People use “values” and “attitudes” as if they were the same thing. They are not, and the difference matters — because one of them explains the other. If you can see which of your values is driving a reaction, you can decide whether the reaction is the one you want.
A value
A value is something you hold as important. It is broad, it is fairly stable, and it does not point at anything in particular. Fairness. Reliability. Learning. Independence. Getting on with people. You would still hold it in a different job.
Values usually come from a long way back — family, upbringing, culture, education, what you have lived through, the standards of your trade. Most people never write them down, which is why they can sit quietly in the background driving decisions nobody has consciously made.
An attitude
An attitude is your settled position towards one specific thing. “I think the new minutes template is a waste of time.” “I like being on the front desk.” “Month-end always goes badly.”
An attitude has three parts, and they do not always agree with each other:
- what you think about it — “the template adds three fields nobody reads”
- what you feel about it — mild irritation every Tuesday morning
- what you do about it — filling it in last, or not at all
Attitudes are learned, and they can be unlearned. They shift with experience, new information, and whose opinion you have just heard.
The difference, side by side
| Value | Attitude | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A principle you hold as important | A settled position towards one specific thing |
| Scope | Broad and general | Narrow and specific |
| How many | A handful that guide most things | Dozens, one for each thing you have an opinion about |
| How stable | Slow to change; often lifelong | Changes with experience and information |
| Where it comes from | Upbringing, culture, experience, profession | Direct experience of the thing, and what others say about it |
| Visible? | Rarely stated; inferred from patterns | Fairly easy to spot in what you say and do |
| Example | Accuracy matters | ”I don’t trust figures that arrive without a source” |
How the two connect
The short version: values shape attitudes, and attitudes shape behaviour.
Take someone who values accuracy. That value gets expressed as attitudes towards specific things — towards unchecked figures, towards being rushed, towards colleagues who send drafts “just to get it moving”. Those attitudes then show up as behaviour: checking twice, pushing back on a rushed deadline, going quiet when someone changes the plan on Tuesday afternoon.
Read the chain backwards and it becomes useful:
behaviour I noticed → attitude behind it → value underneath
Going quiet when the plan changes is a behaviour. The attitude is “changing direction mid-week means something gets done badly”. The value is accuracy. Now the reaction makes sense — and now you can keep the value while choosing a better behaviour, which is the whole point.
Two things worth knowing:
- One value can produce opposite attitudes. Valuing fairness might make you welcome a workload review and resent a rushed one.
- Two values can collide. Accuracy and responsiveness pull in different directions when a customer wants an answer today. That collision is usually what a difficult moment at work actually is — not a personality problem, a values clash inside one person.
Values at work: yours, ours, and everyone else’s
There are three sets in play, and self-awareness means being able to tell them apart.
Your personal values. What you brought with you. They decide what you notice, what you volunteer for, what you find draining, and what you will quietly refuse to do.
Nexus Group’s values. Customer first, Better together, Do the right thing, Keep improving, Safe and well — set out on Mission & values and turned into expected behaviour in the Code of Conduct. Organisational values are not a decoration: they are the standard your work is measured against, and they carry into how goals are set and reviewed under Performance & Conduct Management.
Other people’s values. Your team leader, the colleague at the next desk, the customer on the phone, the supplier chasing an invoice. You cannot see them directly. You infer them from patterns — what someone always asks about first, what they will not let go.
Where your values and Nexus’s line up, work feels easy and you barely notice why. Where they differ, you get friction. Both are worth knowing about, and neither means someone is wrong.
Diverse values and attitudes are an asset, not a problem
A team where everyone holds identical values is a team with identical blind spots. Difference is what catches the thing nobody else was looking for.
| What differs | What it looks like on the floor | What it gives the team |
|---|---|---|
| Accuracy vs speed | One person checks; another ships | Work that is both right and on time — if they talk |
| Independence vs collaboration | One heads-down; one always asking | Deep work and shared knowledge |
| Process vs pragmatism | ”That is not the procedure” / “That is not the point” | Procedures that get followed and make sense |
| Directness vs diplomacy | Blunt feedback; careful feedback | Messages that land without damage |
| Stability vs change | ”It works” / “It could be better” | Improvement without churn |
Difference only pays off when it is out in the open. Left unnamed, the same difference turns into “they are difficult to work with” — and that is where an unexamined attitude starts doing real damage to a working environment. The Equal Employment Opportunity policy and the Code of Conduct set the floor here: difference in background, belief and outlook is expected and protected, and acting against someone because of it is a conduct matter, not a matter of taste.
Working alongside people whose values differ from yours is also the fastest way to see your own. You do not notice you value process until you sit next to someone who does not.
Getting at your own
Values do not announce themselves, so work backwards from evidence:
- Pick three moments from the last month — one that went well, one that annoyed you, one where you dug your heels in.
- Name the behaviour, not the story. “I re-checked the pack twice after hours.”
- Name the attitude it came from. “Figures that go out wrong are on me.”
- Name the value underneath. Accuracy. Responsibility.
- Check for a clash. Which other value was losing at that moment?
- Ask someone. People see your values from the outside long before you do. Ask a colleague what they think you care most about at work — the answer is often uncomfortably accurate.
Write it down as you go. The attitudes and values review in the templates library gives you the structure, and what you find there feeds straight into Knowing how you work.