The Core Values Index™ has taught us how this actually works. Now we can be aware of the Core Value Energy we have chosen to be at any given moment and how to shift from the core value we are currently being into one of our highest capacity that will likely be more effective in the current situation. By learning how to do this consciously we can continuously be one of our more dominant Core Value Energies and stay in the contributing mode. This is the better alternative to holding stubbornly to the Core Value Energy we are comfortable being.  Our comfortable mode of being is far more likely to cause us to default into our adapted personality.

All of this is carefully detailed in my book, Choices. Choices introduces the Human Operating System™ that the CVI has served to reveal, it also provides the details about the anxieties, fears, negative emotions, and the other elements that cause us to shift into our negative conflict strategies.  

Understanding the human capacity to shift from one core value to another at any moment 

We all begin every situation being one of our four most dominant Core Value Energies, usually the most dominant. As life unfolds we either succeed or fail with the strategies inherent in our non-consciously chosen core value. If we succeed we continue being that chosen Core Value Energy. If we judge that this strategy is failing, we become anxious, which often arouses negative emotions. If we don’t shift before our anxiety turns to fear, we slip into our conflict strategies related to the Core Value Energy we were trying to be. If we don’t disengage, we will often shift unconsciously around in the conflict strategies of the four core values, taking and getting, and contributing nothing but disruption and ineffective behavior—not that any of you would ever do that, but I have found myself in that unholy position a few times in my life.

When we are moving to or in a negative Core Value Strategy we may begin talking to ourselves internally justifying why we are right and they are wrong. Sometimes we get strong physiological messages, like a stiff neck, or shortness of breath which is intended to wake us up and tell us to make a more conscious choice about who to be. This is our chance, this moment of awareness, to shift from the Core Value Energy in which we are losing control of our emotions and behaviors and shift consciously into being a different Core Value Energy. This is what we call adult Homo sapiens behavior.

This system functions much like our non-conscious freeway driving. We can be driving along the freeway for minutes, even hours, talking and laughing, and listening to the radio when a truck goes by and splashes water onto our windshields. Suddenly we can’t see, we become aware of what is happening and we decide what to do. We intentionally slow down, swerve, or decide to charge ahead.

The result of ignoring the messages our body is sending to alert us that our current strategy is not working is a steady and often sudden drop from positive contribution. Causing us to revert to our adapted personality, our taking and getting strategies which often creates havoc and amasses the energy of others against this personality self that is now our chosen state of being.

We need to learn to be a little more intentionally shifty. We are, of course, not talking about the negative context of the term shifty. This negative shiftiness is a great expression of people who are shifting around in their fears and emotions, taking and getting from others, and proving that once again we are able to survive by reverting to our ego based personalities.

When we intentionally shift out of the Core Value Energy that is not working for us in a given situation, into a consciously chosen Core Value Energy, we take control of our own lives. We can then achieve full accountability, remain continuously in our best contributing operating mode, and succeed in ways we have only hoped for in the past.

Another expression that is amazingly ‘right on’ is, “I was just beside myself.” This describes what happens when we shift into our personality, our ego-driven stimulus and response interactions. We have been living in an unconscious manner, being our best Core Value Energies, making our contribution to society. Then something (someone) happens that offends and threatens us emotionally, and we are suddenly beside ourselves, having shifted without conscious intention into our taking and getting mode— our defensive ego driven behavior. We are no longer being our Real Core Values Self™. Now we are being our adaptive personality, literally beside our real self, being the opposite of our contributing self.

We now understand a lot more about how unintentional shifting works and how we end up back in our personality behaviors and become ineffective as adults.

Come back next week and learn how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another, how take control of your own life energies, and how to make your highest and best contribution, continuously.

Learn more about your Achilles Heel in my previous four week blog series; The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us.

When bankers slip quietly out of their contribution mode into the personality driven ‘taking and getting’ mode, it is often caused by their commitment to knowledge as the most essential human energy in life. They have a drive to be an expert, to have the knowledge that is most needed in a given situation. They expect this of themselves and hope that others find this to be true most of the time.

The Achilles Heel arises when their peers or higher authorities in business do not ask for the knowledge the banker has. Or an important leader, having asked for the facts, procrastinates reading the reports until it is too late. Or, having read the information the banker’s associates do not make a different decision than they previously would have made without the information. Or, having made the right and better decision, they fail to take action and get the better result that the banker’s knowledge could have assured.

When the banker’s efforts to provide essential information for better success do not lead to greater success, the banker tends to feel anxious that the knowledge they had was not sufficient, not good enough, not thorough enough, not detailed enough. They tend to respond to the anxiety by trying harder, building a more detailed report. This anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.

When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the knowledge energy is free to flow into the room bringing light into the darkness. When the banker’s anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of his knowledge Core Value Energy. This restricts the free flow of knowledge into the situation causing further failure to make an optimal contribution of knowledge into the room.

This effort causes an unconscious escalation of the knowledge energy, trying to force it into strong influence and participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting this effort. They begin to feel worn down by the knowledge person’s constant statements of ‘the obvious.” They tend to become black and white, wrong or right thinkers building resentment among others in the process.

The tendency is to continue to try to be the knowledge in the situation, long past the time when they would have benefitted from and been more effective by shifting into one of the lesser held Core Value Energies.

Note:  Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels.

Having failed to listen to their anxiety, they find themselves judging others as being unworthy of ‘my’ knowledge. The banker may become very aloof and unavailable emotionally, socially and even in functional business situations. The black and white thinking causes others to quit asking for the banker’s knowledge. This causes a fear based response that is either total withdrawal and withholding of information or a pontificating of facts and information in a manner and at a time when this information is neither requested or appreciated.

The best response for a banker who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most ignorant thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of knowledge in a situation that needs more power, love or wisdom. Shift to one of these other essential human energies and get back into a contributing mode.

The smart (awake and conscious) knowledge person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode. 

This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.

• Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
• The Achilles Heel of Merchants
• The Achilles Heel of Builders
• The Achilles Heel of Innovators
• The Achilles Heel of Bankers

When innovators find themselves feeling disrespected, their ideas not appreciated or understood, can find themselves sliding down the slippery slope toward interrogation. This is often caused by their strong commitment to being the wisdom in the room. They have a deep emotional sense that they should be able to make things better for themselves and others through development of relationships and strong positive communication.

They are required by their value structure to maintain their compassion toward others and to be tolerant of a lack of compassion that may be expressed towards them. They can find that they have to suffer a reality that some people don’t see the need for their wisdom. This is based first upon their intuition supported by their collection of facts and reason through brainstorming and curious questioning. They have a need to believe in the sufficiency of their wisdom energy to sole the most difficult and complex problems. In fact this need is so great that some fall victim to their own need for proof of wisdom that they make everything more complex than it needs to be or they may procrastinate until the consequences of waiting to solve a problem become great enough to attract their wisdom’s attention.

The Achilles Heel is activated by circumstances in which the innovator finds himself left out of the decision loop, or when his own performance is less than desired and he feels judged that his ideas and solutions are not respected or understood. There is a tendency in wisdom individuals to make their idea complex enough that others see how wise they are, but the complexity causes the ideas to be misunderstood so the wisdom person is perceived as being unwise. The shift to interrogation happens when someone important in the innovator’s life is being dismissive of the individual’s wisdom and not putting the great strategies into play. When the innovator feels foolish or his ideas disrespected by others it is difficult for him to resist shifting into interrogation to prove the foolishness of others.

When the innovator’s wisdom is not sufficient to solve current problems, or there is insufficient time to come to a truly wise solution, his compassion for others and for himself causes a doubt in his basic capacity for wisdom. His own capacity to be the wisdom in the situation is diminished. He starts feeling anxious that maybe his wisdom is insufficient, that his observations about the way things are might be faulty, that he cannot trust his intuition or his reasoning capabilities. This causes increasing anxiety. The anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.

When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the wisdom energy is free to flow into the room and bring light to the darkness. When the anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of the wisdom Core Value Energy into the situation, causing further failure to make the ideal contribution of wise observations and best strategies to be deployed.

This causes an escalation of human wisdom energy, trying to force it into stronger influence and fuller participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting and denying the wisdom agenda. They begin to feel interrogated and controlled by the requirement for more process, more study and isolated thinking on the part of the wisdom person. They feel tricked by the wisdom person who is now trying to force his wisdom and his required wisdom process into the situation.

People around the wisdom person get the sense that they have no room for error with the person who is escalating the wisdom energy, especially when most believe that wisdom is not what is needed. They tend to believe the wisdom person is not interested in their ideas, and not interested or supportive of anyone else’s knowledge, love or power. Wisdom people (and anyone who is operating in their wisdom mode) tend to ridicule others, express impatience toward the ‘stupidity’ of people who can’t seem to ‘get it. People who are around the wisdom person when he decides to quit being wisdom and start his interrogation process in order to gain control, feel dismissed, not welcome and not trusted to decide things on their own.

The tendency is to continue to try to be the wisdom in the situation, long past the time then they would have benefitted and been more effective by shifting into one of their lower capacity Core Value Energies.

Note:  Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels.

When the wisdom person has failed to listen to his anxiety, he finds himself judging others as being trite and simple minded and not worthy of trust. The innovator may become very sarcastic and demeaning, scathing in criticism and harsh with interrogative practices. This dismissal of other and interrogation that threatens ridicule of ideas is a very controlling tactic, causing others to give in for the moment, looking for chances to undermine the innovator’s future effectiveness. This causes a fear based response in the innovator that is either a seething rage or total control through interrogative destruction of everything that is being said or done.

The best response for an innovator who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most foolish thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of wisdom in a situation that needs more knowledge, power or love.

The smart (awake and conscious) wisdom person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode.

This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.

• Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
• The Achilles Heel of Merchants
• The Achilles Heel of Builders
• The Achilles Heel of Innovators
• The Achilles Heel of Bankers

When builders find themselves frustrated and sliding down the slippery slope toward intimidation, is it often caused by their strong commitment to being the power in the room. They have a deep emotional sense that they should be able to make things happen from their own power. They are required by their value structure to maintain faith in their intuition, in the sufficiency of their power and in their confidence that they will always know what to do next, so they can take fearless action and created dramatic instantaneous results.

The Achilles Heel becomes active when the builder finds himself making more mistakes than usual, creating more fires that he is able to put out, facing business or personal obstacles that require more than his own power to surmount. The shift to intimidation happens when someone in authority decides this builder is not allowed to make intuitive decisions or take intuitive unchecked action autonomously.

When the builder power is not causing a positive change, making a positive contribution, their faith in their own power begins to be diminished. They started feeling anxious that maybe their power is insufficient, that their intuition may be faulty. This causes an increasing anxiety. This anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.  

When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the power energy is free to flow into the room and bring light to the darkness. When the anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of power Core Value Energy into the situation causing further failure to make the ideal contribution of power into the room.

The effect is escalation of human power energy, trying to force it into strong influence and participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting this effort. They begin to feel overwhelmed and not regarded as individuals. They get the sense that they have no options. They tend to believe the power person is not interested in knowledge, wisdom or love and relationships. Power people (and anyone who is operating in their power mode) tend to become ‘Just do it now” people, frustrated by a sense of urgency and their own lack of impact. 

The tendency is to continue to try to be the power in the situation, long past the time then they would have benefitted and been more effective by shifting into one of their lower capacity Core Value Energies.

Note:  Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels. 

When the builder power person has failed to listen to his anxiety, he finds himself judging others as being unworthy of my power. The builder may become very intimidating and dismissive, judging others to be unworthy as reliable doers. This impatience and intimidation can become very controlling, causing others to give in for the moment, looking for chances to undermine the builder’s future effectiveness. This causes a fear based response in the builder that is either total withdrawal or total control through micromanagement and taking over.

The best response for a builder who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most impotent thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of power in a situation that needs more knowledge, love or wisdom.

The smart power person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode.

This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.

• Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
• The Achilles Heel of Merchants
• The Achilles Heel of Builders
• The Achilles Heel of Innovators
• The Achilles Heel of Bankers

When merchants find themselves feeling disregarded, embarrassed by criticism or feeling unappreciated and unloved, they can find themselves sliding down the slippery slope toward manipulation. This is often caused by their strong commitment to being the love in the room. They have a deep emotional sense that they should be able to make things better for themselves and others through development of relationships and strong positive communication.

They are required by their value structure to maintain their belief in fundamental truth about the way things are. This is based first upon their intuition supported by their collection of facts and reason through conversation and listening. They have a strong need to believe in the sufficiency of their love energy to cause people to be loyal, motivated and fully commissioned to want to serve the mission of the group.

The Achilles Heel is activated by circumstances in which the merchant finds himself left out of the decision loop, or when his own performance is less than desired and he feels judged as being unworthy of appreciation and approval. The shift to manipulation happens when someone important in the merchant’s life is being critical or is deemed to be unsupportive. When the merchant feels unloved or unappreciated by others it is difficult for him to continue interacting and doing his work.

When the merchant’s love is not sufficient to inspire others to rise to their highest potential, when the team is not functioning due to conflict, or any sign that love is not needed or wanted, his faith in his own capacity to be the love in the situation begins to be diminished. He starts feeling anxious that maybe his love is insufficient, that his view of the truth about the way things are might be faulty, that he cannot trust his intuition. This causes increasing anxiety. The anxiety works like the dimmer switch in your dining room at home.

When the dimmer switch is fully open and there is no anxiety the love energy is free to flow into the room and bring light to the darkness. When the anxiety gets excited the dimmer switch begins to restrict the flow of the love Core Value Energy into the situation is restricted, causing further failure to make the ideal contribution of relationships and positive inspiring vision into the room.

This causes an escalation of human love energy, trying to force it into stronger influence and fuller participation. The effect is usually that people begin resisting and denying the love agenda. They begin to feel manipulated and actually feel unloved by the person who is now trying to force his love into the situation. They get the sense that they have no room for error with the person who is escalating the love energy when love is not what is needed. They tend to believe the power person is not interested in knowledge, wisdom or power. Love people (and anyone who is operating in their love mode) tend to become highly judgmental, feeling that people are not showing the truth about themselves, or that others cannot tolerate and be trusted with the truth about me.

The tendency is to continue to try to be the love in the situation, long past the time then they would have benefitted and been more effective by shifting into one of their lower capacity Core Value Energies.

Note:  Learn more about how to shift from one Core Value Energy to another in my book, Choices, available in our Taylor Protocols store. I will be writing a new series on the art of shifting just following this four week series on Achilles Heels.

When the merchant love person has failed to listen to his anxiety, he finds himself judging others as being deceitful and not worthy of trust. The merchant may become very mawkish and overly accommodating, judging others to be unworthy to have a meaningful relationship with. This judgment of others and manipulation of situations and people can become very controlling, causing others to give in for the moment, looking for chances to undermine the merchant’s future effectiveness. This causes a fear based response in the merchant that is either total rage (one form of manipulation—How can you treat me like this?) or total control through manipulation of everything that is being said or done.

The best response for a merchant who finds himself in this situation is to remember one simple truth, one simple fact… The most unloving thing a person can do is to continue to be the presence of love in a situation that needs more knowledge, power or wisdom.

The smart (awake and conscious) love person shifts to one of these other essential human energies and gets back into a contributing mode.

This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.

• Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
• The Achilles Heel of Merchants
• The Achilles Heel of Builders
• The Achilles Heel of Innovators
• The Achilles Heel of Bankers

We have learned that most of these Achilles Heel kinds of mistakes in behavior and attitude  most often come out of our most dominant Core Value Energies, out of our most precious and important human energy. As Dan Cox likes to say, “We are most vulnerable when we are operating in our most dominant Core Value Energy.”

Bankers have vulnerable heels in their core value, knowledge. Builders lose their strength when they most need their core value, power. Love fails the best of us merchants just when relationships are most in need of thoughtful responses and a little more maturity in our interactions. Innovators, who are most needed for their wisdom and their constant effort to understand and provide solutions, find themselves in a loop of logic and intuitive blocks that make the best of us look a little foolish at times.

This may not be the most fun topic for any of us, but it is one that may help us most to master our own lives and create our greatest contribution. One admonishment; be very slow to say to yourself, “this doesn’t apply to me.” The only way any of us humans make progress is when we allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable with the way we are choosing to show up. As a last resort to keep yourself honest ask your spouse or other Core Relationship™ people, whether you occasionally display a little Achilles Heel in your daily activities.

Each week we’ll visit a core value and provide a few words that are meant to provide a little constructive discomfort.

This series of posts includes an overview and a post for each Core Value.

• Overview of post series – The Achilles Heel that Haunts the Best of Us
• The Achilles Heel of Merchants
• The Achilles Heel of Builders
• The Achilles Heel of Innovators
• The Achilles Heel of Bankers

While each Contributor Type has positive strategies that lead to success, each also has its blind spots and weaknesses. It is this combination of high benefit and significant challenge that each of us brings to our work team and to our families and friends.

Shared Values

Merchants and innovators both value being needed, either for their solutions and technologies or for their humanity, creativity, and love.  This need to be appreciated drives them to achieve long-term relationships and to develop products and sys­tems that ensure the longevity of the relationships that are formed.

Contributions to Team

The power of a creative contributor is derived from their inexhaustible well of good ideas and new strategic innovations.  This creates a deep sense of optimism.  If the merchant’s dream is not being realized, the innovator can kick in and come up with the appropriate solutions. 

Impositions to Team

Unrestrained creative people can be a real challenge to their teams.  The merchant is constantly thinking of new projects and new adventures, and avoiding non-creative, boring work. There is always a brighter future or a glorious past accomplishment that will distract others from the need for ac­countability today.

            You and I, and everyone else is made up of the same innate natural ingredients, but in different amounts. In fact, in just about every different mixture imaginable, which makes us all so very different, while still being so very much the same.

            The greatest similarities we have with each other are the four basic core values that make up our unchanging innate nature, our motivation to make certain types of contributions, but based upon a unique mixture of the same kinds of motivations and essential energies.

            What is the likelihood that you and I are identical physically—with the same set of skills and the level of capability?  Although the number above is accurate and statistically precise, we can see a similar indication of unique­ness by building a model that computes how many people have lived on this planet since the beginning of human time.

            It is this very uniqueness both in physical and spiritual nature that causes us to have the same universal call; the call to be our unique selves and to find our unique place in the lineage of Man and in the habitation of Earth. We all have the questions alive within us: Who am I?  What am I? Why am I here? We each have an unremitting drive to make a worthwhile contribution. It is part of our creature survival mechanism. It is part of our spiritual urge that makes us all humans. We also each have a unique mixture of core spiritual energies to contribute. These are what make up our Contributor Type.

             We contribute the visible, measurable contributions of our work as part of a company or as a single person. But all of us, no matter what our occupation, are delivering something more important to our society than the completion of a few tasks every day. We are contributing our innate unchanging Core Values Natures to the people around us.

            We are doing this consciously or non-consciously. In other words, our Real Core Values Self is not just made up of some basic values that cause us to think and participate using different strategies and tactics.

This is not just a spiritual or psychological pursuit. The requirement to be useful rides along with us from our very beginning, as part of our survival mechanism. We are not comfortable; we are afraid of being left behind or left out if we are not being useful in some tangible way to our society.

            We are naturally urgent about learning who and what we are so we can be useful to others, so we will be accepted, cared for, and valued by our society. When we are not working in a place of highest and best contribution, this requirement to feel useful and to be seen as a valuable contributor disturbs us at the spiritual level to take action, to change things, to get into a better place of contribution. We call this spiritual agitation.

            When the tasks I am asked to do are not aligned with, or do not deliver who I am to my society, then the unremitting message I get at the subconscious level, is to leave, to find a better place

MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL. 

When using the Core Values Index as a tool for personal development, it is important to understand that our goal is not to change who we are relative to our core values. It is not our goal to overcome who we are, but to learn how to be all that we innately are. Our challenge is to un-warp from our adapted personalities, and learn to consciously make choices based upon our innate Core Values Nature.

The goal is to know the values we hold in each part of our Core Values Nature, to understand the various strategies that derive from these core values, and to decide consciously which Core Value Strategy will be most effective in the current situation.

It is essential to understand our individual core values and the Core Value Strategies inherent in them.  This knowledge allows us to evolve more quickly and effectively toward a fully actualized self, while also relating better with others. This makes us more effective in getting what we want. We are better able to increase agreement with others who can contribute to our success.  All of this ensures our ability to excel in business and in our personal endeavors.

The secret to consistent success is being aware of and understanding the various strengths and weaknesses of the four core values.

Another way to talk about this innate nature is to think of yourself as a unique recipe of energies—that you have a capacity for different kinds of life energy. We each have a unique filter through which we view life, and we each have a different perspective and a different sense of purpose, a different capacity to be a certain kind of presence in our world. 

The nature of this difference also causes each of us to perceive these realities differently, to understand in different ways, and express our understanding differently. The attempt we are making with the Core Values Index and its various applications and business tools, is to provide one cen­tral backbone upon which we can all hang our collective philosophical and psychological hats.

Each individual is gifted with this unique charge of energy, for the purpose of expressing that energy through work, play, music, relationships, and just plain being alive. I often talk to my clients about their motivation to be a certain kind of “presence in the room.” This is the simplest and cleanest way I have found to talk about the nature and reality of our deepest innate self.

Some individuals have almost perfectly equal preference or innate capacity for all four core values, some individuals will have strong innate capacities for three of the core values, and some individuals will show preference strongly only for one profoundly dominant core value.