Career Anchors

A “career anchor” is a combination of perceived areas of competence, motives, and values relating to professional work choices. The Career Anchors instrument is designed to help clients identify their anchors and to think about how their values relate to their career choices.

There are eight career anchors:
? Technical/Functional Competence
? General Managerial Competence
? Autonomy/Independence
? Security/Stability
? Entrepreneurial Creativity
? Service/Dedication to a Cause
? Pure Challenge
? Lifestyle
We believe that every person is concerned to some degree with each of these issues. The label “career anchor” indicates an area of such paramount importance to a person that he or she would not give it up. The person comes to define his or her basic self–image in terms of that concern, and it becomes an overriding issue at every stage of their career. This new edition of includes new and updated information and


-Addresses the rapidly changing world of business and includes more information on globalization, heightened competition, new technologies, greater organizational instability and uncertainty and shifting societal values, all of which influence career trajectories and career anchors.

-Includes a more detailed description and elaboration of the eight anchors.

-Offers a Role Mapping Process which helps to consider the various external demands and pressures and suggests action steps if these external demands are marked by ambiguity, overload and/or conflict.

-Contains Work Career and Family/life that includes suggestions for how the work, family, and personal patterns identified can interact (for better or worse) with each of the eight career anchors.

-Presents a new “looking ahead” section of the companion Workbook that begins with a comprehensive look at how the world of work is changing and what these changes may mean for each of the career anchors.

-Includes developmental activities that participants can use as next steps in their career development.



The Facilitator?s Guide has been ramped up and crafted as a tool to accompany the Participant Workbook and self–assessment, with special emphasis on addressing facilitator and training needs for exploring these anchors.