Alignment of Values - Session 9

I found the values exercise we did in class to be very interesting. When we were first asked to select our most important values after simply rating all of the values as high, low or medium, I wound up with one set of values. Many of my most important values then changed after we were asked to give each value a score based on our answering of the specific questions about how having more or less of each value would affect our happiness.

I think that this personal experience is important to keep in mind when getting feedback from individuals in the future - whether this feedback is on values or anything else. Having guided questions which force you to think about an item or decision and weigh the pros and cons before answering seems crucial to generating more reliable feedback. This seems like it would be an especially good activity to do with employees or board members on a retreat before revising the mission statement, vision statement, or core values for an organization. I think, in the same way that the guided questions helped me refine my own most important values, the entire exercise may help individuals to refine how they feel about their work at an organization, and the values they think are essential for that organization to have. Learning what values drive each individual, and aligning these values with the organization to the greatest extent possible clearly enables employees to work better together towards a common mission. I think that the exercise can also be helpful, in that it reminds us all of the differences people have when it comes to which values are more important. This can help people work better together, since it reminds us there may be a valid reason for a colleague's differing opinion. Rather than just dismissing a colleague's opinion as ill informed, people can understand that a colleague's actions may be driven by a different set of values.