Making Company Values Meaningful
It’s easy for teams and organizations to define their values, but what does it mean to actually live them?
In this meeting story, we discuss how one organization made major strides in its team cohesion through a simple values-based storytelling activity.
What Made this Meeting Work
Company values are empty words unless your team members can see themselves in them.
During a meeting in December 2023 with CG Strategy, we supported a meaningful values conversation by…
Inviting team members to reflect on and share stories about their experiences related to existing company values.
Facilitating a dialogue to identify behaviors that demonstrated the values present in the stories.
Creating a graphically recorded poster of the values and behaviors.
In a post-event retrospective, meeting leaders shared that the activity helped to ground the group in appreciation for the company’s history and decided to make this process a part of their annual company retreats.
Setting the Scene
CG Strategy is approaching its thirty-fifth year in business as a small and mighty consulting agency. In 2017, MeetingMakers (as Dancing with Markers) co-created a map of the consulting agency’s full history, which they installed on a wall in their office. Since then, the team had not updated key events and learnings. Since the Pandemic, the company has transitioned to fully remote work outside of their company retreats and client engagements.
With several new team members coming aboard since the transition to remote work, CGS’s leadership felt that the team needed a refresher on the company's history, including celebrations and learnings. Values are critical in the company hiring process, and there was a need to reconnect with and find meaning in company values in a deeper way.
MeetingMakers partnered with CG Strategy leaders to design a session that revisited the company’s history since 2017 and included a values storytelling activity, where the team was invited to share stories from their work that they felt embodied the team values.
Our Process
The overall flow of the meeting moved from clarifying the past to building common ground in the present through values work.
After a brief visual energizer, we kicked off with a review and reflection on the previous history chart printed on placemat-sized paper. Team members engaged and asked each other questions, and newer team members reported that they better understood the context behind decisions and client projects.
The team spent a few minutes updating key events and insights in the company’s history since 2017 using a large wall chart. A key insight was recognition of the diversity of the company’s tools, clients and offerings, which have created more stability in recent years.
After a break, we introduced storytelling as a leadership tool using a brief energizer called “Story Cubes,” where participants created stories based on images rolled on dice.
We reviewed the company’s values and invited participants to pair up with a colleague to share a story about an impactful time at CG Strategy where they felt one or more of the values were present. Each person had 10-15 minutes to share their story while their partner listened for key behaviors representing values.
Upon returning to the large group, partners shared and highlighted the behaviors from their stories that best represented the values. These behaviors were captured on a visual poster as a takeaway from the day.
What to Take Away
Success for CG Strategy was made possible through authentic pre-event conversations with leadership and the group’s willingness to participate in the process, enabling rich and meaningful conversations.
During this workshop, we used a customized history map template based on the Grove’s strategic visioning toolkit. You can purchase templates and leader guides on the Grove’s website.
If you want to learn more about team-building, history mapping or values storytelling, reach out to discuss bringing us in to facilitate a session with your team.
