Leading with Authenticity: Jane Cox's Perspective
Meet Jane Cox, Executive Coach, Organizational Supervisor, and a Point of Value facilitator. She has many years’ experiences in both corporate management and consultancy roles. Over the years she has developed her own, integrative approach to coaching and supervision.
by Emma Aasa
Hi Jane! How do you use Point of Value’s ranking system?
Jane: As an example, I use it in recruitment. When you go to an interview, you put yourself forward as your best self and you share what you believe will impress the employer, But that's not always the whole picture. Doing the ranking in the recruiting process humanizes people in a way, and you can hire someone that match your team value-wise. Sometimes that is just as important as their merits.
Did value work have any impact on you personally?
Jane: When I first did the ranking, my highest value was generosity. That made me remember, several years earlier, when I had my annual appraisal with my boss, and he'd written: she gives too freely of her personal resource. I will never know what he really meant but the way it landed with me was criticism. After that I thought of my generosity as a bad characteristic.
But, when I saw the value on the ranking, how important it was to me, I decided to change that perspective. If I’m not embracing my value, I'm not being authentic. It's not congruent. So, I decided to feel good about it instead of bad. That's the thing, that was the difference, and it had a profound effect.
Why would you recommend businesses to work with values?
Jane: When I first went into leadership business in the 1970’s it was very difficult for a woman to do anything independent. With that said, I’ve been in the business for a while, and I can tell that now it's a good moment in time to work to recognize our values. It is highly prioritized in management development. There's a lot of talk about values in my world around business consultants.
Yet, they often don't know what they mean by the values of their business. They maybe have five values up on the wall that say integrity, hard work or honesty or something, but they don't really connect with them, they're just words on the wall. But if you can get the whole business to work at that level, which you can make happen with the right sort of tools, it becomes more of a joy to go to work, you connect with the business because you feel in harmony, because you feel in flow.
What feedback have you gotten from your coaching?
Jane: Wherever you come from and whoever you are with, and some people find it life changing, but anybody who I've worked with, everybody who I've done a ranking with has found it beneficial. When they learn new things about themselves, they tend to ask: why didn't I know this before? We do know it; we just haven’t realized it.