EQV Framework · Chapter Four
Values Inventory
Exercise
Self-Assessment Instrument
What This Exercise Does
This exercise surfaces the values you actually operate by — which may differ from the ones you would select from a pre-defined list. The distinction matters.
Pre-selected values often reflect what a leader aspires to hold, or what sounds admirable, rather than what is genuinely driving decisions. This exercise works backward from behavior to find the real thing.
Method. You will be asked about decisions you have made and not made, energy you have sustained and depleted, and what you have been willing to protect and willing to compromise. Behavior is harder to curate than belief.
- Complete in writing, in a private setting, without reference to any external framework or inventory
- Write your responses — the act of writing forces specificity that mental responses avoid
- Budget 60–90 minutes for the full exercise
- If a question does not yield a useful response, skip it and return later
- Answer what you actually do, not what you intend or aspire to do
Important. Your responses are not submitted anywhere. Everything stays in this browser session. Consider copying your final synthesis to a private document before closing.
Decision Archaeology
The decisions that cost you something reveal what you value more than any self-report. Work through each question in writing.
Describe a decision you made in the last two years that was professionally inconvenient, unpopular, or personally costly — but that you made anyway.
What did you protect or uphold by making that choice? What did you refuse to trade away?
Describe a decision you declined to make — an opportunity you passed on, a request you refused, a path you did not take.
What made it non-negotiable for you to decline? What boundary was being enforced?
Recall a moment when you compromised or bent in a way that still bothers you — a decision that created a residue of discomfort you have not fully resolved.
What specifically feels compromised about it? What should you have protected that you did not?
Looking across these three responses, what is the common thread? What value appears in more than one of them?
Energy Patterns
What drains you and what restores you are not simply temperament. They are often signals about alignment — or misalignment — with what you genuinely value.
Describe the kind of work, interaction, or context that leaves you genuinely energized — not just stimulated or distracted, but replenished.
Be specific. Name the actual conditions, not the category. What is present in those moments that is absent elsewhere?
Describe the kind of work or context that depletes you in a way that ordinary rest does not restore.
This is different from fatigue or difficulty. What about it feels corrosive rather than simply tiring?
When have you been in a role, project, or environment that felt like it was drawing on the best of what you have to offer?
What conditions made that possible? What was being honored that is not always honored?
Have you experienced the kind of exhaustion that feels like self-betrayal rather than workload? What were the conditions?
What were you being asked to perform or sustain that was in conflict with something you needed to protect?
What You Protect & What You Compromise
The things you will defend under pressure — and the things you have given up — define the actual hierarchy of your values more reliably than any stated belief.
What have you protected at real cost — in your leadership, your organization, your relationships — that you would protect again?
Not in principle. In practice. What specific thing have you stood in front of when it was under threat?
What have the people closest to you — colleagues, direct reports, partners — seen you defend consistently, even when they wished you were more flexible?
What does your stubbornness reveal about your hierarchy of values?
What have you compromised that you wish you had not — not a mistake in judgment, but a departure from something you knew mattered?
Name what specifically was compromised. What value did the compromise violate?
If the people who work most closely with you were describing you to someone who had never met you, what would they say you stand for?
Not what they would want to say — what would they actually say, based on what they have observed?
Synthesis: Naming Your Values
Review everything you have written. The patterns across your responses — not a single answer — are the signal. Now name your top three genuine values and score each one for current alignment.
Before you name them: look for values that appeared in more than one section. A value that shows up in your decision archaeology and your energy patterns and what you protect is more likely to be genuine than one that appeared only once.
Alignment Summary
The scores below reflect your self-assessed alignment for each value. What matters most is not the score itself but the specific gap each score points to.
What to do with these results
- Any value scoring 7 or above indicates reasonable alignment — not a primary source of fatigue, though it may benefit from reinforcement
- Any value scoring 4–6 indicates a gap worth examining through specific EQV practices
- Any value scoring below 4 indicates significant misalignment — almost certainly contributing to leadership fatigue or persistent background discomfort
- Take your lowest-scoring value to your next coaching conversation as the entry point
- Consider completing the Values-to-Behavior Translation Map with these three values as your foundation
Before you close this page: copy your results. Your responses are not stored anywhere and will be lost when you close this browser tab.