Values Clarification Without the Worksheet: A Five Energies Approach

Most values exercises ask a client to sort a deck of cards or rank a list of words. The result is often tidy, plausible, and quietly wrong. A client circles 'integrity' and 'family' because those words sound like the person they would like to be, not because those words describe how they spent last Tuesday. You leave the session with a laminated list and no real contact with the person in front of you.

There is a simpler route. Values clarification works best when it is grounded in evidence rather than aspiration. The MOJOWAY five energies give you a way to listen for that evidence in a single conversation. You are not diagnosing anything or scoring the client. You are listening for what the person actually moves toward, protects, and returns to when the week gets hard. That is where meaning lives, and it is usually visible within twenty minutes if you know what to listen for.

Start with what the client already did, not what they believe

Open with a concrete week. Ask: 'Walk me through last week, not the highlights, the ordinary shape of it.' Let them talk. Your job is to notice where energy went, not to evaluate whether the week was good. Most clients will apologise for the ordinary week, assuming values live in the exceptional moments. They do not. Values are visible in the repetition.

Then ask one follow-up: 'Which part of that week would you defend if someone tried to take it away?' The answer is rarely the thing they named first. A client might say work is consuming everything, then describe a twenty-minute call with a sibling they refused to move. That refusal is data. Write it down exactly as they said it, in their words, not yours.

Listen through the five energies instead of a checklist

The five energies in MOJOWAY are a listening frame, not a personality test. Wood is about direction and growth, Fire about connection and visibility, Earth about steadiness and care, Metal about standards and discernment, Water about rest and reflection. When a client speaks, notice which energy is alive in the sentence and which is starved. You are not labelling the person. You are tracking what their week is asking for.

A worked example. A director says she is exhausted and considering leaving. She describes three late nights finishing a proposal nobody asked her to lead, then a Sunday spent driving a parent to appointments, then a scroll at midnight because she could not settle. Wood is running hard without a clear direction that is hers. Earth is carrying care for others with none returned. Water is missing entirely. You do not say any of that yet. You reflect: 'You kept choosing the proposal and the drive, and the only thing you dropped was sleep.' She will tell you what that means to her, and it is usually more honest than any card sort.

• Wood: where is the client choosing a direction, and is it theirs or inherited?
• Fire: where do they seek contact, and where are they hiding?
• Earth: what do they keep steady for others, and who keeps it for them?
• Metal: what do they refuse to do badly, and what standards are they borrowing?
• Water: where is rest, and is it chosen or collapsed into?

Ask the two questions that turn talk into values

Once you have a pattern, use two questions. First: 'What did you protect this week, even when it cost you?' Second: 'What did you let go of, and how did that feel?' The first surfaces a value the client is already living. The second surfaces a value they are negotiating with. Keep both in their language. If they say 'I protected the school run', do not upgrade it to 'family prioritisation'. The plain phrase is the one they will remember on Wednesday.

Then test it gently. 'If that stayed true for a year, what would be better, and what would be worse?' This is not a prediction exercise. It is a way to hear whether the value is sustainable or whether it is being propped up by resentment. A client who says 'the school run is the only part of the day I feel like myself' has named something important and also named a cost. Both belong in the conversation.

Close with one sentence and one small experiment

End by offering back a single sentence in the client's own words. 'You protect the school run and the Sunday call, and you let sleep go first. Is that fair?' Let them correct you. The correction is often the most useful moment in the session, because it is the first time they have heard their own week described plainly.

Then agree one small experiment for the coming week, not a plan. Something like: 'Notice what you say yes to before Thursday and bring one example.' This keeps the work grounded in evidence rather than intention. You are not promising that this will change anything. You are inviting the client to keep watching, which is how values clarification actually sticks.

• Use the client's exact words, not coach language.
• Name one protected thing and one dropped thing.
• Agree one observation for next session, not a goal.

Why this works better than the worksheet

Worksheets ask for abstraction at the moment when the client is least able to give it. They also invite performance. A client can produce a beautiful values list in ten minutes and feel nothing. A conversation about last week is harder to fake, because it is made of specifics. The five energies simply give you a way to organise what you hear without turning the client into a type.

For coaches working across the US, UK, Canada and Australia, this approach travels well. It needs no printing, no props, and no shared vocabulary beyond the client's own. It fits into a single session and leaves the client with something they can actually notice between sessions. That is the modest aim of values clarification: not a declaration, but a clearer view of what you already live by.

MOJOWAY is a personal reflection tool, not a clinical or diagnostic instrument. Read our Disclaimer.