NextGenU.org’s values
The organizational values of NextGenU.org are meant to guide the inner conversations of our team members and promote open communication and understanding within the organization and, when put into practice aligns, with the value we provide to the public.
Radical Honesty
Radical Honesty is the practice of always being completely honest by verbally acknowledging things exactly as they are. This requires adopting a mindset that accepts the reality of a situation and effectively communicates in a way that fosters real connection with others. Learning to communicate from a place of Radical Honesty serves as a road map to directly express anger or frustration and reach reconciliation and mutual respect. Radical Honesty emboldens self-expression and fosters meaningful relationships.
Radical Kindness
The importance of infusing kindness into thoughts, words, and deeds can change your life. Radical kindness offers you a process for grounding all you say and do in kindness. It requires going beyond situational niceness or merely being cordial or amicable. Instead, Radical Kindness challenges you to live from a place of compassion and be unconditionally kind to everyone all of the time. Putting this into practice means assuming the best of everyone and then treating them with compassion, humility, and patience. Mindfully adjusting our actions and expressions throughout the day with warmth and understanding enriches our lives and the relationships we have!
Careful Listening
Careful Listening is a form of active listening and this technique involves paying attention to non-verbal cues and making a conscious effort to understand the complete message being communicated. The way to improve your listening skills is to practice not only hearing the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, observing body language, tone, emotion, and reading what is also being left unsaid. Careful Listening facilitates a form of accurate paraphrasing and creates a healthy feedback loop that is ideal for counseling, training, and solving disputes or conflicts. When practicing Careful Listening, avoid allowing yourself to become distracted or bored and refrain from trying to form counter-arguments while the other person is still speaking.
Thoughtful Questioning
Asking questions can help us naturally improve our emotional intelligence. Thoughtful questioning probes for deeper complexity and encourages self-reflection. It offers guidance for carefully and thoughtfully deciding what and how much information is needed, for what purpose, and how it would benefit future interactions, not just for ourselves but for our organization. In practice, thoughtful questions are designed by choosing the best type, tone, sequence, and framing of questions to achieve the intended outcome. Thoughtful questioning improves the team’s capacity through an evaluation of the current status and determination of the next steps.
Efficient Beneficence
The principle of Beneficence refers to actions that promote the well-being of others. Efficient Beneficence represents the moral imperative to do good to others but in a well-organized, productive, and competent way. Efficient Beneficent actions and motives connote doing good in the pursuit of higher moral ideals. In effect, Efficient Beneficence involves the overarching commitment of a person or organization focused on efforts for the greater good.
While these values create strong pillars for our organization to build on, it is the integration and internalizing of these values both internally within the individual and collectively within the team that results in excellence in all we do. The values help ensure that the work of NextGenU.org is meaningful and purposeful.