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As you’ll see in [my post on five things], knowing your values is important in finding your path to what you want most in life.
[values like a compass]
[walk towards the light]
[godlike perspective — piecewise approximation of a curve]
A long time ago, I was having an utterly charmed work life — I was doing well in a coveted role at an amazing place. My path to the Next Big Role at the company was clear, and I was pretty much a lock on getting that job. And I felt terrible because I was pretty sure I didn’t want it, but I couldn’t really explain why. I was on the edge of starting a search for a new job, and I felt crappy about it.
I was also fortunate to have a number of excellent mentors, including one in particular — we’ll call him John. John was an experienced C-level executive who I’d reported to not long before, and he was in his own search at that time as well. In his searches, he had a habit of making a list of what he was looking for ahead of the search to help him while he was considering who to talk to, asking questions during the interviews, and evaluating offers. That sounded smart, so I tried it. It genuinely changed my professional life, and as I explored it further I think it surprised both of us how deeply useful a tool this could be.
You see, it turns out these five things are really the list of your values in a business or professional context. Values are how we explore or evaluate something and decide if we think it’s good, bad, or indifferent. Having an explicit list your professional values is a critical tool for finding and engaging with the work that will grow and stretch you to do your best work and will be the most satisfying and rewarding.
First, there’s the obvious, intended purpose: this is the list you’ll use to evaluate any opportunity that comes your way. As John pointed out to me, it helps you to explicitly look for the qualities and opportunities you’re seeking in your next role; it also helps you make sure that being dazzled by dollars — or title, or any other thing that might be very exciting — doesn’t cause you to forget what matters most to you. It’s the way Past You can help Present You keep from falling in love with something more than you should.
It’s also the list you’ll use to formulate your questions for interviews, as well as the traits and experience you want to highlight in the conversations ahead. If one of your most important things is direct involvement in strategic planning, you’ll definitely want to showcase your experience and the positive outcomes you’ve led and contributed to, as well as ask questions about how they do strategic planning and what your role would be.
You don’t have to be in the market for a new job for your five things to be useful, though. I strongly recommend finding a way to share them with your leadership, both direct and skip-level, as a way to frame discussions about your growth and the kinds of work you’re enthusiastic to be involved in. As a people leader, I love knowing who’s looking for what kind of opportunities inside my organization; it’s a great way to know who will thrive on the next project, which creates a virtuous cycle of engagement and growth that ends with that most gratifying moment where you get to recognize and reward their results.
Your five things are also an excellent tool for measuring your current situation, understanding what’s satisfying you and what isn’t, and seeking to improve things. In moments where things don’t seem to be going the way you want them to, or when things seem to be something between a struggle and a slog, I’ve often found that I can point to one or two of my five things as the place I’m not getting what I need. Fairly often I’ve found that I can change my own approach, maybe delegating differently or changing the way I’m engaging with the project or situation, and move towards a better mode; I’ve also found that being able to point to the right area is a great way to engage my leadership brainstorming what we could do differently to improve things all around.
If you want some help defining your five things, I’ve got an exercise that I’ve been using for years to get to them. Take a half hour and give it a try, and if you’d like to talk about what you found, hit me up.
This is a (pretty corny) exercise to help frame what matters most to you in your work life. If you haven’t already read my thoughts on why this is a critical tool in your career growth toolbox, you might want to give that a look before you tackle this.
In a moment, there’s a knock on your door. As you open the door, a delivery person is walking away and waving acknowledgement over their shoulder at your, ”Thanks!” as you’re looking down at the box they’ve left on your doorstep. It’s about the size of a box of copy paper, but not super heavy — maybe ten pounds. You pick it up and carry it inside.
On top of the box is envelope with your name on it. Inside the envelope is a letter and a check, and like every normal human you look at the check first and see it’s something fairly close to half your annual take home pay. That’s definitely got your attention, so you turn to the letter. It’s addressed directly to you, from the CEO, handwritten, and clearly not a form letter.
We’ve thought long and hard about it and decided to shut down the company. You’ve done great work — and I mean really great work, we wouldn’t have gotten so far without you. Still, it’s the right thing to do. We’re giving everyone six months’ pay and benefits so that no one has to rush into their next job because of money or other concerns.
While we were at it, we talked to a lot of companies about you! We told them about the places you are amazing — and there’s a lot of them! — and the places you’re maybe not so amazing (which was a much shorter chat). It turns out that there are a thousand companies who’d like to hire you, just based on our conversations!
We asked them each to write up the role they’re offering and all the important details that we knew you’d care about. They’re all inside the box, each in its own envelope. All you have to do to accept one of these jobs is open it, sign it, and send it back. Anything you care about — engaging work, compensation, recognition, influence, life balance — is in some set of those envelopes. Do you want a company car? Company jet? How about a company flying unicorn that farts rainbows? It’s in there, somewhere.
Good luck in your next adventure!
You realize immediately that this is way too many offers to evaluate in the usual A vs B vs C vs … G? H? With this many, relative comparison is likely to end up in a long, winding trail or, worse, an endless loop. You’re going to have to step back and develop some framework, some set of criteria, for thinking about this so that you can judge each one as you look at it and feel confident that you’ll know when you’ve opened the right one.
So take a moment now and think about it. What would your criteria be? What are the five most important things about your next job? Make that list, and make sure they’re in order of importance — you’d never say yes to something without #1, and if you were going to say yes to anything without all five, it’d have to have #1-4.
Yes. Five is important; it gets you to the right level of detail, and can conveniently be counted on the average human hand.
You’re making a concise, explicit (and shareable) definition of what matters most to you in a professional context. It’s a valuable tool to measure your current role and judge what’s working well and what you’d like to work differently. It’s also like a map to finding deep job satisfaction, especially when you share it with your leadership so they can help.