What does status mean as a core value?
Status as a core value means caring about your standing in the eyes of others, and the respect that comes with position, expertise or a well-regarded place in your community.
Where you stand matters to you, and you’re honest enough to admit it. Status is about your standing in the eyes of others: the respect that comes with position, expertise, a well-regarded organisation or a place in your community. It opens doors, gives your voice weight and signals that your efforts have counted for something. People have always cared about status. Those who value it tend to read the unwritten rules of a group well, and know how to rise within it.
What does status look like in practice?
- You pay attention to who sits where in a meeting and what that signals.
- You choose an employer partly for how its name reads on your profile.
- You invest in how you present yourself, from your clothes to your online presence.
- You work to be invited to speak, sit on panels or join respected boards.
- You notice quickly when someone treats you as less senior than you are.
When is status overplayed?
When status becomes the main aim, your sense of worth rises and falls with other people’s view of you. You may stay in a prestigious role that makes you unhappy, overlook people who don’t seem to count, or feel threatened by peers who rise faster. Decisions start to be made for how they look. Kept in proportion, status is a platform: respect earned through contribution, with the influence it brings used for something beyond position. A useful test is to look at your last big decision and ask whether you’d have made it if nobody ever found out.
Often confused with
Status vs Recognition
Recognition is acknowledgement for what you’ve done. Status is your standing relative to others, which can come from position as much as contribution.
Status vs Reputation
Reputation is what people think of your character and work. Status is your rank or place in a group, which can be high even with a mixed reputation.
Status vs Power
Power is the ability to make things happen. Status is how others regard you, and you can have plenty of one with little of the other.
Questions to sit with
- Which markers of status do you care about most, and which would you give up without a second thought?
- Whose opinion of your standing do you track most closely, and why them?
- What have you done recently mainly because of how it would look?
More values in Success
Achievement, ambition and coming out on top.
About the author
Matt Rutherford is a Career and Leadership Coach. The Values Finder is the same exercise he uses with his coaching clients. He also writes Stuff that MattRs, a weekly newsletter with practical ideas to help you think clearer and work better.
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