3.1 Your values

Your values obviously have an important influence on what it is that you really want out of life and work. Again, your values will change as your circumstances change, so you need to reassess what's important to you on a regular basis.

To me, stating my values feels a little philosophical, but in essence, what I mean by values is those things that are important to you. For example, Coomber et al. set out a list of six values that they feel people should consider when thinking about a change of career (Figure 6):

1. Benevolence Doing things for others
2. Conformity Being accepted, doing what's socially correct
3. Independence Making decisions, getting your own way
4. Leadership Being in charge, having power and authority
5. Recognition Being highly regarded and admired, having status, being important
6. Support Being treated with understanding and consideration

(Coomber et al., 2002)

Maximise

Figure 6 Values

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Figure 6 is a cartoon showing a man thinking. Six thought bubbles are coming out of his head, one for each of the values listed above, as follows:

• Benevolence is represented by the man cooking a meal for an elderly person.
• Independence is represented by the man making a decision in a meeting.
• Conformity is represented by the man throwing a food wrapper in a litter bin.
• Leadership is represented by the man with a map at the head of a walking party.
• Recognition is represented by the man standing on a podium with people smiling and clapping below.
• Support is represented by the man looking worried while someone else comforts him.

Values

I don't expect you to relate to all the above values or consider them all to be important. Nor is the list exhaustive, by any means – you might feel that honesty, time to spend with your family, or particular moral or religious beliefs are most important to you, for example. However, the list is a good starting point from which to create your own personal goal statement.

Your mission statement should provide you with a focus around which you can begin to plan your career development goals. Now is a good time to do this, because otherwise these kind of values might be forgotten when you are planning your career and only become apparent once you are fully committed to an avenue. Of course, your values aren't mutually exclusive – although some will probably be more important to you than others at the present time – so you can combine several of them to come up with your statement. And remember, the things that are important to you in your career may not be the same things that you value most outside work.

So what does a mission statement look like? Here are some example statements to get you thinking.

Remember, your mission statement doesn't have to consist of a single sentence – you can put together two or three of these kind of statements to construct your overall statement.