OBJECTIVES

To help your team members clarify their individual values, agree on shared team values, and develop a vision of what they want to become as a team.

ABOUT

This Module is about accepting the diversity of values the team members have and making sure each person feels heard and validated. It is also about acknowledging that high performance teams can be composed of people with various values as long as there is respect and appreciation for differences.

This module helps team leaders (as perhaps the most influential individuals on the team) clarify why values they hold and share how these values guide their decision making and actions as a leader.

The module helps teams clarify that their vision for how they want to work together is not the mission. The vision is the dream of how they will work together and function as a team. The objective of the module is to help get members’ values and visions aligned.

WHEN TO USE

Use this Module when:

• helping establish the core motives and shared values of team members
• revitalizing established teams who have not discussed their values and vision in some time and could benefit from renewed motivation
• engaging teams in more heart-felt conversations about what they are striving to be together rather than reviewing daily task and project completion issues
• identifying some that might be leading to conflict within the team and among leaders
• helping team members better understand why other team members’ behaviors may explained by certain strongly held values
• working to increase tolerance and understanding among team members who come from diverse backgrounds and hold different values about teamwork
• onboarding new members into an existing team. How great would it be for a new member to hear what the existing team has established as core values.

This module, Identifying our Values and Vision, has two components.

1) The Discussion Guide and Worksheet

This discussion guide, which is what the team members complete, contains step-by-step interactive fields, check boxes, and open fill-in spaces. This guide can be completed online using the interactive pdf and then shared or referenced as the team discusses each step.  Some steps are designed to be completed together.

2) Facilitator/User’s Guide

These support materials are available to help guide the leader or facilitator through the steps of the discussion guide.

The facilitator may be an outside consultant, the team leader, or one of the team members. However, everyone can help ensure success by reading through some of the tips and suggestions in this guide.

NOTES FROM DR. PATRICK HANDLEY

The values a team selects as their core driving principles will be a composite of the individual member’s values. Try to make identifying these values a process that honors individual differences and builds a foundation for what the team feels is a solid basis for their daily work.

The beauty of the module is that it validates everyone’s different personal values and it invites the team to reach agreement on values they all accept.
Don’t expect everyone to agree exactly on each other’s values. I continually remind teams that the goal is to get close to a working list, an acceptable set of values and that is a satisfactory completion. Then, they that can add to this list over time.

The vision is the list of values put into action. It is a description or bullet list for how the members will strive to work together as a team. In fact, the reason for creating a list of values in the first section of the module is to use these to guide the team in the second section as they develop their vision.

I like to emphasize that the team vision helps them create an engaged work experience and that they, as a team, can work together differently (more positively) than other teams in their organization. This is a team vision they are creating, not a company wide culture change. The team can be exceptional even if the organization is a work in progress.

Since the content (values and vision) is very personal, watch that you give air time but don’t pry or push too hard. If some team members can’t quite articulate why certain values are important to them, provide plenty of examples and give them time.

Keep your eye on the end goal which is to finish with a list of shared values and a vision for how the team can function that all members can get behind and support.

Accept that some team members have never really thought about their values an vision for the team – they may have just taken their position as a “job” and this may have been a pattern in the past and they might not have ever stopped to think about these important issues embedded in conversations about values an vision. They may need to be given permission to just listen and “pass” when it comes to some of the personal points.