Bringing Team Values to Life
In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, gone are the days when generic marketing messages were mistaken for meaningful culture. Teams that are serious about performing well – and staying well – understand that their values are the very heart of their identity, shaping how they behave and succeed as a team and in relation to others.
Your team values are so much more than eye-catching propaganda; they’re the bedrock of your collective identity and help create a strong, unifying bond capable of propelling it forward. Articulating your team values is key – but just the beginning – and truly successful teams don’t stop there… They drill down into these values to find out what they actually mean and most importantly, how they manifest in real-world behaviours.
Uncovering Your Team Values
Articulating your team’s identity is an important first step in being able to drill down into it to uncover your team values. Our recent blog post Team Identity 101 covers how you can start articulating your team identity, so if you haven’t already defined yours, it’s a good place to start.
Another way to uncover your values is by telling your team’s story. An engaging way is to draw the team’s lifeline – marking the successes and triumphs, the lows and learnings to encourage reflection on those events and extract the team’s core values and beliefs.
This is where working with a team coach can be invaluable, as they will ask the right questions to prompt revealing answers to define what truly matters to your team and what can be left behind.
From Ideas to Action: Why Values Alone Aren’t Enough
Once your values are defined, the real challenge begins: transforming them into routine, everyday behaviours.
It’s easy to put words like ‘integrity’ and ‘accountability’ in a mission statement and display them on your wall, but the truth is, without action, values are just words – and teams that fail to recognise this and operationalise their values risk becoming disengaged and ineffective.
Conversely, turning values into behaviours ensures these principles come to life in ways the team interacts internally and externally. For example, a team that names one of its values as accountability might adopt behaviours such as clear communication, timely responses, and taking responsibility for mistakes – which when adopted by everyone in the team, send a clear message about their identity and what they value as a collective to all who come into contact with them.
This is where Brené Brown’s approach is invaluable by providing a structured, step-by-step process to help your team take its values from ideas to action.
Operationalise Your Values: Brené Brown’s Method
Brené Brown’s process of turning words into behaviours is a collaborative, hands-on exercise, so have your flip charts and markers at the ready! Here’s a brief overview of the process:
Step 1: Build a “container” by setting boundaries with your team to ensure open and respectful discussions.
Step 2: Write each organisational value on a large sheet of paper and post them around the room.
Step 3: Have each team member list behaviours they believe support each value, using sticky notes. Generate as many as you like, starting BIG.
Step 4: Once the team has covered all the values, have everyone post their sticky notes on the corresponding value sheet simultaneously.
Step 5: Participants now take a silent walk around the room to review the behaviours listed under each value.
Step 6: In small working groups assigned to each value sheet, look for patterns and common themes in the behaviours.
Step 7: In the same groups, write common behaviours for each value and discuss any outliers, keeping them aside for further consideration if needed.
Step 8: Lastly, each group presents their value and behaviours to the whole team, who can then discuss and pressure-test these behaviours with real-life examples.
Turning your values into everyday behaviours takes thoughtful planning, guidance and action. This is where working with a team coach can help your team bridge the gap between ideas and impact.
If you’re ready to operationalise your values and see them come to life in your team’s daily interactions, our team coaching programmes will provide you with the support and strategies to put value-driven behaviours at the heart of your team’s success.
