Most people can name their values. Few can name them in priority order.

Values only become useful when they're prioritised.

In a typical value exploration session with senior executives, Sophie spends two hours asking variations of the same set of questions. What do you consider most important in life? What is your code of behaviour, the principles you won't compromise on? What guides your important decisions? What behaviours from others make you angry, the boundary that signals which value has just been violated? Who are your role models, and what specifically do you admire about them?

Most people land on a list of seven to ten values. The work then is to streamline to a top five, because five is the threshold of memorability. Then rank them. The ranking is what matters most. Values often appear to align until they don't, and the moment they conflict is the moment a ranked priority list does its work.

The kinds of questions that surface real values:

• What you would refuse to do, regardless of incentive
• What guided your last big decision, retold honestly
• What behaviours from others make you angriest, and why
• Whose lives or work you admire, and what specifically pulls you in

In this video, Sophie walks through the question set, the streamlining process down to a top five, and the ranking exercise that prepares you for the moments when values collide.

When your values clash, the priority decides who you are.

That's the work this video does.