Are you trying to figure out what your next career move should be? Do not make a career decision without a list of your core values.
Core values are the interests and qualities that have always resonated with you. Core values make you who you are. When your work and life are aligned with them, you feel most fully energized and fully “yourself.”
Take Afryea’s example: Her core values include “have impact,” which is why she was attracted to a job in microfinance. In the beginning, she was energized by the impact she felt her work had on female entrepreneurs who needed a small loan to keep their business afloat, and support their families. However, ever since Afryea was promoted to management, she’s been busy dealing with reporting requirements, trying to turn around a difficult team, and attending endless meetings. It’s been hard to see how her efforts make an impact. No wonder she’s been feeling frustrated and listless at work.
Getting clarity about her core values helps Afryea figure out what changes she can make in her current job to make a bigger impact, or decide if it’s time to move on.
Core values are attractive to us – they draw us in, and we want to engage in activities that align with them, without having to make a big effort or set a bunch of goals. In this context we aren’t talking about “values” in terms of moral values, but more broadly the values that we are drawn to and that make us who we are. These are things like: experiment, learn, serve, synthesize.
The idea of core values as discussed here was first presented by the late Thomas Leonard, a pioneer in the field of life coaching. Knowing what our core values are is a critical piece of self-awareness.
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This knowledge can help us make better decisions. We can use our core values as a guide or a set of criteria: “Is my current job honoring my core values?” or “Does this new work opportunity align with my core values?”
Here are some examples:
A technical adviser on an education project, Muzhdah relishes any part of her job that requires her to “be connected” to other people – that is one of her core values. She finds leading, managing, and interacting with people deeply fulfilling as well as fun. To her, crunching numbers all day by herself is a form of torture. Knowing this, she can seek work that will give her plenty of opportunities to connect with people.
Luke realized that “show compassion” is a core value of his. It’s what sparked his interest in relief work at an early age. Interacting directly with people in need inspires and energizes him. He knows that he would be miserable in a job that limited him to working behind the scenes and kept him away from the front lines.
Nina is a project manager on a donor-funded governance project. She is good at project management, but something is missing. One of her core values is “be expert.” She finds herself wishing that she could be more deeply involved in a technical aspect of the project rather than overseeing all the moving parts. For her next job, Nina plans to seek a monitoring and evaluation role on a governance project.
Your list of core values
Read through the list below, developed by Thomas Leonard and Coach U. You can also access it, with full instructions, in this PDF. Then:
1. See what words naturally appeal to you, and circle 20 or so values.
2. Look through your list of the 20 values you have chosen and answer the following:
Do you want it, but it doesn’t come easily? Then it’s probably a “should,” not a value. Delete it.
Are you doing it in order to get something else? If yes, it is not a value. Cross it off your list.
Did you do it when you were seven years old? If yes, it’s probably a value. Keep it on your list.
Is it really exciting and you’re a bit afraid of it? If yes, it may be a value. Keep it on your list.
3. Try to bring your core value list to a total of 5.
You can use this list to guide or validate your decisions about your work and career. I would say that your list of core values is a necessary – but not sufficient – tool for decision-making about your international development career (or anything else in your life, for that matter). The key question is: How does the choice you are considering line up with your core values?
Being aware of your core values can also help you identify when something is missing in your work and/or life. Look through your list of core values and rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how fully your work expresses each value, with 1 = “not at all” and 10 = “perfectly.” Then brainstorm ways you can improve the low scores and preserve the high scores.
The more your work (and your life) aligns with your core values, the more effective you’ll be at your job, and the more fulfilled you will be in your career.
Read last week’s Career Matters.
