Answer

I didn’t understand the question. Someone who thinks these are values (in my view, that is indeed the case) sees them as having value in themselves. A good character trait is not merely a means to proper behavior. On the contrary, it is the more fundamental goal. Behavior is only a derivative outcome. Therefore, good behavior that stems from ulterior or improper motives would not, in my view, count as value-based behavior. The motivation (= the trait) is missing, and without it there is no morality and no values.
Incidentally, I once wrote here raising a difficulty with Rabbi Chaim Vital’s well-known question in Shaarei Kedushah: why were we not commanded regarding the rectification of character traits? I asked against him that cleaving to the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, is counted as a commandment by almost all the enumerators of the commandments, so what is the difficulty? My answer is that the commandment is to walk in God’s ways, since He has no traits in the human sense. So the commandment tells us to act like Him. But Rabbi Chaim Vital assumes that there is also an obligation to refine one’s character traits, irrespective of behavior. About that he asks why we were not commanded. The answers to this are well known, and this is not the place to elaborate.