In 2026, Align Your Actions with Your Values

We often recognize it when we see it in others—the gap between what people say they value and how they actually behave. Maybe it's a direct report who in sists they want to advance but hasn’t taken steps to grow. Or your boss who emails “My door is always open” but keeps canceling your one-on-one meetings. Or the project team whose members agree the team should be a "safe space” for new ideas, yet every meeting is dominated by senior voices and real input from others is rare.

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The Glassdoor Worklife Trends Report for 2026 shows just how deeply this gap between values and actions is shaping the work experience. Mentions of misalignment in employee reviews of senior leadership have skyrocketed: uses of the term “misaligned" jumped 149% from 2024 to 2025. Other signs of disconnect—words like “miscommunication” (+25%), “distrust” (+26%), “hypocrisy” (+18%)—have also surged, highlighting a growing gap between what employees expect and what they experience from management.

Employees aren’t only describing organizational friction. They’re signaling something more fundamental: the erosion of trust when leaders fail to act in accordance with their stated values.

This is happening against a backdrop where burnout , overwork, interpersonal strain, and AI-driven change in scope and job security are already taxing employees’ emotional bandwidth. When the external situation is tough, values misalignment makes it tougher. People rely on formal and informal leadership to help make sense of ambiguity, give direction when the way is unclear, and hold space for functioning well when anxiety, tension and difficulty press in. Values provide one of the few stabilizing anchors leaders have, so it’s a good time to consider a values alignment check.

Leadership and Commitment

James March, one of the founders of the field of organizational behavior, offers a powerful lens with his coauthor Johan Olsen: leaders act according to a logic of consequence or a logic of appropriateness—the latter grounded in identity, roles, and commitments rather than calculated outcomes. My Yale colleagues and I wrote about this as leadership and commitment to make explicit the connection between leadership and personal values.

Logic of consequence is the cost–benefit calculator. We choose the option that promises the best payoff—more revenue, less risk, smoother execution. Most of our daily moves run on this logic, and it’s perfectly functional.

Logic of commitment is different. We act because the choice fits who we are—our deeply held values and identity. The reference point isn’t the immediate return; it’s alignment. We do it because it’s the right thing to do, even when the consequences are uncertain or uncomfortable.

You can’t always tell which logic is at play from a single decision. Two people may make the same career move for very different reasons; motives reveal themselves in patterns over time. Here’s why this matters for values alignment: values become leadership fuel only when they turn into commitments—conscious, salient obligations you embrace. Those commitments function like an unwritten contract with others. They make your choices more predictable, which builds trust and lowers the cost of coordinating around you. When people can rely on you to hold a line, they’re more willing to invest, take risks, and follow.

The most inspiring leaders are grounded in commitment. Think of figures who acted from obligation to ideals, not from personal gain. Commitment doesn’t replace execution—you still have to organize, communicate, and deliver—but it is the starting point. Under pressure, commitment keeps words and actions aligned. That visible values alignment sustains trust and invites others to join you.

How to Clarify Your Values

Prioritizing values before choices increases value‑consistent behavior. And aligning values with actions boosts credibility. A study by scholars at Columbia Business School and William & Mary Business School on “values affirmation” finds that leaders who consciously ground their decisions in their values are seen as more authentic by colleagues and followers.

If you haven’t clarified your values recently—or ever—this is a good moment to do it. Adam Grant and Brené Brown’s conversations on rethinking (as in this video from the Wharton School) invite you to treat values as working hypotheses: write them down, test them against real dilemmas, deliberately seek disconfirming (invalidating) feedback, and refine the language until it reflects behaviors you’re willing to be held to.

Here are some further exercises to try:

• Brown’s Dare to Lead workbook turns that idea into practice by starting with a broad list of possible values, narrowing to two non‑negotiables, defining what each looks like in action, identifying “slippery” behaviors that undercut them, and committing to small daily practices.

• The Co‑Active Training Institute, which integrates coach training with leadership development offers a structured discovery exercise that begins with a curated values list, guides you to choose and personally define your top few values, asks you to rate how fully you honor each right now, and helps you design rituals, boundaries, and experiments to raise those scores.

• The Schwartz Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ) uses short “person” statements to map your priorities across a well‑studied framework (e.g., self‑direction, benevolence, achievement, security), creating a baseline you can proactively revisit over time. As Brown and Grant emphasize in their “Leading with Authenticity and Vulnerability” conversation, living your core values fuels courage, resilience, and authentic leadership—and gives you the stability and momentum to align what you say with what you do. As Brown puts it: “Living into your values, the ability to rumble with vulnerability, [means] to be able to be in uncertainty, risk, and exposure and be able to stay grounded, clearheaded, emotionally regulated, and make good decisions.”

Leading every day is tough—and the perception of misalignment makes it even harder. Face 2026 with the courage and confidence that grow from acting on your values. The ongoing work of alignment is effortful—but it’s what makes leadership authentic, grounded, and sustainable.

By Heidi Brooks, Contributor