Balancing Acts

As professional women in the DC metro area, we are all faced with the challenge of fulfilling multiple roles at work and at home. Balancing our own personal and professional needs along with the expectations of coworkers, significant others, friends, and family requires constant juggling and reassessment. Both my own experience and questions I’ve been asked form the basis of these musings. If you have suggestions for future columns, comments, critiques, please e-mail me at lisa@dcwebwomen.org.

My Webster’s dictionary defines value as: To consider or rate highly. Prize. Esteem.

Why do values matter?

Values are a basic statement of what’s important to you. Traits like honesty, integrity, ambition, courage, creativity, generosity, as well as the importance you place on education, fun, financial stability, family, etc. make up the core of your beliefs about yourself, what you want to be and how you want to be perceived by those around you. When you are asked to perform tasks or achieve goals that conflict with your basic values, you won’t perform your best and will put additional emotional and physical stress on your system.

From the company perspective, values matter as well. At a Netpreneur event several years ago, George Gingerelli of Delta Technologies said that the key to business success is finding people who share your values and giving them the resources to achieve your joint goals. But if your employees don’t share your values, your vision and your goals, they won’t be as committed to achieving them, because for them it will be a job, rather than a passion or an inner desire. Then you’ll be dependent upon external rewards (raises and promotions) and threats (loss of job) to motivate employees, which makes the manager’s job much harder.

Know your own values

If you aren’t sure what’s important to your or haven’t taken the time to articulate your values to yourself, now is the time. I have used and enjoyed “What Matters Most: The Power of Living Your Values” by Stephen Covey. I bought my Palm Pilot at the Franklin Covey store and it came with the What Matters Most software. If you don’t have the time or inclination to use a formal program, think about how you would want your friends, co-workers and family to remember you – what stories would they tell to illustrate what kind of person you were. A brilliant innovator? A loving wife and mother? What would you want your eulogy to be?

Equipped with your list of what’s important to you, you can know look for companies that have compatible values.

Sussing out the company’s values

The first stop for most of us is a company’s web site. Look at the careers page to see if they list the benefits – education benefits, telecommuting options, emergency childcare vouchers can tell you a lot about what companies believe is important. Read the description of work environment, what they promise clients and think about what kind of person the company would need to fulfill those promises. Many companies showcase their community involvement on their web site – would you be happy volunteering time foror otherwise supporting their adopted cause?

Washingtonian Magazine annually publishes a Best Places to Work in DC list, as does Working Mother magazine. Both highlight the benefits available and give insight into corporate values. If training and continuing your education is important to you, then look at Training magazine’s Top 100 Training Companies.

Ask people who share your values where they work – this includes social, civic and religious organizations. Chamber of commerce members prefer to do business with other members because they share a common bond. Even if the only advice you get is to steer clear of certain employers because they act contrary to your values, that’s valuable.

Only after you’ve done this research are you ready to apply for a position and prepare for the interview. Many companies are now using Behavioral Event Interviewing, which asks you to tell an anecdote illustrating a trait the company finds desirable. For example, you might be asked, “Tell me about a time when you went above and beyond expectations to satisfy a customer.” That is a clue that customer satisfaction is important to the company. “Tell me about a time when you had a dispute with a co-worker and how you resolved it,” is another popular question. It’s always a good idea to have a few examples from your career ready on key traits you think are important to the company.

And when it’s your turn to ask questions, ask specific questions about what the company considers important. I recently met with a potential client and was told, “It’s a typical start-up environment.” I asked, “Does that mean that employees can expect email from the president at 3a.m. and follow-up phone calls at 7 a.m.?” He laughed and nodded. Only some people will thrive in that environment and it’s important to know that’s the expectation.

Room for change?

Only you can decide what you can compromise on and what’s a deal breaker, but thinking about it in advance will help you chose environments where you can flourish and not feel compromised.

Keep in mind that in Washington, there are many mission-driven organizations who want and deserve employees who are excited about their goals. There’s room for everyone and the key is finding an organization who is doing work you believe in whether it’s the National Rifle Association or Americans for Gun Safety; National Cattleman’s Association or PETA; The Tobacco Institute or Truth.com. But saying, “It doesn’t matter,” is a lie and one that will make you crazy. If you believe that government should be more involved in solving society’s problems, then the limited government views of your co-workers at The Heritage Foundation will have you biting your tongue.

If you’re working for a mission-driven organization, then you will either have to conform to their values or leave (or better, chose not to work there in the first place). But in private industry, there can be changes in the corporate values – sometimes as a result of industry happenings (the accounting scandals), changes in leadership or internal activism.

When to go

Hopefully it will never happen to you, but there may come a time when your values will conflict with your employers to the extent that you have to leave. I recently interviewed someone who left a large, local company because he refused to sign off on their financial statement which he knew contained inaccuracies. You know that feeling you get when someone wants you to do something you think or know is wrong. Trust your instincts, but also reassess your own values and your company’s values frequently to make sure they are not diverging. If you see the signs, take steps to remove yourself from the situation before it becomes critical.

Living with your values and choices

Choices have consequences, and understanding why you made decisions can help you live with those consequences. For example, a former co-worker constantly complained about her commute. When I asked her why she lived so far from work, she said that the schools were better, there were more options for after-school activities for her children, and she and her husband could afford a better house for their family. Therefore her decision to commute that distance was based on her values that her family’s environment was important to her, but she never connected the two and became increasingly bitter.

I chose a small apartment in Arlington near a metro over more space further out because I enjoy the proximity to downtown activities and friends. Whenever I think, “Jeez, this place is small,” I can console myself with the knowledge that it’s a trade-off I think is worth it. And then I make sure that I’m taking advantage of those activities so it continues to be worth it

Next time: Inappropriate Behavior in the Workplace – When the Boss is Wrong

Lisa King is a technical recruiter for Randstad and a former president of DC Web Women. She writes for WashingtonJobs.com on technical careers and speaks frequently on technical careers for women and job hunting techniques. She can be reached at lisa@dcwebowmen.org.

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