Your values & motivators in the context of where you are now

Wait, what, haven’t we already talked about values and motivators? Well, yes, you might well have done, But there’s always more than one way to skin a cat (sorry, cat lovers...) and there is also more than one way to consider your career values and motivators.
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OK, so let’s dig back into them… but this time we’re going to think about how they relate to the context of your current job or career situation, as opposed to just how you feel about them.
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If it’s been a while since you thought about your values, we suggest revisiting any notes you made when you discussed them earlier in your Voco journey; and if you haven’t completed our motivators quiz just yet, then spend five minutes doing that before you get stuck into this topic.
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Companies are people too...

Companies and organisations have personalities, idiosyncrasies and, yes, values! Often these elements get rolled up into the ever-present ‘culture’ tag. Many even go the extra step of writing down their values and putting them on posters or websites, trying to enshrine and standardise ‘culture-inspiring’ stuff.
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Now, we’re not saying that writing down company values is a bad thing. It isn’t. it’s just that if you could gather every list of company ‘values’ ever written down and map them together, we would probably see lots of repetition... ‘respect each other’, ‘always be learning’, ‘client first’, ‘don’t be an a**hole’ etc. And if we asked people working there, how many of them would actually agree that the values on the posters actually mirror their day-to-day experiences?
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The reality is that each of us experiences the values of our company in a way that is unique to us. So it’s completely feasible that you could have a completely different view on your company’s values to the person at the desk next to you.

Like pretty much everything in life, it’s all about context. What’s important is figuring out whether your own experience of your company’s personality aligns with your own core values. Because if it does, you’re much more likely to be happy working there.

Activity: Who is your organisation?

‍First up, imagine your current organisation - or the last one you worked for - as a person. We’re not talking about your manager, or the CEO or whoever; we’re talking about the organisation itself.
This might feel a bit weird - and don’t worry, there’s an example below - but try to consider the following questions...
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• What do they look like? How old are they? What gender? How are they dressed? Smart? Casual? Cool? Do they wear glasses?
• If you met them at a bar or cafe, what would they be drinking?
• What are they like to talk to? Friendly? Closed? Chatty? Considered? Is the conversation intellectual? Serious? Funny? Surprising? Do they laugh much?

• Do you like them? Why?

Example: You work for Heroes Inc. a small company that sends actors to kid’s birthday parties dressed as a superhero of their choice.
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Heroes Inc. is a small business. It doesn’t make much money and what it does, it invests into various charities that support child welfare. Generally the culture is good. People are happy to be working in an area that brings joy to kids, but struggle with out of date systems and technology. The actors are talented and fulfilled, but they don’t get paid much and most of them are living on the breadline.
So what might Heroes Inc. look like if it was a person? Let’s imagine...
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Heroes Inc. is a kind, old man; with a small brown mouse in his top pocket. He is shy but smiles and laughs easily. He doesn’t look wealthy. He has a small hole in his shoe and the elbows on his tweed jacket are worn. He is drinking warm milk from an old battered thermos. When he talks, he also performs a magic trick, and then tells an eventful story about his pet mouse.
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He has sparkly eyes; but when he reads a newspaper article about child poverty, his eyes darken and he becomes stern, he slams down his thermos, looks me in the eye and tells me that he is going to fix it. He seems to grow a few inches taller and walks off purposefully.

We like him.

Now you have an image of your organisation as a person, however bizarre that image is, it’s hopefully a bit easier to think about the values of that ‘person’.
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Taking Heroes Inc. example it seems pretty clear that the values of this company are things like kindness, humility and joy. They are not things like growth, risk and wealth.

Now, think about the person you’ve imagined your organisation to be, and the characteristics you personally experience.

Try to write down around three values and around three anti-values you think define the ‘person’ you’ve imagined.

Compare these to the values you’ve already identified as being core to who you are:
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• Are they compatible or overlapping? This means you probably pretty happy and at home in your company.
• Are they non overlapping but not in conflict? This means you are probably ok at work but perhaps not ‘in love’ with your organisation.
• Are they contradictory? This means you may well feel on edge at work.

OK, so this might all seem like a bit of fun, but by giving your organisation a personality that’s unique to your own experience, and then thinking about whether you’re aligned to the values of that ‘person’, you’ll likely get a step closer to figuring out whether or not you’re in the right place for you.
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More on motivators...

OK, so you’ve thought about how your values align with how you experience the values of your organisation, and now let’s think about how your motivators relate to your current role and where your career path might lead.
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As a refresher, understanding your motivators can be super helpful in figuring out why your job is - or isn’t - working for you. For some of us they present a clear validation of why we love what we do, for others a stark indication of why we don’t. But for the majority of us it can be a bit more nuanced.

It might be that your current role lets you ‘live’ in some elements of your preferred motivator profile, but it also requires you to undertake some things that align more with your least preferred profiles. And that may be contributing to how you feel about your career.
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Now, life isn’t perfect, and we can’t all choose to just do the things that make us feel most comfortable and happy all the time. We have to earn a living after all! But trying to see your current job through the lens of the motivators it most reflects, and then comparing those motivators to your preferences can help you spot where you might want to make a change.

Activity: Recruiting for motivators

Imagine that you are a recruiter and you have to write a job advert for your current role but the only things you are allowed to state in the job advert are the top three motivators (defined here) that the candidate should have AND the top three motivators that the candidate shouldn’t have.

Now, compare these to your own motivators (reminder - these are listed on your Voco profile). Do your motivators and anti-motivators align with the job advert? Or do they contradict it? If so dig deeper:

• Are there parts of your job that you can amplify so you spend more time living in your preferred motivators?
• Are there areas of your role which you can minimise so you can spend less time in your anti-motivators?
• How can you manage your responsibilities and time to get a better balance of what excites you and what drains you?

Jot down a few notes about what you think you could do, and what you’ve noticed about yourself and your current job.

Activity: where does your path lead?
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Right, to close things out, take a few minutes to think about where your current career path might lead in the fullness of time. We don’t all want seniority and influence but, for example, if you are a lawyer the standard career ladder could lead to becoming a partner at a law firm; or if you’re in a brand manager role, might you be aiming for a CMO job at some point?
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Think about this role, what you think it might actually entail. Imagine again which motivators and anti-motivators you might advertise for if you were recruiting for it.
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Do those choices reflect the things that motivate you now? Do they excite you or make your heart sink? Does comparing your current motivators with those you imagine are required for your future role make you feel more or less interested in pursuing that path?
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Spend some time reflecting on how you feel about your likely career path in relation to your current motivators - it might help to write down a few notes about what you notice.

Bringing it home!

So, we’re all pretty complex and there’s no exact science or formula that can tell us exactly where to focus our energy, how we will perform in different situations, or where we will be happiest. All we can do is try and understand ourselves better, and try and think about big, knotty problems in small incremental steps.
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That’s how understanding our values and motivators help us put structure around our thinking and guide us forward. And let’s be clear that is the objective here: to make thinking about our careers easier and more effective; to help compartmentalise a big, scary question into lots of small, less intimidating ones.
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By thinking about your values and motivators in relation to your actual context, i.e. your organisation and your role, you may have been able to see a smooth and exciting journey ahead. Or you might have shone a spotlight on the fact that you are swimming upstream…  
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Whatever the outcome, spending time reflecting on this topic and locking in those thoughts and insights during a Voco conversation - or multiple conversations - can help you get closer to figuring out what you really want from work, one step at a time!

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