122: Values In Your Professional Life with Linda Evans

On today’s episode of the Career Clarity Show, we are talking about one of the foundational principles to navigating career change and moving towards something that feels like it truly fits you and is aligned with who you are –  values. It’s the question of “What do you hold dear?”. What do you prioritize when you’re faced with a trade off and a decision where one choice honors some things that are important to you and the other choice honors different things that are important to you? How do you make the comparison? 

So often, we can feel like we’re forced to make some decisions that we have to show up as our professional self versus our personal self. And that each one of them is a shade of who we are. Too often we can’t bring our full selves to work. 

Our guest Linda Evans is here to dissect how to think about bringing more of your values into the way that you make decisions in your professional life as well as your personal life. We touch on feeling that kind of satisfaction and alignment that you’re wanting moving forward. Linda is a strengths based career coach, speaker and writer who specializes in personal branding.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

Show Notes:

• Launched By Linda
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career.

Welcome back to the Career Clarity Show everyone. I’m your host, Lisa Miller. And I’m delighted that you are with us today. On today’s episode of the Career Clarity Show, we are talking about one of the foundational principles to navigating career change and moving towards something that feels like it truly fits you and is aligned with who you are. And that concept, we are going to spend our episode today dissecting his values. It’s the question of what do you hold dear? What do you prioritize when you’re faced with a trade off and a decision where one decision honors some things that are important to you? And the other decision honors different things that are important to you? How do you make the comparison? And how do you ultimately make a decision? And how can you feel like you’re truly honoring your values in your work? So often, we can feel like, we’re forced to make some decisions that we have to show up as our professional self versus our personal self. And that each one of them is a shade of who we are. But that so often, we can’t bring our full selves to work. And on today’s episode of the podcast, we are going to dissect if that is actually true. And how to think about bringing more of your values into the way that you make decisions in your professional life as well as your personal life, to feel that kind of satisfaction and alignment that you’re wanting moving forward. So that sounds interesting to you, if you have heard about values, but you haven’t really spent a whole lot of time thinking about them. If you’ve identified what your values are, but you’re not really sure how to use them for decision making. Or if you know exactly what your values are, you like to use them for decision making. And you find yourself in the middle of a decision making pickle, where you have a values clash between two things that are important to you, you’re definitely going to enjoy today’s episode of the podcast. Now, let me tell you about my guest today, an expert on values. Linda Evans. Linda Evans is a strengths based career coach, speaker and writer who specializes in personal branding. She started her virtual career coaching business launched by Linda in 2011. Her full time career has been in higher education since 2012. And she works in Career Services at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. She is a Gallup certified strengths coach and has certificates in positive psychology and public speaking. Linda, welcome to the Career Clarity Show. Thanks, Lisa, I’m so excited to be here. I am delighted to have you. And I’m excited to have a conversation about values. Because like I was saying, I feel like they can be some of the most foundational pieces to how we think about career alignment and fit. And they’re also pieces that sometimes people gloss over or zoom past or don’t really spend any time on. So I’m curious, what makes values stand out so much to you?

Linda Evans  3:24  

Yeah, I look, I use the word foundational, because just like the foundation of a building, it’s not visible, we don’t really see what our values are. We’re not always aware of them. But they are the underlying support for everything else we do. And everything else we choose and decide whether we’re aware of it or not. And as I have been coaching, and working with clients and students in higher ed, it throughout my career, I’ve noticed that values are the underpinning factor behind a lot of decisions, a lot of career dissatisfaction because people are not living in alignment with their values, or they just don’t know what their values are. And I think that is one of the hardest things is identifying our values.

Lisa Lewis Miller  4:07  

Well, let’s dive on into that this question of identifying our values, because especially if they are often the invisible foundations of how we make decisions and why things appeal to us versus not appeal to us. It might feel really intimidating or tricky to figure out how to even start. So where would you suggest somebody begins if they are wanting to dive into really clear values identification work?

Linda Evans  4:32  

Yeah, so I was first introduced to values in a way that I think is still commonly used, which is, I was given a list of many, many values. I don’t remember dozens and told to cross off the ones that don’t appeal to me. And they’re all one words right like creativity or health or security or whatever. And to start crossing them off and then you end up with a smaller list and then you narrow down that list to five or 10 values. And those are your supposedly most important principles in life. And I’ve done this exercise multiple times. And it’s always hard. It’s always hard. For anyone else. I teach this exercise too, because so many things are important to us that it’s really hard to narrow down to five or 10 things. And at the end of the day, it’s like, Okay, well, that was a difficult exercise, what do I do with these last remaining values? And people don’t know. So after feeling like that doesn’t really work, I try to figure it out on my own, how can I help clients and students identify their own values. And what I found really works, starting with myself as a guinea pig is, is identifying the times that I got really frustrated or angry at some kind of situation. And those are the times that I realized, my values were being violated, not respected or recognized in some way. Because it’s just like, you know, values are the foundation, if the foundation is sound, and, and working properly, you don’t notice it, right. But if it’s broken, if it’s not safe, if an earthquake shakes it up and breaks it up, then you notice, Oh, my gosh, my values are being threatened. So that happens in our own lives as well. And I think the easiest way, which obviously still take some time, and introspection, and maybe even journaling, is to think back on times when you got really angry or really upset. And then, and then trying to get to the root of that issue, like what was it that was being threatened or taken away from you, and not acknowledged or violated. And that is usually the root value that you have. So going through this exercise myself, I thought about times that I was really angry in the last few years, maybe three to five years. And I personally don’t get angry that often. And I’m not just talking about or you can also think of times that happen a lot like it’s road rage, you know, if that’s a common one, what is it that you are angry about? What is it that brings out that rage? Is it that you don’t feel respected? So if that’s the case, then respect is a deep value of yours? Is it because you feel like it’s unfair, that that person cut in front of you and you’re trying to get somewhere faster, then maybe fairness is the underlying value, you know, so the same scenarios could pull out different values and different people. And I find that that’s a pretty foolproof way to figure out what our values are. It just takes a lot of introspection, because we don’t tend to think like why am I angry? We just want to then debate it. You know, I love that you’re

Lisa Lewis Miller  7:43  

using an example that feels unrelated to professional life, like thinking about road rage, because there’s so much wisdom in there, that you’re absolutely right, that when people get angry, they get so consumed by the feeling of being angry, that often we can’t stop to take a breath. Exhale, try to pull yourself backwards and create some perspective and say, What is it about this that makes you curious? Because that curiosity could totally like curiosity could mean that you hold safety to be the highest value. Yeah, and when other people have road rage, you’re not feeling like your your need for safety is being met, which would be really different from somebody else experiencing road rage and feeling like it’s an inequality issue and having that be the foundational value for it.

Linda Evans  8:42  

Yeah, thanks for building on that example. And another example is maybe efficiency, like I need to get to this place as fast as I can. And these people cutting me off or keeping me from meeting my tight schedule or whatever. So that could be totally different for other other people who have road rage, like these 10 people who have road rage could have 10 different values under underlying their anger, their frustration. 

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:06  

I love that. And Linda, the way that you set up that example you were talking about it kind of as if there’s a there’s a foundational value, like one core value that drives each one of us is that are a fair representation of the way that you think about it or do you think about it more as sort of like a stable of values a shortlist? 

Linda Evans  9:25  

Definitely a stable values. Yeah, I think it’s really hard to base our whole lives on one value. So I don’t have a certain number that I think we need to pull out. But as I was doing this exercise for myself, I think I found and I have an article about this that’s on my website, I think I found like nine or eight like core values that have come up again and again. And then I you know, once you once you figure out like I think this is the core value then you can ask yourself, like what other scenarios have illustrated this in my life and When I make decisions when I’m calm when I’m like planning ahead for the future, setting my goals, is this something that I consider. So you can think about it on an unconscious level and a conscious level. When we’re angry, it’s kind of unconscious, because we’re just, you know, in that state of rage or frustration, that is very normal. But that extreme emotion can pull out something that is usually hidden in plain sight.

Lisa Lewis Miller  10:28  

I think that’s a great point. And to the point that you made earlier in the conversation around a lot of times when people will do values exercises, they come up with a list of things, and they kind of don’t know where to go or how to operationalize them. How do you help support people in thinking about this? So what factor once they get to their shortlist of 139? values?

Linda Evans  10:50  

Yeah, and I think one of the, I think extremes help people think more clearly, even though our lives don’t always work in extremes. But you know, there’s like the, the negative extreme of anger of our values being bad violated. But there’s also the positive extreme of what I asked clients, for example, like, what would be your perfect ideal life or career? And how does this value show up in that life? So it’s hard to do to do multiple values at once to maybe do one value at a time. If your value say is variety, just one of mine, I really value variety in life. What is your ideal, like, way of having that play out? in your life? Where do you like variety in your life? Where do you need it in your life, and then just talking through all those practical ways, and because it could look very different from me. And you, right, even though we might have the same value, like I prefer it in recreation, I prefer it in the kinds of people I talk to the kinds of places I go to, but for you it might be, you really want it in your work tasks, or you really want it in your emotional states, like you want to feel a huge range of variety of emotions. So it could show up in a lot of different ways. And once we identify what it is, then they can start thinking in those practical concrete terms.

Lisa Lewis Miller  12:15  

Awesome. Yeah, I think that asking somebody to think about, you know, if I had a life full of blank, you know, insert value here, if I had a life full of variety woman that look like yes, can be really illustrative of how you want this to show up in your professional life, how you want it show up in your personal life, how this would look if it was honored and not violated in the way that you live day to day.

Linda Evans  12:41  

Yeah, I love that word honored for sure. We want to honor our values. It’s not necessarily something we choose, you know, values tend to come from our upbringing, they likely can at first. But as we become more mature and more independent from our parents, we get to have more choice and agency, I think and what our values are, like, we can look back and think, Oh, I have these values. Is that serving me? Well? Do I want to have these values? And if not, how can I change how I’m living? So it’s an alignment with my new values. And you know, there’s a lot more choice once you are aware of them. But if you’re not aware of them, you can get?

Lisa Lewis Miller  13:21  

Well, let’s talk about living in alignment with one’s values. Because I think that on its face that feels really straightforward and easy. When it comes to how that actually manifests in life and the decisions and the trade offs that you have to make. Living in alignment with your values, even in your personal life is tricky. But then finding ways to integrate your values into your professional life can be surprisingly difficult. Mm hmm.

Linda Evans  13:48  

Yeah. And I think because our professional lives are smaller than our personal lives, our personalized, like everything, more hours in the day, even though some of those are sleeping. But professionally, it’s not just us, it’s it’s you know, our bosses and our coworkers and the economy, the workplace marketplace, there’s a lot more, I think, external factors in our professional life. So it can feel like it’s harder to control how we live our values that work, or in our work.

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:19  

Well, let’s say that somebody came to you and they were saying, Linda, I’m really struggling with trying to live my values in my work. What are some of the questions that you would ask to kind of get curious or diagnose What’s going on?

Linda Evans  14:34  

First of all, gonna start with the basics. What are your values? Because not everyone knows that and that can take a lot of digging. That could take a lot of counseling and coaching to help the person pull that out of them becoming aware and are to be able to articulate what their values are, because that is kind of the hardest thing, but once they figure out what their values are, then you can start self assessing. How am I doing in life In accordance with each of these values, you know, what are the gaps between my ideal and where I am now? And then focusing on the ones that are really irking them the most? Like if they are living in accordance with these three, that’s great, keep doing it. Don’t give up on those. And then if they’re not in accordance with two of those values, what is in the way? Is it your own barriers? Or is it other people? Or is it systems that you need to restructure or get out of? How much of it is in your control? Because if it’s not within your control, you got to find ways to cope with it. If it’s in your control, then great. What actions can we take to move forward? Yeah, so there’s a lot of like, it’s

Lisa Lewis Miller  15:47  

totally well, and I think that one of the the trickiest things is that sometimes we’ll find ourselves in situations where our values have some natural friction points between them. I think about Tony Robbins, like whether or not you like to do it or not, he’s got this, like, six core needs, and principle that he uses. And he talks about that to the core needs are kind of novelty and variety, kind of like your as Linda and the desire for newness and growth and challenge. But then there’s also a competing need for comfort and security and safety and sameness. So what happens if you find yourself in a situation where you’re feeling like your values are creating some either inner conflict, inner friction, or they’re creating outer friction? either because you feel like you can’t make a decision or you feel like there’s no right decision?

Linda Evans  16:42  

is such a great question. I love that question. Because I have struggled with that myself. And the main example I’m thinking about is my introversion and extraversion because I’m an ambivert, about 60%, extrovert 40%. And I struggled with this for most of my 20s. And it’s living in a big city. So I lived in New York City, I lived in DC, during grad school, and part of me is a homebody. Like I love just staying home reading, journaling, like watching TV, or movies or documentaries, and just like really being in my own head, like, like introspection, emotion, examination, all of that. And then the other part of me is craving, adventure and newness, discovery, exploration, going out into the city and seeing what I run into that day, and experiencing new things. So that I could come back and blog about it, and journal about it and have all these experiences that are enriching. So I really struggled between those, you know, two sets of values, they’re not just two values, I think they’re sets of values, in that I value. Having new experiences, having a rich life, having a wide social circle, having interesting things that I’m doing, creating the experiences, and then also the value of being able to sit still and look within myself and write things down. You know, writing takes a lot of time, and organizing my photos. So I really had to figure out, which is more important to me. And I decided in that case, both are very important to me. So then I had to figure out how much of my time and energy and resources do I allocate to both? Because I can’t live without one or the other, like, I have to have both. But how am I going to balance that, and, and being willing to be flexible, because throughout, you know, life, different stages of life, that will change, that balance will change. And it’s something that I think everybody has throughout themselves, because like I said, we all have multiple values. And sometimes they do compete, like you value your career you value, progression and advancement, but you also value your family and family takes a lot of time, and sacrifice and patience. So how do you balance those and I think it doesn’t have to be hard. As long as you accept that life is complicated, that live is multi dimensional, you have to accept that, and then work in a way that that suits you. Because what works for other people may not work for you, or what works for you now may not work for you in the future.

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:29  

I like that as a philosophical model of accepting that it’s going to be a little messy, it’s not gonna accept it. Totally. I’m wondering if you can give a more concrete version of what that looked like for you, you know, how how did you ultimately end up balancing those things out? What was your messy, complicated solution?

Linda Evans  19:49  

For me, it was very calendar based. So looking at my planner, my calendar, whether it be you know, the written like notebook or like a Google Calendar. I looked at my calendar and I thought, Okay, I have, you know, for social excursions this week, does that leave me enough time to journal about it to reflect to rest, rest is also another values, I don’t get burned out, because I am very good at running myself to the ground just trying to do too many things. And looking at my calendar and deciding, is this a good balance this week? So breaking it down one week at a time? Not Not even a month? Not definitely not a year, but one week at a time? How does this balance feel, and maybe it’s like this week, I’m going to go go go, and next week, I’ll take it slower, I’ll have to reject or decline some invitations, or forego that concert that I was looking forward to, because I don’t have the money or the time or the energy to really enjoy it. And, and there’s a lot of give and take. And that was just me as a single person in my 20s. And, and like being married. And having children is going to make it so much more complicated. So wherever you know, a person is in their life, they have to take all these things into account without sacrificing anyone value. Like I think it is possible to balance. But that balance shifts day to day, week to week and month to month and year to year. Yeah,

Lisa Lewis Miller  21:21  

there are there are two principles that I’m hearing in the way that you’re describing your solution. Principle number one is that they’re kind of some guidelines that you use to make decisions about how you’re going to schedule your time, like you articulated, I gotta have rest must be included every time. So you’ve got some kind of shorthand rules that you can use to pre make some decisions, like I cannot be going out seven days a week, because I need rest. And then the other principle that really stood out to me and your answer was that you just break it up into small chunks of time, you don’t put the pressure on yourself to recreate the perfect quarter, if you just look at a single week, and this week feel like it is giving me the integration of my values that’s going to feed me and serve me,

Linda Evans  22:10  

that’s a great word as well, you’re really good at picking out like one word summaries integration. Because if there’s no way to escape our values, right, as I’m thinking about my values, I’m using my values to organize my values. So one of my values is balance. And another value is flexibility to be able to shift as needs and wants shift. And as the world shifts, you know, COVID threw us all for a spin. It really kept me from living my values of novelty and an exploration and adventure. Because those external things were taken away from me and many other people in the world. So I wasn’t able to go to concerts or festivals or, you know, explore new places, we moved states in the middle of the pandemic, so I wasn’t able to explore my new home the way I normally would. And those things are out of my control. So I had to figure out, Okay, what are my values? And how am I going to live that in this new environment? and remembering that it is temporary? So it’s not as like, depressing, because it’s not gonna be this way forever. Right? Like things will open up again, they have opened up a lot more than last summer. But what am i values? And how do I? How do I live that in a new way, because I’m not used to having to restrict my options, so much. And I think that is really hard for people is they can’t see how they can reframe, not reframe, but how they can live their value in a different way than they’re used to. Because they never had to, but now circumstances forced them to whether it be their job or the pandemic or other life circumstances.

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:56  

Absolutely. And it’s interesting, because talking about how the pandemic really restricted, the ways in which we could allow our values to manifest in our behaviors, is probably a really good proxy for the way that some of us feel within the workspace of my employer or my role or the requirements of my job, or restricting the ways in which I feel like my values can manifest themselves in my life, especially if someone has a core value of freedom or autonomy, and they’re working for someone else right now. You know, you can certainly honor those values by you know, if you’ve got an entrepreneurial streak, building out your side hustle business, on the on the on your part time time. But what would you say to somebody who is noticing now that they’ve done their values work, that they feel really limited in the way that some of their values can come to life within their current job because of that organization’s culture because of their rapport, their dynamic with their supervisor, because of what the role requires. What are some ways that you help folks to get creative in thinking about how your values can be met? In? Perhaps not the most obvious of ways?

Linda Evans  25:18  

Yes. So there’s this thing called job crafting, right. And I haven’t looked at it too much. But I know, it’s basically about making as much change as you can within your current role without quitting the job without quitting the company. So you can change multiple things, the most important and then they have most control over is your attitude, and your Outlook, right, all this internal stuff, how you frame things in your mind, the stories that you tell yourself, and not having, like, for example, not having a pity party not being a victim, and really taking control of what, what you can, but there are obviously limitations to that. And so when people feel like they can’t live out their values in their job, I first asked them, well, what can you change? What is changeable? And have you tried? And if you haven’t, what’s keeping you from trying? If they don’t know how to change it, then then I might help them brainstorm ways to change it. But if they, if they list to me all these ways that they tried to change it, and they can, and I’m like, Okay, well, are you willing to change jobs? You know, like, the changing of any kind is really hard, especially retaining jobs. But it is easier to, to seek change when you have a job than to quit, and then figure out what’s next. So, so to figure out their next step, if they are going to change jobs and getting clear on their values, what do you want in your next job? How are you going to figure that out? Like, if you want, you know, these 123 things? How are you going to detect that in the interview? How are you going to decide like, this is worth jumping ship for? Or, or not? Because sometimes people change, expecting a certain thing to be different, but then it’s not. And so they get discouraged, they feel stuck. They have start all over. So I think getting really clear on what they want. And then seeing like, how am I going to guarantee not guarantee it’s really hard to guarantee things, but how am I going to, you know, maximize the likeability, the likelihood that that will happen in my next job, and it might take several jobs, you know, I don’t think that’s a bad thing to to, like, improve 70% of your job, and then 80%, and then 90%, it might take multiple roles in order to get to that place where you feel like, Okay, great, I’m living, you know, my mouth values as fully as I can be, but then things might change. And you have to be willing, or I guess, you have to be ready for that to shift because maybe you get to the perfect book, job, quote, perfect job. And then your boss changes and everything’s different, right? Like your boss quits, and whole environment changes, then you realize, wow, do I like this job enough to stay? Or are not like is my boss, my new boss ruining everything for me? Like, you know, there’s so many different factors, and they shift over time? So no clean answer for that, unfortunately.

Lisa Lewis Miller  28:25  

Well, you brought up a really interesting point in answering that around, you’d ask somebody the questions of, you know, how can you pre screen an organization, in your research or in your interview process to see how likely it is? You know, just like you said, You can’t guarantee that there will be perfect values alignment, but how likely it is that there will be strong values alignment. And I want to dig into that a little bit more. What are some of the tactics that folks can use to do a values assessment before you’re actually already hired in in the job nine to five?

Linda Evans  28:59  

Yeah, that is really hard, depending on what your values are they trying to evaluate, right? So if it’s, like the dynamic between you and your co workers and the boss that’s much more easy to tell in an interview, then, like the company, culture within the Office necessarily or like, what your day to day tasks will be. I mean, because the interviewer, the employer is always trying to impress you as well as you trying to impress them. So they can sugarcoat things. If they’ve had high turnover, they’re not likely to reveal that very easily. If you ask if you know that there’s high turnover and you ask them why that is, they likely will gloss over that or give a politically correct answer, or a vague answer. And it’s hard to figure those things out. So I think that you have to really keep your radar on, like, be very observant of all the nonverbals. And that’s harder online, right because a lot of interviews now are online, so you don’t get to Shake hands with them, you don’t get to walk down the hallway and have small talk on the way to the interview, you don’t get to greet them in the lobby or see what the receptionist is like, or there’s a lot of things that you miss out on when you’re interviewing virtually. So if you can get in person, exposure interaction with the organization, I think that’s gonna help a lot. Because the website is helpful in that, that gives the company’s ideals, you know, on the about page, it’s what they’re aspiring to, it’s what they proclaim, but there could be a huge gap between what they proclaim as their mission and the values and the company itself. So I mean, it’s not to completely disregard what their aspirations are, because maybe they’re trying to improve like their diversity initiatives, for example, but they’re not quite there yet. So if you can get it in person experience with that, whether it be like meeting with someone who has worked there who’s not on the interviewing committee, or just like, if it’s like, somewhere you can walk, like drive and walk to or walk through the lobby, or, you know, it depends on what kind of organization is obviously I work at universities, I have for the last 10 years. So it’s really easy to go to university and rock around campus and talk to the students and see what the environments like. But for other companies that are more closed, for example, the government, you can’t just walk through the Pentagon and see like, what the vibe is like. But you can also read reviews on websites Glassdoor. maybe do some informational interviews with people on LinkedIn, and get a more candid, you know, interaction with them, like try to talk to people that are outside of the interview committee.

Lisa Lewis Miller  31:47  

Love that. Yeah, I feel like for the analytical listeners among us, totally do your due diligence and do your research. Talk to people who have nothing to do with the interview process who can give you the real deal dirt, use Glassdoor, and salary calm, and very God boss and whatever other websites can give you a little bit of insider Intel, that like might be biased, right? People come there to host where they’ve had poor experiences all the time. But you should be able to get a sense of the ratio of unhappy to balanced or happy reviews and draw some inferences and insights from that. But I think that, you know, to your point earlier in your answer, talking to the intuitive among us, that if you’re in person with somebody, yeah, even if it’s a virtual in person on a video interview, there’s a lot that you can still pick up on even at a subconscious level, to give you a sense of if it’s a good fit or not. And your gut is so often right in ways you can’t actually verbalize or properly articulate, but you just get like a spidey sense tingling feeling about. So for the analytical listeners, there’s plenty of homework, you can do plenty of ways that you can think about prepping, you could even think about using behavior based questions to ask, you know, so how does your company you know, behave in ways that show a commitment to equality or to diversity or to you know, insert the name of your value here. So, analytical folks, you got plenty of prep you can do to walk in there. But in 200, folks, you’re getting way more of a read on the situation, from the little subconscious things, you’re picking up in body language, in the way that people are speaking in their tone in their word choice. Do they sound relaxed? Do they sound like things are easy to say? Do they sound a little cagey and buttoned up? So whichever modality tends to be your driving modality for making decisions, there are absolutely ways to set yourself up for success in screening for values alignment before you actually say yes to accepting a job, and then show up on the first day and realize, Oh, no, this is not what I thought I signed up for.

Linda Evans  34:12  

Yeah, and I’ve done that before. Like, I think everyone has had that, oh, shoot, like moments in a job when they’re like, oh, gosh, I did not expect this. This is I did not foresee this. This is not what I wanted. How do I get out now? And figuring out an escape route, trying to figure out an escape route, like early on in a new job. That’s, that’s painful. But I think those are great learning experiences. And I thought it was interesting that you mentioned the analytical versus intuitive modes. I think that also traces back to our values, right? Because sometimes, it’s like, I think I’m more intuitive. I care. I care about the dynamics between people that are often nonverbal and tangible, and other people might value the concrete things more like pay And benefits and, you know, perks and things like that. So so that’s also important to be aware of, I feel like there’s just layers and layers and valleys that we can dig into.

Lisa Lewis Miller  35:11  

Totally, totally. Well, I think that one last thing I’ll say, on the value screening front, especially given that you’ve had the experience of showing up someplace and being like, Oh, this isn’t what I thought I had signed up for. And I’ve had that experience too. And goodness knows, have I talked to clients who had that experience, one of the biggest commonalities that I’ve seen in those types of situations is that somebody was trying to move fast, or somebody was trying to be very impressive. So like, somebody threw a lot of money at you and a big, cool title. And you’re like, Whoa, sweet, neat. And you kind of said yes to it without grounding yourself back into what does this really mean? What’s flasher? Mm, yeah. Is it just flashy and sexy? Or is it actually soulful? Or when companies are trying to move fast, they do like to interviews and they give you an offer, and you only have 24 hours to respond to it. And then they’re having you start the next Monday, like both of those tend to be big, flashing red warning signs that you can get kind of sucked into their energy or their mode of being mode of operating, and get pulled off your own morning. So watch out for when you’re having a really fast turnaround in an interview situation, because that’s an easy way to have your values fall to the wayside. And look out for when something feels so big and sexy and alluring, that it kind of it almost puts you in like a deer in the headlights mode of being frozen of Wow, this is available to me and too good to be true. And that too good to be true energy. Use usually goes into not doing your your fullest moral, most holistic, most thoughtful due diligence on values alignment for our role. Great point. Linda, before I let you go for today, I’m wondering, do you have any overarching principles or guidance for folks as they’re thinking about potential organizations to move to next on if there are any clear ways to tell from the outside without having to do all the digging into their salary, comm profile and Glassdoor and speaking to employees there to get a sense of the kind of companies that probably should be on your shortlist for alignment with your values? and ones that may not be?

Linda Evans  37:31  

Hmm. Okay, so I think looking at companies may not be the right target. Because each company usually has multiple departments, divisions that have their own little micro cultures. So it’s more critical, I think, to individual job satisfaction to look at the role itself. Like when you’re reading the job description, how much of it are you excited about? And how much are you? How much of it are you thinking? I guess I could do that if I have to. Because that is the bulk of your job is the day to day work, the tasks, the responsibilities. So looking carefully through the job description, at do I get to use my strengths regularly on this job? Do does this utilize experience and skills that I enjoy using? You know, is this going to be too much of a stretch for me? Or is this going to be too boring and unchallenging for me. So I think it’s most important to look at the tasks and the job description before looking at the overall company culture. Because if you love the culture, but you hate the job, you’re not going to last very long. And that was one of the mistakes I made, like right after college is I, I hopped on to this big flashy company, and they had like free food and you know, a gym and like all this, all these extra perks are not a part of the job. And I thought, great, I get free lunch every day, that was totally short sighted, right. And then I started the job and realize that the day to day is going to kill my soul, like I can’t stay here and do this. Because I didn’t really care about the job itself. And that was a huge learning lesson for me. So going forward. I mean, you do want to, like have some buy in to the company. Like hopefully you care about the mission. Hopefully you believe in the product. Hopefully, you think that the service is worthwhile, that you would actually use it yourself if you had that need, you know, like you don’t want to be you don’t want to feel like a hypocrite trying to sell a service or product that you don’t believe in. So that is important, but I think the day to day work is going to play the biggest part in your overall satisfaction.

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:50  

Awesome. I love that. Well, Linda, for anybody who has been listening to our conversation and who has been loving learning more about you and your perspective and your work. If they want to get in touch with you, where are the best places to do that?

Linda Evans  40:04  

So I’m in several places online. But I think the easiest is just to go to my website because it links to social media and other platforms. And you can read more about me and also like articles I’ve written and podcasts and webinars that I’ve spoken in. So that would be launched by lynda.com, launched by lynda.com. And that takes you to everywhere else that you might want to explore.

Lisa Lewis Miller  40:26  

Very nice. Linda, thank you so much for coming on the Career Clarity Show today and sharing your perspective on all things values. Thank you. It’s been a really insightful conversation for me as well.

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