Understanding Workplace Values

Finding the Best Cultural Fit

Your newest recruit, Brandon, has been working with your team for several weeks now, and you're wondering if you made a mistake in hiring him. His workplace values are very different from those of your team, and from the values of your organization as a whole.
Your core team members care passionately about doing work that helps others. They value teamwork, and they're always willing to pitch in or stay late if someone is behind on an important deadline. This has led to a culture of trust, friendliness, and mutual respect within the team.
Brandon, on the other hand, wants to climb the corporate ladder. He's ambitious and ruthless, and he wants to focus on projects that will either build his expert status or achieve a public win. The problem is that his core career values clash with the core values of your team. This divide is causing infighting and bad feeling within the group.
We all have our own workplace values. And, while you can't always make sure that each person's values are perfectly aligned, you can try to hire people who fit. In this article, we'll look at how you can better recognize and understand these values – the attitudes that "make them tick."

The Importance of Workplace Values

Your workplace values are the guiding principles that are most important to you about the way that you work. You use these deeply held principles to choose between right and wrong ways of working, and they help you make important decisions and career choices.
Some (possibly conflicting) examples of workplace values include:

• Being accountable.
• Making a difference.
• Focusing on detail.
• Delivering quality.
• Being completely honest.
• Keeping promises.
• Being reliable.
• Being positive.
• Meeting deadlines.
• Helping others.
• Being a great team member.
• Respecting company policy and rules, and respecting others.
• Showing tolerance.

Your organization's workplace values set the tone for your company's culture, and they identify what your organization, as a whole, cares about. It's important that your people's values align with these.
When this happens, people understand one another, everyone does the right things for the right reasons, and this common purpose and understanding helps people build great working relationships. Values alignment helps the organization as a whole to achieve its core mission.
When values are out of alignment, people work towards different goals, with different intentions, and with different outcomes. This can damage work relationships, productivity, job satisfaction, and creative potential.
The most important thing that you need to do when interviewing someone is understand his or her workplace values. After all, you can train people to cover skills gaps, and you can help people gain experience. But it's really hard to get people to change their values; and they will be "problem workers" until they do.

How to Identify Important Workplace Values

Before you learn how to identify the values of others, make sure that you understand your own values. For example, does meeting a project deadline take priority over delivering exceptional work?
Once you have a thorough understanding of the values that are most important to you (see this article for a list), you can better understand and identify others' values. Your goal in identifying these is to raise awareness and encourage good behavior and habits.
Start by talking with your most respected team members about the workplace values that they feel are important. Ask them to brainstorm the values that they believe are most prevalent among good performers, and list these on a whiteboard or flip chart for them to see.
Once they have come up with their ideas, work together to cut the list down to the five most important workplace values. (Use Nominal Group Technique if you have any problems reaching consensus.)
Next, discuss how people demonstrate these values every day. How do they make these values come to life? And how can you encourage more of these behaviors?
You can also talk to team members one-on-one to get a better idea of their workplace values, coach them to explore beliefs and values, or simply study their behavior. For instance, team members might say that they value teamwork, but it's the people who stay late to help a colleague who actually demonstrate this.
Also, check your employee handbook or rule book. Organizations often list their values in these documents. Pay a lot of attention to these.
You can also identify organizational values by looking at how people work within the company, and by looking at the actions that the organization has taken over the last few years.

How to Understand People's Workplace Values

To create a cohesive team, you need to identify people who will fit best with its culture and values.

Ask Focused Interview Questions

When you're interviewing potential team members, do what you can to identify their workplace values – this is usually the most important thing that you need to explore at interview. There are several ways to do this.
First, ask questions focused around your own organization's workplace values. For instance, imagine that you want to find a team member who, among other values, is highly tolerant of other cultures.
You could ask questions like these:

• "Describe a time when you had to work with a wide variety of people. How did you go about identifying and understanding their points of view? How did you adapt your own working style to work more effectively with these people? What was the outcome?"
• " Has there ever been a time when your beliefs clashed with someone else's on your team? If so, how did you overcome these differences?"

These questions encourage interviewees to open up about how they approach these issues. See our article on structuring interview questions for more on this.

Use Role-Playing Scenarios

When you're interviewing a new recruit, use techniques such as role-playing, or an Inbox/In-tray Assessment to see the potential hire in action.
Set up scenarios or problems that are subtly centered around the workplace values that you're looking for. People in role-playing scenarios have to think on their feet, which means that it's difficult for them to adjust their behaviors to the ones they think you want to see. This means that you're more likely to get an accurate look at how they would behave in your team.

Look at Past Work History

You also need to look at the potential recruit's past work history. Examine the organization that they worked at previously to identify any possible clash in values (this might be most obvious if they've worked with a well-known competitor).
Keep in mind that while most people can be coached to adapt to a new working culture, some professionals will find it hard to shift their priorities. Deeper values may be very hard to change.

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Mindtools.com

Zero Defects - Quality management

Explaining the Idea

Zero defects is a way of thinking and doing that reinforces the notion that defects are not acceptable, and that everyone should "do things right the first time". The idea here is that with a philosophy of zero defects, you can increase profits both by eliminating the cost of failure and increasing revenues through increased customer satisfaction.

Tip:
While this will probably be true, it may not be true in every case!

"Zero defects" is referred to as a philosophy, a mentality or a movement. It's not a program, nor does it have distinct steps to follow or rules to abide by. This is perhaps why zero defects can be so effective, because it means it's adaptable to any situation, business, profession or industry.
The question that often comes up when zero defects is discussed, is whether or not zero defects is ever attainable. Essentially, does adopting a zero defect environment only set users up for failure?
Zero defects is NOT about being perfect. Zero defects is about changing your perspective. It does this by demanding that you:

• Recognize the high cost of quality issues.
• Continuously think of the places where flaws may be introduced.
• Work proactively to address the flaws in your systems and processes, which allow defects to occur.

Zero defects is a standard. It is a measure against which any system, process, action, or outcome can be analyzed. When zero defects is the goal, every aspect of the business is subject to scrutiny in terms of whether it measures up.

"The quality manager must be clear, right from the start, that zero defects is not a motivation program. Its purpose is to communicate to all employees the literal meaning of the words 'zero defects' and the thought that everyone should do things right the first time."
"Quality Is Free" by Philip B. Crosby (McGraw-Hill Books, 1979)

When you think about it, we expect zero defects when we are talking about items or services that we use. If you buy a fancy new plasma TV and your pixels start burning by the thousands, you demand satisfaction. When you take the car in for brake service, you expect that the mechanic will install the parts exactly as the manufacturer prescribes. No defect is an acceptable defect when it affects you personally.
So why then, is it so easy to accept that "defects happen" when you are the one producing the product or providing the service? This is the interesting dichotomy that presents itself. Zero defects is one of the best ways to resolve the discord between what we expect for ourselves and what we can accept for others.

Tip:
Be very careful about where you apply zero defects. If what you're doing contributes towards a mission critical or complex goal, you'd better adopt a zero defects approach, or things could quickly unravel.

However, if you fanatically follow a zero defects approach in areas which don't need it, you'll most likely be wasting resources. One of the most important of these resources is time, and this is where people are accused of time-destroying "perfectionism."

Adopting Zero Defects

There are no step-by-step instructions for achieving zero defects, and there is no magic combination of elements that will result in them. There are, however, some guidelines and techniques to use when you decide you are ready to embrace the zero defects concept.
Management must commit to zero defects. Zero defects requires a top down approach: The best-intentioned employees cannot provide zero defects if they are not given the tools to do so.

• When you decide that zero defects is the approach you want to take, recognize that it likely represents a significant change to the way people do things. Manage the introduction using the principles of change management.
• Understand what your customers expect in terms of quality. Design systems that support zero defects where it matters, but don't over-design if the end-user just doesn't care.
• Zero defects requires a proactive approach. If you wait for flaws to emerge you are too late.
• Create quality improvement teams. Zero defects must be integrated with the corporate culture. Zero defects needs to be accepted as "the ways things are done around here".
• Learn poka – yoke (POH-kay YOH-kay.) Invented in the 1960s by Shigeo Shingo of Japan, it translates to "prevent inadvertent mistakes". It's an approach that emphasizes designing systems that make defects almost impossible or, if they can't be avoided, easy to detect and address. To implement zero defects, you have to have strong systems in place.
• Monitor your progress. Build mechanisms into your systems and methods of operating that provide continuous feedback. This allows you act quickly when flaws do occur.
• Measure your quality efforts. It is important to express your progress in terms of the bottom line. Take baseline measurements so you understand the cost of defects in your organization, and can measure the benefits your achieveing in eliminating them.
• Build quality into your performance expectations. Encourage members of your team to think about how they can achieve zero defects, and reward them when they're successful. 
• Recognize that although zero defects is a destination, circumstances keep changing. Monitor, evaluate, and adapt in a continuous, never-ending cycle.

By,
Mindtools.com

Building a Positive Team...!!

If you have, chances are that most days you were happy coming in to work. You had fun collaborating with your colleagues, and, together, you were able to come up with some great ideas. Because of your focus and enthusiasm, you probably did some of your best work with this group.
Teams that are highly motivated and positive are not only fun to be part of, but they also accomplish far more than teams that are struggling with morale.
This is why it's so important that, as a leader, you strive to build a positive team. In this article, we'll show you how!

The Benefits of a Positive Team

Research shows that positivity can make a real difference to people's success and well-being.
In one study, researchers found that happy individuals are then more successful in many areas of their lives, especially in their careers, compared with individuals who struggle with happiness and positive thinking.
Other studies show how much of an impact positivity has on people's ability to think creatively, progress their careers, cope with challenges, and work with other people. Positivity is an essential ingredient for success!
Positivity also brings longer-term benefits. Barbara Fredrickson, professor and social psychologist, created the Broaden and Build Theory to explain how positive emotions can broaden our behaviors over time. According to Fredrickson, the more positive emotions we experience, the likelier we are to exhibit other positive behaviors, such as curiosity, awareness, discovery, and creativity – all essential for successful innovation. In short, the happier we are, the more creative we are, and this is true for individuals as well as for groups.

Becoming a Positive Leader

Teams often become more positive because they have a positive leader. This is why focusing on your own happiness, well-being, and emotional intelligence is the first step in creating a great team.
Martin Seligman, a leading positive psychologist, developed the PERMA Model to highlight the five essential elements that you need in order to be happy. PERMA is an acronym that stands for:

1. Positive emotion.
2. Engagement.
3. Positive Relationships.
4. Meaning.
5. Accomplishment/achievement.

Start by thinking about how you can increase each of these elements in your life. Spend some time reading our article on PERMA and then take action – the more of these things you can bring to your life, the happier you'll be!
Next, stop and think about the work that you do. Do you know what your strengths are? And how often do you get to use these strengths?
Our work is most satisfying when we can use our unique abilities in a way that makes a real difference to someone else, or to our organization. First, conduct a Personal SWOT Analysis to discover your strengths. Then, use the MPS Process (MPS stands for Meaning, Pleasure, and Strengths) to see how you can use your strengths to bring more meaning and pleasure to your career.
Last, work on your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a vital leadership skill, because it gives you an awareness of your own emotions, as well as for the feelings and the needs of others.
Emotionally intelligent leaders understand what their emotions are telling them, and, because of their inner strength and awareness, they don't take out their own negative emotions on their people. This is definitely a skill that you should cultivate if you want to lead a positive team!

Removing Obstacles to Positivity

Before you can encourage positivity in your team, you need to remove any obstacles to it. By doing this, you can ensure that your team won't start getting motivated and then run into a series of roadblocks; this start-and-stop progress is dispiriting, and it can quickly undermine your team's sense of motivation.
Herzberg's Motivator and Hygiene Factor Theory gives you a great starting point for working on motivation. Psychologist Fredrick Herzberg discovered that employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not opposites. For your team members to be satisfied in their jobs, you must first remove the causes of dissatisfaction, and then add factors that contribute to satisfaction. Both of these steps need to take place for your team members to feel truly happy in their work!
For example, are there policies in your organization that could be causing dissatisfaction for your team members? Is each person's salary competitive? Would your team members be happier if you provided cross-training opportunities, or flextime? These are just a few of the elements that could contribute to your team members' satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
The office itself is something that has the potential to destroy motivation and positivity. So, take steps to create a healthy workplace for your team. Look at the work environment; it should be comfortable, well-lit, clean, and safe. Other elements, such as life balance, employee recognition, and involvement, also play a big part in your team members' happiness (or lack thereof).
Praise your team members for the good work that they do, and ensure that everyone has a healthy balance of work and time off.

Managing Positively

Once you've removed obstacles that could slow your team's progress, it's time to start managing your team in a positive way. There are many ways to do this.

• Teams that fully understand the purpose of what they do are usually more engaged than teams without this focus. This is why it's important to create mission and vision statements for your people. These statements are inspiring messages that express the deeper purpose of the work that you are doing.
• Create a team charter to define each person's role, the group's projected outcome, and your own expectations. Team charters are useful for a happy team, because they provide focus and direction. After all, when your team members know what they're doing (and why), they can all move forward together, instead of pulling in different directions.
  
• Next, look at the objectives that you've set for your team. Make sure that your team members' goals align with those of the organization by using Management by Objectives. Without this framework in place, your team members might feel unmotivated, simply because they're not sure what they should be doing, or because they don't understand how their role benefits the organization.
• Keep in mind that you play an enormous part in how your people feel day-to-day, as well as in their long-term success. Look at how you're communicating with them, and how you're helping them develop on an individual level.
• Keep your team informed about what's happening in the organization, as well as within the team; the more open and transparent you are, the easier it will be to build trust and create good relationships. Schedule regular meetings to discuss important updates or changes. This also gives your team members a chance to voice any concerns or issues that they're having with their work.
• Research shows that autonomy plays a significant role in how satisfied people are in their jobs, so do what you can to give more power to everyone on your team. This might mean delegating important tasks, or simply stepping back and letting people choose how they're going to complete a project. An added benefit of encouraging autonomy is that people's work often improves when they have the power to choose when and how they complete it.
• Your team members can't be positive and focused if they don't have the resources they need to do their jobs. So, are you supporting your people as effectively as you could be? The only way to know for sure is to ask them.
  
  Find out what their biggest frustrations are at work, and discuss how you could eliminate them. Are the processes and procedures that they use working well? Do they have any trouble finding key information? By practicing Management by Walking Around on a regular basis, you can connect and communicate well with your team, and, by doing this, you can understand what's really going on.

 

Reinforcing Positivity

Positivity is a habit, and the only way that you'll cultivate long-term positivity with your team is to reinforce it daily. This takes focus and self-discipline, but the benefits can be huge!

• First, make an effort to build confidence in your team. Giving autonomy helps you get started with this, but you can also build confidence by celebrating the successes that your team members achieve. Another way to help your team is to encourage training and development opportunities, so that your people can build additional skills and knowledge.
• As you've likely experienced in the past, one person's bad attitude can affect the entire group. If you have a team member who consistently thinks negatively, then you need to take action before he or she drags the group down.
  
  The Betari Box is a useful tool for explaining how someone's attitude and behavior can affect the people around them. Meet with your negative team member one-on-one, and use this tool to explain how his or her attitude is affecting the group. Approach the situation with sensitivity and respect; this person might be experiencing problems at home, or may have deeper issues that might be contributing to his or her negative attitude. Next, try to understand the problem. Is this person unhappy in his or her role? And what could you do to help him or her turn things around?
• Also, coach your people to use affirmations to be more positive. Affirmations are positive statements that help you overcome negative thinking. They're great for helping your team members overcome self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors.

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Mindtools.com