Transcript excerpt from a leadership-training video showing a concrete exercise for defining organizational core values. The speaker (Chris) advises that senior leaders should run a small-group exercise: list ‘embodying people’ (team members who exemplify desired traits) in one column and their qualities/behaviors in the other, extract keywords, cluster them, and produce a concise set of core values. Example outcomes from the speaker’s company include: “hustle / work hard,” “grow and get better” (growth mindset / constant learning / excellence), “accountability and discipline,” “create raving fans” (world-class service), and “energy / enthusiasm / positive attitude.” The speaker emphasizes leaders should determine values (not a broad consensus) and then test everyone against them.
Chris is working on determining core values. You recommend going through this exercise with the team as a whole, determining the values as leadership and then communicating them to the team. You definitely don't want to get a collective consensus on if you do the exercise properly. So for those of you that were at the intensive, well, on page 78 there was a core values brainstorming page on page 78, but basically it had two columns. The embodying person on the left and the qualities, characteristics and behaviors on the right. And basically you and Donnie, from what I know are the only senior leaders at the company. You would pick people on your team. So the embodying person, like when we did it, it was like John and Sharon and Chris, they've been with us for over four years. John and Sharon and Chris is going on seven years. We have a new Isa, Ashlyn, who just crushes it and is aggressive and works hard and we put her on the list. And then we have a new buyer agent, Bridge, who's pretty, a pretty good fit for us. So we had five people. And then you're just going to list the qualities, characteristics and behaviors of all of those people. And then on page like 70, well, blank page somewhere. Blank page. Once you do that, you're going to pull out the keywords and bunch them together. So we ended up with hard work. We hustle and work hard. We're constantly learning, we're always seeking excellence. We, we have a growth mindset and we bring a positive attitude. So those were the five things that our five people embodied and that those became our core values. And then you run everyone against that. So on page 80 you can see our core values. You know, hustle and work hard, grow and get better accountability and discipline. Create raving fans which is world class service disc and energy, enthusiasm, positive attitude. Then they have to get it, want it capacity, which is on page 79. So that's the exercise you go through, but it's just you and Donnie doing it. And at the end of it it's not what you want to be, it's what you are. So there's that good article, this article here, make your values mean something. So this is a really cool article that I'll post here. Alright, so read that, that I just posted in the Facebook group before you go through that exercise and it'll make a whole lot of sense. And that is something that is really changing the way we look at our team.
