1.3 Personal Values and Social Identity

Relationships are key to business success. To collaborate effectively with team members, to establish trust with clients, to bring innovative ideas to new partners, and to meet expectations of management, it is essential to develop and maintain relationships. These relationships depend on shared personal and corporate values and on respectful engagement where there are differing values.

When you write a cover letter in application for a co-op position or summer job, you will aim to demonstrate your fit with the organization. Employers do not want employees who possess only technical and knowledge skills; they seek employees who can fit with and further the culture and values of the organization. This need for fit does not mean that you should pretend to be something you are not. You will not be happy in an organization with values that contradict your core personal values. Furthermore, your personal value set is unique to you. You will not be an exact fit with the values of any other person or any organization. Your differences contribute to diversity. Diversity is also a key element of business growth. Your prioritization of values and your ability to respect and appreciate the values of others are key.

We have probably all been told “Just be yourself”. What does that even mean? The word “just” makes it seem so simple. And “yourself”? What actions  are displayed that hold this “self”? What is done or is not done that indicates that I am being “myself”?

You are “yourself” when your actions are aligned with your core values.

Core values are your foundational beliefs and attitudes. They guide an individual or organization’s decisions, behaviours, communications, and actions. Your core values define who you are and guide the choices you make and the things you do. As Susan Heathfield writes, core values “represent an individual’s or an organization’s highest priorities, deeply held beliefs, and core, fundamental driving forces. They are the heart of what your organization and its employees stand for in the world” (para. 1).

Although co-op education programs often focus work readiness, you will not be adequately prepared for your world without self-knowledge. To be an effective business communicator, you need to understand the values that govern your own behaviours as well as understand the values that guide those with whom you are communicating. In addition, understanding our social identities and how these identities have influenced our values, experiences, and opportunities can help us develop mutually respectful relationships.

Personal Values

In her book Presence, Amy Cuddy describes what she calls presence. Presence is “the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values, and potential” (p. 24).  Displaying presence results in appearing more authentic, believable, and genuine.

You can only be truly present, truly yourself, if your words and actions are aligned with your current values. Being clear with what these values are can help you achieve presence. The values you prioritize today may not be the ones you prioritize as you progress in age and in your career and family life. For example, you may prioritize adventure and friendship now but, because of life events, prioritize community and family in five years. Working in alignment with your values, even as they change, is important for personal and professional success.

Social Identity

Navigating the gap between your values and the values of others requires awareness and sensitivity. Firstly, we need to be aware that our personal identities are influenced by our social identities.

As humans, we are driven to seek connections and to understand our place in society. If you are a first-year Commerce student at Dalhousie University, your social identity may be defined by your year in school, degree program, and university. Your membership in these groups may lead you to align yourself with other first-year students in the residence hall, to take pride in and ownership of the Management Building, and to wear black and gold as you cheer for the Tigers at sports events and celebrate at a particular pub. Your social affiliations define both who you are and who you are not. You may think of your status as a Dal Commerce student as better than that of an Arts and Sciences student or better than that of a student who attends the university down the road. The distinction between you and the student at a neighboring university is arbitrary yet can prompt strong emotions of pride and competitiveness.

In addition to identifying with your year, program, and university, you may belong to other groups (either by choice or by birth) based on your hometown, preferred hockey team, native language, religious preferences, racial identity, gender, or sexual orientation.

Henri Tajifel and John Turner defined social identity theory in the 1970s. Social identity results from a process of social categorization, social identification, and social comparison. Social categorization is “the process by which we organize individuals into social groups in order to understand our social world”. According to Vinney, “we tend to define people based on their social categories more often than their individual characteristics” (Vinney, 2019, para. 7). Social identification is the process of identifying as a member of the in-group and taking on the group’s characteristics. Our identification with the group leads to emotional investment in the group’s success, which then contributes to our self-esteem. Social comparison is the process of comparing the in-group to other groups, or out-groups.

To learn more about social identity theory, watch this video 13-minute video:

(Direct link to Us vs. Them: The Science of Social Identity Theory video)

Whether we selected a group or were born into it, our membership in the group comes with certain benefits. For example, as a student you have access to resources and library materials that people who do not belong to the university cannot as readily access. If you are a native speaker of English, you speak naturally and do not have to think about how to respond to a question in a grammatically acceptable way. If you are white, you likely find it easy to buy make-up that matches your skin tone or magazines that include images of people who look like you.

Our social identities also come with disadvantages. You may have the advantage of a strong network within the 2+LGBTQ community, but still face social stigma in places that lack gender-neutral restrooms. You may feel pride in your country of origin but frightened by anti-Asian racism. You may feel a strong sense of community within the Muslim community but feel judged and avoided in a classroom in which you are the only one wearing a hijab.

Bridging social categories will help you understand the advantages and disadvantages others experience. Peter Mandeno’s company Wok + Wine offers events designed to foster new or enhanced relationships. By joining people, wine, and shrimp around a table covered with banana leaves, he creates an environment that leads to connections and collaborations. The messiness of peeling shrimp leads to more openness and authenticity in the interactions. Wok + Wine identifies several benefits of these events, including better relationships between team members, a greater sense of belonging, and collaborations that lead to innovative ideas. In moving outside the groups with which they have strong social identities, people discover new approaches to complex problems and creative solutions. As a Harvard Business Review article points out, Wok + Wine’s approach has, then, both economic and intellectual incentives.

Creating a social identity wheel in the activity below can help you think through your various social identities and the advantages and disadvantages that come with them. Sharing your findings can help you find common ground as well as identify differences. These differences can lead to new ways of seeing, understanding, and respecting the perspectives of others.

Intersectionality

Kimberlé Crenshaw, pictured on the right, tells the story of Emma DeGraffenreid and four other women who sued General Motors in 1976 for racial and gender discrimination. Prior to the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, the company had hired white women in secretarial positions and Black men in factory positions.  Black women were hired after 1970, but they were unable to keep their jobs during layoffs due to the company’s “last hired/first fired” policy. Discriminatory practices prevented them from attaining seniority. Because both Blacks and women were employed by the company and had opportunity to advance, the court found that General Motors was not, therefore, discriminating against women, nor were they discriminating against Blacks. In her 2016 TED Talk, Crenshaw discusses the failure of the court to see the discrimination that Black women faced as a result of being both Black and female. The women lost their case.

Crenshaw (1989) coined the term “intersectionality” to refer to the ways in which DeGraffenreid and the other women who sued GM experienced a combination of racial and gender discrimination. Today, the term “intersectionality” refers to a broad range of overlapping social identities that experience discrimination.

Understanding intersectionality can help you in identifying the needs, expectations, and perspectives of your audience. As the Government of Canada’s (n.d.) “Introduction to Intersectionality” states,

It is essential to recognize that people have multiple and diverse identity factors that intersect to shape their perspectives, ideologies and experiences. For example, consider the multiple identity factors of an immigrant man with a disability. Rather than isolating the experience of being an immigrant from that of being a man from that of being a person with a disability, adopting an intersectional approach will enable you to see this individual as a whole being, with multiple identity factors.

This video explains the complexity of intersectionality. Awareness of these complexities can help in understanding the experiences of our colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders in a business environment.

(Direct link to What is Intersectionality and Why is it Important? video)

Conclusion

Your personal values and your social identities create the unique person that you are. Clarity on these identities will help in presenting your personal brand effectively to employers, in establishing common ground with team members, and in understanding and connecting with customers or clients.