Because competing values can complicate work relationships and sometimes cause conflicts that are difficult to resolve, it’s important that you have a clear understanding of your own values. One way to gain that understanding is through an activity such as a values sort, which CCL sometimes uses in its work with managers and executives. Using the cards laid out on pages 18–20, you can quickly get a fix on your values and rank them in importance. To get started, photocopy the cards (there are three pages with ten cards each) and then cut them apart. Sort them into five stacks: always very important to me, often very important to me, sometimes very important to me, rarely very important to me, and never very important to me. Be sure to put at least one card in each stack.

Don’t worry if some of your values aren’t included in these thirty cards. You can add your own cards with values that are meaningful to you. After you have dealt your cards, look at the stacks you’ve made. Spread them out so you can see which cards (values) are in each group. What do you notice? Do you see trends, themes, or patterns? Look at the always very important to me column. If you have almost all your cards in that stack, what might that mean? (It’s very stressful to think we always have to value so many things.) Are there contradictory responses in this group? If so, you might be setting yourself up for an internal conflict. What are the things that are clearly the most important to you? Which ones would you be willing to “fall on your sword” for? Do you see how your values might set the stage for conflict with other people who are important to you? After you have studied your stacks of cards, record your rankings on a separate piece of paper.

Values are often difficult to recognize in your peers because these values are so personal and ingrained that your peers may not talk about them. Using the same card sort method you used for yourself, try to indicate how deeply one of your peers holds these values. Base your rankings on how you see them acting on their values. Choose a colleague with whom you have a significant working relationship but not necessarily one with whom you have a conflict. You might notice pretty quickly that you don’t know how to sort all of the values – probably because you haven’t discussed them with your peer and because there is sometimes a difference between espoused values and those that are acted on. But if you think about your peer’s behavior at work or off the job, or think about the kinds of statements they have made, you can make a good guess as to how to rank their personal values. It’s not important that your choices be exactly right, because when you review your responses you will be comparing your values with your perception of your peer’s values. If this activity were run the other way, with your peer ranking how important each value is to you, they would likely rank them differently from you.

After you have ranked the values of your colleague, compare these responses to those you recorded for yourself. Where are the biggest differences? Are significant differences related to any conflicts you have had with this peer? If you had been aware of these differences could you have handled that conflict better? Take a few minutes to reflect on that la...