Coaching around values is a cornerstone of much of our coaching practice. Cornelia Lucey shares how she works with values cards to bring this to life.
My research, including through coaching leaders, has explored the resources that ‘positive leaders’ (leaders who bring the best out of themselves and others) are able to draw on (Lucey & Burke, 2022), and highlights how having a clear understanding of one’s own ‘grand design’ (one’s meaning, purpose, and the breakdown of these) is fundamental.
The client knowing their values – what they want to stand for in life – is critical to this understanding, and as we know, can play a key part in developing an effective coaching relationship and in delivering positive coaching outcomes, including supporting client goal attainment. As Susan David writes, knowing our values is essential for our psychological wellbeing and performance, and can be seen as our psychological keel (David, 2017).
Background
Personal values are signifiers of what we find intrinsically motivating and therefore what gives us meaning in life. Understanding and knowing our values is directly connected to our sense of eudemonic wellbeing (deepest level of wellbeing), and our sense of coherence and significance in life. These are factors which are often at play in our coaching conversations, and therefore taking time to identify values through a card activity can be hugely beneficial.
Research (David, 2017; Lucey & Burke, 2022) shows that having an awareness of one’s own values helps us access more:
- Grit
- Willpower
- Positive emotions
Awareness of values and working towards them can lead to:
- Increased health
- Greater professional/academic success
- Greater meaning, purpose, and life direction
A strong sense of personal values can also:
- Protect clients from negative social contagion
- Protect the client from harmful social comparison
- Help the client make choices that feel true and meaningful
- Foster self-acceptance in the client
Assessing and identifying values is key to many helping approaches including Acceptance and Commitment therapy (ACT) as applied in coaching (Barney, Lillis, Haynos, Forman, & Juarascio, 2019). In the following, I share a tried and tested way to work with values in coaching: value cards.
Working with values can help a client to gain clarity over their current, past and future circumstances. If they don’t have this clarity, they can find themselves being reactive and pulled from pillar to post without a lack of focus. Identifying core values is a way to support a client hold a meaningful decision-making framework so that they begin to choose and make the decisions that are truly important to them. For example, when reflecting on careers, clients can choose to look for a role, team and organisation where their values will be recognised, appreciated and have alignment – thus increasing their chances of happiness and fulfilment in a role.
Values cards and the process
Values cards can be useful in a number of ways, including getting clients unstuck when it comes to identifying their values (just presenting them with a list of values can be a bit ‘dry’), using images to get them out of their heads. Values cards can work very well with individuals who are more inclined to embrace imagery and experience. Images can lend themselves to exploring metaphors and stories.
How they work
The process
Find a set of values cards you’d like to work with. I use this one: https://bit.ly/45Cc1SA
Others include:
Contextual Consulting ACT Values Cards: https://bit.ly/4euedQa
CliftonStrengths Values Cards: https://bit.ly/3KWEwRp
Ahead of the session, send a set of values cards electronically to your client.
Ask them to:
- Download and print the values cards*.
- Cut up the activity sheet into individual values cards and place them in a pile in front of you.
- Put the three titles in front of you: NOT IMPORTANT TO ME, IMPORTANT TO ME, VERY IMPORTANT TO ME.
*If you can’t print the values cards or do not want to, instead download and open it on your screen. Write the three title headings: NOT IMPORTANT TO ME, IMPORTANT TO ME, VERY IMPORTANT TO ME on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet.
- l You have a stack of cards in front of you or on your screen. Each card describes something that may represent a personal value for you.
- l One at a time, look at each value card and place or write it under one of the three title cards.
- l The only rule is that you can have no more than ten cards under the VERY IMPORTANT TO ME title. So if it gets “full” and you want to add another there, you’ll have to move one card over to the IMPORTANT TO ME column instead.
- l Once you have finished, take a moment to review your values cards and make any changes you’d like to. Then collect up all the values cards in the NOT IMPORTANT TO ME and IMPORTANT TO ME piles and put them to one side (or fold your piece of paper so you can only see the VERY IMPORTANT TO ME values).
- Next, I would like you to focus on the top ten values you chose. Sort or number them from 1 to 10 from most to least significant.
- Then put aside the five lowest scoring values (ie, values 6–10), or if you’re working on paper, circle your five most significant values.
- Look at your top five values. These are the values that feel the most significant and important to how you would like to live your life.
Make your client aware ahead of this process, that there is no right or wrong with values, as long as they’re genuine to them and not short-term goals.
If they’re still feeling unsure about their values, you can offer these questions to help them identify them further (David, 2017; Lucey & Burke, 2022):
- Deep inside, what is important to you?
- What do you want to stand for in life?
- What sort of person do you want to be?
- What qualities would you like to cultivate?
- If you were celebrating your 80th birthday with friends and family, what would you want them to be remembering and celebrating about your life?
Finally, ask your client to take some to reflect on (and ideally write down some notes) on how they found the process of working out their values, whether or not they changed as you went along, and any struggles or lightbulb moments they had along the way.
Values in a single coaching session
During the coaching session, the coach then works collaboratively with the client to debrief the values identified and how they found the process. The coach and client can together look at where the values have come from, what they mean to the client, and how they might relate to any goals or decisions facing them. This may lead to reflecting with the client on the potential power of goals but how they can create friction if they’re held too tightly. It can also be helpful to explore the importance of holding values lightly and flexibly.
I worked with one client who was an obsessively passionate CEO. He held equity as a value. He’d been very successful in the large education trust where he worked, partly due to utilising his passion to inspire others to have high expectations of their students. What he realised through identifying and reflecting on his values, however, was that when he held the value of equity too closely it increased his frustration with individuals or organisations that didn’t share this value with him. The awareness allowed him to be more compassionate to himself and to others.
Below, I explore working with another client around values.
Case study
Client A was transitioning from a senior leadership position to become the CEO of a subsidiary of a global financial institution. Moving into the new role, she wanted to achieve a number of objectives including continuing to codify and develop her own professional management and leadership approach.
One of the first steps we took was re-connecting to her intrinsic motivators – her values. This helped her to reflect on who she was at her deepest core and how this showed up at its best with her team and wider employees in her management and leadership approach.
We ascertained that her core values were Challenge, Change, Faithfulness, Cooperation, and Knowledge. In doing so, we were able to reflect on what her most authentic leadership approach looked like, and where there might be opportunities and barriers to working in alignment with these values in her organisation.
We considered what success would look like across key strategic relationships, and how moving towards her values could strengthen those ties and dynamics. It was also helpful to reflect on where tensions might emerge, and where more psychological flexibility might be required to hold those values lightly. For example, with a senior colleague who took a very individualistic approach to delivery and strategy, how might she support him to move more into a cooperative approach of leading? And what might be the benefits of doing so?
The client reflected that the process gave her a clearer framework in which to understand herself, and how to navigate the key relationships around her with more intentionality and direction.
Conclusion
The key to using values cards to help identify values, is that in this seemingly gentle and attractive process, the cards can do the complex work of unlocking the inner door to understanding oneself, one’s own story and narrative, and be transformational in moving forward and mitigating any barriers to achieve goals and ambitions.
About the author
- Cornelia Lucey is the director and founder of the leadership development consultancy, Cornelia Lucey Positive Leadership. She is a chartered coaching psychologist with the British Psychological Society and a senior practitioner of the EMCC.
- www.cornelialucey.com
- www.linkedin.com/cornelialucey
References
- Barney, J. L., Lillis, J., Haynos, A. F., Forman, E., & Juarascio, A. S. (2019). Assessing the valuing process in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Experts’ review of the current status and recommendations for future measure development. Journal of contextual behavioral science, 12, 225–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2018.08.002
- David, S. A. (2017). Emotional agility : get unstuck, embrace change, and thrive in work and life (paperback edition). Penguin Life.
- Lucey, C., & Burke, J. (2022). Positive Leadership in Practice: A Model for Our Future (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003170433