Pillar Four: Core Values - but make it personal
After 17 years of being a stay-at-home mom in a Mormon heterosexual marriage and 6 months of conversion therapy that nearly ended me, I filed for divorce. As someone who thought she’d know her role “for time and all eternity”, filing that paperwork meant two things: I was completely starting over and I had no idea what I was supposed to do with my life. The only things I was sure of anymore were that I wasn’t attracted to men, and I needed to get food on the table for four beautiful kiddos.
How in the world was I going to do that if I had no idea who I was?! No, for reals, how do I pick a career to support my family if I had no clue who I actually was versus the role I had played for almost two decades? What does an almost 40-year-old stay-at-home mom have to bring to the table? What were my skills and what did I actually enjoy?
One step at a time, I reconstructed my self-identity using only building blocks I was completely sure of. No more blind faith, no more “shoulds”, no more living for heaven, and no more “I think I must be the crazy/broken/naive one.”
I needed to figure this out, like now. Like before my next court date. So one of the skills I developed was “finding the hacks”. If I can find a more efficient way to accomplish any task, it makes doing that task 100x more fun for me and therefore a much higher rate of success. So could I find a hack for figuring out who I truly am?
I tried a few but can you guess the hack that I used in those early days that has proven to serve me every single day six years later? Figuring out my Core Values.
In less than an hour, I was able to discover and distill exactly what was most important to me in the entire world, down into just three words. I immediately integrated those three words into every aspect of my life. As I searched for a new career, I checked each decision against these three words. As I searched for a new community, same thing. And as I decided to buy a home with my love, I checked for alignment with the core of who I really am.
These days, when something about a new client project feels off or I’m having issues with one of my kids, I go directly to my Core Values. It’s the most efficient way I’ve discovered to cut through a whole lot of societal BS to get to the root of any issue I have going on. It’s a language my mind and my heart understand thoroughly now, so it’s become easier and easier for me to sort through data and find a solution. Using my Core Values as a guide has been a game-changer for my Life 2.0.
As I began working with companies to develop their Inclusive Leadership Skills, I searched for a way to make the new language of diversity, equity, and inclusion feel accessible and actionable on a daily basis. I was already seeing DEI burnout in several companies, and worse, I was seeing performative DEI strategies coming from leadership that lacked a way to make it authentic in their already established company cultures.
I needed to create a way to make DEI strategies authentic and sustainable. I found the answer where I usually do, in Core Values.
Most companies already have established Core Values and the benefits of doing so have been well documented. When organizations begin using the language of their Core Values to describe their diversity and inclusion missions, as well as how to pursue them with employees and teams, the words become easy to find and use. Concepts and the needed actions to take are clearer because there is already an established framework. You can find examples of how that works in the real world here.
When I began teaching my corporate clients how to weave their DEI values into their Core Values as a part of my Inclusive Leadership Skills training, the success of their initiatives began to skyrocket.
Successful recruitment rates increased, particularly among Millenials and Gen Z.
Coworker issues reported to Human Resources decreased.
And amazingly, physical safety incidents also decreased.
I feel like a big part of this success is because the Inclusive Leadership Skill of incorporating Core Values gives organizations a way to customize their DEI strategy to their particular company. No two humans and no two companies are the same. There is no checklist for perfect diversity and inclusion.
But there is a North Star, that can guide your organization along the path of authentic and sustainable Inclusion while remaining focused on who they really are. Just like my Core Values have guided the most important next steps of my life, your organization’s Core Values will provide the guide through potentially sticky social responsibility issues with ease.
Featured in the award-winning documentary, CONVERSION, Elena Joy Thurston is an inspirational Diversity & Allyship speaker, trainer, and author through a lens of LGBTQ+ inclusion. Elena Joy inspires her audiences to learn how Inclusive Leadership can improve company morale and productivity, changing members' lives in a practical way. A Mormon mom of four who lost her marriage, her church, and her community when she came out as a lesbian, her viral TEDx talk on surviving conversion therapy has been viewed more than 45,000 times and landed her media and speaking opportunities with ABC, CBS, FOX, Penn State, University of North Texas, Michael’s, Logitech, and more.