From Words on Walls to Values in Action

Cultural Grounding

From Wall Words to Lived Wisdom

Let me start by saying, I wasn’t always one to understand these things called values. When I worked in corporate environments, values were everywhere. They decorated our boardrooms, filled our corridors, and adorned the company stationery. We do the right thing. We demand diversity. We are consumer obsessed. Bold words. Inspiring, even. But they existed only in print, not in practice.

No one ever explained what values actually meant, how important they were, how they should guide us, or what it truly meant to live by them. I never saw anyone walking the talk. It was as if we had agreed to admire them as aesthetic concepts rather than use them as foundations for behavior, culture, and decision-making.

The Awakening

That all changed when I welcomed a local training provider in to deliver a session for my team, to unpack those company values and help us explore how we were living them. It was intended to be a leadership exercise, but it became a mirror. Suddenly, the disconnect was glaring. No one could point to decisions shaped by those values, no one could recall conversations where they were referenced meaningfully. The words echoed hollow, they were branding tools, not behavioral tools.

In that moment, I began to understand, values aren’t what we write on walls, they are what we weave into our relationships, our leadership, our daily decisions. And if they are not seen, heard, or felt, they are not truly ours.

The Mic Drop Moment

Just as I was beginning to wrestle with the meaning of values, I attended a Women’s Leadership Symposium that changed everything. One of the guest speakers spoke about personal values, not corporate ones, and how they form the framework of who we are, how we lead, how we show up authentically, and how we make decisions.

It was a complete mic drop moment. For the first time, I realised I had never truly defined my own values. Never sat with them, never questioned them. I bought the book Believe at that symposium and devoured the chapter on personal values, it was like unlocking a map I didn’t know I needed. That chapter didn’t just inform me, it transformed me.

Living My Values Now

Since then, values like whānau (family), hauora (health/ wellbeing), and cultural grounding have become my compass. They guide how I show up, how I coach, how I lead, and how I create spaces like Mana Kurahuia. Living by values is not about perfection, it’s about practice, it’s about the small daily choices that shape how others experience us and how we hold ourselves. It's about showing up my whole authentic self.

Ko te pae tawhiti, whāia kia tata. Ko te pae tata, whakamaua kia tina."  

Seek out distant horizons, cherish those you attain