DISCUSSION 5: Values

(Referencing ORGL-502 & ORGL-516)

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For our fifth discussion, I decided to keep the athletes interacting on the idea of values and give them the opportunity to learn about what is important to them in their own lives and truly give them a sense of what their priorities mean to them. For this discussion, I fully utilized an exercise that I learned from Dr. Adrian Popa during my Leadership & Imagination class (ORGL-502) with Gonzaga. Essentially we looked to assess values based on what we could control, what we couldn't control, and through a forced thought process on ranking the people, traits, goals, and possessions that were most important to us. Below is an outline of how the exercise was organized and structured:

 

• Start with 16 pieces of paper and organize them into 4 rows of 4. Each row is labeled with one of these categories: 4 skills/traits/characteristics, 4 life goals, 4 material possessions, and 4 people.

 

With those categories labeled, here is each step:

 

1. Take away 4 values of your own from any category.

2. Take away 2 more values of your own from any category.

3. Have the person on your right randomly (without looking and thinking) take away 2 more values from any category. 

4. Have the person on your left deliberately take away 2 more values that they feel you can live without.

5. With 6 values left, trade 2 values with the person on your left and 2 values with the person on your right to again leave you with 6 total values after trading is done.

6. Randomly flip over 3 values (1 value from any 3 people that are different than the people on your right and left that you just traded with.)

7. With 3 values left, flip over 2 of your own to leave yourself with 1 final value.

 

The conversation was interesting as people started out hesitant but tended to get more open and more invested in how to approach their decision making and priority selection. We talked about why certain rounds were more difficult than others, why it is difficult to surrender control to others to make decisions for you, why we chose to eliminate certain priorities and then keep others, and why we tended to favor certain categories and how we might negotiate others. It was completely different doing this exercise with 18-22 year olds, but was highly successful. They were open, willing to share, and took it seriously. We touched on the idea of the people that are important to us, and related this back to our motivations, relating a common thread for most people back to the very first discussion had. Lastly, as a way of recognizing the people and values that were important to each of the athletes, I decided to relate this back to their athletic events. I had each of the athletes dedicate their race the following weekend to a person that they chose to run for. We talked about finding something bigger than ourselves and making sure that we all understood that there is added meaning when we look to do something for someone else beyond just for our own motivations.