Ask a sixteen-year-old what he values and watch what happens. Not what he likes. Not who he follows. What he values. Nine times out of ten you get silence, or you get a word he picked up somewhere: loyalty, respect, family. Press one layer deeper. Ask him what loyalty has actually cost him, or where respect shows up in how he spends his Tuesday afternoons. The silence gets longer.
Man, if I’m being real with you, that silence used to frustrate me. Early in my mentoring work I read it as apathy. Kids who didn’t care, didn’t think, didn’t want to go deep. I was wrong. That silence isn’t emptiness. It’s a young person who has never once been given the room, the language, or the safety to look inward and say out loud what he finds there.
Let me get into this.
Nobody Taught Them the Language
Think about what we actually teach young people to name. We teach them to name the parts of a cell. We teach them to name the causes of a war. We hand them vocabulary lists every week of their academic lives. And then somewhere around age sixteen we ask them, “What do you stand for?” and we’re surprised when they look at us sideways.
Values aren’t installed. They’re absorbed. A young person watches how their grandmother treats strangers, how their coach handles a loss, how their father does or doesn’t show up, and they absorb all of it. The values are in there. What’s missing is the naming. Nobody sat with them and said, “That thing you felt when your friend got left out and you couldn’t let it slide? That has a name. That’s justice. That’s yours.”
The reality is, most young people aren’t valueless. They’re unnamed.
Borrowed Words Aren’t Owned Values
Here’s where it gets tricky. When we don’t help young people name their own values, they borrow words instead. They pull them from lyrics, from the group chat, from whatever their family repeats at the dinner table. And borrowed words sound right until real life applies pressure. A young man who says “loyalty” because it sounds strong will fold the first time loyalty asks him to stand alone in a room.
A value you can’t explain is a value you don’t own yet. I’m gonna say that again because I know somebody heard it but you missed it. A value you can’t explain is a value you don’t own yet.
Owning a value means you can tell me where it came from, what it costs you, and what it looks like on an ordinary Wednesday when nobody’s watching. That’s a different thing entirely from reciting a word.
Why This Matters for Leadership
Now, if you’re a young person reading this, here’s the part I need you to sit with. Your values are your decision filter. Every day you’re going to face choices where the crowd pulls one way, your emotions pull another, and the algorithm pulls a third. If you haven’t named what you value, one of those three will decide for you. Every single time.
That’s also why this is a leadership issue and not just a personal growth exercise. A leader who hasn’t named his values doesn’t lead rooms. Rooms lead him. He reads the crowd and calls it instinct. He follows the loudest voice and calls it strategy. The young leaders I trust aren’t the ones with the biggest presence. They’re the ones who can tell you what they won’t trade, and why.
What We Actually Do About It
In our 6 Circles to Purpose Leadership Training, values work is the second circle, and that placement is deliberate. It comes right after self-awareness, because you can’t name what you value until you’ve spent honest time watching yourself. We don’t hand young people a list of virtues and ask them to circle five. We teach them to investigate their own lives. Three questions do most of the work.
What made you angry this week? Anger is usually a value being stepped on. Follow it back and you’ll find what you protect.
What would you defend even if it cost you something? Cost is the test. A value that’s never cost you anything is still a theory.
Where does your unforced time go? Not your obligations. The time nobody assigns you. That’s where your real values already live.
I still run these questions on myself, by the way. Last month I caught myself telling somebody I valued my health while my calendar told a whole different story. It happens, man. The work doesn’t stop because you’re the one leading it.
A Word to the Mentors and Parents
If you love a young person, here’s the discipline this asks of you: do not hand them your values and call it guidance. I know the temptation. You’ve lived, you’ve paid for your lessons, and you want to save them the tuition. But a value transferred is a value borrowed, and we already covered what happens to borrowed values under pressure.
Instead, ask the question and then survive the silence. Don’t fill it. Don’t rescue them from it. That silence is the sound of a young person looking inward for the first time, and it’s sacred ground. When they finally say something, even something clumsy, reflect it back. “So it sounds like fairness matters to you. Tell me about that.” You’re not installing values. You’re handing them the language for what’s already there.
I challenge all of us this month, and I mean all of us. Ask one young person in your life what they value, and then ask the follow-up: “Where did that come from?” Then be quiet and let them find it.
That conversation is the front door to everything we do. If you want the full framework, explore the 6 Circles to Purpose Leadership Training, or reach out about bringing the program to your school or organization.
JustINSPIRE Mentoring is a mentoring-based organization focused on helping youth, emerging leaders, and communities grow with clarity, confidence, discipline, purpose, and expression. Learn more at justinspirementoring.online
