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Discover the Personal Values Coaching Card deck with Expert, Clare Walker
Dive into a great discussion between Clare Walker, expert in Personal Values and Darren A. Smith, MBM CEO. Here, the pair talk about why Clare is perfect author of this deck, due to her expertise, training and extensive career experience, how the deck works and what you can do to improve your coaching whilst utilising Coaching Cards.
Read the full Personal Values podcast transcript below:
Clare Walker, Vodafone 0:04
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith 0:06
OK, so the whole thing is probably, I don’t know, 3-4 minutes, 5 minutes. You know, it’s not a long video. It’s as much as you want to say. Really the idea is we’re helping people to understand and use them.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 0:20
Well, no, I’m not. I’m gonna go the personal values.
They just look at the opposite way around for the simple reason I built those as very bespoke, not bespoke. But yeah, I built them quite bespoke.
Darren A. Smith 0:34
OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 0:36
Yeah. OK. Let me go personal wrong.
Darren A. Smith 0:40
So the first question coming up after I ask you who you are and what you do is what are these personal values cards all right.
So we’re just doing the what the what the why in the how.
OK. So let me make sure you’re OK with that.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 0:58
Let me completely blame and just push my credit First off.
I’m gonna be on video.
Darren A. Smith 1:05
And then afterwards I got a different question for you. Nothing to do with the video, just something I’ve had your opinion on.
OK. All right. I’m ready when you are.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 1:13
OK.
I’m ready now.
Darren A. Smith 1:20
Talks, it looks real. It’s good. Love the dunks.
Hi, my name is Darren Smith. I’m from the world’s stickiest learning. I’m here with Claire Walker from Vodafone. Claire, how you doing?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 1:33
I’m very well. Thank you, Darren.
Darren A. Smith 1:35
And Claire, what do you do at Vodafone?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 1:38
I am the coaching and mentoring lead, so it means that I look after all things for external coaching, internal coaching, coaching resources and also training people how to have a coaching mindset as opposed to be coaches.
Darren A. Smith 1:53
OK. And how long have you been doing coaching? Not necessarily just a Vodafone, but how long have you been doing coaching things for?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 2:02
I started my professional or my my more structured career back in 2016, but actually through conversations and interviews like this, I realised I’ve pretty much been coaching all of my life.
Darren A. Smith 2:14
Love that, love it. Love it. OK, OK, now we’re here talking about these coaching card things. We have a number of coaching cards and you kindly collaborated with us on a particular deck. So I’m going to ask you a few questions to share with the folks that are watching. What are these things? Why did you create it and how to use them? So let’s start with the first question.
What did you create? What are they?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 2:41
I created a deck that our personal values cards and I have them all here.
Darren A. Smith 2:47
Oh yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 2:48
And there are 80 of them that help people to understand what their drivers, they’re motivators, their way of being is.
So by going through these you can really start to investigate what it is that’s inside you that can.
When you look at them and investigate them can cause less friction for you and greater understanding of not just who you are, but who the people around you are as well.
Darren A. Smith 3:16
OK, so these are coaching cards. They look like they’re the size of a playing card. OK, there’s eighty of them and they come in a little box and their personal values. All right, got it. Got it. Could you show us a couple just so we can see what’s written on these things?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 3:32
Yes, absolutely. So each one of the cards has got a different word on it. So you can see this collaboration, there is tolerance, pleasure, passion. And as we go through the deck, they’re then going to belonging dependability.
Duty. Creativity. So there’s 80 different words on here that when you look at them, they’re not the top five or four or five words that you would normally choose as being your values. People normally say things like honesty and integrity and fairness and authenticity.
This is a a bigger pattern, goes deeper and when people go through this, they choose cards that they’ve never really considered as being their values, but suddenly understand that actually it’s really important to them to have fun or to be empathic or to belong.
Darren A. Smith 4:19
OK, fabulous. And why did you create them or what problem do they solve?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 4:27
Yeah, they I created them because I’ve been using them for some time. I mean, we always through coaching, we will ask people questions such as you know which of your values do you feel has been restricted here or which of your values could come into play here that could help you collaborate with this person or through your coaching reach your goal. And so when we started looking deeper into how you know, how we could look at these and how how we could get a range of cards.
We started to really understand that when.
Give people these and they start pulling them out in front of them. There are certain cards that can resonate with them and they will pick one up. I had one person picked it up and burst into tears because suddenly this time they realised it meant something to them. They’d never considered it or they haven’t considered it in that way.
And so it’s interesting. We ask people, you know, to choose their set of 10 from this deck and out of that set of 10, you know, that’s their top 10 for the day. But we asked them to to lay 10 out of this pack of 18.
Darren A. Smith 5:22
Oh, OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 5:30
The ones that resonate most with them, not the ones they think they should have. Everyone thinks I should have family and I should have love and I should have. They actually go with the ones that I didn’t have family in mind. It doesn’t mean that I don’t value them, it’s just their omnipresent. I didn’t have to have them in my top ten, but people then lay out their top ten and start to recognise that actually the things they thought they valued might not be at the top of their list. People who say money, yeah, value money.
Darren A. Smith 5:43
Yep.
Yep, OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 5:56
But actually realise they have none left at the end of the month.
What they recognise is that further up the list are things like social interactions and.
Aesthetics, so they may instead of valuing money at the top of their list, what they may value is going out and socialising with their friends, which is why they have no money. But it’s more important to them at the end of the day, to have those connections with their friends than it is to have money in the bank. So you start to really see where you put your values and how you can.
Darren A. Smith 6:17
Gotcha. Gotcha.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 6:29
Ensure that you give focus and energy to the ones that are going to help you reach your goals.
As well.
Darren A. Smith 6:35
OK. And you start to touch on there the how they work, so you’ve got these 80 questions, you’ve got a bunch of folks in a room and you’ve asked them to pick 10 each and then just give us an idea because you’ve done done this a number of times, what happens? You mentioned the lady bursting into tears, but what else happens with those values cards?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 6:54
Yeah, yeah, that was in a 1:00 to 1:00. So it wasn’t too out there in the team. So fortunately we we sat and talked, talked through what it meant to and might have that reaction. OK. So when we do this with teams, we get people to choose their top ten and we get them to lay them out on the table. And then what? We ask people to do is look at that 10 and choose the one that feels most important to them, the one that really resonates with them, the one that’s probably non negotiable.
Darren A. Smith 6:58
Ah, OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 7:20
That they don’t want to live ever without. It’s it’s the one. And actually the one that they choose is normally the one that underpins everything else.
Darren A. Smith 7:21
OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 7:28
So if it’s something like honesty or trust or respect, you’ll find all family or inner peace. You’ll find that everything else that they then talk about sits underneath that and relates to it. And So what we get people to do is choose their number one and then what we do is we ask everybody in the team.
To say what their card is, what that means to them, so really to give the definition of what that is for them. But then why that is so important to them?
Darren A. Smith 7:58
Of course. Yep, Yep.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 7:58
Some people will say family, my wife, my kids. They’re really important to me. And you know, because they are my life and I do everything with them. Other people will look at the same card and say family. That’s the people that are around me all day everyday. And it’s not just the people who are blood related. Family to me are those people who are in my work team. They in my church that are in my my social group. That’s what. So it sometimes goes bigger. And we had one guy who talked about wealth. He picked up wealth as he’s number one and some of the guys on the team kind of went. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Wealth.
And money bags and he said no, no, I don’t mean that. What I mean by wealth being #1 is that I know that I’ve got clothes in my cupboard, I’ve got food in my fridge, but actually more importantly, my wealth means that I’ve got numbers in my phone of people I can call when I need them. And that’s what he meant by wealth. Very, very different interpretation. So what we did is everybody to go around the room and tell you what their number one is. And it’s amazing because nobody can tell you that you’re wrong.
Darren A. Smith 8:45
Support, yeah.
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 8:56
So it builds this level of psychological safety and this ability and this ability for people to talk.
And so it’s great to and you hear these connections of things of people suddenly saying, oh, well, I get that. I understand that. I never knew that about you. And it opens up the conversation. So it’s an incredible way to learn more about your team because it asks the questions that we don’t normally ask because values are very much hidden. They’re personal. We don’t. We don’t, we don’t. We do this exercise. A lot of people don’t know what their values are. So how could other people possibly know that?
Darren A. Smith 9:24
True.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 9:27
So it’s a great way to to do that and build the ability to have conversations with people.
Darren A. Smith 9:28
I love that.
I love that and I guess the ultimate benefit is we’ve got teams that trust each other more, better teamwork, they’re closer, they’re achieving more.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 9:42
Absolutely. Because they know then how to have better conversations. So we had, you know, somebody in the team have in a piece somebody else had leadership as their number ones. So the the manager then knew that the inner peace person, let’s go have a cup of coffee. Let’s go walk down by the river. Let’s go outside. Let’s get nature to have a conversation. Whereas with the person who had leadership, it was like 10:00. Room number 5. Let’s have an agenda. Bang 20 minutes. Here we go.
Darren A. Smith 9:46
Yeah.
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 10:07
Same conversation, but two ways of having it, which meant that they got the best. They delivered it the best way and they got the best out of the other person as well. So it can really help you to understand what level people are at and what it is that motivates and drives them.
Darren A. Smith 10:10
Yeah.
I love that it’s given us a language to talk about this stuff. Brilliant. Brilliant.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 10:28
What I love, and I always say this in the sessions, it also gives you permission to talk about it. So I know my husband and I will every so often, one of us will say, can I just hold up my solitude value card right now because I kind of just feel like I want some time on my own and and usually one of us will go. Yeah, absolutely. So do I. Can I come with you? So we’ll do our solitude together, which is beautiful, but it does give you permission for somebody to go. Can I hold up the honesty card? Because I feel like we’re missing something here. I feel like.
Darren A. Smith 10:55
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 10:57
There’s something we haven’t said yet.
So can I hold up my honesty card and someone might one day go up? Can we hold up the phone card because I’m feeling like there’s not much sun happening right now. And so it gives you permission to be able to voice your value and therefore get what you need, because if you’re missing one of your values, you don’t.
Darren A. Smith 11:12
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 11:20
You don’t behave and you can’t react in the same way. If something isn’t quite ringing true for you. So it’s really important that you have that permission to to literally raise and voice your value.
Darren A. Smith 11:32
I love that talking about that lost side of it, because we’ve all been in jobs before where we might be paid what we want. But actually if there’s something missing in the culture, the team, the boss, the this thing, it doesn’t matter what you paid.
I love that.
Before we wrap up, that’s fabulous because you’ve answered what are they? Why did you create them? How do we use these personal values cards? Is there one small thing you’d like to share with the viewers before we let you go back to what you do best coaching.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 12:02
Yeah, I think that when you use these, always ensure that you do it with curiosity for the other person, ensure that you do it with non judgement.
Small story. I’ve been married to my husband for 34 years and when I very first did this, this exercise probably back in about 2007 on the train home I’d already done my top ten. I knew what I had and I thought I’m going to choose his top ten. We’ve been married a long time. We we I probably can’t. So I did it. I picked out his top ten, had it in my head and I thought, OK.
I think that was clever, and actually when he did the exercise, his top five that he chose weren’t even in the top 10.
Darren A. Smith 12:43
Oh wow.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 12:45
Yeah. And so I instead of going what do you mean that’s your number one? I didn’t say that. I said OK, that’s your number one. Tell me what that means to you. But also tell me what I can do. That means that it shows up more.
Darren A. Smith 12:46
That’s powerful.
Yeah, yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 13:00
And so it was just, I mean he’s he’d put belonging and it was.
You know, to me it was. You belong to this family of it’s fine. But it wasn’t about that. It was actually about being seen and being grounded and ensuring that when we’re talking, we all we belong to each other. We all connect. And so it was a simple thing like all that I do is walk through the kitchen, put my hand on his shoulder. Go. Hey. OK. And carry on that just lets him know that I have recognised he’s there.
I’m present. He’s present, but we belong at that point. In that moment together, and that’s fine. But it’s that fleeting that just then helped him to really get that value dialled up and beautifully so. Yeah, just remember that these are a moment in time they will change over time. Your call ones are probably going to stay, but they will change depending on life events. But if you’re going to go and do this or when you go and do this with people, do it with that curiosity.
Of tell me about what that means to you and what can I do to make sure that you get more of it.
Darren A. Smith 14:03
I love that. What a wonderful story, crumps.
That’s great. So do it with curiosity and a lovely story about belonging. Claire, thank you for creating those personal values cards. What I’ve heard from that is you can do it not just only as a team, but 1:00 to 1:00 and also at home as well. OK. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Claire, thank you very much.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 14:30
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Darren A. Smith 14:34
OK, we’ll cut there. Brilliant. That was absolutely brilliant. Thank you.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 14:38
Awesome, but I chose that one because I know that inside out and back the front. So yes.
Darren A. Smith 14:43
That was fabulous. Fabulous. I’m going to ask you just one question before I I go. You go. You remember we talked a long time ago about taking all these things and sticking them in an app. Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 14:54
Yes.
Darren A. Smith 14:57
We’ve gone off on another path and I think I found a company that’s willing to partner with me on a revenue share.
Which means it won’t cost anything to build.
If I’ve got a company, have you ever heard of Jacobs Engineering? I I haven’t.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 15:14
No.
Darren A. Smith 15:14
They’re a monster. About 200,000 people or something crazy. I think they’re going to partner with us to test the app, which is great, but I also am very conscious that I’ve spoken to you about that. They haven’t said yes or no. They’ve said talk to me, so it’s OK. I want to come back to you on Vodafone. So if we build this app.
With you guys helping and it doesn’t cost anything, is there interest and if there’s not, it’s OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 15:41
Yes, that would definitely be interest.
I know at the moment that there is there has not been for the last 3 1/2 years in doing this role budget. Someone said to me yesterday if we could give you unlimited budget, what would you do? As I said, can we just dial that back slightly? If you gave me any budget at all, what would I do because I have not had budget for 3 1/2 years so so I mean yeah I can tell you kind of 10 stories.
Darren A. Smith 15:52
Yeah. OK.
None.
None.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 16:11
So yes, we would advocate it and we would certainly be able to test it for you and be the Guinea pigs for it.
Darren A. Smith 16:18
OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 16:19
That I know at the moment. I mean the squeeze doesn’t even begin.
To to tell me where we are.
Darren A. Smith 16:24
OK, so so if it was 0 to you guys, which I think it would be because these guys are getting a revenue share, they’ll build it, blah blah blah, you’d be interested or Vodafone might be interested in working with us.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 16:38
Yeah, I believe that well, as a coaching proposition, yes, I believe that you know we we would. But as I say financially we don’t at the moment nothing is going out of Vodafone right now.
Darren A. Smith 16:43
OK.
That’s OK, that’s OK. So we would make it 0 cost all we’d all we would want back is someone who’s partnering with us. You know what it’s like. Sometimes we get given something for free. A company doesn’t value it. So that’s where I don’t want to be as we hand it over and you know, we don’t go anywhere, OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 17:02
Mm hmm yeah.
Darren A. Smith 17:09
How do I take that forward if if it is something I can do?
Clare Walker, Vodafone 17:15
Well, we are.
Coaching here at the moment.
And so it could potentially be part of what we do for our leaders.
And so yeah, we we would try, we would try and build it in to our leadership proposition.
Darren A. Smith 17:30
OK, OK. Because some of the decisions we’re we’re trying to make at the moment are, is it an app, is it web-based? Is it a teams, they call it a teams app, it could be any and all of those and we’re looking for real people like you and your business to say, well, we think it’s that one, OK, we’ll build it in that way. They’re the sort of decisions we’re trying to make, not by ourselves.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 17:54
Yeah, I mean, they love the personal values at the moment. We’re doing it basically on a spreadsheet. And I’ve been saying for a long, long time. If anyone knows how we can do this in a more digital way.
Then we would love to see it and and again in three years. I’ve never, you know, nobody’s ever stepped forward. So if you can fill that space, then absolutely. I run these personal value sessions for anybody and everybody who wants to join in Vodafone every six weeks. So it would be out there in my training every six weeks, Bang, Bang, bang, Bang Bang the team building. We could send that straight out because again I used that because I use the discovery cards.
Darren A. Smith 18:05
OK.
Now.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 18:27
Which you didn’t actually do for as I’m trying to think where they are. Hang on one second. Yeah, they’re up here. The discovery cards are something that I created. Oh, gosh. Before I even started talking to you.
Darren A. Smith 18:38
Oh, OK.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 18:39
To these, which we sent out to all of our coaches, and they’re very similar in that they’ve got little words and and they’re very similar actually to the team building ones. How can you dial up the volume on your strength by 100 times? How and when are you your own best champion? It’s those sort of what most well or phrase would you use to describe yourself. So they’re a little bit similar to a part of the team building deck.
Darren A. Smith 19:04
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 19:05
But we use those.
Now in our Level 2 coaching and actually that’s what I’m I’m taking with me to to Newbury this week. So we would have them available for that as well.
Darren A. Smith 19:08
OK, cool.
Oh, OK.
Here’s where I am. I think we’re going to share. No, no. We’re going to build a concept, let’s say it’s three slides, 2, two sides of a four. I don’t know, build a concept.
And then come back to you and go. Is this what you think it looks like?
There’s no commitment, no nothing. Just a can you help us? And then maybe we draw up what we expect and what you expect.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 19:45
I certainly look at that, yeah.
Darren A. Smith 19:47
OK. All right. Well, let’s do that. All. I was looking for is, is there an interest? It sounds like there is and it might it it it.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 19:52
Well, there will be. Absolutely. Yeah. Because knowing that I’ve already been asking for probably 6 years to get something to, to run the values, the personal values online, then yeah.
Darren A. Smith 20:02
OK. Well, we could probably build your wishes into this app thing. I think all all we’re looking for is maybe one or two companies the size of Vodafone Jacobs to that we can come up with some sort of case study that says, do you know it help these guys a lot. That’s all.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 20:19
Yeah, absolutely.
Darren A. Smith 20:21
OK. Thank you.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 20:23
The only thing we have to be careful with apps is integration or it’s just an online offline app that isn’t integrated then that’s absolutely fine and I don’t see that that would be there. We also have to make sure if there’s any AI anywhere along it, we have to put it through our AI board, but governance boards. But if it’s just a link to an app, it’s like the the one that I’ve used previously is the personal values. One, let me send you the link to it.
Darren A. Smith 20:39
Yeah.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 20:49
You can have a look because it’s really useful. It’s.
Listen, no value dot es. That’s how you spell it. That’s one that we’ve used previously for people to be able to get their values.
Darren A. Smith 20:58
OK.
All right.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 21:04
But we still tend to use this really basic online well basic PowerPoint presentation where people literally download it onto their desktop, click on the the sheet and move them into different areas, which is a little bit onerous. And of course, every time you click, it moves the whole sheet.
Darren A. Smith 21:16
Oh.
Clare Walker, Vodafone 21:21
But that’s how we have been doing it. But if there’s an app way to do it, then yeah, that would be much better.
Darren A. Smith 21:21
Oh, we could definitely do that.
There is some of the fundamental decisions we’re trying to make or whether it’s an app or a Microsoft or da da da da, which we need your input in, otherwise we’re going to go over here and you guys will come back and. No, no, we need in teams or whatever you need it. So it’s those fundamental decisions we need help on over the next couple of months.
But I’ve I’ve got to figure out what we want from you and what you want from us, but it shouldn’t be that hard because money’s not involved. That’s where I’m going.
Yeah, all good. Thanks again, Claire.
I’ll come back to you. Take care. Bye bye bye.
Darren A. Smith stopped transcription
