60 minute session: Team values
Session Focus: Identifying personal and shared team values.
About Values: Your values answer three big questions: What do I stand for? What makes me feel fulfilled? What truly matters?
Session Goal: Identify personal and shared values, then commit to working in alignment with those values.
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1. Warming Up – The Elevator Experiment (10 minutes)
Don’t worry – you’ll be let out in 20 minutes – BUT you’re stuck in an elevator.
There are two other people with you. You notice one energises you, the other drains you. Note down the characteristics of both characters. Share back the 1-2 characteristics of each of these two fictional people. [unpack: this is a window into the traits we value in ourselves and others].
2. Guided Solo Reflection – (10 minutes)
(i)Think back on work over the last 12 months. What are the 2-3 work moments you are proudest of.
(ii)What values did you demonstrate across those moments? (note down 1-2).
(iii)Of the values noted, which 1-2 most meaningfully informs how you work when you’re working at your best (e.g. tenacity, creativity, care).
3. Sharing Values – (15 minutes)
Ask each team member to share the onevalue of theirs that they feel is most important to the team’s happiness and success this year – and why (e.g. “curiosity, because there’s so much change ahead..”).
4. Common Ground – (15 minutes)
Capture the value each person shared on a shared document /post it notes. What are the key themes? Remove repetition, and find ways to capture the collective values into 3 key words(care, ambition, rigour). These are guiding values for how the team works at its best.
5. Commit and Close - (10 minutes)
Share ideas for how the team can live those 3 values, and individually commit to an action (e.g. I’m going to apply more rigour by seeking feedback on my proposals earlier).
Calendar to check back in on the values in 30 days.
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Three science-backed reasons this method works
You stick with things that feel like you. When what you're doing lines up with what you actually care about, the motivation shows up on its own. You don't have to force it. Decades of research on self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2017) keep landing on the same finding: motivation that comes from inside you lasts. Motivation that comes from pressure or someone else's expectations doesn't. A review of 184 separate studies found the same pattern over and over (Ng et al., 2012). People acting from their own values feel better and keep going for longer.
Value fit is the quiet reason people stay. A review of 172 studies found that when people feel their values fit the place they work, they're more committed to the job, more satisfied in it, and far less likely to leave (Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman and Johnson, 2005). The flip side matters too. When the fit isn't there, people don't always quit out loud. They quit quietly first, and nobody notices until they're already gone.
Saying your values out loud changes how your team handles friction. A study of 92 real workgroups found that teams with unspoken value differences had more conflict, lower satisfaction and higher turnover intent (Jehn, Northcraft and Neale, 1999). The interesting part is that the differences themselves weren't really the problem. The problem was that nobody was naming them. Once values get said out loud, what felt like "this person is difficult" starts to look like "we care about different things here." That's a conversation a team can actually have.