I am reading a book on leadership when I came across a sentence which states that leaders always live their lives with values. However, this point is not elaborated further and I am left wondering what the values are.

Personally, I feel that living lives with good values is important not only for leaders but every one of us. However, what are these values? I feel that they are as follows:

• Respect: I figure that I won’t have to elaborate much on this point since all of you have learnt this in your cross cultural communications for two semesters. We have discussed how important respect is when it comes to establishing rapport with others but it’s also important to note the consequences in the absence of it.  Therefore, we should make every effort to respect others as unique individuals with their own strengths and talents.
• Thriftiness: This is a value that is rapidly eroding in today’s society. This is especially so in this day and age where consumerism is becoming more prevalent. In Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice“, the author mentioned that we become less happy when the variety of our choices increases immensely. Therefore, it’s best we think twice about walking into a retail outlet the next time we are in a shopping complex. We should draw a distinct line between what items are “necessities” and what are “luxuries”. This is even more important in recently years where media advertising has somewhat blurred the lines between the two terms.
• Reciprocity: The tendency to reciprocate is losing its impact on society in recent years.  While we used to send season’s greeting cards to friends and anticipating a letter from our pen pal in the past, we are seeing an increased signs of societal isolation in urban society, where urbanites are inclined to listen to a music player than making an effort to talk to their friends. This observation has been given a name by psychologist Daniel Goleman in his book “Social intelligence“, which is “urban trance”. Most urbanites are almost trapped mentally in their own world, and much might be attributed to their bid to avoid the bombardment by media advertising and all the distractions around them. I feel that it’s time that we go back to basics by engaging others in more face-to-face communications.
• Integrity: The value of integrity is also decreasing in value in recent years. You read about it in the papers (cases of embezzlement and frauds), you will observe it in the workplace and you see it in the streets. Personally, I consider integrity as one of the personal values that should be upheld by us because should the value of integrity depreciates drastically, the very social fabric of society will be destroyed, and this will eventually plunge society into a state of decadence.

Personally, I feel that the abovementioned values are good values to hold on to. I hope that you feel the same way too.