60 minutes (15 minutes for individual work; 15 minutes for small-group discussion; 30 minutes for debriefing)
Adaptable L–M P, T
1. To identify personal values
2. To encourage discussion of individual values as a team-building activity
3. To identify the impact of consistency/inconsistency in personal and organizational or team values
• Paper and pencil to record responses
1. Ask each participant to write 20 descriptive statements that begin with “I am…”.
2. Ask each participant to identify the 10 descriptors that are most important to him or her. Now ask each one to choose the 5 most important statements.
Note: What you are doing is asking people to make value judgments regarding what is most important to them about themselves. Be prepared for some groans.
3. Place participants in small groups of 3–5 and ask them to share their top 5 statements, looking for areas of similarity and difference. Tell them to then discuss what values they hold that are represented in their top 5 statements.
4. Ask participants to return to the larger group for debriefing.
1. Describe what happened. What made it easy or difficult to write 20 “I am…” statements? What made it easy or difficult to reduce those to the most important 10, then to 5?
2. How did you feel about sharing your list with others? How did you feel when you identified similarities or differences with others?
3. What personal, organizational, or national cultural values came into play in your initial list? The reduced lists? Are there organizational values that are a particularly good or poor match with your personal values? How might that match, or lack thereof, affect your work in the organization?
4. What have you learned about yourself? About others? About the organization?
5. How could you apply information from this experience to real life? How might the information be used to improve teamwork? Job satisfaction? Productivity? Organizational and/or career planning?
1. Adjectives and traits that we use to describe ourselves reflect our values and beliefs.
2. Values differences can affect individual, team, and organizational effectiveness.
3. Identifying values similarities can improve teamwork and relationship development.
4. Understanding values differences can facilitate effective working relationships.
5. Job satisfaction occurs most often when individual and organizational values are aligned.
This activity can be used as an icebreaker in a training session or as a way to begin a team-building session with an already existing work team. When you start the large-group debriefing, have all of the participants introduce themselves or another member of their small group, using one of their top 5 “I am…” statements.
Adapted from research described by Harry C. Triandis for Culture and Social Behavior, published in 1994 by McGraw-Hill.