Asserting Your Value with Courage

Uncovering our hidden strengths so we can get to a point where we begin to comprehend our true worth can be a grueling process. Without overcoming the self-imposed limits we’ve placed on our own value, often for years or even decades, there’s little chance of genuine modesty being involved in situations where we feel forced to make a case for what we bring to the table. At that point, what we share tends to be more from a place of self-preservation. But the more we’re able to embrace our distinct voice and validate our worth by measuring the positive impact we’ve made, the more open we can be in asserting our value with courage.

The first time I remember doing this, albeit with a very limited amount of confidence or courage, was around August of 2003 when I made an initial case with my corporate safety director to give me an opportunity to support our global behavior-based safety leader by working directly with the company’s sites throughout North American. Having done this for a few locations on a case by case basis for a year or so leading up to that, I had grown (at least a little) more confident in my ability to deliver training that team members in other locations could apply and I had seen a few of them make measurable progress; progress they hadn’t made previously even with direct support from other corporate-level trainers who had since moved on. Without having the courage to make that (likely weak) assertion of the value I thought I could add, I wouldn’t have gotten that opportunity or so many others that followed.

Nearly a decade later, and with a bit more confidence, I made a case to be considered for an open human resource generalist position in our local facility. While I didn’t have anything resembling the bachelors degree the job description required, I had supported the HR department for most of the time I was in the behavior-based safety role so I had no doubt I could catch on. Accepting the position came with the expectation of completing a degree but I’ve never been one to let a little detail like that keep me from taking on something new.

A couple years after starting our business, Cindy and I knew we needed to insert ourselves as the primary keynote speakers at the event we were hosting annually. Our initial goal in facilitating that event was to build relationships throughout our local business community. Going into the fourth year, we knew the only viable next step was to move from serving just as hosts to establishing visibility of the value we could offer. Had we not worked so hard at embracing our distinct voices - for years leading up to that - I can assure you that our self-imposed limits would have stopped us, and we would have written it off as humility. 

I could go on and on… Who would want to read a book written by someone who barely graduated high school? Why would anyone in their right mind hire, or even allow for that matter, a carpenter/press operator to speak in front of hundreds of executives and business owners? Because I was able to gain validation along the way by measuring the impact I was having on the people I served, I gradually developed more courage in asserting the value I could offer. When I solicited Terry Ward’s feedback on how I could perform better after interviewing for a new position in early 2000, he told me that I’d need to learn how to confidently detail my strengths. As hard as that’s often been, his guidance serves me to this day.

While our paths are different, asserting your value with courage will still be crucial as you uncover your hidden strengths and come to terms with your true self-worth. In fact, most leaders will struggle to trust someone who doesn’t understand their self-worth.

Building Trust Through Self-Worth

I don’t think there’s been a topic we’ve worked through in this look at Leveraging Leadership Growth that hasn’t tied back to trust; finding a mentor, having candid conversations, maximizing the return on investment in relationships, mentoring others, displaying humility, and definitely with earning influence. Before we stand a chance at being received even remotely well when asserting our value with courage, there had better be a solid foundation of trust - both ways. Otherwise, humility goes out the door and any hope of finding validation through measurable results goes with it.

Before I could have had any of the opportunities I mentioned earlier, or even the conversations leading to them, I had to earn a level of trust with each of the potential employers I approached - be that within the same company or with the clients who hire us today - through my work. And to get right down to it, I’ve never seen someone consistently deliver the kind of results necessary to earn enough trust that a decision-maker will take a chance on them without knowing their own worth well enough to perform with absolute confidence. Had I approached my corporate safety director about supporting our sites across North America in late 2001 rather than 2003, I doubt he would have even acknowledged the idea; I was little more than an entry on a long list of names he received monthly reports from and I hadn’t produced enough results to yield any substantial validation. But two years later, it was a very different scenario.

While it’s crucial that we build trust with those we support - whether that’s with our clients, the executives we report to, those who report to us, or the people we mentor along the way - knowing our worth is essential for building trust in others too. Before I could ever so much as consider making a case for the value I could offer in any situation, I had to appreciate my own strengths enough to believe that value was really there. For me, that confidence has always come from realizing that, although I may not be the smartest or most talented, I’m willing to consistently out work nearly everyone around me. Early on, I struggled with stating that confidently but today I’m very willing to say so - with humility.

With all that in mind, trust is not a one-way street. If I wouldn’t have trusted that corporate safety director all those years ago, there’s no chance I would have believed enough in the value I could offer to approach him with my idea. We all deal with people in positions of authority each day; some who have earned our implicit trust and others who we wouldn’t believe what they had for breakfast even if we smelled it on their breath. Cindy and I have learned, often painfully, to listen to what someone says but only trust what they do. When we’ve earned someone’s trust and they’ve proven we can trust them, the relationship grows from a secure sense of self-worth, fostering mutual respect.

Fostering Mutual Respect

For more than two and half decades, Cindy and I have worked incredibly hard at coming to terms with our worth and overcoming self-imposed limits. We’ve each approached the process a bit differently but praise God we’ve been able to do it together. That said, there have been plenty of times where we’ve placed our trust in others too soon and that’s bitten our backsides. I won’t speak for Cindy, but my self-worth took a hit many of those times. By consistently pressing through all that, though, the confidence we’ve developed in our worth has helped cultivate many incredible, mutually respectful relationships.

For the first few years after starting Dove Development & Consulting, I jumped at nearly every opportunity I could find to talk about or train on leadership with anyone who would hold still - and some who wouldn’t. During that time, I continued juggling some human resource and safety support for a few local companies. I was established in the HR and safety space so I had no trouble with providing guidance related to either confidently, and sometimes I was able to balance that confidence with humility. With the leadership focus, however, I struggled to find my worth. While I had a solid track record of helping coworkers develop leadership skills, with many of them earning significant promotions along the way, I had a much harder time embracing my distinct voice as I worked to position that as our primary business focus. By not completely trusting my own worth enough in that space then, I can list several situations where I didn’t earn trust from those I was attempting to serve. Fast forward more than a decade, with some amazing experiences now under our belts, the level of confidence in the value we offer each organization we serve has grown exponentially and that, too, has resulted in the cultivation of mutually respectful relationships.

In his piece introducing The Values Advantage, Craig Johnson shares how our first in-person meeting was at The Sub Station Mexican Grill, a remodeled Waffle House building just a few miles from our home.The owners of the restaurant are very dear to me and Cindy so we love taking friends there for the first time. It’s since been (heavily) remodeled but back then it still looked like you could expect greasy hash browns and have a significant chance of throwing hands with someone in the building, even if it was a waitress. I remember the guy who connected us with the Johnson’s being appalled when he heard I suggested that as a location to meet them for the first time. Craig had recently stepped away from serving as CEO and chairman of the board for a company doing close to a billion in annual revenue. That fellow suggested a location much more posh. I countered by saying that if Craig was turned off by where we ate dinner, I was highly doubtful that he’d be impressed with anything else I offered. By that time, I had a solid grasp on my self-worth - regardless of how successful the client was in their own space. Not only did that confidence cultivate a mutually respectful relationship, the Johnson’s have become some of our best friends since. And today, Craig and Kim have entrusted us with providing leadership resources and mentorship to their entire management team, including their children who are actively involved in their rapidly growing family business.

The trust we’ve developed through establishing self-worth, both in ourselves and with each client we serve, has been crucial in creating each of the mutually respectful relationships I’ve shared here - and so many more! We’ll wrap this all up with a quick look at how uncovering our hidden strengths can lead to crafting a lasting influence. Before that though, I’ll challenge you to identify a relationship that you can improve by constructively affirming your value.

Crafting a Lasting Influence

In my early teens, I failed to earn my Environmental Science merit badge as a Boy Scout because I wasn’t willing to follow through on the required 500-word essay. Most of my struggles throughout high school were due to having no interest in similar writing assignments and a complete rebellion against sitting still to read the various books assigned to us. In late 2016, however, I started an email series with the goal of adding value to subscribers while keeping our new business top-of-mind in the leadership development space, a very different sector than I was connected with (at least directly) in my professional career to that point. For quite some time, those emails were random but geared to teach a short lesson that the folks receiving them could apply, averaging four days each week with approximately 500-600 words in every message. I’ve shared repeatedly here that I’ve never felt all that talented in any area of my life, but I’ve always been willing to fall back on a solid work ethic and an extreme discipline for maintaining consistency. Those are what kept me going…

I received occasional replies over the first few years from folks sharing comments about how something struck a chord or how they were able to apply something I shared. I always genuinely appreciated those, and do to this day, but they were usually more of a surprise that anyone was actually paying attention than validation for any kind of measurable impact. Today, those same emails reach a few thousand folks weekly and the subsequent blog posts account for close to 150,000 views on our website each month. One thing I can assure you is that if anything you read or hear from me comes across as articulate, it’s from the sheer power repetition and consistency has in honing any skill. And through all that, I’ve learned to embrace my distinct voice in a way that reaches people I never dreamed of; many of whom I’ll never meet.

Nearly every business relationship that Cindy and I have today is with executives and business owners who are absolute rock stars in their respective industries. While we’ll never be able to do many of the things they do, we’ve been able to foster mutual respect by overcoming the self-imposed limits we battled early on - the same limits that likely prevented some of our initial clients (or prospective clients) from seeing the value we could provide or taking action on what we shared, even though we’ve seen many of them jump through hoops to apply the same things after hearing them from someone else.

Additionally, we frequently run into people who comment on things they see us involved in or share what they learned from us in a session years prior. We never take that for granted! That said, had we depended on that to become confident in our self-worth, there’s no way we could have pressed through all the obstacles along the way. Instead, we found modest strength (and mental toughness) through that intense consistency - something so many others just weren’t willing to commit to. Building that confident self-worth has given us the opportunity to leave a lasting impact through so many amazing professional relationships; relationships we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago, many of which have developed through things we wrote or shared with groups and we’re only now getting to know the individual we’ve impacted.

Before we turn the page and dig into how knowing your worth can be a key differentiator between obtaining a certification and being the most qualified option holding that certificate, I’ll challenge you to create a plan for intentionally sharing the value you add, with modest confidence, to a colleague or mentee. Unless they know that you know how much value you add, they’re unlikely to see that value in you or receive value from you… When they can do this, though, you’ll see a lasting impact on your professional relationships too!