The question that starts it
The opening question is variant-specific to context, but the structure is always: "What's important to you about [X]?"
For career: "What's important to you about your work?"
For relationships: "What's important to you in a relationship?"
Client answers, say, "making a difference." Don't accept and move on. Ask the second question.
The second question
"And what's important to you about making a difference?"
This is the move. You're not eliciting examples; you're eliciting what's behind the value. The client might say "feeling that my time matters." Now ask: "And what's important to you about feeling that your time matters?"
Repeat until you reach a terminal value — one where the client can't go further. "Because if my time doesn't matter, I don't matter." That's a terminal value. You've reached identity-level material.
Generate the list
Return to the original question with a slight variant: "What else is important to you about your work?" Generate the next branch. Keep going until the client genuinely runs out — usually 6–10 distinct values per context.
Rank by hierarchy
Take any two values from the list. Ask: "If you had to give one up, which would you keep?" Don't let them refuse — force the choice. This surfaces the hierarchy.
Pair-compare across the list until the rank order is clear. Common discoveries: the value the client claims as #1 ends up #3; a value they hadn't articulated comes in at #2. The hierarchy is usually news.
Elicit the criteria
For each top-ranked value, ask: "How would you know this is being met? What specifically would you see, hear, feel?" The criterion is the evidence procedure — the sensory test that tells the client whether the value is satisfied.
Without criteria, values stay abstract. With criteria, the client can evaluate any option against the test.
Worked example: career decision
Client is choosing between two job offers and can't decide. Run values elicitation on "work":
- Surfaced values: autonomy, growth, financial security, recognition, meaningful work, work-life integration.
- Pair-ranked: autonomy > growth > meaningful work > work-life integration > financial security > recognition.
- Criteria for autonomy: "deciding what I work on for at least 60% of my week."
- Test each offer: Offer A scores autonomy 8/10, growth 9/10. Offer B scores autonomy 3/10, growth 7/10.
- The decision becomes obvious. Not because the coach told them, but because the values made the math visible.
Frequently asked questions
What is values elicitation in NLP?
A structured questioning process for surfacing a client's actual values in a specific context — career, relationship, health, money. The output is a ranked list of values (e.g. autonomy > growth > security > recognition) plus their underlying criteria. It's a Master Practitioner-level technique.
Why elicit values?
Because most stuckness, frustration, and decision-paralysis is a values conflict the client can't see clearly. Surface the values, rank them, and the right decision usually becomes obvious. Without the values list, coaches and clients argue over surface symptoms forever.
How long does values elicitation take?
30–60 minutes for a single context. Two passes — first to elicit, second to rank — produce a usable list. The list usually surprises the client; if it doesn't, the elicitation was too shallow.
How is this different from a values exercise from a workbook?
Workbook exercises ask you to pick five values from a list of fifty. Values elicitation generates the list from your own language — your words, your hierarchy. The technique surfaces the values you actually live by, which often differ from the values you'd pick off a list.