Value Stories

In the beginning of the quarantine I understood that I could not pretend to work in the same way that I did in person, nor let time pass without being in effective communication both with the team and with each of my collaborators.

I decided to start from scratch by raising the most important things to talk about in the team to make sure our work as a group is productive, happy and stress free, (reference: team canvas) starting with the definition of our values, something that we had not done until now as a work team.?

3 Fundamental questions about Values: 1) What do they represent?, 2) What are the principles that guide us?, 3) What are the common values that we want to be at the core of our team?

But where would we get the values from?

We took them from Management 3.0 “Big Values List”, which is an excellent compendium of examples for values (personal values or team values).

We were left with the task of taking a week to select values from "The Big Values List" and meet again to establish our values.

After the week we meet in video-conference and used an online tool where every team member wrote the value that they had chosen and then we all voted. And what if someone really believes in one value, can we expect him or her to give up that value? Is voting for value fair? Since this was the first time we defined our values as a team, the simple fact of being able to do it and that everyone in the team had a voice and vote, was enough to make the experience a very valuable activity where there was the opportunity to raise them as a team, that is, not imposed by me as a leader, nor influenced by the values of the organization, but we started doing this as a totally free experiment. Perhaps in the future, as a follow up exercise, we will be able to establish a different dynamic to review our values, but with the maturity that this first experience has given us.

Happiness, Teamwork and Self Discipline

These are now our Values, which we capture in a board using virtual post its as shown in the image. Then, we were left with another task: to take one more week to write the definition of these Values as those principles and qualities that identify us and define us as a Work Team. So everyone shared their definition of each Value, then I took the main ideas of each definition and refined them and wrote them in an objective and professional way, this is how we documented our Values.

Having clarity on the values can make a significant contribution towards good behaviors and a better culture. The primary function of leadership is to nurture culture through values. Just as in the feedback sessions I made reference to certain competencies in order for us to maintain high performance, I can do the same now, but referring to our Values as a Team. The key is to invite and / or discourage certain behaviors. At this point, when I shared the whole exercise with my boss, we both agreed to share it with my peers as well so they could do the same with their teams.

But we weren't finished yet, we needed to check how closely our values as a team matched the values of the organization, and the good news was that although they are not the same, they are absolutely compatible and complementary.

As a result, the team identity was reinforced in each member, there was a feeling of satisfaction at having established our values by ourselves, as well as an intrinsic loyalty to live by them because they were conceived by ourselves, and what made this exercise something extraordinary was having done it for the first time and also 100% remotely. Now we are a stronger team, in addition to be a reference to the whole organization proving to others that establishing team values is possible, and that the pandemic is not an impediment, but a salvageable obstacle.

Additional Learning with Values Stories

As Management 3.0 Facilitator, I have learned?that I can enrich my Workshops by sharing these experiences so that each student has real experiences that they can immediately practice. In fact,?from now on I am going to make sure that from the beginning when forming a work team we establish our values,?and what I can do differently is that I will be able to constantly reinforce them in order that each member of the team live our values and be good representatives of each one of them.

So I encourage you to establish your values as a team so that you can then generate stories of how you live them, as you can see it has been a great experience to define them for the first time; I suggest you check the detail of this practice on the?official page of Management 3.0.

If you have questions, or would like to know how to implement this,?please let me know as I can gladly help you, for more information you can always click on the following page ; )