Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction 00:01:46: A recap on values 00:04:27: Benefits of discussing values with your team… 00:04:35: … 1: you start with the "who" 00:05:19: … 2: you gain empathy 00:08:52: … 3: you understand each other's differences 00:09:52: Ideas for action… 00:12:02: … 1(a): more about me 00:17:42: … 1(b): the four Hs 00:18:58: … 1(c): Spotify playlist 00:20:16: … 2: high/low learning 00:24:08: … 3: quarterly compass review 00:33:07: … 4: find a helpful filter 00:37:19: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen. Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah. Helen Tupper: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast to help you to navigate the ups and downs of your Squiggly Career, where we share lots of practical ideas for action to give you a little bit more confidence, clarity and control over all the different things that you might be doing. Today, we are going to be discussing how you can talk about your values in your team.  It has been a while since Sarah and I talked about values; actually, it's over 250 episodes ago, which probably someone might be listening to this as a new listener and they might have only listened to values last week.  But for us, it's a long time since we did a podcast.  It's episode 42, and that particular episode was much more about how you discover what your values are. So, if you're listening to this and you never listened to that episode, I'd say take away the tips and things we're going to share with you today, but I would listen to those two podcasts together, episode 42, so you know what your values are; and then this one's about how you put them into action within the context of a team. Values are one of the skills that we think are most fundamental to succeeding in a Squiggly Career, because one of the big benefits of a Squiggly Career is you can really have a career as individual as you are; you don't have to follow in other people's footsteps and stick out on the same career path you might have started out on.  But being able to design your career around you takes that knowledge of, "What does make me me; what does motivate and drive me?" and that's why values are so important.  But if you don't take that awareness and put it into action, it's not really giving you all the benefit that you need. So, when you have the awareness and you talk about it in your team, it's much more likely that you're going to be able to take action with it, which is what we're trying to pair here; the awareness and the action. Sarah Ellis: And so, a quick recap on values, just to set the scene for today's podcast.  So, as Helen just said, values are the things that motivate and drive us.  We sometimes describe them as they're what make you you.  Everyone has values, there's no right values or wrong values, no one's values are better than anyone else's, and you don't have work values and home values, you just have your values.  What we are particularly interested in today is those values in the context of your teams.  So, the previous episode that we did was more about just how you explore and discover your values, and we're now thinking about, "How do you make those values useful as part of a team and as part of the work that you do?" A question I often get asked is, "How much of an overlap should there be between my values and my organisation's values, if my organisation has values?" not every organisation does, but lots do; that is quite a common thing now to see.  And I think, just remember that your organisational values are written for everyone.  It is very rare that your values will be exactly the same as your organisation's values, because your values are really unique to you, a bit like your organisation's values are really unique to them.  But I think it is really useful if you can connect the dots between your value and your organisation's values. To be really specific, one of my values is achievement, and when I was working at Sainsbury's, one of the things there that was value for Sainsbury's was, "Make it happen".  So, it's not too many leaps to get from "achievement" to "make it happen". Helen Tupper: I remember I was at Virgin, one of Virgin's values was about "Red hot", as a company value, and one of mine is about energy.  Those, to me, even though that wasn't how they described what red hot meant, that was what it meant to me; I could connect my value of "energy" with their value of "red hot". Sarah Ellis: There is a quote from Brené Brown, which is a tiny bit cheesy, which did make me pause me thought; I was like, "Do I include it?"  But I do think she is saying something really important here, in terms of how we use values, how we make them useful for us.  And she says, "Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practise them.  We walk our talk, we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviours align with those beliefs".  I think that's Helen's summary of awareness and action. The word there that really stood out for me when I read that is that point about, it's not just about professing, it's about practising them.  So, that's really what we're going to try and dive into today.  It's like, "Well, how do you practise your values in the context of your team, where everyone will be different and everyone will have different values?" Helen Tupper: There are three big benefits of being able to have these conversations about the things that motivate and drive you within your team.  The first is that I think it puts the right thing first, which is that you end up starting with the who, the who you're working with and what motivates and drives them; whereas, a lot of the time at work, we may, if we're lucky, start with the why, "Why are we working on this thing today?" but very often, I think we just spend loads of time on the whats, "What needs to be done?  What are we doing first?"  This is actually more about, "Who is doing the work and what's important to them, and what's the motivation they're getting from doing the work?"  You just get to understand a little bit more about the people, rather than just the day-to-day work that people are doing. I always think about the difference between human doings and human beings, and I wonder on an average week at work how much time it's about human doings versus human beings.  For me, understanding the who and what motivates and drives the people that you're spending the most time with at work is where you get more into that human being bit, which then goes onto the second benefit, which is about empathy.  Once you understand what motivates and drives people, I think you have more empathy for how they respond to different situations. For example, one of Sarah's values is ideas, and I know that sometimes, when Sarah's and my work is just really, really busy, we are in delivery mode, we have got to meet a deadline and we're doing lots of session deliveries and there are some dates that just can't move, then that delivery will dominate Sarah's days.  And I understand that she will start to feel frustrated, because she hasn't got that space to think and to generate ideas. But now I also know that I work in a different way, I don't need that same level of space, because one of my values is achievement.  For me, that's wins along the way, so I can get almost robotic.  But the fact that we know that about each other, I know that in times of busyness, Sarah needs time out, because that's what she's all about.  And Sarah knows that in times of busyness, I can become quite robotic, and it's just that understanding that that's how we both respond to those situations, and rather than getting frustrated with each other, we have more empathy for that way that we automatically respond, and it's that sort of stuff that you get to. Sarah Ellis: And I think values are never an excuse for bad behaviour; I think that is always really important.  I can't blame my values for not listening to Helen properly, or getting angry or blaming her for things.  You can't go, "It's my values' fault".  But I think what it can help us to do is, none of us are perfect, and it helps us to understand why someone might be finding something hard; I think it can help us to understand if you're surprised by something.  If someone acts in a slightly different way to the way that you see them show up most of the time, maybe that's because there's some sort of tension with their values, or their values are missing in some way. So, let's imagine Helen was having a conversation with me and we were in that very relentless mode and there was no space, I probably start to shut down a bit, and you don't see that from me all the rest of the time.  But if you don't know my values, you might just then start to make some other assumptions, don't you?  You think, "Well, Sarah's not being very collaborative, or maybe Sarah doesn't care", and those things are not necessarily true, it's almost just my response to that moment.  So like I say, we're not trying to make excuses, but I think the more that we just all understand this about each other, we can have that empathy. If you think about what empathy is, empathy is walking in other people's shoes.  So, by Helen knowing my values, she can have a go at walking in my shoes and going, "What's today going to be feeling like for Sarah?  What's this week going to feel like for Helen, for people in our team?" and then we can respond and be more supportive I think as a result. Helen Tupper: It's interesting when you say what this is feeling like for that person, but I think as well as feeling, I think it helps with feedback, because you might be able to say to me, "Look, Helen, I know you're trying to get a lot done this week", which is my achievement thing, "but don't forget that this is going on elsewhere in the team", and it could mean that feedback that Sarah could give me, for example, could be useful at another level, because it's values-based feedback.  And to that point around the "not an excuse for bad behaviour", I might not even know that I'm falling into bad behaviour, because my values are driving me quite strongly in that situation.  But that feedback that Sarah gives me could be even more helpful, because she knows that about me. Then, that gets onto the third benefit really; it just helps us to understand the differences that we have.  We are not trying to have a homogenous team where everybody's values are the same.  It can be useful where you've got points of connection and points of difference.  So again, for example, Sarah and I both have the word "achievement" as one of our values, but it actually means different things to each other, and that is so useful to know that we're both driven by getting things done; but how we want to do those things is very different. Achievement for Sarah is more about one really big thing that we can go after over quite a long period of time, like writing a book for example, whereas that doesn't do it for me.  I'm like, "But what can I do this week?  Can I write one article this week and get it out and get some feedback from it?"  That's more what it's like.  But again, you find those points of connection.  Sometimes you proactively find points of potential conflict, but it means that you don't really fall into difficult conversations about that, because you're aware of it in advance, and that's the difference that this makes. Sarah Ellis: So, what we've got is four ideas for action for you on how you might use values within a team, for some exercises, some conversations, some collaboration.  And I think the second part of this is also how you talk about and frame values in your team.  I think there are lots of teams where, if you've not really done values before, or perhaps values is not a word that comes up loads in your organisation, going straight in with, "Let's do some values exercises" would definitely be some people's worst nightmare and might be really off-putting, and then you might lose the value of doing values. So I think, don't be afraid to position this in different ways, to position this as getting to know each other, spending some time understanding each other and what's most important to each other, and so you don't have to use that word "values".  Some teams I know will be able to do this; perhaps they've already done some work on values, or that just feels like a good fit, words-wise, for your culture and how you work.  But I think when we talk through each of these, I don't think you really have to add "values" as a phrase into any of these, I think they just all work anyway.  But you know that the deeper purpose here is just to start to get a sense of people's values. Lots of people don't know their values really well, or they might have some awareness.  It takes quite a long time to be really consciously competent when it comes to your values, and so we don't need to also expect everybody to have all of the answers when we do this.  So, we want to make these things easy and accessible.  I think if you're going to go away and suggest this to your team, have those things in mind, "How do I make this easy and accessible, and something that everyone can enjoy?" Helen Tupper: Also, you don't have to be a manager to do some of the things that we're talking about now.  You could say, "I've noticed that because we're not coming into the office as much and we've got a few new starters, that people are feeling a bit disconnected.  I'd love to suggest an activity", one of the things that we're going to talk about now, "that could help people get together a bit more, or just spend a bit of time not just talking about what we're doing, but learning more about each other".  So, you don't have to be a manager.  Feel empowered, particularly if there's an opportunity that you spot that this could make a difference to how the team's working, to suggest this to your manager as well. Sarah Ellis: So, the first idea for action is called "more about me", and this is creating something that gives people a framework for sharing more about them, so what's important to them, so you sort of get a sense of what people's values might be.  There are quite a few different ways that you can do this; and I think, especially at the moment with people working in a hybrid way, all of these exercises work virtually and in person, so you could do them either way. But if you are looking for opportunities to collaborate, opportunities to be together, I would say if you have the chance to do these things in person, that is always brilliant, because these are really nice things where I love seeing people's reactions, and it's quite a nice way to get away from screens.  But for some companies, if you're all fully remote, they all work on Zoom or on Teams as well. So, we actually have a more-about-me framework that you'll be able to download, and we'll include that to the links in the podcast show notes.  If you ever can't find anything, you can always just email us.  We're helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com.  So, more about me includes questions like, what five words describe me; I work best when…; come to me if you need help with…; one thing I'd love some help on…; and, one piece of career advice I've found helpful.  So, we've just put together a few questions where if you answer those questions, you would get a feel for who someone is. Helen Tupper: Let's do one together! Sarah Ellis: Well, I was going to say, I think we should add one in, and maybe we could both answer this one. Helen Tupper: Okay. Sarah Ellis: When I re-looked at more about me, I think we should also have, "I'm at my worst when…"  Now, that is more vulnerable, I guess, so maybe that wouldn't be for everyone.  But I think you and I would definitely be up for doing that.  So, let's maybe answer that one.  So, what's your, I'm at my worst when…? Helen Tupper: You can tell me.  This is Sarah trying to give me feedback; she's like, "You think that's when?"!  I think I'm at my worst when I have some stuff that I want to get done, so a combination of selfishness and time pressure.  So I'm like, I want to get this done and I don't have a lot of time to do it.  I think in that moment, I can get quite dismissive of other people's priorities.  So, if I've got my to-do list, so basically a Friday afternoon when I'm like, "Don't get in touch with me.  I just want to get my stuff done, because I've not got a lot of time to do it", that's probably my -- I think I can risk being a little bit dismissive of other people at that particular point in time. Sarah Ellis: That's quite interesting as well, because that's almost like a time-of-the-week thing, where you've gone, "Actually I've got this real high-risk moment in my week", and you can see how that might be quite a frequent thing.  So, that is really useful to know, and obviously we work together a lot; I wouldn't have known that, I wouldn't have been able to say, "It's a Friday afternoon".  But even by you just sharing that specific example, it would probably make me think, "Do I need to share this on a Friday?  Could it wait until Monday?"  And that's just really helpful.  The reality is, we are all busy, so it's a very understandable, "I'm at my worst when…" I think mine, I mean I can actually think of quite a few examples, but I'll just pick one!  One of mine would be, when things change at the last minute.  So, I don't like spontaneity.  I like to plan and I like to be in control, and I like to feel organised.  So, when things go wrong unexpectedly, or just when things change at the very last minute and we have to -- actually it's funny; I love change, but I like leading change.  I think I like being in control of change; I do not like, "Tomorrow, this thing is changing" or, "Now, this thing is changing".  There's just something about me that I just freeze.  I think my reaction to that is freezing, and it just takes me -- I know it about myself, and you will have seen this, I'm sure you'll share something in a minute, no doubt; but it just takes me a little while.  Depending on what it is, sometimes it can take five minutes, but sometimes it might take five days. I think I go through a freeze/unfreeze process when that happens.  And so I do get there, but that length of time can be quite different, depending on what it is.  And I think if you didn't know that about me, sometimes you might be like, "Well, what's happened to Sarah?  She's either not responding, or she's not responding how I thought she would", because basically I'm still frozen, and I've not quite got to unfreeze yet.  Do you recognise that, Helen? Helen Tupper: Yes!  I think it's control at the heart of it.  So, yeah, I actually think you are very good at adapting in the moment if you are in control of the adaption, like if you're, "Okay, this isn't working, let's just do this".  I see it in everything, from team meetings to sessions that we're running to events that we're doing.  If you are in control of the adaption, it's fine, it's like, "Follow me".  But what I think you don't like in the moment is if other people are changing things around you, because I think that it's about control. But you're not particularly difficult, it's just I can see the freeze.  I can see that it's almost like a stutter.  I can almost hear the stutter, but I can see it as well, because I know you, because it's just the energy to move it forward isn't there; you just want to freeze in that moment.  But it doesn't take very long for you to unfreeze. Sarah Ellis: But that's really helpful.  And imagine if someone was working with Helen or me for the first time, how helpful it would be to know those things.  You already start to get a sense of what's most important.  And again, as you were describing that, I was trying to connect the dots between when I'm at my worst and why, in terms of my values.  I think it's because it jeopardises my achievement value, because in my head I'm achieving, but I've framed that achievement in a certain way and I'm very committed and driven to that achievement.  So, I think it's almost like chipping away; in my head it chips away at that, so that's why you get to that point about achievement. There are a couple of exercises you can do.  So, "more about me" is one way to do it.  Another way that you could do it is something called "the four Hs", which I think we have mentioned before on the podcast, and there is a great article about an American football team that have used the four Hs.  They used it when a team wasn't working, so they felt like the team weren't playing for each other essentially.  They were a team of individuals, but they weren't playing as a team and they weren't performing on the pitch. The four Hs stand for Heroes, History, Heartbreak and Hopes.  The way that that team did it is they took it in turns, and they all got I think it was five minutes, not very long, five or ten minutes, and you could talk about Heroes, History, Heartbreak, Hopes in whatever order you wanted to, but that was your structure for sharing with the rest of the team.  Everybody else just listens and you just listen for that five minutes or for that ten minutes. I actually know somebody else who did this exercise, and everybody did it at the same time.  So, the American football team split it, so they were getting together every week and every week, they started their get-together with someone doing their four Hs, so you could do it like that.  I do know someone else where they were getting together for a new network, and they used it as a very quick way for that network to get to know each other, which I also thought was a really lovely idea.  So, that's a slightly different framework. Then, one that I know Helen's used before, which I always really love, and we've never done as a team, but I would really like to, is a Spotify playlist.  So, I think this is a great one if you're thinking values could potentially just feel like you might get maybe not a brilliant reaction to this idea of doing values, but most people love music, or love some music.  The idea here is that everybody chooses a track that just means something to them, and then you put together a playlist for your team, you play those tracks, and then people just talk a little bit about why they chose that track. I think this is the easiest starting point probably for values that we're going to talk about today.  And I think if you just wanted something fun and energising and quite upbeat, there's something great about just playing music, for a start, that maybe we don't expect at work, unless maybe you work in Spotify, I guess; and I think everybody has a song.  It's very universally appealing for everybody. Helen Tupper: I remember when I did this as well.  It's quite interesting, because the song that I chose was Mary Poppins' A Spoonful of Sugar, for various reasons that I won't go into.  But I know that you know this, I'm going to see Mary Poppins this weekend with my daughter, Madeleine.  So, I might listen to that song with a little smile about this podcast recording in mind! Sarah Ellis: Oh, that's nice! Helen Tupper: So, our second idea for action is all about high/low learning.  So, it's often in the highest moments in a working week that our values are present, and it is in our lowest moments in a working week that there's something missing, there's something that we need that is not there.  This is a really good exercise to do in pairs, because I think you get really, really practical.  Sometimes, some of these reflection exercises can sometimes feel a bit theoretical, but literally thinking about, "What was the best moment of this week, and what was a moment that wasn't working well for me?" really helps you to see how this stuff is playing out in your day-to-day work. For example, one of the best moments for me this week would have been an event that Sarah and I did yesterday actually, and the reason why, and it's always important to do, "Why was it a high?" was because I felt that there were lots of micro-moments of achievement, because each moment on that agenda was a win along the way, and there was huge amounts of energy in the room.  And one of my other values is growth, and the last time that we had the community that we'd brought together in the room was about two-and-a-half years ago now, pre-pandemic, and to really think about how much that particular group of people and the work that we do with that group of people had grown over that period was very rewarding.  So, I can see so much of what matters most to me in that moment in my working week. Equally, you might go to a low, which probably for me would have been earlier in the week, when I was working on my own in my office.  And what I can learn from a low is that I get a lot of energy from being around lots of people.  So, if I'm spending quite a lot of time on my own, I start to feel a bit isolated, that I'm not getting that energy that helps me to achieve, that I'm not getting the inspiration that helps me grow, all those other things that are important. I would recommend, when you're doing this in pairs, that you just do the reflection, so I might talk to Sarah about my high and my low; and then Sarah can playback what she's heard.  What it does is it means that Sarah stays a really active listener, because she's got a job.  She is listening to what I'm saying, she's picking out the words that I'm saying the most, she's trying to spot clues, words that I keep repeating, for example; and then what happens is, when she replays those clues back to me, it creates clarity for me, because I might not really realise what insights there are in what I'm sharing, and she can do that.  And then you can do it for each other, so it's a really good exercise to do in pairs. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, the reason I like it so much in pairs, and we've seen this in action so many times, is I love the fact that you can just share your high and your low without having to think about it too much.  Your partner's job is to really listen, to say, "Do you realise you said 'freedom' four times?" or, "You got really motivated and animated in this moment".  But all the other person's job to do is, "This moment was brilliant.  This moment was not so great", and you're not going to do too much thinking, you've just got to share. Again, what's really nice about this is, doing it within the last week, most people can do it.  If you actually broaden this or zoom out and do in the last six months or in the last year, it's a harder exercise to do, because you're asking people, you know, we don't have great memories generally, and you're asking people to think quite deeply, and they probably need more time to prepare or reflect beforehand, so it actually makes the awareness actually less meaningful versus actually doing in the moment increases that meaningfulness.  And then, it's a really easy exercise to encourage people to continue to do for themselves. I think then if you've done it as a pair, I think you then, as an individual, start to spot this for yourself.  So, you help someone else, and then you can continue to help yourself.  And I think it also prompts other conversations.  So, really easy exercise, but probably of all the ones that we've done, we've done this a lot in rooms and a lot in workshops, and everyone comes back from this exercise, when they've been in breakouts, just feeling really energised, so it's a really good exercise. So, idea for action three is called a "quarterly compass review".  So, we think of values as a bit like a career compass, when we're thinking about them in the context of how they're useful for your career.  And the reason that we think of them as a compass is, they guide you, they guide your choices, they help you to make sure you're heading in the right direction; and in a world of Squiggly Careers, where there's loads of change and uncertainty, I feel good that I've got this imaginary career compass that's a bit more of a constant, that I can keep coming back to and I can keep using as a filter for, "Am I doing work that I really enjoy?  Am I doing work that I find fulfilling?  Is there anything that isn't quite working for me?" This isn't a binary black and white, that once I live all of my values at work, they stay still; we want to have a way to keep revisiting, "How much am I using my values and living my values, practising my values, to use Brené's term, through the work that I'm doing?"  Again, this could be one of those ones, a bit like Helen said, "Sometimes values can be a bit theoretical and abstract".  If we just talked around this, again you risk either a nice chat, or a waffly discussion. Both Helen and I have used this with managers, but I think you could also use this with mentors.  You could even discuss this as a team, as a whole, potentially; so, you could use this in a few different ways.  And that is, take your three or four values, or what you think your values might be, even if they're just clues as to what your values might be, you might not have the exact right words, I don't think that matters too much; and for each of them, either give them a red/amber/green score or a score out of ten. I tend to find a score out of ten feels more useful for me, and that's because when we then get onto the "so what" of this, I find it a bit easier with the out of ten; but I have also done it with the red/amber/green rating, and that got me started.  So, you might want to experiment with what feels useful for you. So, to bring this to life, if I was doing this right now, my four values are: achievement, ideas, learning and variety.  So, if I was having a conversation with Helen, as my manager or my mentor, let's imagine she's one of those two things, or both of those things at the moment, I might say to Helen, "In my work right now, I feel like I'm at an 8/10 for achievement, a 6/10 for ideas, a 7/10 for learning and a 9/10 for variety".  And so automatically, you then start to go, "Well, what are you doing well that's helping achievement and variety to be in such a good place?"  We don't want to ignore that, because you want to keep doing what's working well.  It's really easy to go straight to, "Ideas were a six", that's where we automatically all want to go, and you're probably listening and going, "Fix the six". Helen Tupper: "Fix the six!" Sarah Ellis: "Fix the six!" and you do want to fix the six.  But first, I think it is just good to acknowledge and recognise and notice, "There's an eight and a nine there; that's high.  Talk to me about what in your work is contributing to those things.  How could you increase those opportunities; how do you sustain; how do you continue?"  So, keep doing the good stuff that's helping your values to be really present in your work, so we don't want to ignore that. Then we might want to look at the six and the seven, and I think what's helpful there is thinking, "What would it take to get from a six on ideas to a seven or eight; what would that look like?"  And I think if I'm having that conversation with Helen, I've maybe got an idea, I've maybe thought about that beforehand and think, "Ideas doesn't feel as present as I would like it to be, I'm not practising ideas as much as I would like to be.  Could I get involved in this project?  Is there an opportunity over here?"  I might have some initial first thoughts that I'm going to share with Helen. But then Helen's value is that Helen might know opportunities or possibilities that I can't see, that she could share with me.  And before this, she might not have realised that my ideas were a 6/10.  She might have been, "I know Sarah loves ideas, but I feel she probably gets enough of that".  So, she's understanding how I'm feeling about it, and then she has the chance to then support me to then get really specific about actions and just explore. You don't need to fix the six in that moment, but it is just good to know about it, because it then helps you to have that almost confirmation bias; once you know it, you then start to spot, "Actually, there's this opportunity over here, which feels like it needs lots of new ideas, and Sarah needs to fill up that ideas well a bit right now.  So, that would be a really great opportunity for her"; versus if I'd said I was an eight or a nine, then maybe there's someone else somewhere else who that would be a better fit for. Helen Tupper: I just think this makes conversations about values so much more easy to discuss, because the alternative would be, let's say somebody's not feeling great at work at the moment, and they'd gone to their manager, and this becomes, I think, quite a tricky conversation, because I'm their manager and I'm going, "How are you feeling?" and they're going, "I don't know, not great at the moment".  I'm like, "What's going on?"  "Don't know, it's just not quite working out, it's just not quite what I want at the moment".  "How can I help you to be happier at work?" That's like, "How can I help you to be happier at work?" is a massive question, really massive.  It's complex and hard, and the other person probably doesn't know, because it's too big.  Whereas, when you break it down into, "These are my values, therefore these are the things that make me happy at work.  And against each of these things that make me happy at work, this is how I'm feeling right now", accepting that that might look different in a month, it means that we can just have a much more specific conversation. Then, when you start to build a scale into that, so I've gone not just from generically what makes me happy, but into these three or four things, and then for each of those three or four things, I've got a scale; we just get to a much more meaningful conversation about that thing.  And you can do that more regularly, whereas just the, "How can I help you be happy at work?" is just too big; it's too big and it's too hard, and it's probably an uncomfortable discussion for lots of people. This becomes easier, "Okay, ideas are important to you.  When have you felt like you were generating more ideas in the past?  What could we do differently now?" a specific conversation that might make a small difference in the moment, but it's these small differences, rather than having these massive highs and really significant lows.  With the idea of using this as a quarterly compass, it's lots of little adjustments that help you to be happier every day, rather than just dismissing this until you're having a really bad month or a bad six months, I think. Sarah Ellis: And I think this is often, you know when people talk to me sometimes about, "There's nothing wrong at work", but they're just not feeling it.  They're just feeling a bit demotivated, feel like they've lost their mojo a bit, but they can't pinpoint something specific.  Often, it's really easy if you're like, "My manager's really difficult".  You're like, "Okay, that's hard, but I know what I need to do, or I know what I've got to try and work with here".  Whereas, if you're feeling more vaguely, "This doesn't feel great, but I don't know why", I often think values is the answer usually to that.  So, it's always quite helpful to know that. The other thing about having these conversations is, work doesn't have to be all of the answer to increasing these scores from six to seven, from seven to eight, and I think it's also worth thinking about that.  So, although we're talking about this in the context of in work and in your teams, it might be that Helen and I are having a conversation where we say, "Okay, I'm a 6/10 at the moment.  One of the things that I think I'd like to do is, I'd like to do some volunteering for something, where I know I'm going to get to use my ideas value" or there's a hobby that I'm going to spend a bit more time on, because all of the answers don't need to come from your day job. If as many of the answers as possible can come from your day job, great, because you're spending a lot of time in that job.  But I think we've also got to let go of the expectations of, your work can't fulfil all of what's important to you in your world.  And we know that, and that's why your values are not work values and home values.  So interestingly, when you're doing this scale, important I think for you to be clear about, are these scores across all of your week, all of your life, or just in your working week.  And if they are just in your working week, don't forget you've got the rest of your life that you can also look to to increase those scores.  Even small things can make a really big difference. I find if I've having a lower achievement score, if I'm then playing sport, because I get a real sense of achievement from playing sport, you go, "But I've increased that value from something that's nothing to do with work, but then I feel better at work as well".  So, I think we don't want to be, certainly asking our managers or mentors to fix this, but it is a really good prompt I think for specific conversations, around something that can really then increase people's motivation and meaning at work. Helen Tupper: Yeah, absolutely.  And just to close off on it, again I mentioned one of my values is energy.  Tonight, for example, I'm going out with a community I'm part of, and sometimes you might think, "Helen, you're a bit tired, you've got a lot on.  Is that really something you should prioritise?"  But Sarah would know that that's part of how I get my energy fulfilled, and it's a way that I get it fulfilled outside of work.  So, it's a thing to support and see why I do that. So, our fourth and final idea for action is all about using someone within your team who knows about your values as a helpful filter for your future.  I obviously have a high level of trust for Sarah, so I find this easy to do, so I do think trust is important in this particular idea for action.  But when you are making career decisions, so maybe you're thinking about changing the shape of your work, or moving to another role inside or outside of your business, or studying something at the same time as you're working, any of those kinds of decisions, sometimes we can find those decisions difficult to make, because we're just not sure what to do, we're not sure what the right answer is.  And to be honest, I don't know how often there are right answers, but just a decision you're making that you commit to. But what can I think be really helpful is when you are in that decision-making process, to have somebody that you trust and somebody that knows your values, because you've done some of the stuff that we've just talked about, who can hold your values up to you as a bit of a filter for those future decisions and say, "Okay, Helen, well you talked previously that energy was really important to you, so which one of these options do you have energy for?" or, "When you're talking about this option, you seem to have more energy for it.  How does that connect with your values?" and just to ask you some of those curious questions, because they know you and they know your values, and they're using that to help you prompt some thinking about the decisions that you're making. I've always found that really useful, because there's so many factors that go into your decision-making, you're trying to predict what your future's going to be sometimes, and you can't predict the future.  But what you do know is your values, because they're your constant.  I think it just helps you to be a little bit more balanced about a decision-making process, and somebody else doing that for you, that prompting, gives you some perspective that you might not have for yourself in that moment. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's interesting just listening to you there, I was thinking it's sort of peer-to-peer values coaching, which actually might be something useful for us to think about as a resource for people for if you're doing this for somebody, probably someone you already know and you trust; I think you've got to have that as the basis for these conversations.  But what are the sorts of useful questions that are values-based coaching questions that you can ask somebody, because we're probably very used to doing this and obviously, this is the world that we spend all of our time in. But when we go to friends or family, or work best friends to have these conversations, you do feel a real responsibility.  You can see that someone's either stuck, or they're making a real big choice, or they're searching for a right answer.  And I think if you look at that through the lens of reminding someone, "What's most important to you about this decision?" or, "What's most important to you about your working week at the moment?  Is it a four-day week; is it lots of flexibility about how you work?"  I'm having quite a few conversations with people at the moment where they're thinking about what they want to do, and they really want to be around people again in a physical space.  Maybe that's because they love to collaborate, maybe collaboration is a really important value to them. So often, people will rarely talk in values.  You're rarely go, "My value is X, and that means Y", because that would also be a bit weird.  But I think even having those conversations, I think because of what we do, I often do start to get a sense for what's most important to this person, and therefore the sorts of questions that you might ask that might be useful, you know, "Are you guessing that you're going to get more of that value, or do you know?" for example.  You can just start to be that really useful mirror, I think, for people to just hold up somebody's either decision or opportunity, to help them just really think it through, particularly if they feel like they're going round in circles, or they just can't see the wood for the trees anymore. Helen Tupper: Absolutely.  And if you're doing that for somebody else, I think just make sure that you're in "ask" mode, not in "advise" mode, because they're two different things.  You could be a mentor, but if they've gone round gathering lots of other people's opinions, they probably don't need another one, because the more information they've got, the more confused they are.  What you could do to really help them in that moment is ask them questions that get them to clarity, rather than give them yet another opinion that's going to keep them spiralling about their decision. So, they are our four ideas for action, so let's just recap them for you: the first is "more about me", and we've got a good PDF to help you with that, which I'll tell you about where you can get in a second; the second is that high/low learning exercise; the third idea for action was the quarterly compass review; and the fourth idea for action was using someone in your team as a filter for your future. We will summarise the ideas for action, and also some links to some resources that we think will be helpful for you, in our Squiggly Careers PodSheet.  You can get the link to that; if you listen on Apple, it's pretty easy to find.  It's on the description and you'll just be able to click through.  If you don't listen on Apple, do not worry, you don't need to, but go to our website, amazingif.com.  If you go to the podcast page and find this podcast on how to talk about values in teams, you'll see all the resources.  You'll see the PodNotes, you'll see the PodSheet, you'll also see a little recording that we do. If you want to be a part of a conversation about this topic, you can always join PodPlus.  It's every Thursday morning for 30 minutes at 9.00am.  Again, all the links to that stuff are on our website, and you can even sign up for PodMail.  We'll just give it to you every week in an email, so it's all in one place for you. Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening, we really do appreciate it.  We know loads of you share Squiggly with other people, subscribe, you write us reviews that we read every week; and talking about those highs in our week, that's definitely always a moment for me.  I always look out for that email that summarises any new reviews we've got, because they always just feel really personal, and they also help us to know where we're being useful and relevant for you too. So, if you've got two minutes to leave us a review, we'd always really appreciate it.  But that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back with you again soon. Helen Tupper: Bye everyone. Sarah Ellis: Bye everyone.