Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:07: The different types of awareness…
00:02:27: … 1: self-awareness
00:09:53: … 2: situational awareness
00:18:43: … 3: relational awareness
00:28:45: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we talk about a different topic to do with work, and we share some ideas and actions to help us all navigate our Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control. 

Helen Tupper: And if this is the first time you're listening to the podcast, or maybe you're a regular listener, don't forget that all of our episodes are turned into one-page summaries, the Squiggly Careers PodSheet, to help you take action.  So, you'll find lots of the things that we're going to talk about today, the ideas for actions, some coach-yourself questions to reflect on, some resources if you want to go and learn a little bit more afterwards, all put in one place and you can get that from our website, amazingif.com, just head to the podcast page. 

Sarah Ellis: So, this week we're talking about how to turn awareness into action that will accelerate your career.  And I think it's fair to say that awareness is a skill that never makes it to the top of anybody's learning list.  When I ask people in a workshop, "What do you want to learn more about, or what do you want to learn this year?" no one ever says awareness.  Basically, all everyone ever says at the moment is, "AI"!  AI wins.  And awareness is interesting, because I think the default is, when you think awareness, you're like, "Oh, have they missed a word there?  Do they mean self-awareness?"  But actually, awareness covers more than one thing.  It kind of goes beyond self-awareness into two other areas, situational awareness and relational awareness as well. 

Helen Tupper: And those terms can sometimes feel a bit academic, and in fact Sarah and I were sort of tying ourselves a little bit knots trying to get to some quite complicated definitions, and it's hard sometimes to get simple, but it's much easier when you crack it.  So, when we're talking about self-awareness, situational awareness and relational awareness, the definitions that we are going to use in terms of what we're talking about today, are self-awareness is about understanding yourself; situational awareness is about your ability to read the room; and relational awareness is about understanding your impact on others.  And the point that we are trying to make is, there's two parts of this being effective for your Squiggly Career.  So, the first is the awareness part of it and then second, there is turning that awareness into action, so doing something with it.  And I think a lot of people stop at the awareness, "Oh, I understand myself more, I understand other people more".  But it's only part of what will make a difference to your development.  You've got to take the awareness and turn it into action, which is what we are going to focus on today. 

Sarah Ellis: So, we're going to start with self-awareness, which is in some ways perhaps the easiest, or at least will probably feel the most familiar.  So, how to get some awareness to begin?  We think it's helpful to just start with a kind of, "Me at my best and me at my worst".  So, if you were just reflecting on yourself at work in an average week, what does you at your best look and feel like; what are you working on; who are you working with; how are you working?  And we all know when we have our worst moments, I think, or worst days, like what's happening; what triggers those moments; in terms of your behaviours, what might people see or what might they sense?

Helen and I actually did a fun little exercise here, where she was almost like, you know when you do those pictures where you fold over one section and then someone draws the next bit, like the head, and then you fold it over and someone draws the next, and someone else draws the body?  Well, we had one side of a bit of paper was a smiley face and a sad face.  So, I wrote, "Me at my best and me at my worst", and Helen did the same, and then we swapped and gave them to each other, and then we compared and contrasted our answers, which actually were scarily accurate.

Now, just one watch-out on this.  So, I think Helen and I can do this, but even I paused before writing Helen at her worst, just because it did feel quite harsh.  So, we thought it might be more realistic probably, as a bit of a reframe, if you're going to ask somebody else this, you've already figured out where you think you're at your best and where you think you're at your worst.  If I was going to do this with someone probably in our team, and even then I know those people pretty well, I'd probably say, "Where do you see me at my best?" that's fine.  And then, I think my second question would probably be, "When do you think I might get in my own way?" rather than, "When do you see me at my worst?" 

Helen Tupper: Just to make it a bit more real, so I wrote, what I wrote for my own thoughts on when I'm at my worst, I wrote, "When I make mistakes and because I'm saying yes to too many things".  That was my 'me at my worst' self-perception.  And then Sarah wrote, when does she think I'm at my worst, "When you say yes to lots of stuff and then complain about it"!  But obviously, I don't really mind Sarah writing that at all because I know it's meant with good intent and Sarah knows me very well.  But I do think, yeah, you do need to perhaps be sensitive to some people that might take that the wrong way.  So, I think Sarah's slight reframe of, "When do you think I might be getting in my own way", is a little bit softer. 

What I like about this exercise as well is it's really quick.  We did it because we're together today, so we just wrote it on a piece of paper and like Sarah said, we folded it over and did the big reveal.  But you could just do it as like a Teams message, or something like that.  I think the quicker it is, the easier these things are to do.  You don't want this to feel like you're filling in a form or it's this big reveal at the end of a year.  It's a quick bit of insight about you and your impact from somebody else's perspective. 

Sarah Ellis: So, I guess to turn that awareness into action, what we've then got to do is find the motivation to do something different in those moments where you might be getting in your own way.  Yes, let's use that as a kind of nicer framing.  Obviously, the other thing not to be forgotten is, keep doing what you do well.  Sometimes, I think we jump straight to the, "Oh, well, I need to be even better in this area, I've got to make a change".  But there will also be lots of things that you are doing right.  And that doesn't always happen just naturally or by accident.  You're probably doing lots of that intentionally, so keep doing that. 

But when Helen and I were exploring, "Well, what would give us the motivation to do something different in those moments where we are at our worst?"  And so, Helen's one at her worst was around saying yes to too many things and then getting overwhelmed by it, and mine was almost the opposite to Helen, was when things get very busy, my default is just almost to stop everything.  It's quite an unusual response, but I think I get almost very binary in those moments and just be like, "Right, it's too difficult and it's so hard, I sort of want to start again from scratch".  I kind of want a redo, which is also unhelpful, but for very different reasons.  So, we were trying to figure out how can you ask yourself a question that includes or has got a prompt that is based on your values, because your values will always motivate you.  These are things that motivate and drive you, they're what makes you you, they kind of win out versus lots of other things.  So, that was our starting point, like if you're going to do something different, if you're going to take an action, could that be triggered by a question that includes your values?  So, do you want to share what you came up with, Helen? 

Helen Tupper: Well, yeah, so one of my values is about achievement and I have another one which is about energy.  So, that often translates into quick action for me, like pacey, pacey action.  I keep saying yes to things and that's kind of getting in my way at work, which Sarah's sort of played back to me, and that was also part of my reflections too.  So, my motivation to do something different, the sort of prompt for me based on my values was, "If I stop this, then what can I start?"  Because I'm actually really motivated by taking action, doing things with energy.  So, actually stopping saying yes to this and then thinking, "Well, what can I start instead or what could I do with this time that I've got, because I said yes to this?" I find that quite motivating. 

Sarah Ellis: And mine was, let's imagine we've got almost too much work on and maybe it just feels a bit -- I think it's sometimes when I feel a bit trapped by the busyness, if I asked myself, "What am I learning from this work?" that would really help me, because one of my values is learning.  And I think often, when I look for the learning or I feel like I'm progressing my learning in some way, then I'm just automatically much happier and much more up for things.  So, rather than just thinking, "Oh, I need to do something dramatically different, which actually is often really demotivating because usually you can't do that, it actually results in inaction, because I'm like, well, you can't just wave a magic wand and everything in your diary disappears.  And so, all that happens is that you keep feeling demotivated.  

Whereas actually, if I asked myself just, "What am I learning from all this work that we're doing?" like the other week for the first time, I did a workshop where I had people doing BSL, which is British Sign Language, live during my workshops.  I was really distracted by how brilliant they are, and then also slightly worried.  I was like, "How good is what I'm saying right now and do I really want this translated?"  But they were incredible, so I was there, I was actually learning to slow down, because I was very conscious of people trying to keep up and then sign.  And they were like, "Oh, no, do it all the time".  So, that's the action there, is when you've done the me at my best, me at my worst and also asked other people for that feedback as well, then figuring out, can you come up with almost this propelling question that includes your values, which I suppose none of us are perfect, I don't think that's ever the aim.  It's never to beat ourselves up, but it is in the spirit of thinking, "Well, it would be even better if I asked myself, 'What am I learning?', rather than just stayed demotivated".  Better for me, better for the people around me. 

Helen Tupper: I find it really useful, because you and I both said -- I had said, "Me at my worst was saying yes to many things", and you said that too.  And so therefore, not doing anything about that now makes me feel like I'm accepting something that isn't working well.  I know it and you know it. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, yeah.

Helen Tupper: So, I find that exercise really helpful.  So, the second feature of awareness that we are going to focus on is situational awareness, which is all about your ability to read the room or the Teams or the Zoom, whatever situation you're in basically.  And before we get into it, if you are highly skilled with your existing levels of situational awareness, you might be able to hear a slight difference in mine and Sarah's voice.  Why might that be, Sarah, for the highly situational-aware listeners that we've got? 

Sarah Ellis: Well, we were happily recording the podcast today, enjoying our conversation about awareness. 

Helen Tupper: Together for once.

Sarah Ellis: And we were together, which we were quite excited about.  Then we got kicked out of the room, which I think everyone at this point goes, "We've all been there".  But the problem was, there were no other rooms.  We've had a slightly strange three-hour gap and now we're back for more! 

Helen Tupper: We're back and we're still talking about awareness!

Sarah Ellis: And so, I think this often feels like quite a tough skill to know how to do.  You appreciate that it's important but you're like, "Well, what does this look like?"  So, Helen and I were trying to think really practically.  One question that I think is good to ask yourself is, reflect on when you're in a meeting or any kind of moment, "What's different today?"  I think the moments where my situational awareness is at its best is where I spot signs or signals, like something doesn't feel the same as it might normally do.  So, that can sometimes be maybe a dynamic between two people, or it could be one person showing up in a slightly different way to how they normally are.  But I think if you feel like, "Oh, that's quite nuanced", and you probably do need to know people quite well to be able to do that, you can also ask rather than assume. 

So, Helen and I were both saying, we definitely have our own, actually different, tactics at the start of say a workshop.  So, when we're doing a workshop, it's quite hard for us to read the teams.  It's like, you've often got hundreds of people, we don't know those people.  I know if Helen feels a bit different today because I know her so well, but I don't know these hundred people who I might be meeting only for the first or second time.  And so, I think you can ask tactical questions which gives you a general sense of the vibe.  So, I will often get people to share a gif that describes how their career has felt so far.  And it's less about the exact gif that I get back, it's more about how up for gifs people are.  You know, if you feel like nobody's really sharing any, and then I'll be like, "Oh, you can always use a word", and you're just like, "Oh, I'm not getting very many gifts", I might be like, "Okay, well that tells me something about this group, or maybe people are still trying to do other work at the same time or they're still worrying about something on their to-do list".  So, I've not quite got everyone. 

If I'm not getting lots of interaction early, I'm like, "Okay, well something isn't quite clicking for everyone yet.  Maybe they're a bit unsure, maybe they're not that confident, maybe they're struggling to leave other work of the day behind".  So, it's quite it's quite a good way of me getting that situational awareness for a group I don't know.  What do you do, Helen? 

Helen Tupper: Particularly if it's a session or a meeting that's halfway through the week, I will often ask people to give me, "Your week in a word so far". 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's really nice. 

Helen Tupper: And it does one of two things.  One, if people are really slow responding, I'm like, "Well, okay, this is going to be…"  I often think, back to situational awareness, I often think, "Tone myself down".  Because I'm quite an energetic, happy person, if I get a very slow, quiet response, I think happy Helen is probably just not what this group really wants, I need to just tone myself down a little bit.  Or sometimes, I get lots of responses, but the words are like, "Overwhelmed, challenging, stressed, busy", and back to situational awareness, I think, "Oh, I need to meet them with a bit more empathy.  The thing that I'm talking about today, I need to set in their context".  Whereas sometimes, I get, "Excited, busy, fun, curious", whatever, I get different words and I'm like, "Okay, well I can interact with this group in a slightly different way.  So, I find it a really useful question to ask. 

I mean, sometimes I just go really random, I never quite know what I'm going to say.  It sort of depends how I feel in the moment.  I do really early sessions sometimes because we do international work.  You know, it's typical.  I'll be like, "What's the weather like where you are?" in the first couple of meetings.  But again, it's not the question, it's just more how much interaction I get back quickly, and that gives me a really good sense of where I might be starting from, rather than Sarah's point, just assuming that everybody feels like me in that moment, which I think sometimes is a lot of what we bring to meetings, like, everyone feels like me and therefore we're all going to interact the way I think we should right now.

Sarah Ellis: I think when you've got that situational awareness, to turn that into action, the question to ask yourself is, "How can I be useful now, or how can I be most useful now?"  And that's where we've talked about this 3S model before, and I find this useful in all sorts of contexts, which is, you know sometimes, if you just say to someone, "Well, how can I help you or how can I be useful?" it's maybe still quite hard for people to know how to answer that question.  Or, you get the typical answer of, "Oh, nothing, I'm fine".  And I read some brilliant research on 'I'm fine' last week, where it said something like, "It's the most common response if you ask someone how they're feeling, but only 19% of people are actually telling the truth".  So, everybody else, let's say 70% of people are like, "Yeah I'm fine", actually only 19% of them are actually fine.  Everyone else is either annoyed or frustrated, or whatever. 

Whereas if you say, "What would be useful for you?  Can I listen a little bit more to what's going on, so a bit of support?  Do you need a sounding board?  Do you want to run those ideas past me?  Would that be useful?  Or are you feeling a bit stuck, and actually, do you want some suggestions from me that might help to get you started?"  I think you don't have to use those exact words, but I was thinking today, Helen and I had a situation today where we spent time with somebody, and we were reflecting on, they're a bit different to maybe how they might normally be and how they showed up.  And then, we were sort of working through the, "Well, what do they need the most?"  Probably the last thing this person would have wanted would be like, "I don't need ideas, I don't need solutions, I just need a bit of support".  You know sometimes you just need someone to be a bit empathetic and to listen?  Sometimes people don't want you to ask questions, they just want you to say like, "Oh, it sounds like you're having quite a hard time at the moment, I hope you're okay".  You know, zero expectation, I'm not making anyone do any work, I'm not making anyone answer a question, that can actually sometimes feel hard to do, sometimes people are just not up for it. 

Helen Tupper: And I also, on this one, tend to give people options.  Sometimes, I'm like, "I can't quite work this out, but I know they're not quite right", because you know sometimes you're in a meeting and you're like, "Oh, we can just carry on as normal, everything's fine.  Maybe I'll ask a question or I'll just get a little bit of a sense that something else is going on", and that's often where I will present options to people.  So, "Okay, we've got a couple of things that we need to cover today, where do we want to start?"  Or if we're running workshops, for example, and I get a sense that the group is not as engaged as they might be, I will say, "Okay, well we can go into some breakouts today so you've got time to talk together, or we could stay in a group, just means you're going to have to interact a lot with me, what would you rather do?"  And I often find that that helps people to have a little bit more autonomy.  It means that I don't assume that I know what people need, and I particularly do that in a situation where I get a bit of a sense that I just need to do something different, but maybe I don't quite know what better needs to be, but I can give people options so they can determine that more for me. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I do think this idea here of like, can you give people a couple of choices, where they can say, "Oh, actually, it's more of this and less of that".  I was thinking about a situation actually Helen and I had with our team recently, where we definitely had the situational awareness.  So, we were like, "Oh, that was weird".  People acted in a way that surprised us.  So, we could kind of see, we had the awareness, but then I think Helen and I weren't sure how to be useful.  But we were like, "Oh, but something needs to change because everybody's not normally like that".  And actually, I think if we had given everybody options quite quickly after that meeting like, "Okay, so that happened, that's not how we would normally expect people to respond to that kind of a question.  What would be most useful for us to support?  Do you need an example?  Do you want us to talk you through that?  Because I actually don't know".  I'm sitting here now going, actually, we never quite resolved what the kind of -- it was like a small, little issue, but what prompted that.  And I think just by giving people some choices, I reckon we would have got some really fast feedback on, "Oh, okay, it's not what we thought it was, it's actually something slightly different and we can sort that.  Now we know what people need, we can get it sorted". 

Helen Tupper: So, we have gone through self-awareness, that's knowing yourself, we've done situational awareness, which is about reading the room, and now the third area is relational awareness.  So, this is about understanding your impact on other people.  And what's really important to note here is, that is going to be different for different people.  So, again, this isn't the easiest one to be brilliant at all the time, because what Sarah thinks of me and my impact on Sarah will be different to somebody else that I work with.  And so, you need to get good at understanding that difference and also adapting to it and adapting to different people.

So, we had a bit of fun with the 'how to' here.  We're like, "How can you understand your impact on other people?  What's the most useful way that you can do this quite quickly?"  And so, where we got to is that you map the five people that you spend the most time with at work.  So, you're in the middle of the map, it's a me map, and then you almost get to a we map because you're mapping out to all the five people that you spend time with.  And what you reflect on with these five people that you spend time with is whether you think you are a good versus bad influence on them at work.  Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're leading them astray, but it does mean that in terms of the work that they're doing and the way that they like working and what they want to achieve, and all that kind of stuff, working in line with their values, are you enabling that person to be at their best, in which case you're a good influence, you are setting them up for success; or, are you a bad influence, perhaps because you're working in a way that works for you but doesn't work for them, perhaps because you're doing the things that you want to do regardless of what's important to them, and you are maybe derailing or distracting that person.  Any of those outcomes would equal you being a bad influence, because you're not adapting to how you work so that you can have a good influence on people, you're just working the way that you want to work, regardless on your impact on other people. 

When I mapped this, there were a couple of people that we work with that I was like, "Oh, that's a good influence.  I work in a way that helps that person".  And then, there were some other people that Sarah and I were like, "Maybe I'm a bad influence, because I make it hard for that person to stay boundaried".  For example, because I work in a very unboundaried way, like I have an idea and I want to make it happen any time of the day, any day of the week, that for somebody that might also struggle with their boundaries, I'm a bad influence on that person because I make it hard for them to work in a way that works well for them, because I'm just working the way that I want to.  And so, for certain people I'm a bad influence, certain people I'm a good influence, it just means that I might need to adapt a little bit more. 

Sarah Ellis: And so here, I think the tightrope to walk is, I guess what we don't want to do, we're not saying that you should change yourself for everybody else all of the time, because then I just think you can get yourself in a right mess if that's the conclusion you come to.  If Helen tries to please everybody else, you'd be like, oh, but then you lose a sense of self, like what makes Helen brilliant.  So, I think these are often small, subtle changes that you make, while still being you.  So, to take that example of Helen, Helen knows that she likes to work in an unboundaried way and that works for her and she loves freedom and that's her style.  But when she knows she's working with somebody else who also isn't very boundaried, but actually would like to be, she might just have small changes that she makes where she's extra clear on things like deadlines, or when something needs to get done by.  That would be really useful for somebody who needs to get better at boundaries, because the most likely thing that person would do is go, "Okay, yeah, I'll do it now".

Actually, I'm thinking about that same person.  I'm always really clear with that person, when does that need to get done by, because their automatic reaction will be to drop everything and help and I'm like, "Okay, well you don't need to do that, you've got three days", and they're like, "Oh", and I'm like, "Yeah, it's fine".  But I'm naturally much more boundaried, so you can kind of be helpful. 

So, what we think is helpful to do here, kind of two things, I think one is you can build trust across a team by acknowledging how you like to work, and I think this is acknowledging how you like to work, not apologising for it, but also giving people permission to say, "If this is ever stopping you or getting in your way or feeling hard, you can talk to me about it".  So, if it was Helen saying, "Yeah, typically I like to work with lots of pace and I like to make things happen, I love prototyping and action", you're like, "Well, that's great".  But she might say, "But I do know at times that can feel overwhelming, always on and a bit relentless".  If it was me --

Helen Tupper: Sarah's allowed to say that!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  For me, I'm somebody who I typically like to work in a way where I come up with lots of ideas and I definitely have more ideas than answers during conversations, and I think sometimes my brain goes to lots of different places, which is great because it creates new connections, but I do know that that can feel unstructured.  And I think I often leave people to create their own sense of clarity from what they've heard from me, and I'm like, for some people that might be great, but I can imagine that feeling hard.  I'm thinking about a conversation I even had today where we're starting from scratch to design something, and what I do is throw lots of thoughts at somebody.  And I'm like, "Oh, I wonder how that feels having all of those".  For some people, they might be like, "It's great".  But some other people might go, "Wow, I have got no idea what she actually wants me to do now". 

Helen Tupper: I think Sarah is also very good at improving things, like building things better and spotting where things aren't quite where they would need to be.  So, if I'm relentless with action, Sarah can be relentless with feedback.  And so, I think Sarah might say, "I typically work in a way that is about making things better, like making the team better, the business better, our work better, and I do know that that can feel like a lot of information about things that we can need to improve.  If that ever feels hard, please talk to me about it", because it's not Sarah's intent to have a negative impact, it's Sarah's intent to do the best work that we can.  

But it's just that idea of, to Sarah's point, you're acknowledging it, back to self-awareness, you've got the self-awareness to know that about you, so I do think these things go together really well.  But what you are doing is acknowledging that with the people that you work with, and then giving them permission to have a conversation with you if that ever doesn't work for them.  It's where the trust thing is important, because if I said to Sarah, "Well actually, now you said that Sarah, I am feeling like it's knocking my confidence a bit", and Sarah said, "Well, don't be ridiculous, Helen, it's not about you.  Don't be so sensitive", then suddenly that destroys, you know, I've been so brave to have that conversation; that destroys that.  So, you do need to make sure that you acknowledge, create permission, and then respond with the intent to learn in a very open way, rather than feeling defensive about the fact that someone's called you on this thing. 

Sarah Ellis: I do think, you know, how brilliant it would be if your manager or leader role-modelled this.  I think that would be amazing.  The other thing that Helen and I were talking about that I think is a really good build here, because we're in a pretty high-trust team, this feels quite hard to do; and one of the things that we've observed that's worked really well for us in this area is if you can give people permission, but to kind of call you on things but in a depersonalised way.  So, let's say someone's working with Helen and she's throwing stuff at them left, right and centre.  We have something where we say, "At any point, at any time, wave the capacity flag".  And so, that's not somebody going, "Helen, this is your fault", because people are too kind to do that.  And it's also not people beating themselves up.  But essentially, what someone would do is go on to Teams in our company, and they'd probably just message me and Helen.  We get these messages every so often, not that often which is good, but every so often someone in the team will be like, "I'm just waving the capacity flag".  And usually that message is, "I'm okay with what I've got right now but basically, please don't give me anymore".  And we both always respond to those really positively going, "That's so useful to know, thank you for taking the time to tell us and for recognising that". 

So, that's a good example of one mechanism, I guess, that we've come up with that is a way of us understanding our impact on others.  We also have, in our Monday meetings, we have priorities, high-energy moments, and we do say, "Any red flags for the for the week ahead?"  And often again, red flags for the week ahead really help you when you're thinking about your impact on others.  So, if I know somebody has got, I don't know, loads of stuff outside of work happening in a week that sounds pretty hard, I might think, this might not be the week to go really big on feedback.  I can happily critique things, in terms of go through things, and be like, "Oh, there's ten things that we could make better", but maybe this is not the time to do that.  Maybe I go, "I'm going to pick the three things I think we need to make better now, because we need to do that.  But actually, do you know what, the other seven can wait for next week, where somebody might have the energy to absorb those things", because actually, there's no point me doing it anyway.  If someone's not ready and open, they're not in the right mindset, you're just making somebody feel worse. 

So, I think anything that you can do as a team to just be like, "Oh, what are those…" they're like rhythms and rituals, aren't they?  And also using words and language to go, "Oh, we don't wanna pick on people, because really you'd never be like, "Oh, you're a bad influence on me".  We never really want to do that, or, "You're a good influence on me".  I think that can make this a lot easier, and it's a really easy thing to experiment with. 

Helen Tupper: So, that is the end of our three different types of awareness.  There is quite a lot of reflection in here, but the point really is to make sure that you are then acting on that.  And the benefit of doing that is that you build better relationships, that you increase your impact, and that you're also sort of closing the gap between how you want to be seen and how other people see you.  So, there is a really big payoff of doing this.  It might just take you a little bit of time to think about, where am I starting from, and then to take action in the three areas that we've talked about. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, because I think it is quite a high bar that we've set for ourselves and our listeners this week, because even as we were going through it, I could definitely spot gaps in the link between awareness and action where I was like, "Oh, I've got that awareness but I didn't actually take any action.  Oh, yeah, I can see that actually I knew that wasn't quite right, but then I didn't really turn that into anything".  So, I think this is quite a tough skill, it's quite a sophisticated skill that definitely goes beyond just self-awareness. 

Helen Tupper: I think we've given it a bit of credit today.  I think it's a really important skill at work that we don't go deep enough into, but actually if you do, there's a lot of areas you can develop in and I think it makes a really big difference to how you do your work and how you work with people that you do your work with. 

Sarah Ellis: So, that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.