Welcome. This is the first episode in a five-part series of creating clarity and designing action steps that really work. And today we’re starting with the foundation, which is values.
More specifically, how clarifying your values gives you traction in your decisions, your habits, and your relationships. And the coaching profession literally was built to solve a central challenge, which is unclear values. Now, the goals and productivity, those are secondary.
At the heart of meaningful action is knowing what matters to you most. And this video looks at what are values from a life coaching perspective and why they matter. The second part looks at the three most common missed opportunities, and the third part looks at next steps.
So let’s get started. What are values and why they matter? I want to start by talking about the difference between a topic value and a process value. A topic value, this is what you say you care about.
This is more of the category. A process value is how you actually experience that in real life. And this distinction is where the clarity begins.
So for example, a topic value is, let’s say, family. That’s a good start. But it doesn’t tell you how that value actually plays out in your life.
And so a process value might look something like, let’s say family is a topic value. The process value would be that moment when everyone’s together, when they’re laughing, when they’re relaxed. And another aspect of that process value might be the bonds you feel and being committed to people you love and spending time together.
And what coaching really truly excels at is helping people put into words what matters to them most. And if your values are feeling vague or undefined, coaching is the most effective way for you to find that clarity. And when your values are clear, everything else aligns.
You know, looking at the difference between a topic and a process value, you know, it’s just the beginning part of it. And when you start to get really clear on what specific aspects of that process that you really truly enjoy and live and can have that awareness in real time, this is where things start to gain a lot of traction. And after 20 years of coaching, these are the three most common missed opportunities I see when people explore their values.
And I’m pretty sure you could guess the first one. So here they are, the three most common missed opportunities. The first is not distinguishing between topic and process values.
The same could be applied to strengths. For example, love of learning is one of my top five strengths. I love to learn.
I love reading nonfiction books at night. It gives me that nice sleepy space. And then I feel almost compelled to share what I learned.
Like, did you know that the air we’re breathing is mostly made of nitrogen? And that lightning plays a really important role in making it bioavailable to plants. I love growing plants. I know a lot about the ammonia nitrogen cycle and how that all works.
It’s almost like a compulsion for me to learn things and share. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m making these videos. And so the topic value might be love of learning, but the process value for me is that moment when insight happens.
It’s that awe feeling of, oh my goodness, this is amazing. And essentially what coaching is, it’s a front row seat in watching someone else learn and have those deep, meaningful insights about themselves in real time. And knowing that and being able for me to see it clearly, it’s a strategic advantage.
And you get the same strategic advantage when you become very clear on this is my topic value, this is my process value, and this is exactly why I love doing what I do. Now, number two is not looking at value through the lens of others. And now when people do values work, it can very quickly become centered on yourself.
What do you like? What do you enjoy? It’s natural. It’s part of the process. And especially if you’re starting a coaching business or if you’re leading a team coaching in a university or college or organization, this is really important.
Your values need to connect with others. You know, I like to think of value as something that others are willing to invest in both the time, energy, and the money because it benefits them too. And it’s a little bit of a play on words where values can mean something that we, you know, give worth to that we hold dear to ourselves, but it’s also what people are willing to exchange money for.
Like what is the value of a car or a house or, you know, something. And so you can ask yourself, you know, useful questions to ask yourself in this one here is what do others gain by working with you? What do others gain by working with your coaches that you might oversee in a school or university? What strengths do you consistently bring to relationships, to teams, to clients you work with? What does your organization, what value does it provide to the world? These are really important and useful questions to ask, especially from the active empathetic standpoint of looking at the value you bring through the eyes of other people. We as humans are wired for connection.
We exchange value all the time and values are a way to connect with other people. For me, that’s, you know, if I look at love of learning, love of learning for me, it’s a gift. It’s a gift because I know that my love of learning and being a life coach and working with clients and being on that front row seat and watching others uncover insights that transform how they see themselves, that creates tremendous fulfillment for me.
I know I’m being used well. And I know that when I do this, immense value is created for the other person, both in their personal and professional lives. It is a tremendously fulfillment loop.
And it’s one that I’ve basically dedicated my professional life to. And that leads to missed opportunity number three, is that once you have identified values, not translating them into other areas of your life. Now values, these are not just for a vision board or not just for writing them on paper.
Although if you do have them on paper, you are ahead of the curve. You’re writing your values and being able to see them on a regular basis. That’s a really useful tool.
And that useful tool, it becomes even more useful. If you start to look at how you can apply this to other areas of your life, how you can start to look at how values can transform a division to the process that you use to the habits that you do is you can start to refine and explore these values in real life. And adding this sense of mindfulness to your life, you give your actions more texture.
And this awareness, it serves as a foundation for those next steps in the series, which is vision, then mission strategy and process. But values, the mindfulness of being able to live and understand, okay, I have this value, I can refine it, I can modify it even in real time. This is a, it’s a very fulfilling cycle and just mindfulness and being aware of values, having the written down, having them permeate a lot of different areas of your life.
It is the pathway to fulfillment. So next steps, you start with asking yourself, when have you felt most fulfilled during your day, during your week? What is it that you were up to? What is it that you were doing? And why did it matter to you? You can think of a time when you felt truly alive and ask yourself what specifically about that experience mattered to you the most. If you really want to get serious about your values and working, you know, working with a coach, this is one of them, like this is life coaching bread and butter.
This is what coaching was designed for. And if you want to explore coaching for yourself as a client, I invite you to check out coach theory. It’s a coach client matching app where you can request on demand coaching sessions, the URL is app.coachtheory.com, app.coachtheory.com. And you know, you can get clear on your values, ask, you know, and explore, let me know in the notes how it goes, you know, in the comments here.
And then the next video that we’ll look at is how you can apply values to other areas of your life, how it can inform your vision. I’ll drop a link in that video when it’s ready. In the meantime, thank you for tuning in.
Thank you for the likes and subscribes. I really appreciate it. And I hope to see you soon with some more content.
