Dear Crucial Skills,

Over the past year, a team in our organization fell apart, and we’ve identified differing priorities around shared values as a root cause. While team members agree on the same values in principle, they prioritize and apply them differently in day-to-day work. How can I help this team realign and get back on track?

Signed,
HR at a Loss

Dear HR at a Loss,

When I first read that a team in your organization “fell apart,” my mind immediately went to Humpty Dumpty. The good news is unlike Humpty, teams are not eggs. They can usually be put back together. The challenge is that when a team cracks, leaders often focus on repairing relationships or clarifying expectations without examining what caused the fracture in the first place.

In your case, the crack may not be in team values. It may be in how those values are interpreted and prioritized when difficult decisions arise.

That’s because shared values don’t automatically create shared meaning. Team members can sincerely agree on principles like accountability, innovation, respect, or customer focus, but can reach a very different conclusion about what those principles require in practice.

For example, two employees may both value accountability. One believes accountability means raising concerns immediately when they see a problem. The other believes it means working independently to solve a problem before involving others. Both are acting from the same value, but their different interpretations can create frustration and conflict. Compounding the issue, when these differences remain unspoken, misunderstandings multiply, trust erodes, and collaboration suffers.

Reassembling the team requires more than reminding people of the organization’s values. It requires helping them build a common understanding of what those values mean, how they should guide decisions when priorities conflict, and what behaviors team members can expect from one another. To do that, focus on three key leadership tasks: rebuild shared meaning, surface value collisions, and create behavioral agreements.

Rebuild Shared Meaning

A natural leadership tendency when conflict arises is to rush into reinforcing the values themselves. But if everyone already agrees on the values, repeating them won’t solve the problem. The real challenge is helping team members understand what those values mean to one another and how they apply them in daily decisions.

Rebuilding shared meaning requires creating dialogue where people can openly discuss their assumptions, reasoning, and experiences. The goal isn’t immediate agreement. The goal is mutual understanding. Once people understand how others are interpreting shared values, they are far more likely to find productive ways forward.

To rebuild meaning, invite team members to explore how they interpret and apply the team’s values. Consider questions like the following to help expand the pool of shared meaning and uncover hidden differences.

• What does this value mean to you?
• How would you explain this value to a new team member?
• What behaviors demonstrate this value in action?
• What expectations do you have of others based on this value?

Surface Value Collisions

Once differing interpretations have been discussed, the next step is to identify where values are competing with one another. Value collisions occur when two important principles pull people toward different courses of action. Because both sides can point to a legitimate value in support of their position, these disagreements can be particularly difficult to resolve.

The leader’s role is not to determine which value is “correct.” Instead, it is to help the team openly discuss the tradeoffs involved and develop a shared understanding of how decisions should be made when competing values come into conflict.

By naming value collisions and talking through them directly, teams can move beyond personal disagreement and focus on solving the real problem: how to honor multiple important values applications at the same time. Some possible questions could include:

• Where do our values most often come into conflict?
• What difficult decisions regularly create disagreement?
• What value is each side trying to protect?
• How can we honor both values in this situation?

Create Behavioral Agreements

Once teams understand one another’s perspectives and have discussed competing priorities, they need clear agreements about how they will work together moving forward.

Values become meaningful when they are translated into observable behaviors. Rather than assuming everyone shares the same expectations, identify the actions that will demonstrate your values in practice.

Returning to our accountability example, team members may have different views about when concerns should be raised and when problems should be solved independently. Rather than leaving it open to interpretation, the team can create a behavioral agreement. They may decide that accountability is a combination of both and agree to raise significant risks immediately while taking ownership of resolving routine issues. The goal is to translate shared values into consistent actions.

In my experience, teams are more resilient than nursery-rhyme characters. When leaders help team members rebuild shared meaning, surface value collisions, and create behavioral agreements, they restore trust and clarity and improve collaboration. Unlike Humpty Dumpty who remained broken, with the right conversations, teams can be put back together again.

What suggestions and ideas do you have to help restore a team with shared values, but feels “broken” due to differing applications of day-to-day interpretations of those values?

Scott