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Core Values Sample
SAMPLE CORE VALUES REFLECTION
CORE VALUE: Excellence
SUMMARY OF THE CORE VALUES OPENING:
1.Welcome and Introduction .5 minute
2.Introduce the Core Value for the Month 1 minute
3.Further Exploration into the Core Value 5 minutes
4.Close and transition to rest of the Agenda 1 minute
1.Welcome and Introduction
Script: As a way to more deeply understand and use our core values, we are going to take a few minutes at the start of our meetings for a “Core Values Reflection.”
Each month we will look at one of the core values of [Centura], exploring what we understand the core value to mean to us corporately and personally. This will enhance our use of our core values for decision-making, and also enable us to better know one another better.
Note: This introduction could be discarded after the first few months.
2.Introduction of the Core Value of the Month
Script: The core value we are dealing with this month is “excellence.” Our organization defines excellence in a threefold way:
In all we do, we will:
* Put forth our personal and professional best, providing the highest quality of care of which we are capable;
*Commit ourselves to continuous improvement, seeking to set the recognized performance standards within our industry;
*Deliver a superior experience for all of our customers, sensing their needs and exceeding their expectations
Other brief thoughts or quotes on excellence: (choose from list on next page, or your own ideas.)
3.Options for Further Exploration with the Core Value
Based on what has been a done recently and personal preference, facilitator chooses one of the following ways to further explore the core value of excellence:
A. Individual Reflection/Journaling Reflection Questions:
Concept: Take a moment to silently reflect or jot down thoughts on these questions related to excellence. If desired, facilitator can ask for any comments or thoughts at the end of the time.
1. Who was a model of excellence for you early in your career, and what did they teach you?
2. What does your faith teach you about excellence?
3. What is one thing you could do this week to move toward greater excellence?
B. Video Clip/Discussion
Concept: Show a short video clip from someone demonstrating excellence in his or her craft (e.g. musician, actor, athlete, etc.). Facilitator explains why they enjoy watching this person. Then ask the group: Who is someone outside your work you love watching because of their excellence? What do we learn about excellence from these examples?
Note: This one will require more advance planning, including finding a clip and making sure you have the appropriate technology to show the clip.
C. Guided Meditation
Sample Script: A guided meditation is simply using silence and imagination to help us “know what we know.” In the next few minutes I will invite you to imagine a conversation with a mentor. Allow yourself to get comfortable, as I lead you. If it helps you to close your eyes to block out distractions, then do so.
Think about who was a mentor for you early in your career…. picture that person, remember what they looked like, and the settings where you worked together. (This person may still be alive, or they may no longer be with us.) Enjoy being in this person’s company again. It is good to see this person again.
Now silently tell your mentor about a challenge you are facing in your work today. A complex problem that doesn’t have an easy solution. Talk about the problem to your mentor…after you finish speaking, there is a pause. What does your mentor say to you? How does he/she respond? There may be a kind of “conversation” that happens.
After listening to the response, and reflecting for a moment, you say goodbye. As you are ready, open your eyes and rejoin the group.
D. Discussion in Pairs or Whole Group
Turn your chairs and form a group of about three. Discuss the following question(s):
1.Where have you seen excellence exhibited here at work?
2.Any of the quotes with questions listed below.
3. Close and Transition to rest of Agenda
Options (not mutually exclusive)
a.If broken into small groups or pairs, ask if anyone wants to highlight what they were talking about in their pair.
b.A reading or thought about excellence (See below for ideas, or use your own.)
THOUGHTS, NOTES AND IDEAS ON EXCELLENCE
Good is the enemy of great.
Jim Collins, Good to Great
Conversation Question: How can good get in the way of great in your job?
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“Calls” draw us to the depth level of whatever roles we may already have. They turn insurance policy peddlers into advisers of needed financial security, grocery store employees into health and nutrition suppliers, doctors into healers, secretaries into stewards, businesspeople into entrepreneurs, bureaucrats into civil servants, writers into dream weavers, parents into co-creators of life.
John Schuster, Answering Your Call
Reflection/Conversation Question: How does seeing your work as “call” or vocation lead to greater excellence?
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To Be of Use
The people I love the best
Jump into work head first
Without dallying in the shallows
And swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
The black sleek heads of seals
Bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
Who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
Who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
Who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
In the task, who go into the fields to harvest
And work in a row and pass the bags along,
Who are not parlor generals and field deserters
But move in a common rhythm
When the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
Has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
But you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
And a person for work that is real.
~Marge Piercy
Reflection/Conversation Question: What does this poem say to you about excellence?
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The modern mind divides, specializes, and thinks in categories: the Greek instinct was the opposite, to take the widest view, to see things in an organic whole. Arete (the Greek word for excellence) is an expression of this kind of wholeness. Arete, rather than moral virtue, means simply excellence, and this excellence can be attributed to all manner of things and creatures.
H.D.F. Kitto, The Greeks
Reflection/Conversation: What does excellence look like in other arenas of your life? (E.g. friendships, self-care, volunteerism, etc.)
Note: The following would be appropriate for a church or other faith based community
Every occupation has its own honor before God, as well as its own requirements or duties…. God is a great lord and has many kinds of servants…..A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God.
Martin Luther
Reflection/Conversation: What is your job’s version of “milking cows to the glory of God?”
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Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
(Philippians 4:8)
Reflection/ Conversation Question: What is the connection between your spiritual life and pursuing excellence? Does thinking about excellence lead to excellence?