Wanna know more about my own career values?

In this episode I’m sharing my values with you and an explanation of what they mean to me. This weill help you get to know me a little better, but it will also give you some ideas about what to consider when crafting and defining your own career values and thinking about how they can impact your future.

Links I mentioned in this episode:

7. My Career Values – Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, there I’m Bec McFarland the host of the Pop Your Career Podcast. As a career coach, I’m most passionate about helping my clients to discover their own personal flavour of career fulfillment. In this podcast, we are going to be exploring ways that you too can feel more fulfilled by your work. So strap yourself in, get ready for the ride. The tips around here are fast and in abundance.

[00:00:29] Hello. Hello. It’s Bec McFarland here helping you do better and be better in your career. And today I’m here to talk to you a little bit about my own values. So in the last episode, I talked to you about why your career values are so important. And I gave you a couple of different ways that you can learn to identify and define your values. But today I actually [00:01:00] wanted to give you a little bit of a look behind the curtain and to talk to you a bit about the values that I’ve selected for myself. Now, with this in mind, these values, they are my career values, but because of the fact that I own my own business, they are quite specific.

[00:01:15] So I am going to go through each of the values and I want to explain to you what they mean and why they’re so important to me. But you will find that they do have a little bit of business slant to them, just given the fact that that is the situation of my career. But I hope it’s valuable to you and that it helps you to kind of understand how values work, how you can use them, how you can take advantage of them and, why they are just so important, in your career, whether you are in a more traditional career or you are owning your own.

[00:01:51] So without further ado, I think we’ll dive in. So I have five top values that I’m going to share with you today, and [00:02:00] they are in no particular order. And you will find even that there are a few sneaky ones that aren’t actually even on the list that I shared with you, in the previous episode. So if you didn’t get that, go back to the previous episode and you can go to PopYourCareer.com/values.

[00:02:21] There is a freebie there for you, which is a beautiful meditation to support you in selecting your values. And there’s also a little bit of a worksheet there too, that you can pick up that will be very, very helpful in undertaking this exercise. And as I said, you will notice that I have been a little naughty and I actually just selected a few that weren’t on the list, but Hey, it’s my values list, and I love to break the rules.

[00:02:47] So here they are. My top five values. The first one is surprise and delight. Now, again, I’ve broken the rule. I [00:03:00] have actually combined surprise and delight into the same value because for me, they go beautifully together. So what is surprise and delight? Surprise and delight is just the attitude that I have with all of my clients.

[00:03:13] I always want my clients to feel surprised and I always want them to feel delighted. It’s just that really happy, positive, like, I don’t even know how to describe it. You know, when someone gives you a gift and you’re not expecting it, just that feeling of like being loved and being cared for and just someone’s grateful for you.

[00:03:37] I just love that feeling. And of course, if I were to look at my love languages, gifting is my top love language. I’m all about the gifting. And so it’s no surprise that this actually comes across in the work that I do with all of my clients and in a lot of what I do in my business.

[00:03:53] So surprise and delight though isn’t just always about gifts. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be an expensive [00:04:00] thing. It doesn’t just mean that I’m going to be going around, giving everyone presents. I’m not Oprah. Okay. Sometimes I wish I was, but no one is getting a car. Let’s just put that out there.

[00:04:11] But for me, surprise and delight might mean that when I’m selling a program, maybe I will keep one of the inclusions a secret and I might drop it later on and tell people, oh, by the way, you get a bonus group coaching call or perhaps, you know, if I am, You know, working with a group, maybe I throw in an extra bonus resource or something along those lines.

[00:04:34] Often with my one to one clients, I actually gift them free access to a lot of my programs and things like that. And it’s definitely nothing that is planned upfront. I don’t have some kind of secret pack that says, you know, when X, Y, and Z signs up for this package, they get this program for free. It’s just not the way that I work.

[00:04:54] I just work really intuitively and I just know that I love [00:05:00] just that whole vibe of surprise and delight. I hope you get what I mean. It’s that feeling of like sending my team big bunches of flowers on their birthdays. Right? I mean, now they can’t, they’ve gotten to a stage where maybe I’m a little bit predictable in that area, but it’s just so lovely.

[00:05:20] It’s just so nice to know that somebody’s thinking of you. And I always want my clients to feel like that. I want all of my clients to feel like they’re a VIP because they are. So that kind of gives you an idea to surprise and delight and you can see it is quite business focused. Like it’s not necessarily the kind of value that maybe you would have if you were in a more traditional career, but thems the breaks. And this is just the way that things work. We’re all individuals, our values are all going to be different and they’re all going to mean different things to us.

[00:05:49] My second top value is in fact value. And this isn’t just because I love values. And I want to talk about them all the time. It is because of the fact that I want to provide [00:06:00] value. It’s really important to me, for my clients to see the value in what it is that I’m offering. I never want anyone to walk away from coaching with me, or to walk away from, doing a program with me or anything like that and feel like they didn’t get the value that they paid for, or to think like that was a waste of money or, geez, you know, that’s not what I expected or anything like that.

[00:06:29] You know, I’ve had that experience when I’ve worked with other coaches or other service providers. We’ve all had that experience when we’ve gone and purchased something retail, and then we’ve gotten at home and gone, ‘eh, you know, I don’t know if it was really worth the money’. I would never want anybody to think that or to say that about my business.

[00:06:48] Which is why the surprise and delight definitely plays into this, but I am always looking for ways to actually provide more value wherever I can. So one of my clients and [00:07:00] beautiful friends, Angie Rassi from Find Your Bling. If you’re not familiar with her, you should definitely check her out her beautiful game, Find Your Bling is absolutely amazing. She always says to me that she wants to provide at least three times the amount of value of what people pay for. So if they pay $300, then she wants to make sure that they get a $900 worth so that they will walk away feeling so happy about the investment that they’ve made. And I’m with Angie. I think this is a really great way to operate.

[00:07:33] So in my earlier career, When I was working as the human resources manager for the small business, I mentioned this a few episodes ago. What I didn’t mention is that the small business that I was the HR manager for, it was a Telstra licensee.

[00:07:49] Now you can probably imagine that we had a lot of customers that were not particularly happy. It was quite challenging and we actually had a little spot at the back [00:08:00] of the shop where there were quite a few dents in the back wall because apparently people liked to go in and throw their phones. It’s not cool. So not cool.

[00:08:11] But while I was working with Telstra and working as part of their licensee program, I had the opportunity to learn from then CEO, David Thodey. This is around the time that he rolled out the net promoter score at Telstra, and he taught us all about customer advocacy.

[00:08:27] I learned that I really want my customers to be advocates, which basically means that when they leave my business, I want them to go and tell their friends and their family and their next door neighbour, how much they enjoyed engaging with me and how much they enjoyed engaging with my businesses. So for me, that’s all about value. That’s making sure that I provide the value and it’s also making sure that they see the value that’s on offer.

[00:08:54] This episode is brought to you by the Career Clarity [00:09:00] Quest, my absolutely free, seven day program, which is designed to support you in getting so much clearer about your next steps. Find it at PopYourCareer.com/quest.

[00:09:12] My third value is all about contribution. Now, this is really important to me in a few different ways. So it’s important for me to contribute to society with what I have on offer. I believe that the skills and the experience that I am offering to people in their careers, and also people in businesses is really invaluable. I am helping people to feel more fulfilled in their careers, whether that be in a more traditional job or whether or not they might own their own business. I’m helping people to overcome their mindset, challenges, to feel more confident, to get more clear about what it is that they want to do next.

[00:09:56] There is a lot of different ways that I am able to [00:10:00] contribute through the work that I do. In saying this it’s also really important for me to contribute financially. And I like to do that both on a personal level and also from the business. Now for my husband and I, we are both really passionate about animal rights and, making sure that animal cruelty is just not a thing.

[00:10:19] So we follow a beautiful animal rescue called Life of Pikelet. They’re based in Victoria and they actually specialize in the care of neonatal puppies with birth anomalies. And these are often things like, cleft palates, cleft lips, and hydrocephalus. It’s something that we are really passionate about supporting.

[00:10:41] Unfortunately at this stage, we are not able to adopt any other animals, so we’re not able to help from that perspective, but we do like to donate money. We like to be able to support them and to be able to help them to continue the work that they do. And that is something that’s really important to me to continue doing as part [00:11:00] of my career is knowing that I’m contributing and that I’m actually giving towards the causes that I’m really passionate about the causes that are really important to me.

[00:11:09] Another way that I believe in contributing is through my team. Now, as my empire is growing, my team is also growing. And what I will tell you is I have got the most amazing people on my team. You just, you could never even comprehend it. I sometimes wake up and I wonder how the heck I’ve gotten so lucky because the people on my team are just phenomenal.

[00:11:40] They, oh my God, honestly. I don’t even know what I could tell you, but what I know about my team and what I know about women in the workforce in general is that often, they don’t have [00:12:00] superannuation. And this is something that I just think is terrible. It’s not right. It worries me that there are women out there, women who I care about as well as women who I don’t know, who are going to get to retirement age and they’re not going to have the superannuation to support themselves.

[00:12:22] And I believe that we need to, not only support these women to get superannuation to be able to support themselves, but also I believe that the more money that you put into the hands of good people, that the more good will happen in this world. I firmly believe that. And so I’m really keen to contribute back to my team.

[00:12:43] I am always looking for ways that I can help. Whether that is financially, or it might just be in the way of encouragement, helping them to get other opportunities, to make sure that they are expanding themselves, to make sure that they’re learning whatever I can [00:13:00] do, I will do. And I expect that my contribution to my team will only grow as the business grows. And that’s something that I’m really excited about. My team. I love you, right? If you guys are listening. I love you. So grateful for you.

[00:13:19] So the fourth value is success. For me, it’s not about like being a celebrity or even earning a certain amount of money. It’s kind of just like, excellence. I want to be the best version of myself.

[00:13:40] You know, when I say that I want to help others do better and be better. I know that I can only do that by doing better and being better myself. Which is why I’m so committed to success. I’m committed to my own personal success, my family success, the success of the business. And as you can tell, it kind of excites me. [00:14:00]

[00:14:01] So we are here in the business and, you know, in my own personal career and even in my family, working towards success in different ways. So I’m someone that likes to set goals and who likes to work towards those goals, and we do that by regularly monitoring those goals and noting our milestones. It is a, you know, something that I’ve been doing for a really long time.

[00:14:24] I love the fact that I can have these kinds of conversations with the people around me, particularly the people who are on my team, and also with my husband who himself is very, very ambitious. But that is why, um, success is on my list. In saying that it’s also a double meaning, because I’m also really, really committed to supporting my clients to achieve success.

[00:14:48] Whether they be again, business owners or people who are in more traditional careers. And again, success might mean different things to each and every one of them. But through the coaching relationship, we often identify [00:15:00] goals and start to work towards them, and that feeling when they reach their goals, I love it.

[00:15:07] It is just like the ultimate. It’s the ultimate celebration. It feels so good to me, even though it’s not mine. It’s their goal, they’ve done all the work, you know, it’s got nothing to do with me, but I just feel like, in a coaching relationship, my clients have done me the honor of allowing me to walk alongside them as they’re moving towards their goals. So when I’m there to witness them achieving the success that they’ve been craving, that’s why I do what I do.

[00:15:43] Now, finally, my fifth value, which we’ve talked about a number of times now it is fulfillment. So fulfillment, underpins every single thing we do in every one of my businesses. I’m [00:16:00] always asking the question, does this fulfill me? Do I feel fulfilled? Do my team feel fulfilled? Do my clients feel more fulfilled? What can we do? What can we do to make people feel more fulfilled or allow people to feel more fulfilled? What can we do to understand fulfillment and what the pieces to the puzzle are? And that’s the kind of work that I’m undertaking in Pop Your Career.

[00:16:23] So you might have heard me mention previously I do have a career fulfillment framework and it is absolutely something that I’m going to share with you here on the podcast. And it is something that is eventually going to be developed into a program so that I can support people with moving through the different stages of the framework and finding that personal flavor of fulfillment that we know that we’re all looking for.

[00:16:46] But it’s also the thing that all of my clients have in common. So, I know I shared this in a previous episode that I do sometimes help people negotiate pay rises, or get new jobs and, you know, negotiate [00:17:00] starting conditions. And I do absolutely help people to get new jobs and change their careers and change their circumstances, all of those things.

[00:17:10] But it’s never driven by the money. I have colleagues in the industry who they get so lit up by helping their clients earn more money. They get so lit up by helping their clients get promoted and things like that. And I commend them for that. I think the work that they do is absolutely amazing, but that just doesn’t really light me up.

[00:17:36] It just doesn’t really excite me. So when I do my original discovery call with potential clients, we talk about what it is that they’re trying to achieve. And if I get an inkling that it’s really driven by money and not by their desire to feel more fulfilled by their work, then usually I will refer them to somebody else.

[00:17:56] And I’m really honest about that. It’s really important for [00:18:00] me to continue my mission in working with people who do want to feel more fulfilled by their work. Now that doesn’t mean that they’re not getting paid their worth. It doesn’t mean that they are not being remunerated fairly for what they have to offer. But it just means that at the end of the day, their motivation is not driven by the dollar signs. It’s driven by something else. And I love the process of helping to figure out what that something else is, and then helping them to bring it into fruition.

[00:18:33] So there you have it. There are my top five values, surprise and delight, value, contribution, success, and fulfillment. I’d love to know. Have you been through the values exercise yet? Have you identified your own values? Have you begun to define them? Do you know what it looks like when you are living within alignment of [00:19:00] your values?

[00:19:01] Until the next episode, take it easy. And I look forward to seeing you again very, very soon. Bye-bye then.

[00:19:10] Thanks so much for listening to the Pop Your Career podcast. I hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s tips and that you found value in what I’ve shared with you. If you like your career advice quick and entertaining, I would love for you to subscribe. Also leave me a rating and a review. If you want to continue the conversation, come and join me over on social media. You can find me everywhere at Pop Your Career. I’ll see you soon.

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About the author 

Bec

Bec McFarland is an experienced HR practitioner, manager, career coach and the creator of Pop Your Career. She delights in sharing practical, straight to the point career advice, spending time with her family and eating Mexican food.