If you are a team coach and want to build an effective and successful team, you need to understand how the individual team members’ values either will contribute to the success of the team or will work against the team. Most people will define an effective team as a group of people who have the same values and are working towards fulfilling a common goal. Having a clear and shared purpose and a vision for the future is helpful for all teams, but without shared values the team could still fall apart.
Values are the qualities or characteristics that are most important to team members, or that are valuable and admired. Characteristics such as trust, respect, punctuality, ability to deliver on time projects, and the capacity to work well with others are among the common values of successful and effective teams. Effective and high performing teams will always operate in a climate of trust, where individual team members are free to express an opinion without judgement.
The best way to establish team values is to ask team members to bring a list of five values that are important to each member as a professional individual to the first team meeting. Ask each person to define the values and include a couple of ways he or she demonstrates these values in his or her daily working life. This self-reflective pre-meeting work will give each individual some ideas to contribute to the list of team values you will build at the first team meeting, so everyone has input and therefore buy in to the eventual list of team values that your team will create.
At the first meeting, every team member should discuss one value that is different to the other values under discussion. However, give each team member the opportunity to bring all five of their personal values to the discussion, so that the team ends up with a broad list of important values. Some values will overlap, which will help the team recognise similarities between individual team members.
The whole team can brainstorm ways the team can demonstrate that value throughout the duration of the project. Encourage the team to make a list of the most important values from the individual values under discussion. It can be difficult to get agreement on the most important values, which can lead to good practice in conflict resolution for the emerging team. A good team coach will facilitate this discussion with reference to the values, such as respect of other’s opinions.
Once the team has defined and agreed to a set of values, you can easily create some guidelines to ensure that the team works effectively and is able to implement these values in the daily work of the team. These guidelines or value statements are extremely useful when the team cannot make a decision or to encourage the individual team members to focus on the tasks at hand.
Team values only work when everyone in the team is committed to the team values. This is why aligning the team values to personal values of team members in the first place is so important. If the team’s values are incongruent with personal values, the team member can have an internal conflict, and will usually follow personal values rather than team values.
When every team member agrees to and honours the team values, the value statement serves as a powerful binding force for the team, helps to resolve conflicts, and is a reminder that the team has common ground with the common, agreed values.
Photo credit: 
photo credit: thinkpublic
