Know your drivers
Understand your values, personality traits and motivations
Understanding what drives you is a critical step in your journey of finding a career that makes you happy. It’s about understanding how you make decisions, behave and communicate with others.
your values
Values are what drive our thoughts, behaviours, actions and decisions. They set the direction we want to follow in life, like a compass. They define who we are and what we want to be. Our values are usually positive and aspirational, and they motivate us through life.
What happens when we don't meet our values? It can feel like there's a disconnect, something is not quite right. It can lead to unhappiness. Because when we're not aligned with our values, we deny ourselves what's most important.
Values are usually pretty stable, but they can change over time, depending on life experiences, relationships, events. Their level of priority might change depending on specific situations too.
Once you’ll have clarified your values, you’ll be able to be more authentic, to be your true self and make decisions accordingly.
I have written a longer article on identifying your values, including an exercise and a worksheet to download.
your personality traits
Your personality is made of many traits that explain why you behave, communicate and make decisions in a certain way. Some of our personality traits come in our genes and others develop through our environment, education, family, and society.
Our personality type is again pretty stable, but it can change slightly as we grow older and our experience changes the way we do things.
If you want to know more about your personality, you can start by taking the free 16personalities test. It’ll give a pretty detailed overview of your profile. But it can feel a bit overwhelming if it’s the first time you’re taking that kind of test.
Having a proper feedback session on your personality traits will enable you to make sense of your results. If you’d like arrange a 90-minute personality profiling session, get in touch.
Your motivations
Motivation is the force that drives us to pursue a goal, to meet a need. It’s a starting point for all the choices that we make. In general, we are motivated to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. The outcome we are aiming for can either be external, like a reward or validation from others, or internal, such as deriving pleasure from doing something or keeping control of something.
The concept of Career Anchors was introduced by Edgar Schein. He describes them as something that develops over time and shapes your identity. It's a mix of:
your skills and abilities: what we believe we're good and not so good at.
your motives and needs: what is important to us and becomes a goal, e.g. money, status, challenge.
your attitudes and values: the kind of organisation that we feel comfortable with and that matches our beliefs and values.
Look at the 8 Career Anchors described by Edgar Schein below: can you see which has the highest and lowest importance for you?
Managerial
This type’s primary concern is to integrate the efforts of others and to tie together different functions in an organization. They welcome the opportunity to make decisions, direct, influence, and coordinate the work of others.
Technical Expertise
This type prefers to specialize in their skill and they enjoy being challenged to exercise their talents and skills in their particular technical or functional area. They feel most successful when they are recognized as an expert. They tend to dislike being moved into managerial positions.
Autonomy/Independence
This type dislikes being bound by rules, hours, dress codes, etc. They enjoy setting their own pace, schedule, lifestyle and work habits. They often dislike the organization and structure of a workplace and often end up working for themselves.
Security/Stability
This type seeks security and stability in their jobs. They look for long-term careers, geographic stability, and good job benefits. They dislike personal risk and often personally identify with their work organization which makes them reliable employees.
Entrepreneurial/Creativity
This type thrives on creating something new and/or different, whether a product or a service. They are willing to take risks without knowing the outcome. They enjoy work where success is closely linked to their own efforts as the creator.Service/Dedication to a
Cause
This type wants to undertake work that embodies values that are central to them (e.g. make the world a better place to live; help a cause; etc). They tend to be more oriented to the value of the work than to the actual talents or areas of competence involved.
Pure Challenge
This type likes solving, conquering, overcoming, winning. The process of winning is most central to them rather than a particular field or skill area.
Lifestyle Integration
This type’s primary concern is to make all major sectors of their life work together in an integrated whole. They don’t want to have to choose between family, career or self-development. They seek flexibility and strive for a well-balanced lifestyle.
OVER TO YOU!
All the above combine into a unique set that is you! And that’s why your decisions, actions and interactions with others are truly unique to you. Exploring and identifying your values, personality traits and motivations will help understand why past choices haven’t worked and how to make new decisions.
Once you’re finished working through the various exercises, discuss your ideas and thoughts with a supportive friend or family member. Find someone that will fully listen to you, challenge you and add value to your thinking.
You could also start the conversation with a career coach. A coach will ask you the right questions to make you think about what you truly want to do, and help figure out the next steps in your career change journey.