Strengths, Values, and Work: A Weekend Retreat
I spent the weekend with the Trinity Fellows, who are taking a year off to know themselves and consider the nature of work.
I spent this past weekend with a wonderful group of post-college graduates who are part of a year-long program to think and explore work from a Christian perspective. I serve on the leadership team of the Trinity Fellows program, which is part of the National Fellows Initiative.
In addition to being part of the interview and selection process for future fellows, I also help with programming as a career coach and speaker. This weekend we focused on strengths, values, and work.
According to management expert Peter Drucker in the Harvard Business Review:
Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves—their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
Throughout my HR career, I’ve interviewed hundreds of job candidates, and few of them could name their strengths, values, and keys to performance, let alone how they would contribute to the workforce. They did not impress. However, memorable and remarkable were the ones who knew what they were good at, what mattered most to them, and how they worked well. Drucker says these three are critical.
Strengths
Ahead of the retreat, we administered the CliftonStrengths assessment to the fellows so we could discuss their strengths. This assessment identifies your top five areas of talent so you can understand how you’re naturally gifted. Aligning what you’re good at with the work you have to perform leads to natural engagement, fulfillment, and success. So few of us work with the knowledge or intentionality of aligning our strengths with our work, and yet this approach is essential, says Drucker.
Strengths are also a key subject for work exploration. If you’re deciding on a career path, you want to find one that makes use of your natural talents. Why leave your talents on the table? They’re urging for expression, and they’re also key for performance. While knowing your strengths aren’t prescriptive, they do provide great insight into the type of work you’re suited for.
For example:
Wrong approach: I have these talents, I must become a realtor.
Right approach: I have these talents, working with people seems important.
In addition to exploring individual strengths, we also looked at the group as a whole. Particular strengths bubbled to the top as dominant among the group, which begged the question: Why are these particular strengths plentiful among a group of post-college graduates taking a year to explore work in an intentional community?
Values
The second topic we pondered was values, particuarly workplace values. Values are priority beliefs that guide your decisions, behavior, and motivation. And, values are contextual—for example, what matters most when you’re stranded on an island is different than what matters most at home. We explored six workplace values, which we’ll share in a future post.
Values are priority beliefs, which means that some are more important than others. If all of them are important, then none of them are. Each of the fellows ranked their values in priority order, and thought through how their values show up at work. This is important to know about yourself, says Drucker. Your values are part of your overall motivation and performance.
If, for example, autonomy is a core value, but your boss is leaning over your shoulder all day, and you don’t have the resources to deliver your work, then your autonomy will suffer and you’ll be miserable. When you’re disengaged at work, it could be that your values aren’t being honored.
Work Principles
In addition to strengths and values, I shared my own winding vocational journey, and five principles of work that I learned from it. I won’t go into much detail about these principles, but here they are:
Get better at being faithful and ordinary than at being exceptional.
Too much is made of trying to be exceptional. It seems everywhere you turn, there are power coaches, motivational speakers, and business stars pushing you to be extraordinary. I’m all for growth and challenging yourself, but there can be undue pressure to be exceptional and unnecessary temptation to compare ourselves to others. What’s wrong with showing up quietly to do your work, delighting in the dignity of a good day’s work, and being dependable without fanfare?
Your calling is not contained in a single job.
We previously wrote that everyone views their work either as a job, a career, or a calling. This doesn’t mean that your particular paid work equals your calling. It means while your paid work may be a way to express your calling, your calling is separate from your paid work. So, if you are let go or move on, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost your calling, it means a way you’ve lived out your calling has changed. Separating the two also allows you to experiment with different kinds of work while maintaining your calling.
Be aware of your vision for work.
My wife and I got engaged three months after we met. During the course of our engagement, we didn’t live in the same town, had opposite work schedules, and didn’t see each other much. On top of that, we had only one session of pre-marriage counseling. This is to say, we weren’t very prepared for marriage! We had not discussed essential topics like gender roles, money, or sex, which could have really helped. Likewise, there are beliefs, rules, and expectations about work that are floating around inside of you. It’s good for you to be aware of your vision for work.
Your shifting life factors will impact your work decisions.
Work decisions don’t exist in a vaccum; they’re part of a complex ecosystem of various life factors like life stage, finances, family of origin, health, values, and more. Furthermore, a life factor that is a driving force for a decision today may not be as influential tomorrow. After I went thru a medical crisis, having flexibility in my work day was a major concern that led me to work for myself. Then, when my health improved, I was open to work for a company again. Consider what life factors are driving your decisions and then make adjustments when they shift.
A Christian can serve God by bringing his good qualities to the workplace.
Since the Fellows program considers work from a Christian perspective, we explored what it means to be a Christian in the workplace. Hopefully, the workplace is better off because there are Christians within it. Christians are “little Christs,” who ought to be showing things like love, grace, forgiveness, patience, endurance, gentleness, humility, and wisdom. Christians can be mediators of peace, exemplars of hard work, and servants of all. They can be friends to the lonely, defenders of justice, and lovers of truth. And they should be a whole lot of fun if they’re living from the gospel.
Closing Thoughts
I was greatly impressed by these fellows who are taking a year off to know themselves and consider the nature of work. They give me hope for the future, knowing they will join the workforce and influence it. They also challenge me to pause in my work and consider who I am and why I’m doing it.