Personal Values Exercise
This personal values exercise helps you name the three or four values that drive how you lead. Instead of picking words from a list, you start from real moments at work when you felt fully yourself or deeply uneasy, draw the values out of them, then test each one against your calendar and your decisions. It takes about 45 minutes, best split across two days.
Most leaders can list values that sound right. Fewer can say which value wins when two collide, or where their week contradicts what they say matters. That gap is where this exercise earns its time.
1. Moments when you felt fully yourself
- Recall a time at work when you felt proud, energised and fully yourself. What were you doing, and who was there?
- What made that moment matter to you?
- Recall a second, quite different moment. What do the two have in common?
2. Moments of friction
- Recall a time you felt angry, uneasy or flat at work. What line was being crossed?
- What did you want to say or do, and did not?
- Name the value that was missing or under threat in that moment.
3. Draft your list
- From both sets of moments, write every value you can see, in your own words.
- Group similar words and give each group a single name.
- Cut the list to five, then to three. Notice which cut hurt most.
4. Test your top three
- For each value, what does it look like on an ordinary working day, in behaviour someone could see?
- Where did last week's calendar honour this value, and where did it ignore it?
- When two of your values pull in different directions, which usually wins? Are you comfortable with that?
5. Lead from your values
- Which decision in the next month would look different if you used your top value as the test?
- What boundary does one of your values ask you to set?
- How will your team know what you stand for without you giving a speech about it?
Why starting from real moments beats choosing from a word list
Word lists invite you to choose the values you admire, not the ones you live. Almost everyone ticks integrity, respect and excellence. Real moments are harder to fake: the situation that still annoys you a year later points straight at something you care about.
That is why blocks 1 and 2 come before any naming. Write the stories first, briefly and honestly, and let the values show up in them.
How one leader might use the personal values exercise
Imagine a regional director in a family-owned group in the Gulf. Her peak moments both involve backing a junior colleague publicly. Her friction moment is a meeting where a poor decision went unchallenged because no one wanted to contradict a senior family member.
Her top three become fairness, candour and loyalty. Block 4 shows the tension: loyalty to the family's leadership sometimes silences her candour. Naming that does not resolve it, but it lets her choose deliberately, for example by raising concerns privately before the meeting rather than staying quiet in it.
What your values look like in practice
A value only becomes useful when you can see it in behaviour. Use block 4 to translate each one into something observable.
| Value | What it can look like on a working day |
|---|---|
| Fairness | Explaining how a decision was made, not only what was decided |
| Growth | Giving a stretch task to someone who is not yet fully ready |
| Family | Protecting one evening a week from work calls, and saying so |
| Candour | Raising a risk early, even when the room would rather not hear it |
Mistakes to avoid with a values exercise
- Writing aspirations as values. If you cannot find it in your past behaviour, it is a goal, which is useful, but different.
- Keeping ten values. A long list cannot guide a hard choice. Three or four can.
- Treating a conflict between values as failure. Tension between two good values is normal. The work is choosing on purpose.
- Doing it once and filing it. Revisit your top three when you change role, country or organisation.
Where coaching helps you lead from your values
Coaching helps most when you know your values but keep acting against them under pressure, or when two values are locked in a conflict you cannot see past. In mindset coaching, we look at the thinking habits that pull you away from what you care about and practise responding differently.
To take this further on your own, read about values-based leadership and use your top three to write a personal leadership vision.
Rula Husseini is an Executive Leadership & Mindset Coach (ICF PCC) based in Manama, Bahrain, with 26+ years in leadership, HR and talent development and 4,500+ coaching hours. She coaches executives, emerging leaders and teams in Arabic and English, in person and online.
Credentials and training →Frequently asked questions
How long does the personal values exercise take?
About 45 minutes in total. Most people do blocks 1 to 3 in one sitting and come back a day or two later for blocks 4 and 5, when the list feels less like a draft.
Can my personal values change over time?
Your core values tend to be fairly stable, but their order and how you express them shift with life stage, role and responsibility. A new parent or a newly appointed CEO may find a value moves up or down.
Should I share my values with my team?
Sharing them can help, as long as your behaviour matches. Teams notice what you do far more than what you say, so let them see the values in your decisions before you put them on a slide.
What if my values clash with my organisation's culture?
Start by finding the specific point of friction rather than concluding the whole culture is wrong for you. Sometimes a small change in how you work resolves it; sometimes it is useful information for a career decision.
Related
Values-Based Leadership
Values-based leadership meaning and practice: Harry Kraemer's four principles, how to make values visible in real decisions, and where it goes wrong.
How to Write a Personal Leadership Vision
How to write a personal leadership vision in five steps, with prompts, before-and-after examples and a way to turn the statement into daily behaviour.
How to Find Purpose in Your Career
How to find purpose in your career when the job looks right but feels empty: a five-step method, reflection questions and the traps to avoid.
Mindset Coaching for Leaders
Leadership Style Self-Assessment
A free leadership style self-assessment: 12 statements, scored instantly in your browser, showing where you sit between directing and coaching.
Lead from what matters to you
Book a free 30-minute discovery call to talk through what this exercise showed you.