Online Career Tools: Career Values Activity for Lawyers Considering Career Change
The corporate placement firm, Stewart, Cooper & Coon has an online version of Richard Knowdell’s Career Values Card Sort. The Career Values Card Sort involves sorting a set of cards with 54 defined values into five categories ranging from “always valued” to “never valued.” Once you prioritize your values, you may use the values you ranked the highest to help you evaluate career decisions that are under consideration. This online version includes a worksheet where you list a single career decision, list your eight highest-ranked values, and then write about how that value is applicable to your career decision. Then, you examine which values are in conflict with your career decision and brainstorm how to resolve those value conflicts. A sample worksheet, along with blank downloadable worksheets, may be found here.
I did this exercise about a year ago during a workshop that I attended about Career Values. (You can buy the cards and workbook at careertrainer.com.) At the time, I listed these values as my top eight:
- Work-Life Balance
- Location
- Family
- Fun & Humor
- Creativity
- Change & Variety
- Honesty & Integrity
- Creative Expression
Values can change over time, so it is probably time for me to do this exercise again. Looking at this now, I’m not really sure why I ranked Fun & Humor so highly. Although I definitely like having fun, I’m not sure that it makes my top eight “always valued” values. On the other hand, my top three values - Work-Life Balance, Location and Family - would all likely continue to be in my top eight values today.
Overall, I found this exercise helpful, although the online version I’ve linked to here is somewhat more limited than the paper-based Career Values workbook that I used in the workshop I attended. The workbook includes several supplementary activities about your highest career values, including activities reflecting on times in the past when you have been able to exercise your highest career values freely, how your career values have changed over time, and how “in charge” you feel of building your highest career values into your life.
What do you think of the Career Values Card Sort activity? Is it a useful tool in helping to define your career change choices?
Career Quick Links Side Blog
If you visit my blog, you will notice a new mini-blog in the side bar. Career Quick Links is a collection of links on careers, career change and the law. I plan to regularly update it with articles of interest that I do not have time to blog about extensively, but are relevant to the topic of career change for lawyers. You may subscribe to the Career Quick Links as a separate feed. The Career Quick Links will not show up in the main Making the Jump feed.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery — I saw a good example of a link blog on Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs, and I set out to create something similar on my blog. If you’re a blogger, setting up a link blog is fairly easy to do. Feel free to email me about how I set my link blog up, or google link blog to get started. Also, thanks to Kevin for including Making the Jump in his link blog.
Renaissance Souls and Career Change
As part of my research prior to starting this blog, I started reading some law blogs that I had not read before. One that has particularly inspired me is Stephanie West Allen’s idealawg. I was sifting through some of her archives when I came across her very first post about Renaissance Souls by Margaret Lobenstine.
In the first chapter of her book (PDF offered free on her website), author Margaret Lobenstine states:
Renaissance Souls, then, are people whose preference is for variety over concentration; whose process involves widening their options rather than narrowing their choices as they go with their energy flow, and whose success involves moving on to something different rather than going on and doing more of the same. Renaissance Souls are not required to be geniuses, do not necessarily have disorders such as ADD, and are not doomed to a life of poverty or economic insecurity.
My clients and workshop participants always smile knowingly when we get to this summary. They easily relate to the three characteristics identified. They are also relieved that the way they naturally go through life is healthy, not dysfunctional, and does not require them to be geniuses to be successful.
I can see why Renaissance souls do not do well in the law. Traditional law practice seems to require associates to pick a practice area and steadily move up the ladder toward partnership. Also, the way law itself is designed, specialists are rewarded over generalists. Stephanie West Allen does identify some Renaissance Souls who have stuck with the law - it would be interesting to see how they’ve managed to succeed at this. I honestly can’t imagine a Renaissance soul sticking with the law for very long.
By the way, I took the quiz, and answered “yes” to all eight of the questions - I’m a classic Renaissance soul I guess. The book is going on my Christmas list (if I can wait that long to start reading it).