Crafting a Culture of Values: Insights from Gemma Noonan's Leadership Experience
Gemma Noonan is the Operations Director at the Giggs Group, a role that builds on her former experience as an HR Director with more than 18 years’ experience in different organizations. She is also a coach and a Point of Value facilitator.
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by Emma Aasa
Hi Gemma! So, tell me a bit about yourself. Who are you and what do you do for a living?
Gemma: I am the operations director for a set of property related businesses. Two years ago, I joined a local entrepreneur to help him grow his businesses, all real estate related: property sales, property management and the financial services associated with buying and selling houses. We realized we could use the values ranking system when coaching other real estate agents and small business owners.
So, how does it work?
Gemma: We do the values ranking and then we do value storytelling in groups. And here we find that not only do people learn about themselves, but it also has a good team building element to it because people get to learn about each other. By telling the values stories, people get a better appreciation for why people behave the way they do.
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At our organization, we can make all our decisions now in line with our values and we can manage our people in line with our values. Our core values now are about learning, achieving and communication. We believe in being very clear with people about what is expected of them and providing them regular feedback. To be able to do it around a very clear set of core values removes a lot of uncertainty and makes room for much more constructive conversation.
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Has working with Point of Value had any impact on you personally?
Gemma: It enabled me to make a very big decision, to leave a very well-paid job as a HR director, with a lot of respect where some people would've stayed there forever. In theory, I loved my job. I loved traveling. I had some great teams, but the core values of the management didn’t match my own. I got to the point where I realized that I couldn't manage anymore, and I couldn't set a HR strategy in line with my own values. Doing value work gave me the insight I needed to make this huge decision to resign. And I am really happy about where I am now.
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Who would you recommend point of value to and why?
Gemma: I constantly recommend it to people. Our employees and our coaching clients. And likewise, if we're recruiting someone, we will explain to them that the value ranking is part of our recruitment process and that's something that they're going to need to do. You can use it in coaching, recruitment, and team building. I would say they are the three things that we use it for.
This can be life changing. I believe out of every ten people I facilitate, at least one makes big life decisions like changing careers, breaking up with a partner or doing some other brave thing that they maybe didn’t have the strength to do before.