Tools
Team Values
By setting team values together, team members understand what is important to their colleagues and what behaviors are expected day to day.
Length
30-45 Minutes
Participants
Core Team
Why Do It
- Fast forward the early stages of team formation
- Provide a baseline for feedback
When To Do It
- When a new team is formed
How To Do It
- Generate values important to each team member
- Group similar values together
- Summarize grouped values
Step By Step
-
Write the following prompts on the whiteboard:
- “We believe…”
- “We value…”
- “We respect…”
- “We __”
-
Set a timer for 6 minutes and have the team silently generate value statements using the prompts on the board. Each value statement should be on its own sticky note.
-
Go around the room individually and ask each team member to share a value statement and their thinking behind it (especially if it’s not obvious). Collect any similar value statements from other team members and place the groups/themes in rows on the whiteboard
-
Repeat until all sticky notes have been shared and are grouped on the whiteboard
-
Thank the team for the great content and explain that they will be typed up and summarized. Take a picture of the output.
-
Post-Workshop Actions
- Type up the sticky notes written by the team, keeping them grouped. Be sure this document is in the team’s shared drive/folder
- Summarize each group with one value statement. This might be an umbrella sentence that describes the group or one of the value statements in that group.
- Take the list of summarized value statements and compile them into a single document. Print it out and hang it up in the team area.