What’s Your Career Alignment? Find Work That Matches Your Values

Does your career follow the rigid corporate ladder, or are you more fluid and chaotic in your journey? Are you determined to do the most good with your job, or are you more motivated by other things like money or status? Or maybe you fall squarely in the middle, not leaning toward any of these viewpoints, and that’s okay, too.

In Dungeons & Dragons (which I am not associated with), the fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG), players use alignment to guide their characters’ decisions. Alignment is “a categorization of the ethical and moral perspective[s]” that was more popular in previous versions of Dungeons & Dragons. Alignment risks oversimplifying a character, but it can be a helpful tool throughout the game.

But this isn’t a Dungeons & Dragons blog, it’s a career coaching blog. So, how does alignment appear in our professional choices?

Alignment is the most comfortable path for you morally and structurally. Your values, skills, goals, and pathways all factor into your alignment. For example, I value curiosity (leading to skills in education), I’m a skilled designer (leading to values in beauty), my goal is to retire early (leading to values in time and skills with money), and my pathway is a carefully curated path that I design daily. I am most comfortable when all these things work together in my professional life.

If you have a minute, see where you might fall on the career alignment table below. These are just examples based on my interpretation; please use your own experience and judgment with this tool. And to be clear, I’m not saying that good is preferable to evil or anything like that. I’m just using the classic terminology from Dungeons & Dragons. You can call your alignment whatever you’d like.

Lawful Good Values Honor, Justice, Respect Skills Teaching, Patience, Researching Goal Equality	Neutral Good Values Optimism, Friendship, Trust Skills Compassion, Positivity, Networking Goal Compatibility	Chaotic Good Values Flexibility, Fun, Creativity Skills Presenting, Flexibility, Problem Solving Goal Joy
Lawful Neutral Values Authority, Leadership, Competency Skills Debate, Time Management, Organization Goal Order	True Neutral Values Achievement, Security, Stability Skills Streamlining, Deductive Reasoning, Crisis Management Goal Peace	Chaotic Neutral Values Boldness, Experiences, Challenge Skills Brainstorming, Experimenting, Investigating Goal Adventure
Lawful Evil Values Influence, Determination, Reputation Skills Delegation, Training, Guidance Goal Control	Neutral Evil Values Success, Pride, Ambition Skills Supervising, Work Ethic, Negotiation Goal Victory	Chaotic Evil Values Pleasure, Power, Vision Skills Public Speaking, Adaptability, Inspiration Goal Excitement

Now that you're more familiar with alignment and its complexity and interconnectedness, let’s talk about how it feels when our career is out of alignment.

Let’s say your alignment is, for simplicity, lawful good. You might value kindness, you could be skilled in communication, your goal could be to make the world a better place, and you may have followed a set trajectory you created for yourself as a teenager. We love that. Great work. Let’s say your job takes a cheese grater to one part of your alignment, like your boss is extremely unkind towards you. Day in and day out, your boss grates away at one of your core values. A value that you use to guide yourself and the decisions you make. This creates a sense of imbalance, one that is very difficult to correct without dramatic action (such as having a confrontation or quitting). Being constantly out of alignment at work can cause stress, dissatisfaction, overwhelm, and burnout.

Nobody loves that.

So, how do you create a career that aligns with yourself?

The key is to know your alignment.

If you know yourself, your values, skills, goals, and the general path that has worked for you thus far, you will know if you’re in alignment (there are plenty of quizzes and coaches to help you discover these things if you need help). If you feel like there’s a cheese grater scraping at your morals every day, it might be time to think about a transition. Transitions can be scary, they can require sacrifice, and they can be incredibly rewarding if done correctly.

Storytime. I had a job that challenged me creatively, had a reasonable commute, and paid fairly well. On the other hand, the employees were incredibly cruel to one another and highly disorganized. Every day, I felt dread walking into work and sitting at my desk. I decided I wouldn’t let them continue to violate my values in community and organization, so I researched and landed on librarianship as my new career.

If you’re to the point where you are considering a career transition, this is when you look at your pathways. Do you want accredited next steps, or will you jump in head first? For me, librarianship requires a master’s degree, so I followed a predetermined path through academia. And when I decided to pursue coaching, I made sure to go through a school that was accredited by the International Coaching Federation. I chose a very “lawful” approach because it’s the one that made me the most comfortable. I could’ve picked up a job at the local library or started coaching without a certification, and that would’ve worked for some of you out there.

Remember when I said to use your experience and judgment with the alignment table? I want to emphasize your role in your own alignment. Where you go is your choice. If the “lawful” pathway isn’t working, sprinkle in a little “chaos.” If being “good” is causing you grief, ask what “evil” you would do (please don’t do anything to harm yourself or anyone else, don’t break the law, etc…). 

Your alignment doesn’t define you or your future. Alignments can change over time or with major events. Alignments are just a tool to help people play Dungeons & Dragons. With that said, I hope you can also see how this tool overlaps with the professional world, and maybe it'll help the next time you need to make a career decision.

If you’d like to discuss your alignment with a TTRPG-informed coach, please schedule a free call with me.

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