I can’t help but talk about values whenever the topic of work comes up. Why is that? Aren’t values personal and work is supposed to be professional? I believe, work is a part of our life and when we are considering how and what our path forward in our career looks like, articulating our values is an essential step of the journey. That’s why, the first thing I send to my clients before our initial session is a values exercise.
Most people I work with have never explicitly articulated the things they hold dearest in their lives and almost all have never considered their values in comparison to one another. Have you ever looked at 90 words representing core human values, one by one, and ranked them for yourself into buckets of "Very Important to Me," "Important to Me," and "Not Important to Me"? It’s a trippy experience. Big questions come up, lots of feelings are felt. That’s the interesting stuff. All of the value cards (the set I use was developed by researchers at the University of New Mexico in 2001) are concepts and ideas that a person can value. There are no right or wrong values to have. The exercise is about asking oneself, Is this important to me? If so, Is this very important to me? And, how important is it, relative to all these other things I feel are Very Important?
The values themselves are useful tools, serving as an articulation of what you care about right now. The map is not the territory, and the words you end up with mean something specific to you. I always encourage people to write their own definitions of these values in words that resonate more deeply with them. The same set of values can mean something entirely different to two different people. That first session I usually spend asking someone in depth questions about their values to help them understand themselves and to help me understand them.
Values are not ideals to hold gingerly in front of us. They aren’t fragile; they’re gritty and real. Values are meant to be used—as measuring sticks, as compasses, as living reminders of what we care about at any given moment. They evolve as we evolve. Autonomy was like that for me. It was a top-five value when I felt like I had little control and agency in my life, when work dominated my existence. As I gained more autonomy—by quitting my job, starting my own business, and owning more of my time— I realised I wanted autonomy and connection. My value shifted to interdependence. It evolved like a Pokémon!
Values are also guiding lights. They help us navigate toward the versions of our lives we want to experience. They’re a great way to check in on how things are going. Are the actions we’re taking and decisions we’re making aligned with what we say we care about? A lot of our dissatisfaction can be traced back to misalignment with our values. I once had a client who felt a vague dissatisfaction with their work. After doing the values exercise, I asked them how much of each of their top five values they were living out in their work. As we went through each one, their answer was the same: none (and some values were even actively undermined by their job). By the end of the review, their work dissatisfaction made perfect sense! We then explored ways to bring more of those values into their work and based their "Must Have," "Can't Have," and "Nice to Have" list for future opportunities on these values. Work doesn’t need to fulfil all your values, but it’s essential that it doesn’t undermine them.
Like most things, the values exercise is a tool to help us get to know ourselves better. It enables us to understand our own motivations, what we care about, and why we behave the way we do. And as a result, it helps us like ourselves more and trust our own choices—including the ones we make about our work. If you want to give it a try, here is the exercise. Let me know how what you learn about yourself and your work!
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