Career anchors

Edgar Schein suggests that every one of us has a particular orientation towards work and that we all approach our work with specific priorities and values. He calls this concept our ‘Career Anchors’. Of the seven Career Anchors, I feel two are relevant to me:

Managerial competence – individuals who thrive off performing in a position of responsibility, tackling high-level problems, building relationships, and interacting with others; they require strong emotional intelligence skills to succeed.

Pure challenge - individuals driven by a need to be continuously stimulated by new challenges and tasks that test their problem solving abilities. They will often seek to move jobs when their current position becomes stagnant or no longer possesses the challenges they need to progress.

When I did this exercise in 2015, I selected ‘Pure Challenge’ and ‘Technical/functional competence’. With Technical/functional competence, I enjoy being good at specific tasks and will work hard to develop the particular skills necessary to complete them.

Though a challenge is still essential for me, the shift in prioritising ‘Managerial competence’ over ‘Technical/functional competence’ indicates that I now see myself as a fixer more than a doer. The guy who can help blend the team and set them up for success.