DFA’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies to humanize the workplace, empower people, and foster innovation. Members can access full versions the Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.

Organizations invest significant time and resources in recruiting, developing, advancing, and retaining talent. Those efforts are strongest when they are grounded in a clear understanding of what people actually value from their careers and their work experience.

What motivates one person may look very different from what motivates another. For one employee, advancement may mean moving into a leadership role. For another, it may mean building deeper expertise, gaining new experiences, or finding a role that is a better long-term fit. 

Research reinforces how important it is for leaders to understand those differences. In our July Signature Session, Emma Codd, Global Inclusion Leader at Deloitte, shared findings from Deloitte Global’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Deloitte found that steady progress was the most cited career preference among respondents, while only a quarter said they wanted fast-paced growth. Some respondents said they would be willing to move laterally to find the right role, and others would consider a more junior role to gain experience and find the right long-term fit. Flexibility and purpose also emerged as priorities that, for some, could take precedence over job title or speed of advancement.

Further, nearly all respondents said purpose is important to their job satisfaction and well-being, with just over half of respondents saying their current job was mostly or completely aligned with their personal values and beliefs. 

Leaders can use broad findings such as Deloitte’s study to complement work within their own organizations and better understand their own talent…..

Members: Read the full version of this Action Step in the Member Resource Center.

To read this entire Action Step become a DFA member.

DFA’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies to humanize the workplace, empower people, and foster innovation. Members can access full versions the Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.

Values are most powerful when they are more than words on a page. They provide a shared understanding of how people work together, make decisions, navigate challenges, and hold themselves and one another accountable. Values become especially important during periods of change. A merger, a leadership transition, or a stretch of fast growth disrupts how people are used to working together, while also opening a rare window to reset an organization or team’s culture on purpose.

But values only work when they move off the page. A value everyone nods at and no one can define does not change behavior. Common value words like trust, respect, collaboration, and transparency mean different things to different people. Bringing values to life means getting specific about what they look like in practice. For example, what does trust look like in a leadership meeting? How does collaboration show up when there are competing priorities? What behaviors demonstrate respect? How can a team recognize when it may need to reconnect with one of its shared values?

The often forgotten component of creating shared values

Creating a list of values as a team generally feels productive and leaves people feeling energized. What happens next is much harder. Values create actual value only when they translate into shared behaviors that have clear expectations and accountability mechanisms. 

Most teams tend to skip determining what shared values look like in practice, treating the creation of value words as the finish line. This is why so many value statements end up listed on a website or framed on the wall, but in reality are unknown or ignored…

What a strong values process looks like

A values process that sticks moves through a clear arc, beginning with a shared purpose.. It draws on the team’s real experiences of working at its best and builds toward the future the team wants to create. 

At DFA we facilitate this process using a story-based approach and our Me-We-Us model, which moves a group from individual perspective, to team need, to organizational impact….

Members: Read the full version of this Action Step in the Member Resource Center.

To read this entire Action Step become a DFA member.