Our core values are fundamental beliefs of what is important in life. They guide our behaviours, actions and decisions – sometimes subconsciously and sometimes consciously.
Many of us are unaware of our true core values as we rarely take time to truly reflect on them in a deeper way. We tend to have idea of what is important but those ideas are sometimes influenced by people around us, our culture and our environment and are not always a true reflection on what you REALLY value.
Let’s explore the importance of work values and why they are essential to your career.
When we work UNALIGNED to our values we get a feeling of discomfort.
I used to work in agency recruitment for a while during my first years in London. When you are recruiting on behalf of a client, you sometimes get requests for the perfect candidate that are not really aligned with your values. I’m such a true believer in diversity and inclusion so when I got requests that threatened that value it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. And as you can imagine, that makes doing a good job very hard. If your job is making your feel uncomfortable at times, ask yourself if it’s because any of your values are threatened.
When we work ALIGNED to our values we feel a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction.
It took me a long time and several jobs to figure our what makes me feel fulfilled career wise. Looking back over the different experiences it should’ve been obvious but I didn’t see it at the time. In all my roles, there was always an element of helping people. Helping a candidate to get an interview with your client. Helping a manager find the right person for his/her team. Helping a professional develop his/her skillset to achieve better results. I realised only a couple of years ago that it was the helping part of my jobs that made me come home excited to tell my partner about my achievement for the day. One of my values is ACHEIVEMENT and the meaning I attach to it is “making a positive impact on someone’s life”. Once I understood that this was what drove me, my career path became much more clear! And much more satisfactory!
When we know our values, we make better decisions.
Making decisions can sometimes be difficult and no matter if you are someone who tends to go with gut feeling or if you’re someone who rationally evaluates every potential outcome before making it, if your decision is unaligned with your values it will create a feeling of dissatisfaction and discrepancy.
You have probably gotten the question from your manager during your 1:1s “What do you want with your career?”
I used to draw a blank here. I had an idea of what I wanted but it was always vague and slightly influenced by what I thought I should want and so it effected my career decisions accordingly, making my career journey look like a road train rather than the Eifel tower. It resulted in me trying things out without really making serious headway in the direction that I actually wanted to take things. How could I when I wasn’t clear on the direction I wanted to go?
It wasn’t until I realised and understood my values and started making decisions aligned with them, things changed.
After that, when my manager asked me: “What do you want with your career?” My response was: “I want to continue helping people in this organisation by providing the training and development they need” (Aligned with my ACHIEVEMENT) and I want to deepen my knowledge and continue learning to become an expert in my field”. The second part was aligned with my other value FREEDOM. I knew that I wanted to start my own business at some point so I wanted to be an expert, rather than climbing up the corporate ladder and become a senior manager. The question was no longer hard to answer since I knew exactly what I wanted.
As we making headway into January and a new year, many of us reflect on what we want career wise. In fact, in many places, January is the month where most people starting to look for new opportunities and companies are starting to hire new staff.
My advice to you is: before you’re making new decisions related to your career, before you start looking for a new job or applying for a promotion, explore your values and understand how they fit into your career! We spend so much time working, make sure that your job gives you the fulfilment and satisfaction that you deserve.
If you are unclear about your values and vision, join my next “Finding clarify” online coaching camp: https://themikology.com/finding-clarity/