For us at Fair Voyage, it was important to define our core values from the beginning, to make sure they are consistent with our vision and our mission—the outcome we want to see and help create for the world.

To start with, we listed all our values. To make sure we didn't miss anything, we found The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by the Conscious Leadership Group a helpful and insightful guide.

Then came the harder task—how to shortlist and select our top five values from amongst all those we had listed? We tried various prioritization and ranking techniques, but no matter what method we applied, there always seemed to be some important values missing amongst to top five.

For weeks, we turned circles of new attempts at re-prioritizing and re-ranking our values, but the same methods always lead to the same results—lingering doubts and uneasy feelings that something was missing.

Until we started to ask ourselves a different question: What behaviors do we need in order to achieve the outcome we desire—sustainability, peace, humanity?

So then, instead of simply listing our values, we listed all the behaviors that we value and need to act consistent with in order to achieve our vision.

For each behavior, we then asked:

• Would we applaud this behavior, even at the cost of profit? I.e., do we value a certain behavior more than short-term financial gains, and would celebrate team members for acting accordingly, even if it means a financial loss or lost profit opportunity?
• What would be the consequence of behavior breach? I.e. in case of repeat or gross breach and not showing sincere regret or commitment to behavior change, would we have a serious conversation or even let a team member go?
• Which values have this behavior inherent in their notion? I.e. we assigned corresponding values to each behavior, whereby a certain behavior might match one or several of our values.

With all the behaviors needed to create our desired outcome listed and values assigned to each, it then became an easy task to select the five values needed to capture all the behaviors that we valued: Responsibility, Collaboration, Truth & Candor, Empathy, Personal Growth.

Our top five values include "Collaboration" and "Truth & Candor" (which also captures the notion of transparency). Accordingly, we are excited to make our internal behaviors and values assessment transparently available to you: View Our Values Spreadsheet and feel free to download a copy to adjust for your own use.

We hope the process we followed and illustration thereof also may help you define the values for your own organization, and contribute to the development of more value-based leadership and management principles overall.

You may also like to read what we have learned about Sustainability, Peace and Humanity as outcome values as opposed to values we must practice day-to-day to realize these outcomes; and how we hold ourselves accountable to our values as part of our performance reviews.

When we defined our values at Fair Voyage, we felt that Sustainability, Peace, and Humanity all were important values that needed to be part of our core values, because that's the outcome we want to see in the world—our vision.

However, when including Sustainability, Peace, and/or Humanity in our shortlist of top five values, there always seemed to be some other values missing that were also crucial to achieve our vision.

So then we asked: What behaviors do we need to practice every single day in order to achieve our vision?

This helped us realize that Sustainability, Peace, Humanity can only be achieved if each of us takes Responsibility and we hold ourselves accountable to practice certain behaviors.

When we listed all those behaviors, we realized that Sustainability is not a value in and by itself, but an outcome that can only be achieved by practicing certain behaviors.

We came to the strong conclusion that the values and behaviors we need for Sustainability are: Responsibility, Collaboration, Truth & Candor, Empathy, and Personal Growth. With any of those missing, Sustainability remains an illusion.

Therefore, more importantly than tracking of simplistic Sustainability KPIs, we strongly advocate for a shift towards value-based leadership and management principles as an absolute must have for sustainability, peace, and the continued thriving of our shared global humanity on earth.

We at Fair Voyage commit to always put our values before profit and hold ourselves accountable to act according to our values.

To do so, we must ensure that each team member is deeply aware of what our values mean for our day-to-day actions and decision. To do so, each of our team members is asked to read about our expected behaviors and values as part of their joining process, as well as review those regularly, at least on a yearly basis.

Furthermore, we must reflect on and assess the display of our values in our regular performance reviews, which we hold formally on a quarterly basis. You can view transparently our internal performance review template (find our Company Values tracking in section C); and feel free to download a copy to adjust for your own use.

We have learnt that by being clear on our expected behaviors and values, and having transparent conversations about our values and feelings, each team member is able to "feel" instantly any serious deviations.

Furthermore, we have learnt that when each of us takes the responsibility to lead by example, practice vulnerability, and thereby create a safe space for others, it becomes ever easier for each team member to develop the courage to speak up about our feelings and have difficult conversations in a conscious way.

Consequently, we have been able to develop the practice to immediately discuss any critical deviations from our values at least on a weekly basis, as part of our regular team meetings, if not sooner.

As a conclusion, the more we hold ourselves and our team members accountable to our values, the better we become at practicing them consistently as a team. We are proud of acting in integrity with our values!