Value cards and value book

Subject

Empower people / Team Start-up / Team identity

Participants

The entire team

Facilitator

Agile Coach / Agile Master

Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/a-white-board-with-post-it-notes-written-on-it-1Hl8D2qJYuA

Summary

'The Value Cards Method' is used as a self-exploration and development tool for teams. The team choses a subset of cards to characterize how they want their team to be and describe how they may achieve this

Definition

Core values: The values that come to people by nature. They are anchored into his/her mindset or culture and lead to his/her authentic behavior.
Wish values: The ones that we aspire to have but they do not come naturally to us. It is about who we want to be and dream to become in the future.

Motivation

This activity allows people to go inside themselves and to understand their inner world as human beings. This is highly needed when teams commit themselves to common goals and sets the stage for the team's success.

Results

You get an agreed and committed description how the team would like to be and how they think to match this image.

Benefit

The resulting value book can be considered as a guideline for the team that helps to focus on the characteristics that are important for the team to collaborate well.

Procedure

From a set of 20 value cards, the entire team discusses the meaning of each card to align about the understanding and the card's meaning. Afterwards, the facilitator draws a flipchart with two categories:

• Core Values
• Wish Values

Each team member is invited to post his/her own values to the two different categories on the flipchart and open up for a value-based discussion. After everyone has done this, the facilitator invites the team to write down its first 'Team value book'.
The left book page has the title 'Team Values' and the right book page is called 'What do we need to fulfill/live them?'. The team is allowed to agree on ten values for each book page. At the end, the facilitator asks the team for feedback about the value discussion.

Tools

Flipchart/whiteboard, sticky notes, cards

Hints

The values for the team may change during the project. It makes sense to discuss the value book from time to time and calibrate the team values.
Sets of value cards may be scribbled by yourself or ordered in relevant online shops.

See also

Management 3.0 - Value cards