Personal Values and Motivators Workshop

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Identify core personal values and produce a structured ninety-day action plan to align day-to-day work with those motivators.

Use it when: Use during team formation, role transitions, or professional development planning sessions to clarify individual work drivers.

Skip it when: Skip during high-urgency operational crises, disciplinary meetings, or when team members do not trust peers with personal reflections.

Group arrangement: Individual reflection, pairs (or one triad if odd-numbered), and whole-group debrief.

Timing: The original source outlines a full four-hour agenda including arts-and-crafts vision boards; this condensed ninety-minute UWT version focuses on the core values sort and action planning sequence.

Materials and tools

• One set of 30 Core Value Cards per participant (or printed card sheet)
• One Action Plan Template per participant
• One pen per participant
• Timer or chime

Before participants arrive

1. Print and cut the 30 Core Value Cards for each participant.
2. Print one Action Plan Template per participant.
3. Arrange seating in pairs or small tables of 4 to support quiet individual work and partner discussions.

Say this to open

Welcome. Today we will identify our personal core values and look at how they show up in our daily work. You will sort a set of values cards down to your top five, explore how they guide your choices, and write a ninety-day action plan. You choose how much you share with your partner, and your personal reflections remain your own.

How to run it

1. Introduce goals and values sort 10 minutes

   Distribute card sets and pens. Deliver the opening script. Ask everyone to write one professional goal and one personal goal at the top of their action sheet to orient their thinking.

2. Sort cards into tiers 15 minutes

   Instruct participants to sort all thirty cards into three piles: Very Important to Me, Somewhat Important, and Not Important. Once sorted, direct them to take their Very Important pile and narrow it down to exactly five core cards. For example, someone choosing Autonomy might set aside Collaboration if independent decision-making currently matters more to them.

3. Evaluate current alignment 15 minutes

   Participants write their top five values on their Action Plan Template. For each value, they rate alignment on a scale of 1 (poorly reflected in daily work) to 5 (fully reflected in daily work) and note one concrete example of where that value helped them make a recent decision.

4. Draft ninety-day action commitments 20 minutes

   Participants choose the value with the lowest alignment score, or the one most critical to their current goals. They write two SMART actions (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to improve alignment over the next ninety days, noting needed resources.

5. Conduct peer review 20 minutes

   Pair participants up. If there is an odd number, create one triad. In pairs, each person takes eight minutes. Ring a chime at eight minutes for partners to switch speaker roles. In a triad, divide the time into five-minute turns with chimes at five and ten minutes. Partners offer feedback to make actions more concrete. Anyone may pass on disclosing sensitive details.

6. Debrief and close 10 minutes

   Bring the room back together. Ask debrief questions. Collect four or five observations from volunteers across the room. Remind participants to keep their plan in an accessible workspace.

Debrief questions

• What made narrowing down to five values easy or difficult?
• How did rating your current alignment shift the actions you chose to write?
• What is one practical step your partner suggested that improved your plan?

Finished output: Each participant completes a personal values assessment and a ninety-day action plan containing two SMART alignment commitments.

Remote

Distribute a link to a shared digital whiteboard where each participant has a dedicated private area with the thirty value cards, or provide individual editable slide decks for each participant to sort their cards. Run individual reflection in silence, assign breakout rooms of two (or one room of three for odd numbers) for peer review, and gather in the main room for debrief.

Hybrid

In-person participants use printed cards; remote participants use their private digital sorting canvas. Pair in-person participants together and remote participants into online breakout rooms to maintain audio clarity. If an uneven split leaves a single remote or in-person person, connect that person with an in-person pair using a dedicated laptop and headset.

Access and participation choices

• Provide large-print cards and pre-formatted plain-text versions for screen readers.
• Participants may keep their written values private and discuss only the structure or timeline of their SMART actions with their partner.

If the session gets stuck

A participant struggles to narrow thirty cards down to five.

Ask them to imagine facing a difficult trade-off between two cards, such as Stability versus Adventure. Which one would they sacrifice first? Use elimination rather than selection.

One partner dominates the paired review time.

Enforce the halfway chime at eight minutes and explicitly direct pairs to switch speaker roles immediately.

Terms used here

• SMART: An acronym for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.