Do you know what your life goals are? What motivates and directs your work? If you ask yourself these questions, wouldn’t it make your career choices much easier? Dr. Edgar Schein wrote a career assessment book entitled Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values. In this book, he states that everyone has one dominant “anchor” and motivator, as it relates to work.
From my experience in talking with all kinds of people, it is clear that not everyone has the same ambitions in work. Some people are very content to have a quiet, uneventful job, while others thrive on constant change and excitement. In short, we are all different, and our motivators are an “internal barometer” of who we are and what we want.
Dr. Schein outlines eight main career anchors:
• Technical/Functional Competence
• General Management Competence
• Autonomy/Independence
• Security/Stability
• Entrepreneurial Creativity
• Service/Dedication to a Cause
• Pure Challenge
• Lifestyle
How do these motivators relate to you? Each and every one of them is a statement of what you want (or don’t want). To clarify these concepts, I will describe the eight anchors and what kind of work fits each.
Technical/Functional: Enjoy using core skills; skills don’t have to be technical in nature; can be a human resources worker or a secretary and enjoy using the skills needed for those positions; motivated by learning new skills and expanding current knowledge base.
Type of Work: What turns these types on is the exercise of their talent; satisfaction with knowing concepts. If it is not a challenge, technical/functional types feel bored and/or demeaned. Content of actual work more important than the context of the work. In other words, it is the actual work they are concerned with not the organization or the overall mission of their work; teaching and mentoring offers opportunity to demonstrate expertise.
General Managerial Competence: view specialization as limiting; primarily want to manage or supervise people; enjoy motivating, training and directing the work of others; enjoy authority and responsibility, and when someone strips of control it is “demotivator;” thrive in three areas of competence – analytical, interpersonal/intergroup, and emotional.
Type of Work: high levels of responsibility, varied, integrative, leadership.
Autonomy/Independence: need and want control over work and want to be recognized for achievements; can’t tolerate other people’s rules or procedures; need to do things their own way; independent consulting and contract work would be a good fit for these people; want to be left alone to do their work; just give them instructions on what you want, when you want it and let them “go to it!”
Type of Work: seek autonomous professions such as consulting, teaching, contract or project work, or even temporary work; part or full-time acceptable.
Security/Stability: safe, secure, predictable are buzz words; motivated by calmness and consistency of work; don’t like to take chances, and are not risk-takers; stable companies are best bets; strive for predictability, safety, structure, and the knowledge that the task has been completed properly; unused talents may be channeled outside work.
Type of Work: stability and predictability are key; emphasis on context of job rather than content or work (in other words, pay, benefits, work environment most important).
Entrepreneurial Creativity: like the challenge of starting new projects or businesses, have lots of interests and energy, and often have multiple projects going at once; different from autonomy in that the emphasis is on creating new business; often pursuing dreams at early age.
Type of Work: strong need to create something new; bored easily; inventions; restless; constantly seeking new creative outlets.
Service/Dedication to a Cause: motivated by core values rather than the work itself; strong desire to make the world a better place.
Type of Work: high concentration of service-oriented professions, motivated by pursuit of personal values and causes.
Pure Challenge: strongest desire is overcoming obstacles; conquering, problem-solving; competition; winning; constant self-testing; single-minded individuals.
Type of Work: careers where competition is primary.
Lifestyle: have a high need to balance work and the rest of life; enjoy work, but realize that work is just one of many parts of life that are important; subscribe to philosophy of “work to live”, rather than “live to work.”
Type of Work: careers must be integrated with the rest of life flexibility; desire to work with organizations that accept and promote balance; some individuals unwilling to relocate for reasons of life balance.
These are the main career anchors outlined by Schein and measured by his Career Orientations Inventory. In his book he discusses the concept of the career anchor in-depth, raising such thought-provoking questions as:
Are there other career anchors?
Can one have more than one anchor?
Do anchors change? And finally,
How does one match individual needs and those of the organizations?
When embarking on career exploration, the concept of career anchors is just one of many useful self-assessment scales. It is a way of pinpointing who you are and what you want, so you can better define what you are seeking in a job.
Source: Schein, Edgar H., Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values, San Diego: Pfeiffer & Company, University Associates, Inc., 1990.