Does your team have documented team values?

Someone asked me this question and my immediate thought was “blah that sounds boring”. After bouncing some ideas around with some friends, we came up with a way of making it more fun.

The idea was to use Dixit cards to help us. We played two different games:

Game 1

Lay out 9 cards. Everyone decides in their head which card they think best represents the team and the team’s values. When everyone has decided we share together which cards we chose and why. I wrote down the reason for everyone’s choice.

Game 2

Give everyone 9 cards each. Each person takes some time to secretly choose which card best represents the team and the team’s values. Once they have chosen they lay out their nine cards and everyone else tries to guess the card the person selected and the reason behind their choice. Again I wrote down the reasons for each choice.

Compiling the list

This exercise gave us a list of about 20-30 values that we see within the team.

From this we combined and simplified the list into the following items

• Shipping things now, while building for the future
• Being open with each other and supporting each other with kindness
• Everyone brings their own skills and perspective, stronger together
• Role models in the community, leading by example
• We value simple elegant solutions

I hope this was a bit more of a fun activity than having to sit and think without the prompts.