09 Jun Aligning Goals with Core Values
Jayne Heggen, Founder of Heggen Business and Management Consulting Group, shares powerful insights on aligning goals with core values and life purpose. Jayne’s expertise in helping companies, leaders, and teams transition through complex change provides a fresh perspective on how to set goals that don’t derail your personal life, family commitments, and overall wellbeing.
Understanding Why Aligning Goals with Values Matters
Many professionals rush into goal setting without considering how their ambitions impact their personal lives. Jayne emphasizes that this approach often leads to roadblocks, stress, and burnout. Here’s what you need to know:
- Career goals are set by your organization and focus on learning skills and tasks aligned with company needs
- Personal goals represent your commitments to family, health, community, and learning
- Career and personal goals must work in balance, not against each other
Jayne points out that when you pursue career goals without checking them against your personal values, you create internal conflict. A demanding project might require Saturday Zooms and 10 hours of weekly study time, but what if family time and your new health routine are priorities? This is where the real tension emerges.
The key insight: Use your personal goals as a lens to view your career goals. When you do this, you discover a better meeting place; a place of balance where your career goals align with company values while your personal goals align with your core values.
How to Get Clarity on Your Core Values and Life Purpose
Getting started with values-based goal setting requires intentional reflection. Jayne breaks down the foundational framework:
The Three Pillars of Goal-Aligned Living
- Achievement: This is your goal – what you want to accomplish
- Personal Lens: This is why you want to achieve it – your deeper motivations
- Values: These are your foundational pillars that guide purposeful, conscious choices
Jayne explains that while business values like trust, honesty, and integrity are wonderful starting points, they need personalization. For example, honesty might mean sincere, authentic communication in your work environment. Friendship as a core value might mean being in spaces where you can be yourself, express feelings without judgment, and contribute openly.
To clarify your values, Jayne recommends:
- Moving beyond generic business values to personalized definitions
- Asking yourself what each value means to you specifically
- Identifying four or five core values that serve as your decision-making screens
- Understanding how each value shows up in your work and personal life
When you have clarity on your values and connect them to your goals and purpose, you gain a superpower: the ability to set boundaries and negotiate with confidence.
Aligning Performance Goals with Your Core Values
Performance goals take goal setting to a more tactical level. Jayne defines them as commitments to change through learning something new, a process that shifts perspective and often transforms beliefs.
The Toolbox Metaphor
Jayne uses a helpful analogy to explain how performance goals and skill development work together. Think of your skills as a toolbox:
- When you’re young, you might have just one big hammer; a single approach or skill
- As you gain knowledge and experience, you refine your toolkit
- Your goal becomes learning to load your toolbox with varied tools: wrenches, screwdrivers, needle-nose pliers; different solutions for different situations
- Refining your tools, understanding how to use them appropriately, and seeing the results shapes your behaviors, thinking, and choices
Performance goals aren’t just about acquiring new skills. They’re about learning how to apply the right tool in the right situation. This refinement process aligns beautifully with personal growth when it supports your core values.
Navigating Uncertainty When Choosing Your Best Path
Jayne shares a powerful observation: “It’s not necessarily change we resist. It’s the uncertainty of choosing the best path.” This quote captures a fundamental truth about goal setting and career transitions.
When you arrive at a crossroads, with multiple paths, opportunities, and potentials ahead, uncertainty can paralyze you. Jayne’s advice for moving through this stage:
Gather Information
- Identify what information you need to evaluate each path
- Consider refinements to your values
- Look at new tools or skillsets required
- Analyze relevant data
- Talk to mentors who have walked similar paths
Embrace the Leap of Faith Once you’ve gathered information but still feel uncertain, Jayne reminds us of a liberating truth: you don’t have to choose perfectly the first time. Here’s her perspective:
- You can start down any path and turn around if it’s not right
- Paths aren’t straight, they sometimes circle back
- You can try something, refine it, or switch directions
- You’re never stuck
The real wisdom here is permission to start. Progress beats perfection.
The Lifelong Journey: Moving Between Mentee and Mentor
Jayne is a seasoned mentor with over 20 years of experience with Menttium. She describes the mentor-mentee relationship as a continuous learning cycle:
Throughout your career, you’ll move back and forth between being a mentee and mentor. Jayne explains the cycle:
- You encounter a new challenge or goal where you lack experience
- You seek mentors who have navigated similar paths
- You learn from their wisdom and guidance
- You apply what you’ve learned
- You become a mentor to someone facing a comparable situation
- The cycle continues throughout your career
Your Hindsight Becomes Their Foresight
One of Jayne’s most powerful insights comes from the Menttium book, “Unlocking Potential: How Mentors Make a Difference”: when you gain wisdom through experience, your hindsight becomes someone else’s foresight. Your knowledge and experiences become your legacy. By sharing what you’ve learned, you help others navigate their own journeys while deepening your own understanding.
What’s more, the mentoring relationship changes as you evolve. What you need from a mentor in your twenties differs dramatically from what you need in your thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond. Your mentors may change, but the cycle of learning and growth remains constant.
Key Takeaways: Aligning Goals with Values
- Start with career goals, but view them through the lens of your personal goals
- Take time to define your core values deeply and personally
- Use your values as decision-making screens when evaluating opportunities
- Remember that performance goals are about loading your toolbox with varied skills
- When facing uncertainty, gather information and give yourself permission to start
- Embrace the ongoing mentor-mentee cycle as a lifelong practice
- Recognize that your hindsight can guide someone else’s foresight
Moving Forward with Purpose-Driven Goals
Aligning your goals with your core values and life purpose isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s an ongoing practice. By understanding how your career ambitions intersect with your personal commitments, you create space for sustainable growth, better boundaries, and reduced burnout.
Jayne Heggen’s framework reminds us that achieving career success doesn’t require sacrificing what matters most. Instead, it requires conscious intention, clear values, and the willingness to adjust your path as needed. Whether you’re setting goals for the first time or refining your approach, these principles apply across every stage of your career.
The next time you find yourself at a crossroads or overwhelmed by competing demands, remember Jayne’s wisdom: gather the information you need, trust yourself to course-correct, and start moving forward with purpose.
About Jayne Heggen
Jayne Heggen is the Founder of Heggen Business and Management Consulting Group, a firm that brings together independent business solution thinkers to help companies, leaders, and teams navigate complex change and create work environments that truly work. A trained ICF and Purpose Coach with an MBA from Georgia State University and completion of Harvard Business School’s Leadership and Management Development Program, Jayne brings over two decades of consulting and coaching expertise to her work.
With more than 20 years of mentoring experience through Menttium, Jayne is passionate about helping leaders align their goals with their core values and life purpose. She believes that sustainable success comes from understanding what matters most and creating space for both professional achievement and personal fulfillment.