In my role as a career coach, one of the most valuable tools I use is to help my clients explore their personal values.
So, to put this in context, when I was a recruiter, I used to always say to people: if you’re going to go for a job, do your research about the company, find out what their mission statement is, what their vision is, what their culture is like and what their company values are.
As a career coach, I say to people, find out what your own personal values are. If you know what your own personal values are and you know how you want those values to show up for you in a work environment, then you can match that to the organisation and ask “do we share the same values or are we in conflict here”?
But to give you an example, if one of your strong personal values is honesty, you might be willing to be honest with your colleagues and honest with people. Even in the face of conflict, you’d be willing to cause conflict just for the sake of being honest and open and transparent, right?
If you’re working very closely with someone who does not value honesty and would quite happily lie to your face just for the sake of avoiding conflict, that clash of values would influence how you see that person, how you interact with that person whether you like them or not.
So it’s really important to understand what your personal values are and how you want them to show up for you in the work environment.
So it comes down to how do you want to be seen at work? How do you want to interact with others? So what’s important to you? What values do you want to see expressed from your colleagues? How do you want to be treated? And when you interact with them, what are you willing to offer other people and what are you willing to receive from other people?
So we spend time getting really clear about what all of these things are so that people can go into an environment and be very self-aware of this is what I want for me to thrive, for me to be happy in doing this job that I want to do, these are the things that make me happy.
And so they know when they go into an organisation, the organisation can demonstrate their values, their vision and their culture, and you can say, yes, that’s a match to who I am and I’m going to be happy here.
I know I said to my clients, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you do in your job. If the values are not in alignment, you won’t be happy there. If the values are in alignment, you’ll be surprised at what you’d be willing and not willing to do. It just depends what each person values.
So I think I’ve explained this to you as I explore what are your personal values and why they’re meaningful to you, how it is that are trying to fill in your career and what’s missing and how to do this.
A lot of people come to me with their pain points because their personal values are not being met in their current environment.
And when you’re stuck in that situation, it can often be hard to articulate exactly what that is. So that’s why we do the step dive into what are your values?
And we can be really clear about what they are and we can articulate that this is what’s not being met. This is how they wanted to show up and this is what’s not happening.
Once people know that, they go, okay, actually, I don’t need to leave my current job. I can start looking at how I can introduce this value into this role. They can talk to their manager, they can talk to their colleagues and say, Actually, this is what I want to happen. If that won’t work, if the company says no, then we can look at it, let’s change careers, let’s look at changing jobs.
But my first option is always: can you change what you need changed in your current role before you start looking to leave?
Need help with discovering your personal values to help move your career forward?
Call Angela Couch (Career Coach Auckland) on 0226 467 818 or email angela@careerinspiration.nz for a free initial consultation.