EP 243 - Are Group Values Useful?

Introduction and Episode Question

[00:00:00] Paul: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals. 

[00:00:08] Karen: I'm Karen Gimnig. 

[00:00:10] Paul: And I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:12] Karen: Each episode, we start with a question and see where it takes us. This week's question is, are group values useful? 

The Utility of Group Values

[00:00:20] Paul: For us, the answer to this question is a definite maybe, and that's not entirely true.

[00:00:24] Paul: We actually think that they're useful. We think that it is useful when we're in a group and we've been able to identify them. These are values that we have in common, that we feel strongly about, that as a group they help bring us together that we want to use in our decision making, that we want to be embodied in the work that we're doing.

[00:00:45] Paul: We think having that is actually quite useful. 

Challenges in Defining Group Values

[00:00:48] Paul: However, our experience has been it's rare that groups can do that, can get to that point effectively and well, and sometimes they don't [00:01:00] need to. And sometimes, you know, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, right? The process of trying to get to that point, it isn't worthwhile to them.

[00:01:08] Paul: And this is a thing that we've had kind of on our list to talk about for a while. And we kept kind of bouncing off of it, I think in part because. Karen and I were both just like, well, what do we really have to say about this that's useful and constructive? 

Facilitating Group Values Discussions

[00:01:20] Paul: We want to explore a little bit today, our experience of working with groups to try to articulate group values, where we notice things that could go wrong and what are things that we might do that are going to help them land in a better place.

[00:01:36] Karen: Yeah. I think it's worth talking about the failure mode that Paul and I have both experienced with this. And it comes up for me every time a group reaches out to me and says, Hey, could you come facilitate a retreat that's about making our values list or writing our mission statement or that kind of thing?

[00:01:53] Karen: And I right away go to, why do you want to? What is the thing that you think will be true after [00:02:00] that isn't true before, which is the thing I ask about every workshop, every meeting. I always want to know the answer to that. And the thing is what we see, at least what I see in the culture is there is this assumption.

Common Pitfalls in Values Exercises

[00:02:12] Karen: That the first thing you need to do when you come together as a group is to talk about your values and to write them down and to have this document that says this is what we are as, about it's a group and this is what we share and this is what we lean on. And that all makes perfect sense to me, but it's not what I see happen.

[00:02:28] Karen: What I see happen is that a group comes together and they're pretty clear they want to be a group. And then they spend a bunch of time trying to come up with a statement. That they can all live with, that they call it a mission statement or a value statement or a list of values that takes a number of frames.

[00:02:46] Karen: But the conversation ends up not being about what personal values does each person bring, where are we aligned and where are we not aligned and that kind of stuff. It ends up just being about what are the words we can all tolerate. [00:03:00] So it's a wordsmithing exercise. And in the end, we go, yeah, we're done.

[00:03:04] Karen: Whew. We're through that. It feels like a big piece of work done. And we put it on a shelf. Maybe it lands on a page of the website that nobody really looks at. But the likelihood that anything useful has come out of that exercise is pretty small for me. So when a group comes to me and says, Hey, can you help us with this particular exercise?

[00:03:23] Karen: My first thing is what is the useful thing that you're hoping will happen? Because I probably can help you make that happen and it probably is worth doing. But if the only goal we're starting with at the beginning of this day is that we want a piece of paper at the end, I'm not on board with that. 

[00:03:41] Paul: Yeah. The question that I will often ask, I agree with you a hundred percent about that experience. Like I've seen it over and over again. And it is the thing where when a client reaches out and says like, Hey, we want to do this thing, I get nervous. Right? Because I've seen all sorts of ways that it can go sideways.

[00:03:55] Paul: But then after the way I work through that nervousness is by asking, [00:04:00] how do you intend to use these? Right? What use are you going to put them to? 

Effective Use of Group Values

[00:04:04] Paul: The idea and the question of like our group value is useful, I think they can be like, and I often, there's an exercise that I do with groups often where they have, they've articulated group values, and I help them to then use them as problem solving tools.

[00:04:19] Paul: We've talked a couple episodes back, about how when we notice that individually we're acting out of alignment from our values, like being able to take a step back and go, like, why does it feel weird that I'm doing this thing? And stepping back out of the day to day and into the larger picture, into that slightly more abstracted level.

[00:04:35] Paul: To be able to go like, Oh, I noticed that I'm out of alignment with, I'm not actually acting in a way that's collaborative and collaboration is something that's important to me. We can do that same thing as a group when we have sufficient alignment to be able to go, we have this challenging situation in front of us.

[00:04:50] Paul: So we have this decision that we need to make and we want to make that and we want to look at that through the lens of the values that we have. Like, I think that can be a really valuable [00:05:00] use to which values can be put. But the question I'm always asking when somebody says like, can we do a values exercise is what are you going to use them for?

[00:05:08] Paul: Because I see exactly what you do. There's a belief we need to have them, but if we don't use them well, and we don't use them at all, it's not worth doing the exercise. And in fact, it can be somewhat damaging because, and I do a lot of work in corporate environments where it's like, well, we have this list of values and it's like, look, anytime anyone in a position of authority acts out of alignment from these values, that is a rife ground for cynicism.

[00:05:34] Paul: That people can now say, well, like with these values, we don't really live them. And it's almost better to not have the list in that situation because people don't see the disconnect. So I get, again, I get nervous about doing values exercises as a group. 

[00:05:51] Karen: So I want to talk a little bit about what I do think they're useful for, and with that, why those uses don't happen.

[00:05:57] Karen: As you know, if you've been listening to the podcast, I [00:06:00] mostly work in the nonprofit community kind of space. So without the hierarchy that probably you're describing. And a thing that is very common there is a desire to grow the community, the movement, to attract people, to be inclusive, to be welcoming.

[00:06:17] Karen: And the thing about defining your values, is that either their values that every reasonable human being would have, like, let's not kill each other needlessly. We can start there. We don't need to define those because we have them like saying, Oh yeah, we, we are all humans. Probably not helpful. Or you're in a space where some people value that thing.

[00:06:38] Karen: And some people don't. And if you're going to do the values exercise early on for the purpose of defining who you are as a group, I think that's super useful. But if you do that, You will define yourselves out of some members. You will get clarity about the thing that's different about our group than every other human or every other person in our [00:07:00] area or every other person who might come across us is X.

[00:07:05] Karen: We're really going to put a high value on collaboration or making decisions together. And that's going to come with some costs, but that's our value. That's a thing. And if you don't actually want to operate that way, it's not a good idea for you to be a member of our group. That part we don't like to say.

[00:07:22] Karen: We don't like to say. Oh, well, you don't want to, then we're not aligned enough to be part of the same group with this thing. And if we're not willing to say that, then the exercise won't be useful for defining our group. And what I see happen instead is you get a group, Hey, yeah. And I work a lot in co housing, so I'll use that as an example.

[00:07:42] Karen: We want to build a community in our town and we think it'd be great. It fits with co housing. And we get a bunch of people who think that, and now you've got a room of 10 or 12 or 15 people. And then you try to do the value statement. And the problem is that it didn't mean the same thing to everybody.

[00:07:59] Karen: [00:08:00] And instead of having the conversation about, what do we really value? That will then tell you how you're going to choose land or not, or how you're going to handle including affordability or not, or how you're going to handle diversity, or whether you're going to have meals on a regular basis, or, you know, all sorts of things that in the end have to be decided.

[00:08:19] Karen: Rather than answering that question. We just manipulate the language until everybody in the room can tolerate it because instead of using the values conversation to figure out who we really are and if we're aligned enough to be wanting to do this thing together. We're using it as an exercise to assert for ourselves that we do all belong here and nobody should leave, and it's very different.

[00:08:44] Karen: So one use of values that I think is really valuable is at the beginning to define who we are, but when you do that, you have to be ready for it, not to include some of the people who you might think otherwise you could include. 

[00:08:57] Paul: Yeah. The coming back to the idea of like, this is words that [00:09:00] everybody can tolerate, right, is the thing that leads to the very bland of the, you know, stuff.

[00:09:06] Paul: Absolutely, everyone's going to agree with that kind of thing. And I think that can be a really useful test for whether or not you've done your values exercise well is, effectively asking like, would anyone think that these were a bad idea? Right. And if you've got a list where no one would ever possibly think that these values were controversial or anything like that, you probably haven't really defined it in such a way that it helps people decide whether or not they wanna opt in or opt out.

[00:09:34] Paul: I think the other piece that you said early on that I think that is really useful. 

Individual Values in Group Settings

[00:09:37] Paul: Like the thing that I do encourage groups to do is actually to have conversations about individual values in a group setting and to start in that place of when we're working together, it's really useful for me to understand what the people whom I work with find important, right?

[00:09:55] Paul: What do they value? And that's more about establishing a shared [00:10:00] basis of understanding. So, not that we have to have everything totally aligned, like there needs to be a level of alignment, but also that we just need to understand differences. Right. The fact that you place a premium on efficiency, for example, that's something that's really important to you.

[00:10:18] Paul: And I, you know, really value collaboration. I'm going to need to be aware of that when we work together, because those may come into tension. Like again, this thing that lives in the space between. I think it's very valuable for groups, regardless of whether or not this is, I mean, I have fun work with groups where the fact that they're a group is a given, right?

[00:10:38] Paul: You all are on the same team. Y'all report to the same manager. Yes, you could opt out, but that's a less common thing. Like you're probably not going to do that just because of a group's values exercise, although you might be surprised. So like group membership is kind of given, therefore, given that we have to work together, given that we have to do these things together.

[00:10:58] Paul: We're going to be doing that. [00:11:00] Let's come to understand each other as individuals so that we can now start to navigate work together. And it may be like in a wonderful world, we start to discover, actually, there are things that we do have in common. There is common ground where we might actually say, this is something that as a group, as a team, we want to hold as one of our values, but I don't necessarily count on that happening.

[00:11:27] Paul: I don't necessarily, you know, I don't believe that it's useful to go into an exercise like that to say, and we're going to distill out the 17 values and we'll leave with our statement of that. But I do think that exploring as a group what each of us values, what each of us finds important is really useful.

[00:11:46] Paul: And I think that's something that gets stepped over in that let's create our group values process very, very often. 

[00:11:54] Karen: Yep. 

Revisiting and Revising Group Values

[00:11:54] Karen: And a variant that I see of that same thing that you're talking about is, you know, communities that, for example, [00:12:00] have been living together for 10 or 15 years. And there's a lot of tension and the founders are saying, gosh, we don't feel like we're living the thing that we thought we were founding and the values have been degraded or whatever.

[00:12:13] Karen: And we've got this old value statement that we made probably in the process that you and I have just described, but we've got this old value statement. And again, if they call me, they're probably calling to say, Hey, can you help us with a retreat to revise and have a new value statement. And I'm going to push them along the lines of what you were just saying of, I don't think what you want is a new value statement.

[00:12:35] Karen: Maybe that'll come out of it. But what you really want is to begin to ask the question, what are our individual values and where do we have alignment and where don't we? And then if I moved in here thinking that I'm going to live with a whole bunch of people who all want to share resources and that means that if I'm lacking a cup of sugar and my neighbor's not home, I'll just go in their house and get it.

[00:12:59] Karen: And [00:13:00] somebody else is like, that is so not what that meant. That meant that there's a shed down the way that has a one more in it. You can use if you want, right? Very different. Shared resources, that's what says in the values, right? If that's what we're living with. Then it's really good to ask the question of where are we and if in fact we aren't living with the same shared values at the what do they mean in day to day life level, let's find that out.

[00:13:26] Karen: And then we can either readjust our expectations of what it means to live in this community, we can even rethink about do we want to, you know, that's not easy to just move out, but what we wouldn't want to do is continue to assert that in this community this is what we're supposed to be doing. When there's more and more evidence that a lot of people who live in this community don't share that value.

[00:13:47] Karen: So rather than trying to get a new, renewed value statement, maybe we get an agreement to critically and curiously look at the value statement that we have, not for the purpose of [00:14:00] defining a set of shared values, but for our purpose of understanding where we do and don't have shared values and getting realistic about our expectations.

Practical Applications and Conclusion

[00:14:10] Paul: And that connects back to the thing that we were talking about on last episode about like getting into the details. Like, I do think that when we're talking about values, it's really important to get into, so what does that actually look like on a day to day basis? Like, when we're doing this together, and we have shared resources is a great example of that, right?

[00:14:28] Paul: Of like, let's talk details. And another thing around that, that I do find useful, like when a group sort of has a list of values or trying to come up with a list of values, like I will ask, what are examples of where you're living those values today? Like where are you doing that? Because that's also one of those things that the thing that happens oftentimes with group value statements is they're super aspirational, right?

[00:14:50] Paul: In addition to being bland and no one would object to them, they're not actually things that you're doing right now. There are things that you wish you were doing that you would like to be doing. Things like that, but if [00:15:00] they're totally divorced from your current day to day experience, they're likely to be problematic.

[00:15:07] Paul: And so I like to be able to say, like, when they come up with a value, you know, they're like, oh, collaboration, right? And I'm like, great, where are places where you're currently collaborating? Where does that show up now? What does that look like when you're doing it? Because that's also a place that helps them get to details where they can actually find a little bit more alignment around that.

[00:15:27] Paul: So I think pointing it, and then you can also then get into the area of like, where would you like to do more of that? Where are you not doing as much of that as you would like? And so starting to link it back to the day to day, because my thing is always, this is never about highfalutin concepts that we do nothing with, right?

[00:15:45] Paul: This is about things that help us decide what we want to do, there are things that, there are guidelines for how we want to act and interact. And so getting into some of those things, and then when, as you said, like when you discover disagreements [00:16:00] about like, well, I think collaboration would look like this and you think collaboration would look like that.

[00:16:04] Paul: There can be a really rich conversation about why those differences exist. What does that look like? And when we get into those level of details, we can actually start to talk about, we can really figure out, oh, that's what we mean by these things. Those conversations are almost always useful. Exploring what each of these things actually means to us is useful, but arguing over the wordsmithing of our statement is almost never.

[00:16:32] Karen: So we started with the question today of, are group values useful? And we wanted to say, we think that group values statements and the exercises that lead to them in common practice, mostly aren't, but the values and the discussion of those values can be hugely helpful in a few cases, if we're thoughtful about how we're using them, and that really is the key of this whole episode is If you want to do work on values, think about how that will be useful.

[00:16:58] Karen: How are you going to use it [00:17:00] and let that guide how you go about doing the work. So one place that they're useful is in group formation and that's in terms of defining the group. And if you do that, well, odds are you will find that some of the people who thought they might be interested will discover that they're not because you've defined what you are and who you are in a way that sets you apart from every other human on the planet.

[00:17:23] Karen: And some people will want that, and some people won't. And that can be hugely useful because it, what it does, although it means you have fewer members in the short term, it means you have a more clear and defined and aligned purpose in the long term, and that can be super useful. Another place that we think it shows up as useful is if you do, in fact, have shared values that you have talked about enough to know what they mean, that you can go back to them and use them as kind of an assessment for what's feeling off.

[00:17:50] Karen: Well, is it feeling off because value number one is not, you know, that value is not working or the value number two or the feeling, how are we doing with that one, how does that apply? So it can be a [00:18:00] source for an exercise about. How is our work going? How is our direction? Are we aligned? But if we're going to do the work in that way, one of the things we have to be prepared for is the discovery that the values that got written down some time don't turn out to match the people who are living in the space or working in the space today.

[00:18:19] Karen: And so the other thing that we think is super useful as a discussion of individual values is having a curious, open space where we say, what do we value and how do those values play out? And what are the nuts and bolts things that come from them? So if we have a value for collaboration, what does that actually look like?

[00:18:38] Karen: What do we do? What are we doing today? What would we like to be doing in the future? What have we done in the past that aligned or that very much didn't align with that, but looking at not just, can we all buy into the word. Because wordsmithing is a huge part of where this stuff goes wrong, we think. And what we actually want is to be looking at the meaning.

[00:18:57] Karen: And that means slowing down and having deeper [00:19:00] conversations. And that can reveal all kinds of useful and interesting things to take forward. So the overall statement is, yes, values can be interesting. Conversations about values can be super useful. Values statements, probably not. 

[00:19:15] Paul: Well, that's going to do it for us today.

[00:19:16] Paul: Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:19:19] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.