Our Values
Core Values that drive Careers Collective
To bring about change
Encourage and be self-determining
Grow and be a part of a wide community
We, and we will encourage our team also to be:
Innovative in our work, thinking and presentation
To have integrity in all areas of our work and relationships
To retain a sense of humour and encourage others to have one too, work should be a pleasurable environment
Values: a set of beliefs
ADJ. dominant the dominant values of a society | conservative, conventional, traditional | common, shared, universal What shared values do you have with your friends? | human | aesthetic, cultural, educational, ethical, moral, political, social, spiritual We need to be guided by our moral values. | family The party's election campaign emphasized its belief in family values. | middle-class, Victorian, Western | parental the rejection of parental values by a child | democratic, liberal
QUANT. set a prevailing set of cultural values
VERB + VALUE have, hold They hold very upright values. | cherish, encourage, foster Is it the role of schools to foster spiritual values? | hold onto, preserve a society that has failed to preserve its traditional values
VALUE + NOUN system a common value system
(Values in this context are verbs, they are active not descriptive)”
The online Oxford Collocation Dictionary
To elicit our company values, we put ourselves through the same exercise we would use in our workshops. We already know it is not an easy exercise to complete, and completing it as a team was, to say the least, interesting.
Completing this exercise, we considered: who we are as individuals, what we want Careers Collective to represent, the behaviours and culture we would like our employees and collaborators to emulate and the immediate information we would like clients and partners, in any aspect of our work, to know about us.
From the image (of our scribbled post-it notes) below, you can see where we started and where we ended:
The suggestion list of some of the words we felt we wanted to exemplify and or embed into our culture
our individual shorter long lists
a joint shortlist
results of our considered, reflective discussion (for example, respect and compassion became part of integrity)
our values
Careers Collective’s Values
We ended up with three core values, which we present as our mission values. These are the values that are totally central to all that we do and the driving force behind us and our behaviour.
The reason we chose these? Because these were the three words that were on both of our shorter long lists!
We then amalgamated the remaining 7 words on our two separate lists, debated, discussed and filtered them down until we ended up with three more words that covered all our needs and expectations.
Why not try the exercise for yourself?
It is a good process for anyone writing CVs, personal statements, starting a new job or building a business.