Introduction: Dissatisfaction: To make a truly winning career move for yourself, your next employment must help you embody and realize your values on a daily basis. At the very least, you should seek employment that minimizes value conflicts. Your first step in doing so is to become more explicitly aware of your own values.
Objective: To identify values that should play a part in your vocational choices.
Materials: Several sheets of paper and your inventory of assets.
Approximate time to complete: 3 to 6 hours.
Method:
- Title one sheet of paper "Operational Values." Now, refer to your inventory of assets and try to translate each entry into a value. For example, suppose you listed "Increased responsibility" in the preferred rewards section. This entry suggests that you probably value self sufficiency and autonomy. Liking to be rewarded by being given more time off may suggest that you value highly time spent with your children; on the other hand, it might suggest that you value leisure highly. There is no simple way to accomplish the translation of preferences into values: you must use your imagination and spend some time recalling your reactions to a variety of situations.
- Next, get a fresh sheet of paper and brainstorm with yourself. List various values that come to mind. For example, you may have been brought up to believe that charity is a virtue a quality to be valued even though this virtue may not have emerged as one of the values demonstrated through your accomplishments. Write down "charity." Courage might be another value that comes to mind; add it to your list. Give yourself 15 minutes to brainstorm, recording what comes to mind without stopping to evaluate or criticize your productions.
- Devote 5 to 10 minutes of free writing to each of the questions listed below. This isn't a test no one will take points off for failing to interpret a question properly so simply read each question once, then write what comes to mind. These questions are meant to jog your thinking and imagination, not to evoke any specific kind of response.
- What portion of your week would you ideally like to spend on personal relationships doing things with your spouse, children, parents, siblings or friends? Describe what you would like to do during time spent with them.
- From an ethical point of view, what services or products would you get most satisfaction from providing or making? What products or services would you feel least comfortable making or providing?
- If you could select an ideal group of people with whom to work, what would the group be like? Would it contain both men and women? Would it be racially and culturally diverse or homogeneous? Would your cohorts be well educated? Well read?, Highly intelligent?, Interested in sports?, Active in political affairs?, Religiously devout? What kinds of people would you bar from your ideal group? Would you prefer competitive relationships within the group or basically collaborative interactions?
- When you were a child, what kind of person did you imagine be coming as an adult? In what respects are you now like that imaginary adult? How are you different?
- If you won a big cash prize in a lottery, what would you do with the money? How would having it change your life?
- If you could magically return to age 18, what would you want to do differently in the course of your adult life? What elements of your current life would you want to include in your second chance at life?
- Using the results of all the exercises above, generate a list of your top 10 values.
Introduction: You have gathered a great deal of information on what you do well, what you enjoy doing, what you value, and what kind of people you like to work with. You are probably developing a sense of how well your previous job allowed you to embody your values and use your most cherished talents. This exercise puts together everything you have learned about yourself vocationally in the previous exercises. You may, therefore, want to prepare for it by reviewing your responses to the other exercises.
Objective: To write a job description for a position that would be perfect for you at this point in your life.
Materials: Paper; you may also want to look at some detailed job descriptions if you are not already familiar with this kind of document from previous jobs. The human resources department of just about any mid to large size organization can supply you with samples.
Approximate time to complete: 1 to 3 hours.
Method:
- Identify the product or service you would like to be involved in producing and the kind of organization for which you would like to work.
- Describe the interpersonal setting for your perfect job. Would you be part of a team? Lead a team? Both? Would you work largely on your own? To whom would you report and what kind of reporting relationship would you like to have? Would you serve as a liaison among several groups, or work exclusively within a single group? Would you manage or supervise others? How and how often would your performance be evaluated and by whom? Would you have contact with clients? Vendors? Top management? Factory workers? Colleagues? Would you like to be involved in management decisions or would you rather not be involved in organizational politics?
- Now, focus on the physical and technological setting for your perfect job. Would you use computers? Have your own office or inhabit an open office setting? Work in a lab amid the latest electronic marvels? Would you be surrounded by activity and conversation as on a trading floor or by sound absorbing carpets and hushed voices? Don't forget, by the way, that you are striving for perfection, not realism. You may know very well that the majority of financial analysts at your level work in cubicles in a sea of other, similarly enclosed people, but if you want to have a private office, put that in your description.
- Describe what you would contribute what you would be doing to help the organization produce its products or provide its services. This section corresponds to the part of a real job description that is usually labeled "duties and responsibilities." But think, as well, in terms of the kinds of problems you would like to tackle and the kinds of skills you would like to use in your perfect position. Be playful; that is, don't let yourself get too weighed down by reality. If you would like to spend a third of every day on the factory floor assembling cars, a third designing cars using a powerful CAD system, and the remaining third in the board room forging corporate policy, say so it's your perfect job, not theirs. If your perfect position is self employment or business ownership, use the "contributions" section to explore what you want to do for yourself, as opposed to what you want provided by outside contractors and professionals or by employees.
