How To Carry Out Values-First Leadership And Empower Women Leaders

By Megan Abraham, CEO of The Goldie Initiative.

Leading with a values-first strategy can bring many business benefits, including higher earnings as well as higher levels of employee engagement, increased retention rates and lower absenteeism. One of the top benefits is that this strategy particularly helps members of a key demographic—women—who tend to thrive in a values-first environment.

Adapting strategies that support women leaders isn’t selfless; it’s profit-driven, according to a wide variety of research. I’ve seen it myself over the years as CEO of a national nonprofit organization dedicated to elevating extraordinary women leaders in the commercial real estate industry. What I see time and time again is that women leaders are highly effective in manifesting company transformation, encouraging new behavior adoption and, yes, achieving profitability and value creation.

Women leaders “help increase productivity, enhance collaboration, inspire organizational dedication and improve fairness,” according to the American Psychological Association. Here are a few tips on carrying out values-centric leadership that I’ve learned from the amazing women leaders who are part of The Goldie Initiative.

1. Appoint women to positions of authority where they can lead by example.

In my experience, more women in leadership roles could improve results across the board, as they tend to excel in situations where they lead by example. Additionally, I find they are results-drivers in leading with values, so don’t let that resource go untapped. Organizations should engage their women leaders on multiple levels, including:

• Asking for their advice in communicating and rolling out programs tied to company values.

• Tapping them as leaders within their functional areas to identify and resolve leadership decisions not aligned with values.

• Looking to them for guidance not just in what to do but how to do it.

2. Celebrate values-affirming behaviors.

When corporate values are rolled out with great fanfare and then never spoken of again, people will look to other aspects of your company culture for guidance—and those touchpoints may not be consistent with the company you’re striving to build. However, if values become a part of everyday management and communication, then they become part of your managerial DNA.

To communicate how important values are to the culture you are building, a company should look at the daily, weekly, monthly and annual cadence of their business and look for specific processes that present opportunities to infuse values into the employee experience. A few ways to do this include adding a metric for “adherence to values” into performance reviews and to celebrate accomplishments aligned with values. Managers can start meetings and presentations with a slide underscoring the values or create posters and other materials for office locations that articulate the values. In short, values can be integrated into operations at every level—visually, verbally and in more subtle ways.

I have observed that in this day-to-day implementation of values-first leadership, women tend to excel. Look to your women leaders to map these paths for others to walk.

3. Speak your values into existence.

Leaders cast long shadows. If an in-the-trenches leader doesn’t talk overtly about their company’s values, it may be more difficult for employees to digest how values relate to their everyday professional lives. Even when business decisions are shaped by values, they need to be overtly explained and stated or others may not make the connection. It’s critical that everyone in a leadership and management position, not just the women, both speak and act in alignment with the company values.

One of my favorite examples of reinforcing values through everyday interaction comes from my company’s nominated “Shero” of 2024, whose firm provided hands-on support to families navigating the lockdown, including asking for input on what spouses of the firm’s employees needed. Since then, she reinforced a values-led culture throughout her organization by personally meeting with key leaders and managers across the country (male and female) to reinforce the company’s values and having conversations about how to implement them in the field and on every job site.

4. Apply values-driven decision-making to the recruitment process.

Recruiting decisions represent more strategic opportunities for demonstrating and communicating values. Many times, traditional leaders make comments like “that candidate just wasn’t a good cultural fit,” a phrase that leaves a decision to reject a candidate open to misinterpretation. A more effective approach I’ve observed from multiple high-performing women leaders involves articulating their decision-making more specifically, through the lens of their values. They provide details such as, “One of our values is integrity. In the interview, this candidate mentioned several times when they had cut corners to increase profits. While they seem to know how to technically perform their job, we don’t hire people who don’t share our values.”

Women are the key to successful values-driven leadership.

Of course, values-centric leadership must have buy-in and participation from leaders of all genders. However, I believe wise companies will realize that their women leaders are particularly powerful guides on this journey.

By Megan Abraham, CEO of The Goldie Initiative. Read Megan Abraham’s full executive profile here.

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