You’re Not Dealing With Difficult People—You’re Dealing With Different Values
That feeling when you step off a plane and everything feels slightly off? It’s more than jet lag. It’s your internal radar picking up on a different values environment. The way people speak, move, interact, and even make small talk—it all runs through their internal operating system, and that system is made up of the values they hold dear. The same phenomenon plays out in every workplace. When departments feel like foreign countries, it’s not just corporate culture. It’s values.
When Departments Feel Like Different Worlds, Values Are Why
In most workplaces, we chalk up tension between departments to surface-level traits. “Engineering doesn’t communicate well.” “Finance plays it too safe.” “Sales is always in their own bubble.” These statements make it easy to point fingers, but they don’t bring us any closer to solving the real problem. What's actually happening is that different groups are filtering their world through different value systems. Engineers may be motivated by values like Personal Responsibility, Determination, and Employment Security, while sales professionals may be more aligned with Ambition, Influence, and Relationships. These aren’t personality quirks. They’re predictable patterns of behavior rooted in what people care about most.
Values Are the Framework Behind Everything We Do
Behavioral scientists have shown us that values are the drivers behind every decision we make. That’s not philosophy—it’s neuroscience. The part of your brain responsible for choosing between Option A or Option B runs incoming information through a values filter. If something aligns with your core values, it feels right. If it doesn’t, there’s friction. That friction is what you feel when you’re in a meeting and someone just doesn’t seem to “get it.” They probably do understand the facts. They’re just applying a different values lens to the situation.
Thanks to nearly a million surveys conducted for the Valuegraphics Database, we can now measure those lenses. We can identify which values are shared across a specific group, whether that group is your team, your customer base, or your entire organization. That means the guesswork is gone. We don’t have to assume what people care about—we can know, with statistical accuracy.
Moving From Misunderstanding to Meaningful Alignment
When leaders begin to see their teams through the lens of shared human values, confusion turns into clarity. That tension between the operations team and the creatives? It starts to make sense when you realize one group may be motivated by Security, Balance, and Dependability, while the other thrives on Creativity, Self-Expression, and Freedom of Speech. Both groups are doing their jobs. They just have fundamentally different ideas of what “doing a good job” looks like.
Instead of trying to mold everyone into a unified culture built on surface-level norms, you can build strategies around the deeper, shared values that are already in play. That might mean adapting your communication style, your incentives, or even your processes to match the internal motivators of your team. When that happens, engagement increases, trust grows, and collaboration becomes more natural.
Start by Asking Better Questions
If you’re not ready to dive into a full Valuegraphics profile, you can begin with three deceptively simple questions:
Why do you go to work every day?
What do you spend money on, once your basic needs are met?
What would you volunteer for, even if you were completely exhausted?
These questions strip away the surface and reveal values like Service to Others, Community, Financial Security, or Positive Environments. Once you know what someone values, you understand what drives them. And when you understand what drives someone, you can lead them more effectively, influence them more ethically, and engage them more fully.
Conclusion: When Values Lead, Everything Gets Easier
The next time you find yourself frustrated by a colleague, a customer, or even a family member, consider this: they’re probably not being difficult. They’re being values-driven. Just like you. And once you know which values are in play, the mystery fades and empathy kicks in. Leadership gets easier. Engagement becomes authentic. And your organization starts to function like the cohesive system it was always meant to be. Values are the answer. Let’s put them to work.
