Values Conflict: Understanding the Root Causes

Julia explains why teamwork is a competitive advantage, then shares a personal story about being forced to move her horses from a 24/7 grazing field to a yard requiring nightly stabling, which triggered a values conflict she initially blamed on the horses but realised was her own.

Using Rushworth Kidder’s distinction between right-vs-wrong temptations and right-vs-right dilemmas, she identifies her tension between valuing her horses’ space and her own freedom, and uses Shalom Schwartz’s values circle to show how self-direction can oppose security and conformity.

She distinguishes values conflict from Andrew Jameton’s “moral distress,” when circumstances remove choice. She outlines signs of values conflicts in teams and offers four approaches: name the conflict and whose it is, separate values from strategies, manage tensions with warning signs and review dates, and seek a third option via integrative thinking, linking this to designing trust-based reliance on others.

00:50 Horse Move Story

03:50 Values Conflict Defined

06:38 Moral Distress vs Dilemma

08:42 When Conditions Change

12:23 Spotting Values Conflicts

15:50 Values vs Goals Clarity

17:42 Herd Lessons on Freedom 1

8:56 Four Ways to Resolve

22:26 Weekly Leadership Challenge