Putting the You in Universal Values

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I am very fortunate to be taking part in the free Trauma Summit (Sounds True). I love all the content, but specifically wanted to share one I just watched on Day 5: Leadership in Challenging Times by Dr. Monica Sharma. She worked at the UN for decades and is the author of the book Radical Transformational Leadership.

The universal values are

  • fairness
  • compassion
  • dignity

You can use these with The Conscious Full Spectrum Response Model, which was created by designed by Dr. Sharma herself. She used this model in the dozens of countries she affected sustainable, positive change in.

In her presentation, she addresses these three universal values and then talks about cultural norms and systems. Is what is going on:

  • life enhancing?
  • value neutral?
  • life diminishing?

Take something that you don’t like, and want to see fixed in the world. You can look at this issue and how to fix it from a small-scale perspective, or you can activate your pattern mind and see what life diminishing factors are at hand in the larger culture and systems.

If you stand for the universal values of dignity, fairness, and compassion (and add in your core values here too as well), then if there is a narrative that is diminishing, you can take notice and call it out. You can look for the patterns in the culture and systems that need to be changed. Then act.

To see a visual of this model, click here.

According to purpose expert Arthur Woods, research has shown that we generally have a scale of impact we wish to make (individual, organization, or society), and it generally stays constant over the course of our lives. Using Dr. Sharma’s work, we can all connect to the larger scale of impact, even if it’s not how we are wired.

You can read more from Dr. Sharma here, and in her book!