How To Develop Team-Building Shared Values Through Team-Building Activities
To create high-performing teams, leaders must cultivate and develop a set of core values that the group share and become the team culture.
Without these values, consistent high-performance is impossible.
Employees in the best teams understand the company’s values and mission statement and know they are held accountable for any digression from these.
The company values become the team values and guide them when policy or the boss is not around to do it.
The core values guide the behaviors of a group – they are actively used to make company decisions that reflect the culture of the organization.
Given the importance of shared team values, here is a guide on how to develop company values throughout your business.
What Is The Importance Of Team-Building?
Team-building is an effective strategy for a business that wants to cultivate a company culture centred around values of openness, trust, happiness, and collaboration.
Regular team-building activities help each team member feel valued and appreciated while aligning them with the team’s and the company’s values.
Good teams go beyond good hiring. They require the synthesis of the personal values of the team member with the company values and the values of the other team members.
This fact is why the importance of team-building cannot be understated!
What Are Values Exercises?
Values exercises are team-building exercises that offer team members guidance on workplace behaviors, can help them improve decision-making, and can increase collaboration.
These are group activities related to the values of the organization and the potential values of each team member.
Values exercises force the team to think critically about their values and behaviors, individually and as a team, and then marry them with the values statement of the company.
They are best suited to smaller groups where every employee can contribute ideas and explore statements.
What Can Value Exercises Do For My Team?
These team-building exercises can offer many benefits to your employees and organization, such as:
- Guidance On Company Values And Behaviors: In any industry, situations can arise that employees cannot prepare for, and the solution is unclear. Values exercises can help employees determine how they should overcome such workplace challenges.
- Strengthen The Bonds Within The Team: Managers and employees must form a powerful unit for the higher purpose of the business. Many values exercises get employees in groups to engage in an open conversation to share their ideas of success, commitment to excellence, values, and decision-making process.
- Help Each Employee Make Better Decisions: These team-building exercises emphasize the importance of the company values statement and the core values of the organization. They encourage the employee to relate these values to personal values and the core values of the culture they wish to see.
Best Team-Building Exercises For Shared Values
Here are some of the best values exercises for helping to identify, focus, and strengthen your core values.
- Choose Five Values
Each team member must choose five values. These are the values that they couldn’t operate without – the values they see as most important to success.
The team members need to identify what each person in the group considers the most important.
Encourage team members to discuss their choices and identify any themes or areas of difference. And make sure to connect the team’s values back to the mission statement and core values of the organization.
An example list might be:
- Happiness
- Meaningful work
- Excellence
- Health
- Respectful practices
A great partner for this activity is a DiSC Seminar, a non-judgemental tool that allows teams to come together to discuss their behavioral differences. The five values task could be part of this.
This seminar will help the team understand how different employees reach values and ideas, and the discussion will lead to a more unified set of values.
- Cultural Discovery
What better way to develop shared values than by exploring a new culture as a team?
The bustling streets of Bangkok are just one great place to get lost as a team and work together to understand a new culture and overcome challenges. Plus, your team can do this exercise in small teams or a larger group.
The cultural discovery team-building exercise involves racing around the cultural landmarks of Thailand, solving puzzles, and completing challenges along the way – the temples of Phuket, the beaches of Samui, and the jungles of Pattaya all await.
As a values exercise, the cultural discovery activity is a brilliant tool for team members to think about their core values and how they align with those of other cultures and team members.
This exercise also helps develop:
- Communication skills
- Problem-solving
- A broad worldview
This team-building activity will bring the team together physically and help unify them around a core set of values through the experience of a new culture.
Explore Different Examples Of Company Values
Create a list containing each value of the company on a whiteboard. Then have everyone decide and write down what every value means to them.
Then have everyone put their understanding of the value next to it on the whiteboard.
After this, have the team write down how they would implement and achieve each value, giving examples.
Encourage them to ask themselves what skills are required to accomplish each value. Then stick these on the whiteboard and get teams to discuss each value and its interpretations.
Identify differences and discuss how you could create a more unified understanding of each value and what practices you could use to implement them. Prepare a plan of action to chart your progress.
- Encourage Co-worker Recognition
Create an ongoing enterprise that raises team morale and inspires team members to praise one another across all departments for embodying company values.
For example, you could make an incentives program that rewards team members with points for giving and receiving praise and keep an account of the results.
- Think About The Aspirations Of The Company
Get your teams to write down what they believe to be the company’s core values. These values define you and your company and what you stand for.
For example, it could be a commitment to customers and clients, a passion for excellence, a devotion to efficiency, or happiness.
Once finished, spread all the statements on the floor and match similar ones. Now ask your teams to write down what they imagine the company aspires to be.
Ask the teams to discuss solutions for reducing the differences between the two sets of statements and how they would accomplish them.
You can carry out this exercise during or alongside some great team-building activities, all of which will allow your team to put their ideas into practice.
- The Five Behaviors Seminar explores the fundamental causes of disagreement and failure in teams. The seminar is also a way for teams to escape the office stress and relax, letting them discover their shared values in a new environment, such as Thailand.
- Teamwork is essential for discovering core values. The Indisputable Laws Of Teamwork seminar discusses the vital tools necessary for building a strong team centered around shared values.
- Core values are also about leaders as well as teams. The Situational Leadership seminar is the perfect way for your team to engage with the core values of the company in the context of effective leadership.
Not only are these activities beneficial for strengthening your team’s shared values, but you can also do them in spectacular locations such as Bangkok and Phuket.
Developing Values Through Team-Building Activities
The best teams revolve around a common set of values and vision of how their business should operate.
These high-performing teams achieve success through continual team-building exercises to ensure they share a set of values.
Their shared set of values allows them to work to the fullest of their ability within the company because they know how to operate in every situation.
So, if you want a high-performing team, look no further than team-building activities for your success!
