Creating Your Hot Center – Step 2: Add Your Team

If every employee behaved as you do with other staff and customers, how hot would your company’s Hot Center glow? If SUPER HOT flashed into your mind, you’re right. Whether you have one or 100 team members, adding your team’s aligned thinking and actions to your own Hot Center will power your company’s engine for years to come.

At your next team meeting, add “Creating Our Values and Principles” to the agenda and introduce the topic by setting the following expectations.

“We’re creating a clear set of written company Values and Principles. They point to how our team goes about its work and treats each other and our customers. These are your high-level rules of the road—the way our company operates. It will add clarity and help us work together. I want your help as I create this. Your ideas and feedback are important.”

Download the Values and Principles Worksheet from Tools and hand it out to all team members. Give them 10 minutes to answer the same two questions you answered.

1. From your heart, what are the 3 – 6 most important values of your company?

2. What are the 5 top principles guiding your team to consistently provide high-quality work and good customer experiences?

Before you collect their worksheets, call on each member to discuss what they wrote and why. Use it as a “no wrong answer” session so everything is heard. After hearing each member’s take on the assignment, bring out your first draft and go through it with the group. Then lead a group discussion on the relative ranking of the proposed Values and Principles. Drill down on any interesting ideas or issues raised. Get a sense of how much agreement there is about specific items. 

Now, with your meeting notes and worksheets in hand, you’re ready to create the next draft of Our Values and Principles. “Best ideas win,” so review your team’s ideas to create a better document than your first personal draft. You’ll likely maintain most of the spirit of yours but change some of the language and specifics.

When done, circulate it and get final feedback. Each team member went through the idea and discussion meeting, so when they see this draft, they’ll know they’re one of the sources. This process gives them ownership of your final document. Ask for feedback individually on this draft and then write up the final. Here are two little tips as you go to final: 1) Less is often more, so shorter can be clearer and more impactful; 2) Run it by someone who got straight A’s in English so the grammar is correct.

At your next Team Meeting, hand out the final version of Our Values and Principles and go through it so everyone understands it. Discuss how to handle scenarios with customers and team members and how your team members’ actions are derived from Our Values and Principles.

You’ve created it. Now you and your team need to live it.

3