Ask two colleagues what ‘collaboration’ means and you may hear different answers. One describes helping when someone is busy. Another describes involving people before a decision affects their work. Both are reasonable, but the word alone does not tell a team what is expected.

If organisational values are going to feature in development conversations, give people examples they can recognise. The useful question is how a value should influence an everyday decision, especially when time is short or priorities compete.

Start with a situation people recognise

Choose one value and a familiar point of friction. For collaboration, that could be a decision that changes another team’s work. Ask who needs an opportunity to contribute, what information they need and when their input could still influence the choice.

Imagine an operations team choosing new equipment. Colleagues might agree to involve the people who will use it, explain the selection criteria and discuss their concerns before placing an order. These are examples that colleagues can discuss. ‘Demonstrates a collaborative mindset’ leaves much more to interpretation.

Keep the examples few enough to remember. A long catalogue of every acceptable behaviour can become difficult to use during a normal conversation. Begin with the situations that most affect the work, then refine the wording when a real example exposes a gap.

Describe a contribution without prescribing a personality

Be careful with expectations such as ‘always enthusiastic’ or ‘confident in every meeting’. They describe how someone appears and can distract from what they contribute. Ask whether the behaviour is necessary for the role and whether there is another reasonable way to achieve the same purpose.

A person might help colleagues make a sound decision by speaking in a meeting, writing a clear briefing beforehand or identifying an overlooked issue afterwards. Discuss the quality and timeliness of that contribution. Avoid making one communication style the unofficial definition of the value.

Expectations also need to fit responsibility. Collaboration for a senior leader might include involving affected teams before a major decision. For a colleague working on a shared task, it might mean making a dependency visible early. The underlying value can stay consistent while the examples reflect the role.

Use examples to agree what to try next

During an appraisal, ask the person to bring an example of when the value helped them make a choice. Explore the situation, their action and what followed. Their manager can add another perspective, including something useful that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Where there is a difficulty, be specific. If staff first heard about a decision after an order had been placed, explore where an earlier discussion could have happened and what the decision-maker reasonably knew. Agree how affected colleagues will be involved in the next choice, alongside any support required.

Apply the same examination to the organisation. It is difficult to ask people to share information if the relevant systems are inaccessible, or to invite challenge if managers dismiss it. Values should guide the conditions leaders create as well as the behaviour they discuss with staff.

A competency framework can hold these expectations, but the language needs to remain usable. Test one description with a colleague: can they explain what it would look like in their next week of work? If they need a long explanation, revise it together. That small test gives the value a practical place in the next development conversation.

Talk to us about making your organisation’s language useful in development conversations.

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