“I cannot use this microphone”, my colleague gently told me, right before entering the stage where she was going to give a talk. The microphone was supposed to go behind her ears, but she was wearing a hijab. I immediately felt my stomach drop and embarrassment for my own ignorance. How could I not have thought about this? An honest mistake, still, I felt that I had stepped on one of my core values: inclusion.

What are values?

Values can be personal and also be held by different social groups, as you might be familiar with in your organisation, in your team at work or in sports. In social settings, values align us and guide decisions and behaviour, creating a culture that’s (hopefully) adaptive to its context. Values can be held by countries too. In The Values Compass, the author, Dr Mandeep Rai, assigns different values to different countries (I can’t help but feel proud that she assigns the value of diplomacy to my home country, Norway: “being independent, humble, and willing to engage”. What a badge!).

In our personal lives, values are our heart’s deepest desires. They are what we truly care about, and how we want to live and show up in the world. We all have our unique set of values. Some values are shared by most humans, such as connection, while others are more unique. There are no right or wrong values, no values are better than others, and we can all honour and be proud of our own values.

To see some examples of values:

• James Clear
• Brené Brown
• Big Values List from Management 3.0 (scroll down to pdf)

Prioritized

Values can, and maybe should, be prioritised. A couple of years ago, I remember reading about the differences in values between Republicans and Democrats in the US. The article said that we all have the same values: for example, freedom and family are important to most people. It’s the priority of our values that makes them different.

Core values

Your highest prioritised values are often called core values. Some describe core values as constant throughout your life, and something you never want to compromise on. Others believe they are more fluid. What’s your experience? Do you believe that your values were shaped in early childhood years and are a fixed part of your personality? Or have your values changed over time? Personally, I see a shift from deeply caring about compliance and independence to prioritising flexibility, intimacy and connection in my life.

How many values

Brené Brown says you should limit yourself to two values, which are universal across your professional and personal life. Others say you can have different values across different areas of your life, as in the Bull’s-eye exercise. The Values Bridge claim there are only 16 human values, and that we have a hierarchy of core, moderate, and peripheral values. And if you want people to remember your company or team values, many recommend limiting them to the magical number three, though many companies don’t follow this advice.

Yes, I’m also confused. Values work is not an exact science. Labelling, categorising and rationalising about something as abstract as values will inevitably lead to a myriad of different models. Models are not reality. All models are wrong, but some are useful. Follow whatever recommendations resonate with you.

Personally, I find it useful to apply different values to different areas of my life. Sometimes I have one value at the front and centre of everything I do. Other times, it’s a whole sports team of values guiding me. In this brilliant episode on values at The Imperfect Podcast, a sports analogy is used: your values are the players, and you can choose which ones are on the bench and which ones are playing at any given time and place. I would also add that how many values are at play at once is up to you. What kind of sport do you imagine your values are playing? For me, I think of soccer.

Values are not

• Goals. Unlike values, goals are tangible, achievable outcomes.
• Principles. Unlike values, principles are actionable, concrete guidelines.
• Feelings. Unlike values, feelings come and go on their own.
• Expectations (but your company’s values might be)

Be mindful of when you are using the word “should” in relation to your personal values. That might indicate that the values are unconsciously derived from others’ expectations of you or from what you think society would value.

When working with values, we eventually find ourselves in discussions like “Is this a value or not?” For example, some say that health is not a value. You can ask yourself what good health will allow you to do, and that might point you to the underlying value. Nature is another one that’s debatable, because it’s not a doing word (verb or adverb). I still choose to hold nature as a personal value because it gives me direction in life, even though some might say it isn’t a value.

It’s also common to use values and principles as synonyms. In my work with values, I haven’t seen any major problems with not being strict about these definitions, as long as we are clear on what the words or sentences mean. Have fun with it, and don’t let yourself get too caught up in the semantics (unless rigidity is your core value, then please go ahead and take it very seriously).

Scepticism and fear

Throughout my career as an agile coach, I have worked with values in teams, communities, departments and in 1:1 coaching. My experience is that, understandably, values work can lead to a lot of aversion and frustration. We have all seen the fancy words on shiny posters that are inconsistently acted on. Values can feel important to the people who defined them, but meaningless to those who didn’t participate in creating them. Working with values and putting them into practice, whether it is in your personal life or at work, requires ongoing reflection and action.

Some say that values drive our behaviour. This is not always true. Sometimes, you go in the opposite direction and feel a short-lived sense of relief, only to be followed by guilt and despair. For example, you avoid going to the gym even though that would be more in line with your values. Living by our values can be uncomfortable and sometimes requires courage. Fear can also steer us away from living by our values. For example, you might value knowledge sharing, but your fear of public speaking keeps you from speaking up. Living by our values can be painful and hard. It requires a willingness to meet our pain and fear with compassion.

Benefits of knowing your values

Have you ever achieved a goal and then felt empty afterwards? Or felt that life is without a direction or a purpose? These are signs that you are not living by your values, you might not be aware of them, or your values or what they mean to you might have changed.

Knowing your personal values is key to understanding yourself and guiding you towards a purposeful life. Values are often referred to as our inner compass. When we live from our values, we usually feel a sense of purpose, integrity and motivation. When we don’t live by our values, we can feel lost, confused, disconnected and drained of energy.

If you are not convinced yet, these are some of my favourite reasons why it is useful to know your values:

• Values give you a sense of direction, purpose and stability in life
• Values help us get to know ourselves and others better
• Values uncover where we are not living the life we truly want
• Values create a sense of agency: No matter the circumstances, you can always choose to act in accordance with your values. Even when you can’t control the outcome, you can still feel good about your actions.
• Values make decision-making easier, and you become more confident in your decisions
• Values give you a clearer sense of your identity and help you create an external consistency in who you are. For example, if you deeply value and live by honesty, people in your life will know they can trust you.
• Values make goals and habits more motivating when they are connected to your values

Values in a relationship

If values can be held by different social groups, why can’t they also be held by couples? Having married a facilitation geek, my husband had little choice but to co-discover our values together. One value that has recently arisen to the surface (not related to midlife crisis at all) is adventure. Being adventurous was important to us before, but it’s even more important now. It’s like we pulled adventure off the bench (remember the sports analogy?). Making this value explicit helps us when planning events or prioritising what to do. If it does not feel like an adventure (and we are still debating what counts as an adventure), we simply no longer do it.

Discovering your own values

Do we discover our values, or do we freely choose them? Are they already present in us, or can we decide on whatever values we like? How do we know they are our values, and not the values of our society or our peers? In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), values are said to be “freely chosen“, meaning they are free from aversive control. I think this wording is unfortunate when it comes to personal values, and it’s more helpful to think of values as “discovered” or “uncovered”. Organisational values, on the other hand, I think, can be freely chosen (not necessarily discovered), based on what we want to change.

Since personal values are to be uncovered, I recommend working on them from different angles over time, iteratively. Take your time. Values work is an ongoing, never-ending process. If you don’t actively use them, they will start to gather dust again. Write them down and keep them visible if that feels right for you.

Here are some angles you can take when approaching your personal values.

Select from a list or take an online test

If you want to do a quick-and-dirty first iteration, you can simply choose from a list of values. You can use the elimination method, cutting the lists in half until you have about 2-5 values left. However, without reflecting on and feeling your way into it, you might end up with a list of values you think you should have, rather than your heart’s deepest desire. So be mindful about how you choose and reflect on your values.

Also, remember that words mean different things to different people. Make sure to dig one layer further down, to what your chosen value words look like to you. Don’t be shy to come up with your own words that are not on any list. Why not smash two words together and create a truly unique one?

Extrapolate values from strengths

The VIA Character Strengths Survey, from positive psychology, is a test for finding your strengths, and this can also point you to your values. Based on my top five strengths, I identified values such as open-mindedness, inclusion, wisdom, and honesty.

Turning towards your body and feelings for guidance

We all have personal values, whether we are conscious of them or not. Finding your values is more about uncovering them in your body than creating them in your mind. Values are connected to your emotions, so being aware and mindful of how you feel in any given situation makes it easier to uncover them. Emotions are information from your body that asks for your attention. If you’re not as connected to your feelings, you can still go towards what gives you energy and where you find yourself engaged. Chances are that’s also where you find what is truly important to you, i.e. your values.

Reflect on relevant questions

These are some prompts that might help point you towards your values:

• Imagine it’s your future funeral, retirement or an anniversary, where the people in your life are speaking about you. What do you wish they would say about how you’ve lived your life?
• Remember a time when you felt truly engaged. It could have been at work or in any other setting. What were you doing? What was it about that experience that was really important to you?
• Look to your emotions: Remember the last time you felt angry or frustrated. What was the value that was stepped on?
• What would you do if no one were watching? What does that tell you about your values?
• What do you feel is missing from your life? What would that give you?

Working with values

Now that you hopefully have become more familiar with your own values, you can try them on and start connecting them to behaviour and real-life decisions.

Here are some examples of how you might put your values to use:

• Brené Brown’s guide on taking your values from bullshit to behaviour
• The Choce Point diagram from Russ Harries is a great, simple mental model to help you become more aware of how your actions are taking you away or towards your values
• Use The Wheel of Anything or a spider chart to score yourself on your alignment with your values. Use the result to set goals pr define new habits where you want to improve.
• Make art. Be creative. Draw associations to your values.
• Connect your personal goals to your values.

What other tools and tips do you have for discovering and working with values? Also, please let me know if you disagree with anything (I value divergent perspectives and opinions) or if you have any feedback (learning is also a core value of mine)!