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5 Steps to Identifying Your Career Values

What Do You Need From Your Work Life?

By The Couch PoetPublished 4 years ago 4 min read
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What's important to you in your work life? At first, it might seem like a simple, even pointless question. , if you think about it in depth, what are you getting out of your job except pay?

Knowing what you value in a workplace helps you understand what motivates and drives you while at work. On the other side of the coin, it helps you understand what you don't like, and what you should avoid in the workplace.

Its important that you clarify what your career values are when you're changing jobs, considering resigning, or about to ask for a raise, but its as important to keep your career values in mind on an ongoing basis, so that you can continually improve your work situation and culture. Knowing your career values enables you to have a career aligned with your values and mission.

Also, it's important to be aware that your career values, much like your personal values, are dynamic and always changing as you grow and learn. You should reassess your values from see how they've changed.

Before you get started with the five-step process of determining your career values, make sure that you think about your goals for this process. What specifically would you like to get out of identifying and defining your career values?

Step 1 - Work Experience Review

The first step of the process is an easy one. All I want you to do is think about your past and present work experiences, and use them to brainstorm possible value ideas. Using the chart below, jot down a that you like, love, tolerate and dislike about your current job and your past jobs.

Don't worry about how big or small the issues seem. This exercise is about how you feel, and how that shaped your perception and experience of your work situation.

Once you've filled out the chart, take a moments to on your answers. Did you notice any common themes? If the that you tolerate or dislike were your values not being , what might your values be?

Step 2 - Brainstorming

The next step of the value defining process is an expansion of the last step. Now that you've got some possible ideas, I want you to brainstorm even more. We're shooting for a list of about 30-50 ideas here. Think up 30-50 ideas that answer the question, "what's most important to me in my work life?"

Allow yourself about 30 minutes to complete the exercise. Once you're done, give yourself 24 hours to cool off and think about it. Then, revisit it and add anything else that comes to mind. Again, don't worry about "cherry-picking" ideas for what you think are the best ones, or about every answer being a "value" word.

Look for common or recurring themes and words that seem to keep coming up. These are often values that haven't been in past work experiences.

Step 3 - Review and Condense

we took a handful of values, and expanded them into a list of 30-50 possible work values. Now what we're going to do is condense them into a short list of about ten key values or factors that you will work with moving .

I know that it's difficult to narrow down your list to ten items, but you can use the following guidelines to help you out:

  • Look for and group similar values together
  • If necessary, choose the word from each group that is most meaningful to you

Take your time with this step of the process, and come up with ten values that resonate with you and your career values.

Step 4 - Prioritization

This step takes a bit of time and a lot of thought. Using the chart below, create a rough prioritization of your ten values and put them on the left side of the chart. Then take plenty of time to consider the order of these values. Change the priority order where you need to and put your final list on the right side of the chart.

Step 5 - Review and Wrap Up

Congratulations! Through the last step, you've identified and prioritized your top ten career values. Consider the below questions to help you improve your life at work, and to realize the most this process.

  • What did you learn about yourself during this process?
  • What were your biggest surprises throughout this process?
  • What could you do differently to align your work-life more with your values?
  • What is essential to have in your work-life?
  • What must you avoid in your work-life?

Again, remember that your career values change over time, as your personal values do. You should return and re- your career values from see how you grow, change and develop.

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About the Creator

The Couch Poet

Just an NJ based poet writing about the human condition - my human condition. Hope you can relate!

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