Values are everything to human beings. Our values guide us and influence our lives every day. Our values influence every aspect of our lives; they underlie and determine our behavior.
Values-based leadership is the relationship between a leader and their followers. This relationship is based on shared values and is acted upon by the leader. Our text states, “Every act and statement of managers has an impact on culture and values” (Daft, 2009).
This type of leadership approach helps form emotional bonds and mutual trust between one another. People learn and model their behaviors from people they look up to and respect. Values-based leaders are caring, supportive, sympathetic, and they treat their employees in the way that they wish to be treated.
We have learned that culture is the “set of values, norms, guiding beliefs, and understandings that is shared by members of an organization and taught to new members as the correct way to think, feel, and behave” (Daft, 2009). Organizational culture is created because of employees in the workplace and their interactions with one another. Everyone’s life experiences, upbringing, education, strengths and weaknesses bring about this organizational culture.
An organization’s culture is partly the overall appearance of the values that exist in the workplace. Culture provides people with a sense of being and a sense of purpose within the organization. Culture also creates a “commitment to beliefs and values that are larger than themselves” (Daft, 2009). Values guide decision-making in an organization; this includes every day decisions. Values form the foundation for everything that happens in an organization. Founders or businesses and corporations; their values saturate the workplace. Whatever they value will largely run the actions of the business. It’s apparent that values-based leadership does influence an organization’s culture…if not the entire culture.