culture Archives

Image of totem poles as a reflection of personal values

#045 – Carve your Totem – Define your values

14/12/2021 by Mike Clargo

Develop greater insight into your personal values and their role in influencing your thinking – Use modelling and metaphor to explore what is important to you

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Gain greater influence over the shape of things around you

Increase the fulfilment and satisfaction from your work

Better align ‘being’ and ‘doing’ – your identity and your actions

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Values are described as: principles or standards of behaviour; one’s judgement of what is important in life.

Unfortunately, most people’s experience of them is as a list of ‘nice to have’ corporate platitudes, framed and hung on a wall. Things to aspire to as long as they do not get in the ways of profit and performance.

But how do we actually value something? What is it that actually gives that something ‘value’? I would argue that we only really ‘value’ something if we are willing to sacrifice other things we value in order to attain or preserve it – time, money, position, reputation, …. If we can work out what we will sacrifice things for, we can identify what it is we really value. It could be a long list.

But what tops that list? Identifying our most important values can help guide us in making good choices and reinforcing a sense of integrity in ourselves.

This week’s adventure is all about identifying your values, and drafting a visual reflection of them in the form of a totem pole.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Identifying values

Make a list of 5 times you can remember being at your happiest. Make another list of 5 times when you most felt a real sense of pride. And make a final list of 5 times when you most felt a sense of achievement or fulfilment. It is okay if there are overlaps between these lists.

Then consider what was actually happening that led to these feelings within you? What was ‘winning out’ and what was ‘being beaten’? Do these answers reflect things that you would make sacrifices to regain?

Spend a bit of time with these answers, and try and represent them symbolically as drawings or images (or even models) – the most important at the top, and then coming down in a column?

If you can do this, the visual component will help significantly in you better re-assimilating them. But if that is not working for you, please translate them into five sentences which begin with the words: “I value …”?

Once you have done this, place them somewhere prominent, and reflect on them (maybe over the next few days). Feel free to adapt them or change them as you get more familiar with what they mean to you. And consider how this reflection may be helping you in your thinking on other things.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Systemic values delivery

Values do inherently influence our behaviours and choices. But if our true values are not particularly clear to us, this can be an inefficient process. As a result we can find ourselves being drawn in directions that do not help us. And we can waste opportunities to influence our situation positively.

Back in adventure #035 we looked at how we feed different aspects of our character. We can do something similar with our values.

On a sheet of A4 paper, draw a grid 6 squares wide and 6 deep. Then in the first column, write ‘Activities’ in the first box, and make a list of 5 specific things you did yesterday in the boxes below.

In the 5 remaining boxes along the top row, write down (or draw) your 5 values. Then in the other boxes: Firstly, take a black pen and write down how each activity helped you deliver each of your values; Secondly take a different colour pen and write down ways in which they could have helped further.

Thirdly ask yourself three questions. One, would reflecting on my values when I started this activity have helped me have more impact in line with my values? Two, am I doing the right balance of activities to deliver the value I want to deliver? And three, am I actually making the sacrifices I am willing to make for these values?

Consider what you will to do about the result.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Team Values

Consider repeating the exercise for your team meetings.

Do you already have values that you are pursuing as a team or organisation? If not, work with your team to identify what they should be.

Then repeat the grid from the Blue track on a flipchart or shared whiteboard. But down the left hand side column, write the key sessions in your last meeting. And along the top, write your team values. Then look at how each session helped deliver your values, and its potential to do even more.

Finally, ask the team two of the three questions. One, would reflecting on our values when we started this meeting have helped us have more impact in line with our values? And two, are we doing the right balance of activities to deliver the value we want to deliver?

Consider as a team what you will to do about the result.

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

Introduction to Leading by Adventure  |  What we mean by spirituality?  |  Why Adventure
Adventures to date   |  I did it, but it didn’t work very well   |  How do I know if it is working
Bringing this thinking into your meetings   |  Adventure & Mental Health
Leading by Adventure community   |  Explore Strategic Support options

Picture of wolf, based on the two wolves story about feeding character

#035 – Two wolves – Feeding Character

05/10/2021 by Mike Clargo

Understand how your current activities and practices are feeding character – Use the story of the two wolves to better support your growth as an adventurer

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Review your progress in developing an adventure mindset to change

Identify strategies to deliver the attitudes and skills you need to embrace change

Create a culture which better supports mental health in response to change

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

A popular legend has a Cherokee elder teaching his grandson about the two wolves which fight inside us all – one wolf is darkness and despair, and the other is light and hope. In response to the child’s question “Which one wins?” he answers “The one you feed!”

This story about feeding character is popular, because we all experience it. We can relate to the fight, and we have seen the truth in the answer.

But, our reality is that there is more that one pair of wolves fighting inside our minds and our hearts. The tensions that they wrestle with extend in many different dimensions beyond good and evil.

The wolves that we have been most concerned about in the Leading by Adventure series are essentially those of adventure: courage; curiosity; creative confidence, versus those of victimhood: anxiety; stubbornness; habit. And over the weeks we have been providing a varied diet of perspective, insight, opportunity,…

But the reality is this may not be enough, not if every thing else around you – gossip, media, worry – is feeding the other wolf.

So the adventure this week is for you to take a practical look at your own approach to feeding character, and to think about whether you want to change the balance of the time you spend in the various food-stores.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Analysing how we are feeding character

The green track is quite simple. Take a sheet of paper and divide it into two columns, one for each of the two wolves. At the top of the left column write: anxiety; stubbornness; habit, and at the top of the right write: courage; curiosity; creative confidence.

Then think back over the last 24 hours, and how you spent your time. And where that time fed one or other column, write in that column what was happening which provided that food.

At the end of it, look at your two columns, and ask yourself how you feel about the balance of what emerged. Whether your time, and where you spend it, and what you focus on within that, is feeding character in the way that best equips you for the right wolf to win.

And if the answer is ‘not yet’, think about one or two simple changes you want to make in order to shift that balance.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Feeding team ‘character’

At an appropriate meeting, raise the topic of ‘feeding character’ with your team. Perhaps share the work you did on the green track with them. And then use a flipchart to capture how team meetings and other activities are feeding the character of the team. Which wolf does each agenda item, report, document, behaviour and practice tend to feed (if either).

Then explore with the team whether you want to shift this balance so that the right wolf gets better fed, and what changes might be made in order to introduce a better diet in feeding character.

Some of this may involve making sacrifices, but that speaks to the heart of what ‘character’ actually is. Values have ‘value’ precisely because we are willing to sacrifice (pay) other indulgences to attain them.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Steady nourishment?

Both the preceding tracks are one-off exercises. But we know that culture rarely changes in a sustainable way from an isolated activity. Consider whether the activities you conducted above are things that could benefit from regular review.

At its simplest level this could be a periodic repeat of the green and/or blue track exercises and the proposal of further improvement actions out of this.

But such regular review could also include an analysis of progress on how all of the organisational values are being fed.

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

Discovering diversity - picture of a woman seeing herself in a range of images of people from different cultures

#014 – Discovering Diversity

06/04/2021 by Mike Clargo

Investigate & celebrate the diversity that is around you – Invite your people to introduce more of themselves: their richness, their uniqueness, & their journey. Discovering Diversity - exploring difference

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Embrace and celebrate diversity in all its forms – make it a natural part of your team’s processes

Build relationships and insight that embraces people through cultural boundaries and backgrounds

Stimulate the creativity that can be found in simply bring more of ourselves to the workplace

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

We all grow up with stories, with traditions and experiences. Some are common, but many are unique. They become OUR stories. And together they create a bigger story: Our own individual narrative of who we are and why.

Our stories may be actual stories, words and pictures conjured out of a book, perhaps read to us by someone we loved. Or they may be memories, wise counsel, fragments of conversation that reflect what is important to those around us. They may be rituals, pet phrases, recipes, gestures, things that you remember as ‘belonging’ to your family or community. We all have them. And they are important.

And they are all different. The stories of others may have familiar elements to them, particularly where our ‘origins’ are similar. But they will always have something different also.

And where our ‘origins’ are dissimilar, we may find more new elements. But we will find familiar elements also. We will find connection and resonance in their meanings that may well surprise us.

Sharing elements of our story is a good way to build those connections and resonance, but it does more than that.

It helps us to become more aware of our common humanity. It highlights for us elements of our own story that we may have forgotten or lost sight of. It offers insight which helps build empathy, trust and teamwork. It stimulates creativity.

And it helps build understanding that the similarities and differences we have transcend issues of ethnicity, colour, orientation, and religion. That there are more reasons to hold together than to separate. And that there is an wonderful richness in everyone if only we open our eyes, ears and minds to appreciate it.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Celebrate your difference

So the green track this week is to share a little bit of your own story with (at least part of) your team. If you can associate it with something tangible – a picture, or object, or sounds of some kind, so much the better.

To introduce it to the team, explain that you want to do something to compensate for the lack of human contact at present. And that you would like to do something to increase the connections between us. Explain that, to start, you are going to share a short story about yourself to start the meeting. Then simply do that. It is important to try to keep it to under 5 minutes.

At the end, see how it went (you should be able to tell from people’s reactions). If it went well, use the opportunity to share the blue track with them: Get them to take turns at the beginning of subsequent meetings.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Celebrate everyone’s difference

So the blue track this week is to start a pattern of sharing stories.

Ask your team to find or prepare something that means something to them individually. Ideally, something that the bulk of the team do not know. Something that is part of their story, and reflects something they treasure. It might be a picture, an object, a memory, a piece of music, a piece of prose, or (when the pandemic is over) a taste or smell.

Explain why you are asking them to prepare this. That it is about appreciating our diversity. Say that at the start of each subsequent meeting, one person will share for 5 minutes, and the rest of us will each share a sentence of something we appreciate from it.

And then, at the beginning of each of your meetings, give one member of your team the floor. Hear the sentences of appreciation. Thank everybody, and move on with the agenda.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Embrace Diversity

Embracing diversity is clearly so much bigger than sharing stories. But at least sharing stories is a good start.

We are all diverse. We all have things that make us different. For some of us that difference is more obvious than others. And for some of those, that simple distinction has been used against them by those who are insecure in various ways to achieve a sense of power over them.

For all of us, we have some diversities that are less obvious. We could make them obvious, but we have all experienced patterns of inclusion and exclusion as a result of difference, and so anxieties over ‘standing out’ rather than ‘fitting in’ can cause us to suppress certain aspects of who we are – particularly where we are part of a culture where who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ can influence (sometimes unconsciously) how you are treated.

The red track is to begin a dialogue with your team around this issue. As a conversation starter, we have included a number of links in the pack that you may find helpful – particularly the TED talks.

You may also find the ‘Valuing Diversity and Justice’ thread of the meetings maturity model helpful (replicated below). This can help your team position what is currently appearing to happen. And to agree how they want it to be different in the future.

A basic explanation of the maturity model can be found here. There you will find a link to the more comprehensive model (from which the above is an excerpt).

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure