Step three
The values exercise
One of the three questions your narrative answers is what you value. This is how you answer it. Not with the words a company puts on a wall, but with the three to five you would not trade away.
Why this one matters
Most people can talk fluently about what they have done and roughly about what they want. The middle section is where narratives go vague, because saying what you value out loud feels either obvious or grandiose.
It is also the section that does the most work later. Your values are what turn a deal breaker from a complaint into a principle. They are what you reach for when an interviewer asks why you left, or what kind of culture you need, or how you handle disagreement.
Without this step, "What I value" ends up as three adjectives anyone could have written. With it, you have language you actually chose.
How it works
- First pass. You go through a long list of words and click anything that stands out. No filtering, no thinking hard. Then you walk away for at least an hour.
- Second pass. You come back and start cutting. Where two words are saying the same thing, you keep the one that sounds more like you. Then you walk away again.
- Third pass and beyond. You narrow to three to five and mark them final.
Doing it over a few days rather than in one sitting is the whole design. The words you still want on Thursday are the real ones. The ones that felt important on Monday and quietly dropped off are worth noticing too.
If you cannot get to five, do not worry about it. Bring me whatever you have.
Do it here
The exercise is a page on this site. Your selections save in your browser as you click, so you can close it and come back to it tomorrow. Nothing leaves your device until you choose to send it to me.
When you are done, save it as a PDF or send it over, and I will add it to your file alongside everything else.
Then we talk about it
The list is the start, not the finish. In session we go looking for where each one came from. A value you cannot attach to a story is usually a word you think you should want.
Your CV walkthrough is useful here. The deal breakers you named are often the fastest route to your values, because you tend to walk away from a job at exactly the point where something you care about is being trampled.
This also feeds straight into the Purpose conversation in the 5 Ps, so the two sit next to each other on purpose.
What you walk away with
Three to five values in your own words, with a story attached to each one. This is the raw material for the "What I value" section of your narrative.