How Can You Determine Your Team’s Values?
Hint: What are your home core values?
Goal: companies don’t have values but employees do.
Who Creates Company’s Core Values?
As we discussed in yesterday’s post (12/22/20) a lot of companies create core value(s) statements. Unfortunately they are just “nice” words that most if not all people working for the company do not remember.
I even described a way to embed the value into the company way. BUT that does not make them the ones that the people truly live.
So what? How do we fix this?
Imagine a typical household. The two partners each has their personal values. Let’s say that partner A has values A,B, and C. Partner B has values B,C, and D.
What are the values of the household?
It is the overlap values of B and C. Both partners value those and most likely act that way. Notice that A and D are not shared. They are individual values but not household values.
There is a belief that a boss should not have more than 7 direct reports so let’s use that as a basis. Now imagine a team of 7 people.
Let us limit those 7 people to 10 values each that they truly live. That is 70 values that make up the team value set. How much is the overlap? My guess is that most likely 3–4 values.
How do we determine those?
Well you have to sit the team down and give them 15 minutes to write down their 10 values. Values that they actually do and that if you ask any one of the team members they would vouch that they have observed that value in action.
Now that you have those 70 values written down,
- sort them so that you eliminate repeat values and to see the frequency with which they occur
- Write those down on a board or large paper in order of frequency
- Put that paper on a wall .
- Give everyone 5 stickers
- Ask them to put stickers on five values that they really believe and do.
What I believe you will find is that there are 3–4 values which have most energy in the group. Not everyone will share them. Majority will share them and act on them.
Are the values the team has identified ones that you believe will lead to success of the team? If they are not, stop and discuss and rework until everyone is committed.
Now that you have the team core values you have to go to the embedding part by making it real and actionable every month with the words you use and actions you take during the month.
And lastly, communicating those with your customers. They need to know what your teams’ values and actions are.
My seven cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Nov. 2020)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.
