Core values exercise
A classic coaching exercise: from a long list, choose the values that resonate, then narrow to your core five. Print the result. Free and private.
Tap every value that resonates with you. Do not overthink it - go on instinct.
The core values exercise gives a client a structured way to move from a wide field of possibilities to a short, honest shortlist. Working from a long list, they mark everything that resonates, then keep narrowing until roughly five remain. The point is not the final five words but the deciding: the small trade-offs a client makes when they set one value above another are where the real clarity lives. Because it runs privately in the browser and prints cleanly, they can sit with the result first.
Read the output as a snapshot of what someone leans on when choices are hard, not a fixed identity. Use the top five to open a conversation. Ask where each value already shows up day to day, and where it quietly gets overruled by habit, fear, or other people. The gap between a stated value and lived behaviour usually points at the work.
For a coaching practice, values give later sessions something stable to return to. Goals and circumstances shift, but clear core values stay a reliable reference for decisions, boundaries, and motivation. Kept alongside the client record, they stay in view across the engagement rather than fading after one exercise.