What Do You Really Stand For?: The One Question That Will Transform Your Work and Life

A practical, research-based guide to maximizing the most overlooked driver of lasting success and fulfillment--your values.

What if one simple shift could make you feel as satisfied as getting an $84,000 raise? Research shows that really understanding your core values--and living by them--can deliver just that. Yet most of us struggle with this. We go about our work and our lives with only a vague sense of the values that underpin everything we do.

In What Do You Really Stand For? Columbia Business School professor Paul Ingram reveals that values are far more than a moral compass--they're a source of advantage that can boost your performance, your leadership effectiveness, and your well-being.

Drawing on decades of research and the frameworks he's used with students and executives, Ingram presents a set of exercises and tools to help you articulate your values, integrate them into your work and life, build stronger relationships, and achieve better outcomes in all that you do.

Whether you're navigating a career decision or managing conflict, leading a team or an entire organization, or simply trying to live with greater purpose, What Do You Really Stand For? offers a powerful guide to taking more intentional control of your life and career--and leading yourself and others with more clarity, confidence, and purpose.

Paul Ingram is the Kravis Professor of Business at Columbia Business School. He has received Columbia's highest recognition for teaching, the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well as the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence and thirteen teaching awards voted on by graduating students at Columbia and Cornell Universities.