Understanding the Values Compass™
The Values Compass™ is a structured diagnostic framework designed to help individuals identify and hierarchy their intrinsic motivations. Core values are the foundational beliefs that influence your decision-making, interpersonal interactions, and long-term satisfaction. By categorising these values into distinct dimensions, the tool assists in building a clearer picture of what drives your professional conduct and personal fulfilment. This assessment does not measure ability or personality traits, but rather the relative importance you assign to different guiding principles in a professional context.
What this assessment measures
- Ethical Integrity
- This measures the importance you place on transparency, moral consistency, and adherence to principles, even when such adherence is personally or professionally disadvantageous.
- Professional Autonomy
- This assesses the degree to which you prioritise independence, self-directed work, and the freedom to determine your own methods of achieving objectives.
- Collaborative Connectivity
- This dimension identifies the extent to which you derive motivation from group synergy, consensus-building, and maintaining harmonious professional relationships.
- Achievement Orientation
- This measures your drive for tangible results, competitive success, and the pursuit of measurable progress against defined goals.
- Service Contribution
- This reflects the value you place on altruism, mentoring others, and the desire for your work to have a meaningful, positive impact on society or the wider organisation.
How to interpret your result
Foundational Driver — Top quartile of importance
These values are central to your identity and are non-negotiable in your professional life. They represent the core criteria you use to evaluate whether a career path or workplace environment is the right fit.
Next step: Reflect on whether your current environment allows for the regular expression of these values and identify any gaps.
Supporting Principle — Middle two quartiles
These values are important to you but may be contextual; you value them, but they may occasionally be secondary to your foundational drivers when specific circumstances demand it.
Next step: Consider how these values support your foundational drivers and how they might be integrated into your decision-making process.
Peripheral Preference — Bottom quartile of importance
These represent principles that you acknowledge as valid but do not prioritise. They are rarely the deciding factor in your professional choices.
Next step: Observe whether these values are being forced upon you by external pressures, which could lead to long-term professional dissatisfaction.
Who this tool is for
The Values Compass™ is intended for executives, managers, and professionals undergoing a career transition, navigating leadership challenges, or seeking greater alignment between their daily activities and their personal philosophy. It is particularly useful for those preparing for executive coaching sessions who wish to move beyond surface-level career goals toward deeper, value-led decision making.
Using your results
The results of this assessment provide a baseline for self-reflection. Use the output to map your current professional projects against your top-rated values. Where there is a high degree of correlation, you are likely to experience higher levels of engagement and resilience. Where there is a significant mismatch, these results provide a starting point for discussions regarding potential changes in role, scope, or workplace culture. Use these findings as an agenda for professional development discussions or as a framework for evaluating future career opportunities.
Common misreadings
- Interpreting a low score as a negative personality trait, rather than a reflection of relative priority.
- Assuming that core values are static and cannot evolve throughout a professional career.
- Confusing professional values with personal preferences or superficial interests.
- Believing that having conflicting high-priority values indicates a failure in the assessment.
Frequently asked questions
Can my core values change over time?
Yes, while core values are often stable, significant life events, changes in responsibility, or shifts in professional context can cause your priorities to reorder.
Is it possible to have too many core values?
If everything is a priority, nothing is. Limiting your focus to your top five or six values is essential for making difficult professional trade-offs.
What if my employer’s values conflict with my own?
This is often the root cause of workplace stress. Identifying this misalignment is the first step toward managing it, either through boundary setting or exploring new professional environments.
Does this assessment require an executive coach to interpret?
While the tool is designed to be self-explanatory, discussing your findings with a qualified coach can help identify subtle patterns and practical applications you might overlook.
Should my personal and professional values be identical?
They often overlap, but not necessarily. Your values in a corporate environment may be a subset or specific application of your wider life principles.