Recently we had a team building experience in our office. We wanted to realign everyone with the core values of the company. Our senior managers wanted to make the entire experience memorable, but more importantly, effective in achieving the following as we considered the core values of our business.
- We wanted self-reflection by our team members in the exercise resulting in how they thought of themselves and also others in our group.
- If the exercise brought up any issues that were latent, we wanted to have those bubble up, and we decided we would offer private coaching by our management team for anyone who felt they needed to talk further about the exercise.
- We wanted to realign, as I’ve mentioned, with our core values and remind everyone that these are not values that are created once and then forgotten, but they are a living and breathing set of values that come to life through their energy and embodiment.
Our Reality TV Show Experience
Members of our management team decided to do a team-building exercise that was very transparent, innovative and would create a lot of discussions. Our vice president for marketing led us through a question, which was this one: What three people would you choose to represent our company on a reality television show because they represent our core values best?
The experience would eventually bring out the names of the people in our company whom others thought of as leaders in representing our values, which by the way, are as follows:
- Promote happiness
- Deliver WOWism
- Pursue innovation
- Pursue growth
- Create community
At this point, many managers would give out paper and pen and ask people to name three of the people whom they thought best represented our core values. We didn’t do that because we wanted a more in-depth discussion and engagement. We went around the room and asked everyone to verbally name the persons that they would recommend for the reality television show because they best embodied our core values, but we also wanted them to explain why.
What Happened When We Opened the Floor
At first, there was a little awkwardness, as often happens in these types of experiences, but then things got rolling, and one by one team members began to voice the three people whom they would recommend for the television show because they represented our company’s core values best. As the names were articulated, we wrote the names on a board.
With time, and as more people spoke up, it slowly became clear who were the leaders within our company. The same names came up over and over. Each team member who spoke up shared his or her thoughts with humor, sensitivity, and respect. The others who were silent during each sharing experience listened intently. The experience was having an impact on the team, and you could feel it. As I looked around the room, I saw how engaged, thoughtful and attentive all of our team members were during the experience.
Once the exercise was completed, I think our team learned a lot about each other. The energy in the room had shifted from one of awkwardness to one of camaraderie.
What Was Learned
This exercise was intended to realign members of our team with our core values, and it did. We had one or two individuals who wanted to speak privately with their managers about why others were chosen. This provided managers with an opportunity to help guide and constructively offer feedback for the person to reflect upon concerning their work.
The management team also received feedback that one or two persons did not feel they had input into the core values, which was something that we appreciated listening to, but determined that they were created before these members were on our team.
More importantly, we were able to raise the prominence of our core values within the company and demonstrate to our team that we’re a company that wants to live them every day. Candidly, one or two of the people on our team did not remember the core values when we asked everyone to name them on a piece of paper before the start of the exercise. However, that helped us realize that we needed to step up our game in making the core values more meaningful.
We ordered writing pads with our core values on them so they were something that our team members would see daily, and the management team re-affirmed to continue to discover opportunities to bring these essential aspects of our company into our team discussions.
Why are our core values important? They’re essential because they help define who we are and our interaction with our clients every day. In other words, it helps drive our success.
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