This chapter deals with the concept of values as an essential point of reference for coaching, mentoring and developmental and professional dialogues. Values give individuals a fundamental orientation for their work and their life in general. In that sense values can be seen as probably the most central issue in coaching, which is the purpose of the whole section of this handbook. To argue for the importance of this focus on values, a brief analysis of our current society and of today’s rapid societal changes will be presented. In times of hypercompexity and huge challenges on the individual to stay on track, value reflections are seen as a fundamental basis for our sensemaking and our fundamental orientation in life. Values are the entrance point to our lived knowledge and practical wisdom. According to Flyvbjerg (2001, p. 4), instrumental rationality needs to be balanced by value rationality, a balance that “is crucial to the sustained happiness of the citizens in any society.” Values are the implicit foundation for action and social-psychological resilience.
This value rationality shall be developed by presenting coaching as an art of lingering. To build a foundation for this the reader will be introduced to values-based scholarship. The importance of values and their creative inclusion in the coaching process will be presented in light of three different approaches to coaching that will be discussed in order to illustrate how values can unfold as part of the coaching dialogue:
- Existential coaching
- Protreptic coaching as a philosophically inspired coaching approach
- Third-generation coaching as a narrative-collaborative practice

The overall objective of this chapter is to present and discuss the state of knowledge about values as a central aspect of the coaching process, an aspect that can be included in coaching regardless of the preferred model or technique. Finally, some remarks will be made on the necessity of future research in regard to the issue of values in the field of coaching – an area of research which should be strengthened.