Teamwork Exercise: Defining Your Team’s Values
Introduction
Our values drive our personal decisionmaking and are foundational to selecting an option or choosing a direction. As individual team members, it is important for each of us to recognize and articulate the beliefs and principles that we hold so that all team members can understand and appreciate one another’s personal perspectives. It will aid you in fostering a collaborative climate in which productive discussions are much more likely to occur. It will also help you begin to define the standards by which team members will hold themselves and each other accountable.
Exercise Purpose
- To understand and appreciate your own individual values and recognize how they might impact the work of the team;
- To encourage an appreciation for the individual values of others on your team in order to work together in a way that holds in high regard the personal values of all team members; and
- To develop a set of team values related to the work at hand that are collectively agreed upon by all team members.
Exercise Instructions
- Each team member should articulate some of their own core personal values. Think about the types of behaviors or attitudes that you find agreeable or enjoyable in your work environment; consider as well the types of behaviors or attitudes that you find to be annoying, bothersome, or troubling. In addition, think about the beliefs that underlie your substantive work. This will help you to focus on your work–related values.
- Listen closely to the values that are offered by others. Doing so will aid you in understanding and appreciating what is important to your fellow team members. Appreciating the values of other team members will enable you to better understand their perspective, and to identify values that are collectively accepted, agreed upon, or appreciated. It will also aid all team members in understanding the actions or attitudes that are not welcomed or desired.
- Develop a list of shared team values that will inspire and drive the work of the team.
- In order to stimulate thinking about each team member’s own personal
values, ask each person to offer opinions about the values that the individuals
listed below might have possessed. Some suggested interpretations of the
implicit values follow each individual’s statement.
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. ”
Theodore Roosevelt, September 7, 1903
(Implicit values: hard work, doing work that has value)“ There is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
Booker T. Washington, 1901
(Implicit values: dignity of all people, dignity of manual labor, respect for all kinds of work)“Well done is better than well said.”
Benjamin Franklin, 1737
(Implicit values: action, integrity) - Record the team’s shared values. Refer back to it as often as necessary during the course of the team’s work. Revisiting what drives the team on this very personal level will be a continued source of inspiration to the team as it works toward completion of its goals.
“The right to be let alone is that most valued by civilized man.”
Louis D. Brandeis, 1928
(Implicit values: privacy, personal rights, personal freedom, respect for others)