3 Tips to Help You Get Your Employees Behind the Team’s Goals, Values and Results

Posted by shonagarner on Thursday, January 20, 2011 · Leave a Comment

As a manager, you are responsible for making sure that the proper image of the company is conveyed to both clients and the public. If you’ve thought long and hard, (as many organizations have), about the “brand” or image you want everyone who deals with you to experience, then this is not only the responsibility of the Marketing Department, but all members of staff.

Building a brand customers and clients know, like and trust requires consistency in every single area of your business, from every single individual, and in every communication and interaction you have – internally and externally. This shows the customer a unified image, and continually reinforces the values your company wants to become renowned for.

But how do you, the manager, really get your team engaged with these goals, values and beliefs, so they live and breathe them, instead of them just being something written on the company’s walls, or carried around in people’s pockets as reminders – but which aren’t actually being acted out every day?

One way to do this is to teach your organisation how to successfully communicate goals, values, and results. Here’s three tips to help you communicate this effectively, and involve your team in a way which makes it more memorable and real for them.

1. Communicate the Goal

Bring your team together for a training session with three boards titled: ‘Goals,’ Values,’ and ‘Results.’

Give each person a pad of Post-It Notes and instruct them to write down their opinions on what should go under each of these headings. (Later on, they will each go to the board to place their notes under these specific headings but to start, have them complete their notes for the individual sections.)

Ask team members to write one sentence that summarizes what the team goal is or should be.

Have them complete the sentence: “The goal we want to achieve is: ______.

Provide some guidelines to help them such as keeping the goal to one sentence, ensuring it conveys an inspirational tone, and that they should not worry about getting everything into that one sentence.

2. Communicate the Values

Next instruct team members to write down on other Post-Its the values they think they need to have to achieve the goal in section 1 by completing the sentence: “The values we want people to follow to achieve the goal are:______ .”

You may have already worked on company values in the past, if so this exercise should help reinforce them. If not this should be a good place to start defining these values for the company.

3. Communicate the Results

The third step is to have team members write down specific examples of how these values have been carried out previously to produce positive results.

Ask them to complete the sentence: “The specific ways that people have demonstrated the values and delivered results are: _____.”

Once everyone is ready, have each team member go to the board and place their Post-It notes for each section on the board, explaining what they wrote down and why.

Have a short discussion about each contribution.

Once each person has had their turn, have them discuss and decide on one specific sentence that summarizes the goal of the company.

Then work together to develop a ‘script’ to convey the company’s goals, values, and results.

Finally devise a plan for capturing and displaying specific examples of people delivering these results. It’s great at a future team meeting to bring some good examples of how you have seen staff “walking the talk”.

This recognizes model behaviours, and encourages and reminds others about the importance of the goals and values to the success of the team. It keeps them alive!

———————————————————————

For more information to help you with the people side of management,
including how to improve employee motivation and get the best out of your team, take a look at these great resources: