Off the top of your head, how many team values can you think of? Well, you’d be surprised how many there can be. Yes, the term might seem straightforward and self-explanatory, but how would you define team values?
Let’s be straightforward here – if you’re not 100% certain what team values are and how to elaborate on them, how do you expect your team to be able to understand and implement those same undefined values?
We’re not here to give you a boring list of dictionary definitions, as you can find that anywhere. We’re here to help you understand team values and learn to create them in your team, just like we helped numerous small to mid-size teams like yours.
What Are Team Values?
Team values are the guiding principles that shape the behavior, decisions, and actions of a group. Team values foster team cohesion, motivate team members, and enhance the team’s productivity.
Most important team values, such as honesty, openness, communication, integrity, empathy, collaboration, innovation, and efficiency, guide the team towards success and result in higher performance and team morale.
Instilling team values in a team creates a positive work environment where team members feel valued and are encouraged to experiment, innovate, and collaborate. Team values set the foundation for better team collaboration and efficient problem-solving, allowing the team to come to new ideas and solutions together.
When the team works together in an environment where team values are promoted, they feel more satisfied at work as they work in a stress-free environment. Toxic workplaces are detrimental to the success of the team and the satisfaction of team members, and they can be prevented by nurturing and instilling team values on all levels of the organization.
What Are Good Team Values?
Good team values in successful projects are trust, transparency, accountability, respect, innovation, and adaptability.
Trust the Team
Trust is a cornerstone of every successful project.
It allows team members to depend on each other, share ideas openly, and work collaboratively toward the project's success. Trusting team members builds a positive work environment where team members feel safe to express their ideas, create innovations, and test out new solutions.
Trust is built when the team works together towards the same goal, allowing team members to build relationships and work together effectively. Building trust enables team members to collaborate, work together on solving problems, and bring projects to completion.
Keep Everything Transparent
Transparency promotes honesty and openness, eliminating hidden agendas.
It ensures everyone is on the same page, understands the project's progress, and can contribute effectively. Transparency ensures effective communication and collaboration in a team, allowing the team to build trust and rely on each other.
Cohesive teams that work closely together should be transparent when sharing ideas and any issues that might arise.
Being transparent in communication, accountability, and workload distribution will facilitate collaboration in a team. Team members who can rely on each other and trust each other are often able to do so because they can effectively and transparently communicate and exchange information.
Take on Accountability
Accountability is taking responsibility for one's actions and decisions. It encourages team members to deliver their best work and contributes to a project's successful completion. Sharing accountability across the team allows the team to work together towards the common goal and creates a sense of belonging.
Individual accountability is important because it allows team members to focus on their individual achievements while functioning as a team. Taking on accountability improves the way the team functions and allows them to become independent in their individual work while collaborating with other team members to contribute to the shared goals and objectives the team is striving to achieve.
Share Mutual Respect
Respect fosters an environment where every team member's ideas, contributions, and individuality are valued. It promotes a healthy, inclusive, and harmonious team culture. Respect is shown through communication by practicing and honing speaking and listening skills.
It is also shown through celebrating individual and team accomplishments and giving praise for new initiatives, ideas, or a successful completion of a task or a project. Valuing individuals by appreciating their contributions creates a positive work environment.
When it comes to conflicting opinions, the teams that cultivate respect will be able to communicate effectively and bridge any misunderstandings, and they will ultimately continue to contribute to achieving the mutual goals.
Ideate to Innovate
Innovation encourages thinking outside the box and pushing boundaries. It drives the team to develop creative solutions, stay ahead of the curve, and ensure the project's success.
Innovation skills should be honed and worked on by team members to contribute to creating innovative ideas and come to outstanding solutions. The teams that value innovation and instill it in their day-to-day practice can come up with new ideas and work together towards realizing them.
Thinking outside the box allows the team to make groundbreaking steps towards success, and in an environment where team members are valued and encouraged to share their ideas, they feel more comfortable with sharing new innovative solutions.
Adapt to Changes
Adaptability is the ability to adjust to changes and unexpected challenges during a project.
Which, we all know, happens all the time…
It ensures the team can pivot as needed, keeping the project on track and moving towards its goals. The team that nurtures adaptability is ensuring that they remain consistently flexible and lean as they work on achieving their goals.
Adaptability allows teams to break off cycles that are toxic or unproductive, try out new things and ideas, and adjust to new processes. The adaptability of a team ensures that they are always able to face changes and challenges and are ready to adjust to the new environment and circumstances.
Team that Works Together
Teamwork as a core value signifies the importance of collaboration, mutual respect, and collective responsibility in achieving common objectives. It emphasizes that diverse skills, different perspectives, and shared commitment are integral to success. This value encourages open communication, trust, and constructive feedback within the team.
It also underlines that accomplishments are not just a result of individual efforts but are the product of collective action. By prioritizing teamwork, organizations can foster a culture of unity, shared understanding, and mutual support, significantly enhancing productivity, workplace morale, and overall performance.
Why Are Team Values Important?
Team values are essential for fostering unity, ethical behavior, job satisfaction, productivity, innovation, and a positive brand reputation within a team. They provide a shared foundation that guides behavior and decision-making, benefiting both team dynamics and external perceptions of the organization.
To elaborate further, there are more than a couple of reasons why you should really invest in creating good team values:
Unity and Collaboration – When team members share and promote the same team values, they create stronger team bonds. Shared values create a common ground to promote teamwork cooperation and reduce conflicts in a team.
Ethical Behavior – Respect, honesty, and accountability promote ethical behavior. They ensure that team members act responsibly and treat each other fairly.
Job Satisfaction – When team members share the same values, they are more likely to enjoy their work, increasing job satisfaction.
Productivity – Shared values can enhance productivity by providing clear guidelines for behavior and decision-making. They can also improve motivation and engagement, which in turn boosts productivity.
Innovation and Creativity – Values like innovation and adaptability encourage team members to think outside the box and adapt to change, leading to creative solutions and ideas.
Brand Reputation – Team values affect internal team dynamics and influence how the team and the organization are perceived externally. Upholding solid and positive values can enhance an organization's reputation, attracting potential clients, partners, and employees.
Consequences of Neglecting Team Values
Neglecting team values can lead to severe consequences that hold up and prevent the team's performance and overall productivity.
Decreased Collaboration
Team values like trust, respect, and transparency facilitate smooth communication and collaboration. These are necessary for team members to feel comfortable sharing ideas or contributing to the team's goals. When team members do not feel valued, they are less likely to share any new or innovative ideas, which might prevent the team from making progress.
Decreased collaboration, frequent conflicts, and groupthink are all important signals that team values are deteriorating. Neglecting collaboration causes the team to drift apart, form cliques, and promote competitiveness among team members. The team that doesn’t collaborate cannot reach its full team potential. Instead, they function as a set of individuals who often work against each other rather than working together.
Reduced Productivity
Neglecting values like accountability and adaptability can decrease productivity. Without accountability, team members may not complete tasks on time or to the best of their abilities. Furthermore, the team may struggle to handle changes or challenges without adaptability.
Reduced productivity is a sign of unclear goals, unshared values, and a lack of direction and management. Teams that experience reduced productivity, especially if they have been productive in the past, can be a result of decreased motivation, which can be a result of stress or burnout. Treating the cause of the problem rather than the consequences is important to get to the bottom of the issue that is causing reduced productivity in the workplace.
Compromised Ethical Behavior
Values like honesty and integrity encourage ethical behavior. When these values are neglected, unethical practices may creep in, damaging the team's reputation and potentially leading to legal consequences. Neglecting honesty, loyalty, and integrity has a detrimental impact on decision-making, creates uncertainty within the team, and creates an overall impression of unreliability.
Compromised ethical behavior can negatively affect not just the team but the company as a whole, causing costly errors and legal problems. The ethical values of the project manager or team leader are often reflected in the entire team, as the rest of the team takes the lead in their approach to work.
Lower Job Satisfaction
Team values contribute to a positive work environment. Neglecting them can lead to a toxic workplace culture, reducing job satisfaction and increasing turnover rates. Lack of interest, lack of intrinsic motivation, and declined performance point in the direction of plummeting job satisfaction.
Teams that do not nourish team values are more likely to experience decreasing job satisfaction and declining team performance.
If team members appear disengaged, especially during meetings, and do not actively participate, it might signify that they are not satisfied with their current role or work environment. Getting to the bottom of what causes this sentiment in the team can prevent turnover rates.
Negative Brand Reputation
If a team is known for neglecting its values, it can harm the company's brand reputation. This can deter potential clients, customers, or even future employees. A negative brand reputation results in a negative reception of the brand, product, and service, which can, in the long run, seriously damage the company and endanger its very existence.
Therefore, it is extremely important to keep an eye on the atmosphere in the team and the workplace and ensure the promotion of adequate team values. Getting back on the right track after getting a negative reputation can be really difficult or near impossible, depending on the gravity of the situation.
Poor Innovation
Innovation thrives in an environment where diversity, openness, and risk-taking are valued. These values are necessary to encourage creativity and innovation. In teams that lack openness, communication, and collaboration, team members will be reluctant to share their ideas because they know they won’t be heard, valued, or implemented.
Innovation is an important aspect of getting ahead in any business, and the lack of innovation is a signal that something is definitely off in a team. If team members don’t seem to care about bringing any new ideas, lack enthusiasm, and have no zest for their work, it can cause the company to fall behind its competitors.
What’s the Difference Between Company Values and Team Values?
Company values define the core principles guiding the organization's decision-making processes, behaviors, team norms, and stakeholder interactions. These values set the tone for the company's culture and identity. They influence how the team members interact, make decisions, and resolve conflicts.
Company and team values can complement each other by creating a cohesive and harmonious work environment. When team values align with company values, it fosters unity, understanding, and mutual respect among employees, leading to improved performance and productivity. This alignment ensures that all parts of the organization work towards the same objectives and uphold the same principles, thus driving the company's success.
How To Create Team Values
Creating team values creates a solid foundation for the team and allows them to function productively. Here’s how you can create team values in a team.
Create a List of Team Values
Making a list of the team values the teams should have is the first step in creating the foundation for success. Perhaps your team lacks only some aspects of the team values, or for new teams, it can provide them with a framework of which values are desirable in a team. Start from core values that we have already mentioned, but don’t hesitate to add new ones that you think would be beneficial to your team.
Discuss Values Openly
Discussing team values openly with the team allows them to express any new ideas or ask questions to better understand how the team should operate on a day-to-day basis. Discussing openly every aspect of how the team works also paves the way for open communication and collaboration in the long run.
Set an Example
As project managers or team leaders bear a significant influence on the team, they should be the ones to set the example and boost team values in an organization. Setting the right example and expectations will allow the team to adjust to the overall team values and synchronize with the rest of the team. Rewarding the desirable behavior through praise can also set an example for the rest of the team and guide them in the desired direction.
Frequently Asked Questions from ActiveCollab Community
Our community of small agencies, teams, and collectives often discusses team values as they are a super important part of growing an organization – here are the frequently asked questions their managers and leaders had:
How Can I Improve Team Communication?
Improving the team’s communication is best done by instilling trust and respect across all team levels so the teams feel they will be heard and their ideas valued. Provide everyone with enough space to communicate their thoughts and ideas.
During a meeting, involve everyone in the conversation. In written communication, ensure to include everyone in that email thread or discussion and openly ask them to participate.
Finally, provide tools such as ActiveCollab that will allow the team to communicate better, where they can send chat messages, create chat groups, leave comments and create and participate in discussions.
How Can My Team Collaborate Better?
Team collaboration can be boosted when proper team values are promoted from the beginning. Team members should be pointed to each other to collaborate, communicate, solve problems together, and come up with new solutions and ideas.
Once again, using tools such as ActiveCollab will have a great impact on team collaboration in general.
If team members have issues collaborating, project managers and team leaders should lead by example and collaborate alongside the team. Giving the team a shared goal, organizing team-building activities, and working on resolving conflicts can boost the team’s engagement and collaboration.
How to Instill Team Values?
Instilling team values starts with clearly identifying which team values the teams should nurture.
Shortlisting key team values can point the team in the right direction, but providing an example is essential.
Instilling team values is a process, and consistency is key to successfully implementing them. Everyone on the team should openly and honestly share their thoughts and questions on the team values to ensure everyone is on the same page.
How to Recognize Trust in a Team?
A team that is ready to communicate and resolve issues, brainstorm new ideas together, and collaborate usually shares trust with each other.
If the team members rely on each other, work successfully together and independently, and ask each other for guidance and opinions, it is a sign that trust is deeply embedded in the team.
A healthy team takes initiative, works together, has fun together, and challenges ideas and solutions openly, and this all points to high levels of trust among all team members.
How Can Remote Teams Nurture Team Values?
Remote teams need a way to interact with each other, communicate, and collaborate, and ActiveCollab is a great way to achieve this. Remote teams also need precise and clear expectations that are set in how they will nurture and cultivate team values.
Managing a remote team is not any different from managing and instilling team values in a team that works together in the same office. It’s just that different tools and technology are used to bridge the gap between colleagues who don’t share the same workspace physically and provide them with the tools that will allow them to share a virtual workspace.
Conclusion – How Can ActiveCollab Help Establish Healthy Team Values?
Establishing healthy team values is key to creating a successful and cohesive team.
If your team struggles with being transparent, engaging in collaborative work, and fostering accountability, ActiveCollab can help.
ActiveCollab is a powerful productivity and collaboration workspace, designed to uphold team values and enhance trust and respect in the team. It helps the team be transparent with their work by allowing everyone to participate and work together in a shared collaborative workspace.
Here at ActiveCollab, we know how important it is to promote healthy values as we’ve been around for quite some time – our goal has always been to provide small, client-facing, growing businesses who want to enable cross-team collaboration with the ultimate solution where they can strive, not just powered with amazing functionalities but also the support for establishing a healthy team with maximum efficiency.
At the end of the day, having support while creating important aspects of the team, such as team values, is crucial for achieving optimal results – sign up for a free trial and level up your business instantly!
