"The Squiggly Career Guide" by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis defines values as "the unique attitudes and beliefs that motivate and drive us", that they are what make you, you. I had previously struggled with thinking about and reflecting upon my values but here are some helpful exercises.
Activity 1: Your table of values
This is an activity I had completed in the past from Springboard, written by Liz Willis and Jenny Daisley. In this table, you write down what is important to you and what you value.
From this, you can really see how I picture my current work to be like but it is very much lacking in the world and community area. It also doesn't really have much depth of details.
Activity 2: A chart of you
In this activity, you think about your past roles and draw a chart of the highs, lows and the reasons why you felt this way. I had never thought of doing this before but I found it really flowed and worked really well.
From this chart you can compile a list of career must haves, which, for me, included:
- Learning
- Freedom
- Understanding my role
- Being busy
- Communication
- Variety in days and environments
As well as career must nots, that for me were:
- Waiting/not working or being busy
- Not progressing or learning
- Days being too similar
Activity 3: Some value prompts
The next activity includes a list of prompts and selecting those prompts which stand out to you personally.
The values that stood out most to me, prioritised, were:
- Purpose/Helpfulness
- Fun
- Growth/Learning
- Variety
- Challenge
- Freedom/Independence
- Creativity
- Curiosity/Excitement
- Belonging/Inclusion
- Appreciation
Activity 4: Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020
As an added extra to the book, I also used this form to select additional values from a table similar to Activity 2 and 3. It was from the Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020, available here.
This activity identified the following as essential to me in a career:
- Friendship: you would or do like close friendships with people at work.
- Learning: it is important for you to learn new things.
- Place of work: it is important that you work in the right part of the country for you.
These things I classified as important, prioritised:
- Help society: you like to think that your work is producing something worthwhile for society./Helping others: it is important to you to help other people, either individually or in groups, as part of your work.
- Variety: you enjoy having lots of different things to do.
- Challenge: you enjoy being 'stretched' and given new problems to work on
- Excitement: it is important for you to have a lot of excitement in your work
- Communication: you enjoy being able to express ideas well in writing or in speech
- Creativity: thinking up new ideas and ways of doing things is important to you./Artistic: you enjoy work involving drawing, designing, making music, making models, etc.
- Time Freedom: you prefer to be able to choose your own times for doing things, not having rigid working hours.
- Independence: you like being able to work in the way you want, without others telling you what to do.
- Work with others: you like to work in a team alongside others.
- Recognition: you do like people to appreciate you for the work you do.
- Being Expert: you like being known as someone with special knowledge or skills.
And these were things I do not want from a career:
- Persuading people: you enjoy persuading people to buy something or change their minds about something.
- Competition: you enjoy competing against other people or groups.
Now you have to combine all the words from all the activities in this section and rank them against each other.
When ranked, this complete list ended up being:
- Purpose/Helpfulness/Help society or people 17
- Fun 16
- Travel/conferences 14
- Variety 13
- Challenge 12
- Less than an hour commute 10
- Being busy 10
- Communication 10
- Creativity 10
- Work from home 9
- Curiosity/Excitement 8
- A team who get on/Belonging/Inclusion/Friendship 7
- Training/Learning/Growth 6
- Freedom/Independence 5
- Flexi-time 3
- Regular working day 1
- My own desk 1
- Appreciation/Recognition 1
- Being an expert 0
The definitions of the top four priorities for me are:
- Purpose/Helpfulness/Help society or people- that my work is having an impact and means something.
- Fun- that I enjoy the work I do, find it interesting and enjoy doing it.
- Travel/conferences- I get the opportunity to travel to different organisations or places or conferences to learn and develop and also add some variety to my day.
- Variety- that every day is not the same, I get to do a variety of things in a variety of places.
Activity 6: Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020
These final priorities from Activity 5 really fit with a further activity I completed on the MOOC, prioritising what is important to you, accessable here.
Things I am flexible about:
- Financially/Salary: Must be higher / Would accept the same / I would accept less.
- Re-training: No. Want to use existing skills / Would retrain ‘on the job’ / Happy to return to full-time study.
- Status / Seniority: Expect recognition of my age and existing experience / Must recognise my postgraduate qualification(s) / Happy to accept entry level.
- My next move has to be the perfect job: I can or will wait until the perfect job appears / I’m prepared to take a ‘stepping stones approach’, and take something that will help me get closer to my perfect job.
Areas that are non-negotiable for me:
- Lifestyle: My lifestyle (family, interests) comes first – work comes second / My work is more important to me than my lifestyle.
- Geography: I have a specific area(s) where I need or want to live / I can go anywhere.
- Working hours : I want a clearly delineated nine to five job / I’m happy to put in extra hours or work weekends.
