Some people know exactly what they want with their career – how they would like to close the quarter, and where they would like to be in five years. For the vast majority of people, however, their idea of what they want out of their career is a vague idea at best.
University programmes follow standard curriculum for all and organisations manage their employees’ careers according to what is best for the organisation. This is why one must become self-reliant when it comes to career management and do it on their terms. Understanding career anchors may help us understand what we are best suited for and where we should be heading.
Career anchors represent one’s unique combination of perceived career competence, motives and values. According to Edgar Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a career anchor is “that one element in a person’s self concept that he or she will not give up, even in the face of difficult choices.”
Personality, motivation and values affect career choices and preferences, through the metaphor of an anchor pulling people towards particular roles that they are ideally suited for. Career anchors become apparent to us gradually; the early years of anyone’s career is a time for learning – about the job and about the self.
More often than not, it is during the first few years of our careers that we come to challenge our idea of ourselves. This happens when we find out that what we thought we were good at and the nature of the work that we thought we would do all throughout university is inconsistent with the actual day-to-day work experience. This forces us to confront ourselves about what we are good at, and what we really want to do.
As one’s job experience accumulates, strengths and weaknesses and preferences become clearer. Having made difficult choices and decisions, we are better equipped to know what we really want with our life.
In “Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values,” Edgar Schein, a former professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, identifies eight different anchor types. One or more of these types may match your interests and preferences, as identified through your work experience so far. Your type will become clearer the further along your career you go. People don’t fall neatly into any one category and therefore you are most likely a combination of two or three.
Technical/Functional
Those with an anchor placed strongly in some technical or functional area never give up the opportunity to apply their skills in that area and to continue to develop those skills to an every higher level. They derive their sense of identity from the exercise of their skills and are most happy when their work challenges them in those areas. They may be willing to manage others in their technical or functional area, but are not interested in management for its own sake and would avoid general management because that would mean having to leave their area of expertise.
General managerial
People with a key career anchor in general managerial strive to climb to a level high enough in an organisation to enable them to integrate the efforts of others across functions and to be responsible for the output of a particular unit of the organisation. They want to be responsible and accountable for total results; they identify their own work with the success of the organisation for which they work. If you are presently in a technical or functional area but your anchor is general managerial, you view that as a necessary learning experience; however, your ambition is far wider. Just being at a high managerial level in a function does not interest you.
Autonomy/Independence
People with the autonomy/independence anchor like to define their own work in their own way. If you are in an organisation, you want to remain in jobs that allow you flexibility regarding when and how to work. If you cannot stand organisational rules and restrictions, you seek occupations in which you will have the freedom you seek, such as teaching or consulting.
These people routinely turn down opportunities for advancement in order to retain autonomy. They may even seek to have a business of their own in order to achieve a sense of autonomy; however, this motive is markedly different from the entrepreneurial creativity described later.
Security/Stability
Those with an anchor of security/stability seek employment security or tenure in a job or organisation. Their main concern is to achieve a sense of having succeeded so that they can settle down. The value is illustrated by a concern for financial security (such as pension and retirement plans) or employment security. Such stability may involve trading loyalty and willingness to do whatever the employer wants from you for some promise of job tenure.
If this is your anchor, you are less concerned with the content of your work and the rank you achieve in the organisation, although you may achieve a high level through dedication and consistency alone. As with autonomy, everyone has certain needs for security and stability, especially at times of financial stress or when one is facing retirement. People biased in this way are so concerned with these issues that they build their entire self-images around the management of security and stability.
Entrepreneurial creativity
People who have entrepreneurial creativity strive to create an organisation or enterprise of their own, built on their own abilities and their willingness to take risks and to overcome obstacles. They want to prove to the world that they can create an enterprise that is the result of their own effort. They may be working for others in an organisation while learning and assessing future opportunities, and go out on their own as soon as they feel they are ready. Commonly they want their enterprise to be financially successful as proof of their abilities more than for profit.
Service
If your key anchor is service and dedication to a cause, you would not give up the opportunity to pursue work that achieves something of value, such as making the world a better place to live in, solving environmental problems, improving harmony among people, helping others, improving people’s safety, curing diseases through new products and so on.
People under this anchor pursue such opportunities even if it means changing organisations, and they do not accept transfers or promotions that would take them out of work that fulfils those values.
Pure challenge
People with an anchor of pure challenge love the opportunity to work on solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems, to succeed over tough opponents, or to overcome difficult obstacles. For them, the only meaningful reason for pursuing a job or career is that it permits them to succeed in the face of the impossible. Some people find such pure challenge in intellectual kinds of work such as engineering, while others find the challenge in complex, multi-faceted situations, such as strategy consultancy; most think of it as an interpersonal competition. Novelty, variety and difficulty are what these people look for, and easy is another word for boring.
Lifestyle
People under the lifestyle anchor seek a situation that permits them to balance and integrate their personal needs, their family needs, and the requirements of their career. They want to make all the major aspects of their life work together toward an integrated whole and therefore need a career that provides enough flexibility to achieve such integration. If this is your anchor, you may have to sacrifice some aspects of the career. However, you define success in terms broader than just career success. You feel that your identity is more tied up with your life, where you live and how your family situation is than with any particular job or organisation.
Understanding the eight career anchors identified by Schein may help you assess how well suited you are for your current job and what your organisation’s plans for you are, as opposed to your plans for yourself. You are either in what is the ideal role for yourself, or you need to make a change to succeed along your desired career path.
