Core Values for Your
Coaching Practice

COACHING PRACTICE TOOLS

Clarify the values that define how you work,
who you serve, and who belongs on your team.

Where This Tool Helps

Most coaches can recite their values on demand. What trips them up is the gap between the list they wrote in a branding exercise and the decisions they actually make - who they take on as a client, how they handle a difficult conversation with a contractor, what they let slide when capacity is tight.

Values that live only on your website are decorations. Values that inform hiring, client selection, and pricing conversations are operational. This worksheet moves them from one category to the other by asking you to state not just what you value, but where and how each value shows up in practice - and what it looks like when it doesn't.

Most coaches discover at least one values tension here: a personal value that conflicts with a business value, or a value they espouse that their current client mix actively contradicts. The worksheet is designed to surface those gaps, not paper over them.

The sections below work in sequence. Complete Personal Values before Business Values - your professional values should grow from your personal ones, not get written independently and then rationalized as connected.

How to Use This Worksheet

  1. Start with your personal values list. Aim for 8-10 before you narrow. Reducing too quickly cuts off values that matter but feel less "professional."
  2. Identify your non-negotiables. These are the three personal values you would not compromise even under financial pressure.
  3. Translate to business values. Ask: how does this value show up in how I conduct client work, price my services, and structure my practice?
  4. Apply to your team standard. Name the values people you work with need to embody - and the behaviors that would signal misalignment.
  5. Test against your mission. Your mission and your core values should reinforce each other. If you find gaps, note them - they are decision points, not failures.
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Personal & Business Values

Personal Values

List your top 8-10 personal values:

1.
6.
2.
7.
3.
8.
4.
9.
5.
10.

Which 3 are non-negotiable for you - and why?

Value
Why non-negotiable
Business Values

What values do you want your practice to stand for? List your top 5-7:

1.
5.
2.
6.
3.
7.
4.

How does each value show up in how you run your practice?

Value
In practice
2

Team Values & Mission Alignment

Team Values

What values do you want the people you work with to embody?

1.
4.
2.
5.
3.

What behaviors would signal that someone is NOT aligned with your values?

Mission-Values Alignment

Your business mission (1-2 sentences):

Which of your core values directly support this mission?

1.
2.
3.

Are there values that feel misaligned with where you want to take your practice?

Before your next session:

Which value on your list most influenced a client decision you made in the past month - and did you name it at the time?

Where does your current client roster most reflect your values? Where does it most contradict them?

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to unlock sustainable growth.

Consultation

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