Family Values Questions to Ask

Part of your family growth starts with knowing what questions to ask your family to get the conversation going on important topics. Use our discussion guide here on family values to find questions you can ask your family to prompt new conversations whether you are introducing values for the first time or improving how you implement them.

Introducing Values Family Questions to Ask

When you first begin using the building block of values as a family, it takes time to absorb the concept and how it will apply. Use these questions to help generate discussion and make values more applicable:

1. What stories in our family history are particularly meaningful to you? What was the lesson we learned from them?
2. What is a company whose values you admire? How do you see them putting them in motion and what do you like about those actions?
3. What are examples of families, whether real or fictional (like from a TV show or a movie), that you want to emulate traits from?
4. How do you want to see our family look different by beginning to adhere to our values?
5. If you had the chance to travel forward in time and could talk to a family member 5 generations from now, what would you hope they would still be doing that our family currently does? What things matter most to them?
6. Looking at our list of values, are there actions or situations that would feel clearly misaligned with them? How would you handle a situation where you felt like you had to make a choice to hold to a value or not?
7. What is an analogy that would help visualize what values are like to our family? (ie. Roots, foundation, etc.)
8. If you had to explain to someone else within 30 seconds what our family is all about, how would you do that?
9. How would you like to see our family involved or engaged when it comes to discussions about values? (Having a family meeting, having a time to highlight and honor how someone lived out values individually, using a family scorecard to evaluate, etc.)
10. How will we handle times when we fall short on our values, and what will we do to improve?

Implementing Values Family Questions to Ask

As your family is in a consistent routine with implementing values, you need to stay connected on how you reinforce these and practice them together. Use these questions to help check in and generate ideas and feedback:

1. What actions are we taking as a family that best represent or align with our values?
2. When our family experiences conflict, what are ways we can integrate our values into that process to make it more productive and aligned?
3. What is a previous decision we made and how could we have included our values in that decision making process better? (Or address this to a future scenario)
4. In your family members, what were ways in the last month (or pick a timeframe) that you saw them living out our values?
5. In our current stage of life, what do you think our top priority is when it comes to our values? Which word and why?
6. What is a new tradition or rhythm you’d like to try to implement that will help reinforce our values?
7. If we were to create a training guide to teach new family members about our values, what would that process include? (whether for children, new in-laws, or grandchildren)
8. What indicators help show you that our family is on track with its values? How can we do a better job of paying attention to those?
9. What do the opposites look like of our values? (Actions, ways we live, decisions, etc)
10. What is a goal you have or would like to set for yourself related to our values?

Growing in Family Values and Conversations

Through these questions, you can continue to generate conversations with your family and develop the set of family questions to ask that you return to over and over again. Staying connected and aware of your values will help set a strong foundation.

-

Looking for more help on how to introduce and integrate values with your family? Find our guide here.