# Values Elicitation and Hierarchy — Full 4-MAT Presentation Script **Presenter:** Dustin **Total Time:** ~20 minutes (plus ~40 min exercise) **Has Demo:** Yes --- *Last updated: March 21, 2026 at 12:00 PM MT* ## 1. WHY — Motivation (~3-4 min) *Goal: Short motivational opener. Why should the audience care? Pull them in emotionally before naming the topic. No teaching, no definitions.* --- Have you ever watched someone do everything right -- set the goal, make the plan, put in the work -- and still end up right back where they started? Maybe it was a client. Maybe it was you. And it is confusing, because on paper it should have worked. You are probably wondering right now about someone specific, aren't you? Here is what makes it worse. You ask them what went wrong, and they cannot tell you. They say things like, "I don't know, I just lost motivation," or "Something felt off," or "I kept getting pulled in a different direction." They have no language for the thing that derailed them -- because the thing that derailed them was never conscious in the first place. People often find that the biggest obstacles are the ones they cannot see. > [Personal story placeholder -- a time when you or someone you worked with kept hitting an invisible wall. The harder they pushed, the more stuck they got. Everything looked right on the surface but something underneath kept overriding the plan. Then you discovered what was actually driving the behavior -- and it was not what anyone expected.] Here is what I have learned. The difference between the people who break through and the people who keep cycling is not strategy. It is not discipline. It is not even mindset -- at least not the way most people think about mindset. The difference is whether or not someone has surfaced the invisible rules that are running the show underneath all of that. And not just surfaced them -- put them in order. Because when those invisible rules are out of order, or when they are fighting each other, no amount of willpower is going to override them. The system always wins. And that is the most important thing to understand before we go any further. Now as you begin to see how this applies to the people you work with, imagine this. What if there were a process -- a specific, repeatable process -- that could pull those invisible rules out of someone's unconscious mind, put them on paper, rank them, and show the person exactly where the conflict is? What if you could hand someone a mirror and say, "Here is why you keep getting stuck. Here is the exact point where your system is working against you." Can you imagine what that would mean for a client who has been spinning for years? That is what we are learning today. It is called **values elicitation and hierarchy** -- the process of getting someone's values out of their head, onto paper, ranked in order, and tested for conflicts. Whether you realize it now or when you use it for the first time, this is the diagnostic tool that makes everything else in a breakthrough possible. --- ## 2. WHAT — Information (~15 min) *Goal: The main teaching block. What values elicitation IS -- why values are contextual, the three elicitation methods, hierarchy and ranking, toward vs. away-from, conflicts. Pull heavily from Gina's transcripts.* --- ### Values Drive Behavior -- Not Preferences Before we get into the mechanics, I want to be very precise about what values actually are. Most people hear "values" and think of inspirational words on a poster. That is not what we are talking about. > "Values aren't just nice, fluffy words like integrity or honesty or love or results or money. They're not just words we all like. Values are the content of our mind that determines our choices for behaviors. And then those behaviors, those actions that we take, they determine our results." That distinction is critical. Values are not what I like. Values are what drive my behavior. That is why something like fear or disrespect can show up on a values list. It does not mean I like those things. It means those things are running my choices. > "Values determines what we pay attention to. Values determines what we discard. Values determines what we think is good or bad or right or wrong." And values change. They are not fixed. > "The content of your values change based on your rites of passage, what things you're going through in life, based on situations, environment, global events -- values change. Values change." So when I am working with someone, the first job is to find out what values are actually operating right now -- not what they think their values should be, but what is actually driving the bus. --- ### Values Are Contextual The first principle of values elicitation is that values are contextual. I have different values depending on which area of life I am looking at. We break life into six segments: career, family, relationships (intimate), personal growth and development, health and fitness, and spirituality. > "If you just say, 'I want to elicit your values,' and you're doing that in terms of life, that's too chunked up. It's just not enough context. You've got to define the context before you go down the values road." So I always name the context before asking the first question. For today, the context is career -- because everyone in this room has some form of a career, and the process is identical for any other context. --- ### Values Are Nominalizations Values tend to be nominalizations -- high-level abstractions. Values are more abstract than beliefs, which are more abstract than attitudes. So if someone gives me something too chunked down -- like "going out for lunch with my coworkers" -- I chunk them up. "What's important to you about that?" And I keep going until I get to the nominalization level. Teamwork. Growth. Freedom. > "If it's not high enough, you got to chunk them up a bit because otherwise you're going to get 77,000 values." --- ### Three Elicitation Methods There are three methods for getting someone's values out of their mouth and onto a piece of paper. Each method accesses a different depth of the unconscious mind, and together they give a comprehensive picture. **Method 1 -- Standard NLP Elicitation** This is the simplest method. I ask: "What's important to you about your career?" The person gives me a list of words. Then they naturally run out of ideas -- that is called emptying the buffer. So I ask again: "In the context of your career, what's important to you?" And they come up with a few more. Then I ask a third time. Three times through the buffer gives me a comprehensive starting list. > "By asking the question, you're directing their focus deeper and deeper and deeper three times." In standard NLP, this is the entire elicitation. But we go further. **Method 2 -- Motivation Strategy** This one is more subtle. It was found that right before someone feels totally motivated, there is a V-K synesthesia -- a picture-feeling that happens completely out of awareness. The label of that feeling is a value. I ask: "In the context of your career, can you remember a time when you were totally motivated? Can you remember a specific time? As you remember that time, what was the very last thing you felt just before feeling totally motivated?" They might say "excitement." I add it to the list, then repeat the process with a different time. I keep going until I get a repeated word. Usually one to three values come out of the motivation strategy. If someone gives me something too chunked down -- like "I was thinking this was really cool" -- I chunk them up: "What's important to you about that?" Until I get a proper value word. **Method 3 -- Threshold Values** These are the line-in-the-sand values -- deeply unconscious. I show the person the full list we have built so far and ask: "All of these values being present, is there anything that would cause you to leave?" They contemplate it and might say "no freedom" or "betrayal." I add that to the list. Then I flip it: "All of these values being present, including the one you just said -- is there anything that would cause you to stay?" Maybe they say "fear." I add that. Then I oscillate back and forth -- leave, stay, leave, stay -- until I get repeat words or a blank. > "All of those values could be present in your career, and yet you still quit. So these are very, very deeply held values." Between the three methods, I get the full picture -- surface values, motivational values, and threshold values. And a good deal of the time, the most important values come from the motivation strategy or the threshold. --- ### Hierarchy and Ranking Having the list is one thing. Knowing the order is everything. The number one value drives the majority of behavior. It is the most important thing in that context of life. So after elicitation, I have the person rank the values from one to whatever -- as quickly as possible. Then I rewrite them in order so the list is clean and easy to work with. Then I test them. Testing works the same way I test a strategy. First, I read the values back in reverse order -- bottom to top. I get a flat, dead response. The person's nervous system barely reacts. Then I read them forward -- top to bottom. And I watch the person light up. The difference is unmistakable. Gina demonstrated this live. She read the values backwards: "I have an amazing career for you. It's full of fear and disrespect, but you're going to be seen as a leader and there's some excitement and happiness..." Flat. Dead. Then she flipped it: "Boy, do I have a career for you -- first and foremost, you're going to be growing, growing, growing. You're going to have all the freedom you can manage..." And the person's entire physiology changed. That test confirms the hierarchy is correct. --- ### Using Values in Communication Here is a practical application that shows why elicitation matters beyond coaching. Once I know someone's values, I can use them in proposals, pitches, and ideas. > "Let's say I wanted to make a proposal to Liliana. I might say, okay, here's this product and it's going to provide you with a lot of growth. You know that when you're growing, what you're really doing is helping and leading others. I want you to get enthusiastic about how much money you're going to make with this product. Really, at the end of the day, get excited for the impact that you're going to make. You make your proposal using the words of their values set." This works in any professional relationship: > "You could go and do this exercise with someone that you know or even a client that you serve and say, listen, I'm going to ask you some questions about the context of whatever we work in. Let's say you work with a client in the context of your business relationship. You might say, in the context of our business relationship, what's important to you and get five or six values. Then when you go to deliver a proposal to them or an idea to them, you utilize their actual words from their actual values list when you're making the paragraph of your proposal. By using people's values words, you light them up a little bit like a Christmas tree." --- ### Toward vs. Away-From Values This is where the real diagnostic power comes in. Someone might say "money" -- but the question is: are they moving toward money, or away from poverty? Both produce action, but the focus determines the result. > "You get what you focus on. If you are focused away from poverty, then ultimately what you're going to do is bring yourself back to poverty over and over and over again." That is the yo-yo effect. Here is how it works. Imagine money at one end of the room and poverty at the other. If the focus is away from poverty, there is a lot of energy when the problem is close -- I stop spending, I budget, I grind. It works. I start moving toward money. But the further I get from what I do not want, the less danger I feel, so the less motivation I have. Someone offers a vacation I cannot afford. I say, "I deserve it." I blow through my savings and end up right back against poverty. Energy spikes again. That is the yo-yo. Toward values do not yo-yo. The trajectory is slower, steadier, but there is no bounce-back -- because the focus is always on what I want, and the closer I get, the more motivated I become. > "We are very tricky, conniving little creatures and we will use fancy words to sound like we're thinking positively when the truth is we're moving away from what we don't want." To determine the toward/away-from percentage, I ask "why is that important to you?" five times in the context, tracking whether each answer sounds toward or away-from. Then I say: "Trusting your unconscious mind, in the context of your career, the value of [blank] -- what percentage of that is away-from?" And the person gives a number. The results are usually staggering. Even values that sound positive on the surface can be 60%, 70%, 80% away-from at the unconscious level. And that explains the incongruent behavior. > "Every time, incongruent behavior is a result of conflict in the values." --- ### Three Types of Conflicts There are three types of values conflicts, and each one requires a different intervention. **1. Toward vs. Away-From (Sequential Incongruence).** The value sounds positive but is driven by what I do not want. Money that is really "away from poverty." This is handled with timeline therapy. After clearing the five major negative emotions and one limiting decision, 50% of people lose all away-from focus in their values entirely. The other 50% see it decrease significantly. **2. Toward vs. Toward (Simultaneous Conflict).** Two values compete -- I can express one but not the other. Money vs. freedom. In the person's mind, if they pursue money they lose freedom, and if they pursue freedom they cannot earn money. This is handled with parts integration, which resolves the conflict and allows both values to rise in the hierarchy. **3. Away-From vs. Away-From (Simultaneous Incongruence).** Both values are avoidance-based and in conflict with each other. This requires both timeline therapy to address the away-from focus and parts integration to resolve the direct conflict. After a full breakthrough -- timeline therapy plus parts integration -- the values landscape often changes dramatically. Values driven by fear or avoidance drop out entirely. Values that were held down by conflict rise in the hierarchy. And sometimes the hierarchy naturally reorders itself without any additional intervention. > "Working with values isn't something you can just do on a Tuesday and be done with it. Values impact everything we do." That is why this elicitation and hierarchy process is so important. It is the diagnostic foundation. Before I can clean anything up, I have to know exactly what is there, where it sits in the order, how much away-from is present, and where the conflicts live. This process gives me all of that. --- ## 3. HOW — Exercise (~2-3 min) *Goal: Brief setup for the exercise. Demo placeholder. Set up the practice.* --- Alright, so now you know what values elicitation is, the three methods, and how to hierarchy and test. Let me show you how it looks in practice. **"Demo goes here."** *(On Demo Day, Dustin will demonstrate the full values elicitation live -- standard NLP elicitation with three buffer passes, motivation strategy values, threshold values, ranking into hierarchy, and testing backwards then forwards.)* --- **Exercise Setup:** You are going to do the full values elicitation process with a partner. Here are your steps: 1. Elicit values using all three methods -- standard NLP (ask three times, empty the buffer), motivation strategy (until you get a repeat word), and threshold values (oscillate leave/stay until repeat or blank) 2. Have your partner rank the values as quickly as possible -- number one through whatever 3. Rewrite them in order 4. Test backwards (bottom to top) -- notice the flat response 5. Test forwards (top to bottom) -- notice the difference 6. Determine the toward/away-from percentage on each value -- do the first two manually with the five "why is that important" questions, then for the rest just ask "trusting your unconscious mind, what percentage is away-from?" 7. Identify any simultaneous conflicts -- ask your partner if any two values are competing with each other You will need about 20 minutes per person, then switch roles. About 40 minutes total. A note on chunking: if your partner gives you something too specific, chunk them up. "What's important to you about that?" Keep going until you get a nominalization. And remember -- values are not what they like. Values are what drive their behavior. So do not be surprised if negative-sounding words show up on the list. --- **"Exercise goes here."** --- ## 4. WHAT IF — Future Pace (placeholder) *Goal: Self-discovery. Three questions.* --- **1. What questions do you have?** **2. What did you learn?** **3. What do I need to know?** --- **Word Count:** 2,894 words | **Estimated Talk Time:** ~21 minutes (at ~140 words/min medium pace)