating throughout. In other words, the aim is not to create people who can recite 24 words. It is to test how those words influence judgement and action.

The journalistic question is therefore larger than whether IOWL selected the right 24. It is whether values-based leadership can be credible without an explicit answer to the question it often leaves implicit: which values, defined by whom, and how do we know whether they are actually governing behaviour?

Editorial accuracy note: The 24 Positive Values are presented by IOWL as a common developmental baseline, not an exhaustive universal list, personality test or guarantee of conduct. Dynamic IOWL figures should be checked against the current Facts & Figures page before publication.

Explore the Calibre Briefing

Six journalistic routes into the same underlying question: what governs the way human capability is used?

Media hubChoose a story and follow the evidence. ProductivityThe skills gap has a gap. Positive ValuesValues-based leadership: which values? GovernanceWhy regulation often follows the damage. TrustTrust crisis or trustworthiness crisis? EmployabilityWhat does a degree not tell an employer? AI and CalibreCapability is accelerating. What governs its use? Journalist resourcesFacts, definitions, chronology and source trail.

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