Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:03:43: Ideas for action…

00:05:05: … 1: set yourself a growth goal

00:13:06: … 2: connect with or create a learning community

00:19:33: … 3: start a skills sprint

00:26:26: … 4: increase your feedback frequency

00:30:21: 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.  Every week, we talk about a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions that we hope will help all of us to navigate these Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control.

Helen Tupper: And today's episode is on the theme of a post-summer reset.  And this is something that we've written about in our latest Harvard Business Review article.  I want to dive a little bit into why we think this is a really good time for a reset, and then how we go about it.  So we're going to bring that article to life for you today with some of Sarah's and my thoughts, and I guess of our stories of what this looks like for us right now, and then we'll put the link to the article in the show notes in case you want to review that or share it with other people if you think it might be helpful for them.  So, Sarah, we are two-thirds of the way through the year.  I looked, there are 105 days left of 2024, and I always think that September kind of has those back-to-school, back-to-work vibes. 

I was thinking, you know at the start of the year, where it's like new year, new me?  I think this is more like new pencil case, new me, like you get yourself a new notebook, or you start September with this idea of being shiny off the back of August, which is supposed to be a time of holidays and reflection and newness.  I mean, that isn't how my August generally feels.  But how are you feeling about September?

Sarah Ellis: Well, I like the September-ness of the kind of momentum of between now and the end of the year.  I feel like it's a short enough window that you can look at it.  It's short enough but at the same time long enough.  I'm like, okay, I've got the time to make things happen that maybe I haven't made happen so far this year, so I sort of stand a chance of that, and I generally like this time of year.  Like you say, I think you have a different energy.  It usually takes me a little while just to get going, because I do enjoy, over the summer, like we as a company work in a different way.  Pretty much everyone has holidays or goes away at different times, so there's almost a bit more space for yourself.  We do a different kind of work, we do more deep work over the summer, and both of those things suit me.  And so I quite enjoy that.  I enjoy the slowing down, the strategic, almost hard work.  We do some hard yards, so I felt like I did some hard yards in August.

So, it takes me a little while just to let that go and re-find a very different sort of energy, which I'm now feeling actually.  Today is probably the first day that I've felt that.  And so, yeah, that's taken me -- and we're about a week into September, so I'm beginning to sort of re-find, it's not re-find my flow, but re-find a different kind of flow, I think.

Helen Tupper: I always think I'm so impatient about September, like I'm so ready to get back for September.  I think I'm ready before other people.  So, I don't really love August.  I've decided this. Sarah Ellis: No, you don't like August, do you?  I know you didn't like it last year for some very good reasons, but I just think it's not the month for you. Helen Tupper: Yeah, I feel like it's just not my month.  I'm actually, next year, going to reclaim August.  I feel like I don't do August in a way that makes me look forward to it and I'm in such a rush to get back to September.  This is why I'm quite happy we're talking about resets today, because I think I'm in such a rush to get back to September that sometimes I forget to do the reset bit, to use it for its advantage. 

I'm like, get rid of August, get back into it.  And so, I think I rush back into what I was doing before, rather than using September as a moment for a bit of a refresh and a reset.  So, all of our things that we're talking about today, I'm very keen to go away and do for myself.

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so we've got four ideas that we're going to talk to you about, and I think if you're listening and you even do one of these and really commit to one of these, you'll be that bit further ahead with your career development than you were before.  And it will also help you overcome the challenge of like, "We want to develop and we want to do some learning", but then all of the doing kicks in.  And I do think often, September, you use this phrase, earlier where you said it was very like full steam ahead and that you feel that, but also you feel that from other people, like that's the same.  So, it kind of creates this crashing of like, "Right, come on, let's go and let's do everything, and everything needs to happen now!"

Helen Tupper: Everyone's running at once, aren't they?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah. Helen Tupper: It's funny, as I was coming off the train this morning, you know you're listening to people's chats, and there was a woman and a man just talking about post-summer and she's like, "Oh, how are you, did you have a nice summer?"  And then they both said, "Oh, yeah, but gosh it's a bit intense now, isn't it?" because I feel like everybody comes back just all running into the month together, because they realise that they've had this pause and things that maybe they put down during the summer holidays, they need to pick back up again, and everyone's trying to almost get the motor running quite fast.  And so, yeah, I think making sure that we don't miss the moment to reflect and reset is quite important. 

And it can be tricky to do when everybody is trying to push forward at the same time.

Sarah Ellis: So, our first action is to set yourself a growth goal.  And we say 'goal' rather than 'goals', because I think at this time of the year, it is really helpful to have one goal that's all about you and how you want to grow between now and the end of the year.  And so I think, did you calculate, Helen, it's 105 days, or something?

Helen Tupper: Yes, from the day of this podcast going out to the end of 2024, 105 days.

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so we can round down.  I know you'd probably round up.  I'm, like, so you can create yourself a 100-day goal and really think about what goal would feel really motivating for you.  And so, we've got a few questions just to spark your thoughts around what that goal could be, because I think they can be very different.  So it might be, "What do I want to be known for and how can I use that skill and strength more?" 

So, maybe it's a strength-based goal.  "What do I want to be true about my impact in three months' time?"  So, maybe there's something really specific about your role in terms of the difference that you want to make.  "Who am I learning from?"  So, maybe your goal is more about who you're surrounding yourself with.  "What haven't I done before that I would like to try out?"  So, maybe there's an opportunity to set a goal about being a beginner, trying something new, doing something that's been on your mind so far this year but you just haven't got to.  "What am I curious to learn more about?"  So, you could have a goal that's about following your curiosity in a certain area.

Helen Tupper: An example of a growth goal could be to lead your first global project in the next three months, or to improve your presentation skills and use them more in situations, or maybe to develop your coaching capability and use it to support your colleagues, so taking that skill and then also being specific about in what situation are you going to use it.  I think it's important with our growth goals that we try and make them both as realistic as possible, like the timeframe, but also as specific as possible so they just feel doable really.  I don't think you want it to feel like an aspiration, I think it wants to feel like something you can action.  So, Sarah, what would yours be? Sarah Ellis: So, this has actually made me stop and reflect.  So it's working, what we said we all need to do. 

I was thinking, my first thought was to have a goal to meet six people that I've not met before for a one-to-one conversation between now and Christmas.  That was my first.  I was like, "Oh, I can see how that would be useful", because it kind of gets you out of your echo chamber trap.  And newness I think is important, it always sparks ideas for me and I feel like I've neglected that over the past few months because we've been writing, so you don't tend to talk to people much, you tend to focus more on writing.  And also, I know I've got a few people who I could have those conversations with.

My only slight challenge to myself was there were also some people I would like to reconnect with, who I think have been very kindly waiting for me.  So, because we've been writing a book I've sort of had to say, it wasn't a 'no', it was just a 'not yet', but they are people who I learn a lot from and who I want to spend time with.  And then I was like, "Is nine too many?" because I'm also trying to put a filter on realism essentially, in terms of if I said nine, I appreciate for someone like Helen she might be like, "Well, I have nine conversations new people in one week"!

Helen Tupper: Tonight; tonight, Sarah!

Sarah Ellis: But I think I'm not really thinking about big events, I am thinking about a one-to-one conversation over a coffee or over a Zoom.  So, I think I might increase the number to eight and say that of those eight, I'd want five to be new connections and three to be reconnections.  And it's almost prompting me in my head, I'm starting to think about, okay, well I think I could, for maybe at least half of those now, even write down the names and start to get those scheduled, so you know they're coming, but then you leave some space for new things that come along the way.  And I would also very clearly really know whether I've done that or not, because it's actually quite binary, because it's got some data and it's got a number behind it.  And I think for both me and my energy and my learning, it has lots of advantages, and often really good things come from those conversations.  So, that is going to be my growth goal.

Helen Tupper: I think you might need to help me prioritise mine, because I think I've got two that I'm quite interested in, but to the point of finding a bit of focus.  So, one thing that I would like to have as my growth goal is to swap my social media minutes for learning minutes, which is something that we've been talking about a little bit.  So, I often find it's less downtime, but like the between moments, I often find myself scrolling on social media. 

I don't really enjoy it, it feels like a waste of time, don't really feel great afterwards.  And I am trying, I've tried to set up a few new things, so it's easier for me to swap that social scrolling for learning scrolling.  So, just in case it helps other people, the app that I'm using at the moment to enable me to do this is called Inoreader, a bit like Feedly, but it's just helped me to sort of reset and start from scratch, blank piece of page.  You set it up with things that you like to learn from and then you just swipe through that instead and learn from that.  And I'd like to then make that like just more of a habit, so that's the first thing that I go to in that time.  And so, my growth goal is, be intentional about swapping social media minutes for learning minutes.  So, that's one thing.

The other thing that I would like to do is triggered by that first question you asked, "What do you want to be known for and how can you use it more?"  One of the things that I think I'm really good at is iterating ideas, the whole prototyping thing that we talk about, and creating an energy around an idea.  I can kind of suss out quite quickly if it's something that we should take forward.  And I think you and I have got a couple of ideas about some things we maybe do with the podcast, some things that we do with learning communities for the companies we work with.  I want to put that on a page and get some fast feedback and prototype it visually, and I have not used that skill for a little while.  I've created myself a little list, because I think technology is often part of this.  I've created myself a little growing list of, "Tech to try", of things that I keep seeing.  I'm like, "I want to try that.  I want to play with that".  I often find that I create value when I do that, but I haven't created the time or the focus to do it. So, I don't know, what would you, if you were like, "Helen, over the next 100 or so days, I think you would get more value…", or we would get more value, from which one of those?

Sarah Ellis: Well, which one would you feel prouder of achieving by Christmas?

Helen Tupper: I think I'd feel prouder of using my prototyping skills to create something for the business.  Though I think I'd feel good about myself if I swapped my social media minutes for learning minutes.  Am I allowed two?

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: You're so mean!

Sarah Ellis: I'm not mean, I'm realistic.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, that's true.

Sarah Ellis: And I also think it doesn't mean that you still couldn't try or work on the other one, or there'll be some natural.  Like, you've already made some progress on swapping social media minutes for learning minutes through, you just described something you've already done.  But that point is, if you don't use the forcing function of going, "Well, what matters more?" then the risk is I guess you don't do either, or you do both but neither very well.

Helen Tupper: Do you know what, I think it's the social media minutes for learning minutes, because as a result of doing that already, my tech-to-try-out list has been informed by what I've read.  And then last week on LinkedIn, I shared two reports.  I did a bit of 'with people' as a result of what I'd read that was useful.  So, I think that is the, if I do that, it has a knock-on effect on other things that I do.  So, that's going to be my goal.

Sarah Ellis: Okay!

Helen Tupper: I want that to go in my to-do vault.  It's useful to have this chat, thanks!

Sarah Ellis: Thanks for listening, everybody!

Helen Tupper: You're welcome to my -- I do feel like today, we are very much just having a conversation with each other here!  It's helped me, hopefully it can help you!  Right, idea number two.  So, idea number two is to connect with or create a learning community.  And the point here is that when you learn with other people, not only are you more likely to stick to what you start, but the learning that you get from that is more likely to last, because discussing it makes learning last longer, sharing what you know is kind of for our brains, that's better for our brains to be able to do that.

  So, there's loads of benefits of learning communities.  And I think when you think about a learning community, this doesn't have to be a really big group that meets in person.  I mean, it could be something like that.  So, I think Rebel Book Club, it doesn't meet in person, they meet virtually, but that's a brilliant and quite large learning community that you can be part of.  Or PodPlus is one that we create for people, and that's one that meets virtually as well.  It's a really lovely community that you can be part of. But it could also be a learning community that exists on WhatsApp.  This could be like three or four people that set an intent about what it is they want to learn, and then share regularly within a WhatsApp group. 

So, just don't be overwhelmed by the word 'community'.  I think sometimes, it can feel a bit formal and quite large, and it doesn't have to be.  I just think of it more as a commitment between a group of people.  So, while we've got some of this kind of September energy to invest in ourselves, it's a really good moment to join communities that already exist.  And that, I think, sometimes takes a little bit of confidence to join a community that's already connected.  But it is a really good moment in time to do it and the fact they've already got the rhythm, they've already got the focus, they've already got when and where they meet sorted, that takes a bit less effort from you. So, as an example of like, I'm just trying to think when I was back at Microsoft, some internal communities that I could have joined.  So, there were manager communities, people that were kind of sharing manager skills.  There was one community that just existed on Microsoft Teams, which I think was called The Crucible.  It's basically a curiosity community where people kind of shared what they like learning. 

And so it didn't actually ever have a meeting, but it was one that you could join that community and you could contribute to it, and might help you build relationships with people outside of just the daily to-do.  You can also join external communities as well, so it might be worth just having a look at what communities exist that are connected to your profession.  Most professions have pre-existing communities.  Or you could maybe ask somebody else what communities they are part of that they find useful.  And if you're feeling a bit brave, ask them, "Oh, I'd love to learn a bit more, could I come along to something, or could I join something that community is doing next time you're with them?" So, I think don't forget that those communities, lots of people have this need for connection and learning, and so lots of communities already exist.  If you can't see them, ask about them and ask to get involved in them.

Sarah Ellis: And so we asked our Squiggly Careers community for some examples just to help bring this to life.  Some organisations, I have to say none that I've ever worked in, because I would absolutely have always been part of this, have book clubs.  I'd love to have been part of a book club.  Where was that when I was working in corporate land?  I obviously felt the need so much, I was like, "I'm just going to have to write one instead".  Or, what we see more commonly now is podcast clubs or Pod Squads, as they're sometimes called, or people doing things like Tea and TED, get a cup of tea, come and watch a TED Talk together, or having watch parties.  We saw that a lot with the Squiggly Career sprint, people getting together to watch something.  They're sort of learning groups, I guess, but often they have a bit of a theme, or maybe people just follow their curiosity. You sometimes see communities of practice, which sounds a bit more formal, but that's often where there's a group of people who've got something that they want to get better at. 

So, it could be around something as broad as leadership, or maybe it's coaching.  You get a lot of coaching communities of practice, but inside organisations where people are committed to supporting people with their career development.  Or it could be just something that is a topic or area of interest.  So, it might be inclusion, or it might be technology, just where I think people gather together because they're like, "Well actually, I'm just really interested in how we use technology and the latest tech, and I want to try stuff out, or AI and how that might be impacting our industry". I often find this one, as someone who is more introverted, I do find it a more intimidating action.  Initially you look at it and you're like, "Oh, wow, this can feel really hard".  But I think if you just start small and you go to communities that already exist, and these can be internal or external, the barriers to entry are often quite low.  And also you can sort of, I don't want to use the word 'sneak' in, but you can sort of join quite quietly, which I think is reassuring.  So, if you go along to Rebel Book Club, or something along those lines, you can just read the book, you can join, you don't have to be very jazz hands about it, you can just be part of the group.  And I think that can feel really nice and give you a real boost and a real sense of learning something you didn't do before by not being part of those communities.

Helen Tupper: And I think if you're going to create your own, start with one thing.  So, I've recently been invited to join a community which only exists on WhatsApp.  I was like, "Yeah, I really support what that community is about, really want to contribute and learn from the other people in it".  But nothing's really happened yet, I would say, nothing's really happened, and maybe nothing will.  And that's okay.  I think you're okay to experiment with this. 

Also, you could just set up like one Zoom or one Teams meeting and say, "Oh, we're all interested in this area.  It'd be good to share what you're learning at the moment, where you're learning it from, and I'll set up 45 minutes for us all to do that".  And maybe there's some energy in that that means that you meet again and you learn again together, or maybe you don't.  Maybe it's just served its purpose.  I don't think a learning community has to continue for the entirety of your career.  Some do.  Some communities I'm part of, I've used this sort of either new-year, new-September energy to kind of set them up or join, and they are still part of my career; and some just exist for a really short period of time.  But they do help you, I think, prioritise your development, make sure you're learning from other people, just give you that bit of a reset into what learning can look like.

Sarah Ellis: So, action number three is to start a skills sprint.  I think this is really useful if, let's say, you weren't able to do the August Skills Sprint with us, or maybe you did do it and you loved it and you want to keep that momentum going.  And I think this helps you to make progress really quickly.  So, when we say a skills sprint, our suggestion here is to do one week.  So, just pick a week and choose a topic that you want to learn more about.  It could be really, really specific and niche, could be something really big, but you just think, "I want to know more at the end of this week about this topic than I know today".  And we were looking at it, we think you probably need about 15 minutes a day, probably at the start of your day so that you stand a chance of making this happen.  You can get quite far quite fast using a lot of what's already available.  And, of course you're not going to have cracked a topic within five days, but actually often you'll feel really proud of, "Do you know what, I've really invested in me and my development this week.  I have seen what's worked for me and maybe what didn't, like what did I really enjoy of the skills sprint that I've designed for myself".  And then, it might be something you could do with somebody else as well. So, we brought this to life, just to really make this specific for you, so we've picked a topic, we've picked leadership, and we're going to talk to you about what that could look like in five days.

  So, day one is your learning landscape, let's assume you just don't know what you don't know here.  Use search, use ChatGPT, which is your friend for this week, and just ask, "What skills do you need to be a brilliant leader?"  See what it says, with a healthy dose of scepticism and bias that we know is built into these things, but just see what comes back.  So, we did this.  I got a massive list and I was like, "Right, well that's way too long to be useful".  Don't forget to use prompts, which Helen was brilliant at.  Helen was like, "Give it a prompt, give it a prompt".  So then we said, "Well, which three skills matter most?" 

Now, you can debate in your own mind whether you think they've got it right, but at least it gives you something to start with.  So, we got back emotional intelligence, adaptability, vision and strategic thinking.  And I'd go, "Do you know what?  Not a bad place to start".  And that's it.  Day one, you've done 15 minutes, you've essentially done some kind of researching. Day two, your 15 minutes is spent with experts, so getting some expert insights.  This could be a podcast, this could be reading some articles, this could be watching some TED Talks.  Again, ChatGPT will tell you who these experts are.  For emotional intelligence, you could go to somebody like Daniel Goleman; adaptability, we got Adam Grant from ChatGPT; strategic thinking, we put in Margaret Heffernan because we knew that.  Amy Edmondson also came up.  Quick watch-out that we experienced when we were doing this, all of the names that we got every time were always men, which is disappointing.  And it was only because we then spotted that, that you can then ask, you can say, "Okay, so what women might also have some insights on leadership?"  And we had a slight advantage here that we knew some.  But just keep your eye out for those kinds of things.  Just think about, "Okay, have I got a range here, or a mix of people?" Day three, put something that you have learned into practice.  This is a bit about like a trial or a test and learn, probably not going to give it to anyone else, it's just you're starting to turn your awareness or your knowledge into doing, into action.  So here we thought, well you could try out situation complication resolution, which is a sort of strategy structure.  So, you could think, "Well, on a project that I'm working on, what's the situation, what's complicated about it, what are some of the challenges or some of the obstacles, what could some of the resolutions be?"  And it will just encourage you to sort of zoom out of maybe your day-to-day, good bit of strategic thinking, bit of zooming out. Day four, asking for help.  Now you've probably got a bit more knowledge, who could help you?

 Who, in your organisation, is a strategic thinker or a leader that you look up to?  By this point, you might have started to really go in one direction.  So, you might be like, "Oh, actually, the thing I'm most interested in is the strategy bit".  Or, you might have still stayed a bit more zoomed out and just thought leadership generally.  And so, this is when your 15 minutes might be spent sending people a few Teams messages or a few emails saying, "Any chance we could have a 15-minute career conversation?  Really interested in this".  And you might even kind of do a bit of a, "And this is what I found out so far", to show someone you've put some work in already. Then day five, capture your learning.  So, one of the things that Helen and I have started to use more and more is this idea of, "What; so what; now what?"  And I think actually it's really tempting on day five to then do something new. 

Helen and I were really tempted to be like, "Oh, what can we learn now?" like keep adding on, adding on, adding on.  But we know that for learning to last, you've got to consolidate it, you've got to give your brain some space, because essentially that's how what you learn moves from your short-term memory to your long-term memory.  It's how you make learning last and it's how you make it stick.  There's no newness on day five, there's just a, "What have I learned so far this week?  What do I want to dive a bit deeper into?  Who else could help me?"  And so using that, "What do I know so far?  So, what does that mean for me?  Now, what action do I want to take?" just gives you a framework to keep that learning alive, even if your action is, "I'm not going to do anything differently yet, but you know what, I'm going to have a go at doing another learning sprint in four weeks' time and design that for myself". Helen and I did do this as a bit of prototyping just to check it worked.  And even within less than 10 minutes, we got quite far with some new things, some interesting articles.  I was like, okay, it definitely sparks your interest.  You sort of go down a useful rabbit hole, is how I would describe it.

Helen Tupper: And I think to Sarah's point about ChatGPT being your friend, I think what it's doing here is it is accelerating the identification of the skills and the experts.  It's still up to you to dive into their work, and I think the diversity of the people that you're looking at and learning from and the places that you're learning from is really important.  So, read an article and watch a TED Talk, listen to a podcast and flick through a book or something like that.  I think it's important that you consume information in slightly different ways.  But I do think ChatGPT, if you've only got 15 minutes a day, it does point you in the right direction pretty quickly so that you can spend time then learning from those places rather than looking for them.  I think that's why it's so useful for you.  I appreciate as well, Sarah ran through some really useful things there, the day one to day five things.  That information is in the article and we will put it in the PodSheet as well.  So, if you're thinking, "Oh, what did she say on day two?" we'll put all the links for that in the show notes to get that for you easily. So, the final idea for action, so that you can use the September energy as a bit of a post-summer career reset for yourself, is to increase your feedback frequency. 

So, we all know that feedback is a really good way to learn about ourselves and our impact at work, but often it can feel a little bit difficult.  We sometimes worry about when to ask and who to ask and what they're going to say, and those worries accumulate in our head and stop us doing anything with it.  So, the easier that we can make our asks and insights that we get from feedback, the better. One way that you can do this is asking the same question to several different people.  So, an easy ask from you that you ask to multiple people will accumulate lots of insights. 

And what's really useful about this is you can compare people's responses and think, "Oh, isn't it interesting that everyone said the same thing when I asked them that question?" or, "Isn't it interesting that everyone said something different?  Maybe I'm not showing up as consistently as I might like to".  Your insights are obviously really individual, so you won't know until you ask the question, but to make this easy for you, we've got a couple of example questions that work really well to ask more than one person.

So, "What three words would you use to describe me at my best?"  That's probably the one that we ask most frequently and it's the one that I've always found really, really revealing, because it helps you to see, it's really nice, you get some nice feedback, it's a bit of a boost to be honest to ask that question.  If you want a bit of a boost this month then go and ask that question, because you really see some nice words about yourself, and then you can compare them and do the whole consistent/inconsistent thing. 

Second question, "Where do you see me having the biggest impact in my work?"  That's really nice, I quite like contrasting that with my answer.  So, "I think I have the biggest impact in our team meetings", but everyone else says it's in your emails because your communications are clear.  It's quite interesting to contrast those.  And then another one, "What one piece of advice would you share with me to increase my influence?"  If you ask three or four people that question, you're gaining a lot of input that you can action pretty quickly. So, they're three questions.  Again, they're not the only ones, but they're just quick and easy for you to ask, quick and easy for someone to answer.  And the more people you ask that question, the more you can accumulate your insights as well.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think the value from these really come from their repeatability.  So, it's like, "Oh, I can ask Helen and I can ask Tom and I can ask Louise, I can ask somebody I work for, someone I work with, someone who works for me".  So, almost rather than generating lots of new questions the whole time, we have a much shorter list of questions that work to ask lots of different people.  But then as a result, we talked before about you get lots of data for your development, you get lots of insight that's very focused on the same thing, so you've created a really good frame for your feedback.  And given most of us have quite low frequency when it comes to feedback and we forget to do it, we don't know when to do it, or it ends up being really formal and it becomes part of reviews, again back to your goals, one of your goals between now and in the next 100 days could be, "Okay, well I'm going to explore how I could make feedback a habit to help me grow". 

And that might start with just asking people for feedback on your strengths, just do lots of strengths-based feedback, because maybe you're not that sure, perhaps you're your own worst critic. Or perhaps you've got something really specific like, "I want to increase my influence.  So, the only way I'm going to be able to really do that is maybe understand some advice from other people, maybe what gaps I've got".  Talk to people about, "When do you see me have good influence?" so perhaps you can do more of it.  So, you can use this to work however feels most helpful for you.  But if we never ask for feedback, I think we always limit our learning, because you are only reliant on what you know about yourself and you're missing out on what other people see about you too.

Helen Tupper: So, super-quick summary.  September, brilliant time for a post-summer reset, though we appreciate there's always a bit of a challenge, so we're trying to make it really easy for you to action this.  Four ideas that we've shared with you: one, set a growth goal; two, connect with or create a learning community; three, start a skill sprint; and four, increase your feedback frequency.  You don't need to do all of that.  It might be a bit overwhelming to try and do all of those things, so maybe pick the one that feels right for you right now.  And as I said, we'll put all the detail of that both in the PodSheet and you can read the article as well.  It's all in the show notes of the episode.

Sarah Ellis: That's everything for this week.  We'll be back with you again soon, but bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Thanks everyone.