As election fever sweeps the UK, we considered the role of VALUES for politicians. Do they have any? What should they be? Are they more important than the leaders' wives' shoes?
Top 3 most strongly supported statements
Need: to acknowledge that people are human and follow their self-interest, so mechanisms need to be put into place to hold politicians accountable.
Need: start recruiting the right people into politics, looking ,ore into schools etc and changing it at the grass roots
Need: consistency - politicians standing up for what they say and behaving accordingly
The value of values
There was widespread consensus that values are critically important as a guiding light. 90% voted them as having considerable influence in their voting decisions.
Values drive behaviour and give a good indication of longer term actions vs short term ones
let's say the vast majority of politicians believe in social progress...what is the problem why do they cave in on their values and why do they lose their moral compass?
Top values we want from our political parties
100% of the group voted in favour of integrity, connectedness, transparency, wisdom and vision
Runners up (>70% support) were courage, responsibility, reform, listening, decisiveness, innovation, ambition and charisma.
In our poll when participants were forced to choose only one "most important" value, connectedness and courage took over 60% of the votes between them.
Making it happen
There was a shared concern about menu driven political campaigns: There is a risk that polls drive values and every party just reiterates the right buzz words without really espousing them as VALUES
We considered how to impact on politics - can we encourage out politicians to live by these values?
We can make it clear that we need them to be like this
We need to take more responsibility for the country we want to live in. we need to care about each other and to help each other - we need to lead locally in order to get leaders nationally
We could each write to our politicians saying we had a debate and this was the conclusion and can they demonstrate how they stack up against this criteria to earn our vote.
For the full list of synthetrons email us
Next debate "And all that jazz" 4pm (UK time) May 20th. Has music ever stirred your soul or made your heart beat faster? Does it encourage creativity in the workplace or is it just a distraction? Are we making full use of music beyond the obvious domain of the performance space or i-pod? What can we all learn from musicians to be better citizens / entrepreneurs / teams / ... ?
Top 3 most strongly supported statements
Need: to acknowledge that people are human and follow their self-interest, so mechanisms need to be put into place to hold politicians accountable.
Need: start recruiting the right people into politics, looking ,ore into schools etc and changing it at the grass roots
Need: consistency - politicians standing up for what they say and behaving accordingly
The value of values
There was widespread consensus that values are critically important as a guiding light. 90% voted them as having considerable influence in their voting decisions.
Values drive behaviour and give a good indication of longer term actions vs short term ones
let's say the vast majority of politicians believe in social progress...what is the problem why do they cave in on their values and why do they lose their moral compass?
Top values we want from our political parties
100% of the group voted in favour of integrity, connectedness, transparency, wisdom and vision
Runners up (>70% support) were courage, responsibility, reform, listening, decisiveness, innovation, ambition and charisma.
In our poll when participants were forced to choose only one "most important" value, connectedness and courage took over 60% of the votes between them.
Making it happen
There was a shared concern about menu driven political campaigns: There is a risk that polls drive values and every party just reiterates the right buzz words without really espousing them as VALUES
We considered how to impact on politics - can we encourage out politicians to live by these values?
We can make it clear that we need them to be like this
We need to take more responsibility for the country we want to live in. we need to care about each other and to help each other - we need to lead locally in order to get leaders nationally
We could each write to our politicians saying we had a debate and this was the conclusion and can they demonstrate how they stack up against this criteria to earn our vote.
For the full list of synthetrons email us
Next debate "And all that jazz" 4pm (UK time) May 20th. Has music ever stirred your soul or made your heart beat faster? Does it encourage creativity in the workplace or is it just a distraction? Are we making full use of music beyond the obvious domain of the performance space or i-pod? What can we all learn from musicians to be better citizens / entrepreneurs / teams / ... ?
