Coaching Debrief
- For
- One person with a choice, a question, or a pattern they want to understand.
- You leave with
- A clearer sense of what matters to you, why it shows up in this situation, and one next step to try.
FACES™ measures the invisible filter behind every decision you make about value — why you say yes, why you say no, and why someone you love can look at the same information and reach a different conclusion. Once you can both see it, you can see each other better.
Discover how you decide →Everyone carries all five. One dominates.
Two people can share the same facts, the same goals, even the same temperament — and still stand in front of the same opportunity with one saying absolutely and the other saying absolutely not.
The difference is evaluation — the filter you use to decide what deserves your time, your money, your attention, and your trust. Everyone runs one. Few people have ever seen their own. FACES makes it visible.
We call it your architecture of value.
The Value Gap is the structural distance between two evaluation architectures applied to identical information. It isn’t a conflict. It’s a calibration problem. And once both people can see it, it stops sounding like stubbornness.
FACES is most powerful when two people see their architectures side by side. The comparison doesn’t just show you how you’re different. It names the exact disagreement you keep having — and finally explains why.
Every time you commit resources — money, time, attention, emotional energy — you perform an invisible calculation. You weigh cost against payoff to decide if it’s worth it. But “worth it” is never universal. It is shaped by the particular constellation of your history, your values, your fears.
FACES identifies five distinct mechanisms people use to make that calculation. Everyone carries all five to varying degrees, but there is typically one dominant mechanism — occasionally accompanied by a lean modifier in a supporting role. Your dominant mechanism is your default lens: the strongest force shaping how you navigate a world of noisy signals.
This evaluation mechanism treats time as its primary evidence. The question it asks is not “is this good?” but “has this proven itself?” — tested by sustained exposure and still standing. This is not caution. It is a preference for earned conviction over untested promise.
They see themselves as grounded, deliberate, and trustworthy. They maintain long-term relationships and commitments — with people, with employers, with the things they use and the places they go — because they understand that reliability is built over time, not found. They are often the ones others turn to in times of uncertainty, because they project the steadiness that comes from knowing exactly what has earned their trust, and why.
They spend where trust has already been established — not out of habit, but because years of firsthand experience with a brand or product is itself something valuable. The model best known for reliability, not the newest release. They rarely need to re-evaluate familiar choices; the work of deciding was done long ago, and the outcome has already proven itself.
Because time is their primary evidence, options that haven’t yet had time to prove themselves will almost always lose — even when they’re genuinely better. They may stay with something long past the point where it’s still serving them, not out of blindness but because nothing new has cleared the bar that the old thing set by enduring.
“What I trust, I trust because it’s weathered the ups and downs; it’s here to stay.”
This evaluation mechanism filters for distinction. Where others see a perfectly good option, the Affirmation architecture registers sameness — and sameness is a disqualifying signal. They are drawn to what is unconventional, considered, and difficult to replicate. Not because rarity impresses others, but because it passes an internal test that the commonplace cannot.
They are natural trailblazers — often the first to find, try, or champion something before it reaches wider awareness. Perceptive readers of social dynamics, they notice how influence and energy move through a room. When they choose something — a restaurant, a career path, a person — the choice itself is an act of curation, not consumption.
Money is spent in pursuit of the distinctive — not the expensive for its own sake, but the considered, the hard-to-find, the thing with a story that most people will never know. They are drawn to items with rich provenance, the independent maker over the heritage brand, the experience you had to know someone to access.
They may overspend on something unconventional when a conventional option would have served perfectly well, simply because the conventional option failed their internal filter. Professionally, they may chase originality at the expense of execution. Their architecture naturally creates tiers of access that others can experience as gatekeeping — not because they intend to exclude, but because their filter does.
“This isn’t the obvious choice — that’s exactly why it’s right.”
This evaluation mechanism values getting it done. Where other architectures add steps — more research, more comparison, more consultation — the Carefree architecture asks: does the return justify the process? If not, move forward, close the loop, get back to the business of living. This is not indifference. It is a sophisticated calculation about where effort is worth deploying.
They are pragmatic, even-keeled, and steady when things go sideways. Where others respond to pressure by adding steps, the Carefree architecture simplifies. Their composure isn’t performed — it’s the natural product of a filter that doesn’t assign value to the anxiety of over-deliberation.
They spend money to close decisions, not to optimize them. They are willing to pay more to be done deciding — and that willingness is calculated, not impulsive. Doorstep delivery. Intuitive interfaces. The product that requires the least from them to deliver what they need. Whatever gets them off the hook in the shortest time possible.
The “good enough” threshold can prevent proactive optimization. They may tolerate situations — a job that underpays, a product that underperforms — for years, simply because nothing broke loudly enough to trigger the evaluation. The same architecture that produces decisive forward motion can also produce premature closure: resolving a conflict too quickly, or skipping a detail that seemed insignificant and discovering later that it wasn’t.
“Just handle it so I can get back to living. Life’s too short for spreadsheets.”
This architecture seeks measurable value expressed in terms of quantity, quality, or both. Cause and effect is their main engine for pattern recognition. They are likely to have detailed lists with clear needs and preferences, comparing prices, fees, and value propositions across different brands and scenarios. They know how to assess cost per unit to ensure they are getting the best value without compromising on quality.
Principled, driven, and rigorous, they tend to be keenly aware of whether people are keeping up their ends of a contract. Their exacting standards give them a keen eye for detail and make them fond of rules, principles, and formulas that enhance their ability to assess value. This architecture sees value in measurable fairness.
They view money as an equal exchange for value — and can become fixated on fairness. Assessing cost per unit and comparing data points. Specifications that align perfectly with requirements. Evidence-based decisions. Ensuring they get what will last longest for the best price.
Their focus on measurable fairness can lead to indecision or being penny-wise and pound-foolish. Struggling to adapt when things deviate from the formula. Being seen as quick to judge and hard to please. And the architecture has a blind spot unique to its strengths: it sometimes applies measurability to domains where measurement isn’t the right tool — relationships, trust, aesthetic experiences.
“Show me the data. Show me the comparison. Then I’ll decide.”
This evaluation mechanism draws its evidence from people. Not from data, not from personal history, not from efficiency — but from the lived experience, tested recommendations, and accumulated wisdom of those whose judgment has been validated through relationship. When this architecture evaluates something, the most reliable signal it can receive is a trusted person saying: I’ve been there. Here’s what it was actually like.
They are deeply rooted in their networks — not just current connections but the long traditions of their people. They see themselves as connectors, collaborators, and quiet influencers. They build social capital not as currency to be spent but as infrastructure that benefits everyone in the network. They are partial to a great story and are drawn to the details that interconnect people, things, and their environments.
They spend where the network has already done the evaluation. A brand’s reputation means nothing unless someone in their circle can speak to it from experience. They value items of personal and social significance — the handmade gift, the heirloom, the object with a story. Narratives that connect a product to a culture or history. Supporting brands that give back to shared causes.
When trusted sources disagree, the architecture lacks a tiebreaker — and the result can be action paralysis. They may overspend simply because the people in their circle did, because circle behavior is a genuine value signal in their system. They can overextend — prioritizing the network’s needs to the point of personal neglect, or spreading their relational energy across a network too broad for the depth their closest people require.
“I have a whole network of people who know things I don’t. Why wouldn’t I use that?”
The assessment takes six minutes. The answer changes how you see every conversation about money, time, and what matters.
Take the test →Most psychometric instruments measure personality traits, workplace behavior, talent, or leadership risk. FACES measures something none of them do: how people evaluate. The decision layer — how you assign value, weigh tradeoffs, and judge whether something is worth your resources.
This sits closer to behavioral economics than personality psychology. It is not a clinical instrument. It is a practical framework built on well-established principles from consumer psychology, motivation science, and decision theory.
Human behavior has roughly four layers that existing tools measure. Personality traits (MBTI, Big Five). Motivations (Hogan MVPI). Talents (CliftonStrengths). Workplace behavior (Predictive Index). FACES measures a fifth layer that sits beneath all of them: value perception — the lens through which people decide what is worth their time, money, attention, and trust.
This layer is what actually drives consumer choice, life decisions, experience satisfaction, partner compatibility, and brand resonance. It’s the reason two smart people with similar personalities can value completely different things — and why couples fight about money, travel, and lifestyle in patterns that never seem to resolve.
FACES connects to several established research traditions. These connections are structural observations based on how the five mechanisms map onto existing theory — not demonstrated equivalences through peer-reviewed validation. That distinction matters, and we state it plainly.
Regulatory Focus Theory (Higgins, 1997 — APA)
Probably the closest academic relative. Higgins distinguishes between promotion-focused people (oriented toward gains and ideals) and prevention-focused people (oriented toward safety and avoiding losses). Economist maps cleanly onto prevention focus. Affirmation maps onto promotion focus. Familiarity sits adjacent to prevention focus but is driven by duration-as-evidence rather than loss avoidance per se. Carefree is interestingly neither — it’s about minimizing friction rather than either gaining or protecting.
Construal Level Theory (Trope & Liberman, 2010 — NIH)
Proposes that psychological distance shapes how abstractly or concretely people think about decisions. High construal (big-picture, abstract) maps onto Carefree. Low construal (detail-oriented, concrete) maps onto Economist. This gives FACES a cognitive architecture explanation for why these styles exist.
Dual Process Theory (Kahneman, 2011 — Cambridge)
Familiarity and Social Proof lean heavily on System 1 heuristics — fast, pattern-based, low cognitive load. Economist is almost definitionally System 2. Affirmation uses fast social pattern recognition (System 1) but applies it to slow curation calculations — a genuinely interesting hybrid.
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory (Brewer, 1991 — SAGE)
People navigate a fundamental tension between the need to belong and the need to be distinct. Affirmation sits at the distinctiveness pole. Social Proof operates in the relational space — not driven by a need to belong, but by an architecture that treats the network as its primary evidence base. This suggests these two architectures may represent stable individual differences with implications for how they respond to marketing, social pressure, and group dynamics.
Affect Heuristic (Slovic et al., 2000 — Wiley) & Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986 — ScienceDirect)
Social Proof outsources the affect heuristic to the network. Familiarity generates positive affect through mere exposure. Economist maps onto the central route (careful evaluation of argument quality). Social Proof and Familiarity map onto the peripheral route (responding to cues like source credibility).
Academic motivation research tends to ask why people are motivated — the underlying psychological needs. FACES deliberately sidesteps the why and focuses on the how — the evaluation signal hierarchy, not the need being served. That’s a meaningful distinction and arguably more actionable.
The academic literature has named differences in evaluation style from many directions — uncertainty tolerance, temporal discounting, social information processing, identity-based motivation. But it hasn’t unified them into a single practical framework aimed at the evaluation moment specifically. That is the space FACES occupies.
FACES has been in practitioner development for five years, with the framework and question set undergoing iterative refinement throughout. It has now been completed by over 1,700 respondents across multiple cohorts, countries, and cultures, providing an early dataset meaningful enough to analyze — but not yet large enough or structured enough to constitute formal validation.
We state plainly what the data currently shows and what it doesn't. Early analysis reveals a stable five-profile structure across those 1,700+ completions, with consistent dominant-profile distributions. A formal validation study — including convergent validity testing against established instruments and test-retest reliability at scale — is on the active roadmap.
For now, treat it for what it is: five years of practitioner development, 1,700+ completions, and a framework precise enough that people keep sending it to the one person they most want to understand them.
FACES shows what you value, how you assess whether something is worth it, and why that shapes the way you spend, plan and relate. When the people you share your life with take it too, everyone gets their own personal report, and then a second one written for the relationship itself: the values you already share, the different ways each of you weighs what matters, and why understanding that brings you closer.
A shared life is full of choices about what is worth it: the vacation, the home, the savings, the Saturday. FACES shows what each of you values and how each of you weighs it, the values you already share, and why understanding the difference makes the choices ahead feel easier.
“Now I understand why you do it that way, and I love it.”
What you value and how you assess it, in your own right, so you start from knowing yourself.
Sharing your code lets that one person generate a report that uses both your results. You choose who gets it. Everyone signs in with Google or Microsoft, which saves results without a password.
Take it, then send your code →Growing up together, or growing close over the years, does not mean you value the same things or weigh them the same way, and that is often what makes the bond rich. Brothers, sisters, old friends and close family can use the comparison to see what the other values and why, appreciate it, and plan trips, gifts and family decisions with more ease.
“Same family, and I had never seen it from your side until now.”
Your own profile: what you value and how you assess it, on your own terms.
Sharing your code lets that one person generate a report that uses both your results. You choose who gets it. Everyone signs in with Google or Microsoft, which saves results without a password.
Take it, then send your code →A family, a circle of friends, a club, a congregation or a community of any size. One person sets it up and everyone takes the same assessment. Each member gets their own personal report. Then the whole group reads one report on what it values, how it assesses value, and why that matters for the plans and decisions you make together. The person who sets it up also gets a private toolkit for communicating in the way this group assesses value.
“We all want the holidays to be good. Now we know what ‘good’ means to each of us.”
Smaller groups often see the quickest change, because everyone can act on what they learn the same week, but the report works at any size. If someone finishes after the deadline, the leader can update the report. Everyone signs in with Google or Microsoft, which saves results without a password. Just two of you? Use the pair comparison instead.
Set up a group →Colleagues rarely disagree about the goal. They differ on what counts as proof that something is worth doing: the numbers, the track record, the people who vouch for it, the chance to be first, or simply getting it done. FACES shows each person how they assess value, and shows the people they work with what each of them is weighing.
Co-founders, a manager and a direct report, two people who share a project or a client. You can agree on every goal and still stall on what “ready” means. FACES shows what each of you values and how each of you weighs a decision, the values you already share, and why understanding the difference makes working together easier.
“We agree on the goal. Now I understand why ‘ready’ means something different to you.”
What you value and how you assess it, so you start from knowing your own value lens.
Sharing your code lets that one person generate a report that uses both your results. You choose who gets it. Everyone signs in with Google or Microsoft, which saves results without a password.
Take it, then send your code →A team, a leadership group, a project crew or a department of any size. One person sets it up and everyone takes the same assessment. Each member gets their own personal report. Then the whole team reads one report on what it values, how it assesses value, and why that matters for how it works together. The leader also gets a private toolkit for framing proposals, changes and hard asks in the ways this team assesses value.
“We want the same thing. Now we can see how each of us gets there.”
Smaller groups often see the quickest change, because everyone can act on what they learn the same week, but the report works at any size. If someone finishes after the deadline, the leader can update the report. Everyone signs in with Google or Microsoft, which saves results without a password. Just two of you? Use the pair comparison instead.
Set up a group →It sounds like an easy question. Ask someone why they chose a school, a car or a job, and the reasons come quickly. Ask what made it worth it, and most people pause. There is a filter at work in every choice we make, and most of us have never had a reason to put it into words.
FACES puts it into words. It takes thirty-six questions and about six minutes, and you get a report that describes how you assess value clearly enough that you recognize yourself in it. Then, if you choose, the same words can go to the people you share your life or work with: a partner, a sibling, a friend, a team. The point isn’t to decide who is right. It’s so everyone can see how the others get to “worth it,” and decide together with more ease.
People tell us most about what happens next. They start with their own report and end up talking about someone else: so that’s why you do it that way.
FACES wasn’t born from a theory looking for an application. It grew from a question that followed JR Kanu through nearly every chapter of his career: Why do people looking at the same thing reach such different conclusions about its value?
As a journalist at Black Enterprise, Esquire, and CNN, he learned to look beneath what people said and understand what shaped their choices.
Working with global brands, including Coca-Cola and Nestlé, he investigated why consumers value what they buy—and why the same product or experience can mean entirely different things to different people.
As the founder of REACH, a fintech startup, he went beyond what people said about money to build technology that examined how they actually spent it. Millions of transactions offered another perspective on the choices people make and the resources they commit.
And for more than a decade, as an executive coach and leadership facilitator, including work at Stanford, he encountered the same phenomenon in another setting: capable people with the same facts, pursuing the same outcomes, but disagreeing about which decisions were worthwhile.
Across consumer behavior, financial decisions, relationships, and leadership, a pattern kept emerging.
People weren’t necessarily disagreeing about the facts. They were counting different things as evidence of value.
FACES is the result of trying to understand that pattern, give it structure, and make it useful.
Developed through years of practitioner research and iterative refinement, FACES brings together insights from consumer psychology, behavioral economics, decision theory, and direct experience with how people evaluate choices.
Its ambition is both simple and consequential: to give people a language for understanding what makes something worth it to them—and why someone else might see it differently.
That “worth it” becomes something people can talk about. A couple planning a trip, a family deciding where to spend the holidays, a team weighing a launch: each person able to say how they get to yes, and to hear how the others do, before anyone has to be right. Shared words for what we value, so more of life’s decisions get made together.
When you finish, your results page gives you a comparison code and a link to send. The other person takes the test from your link, then enters your code and chooses how you know each other. The comparison report is written for the two of you.
Take the test →In a FACES session, a facilitator works with one person, a pair, a team or a room of hundreds. Everyone sees what counts as proof for the people around them, and leaves with a way forward they all trust.
In a session already? Sign in to your session →
Six sessions, one method. Every session is built on the FACES reports and runs the same four stages.
Four stages, the same in every session. Each one opens a section of your report and ends with you writing on your worksheet.
Everyone takes the test and reads their full report, then starts the worksheet online. It stays private unless they choose to share it.
The facilitator runs the session on screen. Everyone works on a paper worksheet, with no phones or laptops, so the conversation stays in the room.
Short check-ins at 2, 6 and 12 weeks show what has changed in how you decide together.
Sign in with the Google or Microsoft account your invitation was sent to. Your pre-work, your worksheet and your reports are waiting for you.
Running a session? Facilitator sign-in
Tell us who it’s for and what’s prompting it. A FACES facilitator will reply by email, usually within two working days.
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