practice · all tools
Values Check-in
A five-minute meeting opener before consequential decisions: the team briefly reconnects with its stated values and asks how they bear on today's choices. Prevents short-term pressure from silently overriding commitments; builds the habit of consulting the inner compass inside real work, not in offsite exercises.
- Becomes ritual noise if values are recited rather than applied to the live decision — always tie to today's agenda item
Practical
- Time
- 5 min
- Group
- 2–20 · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- The team's stated values, visible
- Mechanisms
- values-clarification, life-embedding
- Change scope
- state → skill · recurring-practice (at meetings with significant decisions)
Origin & where it lives
Thomas Jordan (Manager's Toolbox; activities partly adapted from Transition Makers Toolbox) — IDG practice; values-based leadership
Instructions: open online
In this directory via Thomas Jordan's IDG Resource Library
Jordan rates it ★ (suitable for any team) — the trust axis of this model in its source habitat. Inner Compass is one of the qualities the 2021 report says is not trained by exercises; this tool honestly does something different: it gives an existing compass a regular seat at the table.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25