It is always exciting to declare your values openly because people immediately start to judge you by them. That is what makes it fun. So these are the values that we think and feel drive us in Humap UK. Please tell us if you see or feel other values that we demonstrate in our behaviour or if you notice that we are not living by any of the values we talk about here. One of the qualities we value most is authenticity. That is the basis for almost everything else, but we recognise also that self-deception is among the most developed and apparently innate human skills, so staying authentic requires open, honest, direct feedback.
Healthy, deeply considered values bring real value to us and all our stakeholders when they manifest themselves in our behaviour. In many companies declared values don’t affect behaviour enough because they are developed, written and/or approved by senior managers, they are not thought through in terms of the practical behavioural implications and because there are often conflicts between the different company values themselves and between company values and employees’ personal values.
The values that drive the behaviour of many employees in many organisations seem to be:
1/ keeping my job,
2/ avoiding conflict or embarrassment and
3/ a quiet life).
That is why we also value Transparency and Accountability in Humap. We hope that we create the safety and confidence for people to challenge anything they think is wrong, fake or insincere.
Values are the bridge between beliefs and behaviour. So in order to have resilient values we need to explore the basis and depths of our beliefs. We believe that there is (probably) an objective reality out there somewhere that affects and is affected by my and by everyone else’s subjective perception and interpretation of it and of each others’ perceptions. Between us, we co-construct and co-evolve new ‘realities’ that endure until they collide with something that disintegrates them, if they ever do. Most things that disintegrate re-form in transformed ways – eventually.
These are the main values that hold Humap UK together and keep us engaged with our purpose of helping people in organisations to become better together. They are based on the values Humapians expressed in a meeting in Finland in summer 2011.
Helping by meeting - You help most by getting together with the people seeking help. This is better than advising from a distance because when you get together your attention is much more on the person than on the advice or help you are offering. They can probably help themselves anyway and by being with them you can see things and help them to notice things they didn’t mention when they asked for help.
Collaboration – doing things together, along with co-sensing, co-creating and cooperating and coordinating. None of us is as good as all of us when we are truly together.
Community as a platform for personal growth - the Ubuntu idea that we are part of a community that we create by participating. We contribute to it without losing anything and we gain from it without taking anything from it. At least these things: knowledge, love and power grow from being shared in the community. And these are vital.
“The quality of mercy is not strained…It blesses him who gives and him who takes…” William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1596. And Mary Follett, “We create sustainable power in a community by integrating differences without losing them. Our aim is unity, not uniformity.”
Create collisions - Bumping different things and people into each other can generate lots of new possibilities that gentler, more planned interventions never will. Flints must be struck to get sparks to make fires. Happy collisions reframe and re-orientate our relationships.
Recycling of emotions and thoughts - There has been nothing new since the creation of the Universe. There has been and continues to be an infinite unfolding of new combinations, mixes and blends of things. By changing contexts, emotions and thoughts are changed. We do not need to seek new emotions, feelings or thoughts all the time, nor new extremes of experience or passion. Reflection and reminding deepen and strengthen authentic feelings and revitalise relationships. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel every day (and we won’t try to use wheels to cross steep mountains, sandy deserts, dense jungles and white water). At the same time, we try to avoid labels and cliches that inhibit rather than enhance awareness and mindfulness. Recycling means not wasting, seeking new applications for things that would have been wasted. It is about stewardship, conservation and sustainability.
Liberty and responsibility – Liberty is not anarchy, nor the isolation of individualism, but is the willing engagement with principles that we have created and grown together. Responsibility is the ability and self-assumed duty to respond according to those principles according to how we perceive the situation. Responsibility goes hand in hand with accountability, awareness and responsiveness.
Good working life - A good working life is one that rewards you and the people around you. It has natural rhythms of activity and consideration that allow for mental and physical exercise and relaxation. It is balanced so that you get equal but different pleasures from your work colleagues and friends and from your family and social friends. It allows you to be genuinely present wherever you are, so that you are not distracted at work by wishing and wondering about things at home, nor fretting at home about worries at work, so that though may be physically there, you are rarely emotionally or spiritually present. Being genuinely present enables to you contribute and gain much more value in a short time than years of partial engagement.
Doing the least possible to have an effect. This means trying not to interfere (interference is any uninvited help) so don’t try to help unless you are invited or if you think something catastrophic will happen that others are not aware of. Even then, try to help them to help themselves. It means letting things happen. It means looking mostly forward, while learning from what has happened. It means delegating as much as one can. It means helping people to become more aware of their situation and their possibilities so that they know what they to do for themselves and then getting out of their way to let them get on and do it. It means allowing people to develop their own authenticity, authority and autonomy.
People’s values emerge and develop over time as they experience new things and different responses, so this summary of Humap UK’s values is always a work in progress and your contributions and feedback will be most welcome. Thank you for reading!