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# The Values Finder
- URL: https://www.mattrutherford.co.uk/the-values-finder/
- Published: 2026-10-09T08:00:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-09T08:00:50.000Z
- Description: You have been running on the same five values for years. You just never wrote them down. Twenty minutes fixes that.
- Author: Matt
- Tags: Coaching, Values

Two years ago I wrote a guide to finding your core values. A few hundred people read it. I have no idea how many did the exercise, because a PDF cannot tell you.

That bothered me more than it should have. The exercise can be the single most useful thing I do with coaching clients, and the beneficial part is not reading about it. It is sitting with the cards for twenty minutes and being surprised by what comes out.

So I rebuilt it as a tool. It is live today at [thevaluesfinder.com](https://thevaluesfinder.com/?ref=mattrutherford.co.uk), it is free, and it stays free.

💡

**Written out, Family becomes "Friday evenings are not negotiable".*

### What it actually does

Four steps, fifteen to twenty minutes.

You start with a long list of values and tap the ones that feel true of you. Not the ones you think you should have. The ones you recognise. That distinction is the whole exercise and the tool says so on the first screen.

Then it scores your picks by family, so you can see which themes keep showing up. Then you choose five to eight and put them in order, pair by pair, until a real ranking appears rather than the one you would have said out loud.

The last step is the one the PDF never made anyone do. You define each value **in your own words**, and you describe how fully you are living it right now.

A word on its own tells you nothing. Written out, Family becomes "Friday evenings are not negotiable". Growth becomes "I choose the job that scares me a little".

You get a report at the end. Five to eight values, in order, each with your sentence under it.

### What people say when they finish

People who have done this with me are often surprised by what they realise about themselves. Not because the values are new, but because they have been running on them for years without a name. Seeing the name on a page is a different experience from living it unlabelled.

Some find the reflection easy. Some find it tougher than they expected and enjoy it anyway.

Almost everyone finds the last step, connecting the list to how they actually live and work from here, is where it stops being an exercise and starts being useful.

### Before you do it

I built The Values Finder to be privacy first. It runs in your browser. Nothing leaves your device unless you choose to email yourself the report at the end, and you do not have to. There is **no account**, **no login** and **no list** you are being added to (unless you specify).

Do it on a laptop if you can, with twenty minutes when you will not be interrupted. Be honest throughout. The number you give on step 4 for how fully you live each value is for you, and a generous number helps nobody.

Then keep the report. Over the next four weeks I am going to write about what you do with it: how to recognise the pattern that was already there, how to make a value specific enough to be kept or broken, what to do when two of them disagree, and how to build decisions on them that hold up on a Thursday afternoon.

The report is the raw material for all of that. [Go and get yours](https://thevaluesfinder.com/?ref=mattrutherford.co.uk).

If you would rather work through it with somebody, [that conversation exists too](https://mattrutherfordcoaching.com/?ref=mattrutherford.co.uk). The report is the best thing you could bring to it.