Journey to a dream team series: What is a dream team? What does it take? And how will you get there? The journey includes several iterations, feedback loops, coaching, presentations, and developing handy visual tools to manifest the implemented changes along the way. We will be sharing all insights with you in the upcoming five separate articles: The best team setup, Build a vision & mission, Team values & behaviours, Right goal setting, Communication & feedback. Every article will include a substantial piece of content, concept/method you can download and work through with your team.
Do your personal values align with your company values and those of your employees? Do you even know your values and how to align them with the people you work with? Understanding the importance of aligning values is crucial, as it helps achieve organizational goals and fosters a strong foundation for success. If not, having a workshop in which you develop and define shared values in a team might be just the thing for you!
At Wayra, it is our mission – and one of our shared values – to find innovative startups, support them on different levels and pave the way for a mutually beneficial collaboration. Our mission statement guides our strategic direction, and aligning our values with this mission helps us achieve our goals more effectively. Together with one of our successfully supported startups, CONUFACTUR has put together a workshop design guide that allows you to work independently on creating shared values in your company – without any expensive coaching. Let your business become part of our startup community!
Executive Summary
- If your company has no clear values, your team members must rely on their personal values, which can lead to miscommunication and conflict.
- Establishing company values that are shared values promotes harmony and ensures that your team has clear instructions on how to act in certain situations.
- Creating shared values does not necessarily call for a professional workshop. Following six steps, you can work out your company values on your own.
- The process typically involves creating an initial draft of your values, sharing updated drafts with your team for feedback, and collaboratively agreeing on revisions until you reach a final draft that everyone supports.
A definition of shared values
Every person has their own personal values according to which they act on a day-to-day basis. Those values can immensely differ from other people’s values, potentially resulting in conflict. Shared values are just what the term suggests – values we share with the people around us. Teams can collaboratively agree on these shared values through open dialogue, listening to diverse perspectives, and making joint decisions to ensure authenticity. The more our values align with those around us, the more we move in the same direction and the more harmonious we are in doing so.
Developing and refining shared values is an ongoing process: teams should create an initial draft, explain the meaning behind each value, gather feedback, and produce updated drafts before finalizing a final draft that accurately reflects the organization.
Why you might need to align your shared values
Despite often being deprioritized, your company values are extremely important: They can affect how your staff handles difficult situations, how successful your company reaches its goals and how well your employees work together. They set the tone for your startup culture and make the difference between people being happy with work or not.
When your employees’ personal values do not align with your company values, fundamental discussions will arise, job satisfaction will decrease, engagement will drop and personal relationships will suffer. That is why many modern companies follow the principle: “Hire for attitude, train for skills”.
Before you can align your shared values as a founder
If the company’s values collide with the founder’s personal values, problems will inevitably arise. As a rule of thumb, 70% of the founder’s values should match the company values. That means before you start aligning your values with your team, you need to be clear about your personal values.
You should prioritize your top 5 personal values – preferably with a sparring partner or coach to come up with reliable results. We used this list to cluster ten personal values for each individual and shrank them down to 5 in the next round. For me, personally, trust and honesty ranked really high.
Introduction to Core Values
Core values are the essential guiding principles that shape how a team behaves, interacts, and makes decisions every day. These values are much more than just words on a wall—they are the foundation of a team’s culture and identity. When a team takes the time to define and align on clear and authentic core values, it creates a shared sense of purpose and direction that everyone can rally around.
A successful values workshop is a powerful way to collaboratively build authentic and honest core values that truly reflect the team’s unique character traits and aspirations. By coming together to define what matters most, teams can develop a strong culture that not only supports the organisation’s mission but also drives business success. Establishing core values is the first step in ensuring that every team member understands what the team stands for and how they are expected to act, both internally and with customers.
Understanding Personal Values
Personal values are the deeply held beliefs and principles that guide each individual’s actions and decisions. For team members, understanding their own personal values is a crucial step in aligning with the team’s core values and the broader company values. When there is a strong alignment between personal values and company values, team members are more likely to feel motivated, engaged, and committed to the team’s mission.
A values workshop provides a valuable opportunity for team members to reflect on their personal values and see how they connect with the team’s core values. This process helps to identify areas of overlap and potential gaps, fostering a culture of respect and inclusion. By acknowledging and valuing each person’s unique perspective, teams can create an environment where everyone feels supported and empowered to contribute. This not only strengthens the team’s culture but also helps to attract and retain the most successful employees who share the organisation’s values.
Creating shared value – how to workshop yourself
Hiring a professional coach to work out your company’s shared value might just not be in the budget if you are an up-and-coming startup. CONUFACTUR, one of our community startups, has designed a workshop concept, with which you can individually determine your shared value on your own. To conduct an effective values workshop, it’s important to include everyone’s thoughts and involve the whole team, ensuring that all voices are heard and the process is truly collaborative:
- Step 1: The Is-Analysis
Reflect on the current situation: What are special features and characteristics of today’s working methods and corporate management? Try to include as many different perspectives as possible and ensure an open and non-judgemental atmosphere to gather a broad collection of values and behaviours. Use post it notes to collect ideas from all participants, making sure everyone’s input is visible and considered.
- Step 2: Future Scenario I
Brainstorm what values and behaviours will be helpful to the company in the future to ensure long-term success. Analyze both customer requirements and the ideal team constellation. Consider the behaviour that will support the organisation's values in the future and how these behaviours can be encouraged across the team.
- Step 3: Future Scenario II
As a team, think about social developments, strategic goals and business challenges and derive values that will influence future actions and cooperation. The team's ideas and behaviour can shape future actions and help create meaningful connections with both employees and customers.
- Step 4: Value cluster
Categorize the values you have collected in the first three steps into core values, aspirational values and permission-to-play values. Only use a selection that you agree on in the team and make sure that there is a balance between core and aspirational values. The core values describe the actual state of your corporate values while the aspirational values are those that your company does not currently act upon, but which are important for the future. Permission-to-play values are minimum basic values. The team collaboratively build authentic values during this process, and establishing clear values is essential for a strong organisational identity.
Example: At Wayra, we defined six values in our first session (see below). After some time, we came back to this overview and every team member was allowed to add one more that they thought was missing for them. Providing examples for each value can help clarify their meaning and guide practical application.
- Step 5: Selection of values
Decide beforehand whether you want your team to select the company’s shared values or whether you want to have the final say. A veto right would make sense since we already established that the company values should match the founder’s personal values to great extent. In the picture above, you can see that at each Wayra team member was allowed to choose five values through dot ranking. The values with the highest numbers were chosen as Wayra’s shared values. Be sure to involve new team members in this process and avoid limiting participation to only senior management, as diverse input strengthens the organisation's values.
- Step 6: Definition and next steps
Your shared values should not just be mere theory gathering dust on your website but serve as a basis for hiring, feedback discussions and strategic decisions. Thus, it is necessary that you define what the values mean in concrete terms, how they are supposed to influence actions and decisions, what will need to change and how the values can become practice. At Wayra, we started defining our values by thinking of how each value could reach their extremes, if lived by too much or too little. Finally, we came up with a clear and easily understandable definition. Defining honest values and authentic values is crucial, and a strong communications strategy and marketing strategy can help reinforce these values both internally and externally.
Taking the time, having enough team members to participate, creating an open environment for them to do so and finding someone in the team who is willing to mediate the workshop, you can successfully elaborate your company’s shared value by following the CONUFACTUR workshop structure. In addition, we at Wayra were very grateful to receive professional support by CONUFACTUR’s expert with defining our shared values. Having an external participant join your workshop might help your team stay more focussed, discover new possibilities, and stay open to new paths you might not have thought about before. This process is especially helpful for new teams and supports the team's ongoing development. Feel free to contact Anja Sinz from CONUFACTUR‘s team to learn more.
Values Exercises for Teams
Values exercises are practical activities that help teams identify, discuss, and agree on the core values that will guide their work together. These exercises are designed to encourage open communication and ensure that everyone’s thoughts are heard. Common values exercises include brainstorming sessions, where team members list values important to them; group discussions to explore the meaning behind these values; and dot voting, where the team collaboratively agrees on the most important values by grouping similar values and prioritizing them.
By regularly engaging in values exercises, teams can group similar values, identify shared priorities, and develop a clear set of core values that reflect the whole team’s beliefs. These exercises not only help to define what the team stands for but also ensure that the chosen values remain relevant as the team grows and faces new business challenges. Keeping values exercises as a regular part of team development helps maintain a strong, authentic, and honest team culture.
Implementing Team Values
Implementing team values is an ongoing process that requires commitment from every team member. It’s not enough to simply define core values; they must be woven into the fabric of daily work and decision-making. This can be achieved by integrating team values into employee reviews, promotion plans, and regular workshops, ensuring that values are a fundamental part of how the team operates.
Creating a culture that supports and reinforces team values means providing opportunities for team members to practice these values in real situations. Leadership plays a key role in modeling the desired behaviors and supporting the team as they put values into action. Regular check-ins and workshops help keep values top of mind and allow the team to update or refine them as the business evolves. By prioritizing team values and making them a central part of the organisation’s culture, teams can develop a motivated, engaged, and high-performing group that drives the organisation forward and achieves its business goals.
