If you had the chance to follow Christophe Deval's  workshop at the EVE seminar, you are already familiar with this challenge : building your professional project at the crossroads of your appetites, your know-how/interpersonal skills and your values. It is an essential key to giving meaning to one's activity, nourishing one's commitment and strengthening one's relational ecology.

Here are some tips for finding your alignment.

Prioritizing by values

When we think about work, we tend to reason first and foremost through our skills : what do I know how to do ? However, the first question to ask yourself is that of values : what matters to me ? What corresponds to my vision of the world ?

You must approach the professional project from this angle, in front of which you can then identify an objective (horizon of expectations) and then map your acquired skills, those that need to be strengthened or developed.

Training exercise:

To identify your values, make a daily appointment with yourself for at least 15 days : 2 minutes every day at the same time (set an alarm on your phone, if necessary) to answer, in writing, in a small notebook, the question : what is most important to me in this day ? After 15 days, reread your notes and compare the keywords you have entered into 3 or 4 " major families " (health, family, love, honesty, culture, etc.). The map of your values will take shape before your eyes.

Check the consistency between intents and actions

It often happens, after actions that leave us dissatisfied, to say to ourselves " this is not what I wanted ", " this is not like me"... This is the signal of a gap between the objective we have set ourselves, the intentions that should have resulted from it and the actions we have implemented to achieve them.

This discrepancy can result from a lack of clarity on the objectives (we no longer quite know why we are doing something) but also from unrealistic objectives (we have asked too much about the means – including time – at our disposal) or from a blurring in the transmission between the intentions to be satisfied and the actions to be carried out. It is therefore necessary to check, for each action that you are about to carry out, that it meets the objective assigned to it.

This does not mean that we should not carry out actions that do not correspond, but more often than not reassign them to the objective that corresponds to them. For example : if I participate in a meeting and my speeches fall short, I have to go back to the objective I had set myself by participating in this meeting...

What messages did I need to convey there? For what purpose ? It is by asking myself this question that I will be able to refocus my next speeches and gain alignment... As well as in efficiency !

Training exercise

Focus on a project you're currently involved in. For the various actions you take as part of this project (whether it's sending an email to someone, delegating tasks, speaking to a large audience, preparing a report, etc.), systematically check that these actions pursue the objective and that the way you act meets your intentions.

If you find that in the way you act, there are things you do that stray from the goal or don't serve it, put them aside... To reserve all your energy, your creativity, your intelligence of the situation for actions that serve the objective!

Practice feedback

To align your values with your expectations and develop a wide range of skills that can be used in various situations, diligently practice feedback. Ask around you to check the legibility of your intentions and the understanding by those around you of who you are, what you do, where you want to go. If there is a discrepancy between your goals (corresponding to your values) and what others perceive of them, don't hesitate to ask your feedbackers  for advice to find improvement solutions for understanding your goals and actions.

Training exercise

Integrate (and sanctuarise) feedback times in your agenda : on the one hand at regular intervals (for example for 30 minutes at a fixed time every weekend) and on the other hand after each major step of a project (the submission of a deliverable, the presentation of a project or its progress, an important decision, etc.).

As for weekly feedback, ask someone who is different from your professional entourage (internal and possibly external) and simply ask them what they understand about the actions you are taking and the objective pursued.

Based on their feedback, discuss possible adjustments so that the objective (underpinned by the values) and the actions are always better understood. For progress feedback, ask stakeholders about the meaning they give to the situation and take the opportunity to refine the intended goals.