Are you inadvertently sleepwalking through your career?
Have you got a handle on what’s important about the work you do?
If you’re not sure, well, you’re 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
What they are, and why they matter
Hello and a very warm welcome to Episode No 56 of ‘Your Bravo Career’
My name is Mark Crossfield; I’m a Professional Career Coach helping you to love your job and build a great career.
This podcast is about why your career matters
how you can enjoy what you are doing day each day at work and how to build a great career along the way.
Welcome back. How’s it going? I’m so glad you could join me for Episode No 56
So, today I am going to be talking about Values and why these are important when it comes to working out your career path. I’ve also got a really cool resource that will help you work out your own values.
If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, how you will know the holy trinity when it comes to loving your job comprises of:
- Your Interests
- Your Motivated skills and
- Your Values
Values are what we are going to be talking about today.
And,
Understanding how your values work and why they are important is crucial for your career.
Your work and 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 highly desirable, valuable or even essential in your work or life.
As we all look for different things in our work, your values will be unique to you.
Some people are very focused on salary and other benefits, while others seek to use creativity, and still, others want a role with flexible hours and one that fits in with the rest of their life. Often, we want a combination of these things.
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 things important to you about work and life.
If you have studied any management or motivation theory, you may have encountered Maslow and Herzberg.
Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who introduced the popular ‘Need hierarchy theory’ on motivation. The theory emphasizes the urge to satisfy the needs of people working in the organization.
Maslow’s theory is divided into two categories, growth needs and deficiency needs, which are further sub-classified into five needs. These needs are typically shown diagrammatically as a pyramid.
The theory is based on the premise that human needs are in proper sequence, psychological needs at the bottom and self-actualisation needs are at the top level.
Other needs, i.e., safety needs, social needs and esteem needs are in the middle.
Frederick Herzberg was a behavioural scientist who developed a theory in the year 1959 called ‘The two-factor theory on Motivation or Motivation-Hygiene Theory’. These relate to Intrinsic and Extrinsic job factors.
When you combine the thinking of Maslow, Herberg and other’s such as Duane Brown you can develop an approach like I’ve done which accurately identifies your values.
I will talk you through my approach in a moment.
But first, you might be wondering if your values can change, maybe over time or after certain milestones.
I think they can, or at least I think your awareness of your values changes over time.
It might be your values are pretty constant throughout your career, but, you might not always be aware of your values
or those values might be give a lower priority for a while.
So,
Let’s get into a bit more detail here, so I can explain what I mean.
You can typically break down your work values into three categories:
- Extrinsic Values
- Intrinsic Values, and what I call
- Lifestyle/Workstyle Values
Extrinsic Values relate to external factors. These values tend to be easy to identify and relate to tangible career factors. This can be about financial reward, job security, having a job title that you feel comfortable to share with your friends and relations or even having some sort of recognition in your job.
When starting out in our careers, many of the important things to us fall into this extrinsic value category. We are perhaps more inclined to seek values popular with our peers at this stage, such as a decent starting salary, an interesting-sounding job title and working for a well well-regarded company.
But, as time goes on, many of these extrinsic values become less important to us as we focus on other things of importance. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that in many cases we’ve already achieved many of these values and therefore, they cease to be a motivator.
By the way, this is the reason that salary ceases to become a primary motivator for many people in their mid-careers.
Let’s move on to the next category of values. Intrinsic values.
Intrinsic values are those intangible motivators that are important to you in your job or career. You might have to tune into your internal signals to recognise what these are.
They include for example a need to be challenged at work, or to work creatively, or to be a leader or somebody who influences other people.
They are the things about the job or career that make it attractive to you. These are all things that provide internal satisfaction or enjoyment.
Think about the things you enjoy doing just for fun – solving challenges, being creative, socialising, planning and organising.
It’s likely these things will align with your work values, or, if they don’t maybe now is the time to think about seeking that alignment.
Finally,
Lifestyle/Workstyle values. These are values that relate to the lifestyle that your work gives you or to how you would like to set up your work to have most meaning to you.
These are about how you want to work. How much flexibility you want to have, whether your work is carried out in teams, or you undertake work on your own.
How supportive is the place where you work? And how important is that to you.
Identifying your work values may come to you naturally, or the process can be challenging. Maybe it’s something you haven’t thought about before.
Knowing this stuff is important, though as it’s all about aligning what’s important to you (your values) with the work you do.
A misalignment can cause can you to feel a lack of connection at one end of the scale to depression on the other end.
As I’ve mentioned before on the podcast, I haven’t always known my own Values. 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.
You don’t need to wait; you can identify your values now.
So, how do you Identify your values?
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.
In the show notes you will find a simple exercise you can do at home.
By completing the exercise, you will be able to work out your top values. In particular, make a note of the what’s important in your career and this will help you to seek alignment between your values and your work.
Give it a go and let me know how you get on.
I would be curious to know, if knowing your own values gives you inspiration in your career to do work that better aligns to what’s important to you.
I hope it does …
Ok, that’s all for today.
Please let me know what you think about the content.
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:
If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, I would love for you to share the episode with a friend or share on your social media. It would also really help me if you could leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you download your episodes.
And if you haven’t already subscribed, why not do that now before you forget.
That way you won’t miss an episode and all this useful content will arrive without you having to do anything.
Have a wonderful week and I will speak to you again in a couple of weeks time.
Bye for now.
Step 1. Mark each of the 32 values as High, Medium or Low Importance.
Intrinsic values are those intangible motivators that are important to you in your job or career. You might have to tune into your internal signals to recognise what these are.
Intrinsic Values | High | Medium | Low | ‘Top 6’
1 | To be challenged | | | |
2 | To Learn new things | | | |
3 | Working creatively | | | |
4 | Do interesting Work | | | |
5 | Professional/Personal Growth | | | |
6 | Problem solving | | | |
7 | To achieve important things | | | |
8 | To create and develop new ideas | | | |
9 | Have fun at work | | | |
10 | Leadership and influencing others | | | |
11 | To do meaningful work | | | |
12 | Autonomy and freedom to act | | | |
|
Extrinsic Values relate to external factors. These values tend to be easy to identify and relate to tangible career rewards.
| Extrinsic Values | High | Medium | Low | ‘Top 6’
1 | Job security | | | |
2 | Recognised for contributions | | | |
3 | Financial reward | | | |
4 | Status within organisation | | | |
5 | Job benefits/perks | | | |
6 | Profit sharing/organisation rewards | | | |
7 | Performance related pay | | | |
8 | Job title | | | |
9 | Status in wider community | | | |
10 | Reputation of the organisation | | | |
| | | | | |
Lifestyle/Workstyle values. These are values that relate to the lifestyle that your work gives you or to how you would like to set up your work to have the most meaning to you.
| Workstyle/ Lifestyle Values | High | Medium | Low | ‘Top 6’
1 | Variety of work | | | |
2 | Control over own time | | | |
3 | Time with family | | | |
4 | Belonging to a team | | | |
5 | Self-management | | | |
6 | Ability to work flexibly | | | |
7 | Close relationships with colleagues | | | |
8 | Work life balance | | | |
9 | Supportive environment | | | |
10 | Growth and personal development | | | |
Step 2.Select 6 of the 32 values that are most important to you. Your ‘Top 6’.
Step 3. Are there any other values, not listed, that are very important to you and would therefore have made your ‘top 6’ list?