One of the greatest misfortunes in life is to be good at something you don’t like. While selecting your career you must reflect, analyse, and you must be able to clearly distinguish between what you are good at doing (proficiency, competence) as opposed to what you enjoy doing (interests, values). If your want to enjoy your work take care to ensure that your choice of career is in alignment with your LIFE ORIENTATION. Your life orientation comprises three factors: SKILLS, INTERESTS and VALUES. If you choose a career that enables you achieve success facilitating optimal utilization of your best skills, doing the kinds of work that relate to your favorite interests and in consonance with your core values, you will derive total work-life balance and job satisfaction. If you choose a job in harmony with your true metier, you will enjoy working every single day in your life.

1. YOUR VALUES AND
YOUR CAREER
VIKRAM KARVE

2. Copyright © Vikram Karve
 No part of this Lecture Presentation may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including
photocopying or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the Author Vikram Karve who
holds the copyright.
 Copyright © Vikram Karve 2013 all rights
reserved

3. Bio – VIKRAM KARVE
 A creative person with a zest for life, Vikram
Karve, educated at IIT Delhi, IIT BHU
Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and
Bishops School Pune, is a retired Naval
Officer turned full time Writer and Blogger
 Email: vikramkarve@hotmail.com
 Twitter: @vikramkarve

4.  FEAR , INSECURITY
 NEEDS
 CONFORMANCE
 COMPLIANCE
 CONSENSUS
 CONSCIENCE & FREE WILL
MOTIVATORS

5. VALUES
 Values are core beliefs which guide and
motivate attitudes and behaviour
 When you value something you want it or
want it to happen
 Values are relatively permanent desires
 Values are answers to the “why”
question

6. DISCOVER YOUR VALUES
 You keep on asking “why” questions
until you reach a point where you no
longer want something for the sake of
something else.
 At this point you have arrived at your
value.

7. VALUES, INTERESTS,
PERSONALITY, AND SKILLS
 Values: the things that are important to you, like
achievement, status, and autonomy.
 Interests: what you enjoy doing, like reading, taking
long walks, eating good food, hanging out with
friends.
 Personality: a person's individual traits,
motivational drives, needs, and attitudes.
 Skills: the activities you are good at, such as
writing, computer programming, and teaching.

8. APTITUDE and ATTITUDE
 Your attitude is your way of thinking (based on
your values and beliefs) which influences your
behaviour and determines the manner in which
you approach life.
 Attitude determines your mind-set.
 Your attitude or mind-set is value-based
 your aptitude is your ability to do something
 aptitude is job specific
 Proper training can develop the right aptitude
 No amount of training can change your inherent
attitude

9. Discovering Values
 Why are you doing this academic course?
 To gain qualifications
 Why do you want to gain qualifications?
 To succeed in my career
 Why do you want to succeed in your career?
 To reach the top

10. Values – “Why” Questions
 Why do you want to reach the top?
 To get power
 Why do want do you want power?
 To control people
 Why do you want to control people?
 I want to control people
 Why?

11. Value Discovered
 Why do you want to control people?
 I like to control people
 Why?
 Just for the sake of it – I like controlling people
 Further why’s elicited similar responses related to
control.
 Control for the sake of control – that’s when you
discover your value!

12. Arriving at Values
 I realized that control was one of his values
and maybe he was a future megalomaniac in
the making!
 The same line of questioning of persons
undergoing higher education may reveal
values like knowledge, money, status,
standard of living, ambition, achievement,
growth, reputation, excellence, fame.

13. Values – Subjective Reactions
 Values are our subjective reactions to the world around us.
 They guide and mould our options and behaviour. Values are
developed early in life and are very resistant to change.
 Values develop out of our direct experiences with people who are
important to us, particularly our parents.
 Values evolve within us not out of what people tell us, but as a
result how people behave toward us and others.

14. Values are Holistic in nature
 There cannot be any “partial” values.
 for example:
you cannot be 50% honest (half-honest) –
either you are honest or you are not
honest!

15. Values & Career Orientation
 Your values are the most important and
critical aspect of your career orientation.
 If you want to enhance certain skills, you
can work on it. Similarly, you can change
your interests, devoting time to those
interests you would like to create, acquire or
strengthen, you can develop your
Personality, but you cannot change your
Values.

16. Values are Permanent
 Skills can be learned, interests can be
developed, personality can be changed,
but values are intrinsic.
 It is very difficult to change your core values.
 You may compromise your values, but
you cannot change them.

17. Orientation in Life
 If your want to enjoy harmony in work-life
balance, your choice of career should revolve
around your orientation in life, which
comprises four factors:
 skills
 interests
 personality
 values.

18. Job Satisfaction
 If you choose a career that enables you
achieve success facilitating optimal utilization
of your best skills, doing the kinds of work
that relate to your favourite interests,
blending with your personality, and in
consonance with your core values, you will
derive total job satisfaction in life.

19. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

20. Discover your true Interests
 How do you find out your interests?
 Assume you have enough leisure and plenty
of resources; what would you do?
 How you like to spend your leisure gives a
clue to your interests.
 Will the career you choose enable you to
satisfy your interests at work, or will you have
enough leisure to pursue them on your own.

21. List and Prioritize your Values
 This list might include values like honesty,
integrity, loyalty, prestige, happiness,
friendship, family life, achievement,
independence, education, power, money,
independence, freedom and so on.
 Now prioritize your values in order of
importance to discover your core values.

22. Matching Career Options
 Suppose your priority skills include hard skills
like mathematical and analytical ability, and
soft skills like leadership and communication
skills. Your interests include travel, adventure,
photography and good food. You have a
commanding personality. And your most
important values are family life, prestige
and achievement. Now let us consider
various career options.

23. Mismatch
 Consider a career as a deck officer in the
merchant navy. Your skills, personality and
interests seem to be ideally suited but there
is mismatch, a conflict, between the
demands of the career in the merchant navy
and your most cherished value ‘Family Life’
which in the long run could lead to frustration.

24. Matching Values and Career Attributes
 Perhaps, if your most important values were
money, independence and prestige, the
overall harmony and compatibility of your
values, skills and interests with the career-
attributes would have made merchant navy
an ideal career option for you.


25. Work Life Harmony
 Before you choose your career, introspect
and ascertain the compatibility, congruence
and harmony between the career and your
orientation in life [your skills, interests,
personality and values].
 Values are most important, because you
cannot change your values

26. Career Choice
 Devoid of intrinsic motivation to purse a
career which is not in harmony with one’s
orientation in life, but caught up in the need to
retain parental affection, materialistic rewards
and extrinsic recognition (peer and societal
acceptance), young people often enter
careers which never offer them true inner
happiness or fulfilment that evolves from
harmonious work-life balance.

27. Look Inwards
 Interests, skills and personality can be
developed, but values are intrinsic core
beliefs inherent within you.
 You have to look inwards, analyse,
introspect, reflect and endeavour to discover
your own true values.

28. Value Congruence
 Whether it is your work or relationships, value
congruence is of paramount importance
 your values must be in harmony for the
relationship to tick.
 Career, Marriage, Friendship, Team

29. Value Dissonance
 The extent of mutual harmony in your values
should determine your choice of work,
activities, relationships, friends and partner.
 Value Dissonance due to mismatch
between individual values and organizational
values can cause great strain and trauma at
the workplace.

30. Freedom
 Is freedom an important value for you?
 Is the career or job you are considering (or
the person you want to marry) going to give
you enough freedom?

31. Leisure
 Do you value leisure?
 Leisure is not only an important value but
also a determinant of character
 If you want to know about a man find out how
he spends his leisure
 If you had a day off what will you do?
 How you spend your leisure reveals vital
clues about your values too!

32. How would you spend your Leisure?
 Would you read a book, write a story, go
hiking outdoors, play your favourite sport,
adventure sports, chat with friends, picnic,
see a movie, eat your favourite cuisine in a
restaurant, or cook it yourself, socialize in
your club, spend the day at home with your
family, study, play with your pet dog, or see
TV at home, or just spend the day in glorious
solitude enjoying quality time with yourself?

33. Workaholic & “Achiever”
 Or would you rather not “waste” your leisure
time and spend the day doing something
“useful” connected with your work, career or
advancement towards “achieving” your
“goals”?

34. Match and Harmonize Values
 Do you value humour, fun, pleasure, food,
enjoyment, sex, family life, quality of life, status,
money, success, fame, power, prestige, security,
nature, loyalty, love, affection, independence,
privacy, togetherness, tranquillity, adventure,
leadership, followership, competition, contentment,
creativity – look within, reflect, find out for yourself,
and the values of others too who you want to relate
with – match and harmonize your values, and be
happy and fulfilled in your work and your
relationships.

35. Trust your Sense of Values
 Remember, at any important milestone in your
life, when you have to make a vital decision,
whether you are on the verge of selecting a career,
a job, a house, or a marriage partner – trust your
sense of values!
 Don’t make a hasty decision or you may find
yourself on the wrong road and then it may be too
late to turn back.

36. Choose your career carefully
 Devoid of intrinsic motivation to purse a career
which is not in harmony with one’s orientation in life,
but caught up in the need to retain parental
affection, materialistic rewards and extrinsic
recognition (peer and societal acceptance),
young people often enter careers which never offer
them true inner happiness or fulfilment that evolves
from harmonious work-life balance.
 Thus, though they may appear outwardly
successful, inwardly they lament over the reality of
inner dissonance owing to work-life imbalance.

37. Thank You
 “A man who has work that suits him, and
a wife whom he loves, has squared his
accounts with life”
…… Friedrich Hegel

38. Bio – VIKRAM KARVE
 A creative person with a zest for life, Vikram
Karve, educated at IIT Delhi, IIT BHU
Varanasi, The Lawrence School Lovedale and
Bishops School Pune, is a retired Naval
Officer turned full time Writer and Blogger
 Email: vikramkarve@hotmail.com
 Twitter: @vikramkarve

39. Copyright © Vikram Karve
 No part of this Lecture Presentation may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical including
photocopying or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the Author Vikram Karve who
holds the copyright.
 Copyright © Vikram Karve 2013 all rights
reserved