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Following-up from my latest article "Own Your Career Path", this article is a focus on step 3 from my blog series, the importance of uncovering your values and understanding their impact on your professional career.

As professional opportunities arise, if you don’t know what your most important values are, you are more likely to dismiss your instinct about something.

 

I know that some of you might already be thinking that "values topic" is so evident that it's a waste of time to put some attention around it. I therefore hope I'll get you to change your mind after your read this article.

 

Let me first help you understand what do I mean by values, what is a value?

 

A personal value is what makes you unique and stand out, it’s something that is so embedded in you that you somehow cannot explain or bargain it. Values are a set of beliefs or guiding principles that influence and direct your actions. Every time you show-up authentically in front of others, you will communicate from a certain set of personal values, which make people relate and connect to you at a more authentic level. While some of your values can evolve over time as you experience new things, your core values usually do remain the same as a compass of your personality.

 

There are many resources, methods and trainings available online which you can use to define and uncover your values and many of these are free of charge. Personally, my preferred resources are usually the simplest ones, here’s how it works:

 

1) Read through the following values and try to pick the top 10 values that resonate the most in you, don’t overthink the topic, trust yourself on the selection and listen to your inner voice.

 

Accountability, Achievement, Adaptability, Advancement, Adventure, Aesthetics, Assertiveness, Authenticity, Autonomy, Balance, Belonging, Challenge, Communication , Community, Compassion, Competition, Creativity, Curiosity, Development, Dialogue, Discipline, Diversity, Effectiveness, Environment, Equality, Excitement, Family, Flexibility, Forgiveness, Freedom, Fun, Generosity, Gratitude, Harmony, Health, Honesty, Honor, Humor, Independence, Integrity, Justice, Kindness, Knowledge, Learning, Leisure, Love, Peace, Power, Relationships, Security, Self-improvement, Self-reflection, Service, Spirituality, Tranquility, Unity, Wealth, Wellbeing, Wisdom.

 

2) Now, take some time to contemplate your top 10 values you’ve chosen and write them down in a clean sheet, if you feel unconfident about the exact meaning of these words, feel free to do some search online to gather some common definitions, you’ll see that it’s pretty easy to find and access values' definitions on line. Also, if you happen to identify a new value which is not in the list above, don’t worry, make sure you add it since my list is obviously not exhaustive and follow the next steps.

 

3) Reflect consciously about these top 10 values and on the experiences, you had in mind which made you draw towards these specific 10 values and less towards the others in the list. Resist perfection, the same way that I explained in my previous articles, we are not looking for perfection here but for a transformation journey.

 

4) Once done, take it a step further and rank them in order – value top 1 being the most important personal value for you and number 10 is the least. Here again, all you need to do is to listen to your gut. Read and correct as necessary your ranking, if you still have some doubts, reach out to a close friend or a relative, discuss your values and ask for feedback, this may enable you even better on the ranking exercise. Once you completed the ranking step, segregate now your top 3 values which you settled on, and write them down in a separate sheet.

 

5) For each value in your top 3, spend some time now to write-down your own definition and meaning of this given value, explain how it translates to your personality and how is it important for you.

 

=> Here’s a simple example to guide you on this step:

 

Top 1 value: "Adventure" common meaning & definition provided on several resources: an unusual and exciting possibility, venture or experience which provides a new feeling.

 

  • Adventure: as per your own definition & meaning: possibility to explore and test new things, have a sense of embracing new ventures and experiences in every context, it’s all about playing and making the journey fun for more excitement.

 

Here’s the great thing with this exercise, as you write down your own meaning and definition of your top values, you’ll feel something nice and positive which will empower you along the way in your career journey.

 

Articulating your values after you defined your strengths, will allow you to complete the puzzle about who you truly are and will charge you with more confidence about your aspirations. In a nutshell, this work will allow you to start taking back your power and justify less situations or experiences where you felt that something went wrong, but you were not quite sure how to explain it. In fact, if you think about it for a second, in every uncomfortable situation you faced, you’ll observe that most probably you were in conflict with your core values.

 

You may now start wondering - how does this all relate to the workplace?

 

In the workplace, you’ll be confronted all the time to making decisions and therefore you will likely have to answer to this question: how does your decision match your values?

 

If your intuition tells you that your values are aligned with the decision you are making at work, then you already have a clear answer. You will feel true to yourself and aligned with your core values, including in difficult times - where you'll have to make important changes for instance or manage big teams etc. The opposite is unfortunately true. Failing to define your core values, may take you down a path where you may take decisions at work, which will conflict with your values - leading you to conflicts, frustration and disappointments.

 

So, if you are looking for a simple method to cultivate your core values in the workplace, here are few tips that I recommend based on my own experience:

 

  • Find a company/employer who stands by your values: if your values are adventure and freedom for example and your employer is giving you total freedom on how to do the work you are supposed to do and to try-out new things and ventures, imagine how uplifted and empowered will you feel? Whereas, if you work in an environment where routine and scrutiny are imposed - in that specific example - you’ll very quickly feel exhausted since your values "adventure and freedom" are confined, it will be just a matter of time until you decide to leave.

 

Becoming aware of your values will get you clearer on which company/employer you should be working for and why. This will also empower you to be armed to say “no” to job opportunities where you know clearly that your core values won’t match, despite all the great perks you can get. Remember to identify your motivations when seeking for a new job.

 

  • Speak about your values during job interviews: voicing out your values will show your true colors to the interviewer, you’ll therefore leave an authentic impression of yourself, allowing space for genuine discussions and connection. Sometimes, the single thing that will make you get or not get the job vs other candidates will be your capacity to connect authentically at human level, so consider your values as an asset to leverage not something to hide away. One bonus here - keep in mind that the same applies for the interviewer - who will also look for a perfect match between his/her values with yours, even if he/she won't necessarily articulate a clear question around values during the interview.

 

  • Then, look for colleagues who share the same values than you at work and surround yourself with them as much as you can, even if you don't work with them on a daily basis. Imagine for example that your top values are "generosity and community" and you found colleagues who also stand by these values at work, you could run initiatives with your co-workers around community volunteering to give back, raise funds to help others...etc. This act of creating a collective circle for you at work on top of your job, may help you perceive totally differently your work environment and feel even more fulfilled at work. Simply by nurturing your core values on the side, you’ll balance any aspect in your job which can be less fulfilling.

 

Finally, my recommendation for you is to make sure you keep all this work you completed about your values and strengths somewhere where you can go back to it easily. Why? Because all this work will be extremely useful for the next steps in defining your ideal job and owning back your career path. Also, do the effort to capture all this work on paper, research has shown that we process print more deeply than digital content.

 

As usual, I hope this article has inspired you to keep on dreaming and tapping in yourself because everything you need is in you already, all you need is some inspiration to unleash your capabilities. Stay connected for my next release on step 4 “Do the work and build your career development plan”.

 

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