How to be a learn-it-all

00:00:00: Introduction 
00:02:32: Helen & Sarah's new book 
00:03:42: What is a learn-it-all 
00:07:02: 1: Learning 
00:08:17: Learning experiments 
00:10:24: Keep a learn-it-all log 
00:13:16: Team learning 
00:15:29: 2: Unlearning 
00:16:33: Examples of unlearning 
00:22:10: Connect with those with opposite experience 
00:23:25: Propelling questions 
00:25:16: 3: Relearning 
00:26:56: Be a strengths solver 
00:30:18: Fresh eyes' feedback 
00:33:12: Final thoughts 
 

Interview Transcription 

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen 

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work and offer some ideas for action, tools and advice that we hope will help you and us to navigate our way through all of our Squiggly Careers. 

Helen Tupper: And it's our first time back together for a while. 

Sarah Ellis: It is! 

Helen Tupper: That makes me very happy.  Are you happy about that, Sarah? 

Sarah Ellis: I am happy.  And I'm really happy, because we're not on video today.  Because of various different technical issues, you can't video me without telling me, which makes me even more relaxed.  

Helen Tupper: I mean, I did tell you that I'm videoing; you just don't like it.  It's not like I do it secretly!  I gave you a video today to approve before I posted it on social. 

Sarah Ellis: I know you did. 

Helen Tupper: I thought that I was quite impressed with my collaboration skills!  But yes, Sarah and I are back together, and we hope that you did enjoy listening to us talk to other people in our Ask the Expert series.  We're running a competition for people to win a stack of books from all of the speakers in our series and people were sharing on Instagram and on LinkedIn, which was the episode that they needed most right now.  We found it really interesting to see people's responses.   

I think there was a lot about Time, which was your conversation with Oliver Burkeman, and there was a lot about Uncertainty as well.  They were the two that seemed to come up the most for people about the skills they needed to focus on right now.  But if you do have any topics that you'd like us to cover, or experts that you think we should be speaking to, do let us know, because we'll look at it for our next Ask the Expert series.  And actually, the storytelling expert came from a listener request, so we absolutely do listen and we do try and reach out to the people that you recommend to us. 

So, if you've got recommendations, you can just email us, helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com and we will add it to our list for the next series. 

Sarah Ellis: So today, we're going to be talking about how to be a learn-it-all, and I'm really looking forward to this episode, because we've probably spent even more time preparing, obviously we always prepare lots for the podcast, but we have spent a lot of time preparing for this podcast, because we've just had our first article published in Harvard Business Review, which for us is a really big deal.   

I'm not sure anyone else will be that interested; but for us, it's a really useful source of inspiration and advice and lots of expertise that we go to regularly for all of our podcast episodes.  So, to actually have something published on there for us is a really big milestone, I think, for what we're trying to do with Squiggly Careers and Amazing If.  So, that article is all about how to be a learn-it-all, so we thought we would do an accompanying, almost a twinning podcast for that article. 

Before we dive into today's topic, I just want to remind everybody, and we're trying to make sure that you can't really miss it, to be honest, but you can now pre-order our new book, You Coach You.  As you'd expect from us, it's a super practical book.  It's got more than 50 ideas for action, it's got over 100 coach-yourself questions, it's got chapter page summaries, and we talk about everything from the skillset, mindset and toolkit that you need to coach yourself, whatever your obstacle or challenge or career opportunity that you'd like to explore; then we dive into some common career conundrums and challenges, including resilience, time, relationships, self-belief, progression and purpose. 

Pre-orders are a massive part of how you can support us and the work that we do, and it makes a really big difference in terms of being able to share our work, and to be able to hopefully help you even more and provide you really useful ideas and content.  So, if you have got two minutes to pre-order, it will be with you on 13 January, or just afterwards, and you can get it from wherever you buy your books.  We will be incredibly grateful if you invest in a copy for yourself and your friends if you'd really like to. 

Helen Tupper: So, back to today's topic then, and what is a learn-it-all?  There is a quote that Sarah and I come back to a lot, and it's by a futurist called Alvin Toffler, and the quote is, and we'll include this on the PodSheet, if you want to reference it for yourself in the future, but the quote is, "The illiterate of the 21st Century won't be those that cannot read and write, but those that cannot learn, unlearn and relearn". 

There is something in that quote that just sticks with us and resonates so much that of all the skills that we need to invest in for ourselves and our career, the ability to be a learn-it-all, to be that person that can learn and unlearn and relearn is so important to our success.  But we know it's not easy and that you have to understand what's the difference between learning, unlearning and relearning.  And then, once you understand the difference, what's the action that you need to take. 

So, that's what we really want to unpack a little bit in the conversation that we have together today and with all of you, is to make the distinction between those three different learning skills, and then give you some things that you can try out so that you can support yourself with your own self-development.   

The reason that's important is because, not only will that future-proof your career, but when you are looking at different career opportunities, it's one of the things that can make you really resilient in roles, whether you're squiggling around your current organisation, or whether you're moving to a new organisation, leaders are looking for learn-it-alls, because they know that if they have people in their organisation who are able to keep learning continually, they can adapt to all of the inevitable changes that come their way. 

Reid Hoffman, who is the Founder of LinkedIn, says that when he's assessing founders for potential investments that he wants to make, he looks for the individuals that have an "infinite learning curve".  So, that's what we're trying to help you all with; we're helping you all to have infinite learning curves by being learn-it-alls. 

Sarah Ellis: And I love Satya Nadella, who is the CEO of Microsoft; he says, "The learn-it-all will always do better than the know-it-all".  So, I think if we needed any more motivation for why this is important, I think sometimes we do have those confidence gremlins around, "Do I know enough?  Am I smart enough?" whereas I think now, the question we should all be asking ourselves is, "Am I learning enough?"   

It's something I keep coming back to, and as we've been writing this article and preparing for this podcast, there are definitely some gaps that I've identified for myself where I think the answer to that is no, I'm not learning enough, or I'm not stretching myself, and am I doing enough in each of these areas?  So, what we're going to do today is we're going to take each of the learning, unlearning and relearning, try and be really clear for you about what we mean by each of those areas, and then share two ideas for action about what this looks like in practice.   

Although today, to try and make this easy to follow and simple and practical, we've divided up learning, unlearning and relearning, they are obviously all connected.  So often, you might be unlearning something and then relearning something at the same time, and these things all mix and mesh together in lots of ways.  But we just wanted to make sure that this was easy to follow, and so we're going to take them each in turn, have a chat about them, what we do well and areas that we can see where we need to improve, and hopefully just give you some really practical inspiration.  

So, let's talking about learning first, which I think in some ways, is the easiest to understand, because I think we all have a sense of what learning looks like for us.  But I think the biggest challenge is that most of our learning, of course, comes from what we do day-to-day for our day jobs, but that doesn't just happen to us; we have to be really intentional about choosing to incorporate and include learning as part of our roles. 

I was watching an interesting talk actually earlier this year, where the way that learning was described was learning used to be about, you go to work to learn to do a job, like I'd go to work to learn to do brilliant marketing, or I'd learn to be an accountant; whereas now, learning is the job.  I think that takes quite a different mentality.   

I think for me, I definitely went to work to learn to do a job for a long time, so you've got to do some reframing in your mindset about what learning looks like, that learning isn't something separate to your role; you need to prioritise it and make time for it.  But so often, the exact opposite happens, because we're all really busy, we're very task-focused and it can feel so hard to fit in, even I think for you and I where we both love to learn.   

Learning is one of both of our values, our business is almost built on learning.  I still sometimes think, when I get to the end of the week, have I really made time to be really intentional unconscious about what I'm learning and how I'm learning.  So, I think it's like an ongoing endeavour that you have to invest in, and it's not an easy thing at all.   

One of the other ideas for action is the idea of learning experiments.  So, what learning experiments are you leading or running right now?  And again, this is a bit about reframing, I think, what an experiment looks like, because I still can't help but think of a Bunsen burner in science at school!  So, when someone says "experiment", I just think of burning bits of wood in science class, because I wasn't very good at science, so I was always a bit distracted. 

Helen Tupper: Do you know what, my little boy came home yesterday from school, he's 6, and he came home and he said, "Mummy, I made a circuit today".  That took me right back to the little light boards and connecting it. 

Sarah Ellis: Oh, like a circuit board?  Oh, I was so rubbish at those sorts of things. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and he was like, "With crocodile clips, mummy, but they weren't real crocodiles"!  I was like, "That's really sweet!" 

Sarah Ellis: That's impressive at 6.  I feel like that's something I did at secondary school; but maybe that's because he's so smart!  But it is a good way to think about experiments, because the point of experiments is that they are there intentionally for us to try something new and to figure out what works, to adapt and also to intentionally fail.  And I think, when we set something up as an experiment, we have a different relationship with the outcome of what happens. 

So, if you've labelled something as an experiment and it doesn't go very well, you feel very differently about it versus if something just doesn't go very well.  So, often really thinking about, what are those things where you feel like you've got the space and the opportunity to experiment?  And it can be anything; it can be what you're working on, it can be how you're working, it could be experimenting with different styles of meeting.  There are so many different ways you can experiment.  But I think until you really think about it, you probably almost don't really know what experiments are happening. 

So, one of the things that I'd really encourage you to do if you want to try this for yourself, is almost keep, we call it a "learn-it-all log", where you actually write down, what are the two or three learning experiments that you want to run at the moment, and then maybe once a week, you're just jotting down some notes about how are those experiments going.  Like in science, I do think this is what we actually did in science, where you had to write down your observations, what did you notice; how would you adapt the experiment for next time?  I think those kinds of principles probably really apply here. 

One of the things, for example, just to bring this to life, one of the things I'm experimenting with, is different styles of communications in meetings.  So, sometimes I experiment with taking more of a lead, sometimes I experiment with really thinking, "Right, I'm going to put my listening hat on", and again, I like lots of visual metaphors.  So sometimes I think, "Right, am I putting my leading this meeting hat on; am I putting my listening hat on?" and I'm experimenting with, what is the impact that I have as a result of wearing those different hats in those meetings?  Is it what I expected; do those meetings go better than I thought; were they just different; was I surprised by anything? 

So, often for me at the moment, I think lots of my experiments are a bit about my own behaviours, which I think is always a useful place to start, and then we've got a couple of projects specifically within Amazing If, that we have together labelled as experiments.  So, we're working on one at the moment where we're asking some people to share their Squiggly Career stories, because together you and I have chatted about, "That's an experiment.  Let's see, does that idea work; how might we create it; are they in the right format; will people watch them; are they going to be useful?"  I think I have approached the "what" of that project in a very different way, because we agreed upfront, that is an experiment. 

Helen Tupper: It's really interesting today, I was talking to four people that were in Australia and Hong Kong, and they're part of our Squiggly Careers advocates community, a community in itself which was an experiment this year.  It's a year-long experiment to see whether we can accelerate the work of people who are already doing stuff to help people with their Squiggly Careers, by connecting them and supporting them. 

I was talking to them saying, "This is an experiment.  I don't know if we're going to continue with this.  We're looking for everyone's feedback.  This is what we're trying to do with this experiment, and we'll only know if we've achieved that by the end of the year, and that will determine what we do going forward".  And it is so interesting to hold the space for something to succeed or fail, but for it to be okay either way.  I'm not like, "This has to succeed at all costs".  I'm like, "We're doing it because we think it's the right thing to do and we've got some clear outcomes that we want to achieve.  We're going to check in regularly and get lots of feedback, and we'll learn if it doesn't work and do something different, and we'll help lots of people do other stuff if it does work".  But I'm open to either outcome; it's learning that is the priority. 

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action two is actually more about this idea of team learning, which is having a collective curriculum.  I sometimes think, back to the point about why learning is hard, I think the number one reason most people would say learning is hard is not because they don't want to learn, but is because of time; it's a practical one.  And whether that is a real barrier, or whether it's one that we put in place, or we feel like is a real busy barrier, I think if you're learning together, it has a lot of advantages. 

Firstly, it creates accountability, so we're learning and if we are both reading the same book and then we're going to talk about it at a certain point, you read the book, because you know you're going to have that conversation.  But also, I think it prioritises as a team that you're saying, "This is part of who we are and how we work".  And I don't think this has to be a really onerous thing that has to be really time-consuming, and I think it is important to give people the freedom to design their own development in a way that works for them. 

So, I think this can be as simple as, monthly you might take a topic, and maybe people take it in turns to choose that topic; or maybe those topics are very related to your objectives for the year, some of your priorities at the moment, or just things that you think it's important for your team to learn about in the future.  And I think you give everybody the opportunity to say, "Find something to read, watch or listen to that's related to that topic", and then you create a moment in a team meeting that already exists, this is not about new stuff, and you dedicate that 30-minute team meeting to all share one thing you learnt that you found really interesting from that thing that you listened to, and then maybe a question that it raised, or thing that you'd be interested in knowing other people's points of view on. 

I think just by having that collective focus, and also those moments in time to get together where you've labelled it as a learning moment, you think about it, if you did that for 2022, you would have done 12 different topics, and you might have either maybe listened to 12 podcast episodes, maybe you've switched it up and you've watched some TED talks, you've done some podcasts, you've read some books, you've done some articles.  Maybe you've gone to some events together, but you've just started to put learning to be part of your week, rather than something separate that you never quite get to. 

Helen Tupper: So, we're going to move on now then to the idea of unlearning, and this is one that Sarah and I keep going round and round.  When we were writing the article, we were like, "How can we make unlearning as clear as possible?" because I think of other areas.  You don't often think about, "How do I go backwards in my learning; how do I unlearn?"  But there is a saying that really helps us to understand it and gives us clarity, so maybe it will for you.   

We think about unlearning as really being that whole, "What got you here won't get you there", that idea of there being some things that you might have learnt, some knowledge for example, or some behaviours that you have developed, and they've got you to a certain point in your career.  But what you start to recognise is they might not help you get to where you want to go.  Maybe if I give an example of this and maybe, Sarah, if you give one, just to bring it to life for people to make it as clear as possible? 

So, if I think about something that I've had to unlearn in my career, it would be the way that I delivered feedback.  I've talked a little bit about this before, but when I worked at Microsoft, Microsoft's got a really strong feedback culture.  It's a big part of you as a manager, your quality and your ability to give feedback effectively.  If you don't, it sort of comes back to bite you a little bit, because you get feedback upwards that's delivered quite transparently.  So, you have to get better at feedback quite quickly. 

What I realised was, the way that I had been doing feedback to that point, for everything that I'd been doing up until Microsoft, it helped me as a manager; my teams hadn't been that large, and I learnt as I went with it and I didn't think it was really holding me back.  But what I realised was that if I didn't unlearn some of those feedback practices, I wouldn't be able to succeed as a leader in Microsoft.   

So, I had to really re-look at, "Well, how am I delivering feedback and how might that not be helpful?" and it actually coincided with me discovering a lot of Kim Scott's work on Radical Candor; so, this recognition that I need to do this differently to be a good leader in Microsoft, and also realising from Kim Scott's work that some of the approaches that I had been using actually weren't helping people as much as I thought they were.  Those two things kind of coincided, and I really had to, quite quickly, maybe a little bit painfully, relearn how I did feedback.   

I think that's the thing as well with unlearning things; it can feel quite uncomfortable, because you're replacing something that is a known to you, with something that feels unknown, and you are doing that really consciously and deliberately.  So, I think this is probably the bravest one, because you have to recognise what the thing is that might get in your way, and then you have to put yourself in quite an uncomfortable place to do something different. 

Sarah Ellis: I think my example, because I was trying to think about this, because I was talking to Helen about it before and saying, "This one definitely made my brain ache a bit, making sure that we were really clear about what unlearning was".  But I do find that, "What got you here won't get you there" is just a good way of framing what we're trying to think about. 

I think probably the biggest example for me that I could think about in my career was, I definitely had a period in my career where I said yes to everything.  So, I was in the position in my life where I could do that and that was brilliant, because it opened up so many doors for me and gave me so many new experiences and opportunities.   

So, when I said, "Saying yes to everything", I worked a lot and really long hours, but I was really enjoying it, and I was doing things within my organisation, I was volunteering for extra projects in my company, I was doing things in the evenings that were side projects, or personal projects, I was doing charity stuff, I was doing loads of learning, all of these things, all of which I was very actively choosing and it was giving me loads of energy; and I felt like that was a big part of helping me to be successful, because it was making me curious, it meant I got really good connections.   

You know those moments in your career where you feel like you've found your flow, you're doing things in a way that works for you and it feels really authentic?  So, great, that was certainly for a good three or four years, I think, how I worked.  Then, when I had my little boy, Max, who's 4 now, and I think probably over the past couple of years because of the pandemic and running your own business, I'm having to unlearn that behaviour, because that doesn't work anymore; it just doesn't work for me and my lifestyle and it's unrealistic. 

So for a while, I think I really held onto that as, "That's just me, that's the way that I work", and I'd get really frustrated and almost a bit annoyed with myself and other people that I couldn't work in that way.  But then once I started to realise, I was like, "Okay, I need to let go of that as my model of my way of working and I need to come up with something new".  And a big part of that, I'm finding over the last six months, is I'm having to learn to say no to things that I want to do. 

So, it's not about learning to say no generally; I'm okay at saying no to things that I don't want to do, I feel all right about that.  It's those things that I think, "I would like to go to that thing [or] I would like to do that learning [or] I would like to say yes to that partnership", or loads of things.  I think for a long time, I continued to say yes to those things, and then it got in my way and it either reduced the quality of my work or it added to my stress, it meant I hadn't got space for other things.  So, that is the thing that I think I'm still going through, that uncomfortable process of unlearning saying yes to everything that I want to do; and now, thinking about how do I learn what to say yes to and what to say no to, even though I would like to say yes. 

It's one of the points actually Oliver Burkeman makes in his book, and it really struck a chord with me of that, the people that he talked to as part of his research that do a really good job of doing meaningful work that matters to them, in the context of all the complexity and everything we all have in our lives, is that they have learnt to be able to say no to things they want to say yes to.  So, I still feel really uncomfortable doing it, and I think that's probably how you know you're unlearning, because it feels really hard! 

Helen Tupper: So, keep the clarity in mind of, "What got you here won't get you there", if that helps you to understand unlearning, and know it's going to feel uncomfortable; and we also wanted to give you a few ideas for action to support you with your unlearning. 

So, the first thing is to connect with people who have some kind of opposite experience to you in some way, so just to give you a few examples: maybe if you work in a really big organisation, like when I was at Microsoft, connecting with someone who worked in a start-up, so they would have a very opposite experience of the way that the work worked; or, maybe if you are really early in your career, getting mentored by someone who is very experienced; they can bring a different perspective. 

This idea of opposite experience, what it helps you to do is to see the world through a different lens, through somebody else's view of the world and their perspective.  And it helps you to think about, "Well, what might I need to do differently?"  So often, we just work on autopilot.  I just keep doing feedback the way I've always done it, or Sarah keeps saying yes to everything.  And it's not until you get a different view of the world, which you can create for yourself by getting these opposite experiences, that you start to challenge some of your assumptions about the way things should be done and specifically, the way you should be doing them.  And it just starts to accelerate those unlearning opportunities, when you start to spend some time with people who see things differently to you, or have different experiences to you. 

Sarah Ellis: Another thing that you can do for yourself, second idea for action, is to ask yourself some, what are called "propelling questions".  So, this is very much inspired by the work of Adam Morgan, who wrote a brilliant book called Beautiful Constraints, and he talks about propelling questions as a way of figuring out difficulty, or where you feel a bit stuck.  I think this can be quite useful for unlearning, where we're trying to take ownership for what this could look like for ourselves.  So, here are five propelling questions that we came up with, in the context of unlearning, that we thought just might get you thinking about what unlearning might look like for you. 

You can find all of these in the articles, these are all written out for you, so please don't worry about writing these down.  Number 1: imagine it's 2030, what three significant changes have happened in your industry?  These are fascinating.  I could get stuck on these for ages!  We'd never get through the podcast! 

Helen Tupper: Stop!  Keep going. 

Sarah Ellis: Number 2: how might you divide your role between you and a robot?  Number 3: which of your strengths would be most useful if your organisation doubled in size?  Number 4: how could you transfer your talents if your industry disappeared overnight?  And number 5: if you were rebuilding the business that you're in tomorrow, what would you differently? 

Helen Tupper: Oh, so interesting. 

Sarah Ellis: And those are all hard questions.  So, there's no right answers when you're trying to figure those out, so perhaps just pick one or two.  But I think just the process maybe of mind-mapping, or just bullet-pointing some thoughts on at least one or two of those propelling questions might help you think a bit about, that's just made me think that I need to unlearn this way of behaving, or way of doing things, and let go of some of that; and then think about what you might want to learn instead, what do you want to replace it with. 

Helen Tupper: The third area is all about relearning.  Relearning is about how we take action to continually update our knowledge, so that our strengths remain relevant, even though the way that we're working or where we're working might change.   

So, to give you an example, technology two years ago; the technology that I used to do my job two years ago was PowerPoint.  When we delivered our sessions, for example, two years ago, it was about, "How do we connect our iPad to a screen in a room?" for example.  But Sarah and I had to relearn how we delivered all of our workshops, because rapidly because of pandemic, it all went virtual.  If we hadn't relearnt how to do our job in a new context, which was a virtual world of work, our business wouldn't have remained successful, we wouldn't have been able to learn, grow and develop. 

Obviously, the pandemic is so massive and big, and it changed the way that everyone did everything, but there are lots of other situations: a change in your organisation, or maybe a new system that's been brought in to work, or maybe a new structure.  Our world of work is changing constantly, and what we have to be able to recognise is how we need to adapt our skills or our behaviours or our experiences so that they remain relevant to that new context.  So, relearning is constant and if we don't relearn, then what happens is the skills start to stagnate and we start to hold ourselves back at work.   

So, we've got two ideas for action to support you for your proactive relearning.  The first one is about being a strengths solver.  So, this is about recognising that we need to keep stretching our strengths, so that they don't stagnate and we don't stall at work.  By being proactive and thinking, "How can I use my strengths in a different way or with different people?" we build that relearning muscle into just the way we're working every day with our strengths.  Strengths solving means that you're going to look for problems outside of your day-to-day job, because there's probably plenty of things that you solve there already, but look slightly outside of your day-to-day job, so this could be maybe in the department that you work in, or maybe it's in the wider business.   

So, I don't know, maybe you might go, "The departments aren't communicating as much.  We haven't connected as much over the last 12 months and work's become a bit siloed" or, "There's been a big budget cut in the last month; it's affected some of the projects that we're working on", whatever.  But try and spot these problems that are a bit bigger than your day job and think about how you could use your strengths to solve some of those problems, because it will stretch it outside of the day-to-day. 

What you're going to be forced to do is to relearn how you remain effective when you're working on different problems, or with different people, or different timelines or different budgets.  All those things just make you work a bit harder to use your strengths differently, and that builds up that relearning muscle that you need. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think somebody once described this to me as you have to do two things.  The first thing is, you've got to be good at sensing.  So, you've got to be good at sensing what a team needs, what an organisation needs, almost anticipating problems or opportunities.  It can be opportunities; it doesn't always have to be things that are not in a good place.  And then, once you've done that sensing, you've then got to be really good at thinking situationally, so, "How do I apply my strengths to this situation?"  That really is about being adaptable with your strengths, and that's where, as you were describing, you're stretching them.  And by stretching them, then I think you make them even stronger. 

I think I definitely fell into this trap a couple of times in my career, where I got very good at applying my strengths in a certain way.  So, I think relatively early on in my career, I started to get a good understanding of what my strengths were and how they could be helpful.  And so, I sort of honed that skill.  When things around me changed, it took a little while for me to do that readjusting that you need to do to then find out, "Well, how can I still be useful and how are my strengths still relevant?" and almost a bit, and this may be just a common theme of me about letting go of stuff, again it took me a little while, I think, to sometimes go, "I've got to let go".  Just because I use my strengths in that one way, doesn't mean that you then can't stretch them or use them in a different way to solve different problems.  

I think the people that I've worked alongside that I really admire and have learnt a lot from are very good at not only knowing their strengths, but also just understanding how they can apply their strengths in so many different situations.  So, they stay very authentic and true to who they are, but they're very stretchy at the same time. 

Helen Tupper: So, our second and final idea for action is about fresh eyes' feedback.  This is where you're going to take your skills and think about someone else's perspective on them as a way of generating some different opportunities for you to relearn. 

So, often when we are looking at our own skills, we can't always see them with that perspective, because we're the ones using them on the everyday work.  And when we're thinking about, "How could I relearn them?" that can feel sometimes quite hard to get our head into that mode.  But when you ask someone else for feedback, they can give you that almost distance from yourself which can support your development. 

It sounds like you saying to somebody an "even better if" type of question.  So, you might say, "How could I make my presentations even better?" because that's one of the things you might not be able to see, because you're so close to it.  But when you say to them, "I'd really appreciate some feedback on how I could make my presentations even better", they can just give you that fresh perspective on something that you could relearn to improve your impact. 

Or, maybe it might be, "How could I run our team meetings even better?" or, "What's one way that you think I could do an even better job of managing my progression in my career?" something like that.  But it's that "even better if" question which just helps somebody to positively frame the feedback, so they find it easier to give it to you.  But it just gives you that sense of perspective on something that you could choose to do differently.  You don't have to do it, but it just gives you that distance to support your development and a bit of insight, which can help you to focus that relearning activity that you might want to do. 

Sarah Ellis: One thing that all of our conversation today has really made me think about is just how critical it is to have a work-in-progress sensibility across learning, unlearning and relearning, because everything that we have talked about requires you to be continually work in progress.  That is almost the essence, isn't it, of being a learn-it-all?  And it does take confidence and vulnerability at the same time. 

Helen Tupper: But it's so liberating.  I think when you're like, "Yeah, I haven't got all the answers, but I'm just really committed to keeping learning", I find that once you've got that into your head and you're happy to share that with other people, you stop feeling like, "I have to know everything and prove myself to people", because all I have to prove is that I've got a willingness and ability to learn, and show ways in which I do that.  And that just feels a lot more manageable to me than, "I've got all the answers for every bit of my job". 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and you can tell we're really interested in this topic, because we've talked for a bit longer than usual, and I've really enjoyed it!  And I could keep going and now I'm thinking, "There's a few more things I would have liked to talk about in that article that we didn't get round to", but that's okay, because we're all work in progress, so we'll just do part two at some point, if people go and read the article and we get asked to do another one! 

Helen Tupper: So, what we'll do is, in the notes to this episode, we'll put the link to the article.  As ever, there'll be the PodSheet, which is the editable summary, so that you can reflect on some of this for yourself and get really clear and focused on the actions that you are going to take.   

We would love your feedback.  We've talked about feedback quite a lot in this episode, but we'd love your feedback, both on this as a topic, and also on the article, because it was a big thing for us.  And we're going to be writing some more, so if you have got any feedback about anything that we could do even better if for our next article, let us know.  We're at helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com.  

Sarah Ellis: But that's everything for this week.  As always, thanks so much for listening and next week, we're going to be talking about how to work your weak ties.  So, if you're an introvert like me, that sounds almost impossible, but I promise you it's not as bad as it sounds.  And if you're anyone else, who is maybe a bit more extroverted, or just enjoys making connections, weak ties are particularly important, because they're people that know things that we don't know and they know people that we don't know; so one of those really critical areas, I think, for a Squiggly Career that's going to go in all different directions.  So, that's what we're talking about next week. 

Helen Tupper: So until then, we will leave you to it, everybody, and speak to you very soon.  Take care. 

Sarah Ellis: Bye for now.