This Northgate activity looks at organisational and personal values. In terms of the former, are staff aware of their organisation’s key values? Do they know their organisation’s mission statement? And, on a personal level, have they got individual integrity?
All organisations have values – even if not formally expressed. These values remind staff what is important to the organisation – what holds it together. They form a platform on which the organisation’s culture, behaviours and aspirations stand.
Usually, such values come down from the top - and organisations tend to recruit people who fit into that culture. So, culture becomes set and is passed on from year to year.
Teams are given the opportunity to identify the values they feel their organisation is all about. Which values does it try to promote? What values best describe the image that it wants to project?
Next, teams explore their personal values and later these values are strength-tested. It’s all very well assuming we have certain ‘good‘ values, but are they reflected in our actions? When the chips are down it’s all about what we DO rather than what we say we WOULD do!
Teams are given 15 ‘ethical’ questions to test their individual integrity. Using coloured counters and a set of matchboxes (in which the counters are secretly placed), teams choose an option for each question.
For example, a yellow counter might be used for the answer YES to a question; a green counter for a No. In this way, anonymity is guaranteed which means participants can be totally honest. Or will they be? It’s all about integrity and the results can be fascinating!
- To remind participants of the organisation’s values and codes
of conduct - To allow teams to discuss their personal values and how
they align with those of the organisation - To test individual integrity in a fun way
- To stress the benefits of adhering to clearly-expressed
values and ethical procedures for moral reasons and for the reputation of the organisation.
Ideally suited to:
Taking a look at standards and ethics as well as personal integrity. Promotes great discussions and ends with an hilarious game where earlier-stated personal values don’t always match reality!
- Introduce the activity as an exercise to investigate values and integrity.
- Begin with a discussion of mission statements, company goals and branding.
- Move on to look at personal values – where do our values come from?
- Next, focus on organisational values. Teams are given a listand choose which are promoted by their organisation.
- Issue counters to each team member and 5 matchboxes to each team. Teams secretly answer questions using the counters and the boxes.
- Either use the PowerPoint to pose the questions to the whole group or read them from Handout 3.
- Individuals in each team choose their response and use a counter in the matchbox to secretly record it.
- After each set of 5 questions, the results are analysed to see if the majority behave ethically or not!
- The Debrief focuses on the importance of values, their key role in the reputation and success of an organisation and how consistent we and the organisation are in keeping to our core values.
Full guidance is supplied in the Trainer's Notes.
- Trainer's Notes (Booklet + PDF)
- Handout 1: Personal Values (PDF)
- Handout 2: Organisational Values (PDF)
- The Values Game Questions (PDF & PPT)
- Craft 'match' boxes (25)
- Counters (x120 green, x120 red, x120 yellow)
This activity is for face-to-face classroom use. It is supplied digitally with Trainer's Notes and team resources (matchboxes and counters) supplied in a hard copy pack. Digital files are supplied via the Northgate Trainerhub.
This Northgate Training activity comes with a five-year licence for repeat use with up to 24 participants at a time, for use by Trainers based at one licence-holding site.
All Trainers physically based at the same office location can access the Northgate resources during the five-year term, including the digital resources supplied on the Trainerhub via your own site-specific Trainer Dashboard. If you have Trainers based at other locations, and/or remote workers, who would like to access and use the Northgate resources, we can advise further depending on your requirements.
For further information on our licence terms please view the Northgate Licence Agreement.
To use with more than 24 or for multiple site licences please contact us for a quote.
