Why Understanding Your Worth is Essential Right Now
Lately, I’ve been hearing a similar sentiment from people across sectors and career stages: “Work feels like it’s shifting under my feet.” It is not a feeling of panic — just a sense that things are moving quickly — priorities, tools, expectations, even entire business models. It’s easy to feel unmoored when the ground keeps rearranging itself.
Employees are not the only ones feeling this. Leaders are under pressure too. Boards, investors, donors, and stakeholders are asking harder questions about the value of their workforce — how it contributes, how it adapts, and how it moves the organization forward. Everyone is being asked, in different ways, to articulate worth.
In times like this, one practice becomes especially stabilizing: Knowing your worth — clearly, confidently, and without apology.
Your Internal Worth: What the Organization Experiences
Internal worth is the value you create in the specific ecosystem you work in.
It includes:
The problems people trust you to solve
The consistency of your performance
The quality of your relationships
Your visibility and reliability
Your institutional knowledge
The emotional steadiness or uplift you bring to the culture
Many people underestimate this side of worth. They assume that because they’re not “the loudest” or “the biggest deal,” their contributions are ordinary. In reality, much of what keeps an organization functioning — and thriving — comes from people whose value is steady, pivotal, and deeply felt.
And replacement cost is real: loss of continuity, loss of client trust, ramp-up time, recruiting, onboarding, cultural fit. All of that is part of your worth.
Start With What Your Organization Actually Sees
Whether or not it’s explicitly stated, organizations leave clues everywhere about how they experience your value. Look for the evidence:
Performance reviews over time
Positive emails or informal praise
Achievement of KPIs, goals, tangible outcomes
Certifications, trainings, or new skills you’ve added
Awards, recognition moments, or special assignments
The work people reliably trust you with
The steadiness, continuity, and institutional knowledge you bring
This isn’t about perfection — it’s about patterns. Those patterns tell a story about your contribution. They also give you a grounded foundation for any worth conversation.
Your External Worth: What the Market Reveals
Your internal indicators tell one part of your story — how your value is recognized where you are. Your external benchmarks tell the other part — how your value stacks up across the broader landscape. External worth is your value beyond your current walls.
It includes:
Salary and role benchmarks
Industry expectations
Skills in demand
Peer comparisons
Recruiter insight
Job descriptions for roles adjacent to your own
External data is grounding. It removes the guesswork and prevents you from undervaluing yourself simply because you feel “grateful,” “not ready,” or “too junior” to ask for more. Together, internal and external worth create a true, balanced picture — one that is far more accurate than your fears or assumptions.
And Then the Worth Dragons Arrive
Whenever I talk about worth, I also talk about Dragons — the internal stories that show up when something feels risky. These Dragons don’t only affect individual workers. They show up in leaders and organizations too.
A few you might recognize:
“Nice People Don’t Talk About Money” Dragon: Shows up in employees who hesitate to ask — and employers who avoid transparent conversations.
The Ambition Dragon: Employees fear looking self-focused; employers fear rewarding “too much ambition” will create inequity.
The “Fairness to Me” Dragon: Personal circumstances get mistaken for professional worth — on both sides.
The Loyalty Dragon: Employees wait to be recognized; employers assume loyalty means someone doesn’t want more.
The Comparison or Perfection Dragons: Employees underestimate themselves; employers hold people to unrealistic standards.
The Self-Value Dragon: Perhaps the trickiest. It convinces both individuals and organizations that someone’s potential is fixed.
These Dragons often stem from childhood messages, cultural norms, gender expectations, or workplace habits. They show up to protect us — but they also shrink us. Naming them is liberating. Reframing them is transformative.
How to Have a Worth Conversation (Employee Perspective)
A worth conversation isn’t a confrontation — it’s clarity. And the most confident conversations follow a simple pattern:
Prepare your evidence: Ground the conversation in contribution:
What you’ve delivered
How your role has expanded
What others rely on you for
Visible outcomes and examples
External benchmarks to anchor your ask
State your value clearly and calmly: One sentence is enough: “Because I’ve increased my impact in X and Y, and external benchmarks place this role at [range], I’d like to revisit my compensation and title to ensure alignment.”
Use silence strategically. Make your ask. Pause. Let the other person think. Most over-talking in these conversations comes from discomfort, not necessity.
Stay curious, especially if the answer isn’t yes yet: A “no” becomes information, not a verdict. Ask:
What indicators would make this possible?”
“What timeline makes sense?”
“What skills or impact should I focus on to move closer?”
End with next steps: Clarity reduces anxiety. “Can we revisit this in 60 days with milestones A, B, and C?
How to Have a Worth Conversation (Employer Perspective)
Many leaders struggle with these conversations too — not because they don’t value their people, but because:
Budgets are tight
Expectations from stakeholders are rising
Job roles are changing faster than compensation structures
Performance metrics aren’t always clear
A grounded worth conversation from the employer side includes:
Clarity about criteria: Don’t be afraid to be explicit about:
What performance looks like at different levels
Skills that matter most to the organization
Where the employee is exceeding and where they need development
Transparency about constraints: If the issue is budget, say so. If it’s timing, say so. People can handle honesty — they struggle with silence.
A path forward: Employees feel valued when they understand:
What’s possible
What’s not
What will be reevaluated
What timeline is realistic
Follow-through: Nothing builds trust more quickly than to co-design action plan and actually get it done. When both sides approach worth as a shared reality rather than a tug-of-war, the entire organization becomes stronger.
Why This Matters Now — for Both Employees and Employers
In a rapidly shifting environment, clarity about worth is not optional. It’s a source of stability. For employees, knowing your worth helps you make grounded, confident choices — about roles, opportunities, conversations, and direction.
For employers, understanding the worth of their people helps them allocate resources, design roles intentionally, avoid costly turnover, and build cultures rooted in transparency rather than guesswork.
When both sides understand value clearly, the relationship becomes healthier, more strategic, and far more humane.