Have you ever sat down and asked yourself what’s important about your work and career?

 

I mean, really important.

 

No, well, you are in good company; not many people have.

 

Let’s see if we can change that today as we look at your all-important Work Values

 

how you can enjoy what you are doing day each day at work

 

and how to build a great career along the way.

 

It’s all happening here

 

Shops are reopening, pubs are open for alfresco business and I even managed to get a haircut after a four month wait. All’s I can say is that I’m glad this is an audio podcast.

 

So, today I am going to be talking about Values and how you can use these in your career, to:

 

-       Find a job you will love

-       Change roles to something that is more suitable

-       Have a discussion with your manager about how to get the best out of you

-       And, ultimately to have a great career

 

Because, you want the best for your career right, who wouldn’t want that? And I guess that is why you are here, why you are listening to this podcast.

But what you want from your career is different from what I want and it’s different from what your friends and colleagues want.  We all have different things that are important to us. That is, we all have different values.

 

Even though it can be tempting to follow what others are doing you only really get clear on what you want when you start to tune in to those things that are important to you about work and life.

 

And, we’ve talked about this before. When looking for happiness, satisfaction and alignment with your work, there are a number of things to focus on:

 

-       Your strengths / motivated skills

-       Your interests, things that you are magnetically attracted to

-       We covered these in previous episodes Nos 5, 9 and 10 and

 

In addition to these critical factors, and the subject of this episode, are your career values. 

 

So what are your career values?

 

Your career values are the beliefs you have about what’s important in your work, and the things in your work or career that you find meaningful.

 

Your values are the things that you find desirable, valuable or even essential in your work or life.

 

These are unique to you. You see we all look for different things in our work. 

 

Some people are very focussed on salary and other benefits, while others seek to use creativity, and still, others want a role with flexible hours and that fits in with the rest of their life. 

 

You can typically break down your work values into three categories:

 

§  Extrinsic values tend to be easy to identify and relate to the tangible career rewards. Some examples of extrinsic values are pay, your status or position within your company and working as part of a team.

 

§  Intrinsic values are those intangibles you have in your career. You might have to tune into your internal signals to recognise what these are. Examples of intrinsic values include helping others, freedom and working creativity.

 

§  Lifestyle values. These are values that relate to the lifestyle that your work gives you. For some people lifestyle values are very important whereas for others this type of value has a lower priority. Some examples of lifestyle values include living in the countryside or a city, having a role with interesting travel opportunities or finding a job that allows you to live more simply.

 

We collect our values in our life starting at a young age, a bit like collecting shells on a     beach. And, sometimes as we go along in our career we pick up new (values) and put others down. 

 

So our values change over time and during our career.

 

Identifying your own work values may come to you naturally, or the process can be a challenge. Maybe it’s something you haven’t thought about before.

 

I haven’t always known my own Values – I wish I had discovered what they were earlier in my career. It took me years and multiple roles before I understood myself and what my values are and why it’s important to keep these in alignment with the work I did.

My values were there all along, but I didn’t see them.

 

Right now, my values are Freedom, flexibility, helping others, creativity and variety.

 

There is no wrong or right with this stuff, and values are different for everybody. What is vital however is that you understand your own values and use these to shape your job and career.

 

You see if you find a job or career that satisfies your most important values you are likely to feel more satisfied, happy and aligned in your work.

 

A misalignment can cause can you to feel a lack of connection at one end of the scale to depression on the other end. 

 

And, as I said earlier,

 

The easiest ways to identify your career values is by looking at a list of values and doing an honest evaluation of how much each value matters to you. A simple scoring of one to ten will help you rate each one. Afterwards you can focus on the highest-rated values and also note the lowest rated values. I will put a list in the show notes.

Another simpler way of ranking these values is to use the following:

-       Must have, 

-       Nice to have, 

-       Ok not to have, and 

-       Must not have.

Here are examples of Work Values. As I read this list, think about how important each value is to you.

 

You might want to pause the podcast here and make a note of your thoughts, reflections and ideas.

What are your top values, the most important ones and what are the least important to you? In particular, make a note of the values your career must have.

And in the second half of the podcast, we will look at how you can use these ideas to help you to shape your future career and life

Welcome back. 

 

In the first section we looked at how you can identify what your Career Values are.

 

Ideally you will have a list of your most important values. If you don’t already have this, have a look now at the Show Notes and rank your values.

 

So, we are now going to look at how you can use your values as a navigation aid in your career. Your values are powerful, and we are going to look at how you can use them to:

 

-       Find a job you will love

-       Change roles to something that is more suitable

-       Have a discussion with your manager about how to get the best out of you

-       And, ultimately to have a great career

 

 

 

Well, when I work with clients to look at their options, the way I do it is to look at:

 

-       Roles similar to those that you have already done

 

-       Roles that are different but complementary to the work you have done, maybe there is some kind of overlap

 

And 

 

-       Breakthrough job ideas which are completely different.

 

And when you combine this with knowledge of your ‘must have’ career values, those things that are really important to you, this is a very powerful exercise.

 

So, for example, If I’m working with a manager in a private sector organisation and they determine that their values are, say:

 

 

A similar option would be to work as a manager, perhaps in the same industry but in an organisation that can give me, say, flexibility about my working hours and working from home and in a role where I can help other people but at the same time free of management or organisational interference.

 

A Complementary option would be to look for management jobs in a different industry that can give you a role that meets your values. For example, a role where you are managing apprentices who need your help and support or managing a team that supports vulnerable people in our community. The role would also need to give you the lifestyle you require and independence so this would also be front of mind during your research.

 

And finally, breakthrough ideas would be to focus on your values, and using the power of google, read about roles, organisations and sectors that would meet your values. For example, if we google careers helping others this returns things like:

 

Language and speech therapist, Relationship Counsellor or even a midwife.

Another good resource is O*Net Online which has an excellent tool you can use to search for occupations that are suitable for those with particular work values. I will put a link to the website in the show notes.

 

Another way you can use your values is to …

 

Let’s say your must have values are Challenge and Autonomy

When you have your annual appraisal or when you meet you manager you can have the conversation about what the things are that you need more of in your job. 

 

You know, you can say I have been doing some thinking about my role here and I would like some more challenge. Is there a way that we could evolve my role so that we can add some more challenging aspects?

 

And, since we are talking about my role, I have been working here now for 18 months, it would be good to have some autonomy in my role, so I am not always checking back with you. Is that something we could talk about? Would that give you more time? I know you have a lot on your plate right now.

 

The conversation will be different for you, it will depend on your values of course, but why not have a discussion with your manager about the things that are important to you.

 

I think sometimes we don’t have this conversation because we don’t know what is important to us, in our career. What our values are.

 

 

And the third and final way you can use your career values is to …

 

Well, your career will be long, and your values aren’t static, they will change over the years.

So, it’s important that you keep checking in with your values, to see if they have changed. Because if they change and you haven’t noticed, the first think you will know about it is when you feel like you aren’t enjoying your job as much, maybe you feel out of alignment at work.

 

So, keep looking for alignment between your values and your work.

 

This reminds me of the quote from the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.

 

The book is fundamentally about change and we need to adapt to changes around and within us. The quote is:

 

“The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.” 

Ok, that’s all for today. Let’s go and enjoy the sunshine …

 

Please let me know what you thought about the content

 

As this is a new podcast, feedback really does help me to shape future episodes, and make the content as relevant and helpful as possible.

 

You can email me at mark@bravocoaching.co.uk and you can find the show notes at bravocoaching.co.uk/podcast

 

If you are interested in working with me, you can book a free discovery call on my website, here:

 

And to remind you that you can download your free Should I stay or should I go guide at

 

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Have a wonderful week and I will speak to you again in a couple of weeks time.

 

Bye for now.