Daylight talks: getting to the core of workplace accountability

Integrity is one of our core values here at Daylight. But integrity is a squishy word. What does it really mean? It occurred to us that each team member may have different definitions and values around what it means to have integrity—and more importantly, what it means to embody it.

We’ve recently committed to hosting regular lunchtime “Daylight Talks” to help us build our company’s culture by clarifying our core values, mission, and vision. In these talks, we will also be discussing how these values impact our community involvement, nurture our creativity, and foster growth within our team.

For our first Daylight Talk in December, we focused on integrity as well as accountability, its natural partner. Monica Borell, CEO, and founder of an online organization and remote meetings tool called Cardsmith was the perfect facilitator for our first Daylight Talk. She’s a leader in Portland’s startup community, an experienced project manager, and a process junkie.

Instead of the traditional lecture-style event, Monica facilitated a discussion in which each team member contributed. Her process was designed to maintain open reflection so that each person could get to the heart of their beliefs and then share those ideas interactively (and safely) with the group. Throughout the session, we wrote down our answers to various questions regarding our feelings and behaviors around accountability. We then took turns explaining our points of view.

One topic we discussed was what it feels like when we fail to be accountable. It was interesting to see that many of us feel shame when we let someone down. Some of us become reflective in that situation and look at what we could have done differently. We all viewed that experience as an opportunity to improve our integrity in the future.

It was comforting to learn that many team members have similar outlooks on accountability. Contemplating an important topic like this one clarified our understanding of each other, and the cohesiveness of our team. That, in turn, allows us to provide the best possible service to our clients.

We plan to keep up these Daylight Talks. In our next session, we will delve into how we can create an even more awesome working environment—recognizing that we can rely on our new understanding of integrity and accountability to make that happen.

Thanks again to Monica from CardSmith for speaking to our team and Paige from Storycatcher Creative on adding content to our blog!