Tool 8: Assessing Your Values, Decision Style, and Readiness for Change Using the Hartman Value Profile

The Hartman Value Profile (HVP) is not a personality test like Myers-Briggs or the DISC Profile (though if you like those kinds of tests, you will probably enjoy this one too). This tool is an assessment instrument developed by Christian philosopher Robert S. Hartman in the mid-20th century.

What Is the HVP?

A test that you can take for free in 15 minutes or less, the Hartman Value Profile is designed primarily to help you understand what you value and in turn to illuminate how you make decisions, choices, and judgments.

Results are broken down into two parts—one related more to doing in the external world (how your values and judgments affect how you work) and the second to being (who you are on the inside). The test even has spiritual implications, with its concepts of values and judgment being rooted in the Old Testament idea of wisdom (hokma) and the New Testament idea of discernment (sophia), which Paul saw as a spiritual gift.

Why Take the HVP?

The HVP will help you understand your life and yourself in the present; results can vary over your lifetime (since values and decision-making styles change), and they can even differ from one year to the next. The HVP can specifically help you answer questions related to:

  • Your ability to handle life changes or transitions
  • Your readiness to retire or to move to a new phase in your career/work
  • Whether you are headed for a personal crisis (midlife or anytime) or—if you’re already in a crisis (or recovering from one)—aspects of your decision-making style that may be helping or hurting you
  • Frustrations, recurrent troubles, or nagging dissatisfaction in your personal or work life
  • Personal tendencies that may be causing you to shoot yourself in the foot

The Hartman Value Profile is unlike personality tests in several ways, starting with the spiritual commitment of its founder. The HVP is based on a branch of philosophy called axiology rather than on Freudian-based psychology. In addition, the HVP will result in a mathematically valid score that is objective, unlike subjective personality tests. And results don’t tend to stay static—therefore, it’s good to complete it more than once.

Take the HVP for Free, and Get a Special Recalibrate Report

You can take the HVP at https://gladwoodllc.com/recalibrate. In addition to a free standard report of your results using the “Byrum Method” (Steve Byrum was a first-generation student of Hartman himself—it’s truest to the original intent of the HVP), as a reader of Recalibrate Your Life, you will also receive an exclusive “Readiness for Change” report. This special report pulls out certain aspects of the HVP results that speak directly to life change. Specifically, it provides insight into the following questions (including suggestions for how to address weak spots or problem areas):

  1. How strong am I at dealing with change?
  2. How good of a decision-maker am I, especially in high-pressure situations?
  3. How much problem-solving energy do I have?
  4. When I’m faced with a problem, how much information do I need to make a decision?
  5. Can I balance my resources and energy to meet both my own needs and the needs of others?
  6. Can I identify what is most important in a complex situation?
  7. Am I more realistic or idealistic?
  8. How well do I maintain a positive, productive attitude in the face of personal stress?
  9. How do I respond to criticism, both from myself and from others?
  10. Will my attitude toward my daily tasks/work help or hinder me in a stressful transition?
  11. What value do I place on social contacts, relational engagements, and interpersonal activities?
  12. What value do I place on doing tasks, engaging with projects, and working to accomplish some productive goal?
  13. What value do I place on learning new information, making connections between ideas, and being mentally stimulated by new environments?

If you’re in the middle of a life transition right now, we recommend you take the test now and again six months to a year from now. Although it’s optional, for a fee you can add a half-hour consultation session with an expert who will help you interpret your results after you receive them. (We highly recommend doing this because it tends to be illuminating and helps you know what to do with your results.)

TAKE THE HVP NOW!

Testimonials

 


  • [The HVP and subsequent consulting] decisively provided insights soaring well beyond any tool … we had worked with previously. … We use the HVP assessment at JANSON as a component of our HR [human resources] program. The results of this critical assessment provide an additional layer of intelligence that has aided in the strengthening of our organizational alignment.

    Janet C.
    Founder and CEO, JANSON

  • In my personal experience, I found the Hartman Value Profile and associated consulting to be the most effective framework for creating clarity, concrete action, and personal discernment in my life and work. The profile provided awareness around limitations caused by lower self-esteem and self-regard scores, a lack of assertiveness, and high self-criticism. My personal efforts to heal were being driven by the exact qualities that prevented healthy healing and maturity. This awareness transformed the effectiveness of the effort I was already investing in my growth. At the same time, my highest scores revealed strengths that I was barely using—and actively avoiding—in my career. Where I lacked confidence in myself, I looked to the profile scores as my “proof” and began stepping into roles that required these qualities of strong judgement, coaching, and out-of-the-box insights. As a result, my work has shifted from a “career” to a life mission.

    Joy L

  • Sometimes, the space between where/who I am and where/who I want to be seems like a gaping canyon. My experience taking the HVP … created a bridge from who I am now to who I want to become. It didn’t remove the work of crossing the bridge, but it did remove an overwhelming sense of stuck … [and] freedom from circles and cycles that I’ve walked around and around, feeling defeated by my weaknesses.

    Anonymous

  • The Hartman Value Profile is a powerful tool that offered me the ability to explore multiple components of not only my work life, but my personal self as well. The assessment had me thinking through scenarios where there may be sources of resistance, and whether I would need to make changes over time to see improvements or continue down the path I was already on.

    Brian

  • The HVP confirmed my identity and the passions of my heart; therefore, I can now run with confidence in the things I choose to achieve.

    Marilyn

  • I was immediately impressed at the output of the Hartman Value Profile and analysis Renee Wood provided to help me better understand what the profile revealed about my value systems. I had just interviewed for a consulting role a day or two prior to taking the assessment and sent the results to the CEO who interviewed me. I told her that regardless of the impressions she took from my interview, I felt the HVP provided as accurate an assessment of who I was as anything I had seen previously or since. I strongly recommended that she consider using the HVP when making key personnel hires in the future. She took me up on that recommendation and has continued to use this very valuable tool to make critical hiring decisions.

    Clayton S.

  • The Hartman Value Profile (HVP) is an invaluable tool for self-discovery and a game-changer for strategic workforce planning.

    Regina C.

  • I consider the Hartman Value Profile as astoundingly illuminating for me personally, and a divine tool for fostering business development and team cohesion.

    Anonymous

  • Never in the past have I experienced such a remarkable and accurate assessment!

    Anonymous
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Recalibrate Your Life: Navigating Transitions with Purpose and Hope

Times of transition, especially in midlife or later life, are ideal moments for recalibrating our priorities and habits. Gain practical tools and the eternal perspective needed to evaluate your God-given gifts, skills, wisdom, resources, and opportunities in order to life meaningfully now and for the rest of your earthly sojourn.

Recalibrate your life