How thinking about your Personal Core Values can help you

I have been preparing for a strategic planning session for my work when I had to define what I thought our clinic’s core values, mission statement and vision statement should be.  As I was researching what these meant, I started to think about how defining my own for my work and blog would help guide me in the future.  

Businesses and Schools routinely define core values, mission statements and vision statements.  My focus during Better Hearing and Speech Month is talk a little bit about how defining our personal core values, creating our speech therapy mission statements and even a vision plan can help to define our professional goals and where we should be practicing.

Today I am going to talk about core values.  The first steps to determine your core values is to choose and define them.  But just because you want something to be your core value, doesn’t necessarily mean that it IS a core value for you.  You have to kind of try them on, see how they work in your daily environment and decide if you are really sticking to these values.

I WANT one of my core values to be diligence and dependabilty.  But in practice, I can barely respond to emails at work when they directly relate to my job.  I need to have a basic competency in this, but it is not going to be one of my core values.  

I started by reviewing some lists of Core Values, and really thinking about what I value professionally and personally.  I came up with this list of my values:

• CREATIVITY:  I’ve always valued creativity.  I have bins of scrapbooks from junior high until I had my son.  Turns out I preferred documenting kegger parties more than my own child’s development.  Although I’m sure I will eventually get some great Shutterfly books for him-probably around the time he graduates.  I make my own jewelry and enjoy taking community ed. courses when I can.  In treatment, I love thinking of new ways to use old toys or creative ways to address a treatment area.
• EMPATHY:  This is one that I need to probably test out a little bit more.  I often feel empathy for my families, and this drives me to provide home program suggestions that can be done within activities, it drives me to advocate for insurance reform and it helps me remember that most of my clients-even the challenging ones are just children who are trying to fit in the best way they can.  This value does not seem to apply when I realize that my husband has just washed and shrunk my three favorite work sweaters.  
• FUN LOVING:  I feel like it is my job to motivate my clients.  If they seem to “hate” therapy, I try to change my approach.  It doesn’t always work but most of the time, I am able to meet the my client on some type of common ground.  Usually this involves Star Wars…
• KNOWLEDGE:  I LOVE to learn new things.  People make fun of me work, because I’ve never met a CEU I didn’t like.  (Technically, not true.  There were 3 out of the 40-50 I have taken that I hated.)  But I really do enjoy reading about issues in our field, reading portions of treatment books, and taking courses.
• INDEPENDENCE:  If I don’t know an answer, my first step is usually to research it myself before asking others questions.  I enjoy the challenge of figuring things out and generally I want to be right.  Opinionated seems like it would be one of my negative core values.  
• PASSION:  Not necessarily the randy lady on the old romance novels kind of passion.  But I do get passionate about certain issues.  Insurance reform-and all clients having access to both school and private therapy is one of them.  Put a quarter in me and I can entertain/bore you all night.  I tend to talk first-before I think, so this has also gotten me into trouble a time or two.

Here’s what is pretty cool-once you know your values, you can use them to see how your job, relationships, activities match up to your values.  For instance, my core value of independence has served me well in jobs which had little to no support available for staff.  But in those jobs, my value of knowledge was not always being met.  If I had a core value of adventure and change, I might enjoy working for a traveling company.  If one of my core values was financial success and not just financial independence, I might choose a completely different career path.  If I had a core value of expertise, I might choose to specialize in 1-2 areas instead of being more of a generalist.  Have you thought about your values?  Do you think they help you in thinking about your career or family life?  I’d love to hear about it below!