Positive Value Leadership did not begin by asking people to write down whichever values they personally preferred. IOWL first confronted a more fundamental problem: if values are meant to govern judgement, what happens when individuals, leaders and organisations are all free to define entirely different values - or when the values they actually hold are not positive at all?
Values-based and values-driven leadership made an important contribution by recognising that leadership should be grounded in values. But the phrase "lead from your values" leaves an unresolved question: which values?
A value is not automatically positive simply because a person holds it strongly. An individual can value status, dominance, personal advantage or unquestioning loyalty. A person can also espouse positive values publicly while behaving according to a different internal set when pressure, opportunity or self-interest intervenes.
The same problem exists institutionally. If every person, team and organisation independently selects only the values it considers most important, each may act with good intentions and still create a fragmented landscape in which there is no common baseline, no shared language and no consistent expectation when their spheres of influence meet.
Much leadership language has treated the positive nature of values as implicit. If someone is encouraged to identify their "core values", the exercise often assumes that what emerges will be constructive. That assumption is unsafe.
People possess values whether or not those values contribute positively to other people, organisations or society. They can also learn to present an attractive external set of values while their enacted behaviour reveals something quite different. In IOWL terms, this creates an important distinction between what is personally valued, what is espoused, what is enacted, and what can reasonably be described as a Positive Value.
These influence choices and priorities, but they are not automatically positive simply because they are sincerely held.
Public statements matter, but they do not establish that behaviour will remain aligned when interests, incentives or pressure intervene.
PVL makes the positive expectation explicit and provides shared definitions against which judgement and behaviour can be examined.
This is why PVL does not treat values declaration as sufficient evidence of Calibre. The developmental question is whether Positive Values increasingly influence actual judgement, conduct, agency and consequence.
Keystone uses a simple analogy. Imagine allowing every accountant and every organisation to design its own accounting conventions independently. Each might create a system that works internally. The difficulty appears when two organisations have to interact: without a common standard, comparison and understanding become unnecessarily difficult.
The same logic applies to values. If every leader, organisation and institution begins from an entirely blank page, "values-led" can mean something different everywhere. Even where each list is positive, selective emphasis can create gaps. One organisation may champion innovation but say little about honesty. Another may emphasise performance without giving equal attention to humanity. A third may celebrate loyalty without making clear when loyalty must give way to integrity.
IOWL's answer was not to prevent people or organisations from holding additional positive values. The 24 Positive Values provide a common baseline. Individuals, teams, organisations and institutions may add their own positive values and contextual commitments above it.
The baseline therefore creates continuity without demanding uniformity. It provides a common starting language while leaving room for culture, profession, purpose and personal development.
The 24 Positive Values are organised through six Exemplars - Probity, Potency, Planet, People, Perception and Participation. The six-part structure prevents Positive Value Leadership from collapsing into a narrow list concerned only with personal honesty or professional conduct. It requires the learner to consider the quality of judgement, personal effectiveness, wider context, treatment of people, use of information and participation with others.
The framework is therefore intended to provide breadth as well as usability. Twenty-four defined Values are substantial enough to expose different dimensions of behaviour, but structured enough to be repeatedly used for reflection, interaction, influence, assessment and continuing development.
A further reason for using a defined framework is that individual values can become distorted when separated from the others. Perseverance without Open Mindedness can become stubbornness. Loyalty or collaboration without Integrity can protect collective wrongdoing. Honesty exercised without Humanity, Empathy or Judgement can become needlessly damaging. Strength without Equitability can become dominance.
PVL therefore does not ask which single value is most important in every circumstance. It requires the learner to consider how several Positive Values interact within context, where they reinforce one another, where tensions arise and what considered judgement requires.
Once IOWL distinguished personally held values from morals, organisational commitments, professional ethics, governance and compliance, another relationship became visible. Values sit closest to the internal decision process. The higher strata progressively introduce wider social expectation, professional standard, institutional control and external requirement.
If the foundation and the strata above it are broadly aligned, responsible conduct is reinforced from multiple directions. If they are materially misaligned, the upper layers have to do more work through supervision, sanction, rules and enforcement. A person can comply while privately rejecting the purpose of the rule; an organisation can espouse values that its incentive system undermines; professional ethics can be weakened by a culture that rewards the opposite behaviour.
This is why the common baseline matters. PVL seeks to strengthen the internal foundation rather than presume that ethics, governance and compliance can permanently compensate for whatever values happen to sit beneath them.
The existence of a common baseline does not mean IOWL expects every learner to claim that all 24 Positive Values already describe them. That would undermine the developmental purpose. One of the most useful questions is precisely which Values the learner finds difficult to apply consistently, especially under pressure, conflict, uncertainty or competing self-interest.
PVL therefore introduces the framework only after learners have first accumulated real material from their own lives and interactions. The Values then become lenses through which those experiences can be revisited. The learner can compare what was espoused with what was enacted, identify tensions, recognise consequence and decide what development is required.
This is the bridge from the 24 Positive Values into the wider developmental and recognition architecture.
See how Positive Values become Reflective Transformation and Calibre recognition >
A common positive baseline is not intended to erase cultural difference or insist that every context applies each Value in an identical way. PVL itself requires Cultural Awareness, Open Mindedness, Empathy and International Mindedness. Context therefore matters.
The distinction is between contextual application and an entirely relative foundation. Individuals and organisations can bring their own positive values, professional expectations and cultural context to the framework. What PVL resists is the idea that the word "values" is sufficient by itself, regardless of what those values are or how they are enacted.
The significance of the baseline extends beyond an individual learner. Universities educate people from different cultures and disciplines. Employers bring together people from different educational, professional and personal backgrounds. Institutions interact across organisational and national boundaries. Society depends upon millions of interactions between people who cannot possibly begin every encounter by negotiating a fresh moral vocabulary.
A shared Positive Values reference point does not guarantee good behaviour. It does something more realistic: it makes the developmental expectation explicit, gives people a common language for reflection and challenge, and reduces the ambiguity created when everyone is left to decide independently what "values-led" is supposed to mean.
That is why the 24 Positive Values sit at the foundation of Positive Value Leadership - not as the final word on everything a person may value, but as the common positive baseline from which Calibre can be deliberately developed.
This page explains why PVL begins with a defined common baseline. The linked pages show why that foundation was needed, how it becomes development and recognition, what evidence is emerging and where the architecture applies.