Welcome back to Relationships At Work – A leadership podcast helping you build workplace connection, improve culture, and avoid blind spots. I’m your host Russel Lolacher

I’m a communications and leadership nerd with a couple of decades of experience and a heap of curiosity on how we can make the workplace better.

This mini-episode is a quick and valuable bit of information to help your mindset for the week ahead.

Inspired by our R@W Note Newsletter, I’m passing on to you…

Focusing on Values Over Feelings

“We’re far more focused on feelings than values.”​
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This quote has sat with me. It came from professor, author, entrepreneur and Pivot podcast co-host Scott Galloway as it hit like a tuning fork for me around leadership and our focuses —especially when we talk about what it really means to lead a team or shape a culture.

It’s not wrong to consider feelings. Not at all. Emotions are part of how we show up, how we react, how we connect. But when feelings become the dominant lens through which decisions are made—without anchoring them to values—we lose our footing. We shift from being guided to being swayed.

And this isn’t just a “bad leadership” problem. It’s an “untethered leadership” problem.

Too many organizations treat values as an HR slide deck, a poster in the break room, or a splashy page on the careers website. They’re beautifully written and almost entirely unaccounted for. “Integrity,” “Collaboration,” “Innovation”… all noble ideas. But if your organization isn’t defining them and using them to evaluate behaviour, prioritize work, and resolve tension, they aren’t values. They’re pretty decoration.

Feelings aren’t the problem, but they aren’t the map either.

Let’s be clear: leading with empathy, emotional intelligence, and compassion is not the issue. In fact, it’s non-negotiable in trust-driven leadership. But when an entire workplace culture is shaped more by the avoidance of discomfort than the pursuit of values, we end up with:

• Confused teams, unclear about why decisions are made.
• Inconsistent leadership, driven by how someone feels in the moment rather than what the organization stands for.
• Performative behaviour, where people say the right things to “feel right” rather than dothe right things.

Feelings fluctuate. Values anchor us. When times are tough, values are what keep us from drifting into chaos or groupthink or fear-based decision-making. They aren’t a luxury—values are the instructions on how to be who we say we are.

So… what are your values actually for? If you can’t answer that, or if your team gives different answers, that’s the problem.

Values are the operating system of your organization. They guide:

• Who you hire.
• Who you promote.
• What behaviours are celebrated—or not tolerated.
• How you navigate disagreement or uncertainty.
• What decisions are made when money, time, or energy are tight.

When we treat values as guiding principles rather than vague ideals, we create clarity. We get out of the trap of catering to every emotional reaction and start aligning people with a shared direction. That doesn’t mean ignoring how people feel. It means putting feelings into context.

If a team member feels frustrated by a process, the first question isn’t “How do we fix the frustration?” It’s “Is the process misaligned with our values?” If it is, that’s the priority. If it’s not, then maybe the discomfort is part of growth or change. Either way, values help us make decisions with integrity.

The Question: How can we ensure we make decisions and lead our teams based on values—not just feelings?

The Action(s):

• Create a values decision filter.​
  Before major decisions, ask: Does this align with our stated values?Am I reinforcing a standard or reacting emotionally?Use the values as your litmus test.
• Tie recognition and feedback to values.​
  Don’t just say “Great job.” Say, “You really showed our value of [X] when you did [Y].” This signals that values aren’t abstract—they’re how performance is measured.
• Integrate values into performance conversations.​
  Make values part of your check-ins and evaluations. Not just what someone accomplished, but how they showed up. And if they didn’t live the values, address it directly—respectfully, but without avoidance.

We can care about how people feel. We should care about how people feel.
But if we don’t anchor that care to what we stand for, we’re not leading—we’re mood-managing.

Let’s far more focus on values than feelings and demonstrate leadership that our teams can connect with.