The Six Questions (Values Excavation)
Six prompts — half positive, half negative — that reverse-engineer the values you can't name.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 90%
Glazer developed six questions that surface core values indirectly. The positive half asks where you're highly engaged outside work and where you did your best work — with the crucial instruction to describe the environment, not the employer. The negative half is the sharper tool: what qualities in others frustrate you most, what makes your blood boil, and what you'd want said in your eulogy. Because a core value feels bad when violated, the things that irritate you in others reverse-engineer directly into what you value. Glazer runs this live on guests and consistently gets usable values in minutes.
Origin
The questions grew out of Glazer's own three-to-six month values journey after the 2013 leadership training, and were later formalized into the core values course that became the basis for the book The Compass Within. He publishes them free at robertglazer.com/6q alongside a video walkthrough.
Core principles
- 01Positive questions surface what lights you up; negative questions surface what you cannot tolerate.
- 02What frustrates you most in others is a mirror of a value you hold.
- 03The environment you were happiest in matters more than the job title you held.
- 04How you want to be remembered reveals what is actually important to you.
How to run it
- 1
Answer the engagement question
In what non-work environments are you highly engaged? What do you do outside work that lights you up, makes time fly, makes you happy?
- 2
Answer the best-work question — describe the environment
Where did you do your best work and where were you happiest? Don't answer with an employer name. Answer with the conditions: 'a small team chasing big things with a lot of independence.'
Pro tip The environment description is where the value hides; the company name carries no information.
- 3
Answer the eulogy question
What would you want said about you in your eulogy? How you want to be remembered maps closely to what is important to you.
- 4
Answer the frustration question
What qualities in other people do you struggle with most? What behavior makes your blood boil? This reverse-engineers a value by looking at its violation.
Pro tip Name your 'villain at the party' — the specific person type you cannot stand being cornered by.
Watch out Be specific about behavior, not identity — 'people who complain and do nothing' is usable, 'annoying people' is not.
- 5
Flip the negatives into positive wordings
Take each irritation and state its inverse as a value sentence. 'Can't stand disloyalty' becomes a loyalty/trustworthiness value; 'can't stand people the world happens to' becomes self-reliance.
Pro tip It's interesting to have those words on the positive side — you can then use them in hiring and interviewing questions.
- 6
Cluster and name
A spread of answers usually contains several distinct values. Separate them rather than mashing them into one — a getting-better value, a trustworthiness value, and a team-first value are three different things.
In the wild
Asked what makes her blood boil, Hala named disloyalty, selfishness, and people with victim mentalities who don't better themselves. Glazer immediately parsed that into at least three separate candidate values: one about getting better and improving, one about being trustworthy/loyal, and possibly one about thinking of the group rather than yourself.
→ A few minutes of negative-question answering produced a multi-value draft that Hala had never articulated in years of interviewing others about theirs.
Glazer describes his kryptonite as the person telling him about their woes, treating the world as something that happens to them, doing nothing about it, complaining their trust fund payment didn't arrive on time.
→ That irritation reverse-engineered directly into his named core value of self-reliance.
A guest Glazer ran the questions with the week prior landed on 'it's not about you' as his core value — and immediately began applying it inside his company and elsewhere.
→ A precisely-worded, decision-grade value emerged from the negative questions and became operational straight away.
Common mistakes
Answering the best-work question with a company name
'I worked for Hala' tells you nothing. The transferable signal is the environment: small team, big goals, high independence.
Skipping the negative questions
The positive questions are the easy warmup. The frustration questions do the heavy lifting because a core value announces itself most loudly when violated.
Collapsing multiple values into one
A rich answer usually contains several distinct values. Mashing them together produces a mushy label that can't decide anything.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone starting values work who needs concrete prompts rather than a blank page.
Not ideal for
People who won't be honest about their irritations — the negative questions do most of the work and require candor.
From the transcript
“One of the tests of a core value is it really doesn't feel good when it's violated, and so a good way to test it…”
“What are the qualities in other people that you really struggle with the most and frustrate? What's the stuff that makes your blood boil?”
“It's more important that you understand what that environment looked like.”
“My villain at the party is the person who's telling me about their woes and the world is happening to them and they're not doing…”
From the episode
Robert Glazer: The Proven Decision-Making Framework High Achievers Use to Unlock Fulfillment
Robert Glazer