Choose the five Career or Business Characteristics that are the most important to you on this list. (Your desired characteristics may change throughout your life, choose what is important to you now). Identifying the characteristics that are most important to you will help you choose a career or career path that is more likely to help you create the life you want to live at work and at home, which will in turn, help you be happier.  We may find the work involved in a career interesting, but it may not make us happy because it doesn’t allow us to live the life we want to live.

 

Work Environment

 

  • Pleasant:  A pleasant work environment, comfortable furniture, comfortable office, in a nice building.
  • Respectful:  A work environment in which you are treated with respect and dignity.
  • Beauty Oriented:  Working closely with beautiful things: nature, art, fashion, music, literature, architecture, and/or theater.
  • Informal: Dress is casual, approach to work is casual.
  • Not Office Bound: Work is performed in the field, while traveling, or at multiple sites.
  • Private: Work is performed in an office or a cubicle, not in an open collaborative space.
  • Informal: Work environment is informal, dress is informal, work start and stop times are informal, meetings formats are informal or non-existent.
  • Quiet: Work environment is quiet, devoid of noise.
  • Outside in Nature:  Work is performed outside, in a natural setting, for example in a forest, by the sea, in a park, on a golf course, in a garden.

 

Work Style

 

  • Independence: Doing things on your own; having the freedom to do as you believe is best, ability to take risks at work.
  • Expertise:  Ability to be the best in your field, provides an opportunity to compete with others, allows you to stand out, allows you to meet high level goals.
  • Leadership:  Ability to influence others, ability to inspire others to action.
  • Friendship:  Being liked by others, having companionship, working on team projects with persons you would choose to work with.
  • Nurturing:  Contributing to the welfare of others, helping people or society.
  • Predictable: Having a work routine and job duties that are largely predictable and do not change over time.
  • Variety: Work has a variety of tasks.
  • Learning: Ability to learn new things and/or expand your knowledge in a new area.
  • Creativity: Developing and/or implementing new ideas or projects or coming up with creative solutions.
  • Collaborative: Work is performed in teams of 2 or more. Work involves creating things or ideas with other people.
  • Structured: Job role is well defined and provides structure in the nature of guidelines, documentation, regular assignments, and/or frequent feedback on performance.
  • Sense of Task Completion: Tasks assigned have a beginning and an end, there is a strong sense of completion that occurs often or relatively often.

 

Lifestyle

 

  • Wealth:  Earning a great deal of money, salary /commission, bonuses.
  • Location:  Living close to work, working where there are interesting things to see or do.
  • Health:  The career promotes a healthy lifestyle.  Low stress, allows you to be active either on the job or outside the job, is in a healthy environment, and/or allows you to take care of yourself.
  • Flexibility: Flex time, ability to take off at different times during the day or week, and/or ability to work less than 40 hours a week.
  • Security:  Career provides health Insurance, other benefits, or creates income so that present or future income or welfare is not an issue.
  • Additional Education Not Required: Based on your current state of knowledge and education, no new education is required.

 

Work Characteristics

 

  • Meaningful Work: Work that provides personal meaning to you, allows you to make an impact, and/or matches your values.
  • Prestige:  Position or accomplishment provides prestige and/or respect from others.

 

 

 

Career/Business Characteristics – Exploration Questions

 

Which is the most important characteristic to you?

 

 

How can you build these characteristics into your present job?

 

 

What new job would have these characteristics?

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