I Don't Agree. Michael Brown

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      How to build a collaborative team and reduce conflict through values outing

      My answer to this begins with something I refer to as values outing, a process which is wrapped up in a common word in corporate life: culture!

      Business gurus, experts and C-suite executives are so hot for organisational culture it’s almost unseemly. My definition of it doesn’t differ much from any other commentator’s: it’s the way in which the people within an enterprise collectively act to achieve a vision.

      It follows that the way they act can be shaped by a set of values – these are the ingredients. Much has also been said about the first step to actively shape good culture: which is to take a values-first approach to your recruitment and onboarding policy; a signpost to all that there is a defined, identifiable culture and, by extension, behaviours that are less tolerated. Following on from recruitment, you’ll find equal amounts of expert opinion telling you that all decisions taken every day inside an organisation have to be genuinely guided by values.

      I’ve followed all the advice to the extreme. As far as recruitment goes, I’ve relegated a candidate’s qualifications, past experience and abilities to a secondary position. And then I’ve gone further still: instead of recruiting people who would be a good fit with our published organisational values (which is where most advice points), I think there’s more value in getting candidates to reveal their own core values.

      As we saw with my little values survey earlier, it’s difficult to pin people down on this. But if you can get people to truthfully out their real self, then you can make a better judgement call on their fit. This improves your chances of building a diverse team which features individuals with complementary beliefs and behaviours, as opposed to mere repeats of the values published on your website.

      What’s interesting about this is that everyone instinctively feels at a gut level when something goes against their core values. A deep inner feeling tells you when a behaviour cuts against the grain. Yet if you were asked to clearly articulate your values, you might struggle. I’ve unfairly surprised many an interviewee by requesting them to share theirs, off-the-cuff and totally unprepared. Generally, people initially freeform over a range of superlatives, verbs and adjectives. Some of these will be completely aspirational (or totally untrue). Others will be words that the interviewee thinks you want to hear. Some will, of course, be absolute core beliefs – at least the ones that are socially acceptable.

      In the values survey mentioned earlier, 96% of people answered ‘yes’ when asked if they possessed their own set of personal values. However, 78% of them had never committed them to writing, and just 4% could claim that they lived up to their values all of the time. Respondents were also asked to quickly, and without too much thought, list their top five values – an easy task for all who claimed they have their own personal framework. Later on, they were asked to repeat the exercise, but this time give their answer a lot more thought without recourse to their earlier inputs. Almost 50% changed one or more of the values the second time around.

      I don’t mention this as a criticism, or to suggest everyone is dishonest. I offer it only to support the notion that, for a lot of people, personal values are seldom thought about and are not hard-and-fast rules. Further, if they are thought about at all, it’s mostly in aspirational terms. There simply aren’t that many people who have crystallised their values framework and are able to express it – either to themselves or those around them.

      Whereas, if you ask someone to go away and give serious thought to outing their values framework, what they come back with will be their own personal behavioural blueprint for the future: a barometer they could use to set them on the road to achieving a vision of their ideal self. Such a blueprint is therefore an exceptionally powerful tool, not just for any individual wishing to change their life, but for anyone charged with building a collaborative team or improving the culture of any human endeavour.

      And if that includes not allowing conflict to play such a huge part in your life, then so much the better!

      How to do a values-outing exercise

      Values outing is easy to do – I simply ask anyone wishing to join one of our teams to repurpose their CV and all they have achieved, not just academically or career wise but in their wider community, around a set of four or five personal values of their choosing.

      Why four to five? Because this is the average number of values claimed by companies in the FTSE 100. A fascinating 2016 survey of the value of values in British business, undertaken by the consultancy firm Maitland, revealed that 84 of the FTSE 100 published a values framework on their websites and therefore recognised their importance. However, when I looked, none of them displayed how their values were enacted. In other words, there were no specific examples of past, existing or planned future behaviours. This means their influence on internal culture is impaired; there’s no blueprint to help shape good internal culture.

      The report featured a foreword by the then director general of the Institute of Directors, Simon Walker. While he acknowledged the importance of values as a major differentiating factor, he asked how many CEOs could honestly say the values they so lovingly crafted were fully understood and implemented within their organisation. Indulging in a bit of values outing may be one way of addressing their dilemma.

      Give it a go yourself: don’t worry, even if you forget to WhatsApp your mum on her birthday every year, you’ll definitely be able to identify a set of personal values. Try and distil everything that you believe to be true, or would like to be true about yourself, into a handful of identifiable and easily communicable qualities.

      Take your time about it – you should think of your framework as something wholly immutable that will guide your behaviour in the future. A bit like a set of New Year’s resolutions that will last a lifetime. It’s a big commitment which needs some serious thought – you wouldn’t want to enshrine your values now and return later only to wonder which loser wrote them.

      Equally, most people are so unused to thinking about themselves in aspirational terms that it’s embarrassing to contemplate at first. When I originally attempted my values-outing exercise, I kept cringing at the thought of leaving it open on my desktop. I could only imagine the increasing levels of ridicule that might be heaped upon me if it was, in turn, discovered by my wife, my kids, then my colleagues and, much worse, certain friends with a particularly cruel sense of humour.

      Don’t let such thoughts put you off. This is an entirely valid and personal exercise that could change your life – although I did delete ‘world changer’ from my framework. I didn’t want that claim to be seen by anyone who’s witnessed me snoring in my pants.

      Finally, take the acid test to see if your past behaviour lives up to your set of freshly minted personal values. Grab your CV and review all your achievements, experience and ideas against them. Importantly, try to show how you have lived your values by reworking, rewriting and categorising the structure of your CV using each value as a heading. It’s OK to omit some details of your past if they don’t stack up with your shiny new core principles. One use of this exercise is to create a road map to self-actualisation; that moment when your ideal self becomes your true self.

      How to use values outing to positively shape your culture

      Hopefully you can begin to see how values outing might be applied. The reason I do this exercise is to identify indicators of behaviour that mark out those we are looking for: we want people who will be a good fit in a specific collaborative and conflict-reducing culture. You may be seeking another type of culture. The exercise is flexible, as long as you have a strong viewpoint on which values will maintain the culture you have in mind.

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