How to Actually Use the Brene Brown Values Assessment
The Brene Brown Values Assessment is a self-reflection tool created by researcher Brene Brown to help people identify what they actually value, not what they think they should value. It was originally developed as part of her work on shame resilience and wholehearted living. The assessment lists a number of core values and asks you to rate how important each one is to you and how well you feel you're living according to it. Brene Brown's official website, GreaterGood.com, hosts a free version of the values assessment. You can also find it through her various published works and workshop materials. The full assessment typically presents around 20 to 25 core values and asks you to rate them on two dimensions: importance and alignment. It usually takes about 10 minutes to complete if you actually sit with the questions instead of rushing through. Here is the honest part that nobody really talks about. When I first ran my team through this assessment for a leadership development program, I expected everyone to get similarly ranked top values. They did not. What I found more interesting was watching people struggle with the second part of the questions where they had to rate how well they were living their values. Several people in senior management had significant gaps between what they rated as most important and how they admitted they were actually showing up. That gap is where the work actually happens.
The assessment itself is straightforward. You go through a list of values like authenticity, courage, compassion, integrity, and humor. For each one you rate how important it is to you on a scale, then you rate how well you feel you are living it. The scoring is simple arithmetic but the results can feel uncomfortable. I have watched people close their laptops after seeing their scores. That is normal and usually means the assessment is working. One edge case that caught me off guard involved someone whose top three values were stability, security, and predictability. When I asked them about it in a follow up conversation, they admitted they were deeply unhappy in their job because it was chaotic and unstructured. The assessment had revealed a mismatch between their stated values and their daily environment. We spent the next six months working on strategies to create more predictability within their role or planning a transition. Without that assessment they would have just stayed miserable for years. This is the kind of thing the Brene Brown Values Assessment does well. There are some limitations worth noting upfront. The tool is subjective by design. Your answers reflect how you feel in that moment, which can shift depending on stress levels, recent events, or even your mood on the day you take it. I have seen people retake this assessment within the same month and get notably different results, especially on items related to vulnerability and self-compassion. That does not make the tool broken. It makes it a snapshot rather than a permanent diagnosis.
Another limitation is that the value list is not exhaustive. Some important values like financial independence, spiritual growth, or creative expression may not appear explicitly depending on which version you encounter. People sometimes fixate on missing values and get stuck questioning whether the assessment is complete. Move past that. The point is not to find every possible value but to notice patterns in what you do see. For anyone planning to use this with a group or team, here is a practical workflow. First, have everyone complete the assessment individually without discussing it. This prevents anchoring bias where one person's ranking influences others. Second, schedule a separate debrief session where people can share their top values if they choose to. Third, look for clusters and conflicts. In one cohort I facilitated, two people had identical value rankings but worked in completely different departments and never understood why their collaboration kept breaking down. Their third ranked value differed dramatically, and that explained everything. If you are using this for personal development, do not just fill out the form and file it away. Write down your top five values and your bottom five. Then pick one value where you have the biggest gap between importance and alignment. Spend two weeks deliberately making one small behavior change aligned with that value. Notice what shifts. The assessment becomes useful when you act on what it reveals.
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Some people report feeling criticized or ashamed after seeing their results. That reaction connects directly to Brene Brown's broader research on shame. If you find yourself getting defensive, take a breath and remember that the tool is not grading you. It is giving you data. Data can be uncomfortable without being a verdict. I also want to mention that the Brene Brown Values Assessment works best when combined with other reflection methods. A journal entry written after completing the assessment usually surfaces insights that the raw numbers miss. So does talking through your results with someone you trust. The assessment opens the door. What you do after walking through it matters more. For those who want to go deeper, Brown has expanded on these concepts in her books and podcast discussions. The values assessment is an entry point into a larger framework about how living according to our values correlates with resilience, connection, and lower levels of shame. Understanding that context helps you take the results more seriously instead of treating it as a one time curiosity quiz.
The short version is that this assessment is a mirror, not a map. It shows you where you are standing right now. It does not tell you how to get somewhere else. That part requires actual decisions and follow through, which is always the harder work regardless of which tool you start with.
