When Values Collide: Why Real Leadership Lives in the Tension

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When Your Company Values Start Fighting Each Other

Most leaders have a clean list of company values they can refer to. Typical values in an organization include integrity, innovation, customer focus, teamwork, et. al. They look great on the website and in employee handbooks, sure.

But here's what no one tells you: in real business situations, these values constantly contradict each other.

The Hidden Problem Every Leader Faces

Everyone in the organization has their own set of values they abide by. Some are known and even explicitly stated to others; many are not fully known (or even subconscious), and can only be implied by observation. Some may even be outright denied when called out!

But why does this matter?

Simple: an organization's stated values tend to clash with the unstated values of the people that make up the organization.

Ok maybe not so simple ... but the broad brush I'm painting with tends to show up in reality within every organization at some point.

You're running your organization where real decisions have real consequences, real deadlines, and real people involved. That's exactly where your organization's carefully crafted values start throwing punches: both at each other, and at the underlying values that remain unnamed.

Consider this scenario: Your "customer obsession" value demands you fix a product bug immediately, but your "employee wellbeing" value means not asking your already-stretched team to work another weekend. Your "transparency" value says share the bad quarterly numbers with everyone, but your "strategic thinking" value warns that premature disclosure could spook investors and hurt the company's future.

These aren't theoretical dilemmas. They're Tuesday afternoon decisions that land on your desk with no clear right answer.

Why This Happens More Than You Think

An evergreen example would be a service organization that has the stated value of acting with integrity and acting ethically. The customer-facing staff has a value that is not written "on the wall", but is well known: take care of the customer.

Both seem to be good values on paper, and with the best intentions. However, they also have the capacity to be conflictual with each other.

Imagine the director of the customer-facing department facing the challenge of a lucrative customer with 5 years of past business asking for contract concessions that border on the line between ethical and unethical. None of these concessions are legal issues, but the feeling around this from the frontline and supervisory staff is "icky" and "feels unclear whether we can do this."

The director has a conflict here: do you "take care" of the customer, or do you determine this borderline unethical action is in violation of company values? It may be easy to claim that they should just follow the company values of acting with integrity and acting ethically.

But life isn't always that easy. Hindsight is 20/20, and in the moment, the conflict in values is far more opaque than it is when reading about it in this article.

Consider additional variables that may apply. Maybe the company is looking to increase revenue due to the previous 2 quarters being losses. Maybe the "take care of the customer" was something the late founder of the company always said to the front-line staff, making it a cultural norm. Maybe the director has an underlying and unstated value of being liked by his customers that's getting in the way.

What This Actually Looks Like in Your Business

You probably see this playing out when:

Teams get paralyzed because they can't figure out which value should "win"

Different departments interpret the same value in contradictory ways

Employees become cynical because leadership seems inconsistent

Decision-making slows significantly as people try to honor all values simultaneously

Your best people leave because they can't reconcile what you say with what you reward

The Real Cost of Pretending This Doesn't Happen

When leaders act like their values never conflict, several things go wrong. First, the conflicts don't disappear: they just go underground. Managers start making quiet trade-offs without talking about them. Teams develop informal workarounds that contradict official policy. The gap between stated values and actual behavior grows wider.

Second, you lose credibility. Employees aren't stupid. They see the contradictions even when leadership doesn't acknowledge them. When you claim there's no conflict between "move fast" and "get it right", people stop trusting your judgment.

Third, you miss opportunities to build a stronger culture. Every value conflict is actually a chance to show what your company really stands for when the stakes are real.

The Bottom Line for Your Business

Your values will conflict. That's not a bug in your leadership—it's a feature of running anything meaningful. The question isn't whether you can eliminate these tensions, but whether you can handle them in a way that builds trust, clarity, and stronger decision-making across your organization.

So don't pretend values in your organization never clash. Instead, get curious about the conflicts. Ask your team: "What's really at stake here? What would we lose if we choose one over the other? And how do we make that choice in a way that strengthens rather than weakens our culture?"

The companies that thrive are the ones where leaders acknowledge these conflicts openly, make conscious choices about trade-offs, and help their teams understand not just what they stand for, but what they're willing to sacrifice to stand for it.