Values, Reputation, and Legacy: A Conversation with Africa Brooke
I recently had a conversation with Africa Brooke on the Leaving Well Podcast and we discussed so many incredible topics around values, integrity, and her new book, The Third Perspective: Brave Expression in the Age of Intolerance: (Bookshop | Amazon)
When I broach the topic of values with my clients, they always roll their eyes at me because values work is often laden with jargon and meaningless fluff, and it doesn’t feel authentic or genuine. But I approach values through a lens of foundation and stability.
As Africa says, “Values are the evidence of our foundation and they show the foundation stones of your identity.”
Exploring this foundational approach further, Africa explains that her own values come from tuning into what it means for her to operate in integrity. In this way, knowing your own values becomes a non-negotiable part of life. Those “foundation stones” are the anchoring point that everything else is built upon in our lives.
“Values will be the anchor when external pressures might otherwise sway you. You will do more than simply have them. You will be living them and making sure they trickle into every area of your communication and your life. Every conversation, even the ones with yourself, every post, every call, you'll see how this guiding system impacts how you connect with people, how you make decisions, and how you react to what happens around you.” – Africa Brooke, The Third Perspective
Live Your Values to Build Trust
It’s easy to say we should live by our values, but sometimes that feels easier said than done. Trying to be ethical, aware of every important cause, and up to date on current events is overwhelming–let’s be honest. But living your values doesn’t have to be about 100% perfection. It’s about knowing what’s most important to you.
Not living your values can have negative effects for your own self awareness and your interpersonal relationships on a micro and macro level. Africa says that it “inhibits you from being intimate with yourself, other people, and the world around you.”
Your values are something that you’re willing to go against the grain for or be misunderstood over. They are the hill you will die on. And if you don’t stand for something, you’re subject to change and more easily swayed than someone who has a firm hold on their values and beliefs.
“At any given moment, any opinion that feels stronger than yours…someone who you think is more knowledgeable, maybe someone that intimidates you a little bit, you're more likely to adopt their way of thinking, their way of speaking, their way of behaving, because you have no idea what your internal anchor is.”
Being firm in your values means being willing to engage in hard conversations and even conflict in order to stand up for them. And conflict can actually build trust and intimacy, because being willing to disagree and show your humanity is an act of vulnerability. When you engage in conflict in good faith, it’s almost always going to build trust.
Embodying Values for Nonprofits
A lot of organizations have a mission, vision, and values statement and may even have posters up around the workplace detailing the company values. For example, we thought of several common values like transparency, honesty, diligence, and efficiency.
I have two questions about your values on the wall of your nonprofit office:
Are these values actually staking any kind of claim that will need to be fought for or backed up?
Are these values actually making their way into the communities and clients served by the organization?
In my work with organizations, when I ask about the company values, they’ll point to the wall. And when I push a little harder and ask how they are actually living those values out with the people they serve, oftentimes a bit of friction starts to build up. This is how I know that the values aren’t “trickling down” to the communities.
I think that some of this hesitation and friction around actually embodying the values written on the wall is because we think upholding values should be challenging. But it doesn’t have to be.
For example, if an organization has the value of kindness, I would operationalize that by implementing 20 minute meetings with an agenda. This is kind to me as I schedule my day and it’s kind to the person I’m meeting with so they have time for a quick bio break before their next meeting. It reduces the rush and hustle of a lot of our day to day lives at work.
When I use this example, people start to realize that living their values doesn’t have to be as hard as they thought.
In The Third Perspective, Africa writes that there is a difference between embodied values and desired values. Embodied values are the actual results in your life from the actions you take. Examine the way you experience your workplace, your relationships with colleagues and supervisors. Do you censor yourself and find it difficult to speak up around certain topics?
The way we embody our values might be different from our desired values, the ways we wish we acted and the integrity we want to uphold. Is there a way you wish you operated in the workplace, is there something you wish you could stand up and say in a meeting?
My advice for organizations, from the founder to a new hire on day one, is to look at the embodiment of the values.
What are the results?
How do people feel and behave at work?
Do they feel empowered to disagree and voice their opinions, or do they behave like they need to maintain the status quo?
Is that result what you desire, in comparison to the values on the wall?
Disrupting Your Perceived Identity and Reputation
I asked Africa for her thoughts on a not-so-hypothetical situation. I’ve worked with organizations during transitional periods and have dealt with this issue a few times. When someone is facing a tough transition–maybe an executive is leaving for a new opportunity, or someone has stepped in to hold it all together as someone else is leaving–it can feel like their every decision is under scrutiny because of how precarious it is during this exit or interim period.
How can this person use their personal values for support through the chaos, criticism, and public backlash of an executive transition, where anything they say or do might become a headline?
Africa’s response was that this scenario can be linked to one’s identity. There is a change of identity happening from a well-known role into a new phase of life. It’s the same for musicians or artists who do something different after spending a long time doing one type of work.
When upholding and embodying your values, you must be willing to disrupt the idea that people have of you. This is a very courageous thing to do, but it comes with discomfort too because people can and will have their own opinions about the changes you make.
As Africa puts it, “Am I willing to be whole regardless of the environment that I'm in, regardless of what it is presented to me? Am I willing to make the decision that is in true alignment with what it is that I stand for?”
“So I think on an internal mindset, embodied level, you need to have that willingness to completely, compassionately disrupt the idea that people have of you. And that requires holding some discomfort and trusting your decision making process. You have to trust yourself enough to say, this is the decision that I'm making. This transition is happening regardless. You are going to need to get used to the new way of doing things. It's a difficult thing to hold because it requires you to actually really stand up straight in who you are as a person. And that can be difficult when there's so much external noise, especially in the corporate world.” – Africa Brooke, Episode 38 of the Leaving Well Podcast
Women Are Socialized to Focus on Reputation
Both Africa and I work primarily with women in our consulting and client work, and it’s all too common for women to have more at stake when it comes to disrupting their reputation and identity. Living in a patriarchal society, women are held to more rigid standards with less forgiveness of perceived transgressions. Women have been socialized to put other people’s needs before their own, including stakeholders, board members, and entire communities.
In my opinion, it’s because we over-give ourselves to the work–women tend to have a strong connection to the community, the mission of the work, the larger purpose that they are a part of. Especially when women are the founders of an organization and they’ve tied their identity to what they have built. There’s a natural fear of what might happen if the work ends.
Another big consideration is around our relevancy. If we've identified ourselves as kin to the work, then if the work is changing or being disrupted, we are risking our own reputation and relevance to the overall mission we’ve built. Relevance can feel like a superficial concern, but it’s as natural a reaction as overworking. We’re taught that being relevant is important to our continued support from the community, so of course we fear losing it.
But some of the most courageous and embodied values are the ones I’ve witnessed when women are willing to disrupt their own relevancy–letting it change, fall, or go dormant. That feels very powerful when that decision gets made.
The very language of “damage” around reputation is absolutist–is it fact or fiction, real or not real? Africa teaches to bring this question away from the reputation and back to the self. In our podcast conversation, she says, “I think it’s much more important to cultivate a robust self reputation, because your external reputation can change at any moment.”
When mistakes happen–and they do happen, frequently–they aren’t as world ending as we perceive them to be. Leaders who have “damaged their reputation” can take accountability, make amends, and rebuild bridges and connections. Because holding integrity with your values means you’re okay with being misunderstood and willing to do the restorative work.
Leaving a Legacy
I get cautious when legacy comes up, because I see a harmful path forward if we only work toward the future of our legacy, rather than staying present in the here-and-now of today. And for clarity, my definition of legacy is the thing that you actively work toward in order to leave something behind. Simultaneously, the idea of intentionally creating a generational torch to pass on can be extremely beautiful.
Africa asks the important question–who is the legacy for?
“Who is this sort of legacy for? Is it for you to feel? Is it an egoic stroke? Or is it because you’re very clear…that the ideas that you’re putting out into the world are going to impact and transform the lives of people. So this actually has nothing to do with you. You’re simply a vehicle for making an actual, tangible change.”
Our conversation helped me reframe my thoughts around legacy and appreciate the sense of building something impactful and world-changing because of my commitment to the work, rather than a commitment to building a legacy itself. The legacy is a result of committing to important and impactful work in the now.
Jaiya John speaks about being a living ancestor (stay tuned for an upcoming podcast episode with Jaiya!), and I love that particular reframe of the concept of legacy. It’s the fact that we are living ancestors–every decision, every creativity we bring into our lives, every piece of our body of work that we focus on is part of the ancestorship that we’re leaving.
This approach of being an ancestor isn’t as self-focused, in my opinion, and focuses more on a sense of collective and community. It’s about embodying the future you want to create and leave for those who come after.
Personal Symbols for Change and Transition
Obviously my work around Leaving Well is about leaving–changing, transitioning from one role to another, one phase of life to another. So our conversation on the podcast turned to the topic of change and how we both handle it.
In our conversation on the podcast, Africa shares about her experience getting sober as one of the most meaningful transitions of her life. It is truly worth the listen and I recommend you tune into this episode to hear the story first-hand.
But there is one part of her story I want to share with you here, because it applies to all of us.
“For the first two decades of my life, change always felt like something that was forced onto me. It never felt like a choice. But through the lens of sobriety, I really got to embrace it and to realize that my human existence is a reflection of the seasons. I get to be winter, and then I get to be spring, and then I get to be summer, and then I get to be autumn. I get to be so many iterations and versions of myself, even when it's so uncomfortable. And because I've learned to collect lessons from every single transition, I don't force myself to do it at the moment in time… I'm really realizing that I'm being invited to feel and to honor and to see the reality of what is as I'm in this moment of change and transition.” – Africa Brooke, Episode 38 of the Leaving Well Podcast
When I was younger, I always thought that change and transition were the same thing. They went together and made one big mess that I thought I handled really well. And as I've gotten older, I’ve realized that these are two different things. Change is what happens to us, and transition is the process that we go through internally in response to that change.
In The Third Perspective, one of Africa’s teachings is the idea of personal symbols–something tangible to help guide you through periods of change. The last time we moved, I went into my super-organized-mover mode and decided to prioritize setting up symbols and reminders around my home to keep me focused on my values. To me, it feels like a compass or a guide, always leading me back to the knowledge of my values, my integrity, the work I do in our world.
I highly, HIGHLY recommend you buy this book immediately: Bookshop | Amazon
Choosing personal symbols as part of your compass, your toolkit, your guideposts really is about choosing. Choosing the things that anchor you, choosing the things that will be compassionate and not judgmental or send you into a shame spiral about not being 100% perfect.
These symbols of yourself and your values can be as simple as the clothing you wear. Africa says in our podcast episode, “People think self censorship is about what we’re saying, but it’s even in your choice of clothing. I can’t wear this, it’s too loud. It might be too much. We’re constantly editing so other people can deal with us easier.”
This comes back to the idea of building your self reputation instead of using public perception to mold your values and behavior. What values do you embody? What values do you want to embody? You don’t want to create a false perception, you want to do the work to actively embody these values that are important to you.
Hear the full, unabridged conversation: Episode 38: Africa Brooke on Values and the Third Perspective
Do you love the idea of getting your nonprofit’s values off the wall and into your community with matching results that actually align with your mission? Book a consultation.
About Africa Brooke
The CEO of Africa Brooke International, Africa is a Zimbabwean-born consultant, coach, and speaker recognized for her work in overcoming self sabotage and self censorship. She hosts two personal development podcasts, Beyond the Self and Unthinkable Thoughts, and she’s a frequent guest on TV shows, movies, Podcasts and radio broadcasts. Africa's insights have been featured in publications like the Guardian, and she has delivered keynotes at prestigious venues including Cambridge University.