I was out on the water this morning before I sat down to write this. That’s usually where my best thinking happens, man, if I’m being real with you. And what I kept coming back to was a question I’ve asked hundreds of young people over the years, in classrooms, in mentoring sessions, across a chessboard.
What do you value?
You want to know what happens almost every time? Silence. Not the disrespectful kind. The honest kind. The kind that says nobody ever asked me that before, and I don’t have language for it.
I used to read that silence wrong. Early in my career I took it as apathy, like these young people just didn’t care about anything. I was wrong about that. It happens, man. The reality is they care about plenty. They just don’t have the words yet, because nobody handed them the vocabulary and nobody gave them the room to figure it out.
The Silence Isn’t Emptiness
Here’s what I’ve learned sitting across from young people for over eight years. When a sixteen-year-old can’t name his values, it’s almost never because he doesn’t have any. He’s living by values right now, today. The way he shows up for his little sister. The way he refuses to snitch on a friend even when it costs him. The way he gets angry when something feels unfair.
Those are values in motion. Loyalty. Protection. Justice. He just doesn’t know that’s what they’re called.
And I’m gonna say that again because I know somebody heard it but you missed it. Young people are already living by values. They just haven’t named them yet.
That gap between living your values and naming your values is where a lot of young leaders get stuck. Because you can’t defend what you can’t define. You can’t make a hard decision from a foundation you’ve never looked at. And when the pressure comes, and it will come, an unnamed value folds a lot faster than a named one.
Why Naming Is So Hard Right Now
Let me get into this, because I don’t think we’re honest enough about what young people are up against.
First, they’re drowning in borrowed language. Every platform they scroll hands them somebody else’s identity in a caption. Hustle culture values. Aesthetic values. Whatever’s trending this week. It’s not that the words aren’t available. It’s that none of the words are theirs. There’s a difference between wearing a value and owning one, the same way there’s a difference between renting a house and building it.
Second, most of the adults in their lives never modeled the process. We tell young people to have good values, but we rarely show them our own reasoning. When’s the last time a young person watched you make a hard choice and heard you explain which value made the call? We hand them conclusions and skip the work. Then we’re surprised when they can’t do the work themselves.
Third, naming a value is a commitment, and commitment is exposure. The moment a young man says out loud that he values honesty, he’s given everyone around him a standard to measure him against. That’s scary at any age. At seventeen, when your whole social world runs on watching people slip, it can feel like handing out ammunition.
So the silence makes sense. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a skill nobody taught and a risk nobody made safe.
What We Actually Do About It
In our 6 Circles to Purpose leadership training, values sit in the second circle, right after self-awareness. That ordering is deliberate. You can’t name what you value until you’ve spent real time noticing who you are, what moves you, what you can’t let go of.
And we don’t start with a worksheet of fifty words asking anybody to circle five. That’s inventory, not discovery.
We start with stories. Tell me about a time you were proud of yourself and nobody even noticed. Tell me about the last time you got angry on someone else’s behalf. Tell me what you’d never do, even for money. The values are already sitting inside those answers. Our job as mentors is to hold up the mirror and say, you see that? That thing you just described? That’s integrity. That’s loyalty. That has a name, and it’s yours.
Then we test it. A named value that’s never been tested is just a word on a page. So we ask the harder questions. What did that value cost you last month? Where did you fold on it? No shame in the answer. A moment where you folded is just that, a moment. You are not your bad moment. But you do have to look at it, because the looking is where the value gets stronger.
That’s the difference between a young person who can recite values and a young leader who can stand on them.
A Word to the Mentors and Parents
If you’ve got a young person in your life, here’s my advice to you. Stop asking them what their values are. Start asking them about moments. What made you proud this week? What made you mad? Who did you show up for? Then do the naming with them, not for them.
And show them your own work. Next time you make a decision that costs you something, let them see the reasoning. That’s worth more than any lecture on character you’ll ever give.
I challenge all of us on this one. Every young person in your circle should hear you name one of your own values out loud this week, and hear what it cost you to keep it. That’s how this gets passed down. Not through posters on a wall. Through people who live it in front of them.
The young people are ready. They’ve been ready. They’re just waiting on somebody to ask the right question and stay long enough to hear the answer.
Ready to go deeper? Explore 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
