315: The One Thing That Makes People Say Yes with David Allison

What if the reason people aren’t buying, engaging, staying, or following your lead isn’t because they need another motivational poster about “teamwork”?

It might be because you have no idea what actually matters to them.

In this episode, Erin sits down with David Allison, founder of the Valuegraphics Research Company and author of The Values Map, to talk about why demographics, generic corporate values, and a bunch of buzzwords slapped on an office wall don’t tell us nearly as much as we think they do.

David shares how understanding what matters most to people can make you a better leader, marketer, salesperson, and overall human trying to get other humans to do things.

They also dig into how to uncover someone’s real values without creepily asking, “So...what are your deepest values?” and why values alignment might explain why certain jobs, people, opportunities, and even parties just click while others make you want to fake a babysitter emergency and leave.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why corporate values often become expensive wallpaper and what actually motivates employees
• Three questions that reveal what matters most to someone without turning the conversation into a therapy session
• How to use curiosity and the “Third Why” to get past surface-level small talk
• Why understanding someone’s values can make selling, leading, and influencing a whole lot easier
• How David realized the traditional definition of success was basically a lie for him and why building your work around what matters most can make it suck significantly less

Resources Mentioned in the Episode:

• Check out David's Website: www.davidallisoninc.com
• Learn more about Value Graphics: www.valuegraphics.com
• Pre-order David’s book, "The Values Map: Discover What Drives You and How to Move Others"
• Follow David on LinkedIn at davidallisoninc/

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DISCLAIMER: This episode is not explicit, though contains mild swearing that may be unsuitable for younger audiences.

Tweetable Comments

“What matters most to us drives everything we do.”

“Your corporate values are not the human values of the people who are showing up at your corporation.”

“Authenticity is, I’m gonna say, not a value, it’s the end result of values alignment.”

“It was, 10 years of living a lie that I didn’t know was a lie, because I’d only been taught that this was the truth.”

Podcast Transcript

Erin Hatzikostas sits down with David Allison, founder of the Valuegraphics Research Company, to explore what really motivates people at work. They unpack the difference between corporate values and human values, how leaders and salespeople can discover what matters most to someone, why values alignment influences engagement and decision-making, and how understanding your own values can help you build a career that actually fits.

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Why “Values” Might Be the Wrong Word

Erin: What's the biggest misconception you get when people call you the values guy or talk about the research you do around values?

David: One of the biggest confusions is just the word values. We're all used to sitting in boardrooms talking about mission, vision, values. The CEO sends out the annual note saying they've finally figured out the corporate values, and usually they're the same as everybody else's corporate values. They go up on the wall behind the receptionist, everybody's happy, and then they're forgotten about 24 hours later.

We also run around talking about what we think our values are. Politicians tell us what our values are. So I actually don't love using the word anymore.

What works better is asking: What matters most?

What matters most to you? What matters most to your customers? What matters most to your employees? That gets much closer to the kind of values I'm researching.

Erin: And it feels more distinctive too. Instead of asking somebody for five or ten values, you can start with one or two things that really matter.

David: Exactly. Through our research, we've identified 56 values. And the interesting thing is that you can't simply ask people what their values are, because they'll either intentionally or unintentionally tell you what they want their values to be, or what they want you to think their values are.

Instead, you ask about behavior. What do you do all day? How do you feel about this thing? What does this topic mean to you?

When you listen to what people are actually doing and start mapping their behaviors, you can work backward and understand what matters most to them.

What Hockey Can Tell You About Someone's Values

David: I'm Canadian, so let's use hockey.

If somebody says they're a hockey fan, don't just stop there. Ask how often they go to games. Do they watch at home? Who do they watch with? Friends? Family? Do they take clients to games? Do they own a jersey? If their team gets eliminated, will they cheer for another team or stop watching completely?

You're asking them about something they're excited to talk about. But underneath their answers, you're hearing their values.

If they refuse to cheer for another team, maybe loyalty matters a lot to them. If every hockey experience involves their friends but never their family, that tells you something about the relative importance of friendship and family in that context.

You listen to what people do, and from there you start to see what matters most.

Erin: That's the legit researcher part. You're discerning the thing without actually asking them the thing.

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The Pink Van: Why Assumptions About People Get Us in Trouble

Erin: Let's make this practical. Our listeners might be in sales, leadership, or running businesses. How does this help somebody market better, sell more, or become a better leader?

David: I'll give you an example from our research.

I was preparing for a keynote for a group of employers in the blue-collar trades. They were dealing with a major talent shortage and wanted to understand how to get more people interested in joining the trades.

Our research found that people considering careers in the trades dramatically over-indexed around a value called service to others. They wanted to know they were doing something that helped people and made a difference.

The employers were already talking about things like earning more money, getting out of shift work, and avoiding the cost of college. Those are logical benefits.

But they weren't saying, “This is your chance to be in a helping profession.”

After my keynote, a business owner came up to me. He had seven offices across the Southern United States with fleets of service vans. In each fleet, one van was painted pink, and all of the money earned by that van went toward breast cancer research because of a personal story involving his wife.

I thought that was the story.

He said, “No. The real story is that every day my guys fight over who gets to be in the pink van.”

Erin: Wow.

David: Think about that. If you were marketing to people in the trades based on stereotypes, would you ever have gotten to pink vans?

Probably not. You'd be talking about football, tailgates, country music, or whatever other assumptions you had about the audience.

But the answer was pink vans.

There's almost always a pink van in the research. Something that makes you say, “We never would have guessed that, but now it makes complete sense.”

When you understand what matters most to people, you can use it to market, motivate, inspire, build policies, engage employees, and make strategic decisions.

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Three Questions That Reveal What Matters Most

Erin: What about people who can't hire your company to conduct a big research study? What questions could they ask employees or clients to get closer to this information themselves?

David: We have three questions we call the three telltale questions. We've tested versions of them with people around the world.

The important part is that you don't ask one person once and assume you've figured everything out. Ask a lot of people and listen for patterns. Those patterns are the signals in the noise. That's where the values start bubbling to the surface.

David: The first question is: Why do you go to work?

Someone might immediately say, “To pay my bills.” Fine. Ask why else.

Maybe their friends are there. Maybe work is their creative outlet. Maybe they feel like they're making a difference. Maybe it's where they feel useful.

They're telling you why they choose to spend such a huge portion of their life doing this thing.

The second question is: Why would you give away half of your lottery winnings?

If someone says they wouldn't, tell them to imagine they won a lottery where giving away half was required. Then ask where they'd give it and why.

That's a major behavioral decision. The “why” behind it is usually a value talking.

The third question is: If you could send one message to yourself 10 years ago, what would it be?

Listen to whether they talk about family, friendship, work, stress, money, kids, health, or something else. Whatever comes up tells you something about what matters most to them.

Erin: That's really good.

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The Values Corporate America Often Misses

Erin: Is there a value corporations tend to underestimate? Something that leaders might not put in their top five, but your research shows matters a lot?

David: Every workforce is different, so I wouldn't prescribe one value to every company. But there is a cluster that appears again and again.

Of the 56 values we've identified, five show up constantly across different industries and groups. We call them the togetherness values: belonging, family, friendship, relationships, and community.

Those aren't interchangeable. Belonging is different from community. Community is different from relationships. Companies tend to lump them all together, but you need to understand which one actually matters to your people.

The broader point is that humans want some form of connection.

So look at your employee research, surveys, hallway conversations, and everything else you already know about your workforce. Which form of togetherness seems to matter most?

Then lean into it.

David: Because here's the secret to everything: What matters most to us drives everything we do.

If you want people to be more engaged, stop quitting, or actually care about the work they're doing, you have to give them more of what matters most.

Your Corporate Values Are Not Your Employees' Human Values

David: One of the biggest mistakes corporations make is spending two years and millions of dollars figuring out their corporate values and then wondering why employees aren't behaving according to them.

Your corporate values are not the human values of the people who are showing up at your corporation.

You've only done half the job.

The company might decide creativity is one of its core values. Great. But suppose personal growth is one of the strongest human values among your employees.

Now you need to connect the dots.

Show employees how being creative at work helps them grow as people. Explain why the behavior you're asking for gives them more of something that already matters deeply to them.

If you don't make that connection, they'll look at “creativity” written on the wall and think, “Okay, whatever. That doesn't matter to me.”

Corporate values might actually be better described as guiding principles or a list of ways the organization wants people to behave.

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Stop Turning Values Into Expensive Wallpaper

Erin: You just hit one of my hot spots.

It's not enough to say you're a “family-first organization.” Tell people what that actually means.

Maybe it means you're not expecting someone to answer emails from the soccer field. Maybe leaders who have ideas over the weekend schedule the email to go out Monday instead of firing it off immediately.

Specificity is what makes those values feel real.

Even something like safety can be communicated in a more human way. Instead of just saying, “We believe in OSHA adherence,” explain that you want people to leave work safely and go home to grill burgers with their family that night.

It's not just about the value. It's about how you talk about it and how you put it into action.

I recently talked to a company whose mantra was “grit and gratitude.” I loved that because it's only two things, it's memorable, and there's a little juxtaposition between them.

Companies sometimes think more is better. Maybe you're better off choosing one or two things and going deeper.

David: I like grit and gratitude because it doesn't sound like everybody else. Under those two ideas, you can still have many different behaviors and principles. But at least there's something distinctive to connect to.

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How Understanding Values Tripled a Fundraising Target

Erin: What's one example where an organization used your research and made a change that had a really profound impact?

David: We worked with a hospital foundation in Canada that wanted to attract more high-net-worth donors and increase the size of their gifts.

We profiled people in the community who had previously donated to health-related causes but had never donated to this particular foundation.

An interesting pattern emerged.

Many of the prospective donors were women who had recently been widowed and, for the first time in their lives, were making major financial decisions independently.

Our research showed how important that newfound independence and agency were to them.

So the foundation changed its approach.

Instead of saying, “Here's where your money is going,” they said, essentially, “Your gift could help us in several different ways. Which area would you like your money to support?”

They sat down with donors and let them decide what mattered to them.

By giving those women agency over the decision, the foundation tripled its fundraising target.

Erin: Wow.

David: They framed their strategy, marketing, and messaging around what mattered most to those people.

The decision suddenly became an easy yes because the organization wasn't just asking for money. It was giving people an opportunity to act on something they deeply valued.

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What Values Alignment Feels Like

Erin: I think about this in my own life too. When I was evaluating financial advisors, it was amazing how few people seemed interested in understanding what mattered to me.

For me, I wanted someone I could actually connect with and have real conversations with. Not a bunch of BS.

If somebody had simply asked me what was most important to me, I would have basically handed them the answer to how to sell to me.

David: And here's what's interesting about those situations.

When you find a person, product, job, or situation that genuinely aligns with what matters most to you, you often notice the absence of things.

You're not second-guessing yourself. You're not lying awake at night running the pros and cons through your head. You're not constantly trying to convince yourself to make the relationship work.

It just works.

Erin: It clicks into place like a Lego.

David: Exactly.

Think about parties. There are parties where you walk in and immediately think, “Nope. How quickly can we leave?”

And then there are parties where you want to stay all night.

You may not be able to explain exactly why. Maybe it's the people, the music, the room, the energy, or some combination of all of it.

But something about that environment aligns with what matters to you.

Is Authenticity a Value?

Erin: This is where your work and mine dovetail. People are craving something they can connect to, whether it's a salesperson, a leader, or a company.

Wallpaper corporate values aren't enough. You need specificity, examples, and authenticity. Give people something they can plug into so they can determine whether it aligns with them.

And it's actually better if someone can clearly say, “No, this doesn't align with me,” than to give them nothing but vanilla and leave them thinking, “I don't know.”

David: You said earlier that authenticity might be the 57th value. I'm going to reframe that.

Authenticity is, I'm gonna say, not a value, it's the end result of values alignment.

If you're living authentically, you're living according to what matters most to you.

Erin: I think authenticity might also be part of how you uncover the values in the first place. It's the stories, uncommon language, specificity, and willingness to actually expose who you are that allow people to feel what those values really mean.

David: I think we're talking about the same thing from different layers. You're looking at the umbrella. I'm down in the weeds.

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The Question That Changed a High-Stakes Negotiation

Erin: I have a story about the phrase “what matters most.”

When I became interim CEO, I had to renegotiate our largest contract. The vendor wanted more money, and giving it to them could have made an already difficult financial situation much worse.

It was high stakes, and I'm not exactly known for being a giant planner.

Early in the first conversation, I asked the executive, “What matters most to you in this negotiation?”

He wasn't expecting the question, so he answered honestly.

His company expected to pursue an IPO, and long-term contracts were incredibly important because investors would want confidence that major clients weren't about to leave.

Suddenly, I understood that this negotiation wasn't only about price. A long-term agreement mattered tremendously to him.

Switching vendors would have been incredibly difficult for us anyway, so I was perfectly comfortable discussing a long-term contract.

That one question completely changed what I understood about the negotiation.

David: “What matters most to you about this situation?” or “What matters most to you about this outcome?” are fantastic questions in sales and negotiations.

But you can also learn a lot by simply paying attention and being curious.

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How to Discover Someone's Values Through Small Talk

David: Let's use you as an example.

There's a photo behind you. What's it a picture of?

Erin: My family. My husband and my two children.

David: And I can see books behind you. What's one of the most recent books you added?

Erin: Probably Fans First by Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas.

David: Are you a baseball fan?

Erin: Not specifically. I'm a big sports fan, though.

David: Where did that come from?

Erin: My grandmother.

She passed away when she was 62, so I was only 11. But I remember sitting in her living room with her. She was about 4'11", sitting in a green leather chair beside the dialysis machine she used at home, smoking a cigarette with a police scanner nearby.

She lived in a town of about 800 people, so I'm not sure how much exciting police activity there was to scan.

And she always had sports on.

She didn't just watch sports. She participated. She yelled at the TV. She was spicy. She absolutely hated Notre Dame, so I still hate Notre Dame today basically as an ode to her.

For a woman of her generation, being that passionate about sports was unusual.

And I think that's where I got it.

The other reason I still love sports is the authenticity of it. Nobody knows what's going to happen. It's not scripted. I love the energy and unpredictability.

I also love the lack of commitment. I can watch and leave whenever I want.

David: That little conversation already gave me several clues.

Family is important to you. Creativity is clearly there. I hear some tradition in the way you talk about carrying your grandmother's influence forward.

Experiences are important to you. The way you described sitting in that room with your grandmother is incredibly vivid.

And when you said you like being able to leave whenever you want, independence came roaring to the forefront.

Erin: One thousand percent.

And what's interesting is that most people stop too soon.

They see the family photo and ask, “Are those your kids?” Or they notice something from Michigan and ask, “Are you from Michigan?”

But then they stop.

To uncover what matters to someone, you have to be genuinely curious enough to ask the next question.

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The Third Why

David: There's a technique I call The Third Why.

You might ask somebody why they chose to have a family photo taken at a particular place. They'll give you an answer.

Then you ask why that mattered.

And then you go one level deeper again.

Three whys down is often where people start telling you about a value.

The first answer is usually surface level. The second starts getting somewhere. By the third, you're getting closer to what is actually driving the decision.

Erin: That's the key. You can't necessarily plan all of those questions ahead of time. You have to actually listen and be curious enough to follow where the answer goes.

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When the Traditional Definition of Success Stops Working

Erin: We ask everyone for a “buck that” story, meaning a time when you bucked the norm, stopped following the expected path, and did something different. What's yours?

David: Quitting the big company and going out on my own.

That was scary.

I remember the first days working from home, finding all kinds of ways to stall. Making sure the pencils were in exactly the right place. Rearranging things. Eventually you realize there's nothing left to organize. You actually have to do the work.

But as we've been talking about, I have an independence streak a mile wide.

I once told my coach I couldn't understand why I wasn't getting anything done even though I had deadlines everywhere.

He asked if I'd blocked the work on my calendar.

I said yes.

He asked, “So why aren't you doing what's on your calendar?”

And I realized: because I don't want my calendar telling me what to do.

Erin: Because you told yourself to do it, and now yourself can't tell you what to do.

David: Exactly. My calendar is bossing me around, and I'm resisting my own calendar.

That independence was one of the values pushing me toward working for myself.

The Day David Couldn't Get on the Elevator

Erin: Was there traditional career advice you followed for a while and eventually realized wasn't right for you?

David: Keep your job.

Why would you work for yourself and rely on your own ability to earn a living when you could get a steady paycheck every two weeks?

I grew up at a time when the path to success seemed much narrower. It felt like the goal was to become the CEO of Coca-Cola.

Erin: Or become a consultant to the CEO of Coca-Cola. Those were basically the two business models we knew.

David: Exactly.

The world told me I was supposed to run as fast as possible up the corporate ladder. Learn to love the suits and ties. Play the politics. Run a board.

Eventually I realized it wasn't working for me.

I actually had a breakdown.

I was working for a big company and one morning I was standing in the elevator lobby waiting to go upstairs.

I couldn't get on the elevator.

It felt like there was a physical barrier in front of me. I could not make myself get on that elevator and go face everything waiting upstairs.

So I turned around, went home, and called in to say, “I don't think I'm coming back.”

It took me almost a year to recover from that and start building what I needed to build on my own.

David: It was 10 years of living a lie that I didn't know was a lie, because I'd only been taught that this was the truth.

When I finally figured out it wasn't the truth, at least not for me, it was like being slapped across the face.

That's something I try to pass along now.

Whatever the internet tells you, Instagram tells you, your parents tell you, or society tells you is the path to success is only useful if it's actually your path to success.

Figure out what matters most to you. Figure out your values. Then craft your version of life and run in that direction.

Erin: And the experience you went through is part of what allows you to give that lesson to somebody else now.

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David Allison's Advice for Making Work Suck Less

Erin: What's your final piece of advice for making work suck less?

David: Find ways to make your work more about what matters to you.

Volunteer for that project. Take the extra assignment that aligns with you. When you can, move away from the work that doesn't.

Even if you're working inside a set of constraints and don't have much flexibility, almost everybody has some ability to maneuver. You can choose what you're going to lean into and what you're not.

Make your work more about what matters most to you, and you'll be happier.