The pandemic years has rumbled everyone’s sense of self. It has ushered in new ways of working, a new outlook of family’s health and safety, and creating new priorities and goals for ourselves. This massive change in our lifestyle can leave us feeling uncertain. People are one with their jobs or living a certain way however don’t know what they want.
Carter Cast, a clinical professor of entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School describes this disconnect between our stated values and our actual behaviors as an “integrity gap.” Individuals may take up a job that pays well without considering their passion and values. In the beginning, it is easy because the work maybe easy or the money is good. But with time, we find these gaps when we find ourselves making incremental values trade-offs that begin to erode our sense of personal integrity.
According to Cast, Avoiding an integrity gap can be achieved through reflection and consistent recalibration.
Regular Self-Audits
There needs to be a balance between your values and motives, Values are anything that you hold clearly and won’t compromise on, such as respect, spending time with your family, challenging work etc. Motives are things that give you energy and drive you to continue your career prospects. It could be money, shift timings, etc.
It is important to check in with yourselves on a regular basis, are your values and motives being met sufficiently? If you do not check in, you are likely to just complete your work forgetting how it is compromising on your values, and one day you may wake up feeling burnout and unsatisfied with your job.
“For a number of years, I was not very self-reflective,” Cast says. “I just put my head down and worked. But in my early forties, I realized that I had an empty personal life. I was lonely and realized that progressing in my career wasn’t enough. I needed to recalibrate and create the context for a richer, more balanced life.”
Eventually, Cast realized the importance of having a keen sense of what motivated and energized him. This knowledge helped him identify jobs congruent with those motivations.
Working a job that you love decreases the stress and matches with your values closing the integrity gap. Let’s look at how we can identify the job role and responsibilities that will help you bridge this gap. You can conduct an activity where you will label all the tasks that you do in the office as – energy creator, neutral or energy reducer. You can also color-code them as green, yellow and red. This will help you identify what are the aspects you love about the job and how you can focus your time doing more of that and what aspects you do not like and check if there is any way you can reduce the work or change your perspective to better suit your needs.
Its important to build a career that not only helps you grow into higher positions but provides a good energy atmosphere that energizes you and lets you keep in touch with your real self.
Set Boundaries
If your value is to spend family time but your job demand long working hours which are impacting your time with family, you can set boundaries with your office or make personal adjustments such as no phone or office work between this time or have a family dinner every night and a movie.
“Most integrity gaps emerge when we ignore—or never set—our non-negotiables,” Cast says. “It’s up to you to know where that line is. What are your non-negotiables? That’s something to think about before you dive into a new job.”
If you feel that your current job pays you well, however, doesn’t really challenge your intellect, You can ask for extra assignments or do something at the side, such as content writing, designing, or anything you love! You will be extremely grateful to the joy and peace this additional work brings you.
BRIDGE THE INTEGRITY GAP
How do we address this misalignment between what you are currently doing and what you want to do? It is difficult to switch or maybe even opt for a job that fulfills your desires. One way where you can upgrade to your desired goal is to acquire skills that suit your desired position.
You can analyze the skill-gap, where you list all the key skills needed for your dream job and you work towards acquiring them. You can acquire these through practice and training in your current job, as developing and perfecting a new skill takes time, patience and hard work.
Ask yourself, What do I Want, What do I need to do to get there and Go Get it!
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