How to identify and clarify your personal core values

Executive overview

Leaders who lack clarity on their own values cannot effectively lead others. Core values are the filter through which you make decisions — career moves, commitments, and relationships.

Dave Stachowiak walks through his own five core values as a working example, then offers a concrete discovery process anyone can apply.

Knowing your values before you need them saves you from accepting the right-looking wrong choice.

The case for fewer values

• More than five "core" values dilutes the concept — if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.
• Aim for two to five values you genuinely cannot cross off a list.
• Values evolve in vocabulary over time, but the underlying drives tend to stay consistent.
• You don't need a perfect list to start — 80% clarity from a first pass is enough.

Dave's five core values (as a worked example)

• Meaning — investing time and talent into things and people that personally inspire you; drove the decision to take a lower-paying education job over a prestigious banking role.
• Sustainability — putting effort into lasting positive change, not one-off events or quick fixes; prefers multi-month client engagements over single-day workshops.
• Vision — creating the future by envisioning it first; finds more energy in planning and building than in executing.
• Empowerment — giving others the confidence to learn, grow, and contribute; measures success by depth of engagement, not audience size.
• Love — treating people as fellow human beings; expressed through genuine listening so people feel heard.

Discovery questions

• Write out your perfect day: what work, who you'd be with, what interactions you'd have.
• Identify when you lose track of time — those "flow" moments signal alignment with values.
• Recall the events and relationships you're most proud of.
• Notice when you feel most alive.
• Notice what makes you angry — violations of values often show up as anger.
• Ask what you're willing to fight for.

The elimination exercise

• Download or compile a broad list of common values.
• Circle nine that resonate most strongly.
• Eliminate down to seven, then to five.
• Keep eliminating until you cannot cut any further.
• The values you can't remove are your core values.