I’ve been asked to contribute to a collective statement about our teams values. Sigh. I know how these things go. First everybody takes time to come up with a set of values they believe in, then everybody talks as a group to come to a consensus. The result is a set of generic values that could have been found by quick internet search. Then the list is put to one side and never consulted again. So, as you can guess, I’m not going to spend much time on this. I did suggest that we take the UofG values and show how we embody those as a team, but I’m not going to get off that lightly. So here’s an exercise from Brene Brown that I think is worthwhile doing as an individual. She suggests that we start with her list of 50 values (and add your own if you want), circle those that you think are the most important and whittle them down to two core values. As she says, this is HARD – I can get to a shortish list, but choosing the final two takes time. Anyway, here’s my initial list:
- Transparency/openness
- Accountability
- Responsibility
- Integrity
- Authenticity
- Honesty
- Reliability
- Collaboration
- Ethics
- Reflection
When I look over my list, most of them can be summed up by one value: authenticity. I’ll choose collaboration as my second value.
