Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:46: Having purpose vs being purposeful
00:03:58: Some research statistics
00:04:43: Follow your blister
00:07:01: Why we care about being purposeful
00:08:32: The Squiggly Career Sweet Spot...
00:09:36: ... 1: values
00:11:06: ... 2: strengths
00:14:14: ... 3: improvements
00:16:30: ... 4: impact
00:18:43: Creating your personal purpose statement
00:21:08: 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 show where we talk about the ins and outs of work, and give you a bit of support to help you with your skills so that you can succeed in your Squiggly Career.  And as well as the episode that we're going to talk through today, we've got lots of extra resources to help you.  So, you can download our one-page Squiggly Careers PodSheet, which is a summary of the episode.  It's got all the ideas that we'll talk about and some coach-yourself questions in.  And also, we would highly recommend that you sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action, which is our new weekly email.  It has everything from this episode in, as well as lots of other things to help you learn too.  So, you get some of Sarah's borrowed brilliance; you get a Helen how-to, where I talk through a practical career tool; and you get some secret behind-the-scenes stuff in the world of Squiggly Careers.  We'll leave it to you about whether you like that stuff or not, but you could always let us know.  Actually, on that point, anything we share in today's episode, all the emails that you can get, we love getting your feedback, so you can always email us at helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com. 

Sarah Ellis: So, today we're talking about what I suspect will be quite a popular topic, do you need to have a purpose at work?  And so, when we asked lots of you for topic ideas or areas you just needed some support with, we have people saying, "How do I stay connected to my purpose?  So, I get really lost in the day-to-day".  So, that implies this person has a purpose, but maybe kind of loses it along the way.  Other people are saying, "How do I know my purpose?  Everything's so squiggly".  What I really like about this person's feedback is they were like, "I like everything.  I'm interested and I'm curious.  So, it's really hard to nail down my purpose".  I was like, "Oh, that's a really good observation".  And then someone else saying, "I've been working for over 20 years, and I still don't feel like I've found a purpose.  Is that a problem, or am I doing something wrong?"

Helen Tupper: I often think when people talk about purpose, it's quite a popular thing, isn't it, to talk about my purpose?  And I find a bit of pressure in that, the idea that I'm supposed to have this one defining statement that is going to give me direction for my career. 

Sarah Ellis: My North Star.  You talk about the North Star a lot.

Helen Tupper: The North Star.  For all these years I'm supposed to be at work, I'm supposed to have this perfect purpose.  I find that quite hard to get to.  We were talking about, like, do you think you have a single purpose?  Do you think you have, like, from the idea of purposes, it's this one sentence that you can say out loud and that gives you that the North Star thing.  Have you got one?

Sarah Ellis: No, and I reflected on the whole of my career, 20-plus years, and I was like, I don't think I've had one and I've lost it.  And then I read quite a lot about purpose and about passion, so I was trying to immerse myself in this topic, because I thought, "Well, maybe I have got one, I just haven't realised it yet, or maybe I've just not said it out loud".  And my conclusion was, purpose feels a lot less important to me than just being purposeful in the work that I do.  And that kind of opened up lots of ideas and thoughts and opportunities for me, this idea of being, I definitely want to be purposeful in the work that I do, but actually purpose doesn't connect with me as a concept.  I just feel like maybe it's a bit lofty, perhaps not as practical probably as either you or I want things to be.  I'm always like, "How can I use this and how is this going to make me better?"  Whereas being purposeful, I can see how that could drive me to improve and to learn and to grow.

Helen Tupper: Well, if I was doing a mind map, if I started with, "What is your purpose?", pen and paper, I feel like I would just look at that for ages.  Whereas if the middle of the mind map was, "What makes you feel purposeful at work?" I think I'd have loads more things on that about some of the projects that we work on or some of the conversations that we have with people.  I would just be able to think a lot more.  That question is sort of too big and too high pressure for it to be useful for me.

Sarah Ellis: So, it turns out that we are the exception, not the rule, and apparently everybody else has it figured out. 

Helen Tupper: I don't believe this. 

Sarah Ellis: I'm not sure either.  So, some McKinsey research, and we will link to the article so you can have a read for yourselves, said 85% of people feel they have a purpose, which I thought felt really high.  Maybe they felt claimed behaviour versus actual.  I was like, maybe they felt they have to say it!

Helen Tupper: Almost invalidating this research!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  I mean, it could very much be true. 

Helen Tupper: Sorry, McKinsey. 

Sarah Ellis: And then, only 65% of them …

Helen Tupper: Only? 

Sarah Ellis: … but I still thought that was really high, felt that they could articulate that purpose.  So, they were sort of talking about this gap between, you've got this purpose but you don't know how to say it.  And I was like, "Oh, I'm not even sure that's where I start from", to be honest. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  So, 65%, that's like two in three people have a clear articulation of their purpose.  I'm like, well, we're two people. 

Sarah Ellis: Maybe we are the ones, maybe that's the problem! 

Helen Tupper: We're the odd ones out!

Sarah Ellis: And if you want a different article to read, and I recommend this to quite a few people for lots of different topics, like, it must be a useful one, so Dan Cable, who's been on the podcast before as one of our experts, a professor at London Business School, he wrote an article talking about what you should follow basically instead of your passions/purpose in quite a sort of interchangeable way.  And he talks about this idea of following your blisters.  And your blisters are essentially, you know blisters are annoying and they rub?

Helen Tupper: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: And so intuitively, I don't want to follow my blisters.  But his description is, "They are things that you basically keep coming back to.  Even if sometimes they're frustrating or annoying, you almost can't help yourself".  So, I was thinking about the podcast, which Helen's like, "Do not say that!"  But we've had various moments with the podcast.  We've got nearly 500 episodes, we've been doing it for five years, there are moments where obviously the podcast has felt, you know, we've been like we're not sure what to do with it, is it the right thing?  But we always come back to it, we can't ever let it go, I think because it feels really purposeful for us because we're really connected to the difference that we make.  And it's not just a podcast.

Helen Tupper: Oh, that's a nice outcome from you going, "We've done 500 episodes!"  It does feel purposeful.

Sarah Ellis: But that would be a good example where he's like, it's almost unavoidable.  Like writing books.  Writing books at times would probably be an equivalent for you sometimes.  I think I enjoy that slightly more than maybe you might at times.  But I bet you would describe writing a book sometimes as a bit of a blister like, "It's annoying, it's doing my head in, it's frustrating, it's hard".

Helen Tupper: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: But we keep writing them.

Helen Tupper: Because they feel purposeful, yeah, you are right.

Sarah Ellis: We're on the fourth, we're on the fifth, you know, and they're probably not going anywhere.  So, whether it's books or writing, and I think that's just a different way into thinking about what's the work that matters to you, what's the work that motivates you?  Worth reading that article. 

Helen Tupper: Just before we go back to purpose, on the topic of blisters, I haven't shown you my blisters.  Look at these two scars I've got from my blisters.  That was from kayaking on a holiday!  I was supposed to be having a family kayak and I was with my daughter and my husband was with my son, and I was like, "I'm going to show that girls are better kayakers".

Sarah Ellis: Even the action that you are now doing looks like rowing. 

Helen Tupper: Oh yeah, that's a good point.  That's right! 

Sarah Ellis: Oh my God!  This is why you shouldn't be allowed to do these activities.

Helen Tupper: That's where I went wrong.  I was like dragging.

Sarah Ellis: So, why do we care about being purposeful?  So, we're going to use purposeful rather than purpose.  So, we do think knowing what purposeful work looks like for you is helpful.  It provides a direction for your development, a bit of a filter for your future, for your choices, for your decisions.  And I do think, and this is often why people I think want a sense of purpose, you know the sense of like in the midst of a busy day or when things go wrong or just when there's loads happening, reminding yourself that there's something beyond loads of meetings, loads of emails, like writing a presentation, actually can be really motivating, can be really helpful.

Helen Tupper: I think it connects with Angela Duckworth's concept of grit as well.  So, the definition of grit is, "Passion and perseverance for long-term meaningful goals".  And I think knowing what's purposeful for you, like writing a book, that is sort of the long-term meaningful goal.  So, when it feels difficult, you're more likely to stick at it, because you've got that kind of purpose or purposeful connection to what you're working on.

Sarah Ellis: I think you're right.  I think it's a useful constant in the squiggliness, you know, like someone was saying when they wrote into us about there's so much happening, there's changes, uncertainty, there's challenge.  Actually, I think if you know what feels purposeful, it's an anchor to keep coming back to.  And I think your view or your version of purposeful work, I think you have got permission to change that.  And I think when I reflect on mine over time, it has changed, but some things have stayed the same.  And actually, we're going to talk you through now a bit of a concept for how do you think about your own purposeful work?

Helen Tupper: So, the concept is the Squiggly Career Sweet Spot, and there is a diagram that brings this to life.  So, I do think of all of our episodes, there are some that I think the PodSheet is extra helpful for.  And because this is a model for you to work through, we will talk it through now, we'll give our examples as we go to bring it to life, but it is worth downloading the PodSheet because you'll be able to fill this out for yourself and we've got all that visual for you. 

Sarah Ellis: So, Helen, you're going to be our Squiggly Career Sweet Spot guinea pig for today. 

Helen Tupper: Can't wait. 

Sarah Ellis: Because, this is definitely one where working it through I think is probably more helpful than us just telling everybody about it.  Also, we can test it.  So, we have to reassure everybody, we did give it a bit of a test before now, but we would love you to have a go at it and let us know, did it work for you?  Did it help to move your thoughts further forward?  And there are two criteria that are more internal, and when we say internal, kind of looking inwards, more about your self-awareness; and two that are more external, so more outward-looking.  So, the first one is values.  So, values, what makes you you, what motivates and drives you.  We've obviously done a lot of work on values, so we can sort of skip here straight to the outcomes.  If you've not, don't forget on the website, amazingif.com, a whole free Values Toolkit.  Please make the most of that, and that will kind of walk you through lots of small exercises to do.  But let's imagine you've done, because you have done all that hard work, Helen.  What are your four values? 

Helen Tupper: Freedom, growth, energy and achievement.  And I know I've said that so quickly, and it's because I know them and use them very practically in my career, but I could give a statement for each of those.  So, freedom, for example, means being unconstrained about my choices; energy means working with positivity and productivity.  So, I could define them a bit longer, but I do know them. 

Sarah Ellis: So, maybe let's just pause on that for one moment because we both have achievement as our top value.  And just to really make that distinction between why is it important to just almost create your own clarity around what a word means, what does achievement mean to you?

Helen Tupper: Having lots of wins along the way.

Sarah Ellis: Whereas achievement for me means big long-term goals to go after.  So, we could be having an identical week and you could feel like your values are fully fulfilled, your value of achievement is fully fulfilled because there's loads of quick wins, there's loads happening; and I can have an identical value and actually be feeling quite down about it.  So, just to make that point for people.  So, it is worth just going beyond those words, give those words meaning for you. 

So, we'll move on from values, what motivates and drives you, into strengths.  So, this is what you want to be known for, what you want to build your reputation and be recommended for.  What are you brilliant at, Helen? 

Helen Tupper: What am I brilliant at?  Oh, I get to talk about things that I'm brilliant at.  I am brilliant at creating clarity; I am brilliant at making things happen; and I am brilliant at bringing the best out in people. 

Sarah Ellis: And if people hadn't got that clarity yet on those things that gave them energy and what they want to be known for, where might they start?  If they were like, "Actually, I've got stuck now.  I don't know what that looks like".

Helen Tupper: Two places to start, if you don't know what your strengths are, I would definitely invest some time in this because it'll make a big difference to your development.  First thing you can do is get some strengths-based feedback, so I could ask you, "When do you see me at my best?"  So, if I was to ask you that, what would you say?

Sarah Ellis: I would say I see you at your best when we need to prototype something fast.  So, we've had an idea, we're not really sure how to make it happen, and rather than worrying about, "Let's take a year planning this", you'll be like, "Well, we could just do this".  And then you go beyond that and you're like, "I will do that and I will mock that up, and it'll be on LinkedIn by the end of the day".  And I'm just like, it's like a whirlwind of activity.  But what that does is it moves us forward fast and it gives us momentum.  That is you at your best.

Helen Tupper: What's nice about asking someone else for strengths-based feedback is sometimes you go, "Oh, they've articulated that better than me".  So, giving an idea of momentum, making it happen, moving things forward fast could replace what I'd said as nicer words.  So, that's one thing you can do.  I think the other thing you can do is use strengths-based surveys.  So, I never think these are the answer for what your strengths are, but if you do a couple of them, you can sometimes go, "Do I…?" in something like 16Personalities or PrinciplesYou, for example, is quite a good one.  Or VIA character strengths, all free.  You do the survey, take you about five, ten minutes, and it will come up with a profile.  And then I always scan those surveys and think, "Which strengths do I want to be known for?"  So, I just treat it as an input.

Sarah Ellis: Something to choose from a bit, or kind of add to and edit.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  Other thing is an energy audit.  So, you can go through your week at work, think, "What was the thing that gave me the most energy and what was the strength I was using in that situation?"  Any of those things will help you work out what your strengths are.

Sarah Ellis: The energy audit was particularly useful for me, I think, to clarify, you know you've got lots of things that you are good at, but here I think we're trying to move from good to great, those things that you're like, "Those are the things I really want to be known for".  And if I was being forced to think about only two or three, what would they be?  And what I found interesting is the situations could be really different for me, but what was always really consistent was the space to create.  So, I could be in a meeting, I could be by myself, I could be with the team, I could be with someone I've never met before, but it's always like, there's just a need for me to create ideas, creative thinking, create something that hasn't been done before, and it just shows up, it's such a constant thread in every job I've ever done in my Squiggly Career.  It gives me a lot of confidence.  I go, "Yeah, I know that's me.  I know that's how I add value, that's how I have impact".  So, there are two, so we're doing values and strengths. 

So, we're now starting to think external and outside.  What do you want to make better?  So, when you're thinking about improving, so this is not making yourself better, but just answering that question, what are your first thoughts?

Helen Tupper: I find this one interesting.  So, I do find in our job now and what I do, I can answer that very quickly because I go, "Well, I want to make careers better". 

Sarah Ellis: Our mission is literally to make careers better for everyone!

Helen Tupper: So, I feel like I have a very clear answer now, which is I want to get rid of outdated notions for career development.  I want to help people succeed in Squiggly Careers.  But I think if you'd asked me that in Microsoft, when this wasn't my full-time job, I would have had a very different, "What did I want to make better?"  I wanted to help our team.  I think I wanted to help them cut through and be proud and make progress.  Microsoft's a big organisation, and I was trying to work out, as a manager, what is the most positive thing that I could do for the people that worked for me?  And helping them to create cut-throughs so that they could be at their best and do their best, I felt like that was a big part of my job, that they weren't stuck in meetings and conversations with nothing moving forward.  So, I know that what I say now in Amazing If, I say it very quickly because it feels so easy and natural for us to do.  But I think a couple of years ago, it would have taken me a little bit longer to say what do I want to make better.  But right now, for me, it's making careers better.

Sarah Ellis: I also think if you're doing this for yourself, don't be afraid to sort of make a longer list that might be smaller and more specific.  So, I think if I was back in my Sainsbury's days, in that job, maybe every day I might look back over my day and think, "Well, what did I want to make better today?"  And I think I would have got to some useful insights that way.  So, I would have thought, "Well, I want to make career conversations better", because as a manager, I loved having career conversations. 

Helen Tupper: Or make inductions better.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah. 

Helen Tupper: Or team meeting better. 

Sarah Ellis: "I want to make how we do these communications in our annual report more creative", which is a really specific thing, but that was one of my jobs.  That was the bit that I was motivated by, was the creativity, the design, the look and feel, and the energy that we could bring to some things that were sometimes quite technical or quite hard to understand.  So, I think it's okay to collect these insights, not feel like you have to have a perfectly distilled answer.  So, you've done that, you've thought about what you want to make better, what you care about improving.  Last one, what do you care about that is bigger than your job?  So, if the last one is really about what you want to make better probably in your role, this is more about your impact beyond the day-to-day. 

Helen Tupper: I want to make learning and development accessible for everyone.  That is much bigger than me.  I don't think it is fair that we've created these things like ladders and levels that limit people's learning.  That really bothers me, it feels unfair and unjust.  And I think I also believe that if you help people with better careers, you help people have a better life.  Because I think your career and work play such a big part of the hours that we have, you help someone in their career, and I honestly believe you help someone in their life.  So, that's, I think that's the thing that I really connect to emotionally.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so I think this is where some people might have causes, not everyone, but some people might have causes that they go, "Well, I care about a cause that is part of the company that I work for".  So, you might work for a company where part of their mission is to make understanding money easier, or to make money more transparent and easy for everyone to understand.  And actually, so there might be something in your company mission or your company's purpose that actually you really connect to, not always, I think it's fair to say, but there might be something there.  Or there might be just something that you feel more personally connected to.  Like, I think there's somebody in our team who you can just see she has a real sense of fairness and equity that drives her.  So, I imagine if she was answering that question, she wouldn't say, "What I care about that's bigger than [her] job", she wouldn't say, like, "Making careers better for everyone".  I think she would say, "Making the world fair for everyone", because I think she's naturally got more of a kind of world view, and actually quite a sense of community.  And so, I think just answering that in your own way, it might be to do with your company, it could be to do with a cause, or it could be something way bigger.  Wherever your head goes first, I always think first thoughts is quite a useful phrase here.  It's just like, what springs to mind first, and then just see where you go from it.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I think the most emotion's in that last one, I think.  That's probably the most, yeah. 

Sarah Ellis: So, what we're going to do now is turn the insights you've got so far into something to work with.  So, a bit of a personal statement about your Squiggly Sweet Spot that you can change and edit and adapt, but it gives you a starting point.  So, we have put all of Helen's insights so far into ChatGPT. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and we're going to do this live. 

Sarah Ellis: And we're going to do it live, so we actually don't know what it's going to say, but we've written it so you've not got to watch Helen type for two minutes, because that could be quite dull. 

Helen Tupper: So, I've taken what we talked about, so I'll just read it really quickly.  My values are freedom, growth, energy and achievement.  My strengths are making things happen, creating clarity, supporting people to be at their best.  I want to stop outdated ideas for career development.  And then I put, "I care because I believe better careers lead to better lives".  And then I said, "Develop a one-sentence purpose statement that I can use to guide my career".

Sarah Ellis: Drum roll!  Ready, go!

Helen Tupper: Okay, "My purpose is to challenge outdated career thinking, create clarity and equip people with the skills and confidence to develop in a direction that's right for them, because I believe better careers lead to better lives".

Sarah Ellis: It's a long one sentence.

Helen Tupper: I would say it's 75% of the way there.

Sarah Ellis: Okay, what don't you like?

Helen Tupper: The word, 'equip'!

Sarah Ellis: I know.  I was like, "Oh, very formal"!

Helen Tupper: I don't want to equip people, "Here is your equipment"!  No, I do give people tools, "Here's a tool".

Sarah Ellis: "Here's a matrix.  Here's a podcast".

Helen Tupper: But I suppose the point here is you need to get to a sticky statement, something that I think is meaningful and memorable, and I think how short it is is part of what makes it memorable, and I think the language being something that works for you is also part of it.  So, I could take this and I could change the word 'equip' to 'give'. 

Sarah Ellis: Well, I mean you could literally put into ChatGPT, "Make this shorter and less formal", and see what it comes up with.  I suppose what it gives you is something to work with, and I think that's really all we're looking for here.  And if we go back to why are we doing this, well, we're doing this to get a sense of what matters most to us, to improve our decisions and our choices, and probably to make us feel a bit better when we're having a really busy day. 

Helen Tupper: Because this is why! 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so you're not going to remember three or four sentences, but you might remember a shorter version of that.  Or you might remember, I don't even think it has to be a sentence.  I think you could have it as just individual words.  I remember having that for a while when you were talking about doing vision boards.  I don't really do vision boards, but I think I do have words and I think I have kind of words that guide me, and sometimes they don't really make sense in a sentence, but just the individual words are enough. 

Helen Tupper: So, hopefully that has given you a sort of practical way to develop your own Squiggly Sweet Spot.  We would definitely suggest getting the PodSheet, because those four areas that we've talked about, the values and strengths, which are the kind of internal drivers, and then the impact and improvement, which is more of the external ones, that is all in the PodSheet.  So, you'll be able to write down your notes and then you can either just use that to reflect on, or you can turn those insights into a prompt for ChatGPT and get to a one-sentence summary that maybe feels more like you than that one did for me, but it's always a bit of an experiment.

Sarah Ellis: But that's everything for this week, thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now. 

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.