What example are you setting? Including 10 Top Tips to find your values

Have you set a good example lately? What exactly would you call a good example?   It is not so much about constantly being on your best behaviour but rather having a strong value foundation from which your behaviour consistently operates. For believers, this means using the example of Jesus and bible values in our working and personal lives.

The wonder of being a human being is that these values are your own choices, how you want to be seen, known and ways you plan to develop.

The values can be integrated from childhood, learnt patterns but ultimately it is a choice as you quickly learn right from wrong. It is your decision which side you want to be on and how to incorporate these into your daily life.

The decisions are not always easy, especially incorporating your values into management decisions affecting other people, but it is the example by which you will be regarded. Are you fair-minded, open-minded and give the best of yourself? Your peers are using your behaviour, consciously or unconsciously as a good or bad example.

We are all voyeurs in our interest in others—after all, it is how we learn.  It is also how we entertain ourselves explaining why soaps and reality TV are so popular. Knowing this it becomes imperative to keep your values strong by guarding against gossip and hearsay.

At work you are watching your peers and bosses all the time and they are also watching you.  Topic of conversation is not really the work or why the work needs to be done but HOW it is being done.  This is the biggest cause of tension in the workplace because one person’s ‘how’ is another person’s ‘what’!

Think of someone who has been your best mentor and coach. They have shown you what to do by example; you admire their ways, wanting to imitate what and how they behave and make decisions affecting others in the workplace.  Their example has:-

• exhibited values you agree with
• made sense the way it is being done
• brought success and respect
• other points which made you take notice

It may be that you emanate this too by your behaviour without realising it! A friend who loved a way his boss chaired meetings used the same tone and mannerism when they ran a meeting. He had learnt by example. This is fine, as long as your own personality is not forgotten as you cannot be other people—only yourself. Check out the blog: How to reclaim your unique personality at work.

Paul told me, he worked for an accounting firm and was a Christian. As a believer in the workplace, he was open about his faith, without making a song and dance about it! His gentle value set emanated through his decisions and processes at work.   Many years later he received an unexpected phone call from a distant colleague. Someone who had been on the fringes of his work so he had no idea that he had made a difference in his life. This colleague excitedly told him that he had become a believer and that Paul’s attitude over the years was a witness and influence to him in making this life-changing decision. Paul was humbled, as he had no idea that his colleague had noticed, let alone had watched and learnt.   Paul had unknowingly set an example for someone else.

This is how you and I need to be in setting our examples of faith in the work place.   Being like Daniel whose faith and values were so strong that there was no evidence for negligence or corruption in his work or manner (Daniel 6:4).   It means that no matter what work challenges come your way, you are protected from resistance or those who want to pull you down. The reason they want are against you is that they have different values to you!

Your attitude makes all the difference and you never know it can be the example God is asking of you.

Learning from the Bible:

“In all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.” Titus 2:7-8

Ladey Adey   Author of UNFROZEN

http://www.ladeyadey.com