How to Create Team Values

This is important to read for you if you are  an entrerpenuer starting a new company , a project manager leading a complex projec, leading a virtual team  or team that has internal and external team members, if you are e teamleader and want to establish  team culture by design.

A team is a group of people who are inside your company or collaborating with you on your projects towards delivering a specific result. You, as a Project Leader, can use different strategies to create shared team values that boost the performance and motivation of all teammates involved. In this blog post, I share what are team values and why we need to discover them, how team values relate to organizational values, and how to create shared team values by design.

What are team values?

Team values are beliefs and convictions that determine the behavior, decisions and performance of team members. Team values are reflected in the code of conduct. When a Team has established "Shared Values" you can expect that  everyone is on the same page even when the management is not present.

The leadership team values lead to corporate values, and when you grow and hire new people, make sure you develop a mutual understanding of these values with all partners. , Values are not visible but show up as in  integral part of your everyday work experience in your team and for your clients. The values creators of your culture and the foundation of your corporate identity.

The Team values shape the Team culture.

• The values practiced within your team drive your team culture 
• Your culture determines the quality of the relationship towards your clients, stakeholders and teammates 
• Your organization's culture finally drives the results of your business. 

The Team values are reflected in the code of conduct.

We alway ask how do our values show up in our behavior. What is our typical behavior?

What are the rules of the game in your team?

The Team values are visible in your attitude  towards stakeholders.

How does our attitude towards stakeholders is relfected in our daily actions?

In my values workshops, I like to focus on  3 categories for Team values.

• People - Me, my team, my clients, our  behavior in relationship, communication, attitude
• Results - Quality, Time, Resources
• Systems - Processes, Procedures, Regulations, Financing

We alway ask how do our values show up in these areas. What is our typical behavior?

A very interesting question is to understand what do the people in my team value most, the values in Systems, the values related to People and Relationships or the values related to achieving results.

Why is it important to design your Team values?

Values are enduring and form the core of our personality, influencing the choices we make, the people we trust, the appeals we respond to, and the way we invest our time and energy. If we want to act in alignment and collaborate effectively, a shared identity of our team is formed by shared beliefs and values.

Here are some key areas that will be shaped by our values. Our team values will show up in o

• our productivity,
• our performance
• our relationship with our clients
• our financial results,
• our creativity,
• our vision,
• our attitude to our daily work 
• and so much more. 

Knowing our values helps us, especially to improve in these three areas of our life and business:

1. Create your team identity and a great team culture

Our values define our Team culture and our Team identity. Great engineers and experts go to work where they find a great team culture. The team identity attracts or repels talent.  You want your team to think and judge about work and client related things in a certain way. The team values and beliefs shape our team members habits, actions, behavior and affect the team's performance.

2. Build better Relationships

We can build much better relationships with other people by understanding and respecting other people's values that are definitely different from ours. I had the pleasure to work with international teams, and they had very different understandings about punctuality, quality, initiative, being assertive, leadership, giving feedback, being ambitious, rules and regulations, structure, responsibility, collaboration, empowerment and others values.  One of my tasks was to help these teams of engineers, financial experts and managers to create shared values and a team culture.

I extended that process by including the key internal and external stakeholders.

We all know that like attracts like, and we used the discussion about values and beliefs with stakeholder to attract project financing, like-minded team members, partners by aiming for long-lasting win-win relationships. 

Once we are aware of our values, we can change and adopt new values that serve better our vision and the goals we want to achieve. 

3. Grow and get what you want

What brought you here, will not bring you to the place you want to go. A team of 2 to 5 or 100 will need some different sets of values to collaborate successfully and create great results.

You will need to change the organizational values every time you decide to grow. If you want to get different results, you may not just encourage new behavior, but start with upgrading the set of values.  Start with defining the values that drive this new behavior.

This is why many entrepreneurs get stuck and can't scale because they do not see how their present value system is holding them back from attracting the right experts and the bigger clients.

So many engineers fails as leaders unless they sit down, get mentored and coached to help them to change their values, behaviors and actions in a way that allows them to lead and support the team of experts they lead successfully. 

If your team grows, and you need more structure and new systems to serve your clients, it is not enough to introduce a new workflow or automation, but you will need to start with designing new values and beliefs that support these new process and systems and want to make them work. If you miss that step away, change to grow and scale will feel hard and can get lost in waste millions in systems that nobody uses to create great stakeholder experiences.

How are personal values different from the team values and organizational values?

Your team values shape your team culture.

Your team values overall need to align with the organizational culture, however the priorities for a sales team a leadership team, leaders board team and production team and serve team will be different due to their type of work and their specific results they want to create.

The values that are supporting effective results in your team depend very much on the level of consciousness of every single person in your team. Sales teams in large organization can have very different team values in different countries, depending on the people's personal values, team size, the nationality, the education, the country, the specific stakeholders they are dealing with.

The values of an organization shape the organizational culture.

• The values practiced within your team drive your team culture 
• Your culture determines the quality of the relationship towards your clients, stakeholders and teammates 
• Your organization's culture finally drives the results of your business. 

This is an example of the team value system of a leadership team that is aligned and shows high level of cooperation and collaboration. If the red color bar would be the longest, the leaders would be more competitive and ego driven than supporting the overall team.

Service teams and sales team are very likely to have different team culture, but being part of a larger organization, they should have as well some shared values so that they can collaborate effectively. 

If your personal values do not match the team culture, you may not feel well, not at all motivated and do not deliver results like you would if you feel great and enjoy the culture.

Every business organization has a culture, and every team has a culture, a good on a bad one that depends.

Not everyone is aware of it sown personal values, and neither t every team leader is aware of the values that they practice and live in his organization.

The point is to become aware of the values and design the ones you can agree and live in your daily actions.

If you want to change the culture of an organization, you need to start with designing the new values that the new culture will need to drive new results. You start in the core of the organization with the shareholder, and the top level board and C level executives. The organizational results ill always reflect the values the executive team live by.

In order to grow, to see something new, you need new values and create the future identity 

Here are some team values from our team workshops.

• Vision
• Responsibility
• Honesty
• Openness.
• Accountability.
• Integrity.
• Compassion
• Enthusiasm.
• Respect.
• Teamwork. 

The big mistake teams make is to put just words on a wall. Words mean different things to different people. It is important to provide a clear definition and examples of what the behaviors look like for each of these words.

Shared team values unite the team around common beliefs and serve as a compass that team members can follow when they don’t have access to a manager. Do you have team values? Get started today!

How to create shared team values?

While many organizations have statements of their values, team do not live by these. We believe there is great power in making our values explicit and communicating them with others in your team.

Let´s  apply  the framework People. Results, Systems to our  process how to create shared team values

The People- we need to get clear who are the people - who is inside of  the team and  how many teams you will be connected ( inside your company or external stakeholder , clients), suppliers .

The Results- get clear on the purpose  of the value exercise. what work do  you deliver as a team, what do you want to achieve, what new business you want to build, what big vision you want to make a reality. How much time do you have for this value process. what is the purpose for this value process, what money can you invest?

The Systems-what process can you use? can you meet in person ? are you online? what communication channel do you use? Can you use lego brick, outdoor exercise or are you dong that all online? What communication channels you use with the other stakeholders?

The team values should follow the 3 C Connect, Create, Cultivate 

• Connect the Team members
  
• Create the Team Values
• Cultivate the Team Values in daily actions  

Here is a sample of how we run a values' workshop discussion with the top leadership team:

Step 0 Introduction to the concept values

We introduce the concept and power of values in a keynote style presentation. You can watch a webinar by clicking here: 

Step 1 Connect with your People by sharing Personal Values 

We start with creating awareness for the  personal values of all team members or the leadership team. If possible, we ask all participants to take an individual Value system survey.
The team prepares prior to the workshop  a tValue system team survey. That will take each team member maximum 20 min online. They take the online survey and discover their personal value system.  In the workshop we print the summary graphs of those reports and shares these with the other participants. We write main 3 values a on moderation cards a or sticky note and put them on the wall to see how we match with the other team members. 

The beauty  of this process is there  is no right or wrong and as a leader I focus on that there is no judgment. Every one picks his most important values and writes them on a card and e pins it on the big wall chart.

If we are meeting face to face  I like to use a set of Values Cards and Value lists to choose from. However, I don’t advise using any predetermined lists. Why? Values aren’t selected; we discover and reveal them. If you start with a list, your conscious mind will evaluate which values are “better” than others. 

Step 2 Create  shared Team Values

Now we design the new values for your  team. I like to put people into small groups of maximum 5. First we assess the present values of the  team, or if this is the new startup, we brainstorm our list of key priority values.

If you have the option to use the  9 Levels Value Team survey in addition to your personal profile  you will get  scientific proven data that give you detailed information from the “outside” about what exactly are the  values that you live and work and show in your team. 

Once you know the present values, you can start designing the  new values you want to implement. 

Brainstorm typical behavior you want to show in your team, towards clients, stakeholders, results, suppliers etc. Uncover the values and beliefs that are linked to this behavior. 

Collect and organize all these values on a big joint team values wall and group them into similar values,

Sometimes we vote, and sometimes it is easy to discuss what are the 10 priority values of the team. By moderating this process, it is important to not just rely on voting and to ensure that the meaning of these values is explained and understood.

Now we ask the team to nail down and choose the 5 most important values and describe together what behavior and action in the daily work life will be reflecting these values towards:

• Clients
• Employees
• Suppliers
• Stakeholders
• Finance
• Leaders

The teams write a clear definition of what do they mean by that value and give examples of what the behaviors should look like for each of these values.

Step 3.  Cultivate the values

Now it sis time to live these values by implementing the new habits you want to show, The biggest mistake I see here is that the values get communicated on a website and are not lived by.

What really works well is having a chart with the values on the wall as a reminder where you all can see it, Online screensavers, morning standup meetings are used as a reminder, kind  feedback and weekly behavior  goals have been a game changer for many teams.

Do not forget to check in from time to time to evaluate the impact t of your values. Meet  with your team and talk about how do  these values are reflected in your behavior, how doe they support your results and how can you help each other to change behavior with fund and ease.

Recommendation

If you meet with your team for a project  make sure you define your values or minimum the rules of the game so everyone knows what you in your team want to understand by being punctual in time,  showing integrity, and being customer oriented.

The value exercise needs 1 hour to 4 hours time and yes you can repeat the conversation about values , reshape and refine the description  and go deeper as your team grows and evolves. But just even a 10 minutes to begin of a meeting spent on what is the behavior desired here in this meeting goes a long way and helps.

Read more

 How to measure personal values click here