Dr. Seuss:

“I'm afraid that some times

You'll play lonely games too.

Games you can't win

'cause you'll play against you …”

Inverting Dr. Seuss' caution, you can win this game because one of you is going to win. And winning means getting a better sense of who you are. From the original research in the 1970s to now, this has been the common thread—understand your anchors to understand your career trajectory.

One very important point is that the anchors do not correspond precisely to particular occupations because in most occupations, such as business, medicine, or the trades, it is possible to be in that occupation with different anchors. For example, in any sample of doctors, lawyers, or even police officers you will find successful occupants with different anchors because in these occupations it is possible to pursue that line of work for different reasons. When you look at the descriptions and examples, think about your competencies, motives, and values in general terms, not necessarily in terms of what you are doing right now in your present work.

To familiarize yourself with the eight anchor categories, read the descriptive paragraphs and the example stories associated with each of them. For each anchor think of the description relative to yourself: Is it “Totally me,” “Sort of like me,” “Not so much me,” or “Definitely not me.” After the description, we provide two hypothetical examples, not real people, simply prototypical examples to illuminate the anchors.

TECHNICAL FUNCTIONAL (TF)

A “Totally me” on this category means that you want to get better and better in your area of competence and would prefer your work to remain in that area of competence. What you consider to be your particular skills and areas of knowledge are a product of your talents, education, and work experience. You are proud of them, and it gives you an identity as being the best in some area of specialization.

That work area can be anything from being an expert technical sales rep, an engineer, or a teacher. Or it can be in a craft such as electrical, mechanical, or construction. You are good at it and you value it, and if a promotion or new offer took you out of that area of work, you might resist the move, especially if it brought you into a role in which you could no longer practice your area of competence.

TF Examples

Ted Friedman got his BA in political science but had a great interest in teaching. He went on to get his teaching credentials and specialized in teaching social studies in high school. After a few years, he discovered he was very good at it, enjoyed it very much, and resisted any move to other fields or into administration if it removed him from high school teaching. He attended advanced training courses in how to become an even better teacher and took on some jobs coaching younger teachers.

Tania Field graduated with a BS degree in computer science and then went on to business school and emerged with an interest in computer engineering. She then took various jobs in large companies that permitted her to develop her interest and competence in this area. In two of these companies she was promoted to supervisory jobs but found out she did not like the management side of this work and left for a smaller start‐up where she could concentrate on developing her own specialized skill set.

AUTONOMY (AU)

A “Totally me” for this anchor reflects your strong need to do things on your own, free of the constraints and rules that characterize most organizations and work projects. What you really want to hold on to is a work situation or job context that gives you the feeling of freedom and independence you need. At the extreme you might wish to be self‐employed, but many traditional organizational jobs such as teaching, consulting, research and development, and even sales can also allow a great deal of freedom.

If you are in an organization, you will want to remain in jobs that allow you flexibility regarding what you work on and especially when, where, and how you do your job. You sometimes will turn down opportunities for promotion or advancement to a bigger project in order to retain your autonomy.

AU Examples

Alice Updike started her career after graduate school as an independent management consultant and was so successful that in a few years she had to hire several others to help her handle all of the business. As her company grew, she realized that she did not like managing the organization. What she liked was the consulting and the freedom that it provided. As a result, she sold her company and went back to being a freelance consultant.

Arthur Unger started his career in the human resources department of a large corporation and quickly discovered that he neither liked nor respected many of the rules and rituals of that organization. He tried developing a more autonomous research role, but found that life in a large organization was just too intrusive. He left the organization, went back to school, received an advanced degree in psychology, and began teaching and developing his own research projects at a midsized liberal arts college. He was successful, and over the years, he moved on to several larger universities able always to pursue his evolving but independent research interests.

CHALLENGE AND RISK (C&R)

A “Totally me” in this category means that work for you has to be perpetually challenging. You thrive on tackling the seemingly unsolvable problems, to winning out over tough opponents, or on overcoming difficult obstacles. For you, the most important reason for pursuing a job or career is that it continues to provide challenges, that it permits you to win out over the seemingly impossible or vanquishing the toughest competitors.

Some people find such pure challenge in intellectual kinds of work, such as the engineer who is only interested in impossibly difficult designs; some find the challenge in complex group situations to get people to work together; some find it in interpersonal competition, such as the professional athlete or the salesperson who defines every sale as either a win or a loss. Capital markets positions, such as investment banking, trading, venture capital, and private equity, may also provide the level of irresistible risk associated with this anchor. Novelty, variety, and difficult puzzles become ends in themselves, and if something is easy, it becomes immediately boring.

C&R Examples

Charlie Riordan joined the US Navy because he wanted adventure. He was able to join the aviation wing and became a pilot flying off aircraft carriers. He spent all of his discretionary time honing his flying skills so that if at some future time he had to confront an enemy in single aircraft‐to‐aircraft combat, he would prove to be the superior pilot. He kept himself fit and ready at all times, waiting for the opportunity to prove his own superiority. In sports and in games, he was extremely competitive and could never stand to lose. When his flying days were over, he reluctantly took a desk job but continued to be a fierce competitor in all of his non‐job‐related activities and loved solving difficult puzzles.

Christina Richmond graduated from business school with a major in finance and took a job on Wall Street as a bond trader. She enjoyed the intrinsic intellectual and interpersonal challenge that this job provided. When offered an opportunity to be promoted into managing a group, she refused because she wanted the stimulus of one‐to‐one competition with others and the challenge of solving problems under conditions of uncertainty and incomplete information. She found sales relationships intrinsically exciting and defined every situation as a “combat” in which either she or “the other” would win. She was able to remain in this kind of competitive environment throughout her career.

ENTREPRENEURIAL CREATIVITY (EC)

A “Totally me” in this category reflects your need to create an organization or enterprise of your own, built on your own creative abilities and your own willingness to take risks and to overcome obstacles. You want to prove to the world that you can create an enterprise that is the result of your own effort. You want your enterprise to be financially successful as proof of your abilities. You measure yourself by the size of the enterprise and its success.

You may be working for others in an organization while you are learning and assessing future opportunities, but you will go out on your own as soon as you feel you can manage it. This need is so strong that you will tolerate many failures throughout your career in the search for that ultimate success. You may also find that once an enterprise is successful you may want to move on to try to build yet another enterprise.

EC Examples

Ellen Cohn started out as a part‐time real estate agent in her local area while raising her children. During this time, she also started several “spouses financial clubs,” focusing on successful investing and also built up a small retail jewelry business. After her children were older, she established her own successful real estate office. Over the next several years, she built a chain of real estate offices in her region and ended up running a sizable real estate empire.

Ed Corbin started his engineering career in Boston, but he was always on the lookout for opportunities to start something of his own. He developed some skills in the area of finance and discovered that certain financial procedures that were very successful in one industry were totally lacking in another industry. He moved to Denver, where he saw the opportunity to create a consulting company that would sell this new financial tool and built up a multi‐million‐dollar business. He also wanted to open some retail fish stores that sold ocean fish in this “mountain area,” but this business failed for lack of a market. In time, he sold the financial business and invested in some mining interests and eventually retired from being a business entrepreneur to become a dean in a new business school in the area that he viewed as another type of entrepreneurial venture. He called himself a “serial entrepreneur.”

GENERAL MANAGEMENT (GM)

A “Totally me” in this category means that you have a desire to manage broadly and pull together the various elements of an organization or project. What you desire is the opportunity to climb to a level high enough in an organization to enable you to direct the efforts of others across functions and to be responsible for the output of a particular unit of the organization. You want to be responsible and accountable for total results, and you identify your own work with the success of the organization for which you work.

If you are presently in a technical or functional area, you view that as a necessary learning experience and may even accept a high‐level management job in that function. However, your ambition is to get to a generalist job as soon as possible. You want to be able to attribute the success of your organization or project to your own managerial capabilities based on analytical skills, interpersonal and group skills, and the emotional capacity to deal with high levels of responsibility and the difficult decisions that inevitably come with those levels.

GM Examples

George Madison graduated from business school and entered a program in the communications industry for “high potential” managers. This program involved annual rotations through the various business functions. Eventually, George was given a chance to supervise a group and discovered that he liked working in that role and was good at it. He realized at that point that he wanted to climb the managerial ladder and became quite impatient with the slow rotational program. After looking for possible career opportunities elsewhere, he took a managerial job in a smaller but rapidly growing firm, quickly moved up the promotional ladder, and was shortly running a company sooner than would have been possible at the communications company. He successfully ran and grew this company for twenty years before retiring from that job.

Grace Morgan started in a large computer company as a computer programmer. After five years in various programming jobs, she took over a technical group, displayed some talent in managing the group, and discovered that she really liked the managerial side of her job. Over the next several years, she took over larger and larger groups, learning during that time a lot about operations, finance, and marketing. When a company in a similar line of business needed a new CEO, she was recruited by a headhunter for this job, took it, and has successfully run this company for the last ten years of her active general management career.

SERVICE, DEDICATION TO A CAUSE (SV)

A “Totally me” in this category means that you want your occupation and your daily work to mean something of significance to you, that you want to pursue work that achieves something of value, such as making the world a better place to live, solving the environmental problems of how to adapt to global warming, improving harmony and cooperation among people, helping others, improving workplace safety, curing diseases through new products, and so on.

You would pursue such opportunities to perform socially meaningful work even if it meant changing organizations, moving to a new location, or receiving lower pay. But you would not accept transfers or promotions that would take you out of work that fulfills values that to you are significant and worthwhile.

SV Examples

After college, Stella Vargas took a position in the human resources department of a large corporation that had the reputation of caring for its people. What she wanted was an influential position in the organization where she could influence corporate human relations policies. She knew, however, that the career system in the company would move her through other functions first and strongly resisted efforts to move her into those other functions. Over time, she convinced her bosses to implement some new HR policies based on her humanistic values. As her influence grew, other organizations noticed her work, which led eventually to her being recruited to become head of organization development for a Fortune 100 company.

Stanley Vance majored in biology and forestry during his college and graduate school years. He became a research professor at a state university and was able to work on his concerns for how corporate policies were endangering the environment. A major aluminum company recruited Stanley and asked him to develop and implement mining policies that were environmentally responsible. Stanley spent ten productive years implementing his ideas in the firm, but when a new corporate administration wanted to reward him by promoting him to a general management position that was not in the environmental area he decided to return to teaching and environmental research.

STABILITY AND SECURITY (S&S)

A “Totally me” in this category means that you really value and need stability and security. In your decisions to accept a job or a kind of work you seek employment security or tenure in that job or organization. This need can show up in concern for employment stability, financial security such as medical benefits, pension and retirement plans, or geographic stability in the sense of being in an area where you feel you can always find a secure job.

Such stability may involve trading your loyalty and willingness to do whatever the employer wants from you for some promise of job tenure. You are less concerned with the content of your work and the rank you achieve in the organization, although you may achieve a high level in line with your talents. Everyone has these needs to some degree and they can become paramount at certain life stages, but if you strongly identified with this category, it means that this is always a concern for you.

S&S Examples

Stan Seward grew up in a small town in which his father had a small business. After college, Stan worked in two or three companies that moved him around the country in various functions. He felt he learned a lot from his willingness to take on the variety of tasks assigned to him, never turning an assignment down. But when he was ready to settle down and raise a family, he returned to his hometown and decided happily to enter the family business because it would provide a secure career and geographic stability.

Sally Smithson grew up in a family that could barely afford to send her to college. But they managed to do so, and she chose engineering as her major because it would guarantee that after four years she would be able to go directly into a job without graduate training. After graduation, she went to work for a large electronics firm and developed a set of skills that she knew were on demand and would be required indefinitely. She was content with the working conditions, good benefits, and generous retirement plan offered by the organization, often accepting assignments that were not particularly challenging but that she was glad to do because it made her feel needed and hence more secure in that organization.

LIFE‐WORK INTEGRATION (LW)

A “Totally me” reaction here reflects your desire to balance the demands of work, family, and taking care of yourself. You may have a relationship with a significant other who also has a career so that the two patterns of work have to accommodate to each other. You want to make all of the major elements of your life combine together toward an integrated whole, and you therefore need to develop a work situation that provides enough flexibility to achieve such integration.

You may have to sacrifice some aspects of your career—for example, a geographical move that would be a promotion but would require your significant other to give up his or her career aspirations or would require your children to leave a good school or would require you to relinquish commitments you have to your community. You feel that your identity is more tied up with how you live your total life, where you settle, how you deal with your family situation, and how you develop yourself rather than with any particular job or organization.

LW Examples

Lisa Walden, in mid‐career on a general manager track, had to choose between taking a very large promotion to the headquarters of a company located in a rural area of the Midwest and a much less prestigious job in a corporation located in a large urban area on the eastern seaboard. Her husband was in a highly specialized technical field, and his chances of finding a job in the urban area were much better than in the rural region. Lisa chose the less prestigious job in order to maximize both of their chances to have satisfactory careers.

Lou Woods was a middle manager working in a European subsidiary of a large oil company with its headquarters in New York. He was on a general management track in the US organization, but he had a German wife, who was attached closely to her German family and culture. When their son was eight years old, Lou was offered a major promotion in the US company that would require leaving Germany and moving to and remaining in New York for at least the next five years. Lou turned down the promotion and opted instead for a lesser job in the subsidiary because he and his wife decided that they wanted to bring up their son in Germany where they felt most comfortable.

Career Anchors, Modernized

The eight anchor categories that you have just reviewed cover most of the types of career that we found in the research on men and women in recent decades. There is every reason to believe, however, that the pandemic and the recent changes we have described earlier in the book may produce other kinds of work self‐images that are either derivatives of the eight categories or brand‐new variants.

What this means is that you may not have found a single category that is truly YOU. Instead, you may have found that you are a complex combination of many features, or that you have experienced change in yourself or your circumstances over the last few years such that you are feeling less and less “anchored” and that you are now, more than ever, “at sea” searching for a “steady course” or a “safe harbor.”

The earlier research clearly showed that many of the anchors remain stable when we followed people further into their careers; but here, as well, we are seeing changes in how people are viewing themselves as a result of the new social and technological environments we are facing. In today's world, several anchors can serve as your internal guides, and they may function together across many different kinds of occupations or jobs or even in your leisure and hobby activities.

Some examples of contemporary careers—akin to our brief illustrations of the eight career anchors above—are described below. These three cases, unlike the previous idealized examples, reflect a mix of anchor leanings that shift with changing circumstances and life stages. As with all of our case examples in this book, these are stories of composite individuals, with entirely fictional names and representative though not actual details.

Moving On …

In the chapters to follow, we do not ask you our original anchor question of “What would you not give up, if you had to make a choice?” Instead, the next two chapters will provide you with more opportunities to figure yourself out in terms of your anchor preferences across all eight anchors. Do not assume that you can easily define a singular anchor as dominant. It is important, therefore, to remind yourself that the goal of this entire exercise is for you to figure out what motivates you, what your values are, and what you are really good at. You may find that none of the anchors fit you very well and that you will have to find your own words to characterize who you really are at this stage in your life.

To anticipate the next step, the best way to do this deeper dive into who you are is to first review your own work history—what jobs you took, when you took them, why you took them, and what you learned from each job move. You can do this by yourself, or you can do this with a partner and have that person discuss this with you based around the “interview” questions we provide you in the next chapter.