Edgar H. Schein is one of the true giants in the field of understanding organizations and the role of people within them. His credentials are too numerous to outline here. Suffice it to say that his education came from the University of Chicago, Stanford and Harvard. He has been affiliated with the Sloan School of Business at MIT for some time.
In 1990 he published a booklet entitled "Career Anchors: Discovering Your Real Values". Intended to be a workbook, he first presented his career orientations inventory of 40 question which allows the individual to respond from "never true for me" to "always true for me" using a scale from 1 to 6.
Schein went on to define eight themes that he believes represents the forces that cause each of us to pursue our careers. The reader has the opportunity to obtain a ranking of the career anchors based upon the responses to his or her 40 questions. Schein postulates that most people find their careers anchored in one or two of these eight themes. But Schein goes on in his booklet to encourage the reader to complete an inventory that allows for the exploration of important decisions throughout one's life, in school, career and personal life. He says that most people see how they have been nurturing their personal career anchors throughout their lives. Those who allow themselves to turn their back on their anchors are more likely to find work to be dissatisfying and will end up being less proficient in what they do.
In the year 2000 the British management consultant and psychologist Ros Taylor was invited by the BBC to produce a series of self-help TV programs which ended up with the title "Confidence in Just Seven Days: Practical Strategies to Transform Your Life". The series was so successful that Taylor was invited to put the key features of it into a small book. In doing so she used a number of exercises designed to help the reader to better understand him or herself. One of those is called Career Driver. Bearing some obvious similarities to Schein's career anchor, the career drivers concept identifies nine areas rather than eight and she suggests that most people are driven by two or three of the drivers as opposed to one or two of Schein's anchors.
I find both of these tools to be very enlightening use them both in seminars and one-to-one coaching situations. Here is a comparison of Schein and Taylor's respective themes. I have not attempted to align them with each other since that would only be partially possible.
Each of these themes has subtle aspects which can only be fully understood by reading the authors’ descriptions. Fortunately, you can do that rather easily. Schein’s single booklet has now evolved into a series of booklets all bearing the key word “career” in some aspect or another. Taylor’s book has been reprinted and the title has been reversed so that it now reads “Seven Days to Confidence”. You will also find several websites that will offer for a small fee to let you complete Schein’s or Taylor’s surveys online, automatically do the calculations and deliver to you a PDF file with the results and some suggestions and observations about them.
In any case, I believe that regardless of what stage you are in your career and professional development, there are great benefits to knowing what gives you job satisfaction intrinsically in your work. And for anyone reading this who is a leader of others, keep in mind that if you have some idea of what drives (or anchors) those you lead, you will be better prepared to place them in the roles that will give them high job satisfaction. We work a large portion of our waking lives and if we do what we love, we will never have to work again.
Herb