Schein's career anchors

Career anchors can be described as a consistent value set which guide our career decision-making (Schein, 1996). They are values and motives that we don't give up for our work, acting as our 'stabilising' force, developing with us as we gain life and work experience (Inkson et al., 2015).

The career anchor theory was developed in the late 1970s with five anchors, but was expanded to eight by the time Schein revised the theory in 1985 (1996; the asterisked anchors are new additions; Inkson et al, 2015, p. 156). The anchors are:

1. Technical/Functional Competence. Think specialist. Someone who has learned a very technical skillset which has taken much mastery. Musician, engineer, crane driver.
2. Managerial Competence. Someone who has learned how to unlock the best in people. A team-builder, a communicator, a motivator with a sense of accountability. Coaches, managers, captains
3. Autonomy/ Independence. A person who needs to think for themselves, and not to follow the pack; who needs to have creative control. Think writer, artist, solo musician, sole trader.
4. Security/Stability. Think safety. Someone who carefully, slowly thinks through transitions. Loyal. Reliable. Likes their job and may want to go for something new - that is already known.
5. Entrepreneurial Creativity. Has an idea and wants to make it real. Has a strong sense to achievement, drive, and vision. May find delegation difficult.
6. Service/Dedication to a Cause*. Has a calling to something: community, charity, correction, or crusade. Strong personal values, but driven by a cause that is greater than themselves.
7. Pure Challenge*. People are so driven they overcome significant odds and barriers. Think Elon Musk. Parkour. Explorers.
8. Lifestyle*. Work is there to fuel what is done outside work.

Our anchors are effectively stable personality traits which influence our career decisions. Schein’s theory suggests that we may have one or more dominant career anchor which endure throughout our careers (Inkson et.al, 2015), but we may also have multiple career anchors which influence our career decision-making (Feldman and Bolino, 1996).

We need to fit our work, else we will not be happy in it, so having an understanding of our own career anchors is a key element of calculating our own fit. If we had service career anchor and felt conflicted about eating meat, taking a job for Fonterra or Silver Fern Farms would be less than an ideal fit for us. However, if we had a career anchor of pure challenge, we might want to focus on the job crafting elements of the job with Fonterra or Silver Fern Famrs which stretched and grew us. We can work on altering the job characteristics to better fit our needs (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001).

Sam

References

• Feldman, D. C., & Bolino, M. C. (1996). Careers within careers: Reconceptualizing the nature of career anchors and their consequences. Human Resource Management Review, 6(2), 89-112. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-4822(96)90014-5
• Inkson, K., Dries, N., & Arnold, J. (2015). Career Development (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
• Schein, E. H. (1996). Career anchors revisited: Implications for career development in the 21st century. Academy of Management Perspectives, 10(4), 80–88. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.1996.3145321
• Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011

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Volunteering: what do we get from it?

Volunteering in New Zealand is more culturally endemic than Australia; out of 4 million people we have 800,000 volunteers. Australia with 20 million has 200,000. That's 20% of Kiwis versus 5% of Aussies (this little stat got me wondering if Aotearoa has more volunteers than other nations - but I will leave that for a later post!).

Sport NZ commissioned a study in 2006 on what drove New Zealanders to volunteer in sporting organisations. They found four key generic values of "generosity; love of sport; social connection; and appreciation" (SNZ, 2006). The nature of volunteerism - not philanthropy - is fascinating, as are the motivations to do it.

The SNZ study also explored the life stage of volunteers, and found four main volunteer clusters: late teens, 'youth', family and 'seniors'. You are most likely to be a sports volunteer if you are a Pakeha man in their 40s with a child over 18 (2007). Half of sports volunteers are in visible roles, half are ‘behind the scenes’. A quarter of people volunteer for under two hours a week, a quarter for between two and four hours. A sixth of us volunteer for more than ten hours a week.

95% of volunteers recommend the value of volunteering to others. They get a lot out of volunteering: personal satisfaction, the sense of giving something back, leaving a future legacy, helping out their own kids and love of the sport (SNZ, 2007).

But we also fall off the perch often, with some pretty regular, recurring themes. These include outside or work pressure and a "feeling that it is time to move on", and getting on with people via personality clashes and club ‘politics’ (SNZ, 2007).

So why do we fall off? Harold Levinson & some Harvard buddies (1972) did some work on motivation, based on Schein's (1970) work, suggesting we have five main motivational assumptions which drive us. They are the rational economic, the social, the self-actualising (all dervied from Schein), the pyschological (Levinson et al) and the complex (Schein again) assumptions. Hmm... actually, that last one is really a combo of any of the others. So let's dial that back to four key assumptions.

1. Rational-economic: People are motivated primarily by economic needs. They are passive and can be manipulated, motivated and controlled by the organisation. People are irrational, and so organisations must be structured to control their feelings and unpredictable traits. 
2. Social: People are social animals and gain their sense of identity from relationships with others. Rationalisation has taken much of the meaning out of work itself, so meaning is sought in social relationships on the job. Management must be able to mobilise and rely on social relationships, and so issues of leadership style and group behaviour are important. 
3. Self-actualising: People are primarily self-motivated and self-controlled. They seek to be mature on the job and are capable of it. 
4. Psychological: People are complex, unfolding, maturing organisms who pass through physiological and psychological stages of development. Work is part of a person’s identity and ego ideal, and motivation depends on having opportunities to work towards that ego ideal.
5. Complex: People vary, with many motives whose relative importance changes from time to time and situation to situation.

The rational-economic usually doesn't apply to volunteering. But the social, self-actualising and psychological ones do (and in combination in the complex view). So when people change, when a new club captain is appointed, when we suddenly see a new way; it is easy to see how our motivational mojo can suddenly run dry.

The trick in managing a volunteer organisation is to go and have those chats with people that keep them engaged. The best volunteer people do that in spades.

He Tangata, he Tangata, he Tangata!

References:

• Levinson, Harold; Molinari, Janice & Spohn, Andrew G. (1972). Organizational Diagnosis. USA: Harvard University Press 
• Schein, Edgar (1970). Organizational psychology. USA: Prentice Hall 
• SNZ (2006). Finding and Keeping Volunteers. Retrieved May 16, 2009, from http://www.sparc.org.nz/filedownload?id=850d18af-002f-40b7-b989-5a99e5b40f82 
• SNZ (2007). Volunteers the Heart of Sport. Retrieved May 16, 2009, from http://www.sparc.org.nz/filedownload?id=e9cadf32-3740-4dcf-9b7a-ff5a6e3ef699

Sam

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Managing Meaning

Culture, or "how we do things around here" (Deal & Kennedy, 1982), is the art of managing meaning in our organisations, according to Jackson and Parry (2011). Jackson and Parry, along with Edgar Schein (1985), all think that managing meaning is one of the key things that leaders do.

If we, or the leaders around us, manage meaning well, then we all feel happy, fulfilled, and necessary in our work. We know we add value, and that our contribution assists the collective whole. Knowing we are a net contributor seems to be a relatively innate human need.

So why then do so many people NOT feel happy, fulfilled and necessary? How do we manage to miss the boat so much on creating, directing, sustaining and monitoring healthy cultures in our workplaces?

I recently was directed to an article in the New Zealand Listener via a Careers and LinkedIn colleague, Mike Dooley, on 'bullshit jobs'. The article suggested that we had moved from having rubbish roles in manufacturing to having rubbish admin jobs that were just as pointless, and that the people doing those roles found them - or should find them - soul-destroying. This article was a mash-up of a few others which I also followed through (listed below).

The really interesting thing for me is that, if the culture is right, we will know exactly how we add value. If the culture is poor, then we will not understand that connection. It is leadership's key role to guide us to this meaning, and if it doesn't happen, then I feel it is a leadership failure, not a failure of the job.

What do you think?

References:

• Burkeman, Oliver (7 September 2013). This column will change your life: how to tell whether you have a bullshit job. UK: The Guardian. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/07/column-change-life-bullshit-job
• Deal, Terrence E. & Kennedy, Allan A. (1982). Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. UK: Penguin Books
• Editor (17 August 2013). On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. UK: Strike Magazine. Retrieved 19 September 2013 http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
• Jackson, B. & Parry, K. (2011). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Leadership (2nd Edition). NZ: Sage Publishing Ltd.
• Manhire, Toby (18 September 2013). The triumph of bullshit jobs. NZ: The Listener. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/the-internaut/the-triumph-of-bullshit-jobs/#!
• R.A. (21 August 2013). On "bullshit jobs". UK: The Economist. Retrieved 19 September 2013 from http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-markets-0
• Schein, E.H. (1985). Organizational Culture & Leadership (3rd Edition). USA: Jossey-Bass

Sam

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