Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:31: Squiggly Careers video book

00:03:06: Increasing your visibility, and the benefits it brings

00:07:29: Why should your visibility concern you

00:08:43: When the ideas for action will matter

00:09:52: Ideas for action…

00:10:10: … 1: understanding your visibility whys and whats

00:14:58: … 2: create your visibility principles

00:22:54: … 3: focus on a captive audience

00:27:59: … 4: know who matters most

00:30:30: … 5: using your values to influence your visibility

00:34:18: Extra tips and tactics…

00:34:22: … own your own headlines and make them memorable

00:37:03: … explicit asks vs assumptions

00:40:50: 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 share different ideas and tools that we hope really help you, and they do always help us, to navigate that Squiggly Career that we all now have, with just that bit more confidence and control.

Helen Tupper: And if this is the first time that you have listened to the Squiggly Careers podcast, it is worth knowing that along with what you're going to listen today, we also create lots of different resources to support you with your development.  So, every episode comes with a PodSheet, which is a one-page summary of the main stuff we talk about so you can take action easily; on social media every week, we share a PodNote, so you can get that on our Amazing If LinkedIn page and also @amazingif on Instagram; and then we also have a PodPlus session every week.  So, on a Thursday, lots of lovely, like-minded learners all come together, it is free, for 30 minutes at 9.00am, to talk about what we are discussing today and dive a bit deeper into it. All the information for those things will be on the show notes, and if you ever can't find any of it, you can either go to our website, amazingif.com, or just email us if it's easier; we are helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  And today, we're going to be talking about how to increase your visibility at work.  I said to Sarah, "Can I do a quick shoutout before we get started today?"

Sarah Ellis: Squiggly Shoutout!

Helen Tupper: Squiggly Shoutout to my friend, Mel!

Sarah Ellis: Sure!

Helen Tupper: So, we have many listeners every week, but I just want to do a shoutout to my friend, Mel, who listens while she goes running and I find that really strange, running along in the village where Mel lives, listening to us talk.  So, hi Mel! Also, more relevant to the world of Squiggly Careers, worth knowing about our Squiggly Career video book, everybody.  So, this year, we launched a Squiggly Career video book to bring to life our book, The Squiggly Career.  It is just about 50 minutes of video that you can watch and it has lots of the exercises, tools that you can download to support you to take action, and you can get it from litvideobooks.com, lots of other ones on there two: The Long Game from Dorie Clark, for example; Ethan Kross' book, Chatter; Shellye Archambeau, Unapologetically Ambitious; so, quite a few previous guests from the podcast.  That's actually how we discovered it as a concept and as an idea.

Sarah Ellis: We do know books are not for everyone, or we buy books and then we never read them.  And what I really like about the format with these video books is they're all broken down, so you can just go and watch five or ten minutes at a time, they're still really practical; and what's a bit different compared to The Squiggly Career book, the company that have made this with us actually asked us for people who've had Squiggly Careers to share their stories.  So actually, you'll hear people from all across the world talking a bit about some of the work that they've done on their career, what worked, what they found hard.  You also get an animated Helen and Sarah, and you get the real Helen and Sarah, so you can decide which one you prefer! So, I think it keeps you really interested and engaged, and I like how flexible it is.  You can watch it in a way that works for you.

Helen Tupper: And when you go to litvideobooks.com, you can also get free access for three days to The Squiggly Career and all those other books that Sarah mentioned.  So, if you just want to give it a go and see if it's worth it, it's probably a good way to get started.

Sarah Ellis: So today, we're talking about how to increase your visibility at work.  And I think this is one of those maybe slightly, I'm going to call it "urgh" topics, you know those areas that maybe sometimes you get feedback on and someone says, "One of the things you should work on is increasing your visibility", and you just think, "Urgh, how am I going to do that; what do you mean by that?" so I think sometimes it can prompt that kind of response.  Or perhaps if you're more introverted like me, you think, "Does this mean I need to start speaking more or shouting louder, and that feels really counterintuitive to my personality?"

Interestingly, we've done quite a lot of research before today's podcast, so people do talk about this as a topic, but there aren't many practical ideas or actions, certainly that I could discover.  There's also definitely a skew towards this being feedback that women get.  So, when I was looking at different podcast episodes and different articles, it often comes under the category of, "Women need to do this, but men don't".  So, I find that quite interesting, and that also might be why some people might have a negative reaction to this to go, "Why do I have to do this, because of my gender?" or, "Why do I have to do this; because I'm a bit more introverted?" So, never ones to shy away from a more difficult Squiggly topic, we thought we'd take it on and hopefully make it useful, whether you think this is something you already do well and you want to get even better, or whether you're in the, "I should do this but I've never found a way to make it work for me".

Helen Tupper: So, why is this worth your time?  We think that when you proactively increase your visibility, so it's something that you feel confident and in control of, what happens is that you pull possibilities towards you and you're effectively increasing your options and your opportunities in your Squiggly Career, which is one of the biggest benefits of Squiggly Career, so it's one of the ways that you take control of that. The other thing that increasing your visibility helps with is, it gives other people the chance to amplify and advocate for you, because when they see your strengths, they know what you're good at, they want you to do well, they've got more stuff to share on your behalf, which means that your brand goes a bit further. Then, the third thing is, is that it increases your curiosity.  So, when you're increasing your visibility, you're putting yourself with more people in more places, and that curiosity can create unexpected connections.  So, I think there's quite a lot of enjoyment in doing that like, "Where can I increase my visibility; and who might that put me into contact with that I don't know today?"

Sarah Ellis: So, what do we think it means to increase your visibility?  Well, as we were saying, we don't think it is just about being seen, we think it is about being seen and heard, so both your words and your work.  And it's about making sure that your impact is recognised.  And when that impact is recognised by the right range of people, it means that they can amplify and advocate on your behalf, so it can make your work go further and make your work worth more. We think it's also important to think about this both internally and externally, so increasing your visibility in your organisation, and think about, "What does this mean in terms of my industry?"  So, this doesn't mean everyone knows who I am and I need to spend loads of my time doing something that feels inauthentic to me.  I do think the only way that this will work is if you move your mindset away from, "This is something I should do" to, "What feels authentic to me?  How can I develop my own approach to increasing my visibility so it feels like it's mine and it belongs to me?"  And also, of course, we want to be sophisticated enough to have that appreciation of, "What's the culture and the context that I'm working in?" so, of course we need to adapt along the way.  But I do think our aim here, our jobs to do individually, is to figure out, "What does this look like for me; and maybe, could I even enjoy it?"

Helen Tupper: We have touched a little bit on this topic before, when in episode 172, we talked about how to stay visible when you're working remotely.  But I think today's topic is a bit bigger, it's not just about, "I'm at home, how do I still get seen?"  It's more, you and your career, how you make sure that your work and your words are seen more broadly.

Sarah Ellis: So, let's start with the statement that loads of people listening I reckon will be thinking right now, which is, "Surely if I work hard enough and I do really good-quality work, that should be enough?  Why should I even worry about this?  If we were all in good places of work, this wouldn't even be a thing".  What do we think about that, because I do think that will be lots of people's barrier to even getting started.

Helen Tupper: Do you know, I think that's where that "urgh" sound comes from, because it's like I'm already working really hard, and I think this is not about working harder.  So it's not, "To be more visible, you have to do more stuff", it's not that at all.  I think this is about making sure the hard work you already do gets seen and heard by people that it might not be doing, and I don't think that you can assume that it is being seen and heard, and that it's being seen and heard in a way that you would want it to.  I think this is just really about taking control of your impact. So, you are working hard and you are doing good work, but you might need to do something more so that that is seen and heard in a way that you feel in control of.  So, I think that's the distinction we're trying to make, not doing more, but making sure that what you already do impacts in the way that you want it to.

Sarah Ellis: I also think you have to ask yourself the question of, "Where will increasing my visibility be useful?"  So, what we're not suggesting is that you take all the ideas for action we're going to talk about today and do all of them for every piece of work or project that you're involved in at the moment.  I was really thinking hard about, "When have I done this well so far in my career?" and, "What does this look like?" and it very rarely looks like always doing this in exactly the same way.  I think you make some choices and I think you almost pick what matters most in terms of increasing your visibility. At certain moments, it might be about you and your personal brand, as an individual, and your Squiggly Career and where you want that to take you, and we'll talk a bit about that.  Or, sometimes it might be you're working on a really high-profile project, or something you're really passionate about, or a cause that really matters to you, and you can see that, "If I increase my visibility, that work is going to go further, it's going to be even better than if I kept it smaller.  So, just starting to think about, "Why is this use for me?" starts to unlock why we might go away and spend some time thinking about this.

Helen Tupper: So, what we're going to do now is go through five ideas for action, so that you can feel more confident and in control of your visibility, and then right at the end, we've got a few little tips and tactics that we wanted to throw in, so small little things you can do.

Sarah Ellis: We couldn't resist! Helen Tupper: Yeah, couldn't resist throwing a few more things in, but your five ideas for action are coming up first.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action one, which builds on what I was just talking about, is understanding your visibility whys and whats.  So, here are three coach-yourself questions, which I think until you answer these, it's very hard to get started.  So, first one, "What do I want to increase my visibility in?"  So, for example, is this a project, something you're passionate about, a specific piece of work, something to do with you and one of your strengths; is it an area of expertise?  It can be any of those things.  So, what do you want to increase your visibility in? Two, "Who do I want to increase my visibility with?" 

This could be individuals, so you might be actually naming, you know, John, Helen, Sarah; you might be talking about teams, the operations team, the retail team; it could be people outside of my organisation, particularly influential people outside of your organisation, for example; and it's very unlikely that the answer to that question is going to be, "Everyone"; "Who do I want to increase my visibility with?  Everyone", because that's too vague I think to be helpful, and also it's pretty unrealistic, to be able to get your visibility out there for everyone. Then the final question, "Where do I want to increase my visibility?"  So, this again might be certain groups; you might be thinking internal versus external; where is the emphasis; maybe in particular moments. 

You might have a specific meeting.  I can think back to examples of jobs I've done where I would literally be able to go, "In this meeting [or] in this steering group [or] in these get-togethers that happen", you know the rituals and routines that happen in an organisation, I think I definitely had earmarked that in that moment where, let's say, these leaders get together, "I want to increase my visibility there".  Or, "In this meeting when these three heads of department get together, I want to increase my visibility in that moment", so just starting to be able to answer that question of going, "What would good look like here?  How will I know when I've increased my visibility?" I think that's often the challenge, particularly if you do get this kind of feedback, you might want to very gently prompt that person who's given you that feedback to say, "What would you imagine would look and feel different if I was doing this even better?  What are some of your suggestions in terms of the what, the who, the where?" because people could be really helpful here, they might have some really good suggestions here. But I went through this, and I won't talk through the example now, because you don't need to hear more from us, you need to hear the ideas; but when I started to do this for myself, the what, the who, the where, it gave me a real focus.  So, I was like, I would know in six months' time whether I had increased my visibility if I'd answered those three questions.

Helen Tupper: When I was listening to you there, Sarah made a stumble that will probably be edited out, where she said "invisible" versus "visible" but it made me think, actually there's probably a scale here.  So, once you've answered that question, "What do I want to increase my visibility in, the who and the where?" you could probably for each of your answers there, almost do a visibility scale, where at one end you've got, "I'm invisible to that person, to that project" and at the other end you've got, "I'm very visible", and just almost see where you're starting from, because it might help you to think about where's your biggest gap when you're doing that. 

So, it could be an extra thing to build in. I was also thinking, "I'd really value hearing this from our team".  So, I think if you're a manager or a mentor, you could really support people with this.  So, if I understood what my team wanted to do to increase their visibility, the what, the where and the who, that would be a different way that I could support them with their development.  So, even though these are coach-yourself questions, I think if you're a manager or a mentor, you could use them to support people with their development too.

Sarah Ellis: I even tested it live, and I appreciate this is specific to the work that we do, but I was in a big group of people, about 400 people that I was presenting to a few weeks ago, and they were a group of people who I want to increase our Squiggly visibility with, so I thought I would just test it.  So, I literally asked everyone in the room, "How many people here have heard of Squiggly Careers?" not Amazing If, I thought that would be too niche! 

But I thought they might have heard of Squiggly Careers, and actually that just gave me a really good sense check, because they were people broadly in career development, but in a very different sector to ours, and doing very different jobs.  So, we'd got lots of teachers in the room, as well as career advisors working in schools and colleges. I was like, okay, I could see that about 20% of that room we'd got some visibility, so we were invisible to 80% of that room, so you're like, "Wow, that's a big opportunity!"  I see that as an opportunity, not a gap, because we've not really been active about increasing our visibility there yet.  But interesting that we'd already got some people in the room who basically had discovered us through their own work and their own initiative, and then that's really interesting because then you can build from that point.  I was almost thinking, "I'd love to be standing in this room again in a year's time and reverse that ratio", so we go from invisible to visible.

Helen Tupper: So, our second idea for action is all about creating your visibility principles.  And the reason this is important is because of what Sarah said about authenticity.  We're not all trying to build our visibility in the same way, because we're not all the same person.  And so, the way that you can build your principles is first of all, think about people in your career community, wider network, you don't necessarily have to know these people directly, but people who you think of as being highly visible.  And I would just spend a minute thinking about, that might be on social media, that might be in your company, that might be networks you're a part of.  But get to a list of say five people that you think of as being highly visible and write their names down. Then, for each of those people, just think about, "What is it they do that makes them visible to you?"  And then once you've got that, the third question is, "Would what they do work for you?"  And if you're like, "Yes, absolutely", then, "Why?"  And if you're like, "No, that doesn't feel like me at all", then write that down; because what you get to by answering those questions, who do you see, what do they do, and would it work for you, is some insight into what your visibility principles could be.

Sarah Ellis: So, Helen and I had a go at this and actually had quite a lot of fun doing it, I would say, earlier.  It's quite fun, isn't it?  It's always brilliant when you're not having to think about you, you can think about other people; it gives you a break for a bit.  And what I think this does really help with is that uncomfortable sense, or perhaps sometimes the default assumption we make about what does increasing your visibility look and feel like.  So, if you are someone like me, you think, "But I don't want to be the person that shouts the loudest.  I don't want to spend more time on social media", and you go straight to all the things that you don't want to do.  Whereas this exercise really unlocked for me, "Oh, but there are people who have got great visibility that I really admire, and what is it about their approach that I can learn from, or that might help me?" So, I got to a couple of people, I'll give them a shoutout because I think they're doing great work, so I got to a lady called Nicola Kemp, and Nicola's done some training for us in Amazing If.  She does a few different jobs, she's got a Squiggly Career, but one of the things that she does is something called Good Shout, and also helps with copy and writing skills.  And one of the things I was thinking about Nicola that I really admire, and I think she's really visible, is that she shares her point of view, and she really sponsors and advocates on behalf of other people.  So, she is incredibly supportive, I just feel like she's a really active advocate. So I will often see her commenting on other people's work saying, "This is incredibly insightful, this company is really lucky to have you".  I feel like she's always talking people up always.  She has this sort of sense of, the way that she is visible is by almost making other people visible.  I love that about her and I just feel that even though she's sometimes talking about hard issues or challenges, she does always approach it with, "Let's try and be positive and optimistic about what we might do to change something".

Helen Tupper: And would that work for you?

Sarah Ellis: Yes.  I think we have a different style, I think she's probably a better writer than me, giving that's what she does for a living, but I don't do as much very visible support and sponsorship.  And I think the way she does it in such a specific way increases her visibility.  So, she's not just going, "Oh, great news!" I feel she always just goes that little bit further, so I go yeah, that feels really comfortable to me and I like the idea I'd be helping other people. The other person who I always enjoy spending time with, because they're very visible, is James Elfer, who is the Founder of a company called MoreThanNow, behavioural scientists.  And what he does is he uses data to disagree usefully.  I don't think I do either of those things particularly well, as in I don't use that much data and I get very nervous about disagreeing, and he does it in a very public way.  So, he's sharing something, but his tone and his common sense approach also invites conversation and means that he's looking for contributions.  So, he's not being challenging for challenging's sake, which I could never relate to, because that's so far away from my approach, but I do read everything that James writes and I always think, "I think I could learn from that". I think, if I wanted to increase my visibility as say a career development expert, if that is part of one of the things that's important to you, you can't just be agreeing with everybody all the time; you've got to have the confidence to sometimes challenge really constructively.  And I look at what he does and think, "I could borrow some brilliance if I wanted to increase my visibility in that area.

Helen Tupper: Mine were quite different.  I thought about two men actually that are in my network, one called Ian Sanders, one called David Hieatt.  David's been on our podcast, I've known Ian for a long time, and when I think about what they do that flags them as being visible to me, they're both brilliant storytellers.  So, they will often show up on my social feeds, and when they show up on my social feed, obviously you're scrolling through so much, aren't you, on Instagram and LinkedIn, and I always stop, see and read their posts.  It normally starts with a really compelling visual, but then they have a really simple story that goes behind the visual that leaves you going, "That's interesting" and then it has something to act on. I really like that because it feels authentic and interesting and it's never like they're selling something.  But they kind of are, they're selling an article they've written or a programme that they're creating, but it never comes across like that.  It just feels like they are their business, that's what it feels like, because they are.  Ian's business is called The Ian Sanders Company.  They are their business, but they portray that in a very authentic and engaging way.  And so, would it work for you?  Yeah, I think it would and I think I could probably tell more stories than I do in a simple way that they do, and use the visuals to support it; there's a lot that I can learn from them.

Sarah Ellis: You did that brilliantly recently.

Helen Tupper: What did I do?

Sarah Ellis: I can think of one example of where you did that, when you shared a picture of the shepherd's hut that you've renovated!  So, Helen has got a random shepherd's hut, everybody, and with her daughter, she had painted it to a good enough standard.  I actually thought it looked very impressive, but your whole point of that post, it's interesting that I can remember it given I couldn't remember most of what you post; but you posted that and you were saying about, we did a podcast that week on When Good Enough is Great, and you used a really interesting image to share a story. So, it might also be quite helpful about thinking you might do that in an ad hoc way well, and you might think about increasing your frequency because you can do it, I've seen you do it, so you go, "Oh, okay, I admire that about other people, I know I can do it but perhaps not super-intentionally, or not as intentionally as it could be; what would it take to do a bit more of that?"

Helen Tupper: You are correct!

Sarah Ellis: The one other thing I would just mention on this is we've both given examples here of people external to our organisation, and people who show up quite a lot on things like LinkedIn or Instagram, but that is definitely because of our context.  If I had been answering this question when I was in Sainsbury's, I definitely would have been talking about internal people, where you wouldn't have seen their words or their work externally hardly ever, and I don't think that matters.  So, we don't want to fall into this trap, which might make you go back to the "urgh" of thinking this always has to mean writing stuff that publicly is available.  I've seen people have brilliant visibility and increase their visibility really with quite an internal context, or maybe you're in a creative world and that looks and feels very different and may or may not be about social media. So, I just don't want everybody to feel, "It has to look like that to be right".  Back to that point about, "What's your context and what feels authentic for you?" So, idea for action number three is focusing on a captive audience, because then you'll have their attention. 

So, this is where we started to get very practical about when we have both done this, what works, and really practically what works.  And I think if you try and get people to come to you, or you're trying to add on to other people's days, that's always quite hard to get people's attention.  Whereas, if you focus on where people are already are and you try to go to them, so meet them where they already are and where people are already together, you've just got this moment in time where people have to listen to you.  So, it's efficient, and also it goes beyond what I think can sometimes be either a bit lazy or because we're a bit nervous, where we hope an email update will do the job. I have definitely fallen into this trap before where you think, "Okay, I need to update this person on this important piece of work I'm doing and I know they're busy and it will be too hard to get time in their diary, so I'll just email them".  Then, you know in your head, you tick it off your to-do list.  But actually, has that email been read; has it really increased the visibility of that project in a way that's going to be useful for you?  Probably not. So, this is where I would be starting to think about, "If I need to go and spend time --" let's say I need to go an influence the retail team, I'd be going, "Right, where do the retail team hang out; when do they get together; can I get a slot on that team meeting; do they have a weekly agenda where I could have just five minutes; could I go and spend a day with them?" and basically, maybe I spend a day learning a bit about them, but I also use it as a bit of an opportunity to talk to them about what I'm doing as well. Any time I think you can meet people where they are, you have to go out of your way, I think, to spend time in their world to then bring them into your world, rather than that sort of tell thing like, "I need to tell Helen about this project I'm really passionate about, so I'm going to force it on her in a way that suits me and in a way that works for me", versus thinking, for example, if I'm going to influence Helen, I'm going to be thinking, "Right, Helen likes socialising.  What sort of events might she be going to; could I turn up to those events; could I get an introduction; could I invite her along to an event?"

Helen Tupper: Yes!

Sarah Ellis: I can actually see Helen today in real life across the table from me, and already she's beaming going, "Oh, what event?  Maybe I could come along!" whereas actually, that wouldn't work with me.  So, if you're trying to increase your visibility with me, it might be more like, "Send me a really interesting article and then invite yourself", say, "Could I come along and talk to your team a bit about this idea?"  I'd think, "That would be useful, I'm intrigued by that".

Helen Tupper: And just on inviting yourself into a meeting thing, I do think five minutes seems a small amount of time, but it could make a really big difference, particularly what I have learnt, is where I'm bringing a different energy to that meeting.  So, in corporate life, when I've been working in big companies and there's been these really long meetings that actually tended to be in person when I was doing them, but they were quite long and there were lots of updates and there was all that kind of data and information --

Sarah Ellis: Oh, those were the days - not!

Helen Tupper: -- and not the most fun meetings.  Then, you can be the five minutes on that agenda that just brings a new energy, something interesting, insightful.  And you can say, "If you'd like to hear more, just get in touch with me afterwards and I'll follow up with some more information after today".  But your five minutes of kind of freshness to that meeting can actually feel a lot more positive to people.  And I think it's that, you know when Sarah talked about the context?  If the context of that meeting is pretty boring and you bring five minutes of energy and interest, then that is going to have almost a disproportionate benefit versus the time that you spent there.

Sarah Ellis: One example recently from within Amazing If, so Matt in our team works on our Squiggle and Stay project, where we're working with loads of organisations across the world to experiment on new ways to encourage people to move around organisations, and a few people in our team had commented, they were like, "We're not really sure what that is".  And because Matt works with us one day a week, he's not naturally the most visible person in Amazing If. So, we were chatting about what that might look like.  And rather than him just do a Teams message on Microsoft Teams to everyone, he recorded a really short video of him sharing what is Squiggle and Stay, why it's important, basically a bit of a project update.  That was just a small change to what you might normally do.  But because he's great on camera, it was probably a bit disruptive, everyone on our team was like, "Matt sent us a video!" and that's not something that we would normally do, everybody watched that and then I got really nice messages back. So, if I think about for Matt, that has both increased his personal visibility across Amazing If, but also it's increased Squiggle and Stay's project visibility, which is the thing that he's connected to.  So, rather than maybe our team thinking, "Maybe Sarah's working on that", suddenly he's got a stronger connection to it.  So, I just thought that was a small example of a really smart thing to do that increased his visibility.

Helen Tupper: Really nice example, and quite efficient as well.

Sarah Ellis: Really efficient.

Helen Tupper: Idea for action number four is about knowing who matters most.  So, I think quite a few of the things that we've talked about so far have been increasing your visibility quite broadly, but what can make that more effective is when you're specific about the people that matter most.  So, when you're thinking about your Squiggly Career, where you might be developing and the things you might want to do with your development, thinking about, "Who's going to have the most impact and influence over the things that I want to do; and therefore who do I need to build my visibility with?" can just help you to be a bit more specific about who sees you doing what you do on a day-to-day basis.  It's as simple as thinking about, "Who are the three most important people?" and then, "How can I show up more visibly with them?"

Sarah Ellis: Do you know what I used to do, which doesn't work, I used to be very good at increasing my visibility with people who I was already quite visible with, because I liked them and because they liked me, or they admired me, we got on well.  So, one of the things that then really helped me as I progressed in my Squiggly Career was actually doing this, was thinking, "Who are the three people who are going to unlock my visibility?" in terms of whether it was my career, or particularly on projects or things that I'm working on, and it's often not those people that you maybe really want to spend time with, or who you enjoy and would look forward to. They might be people where you think, "I don't have that natural relationship with that person [or] I'm going to have to work a bit harder", so it's quite a good one to just challenge yourself to make sure you're not doing more of the same.  If you've already got some really good advocates and sponsors, brilliant, but maybe you're thinking, "Who else?" or, are there other people who might be even more important.  You are actually doing some prioritising here.

Helen Tupper: It's quite interesting you said about visibility unlockers.  So, there might be a direct person that you want to have more visibility with, so I might have said when I was in Microsoft, "I want the CEO", at the time it was Cindy Rose in the UK, "I want to be visible to her", so a direct connection.  Or it might almost be more indirect, because it might be a visibility unlocker.  So, if I think now about one of the things that we want to do is build awareness of Squiggly in the US, it's almost like, "Who is an unlocker to that; who has got access and influence in that area, because if I build visibility with that person, they have the ability to impact lots of other people?"  So, it's slightly two different people.

Sarah Ellis: And I like that thought about what can they unlock for you.  I think that might help you with just thinking about who these people are. Then, idea for action number five is about using your values to influence your visibility.  So, almost as we've been talking about there's these different dimensions of visibility, sometimes I think you'll go, "Right, I need this project to be really visible", or to Helen's point, maybe we're trying to grow in the US and we're going to really put a lot of effort and energy into that for a couple of months.  I also think you have your ongoing, almost day-to-day visibility, for you and your career and where you want your career to take you. Again, Helen and I were doing this exercise earlier and we were both saying to each other, "If you were only going to be visible for one thing, what do you want that to be?" so you're getting close here to, what do you want people to say about you when you're not in the room.  And what was interesting is before we came up with a title for this idea for action, we both answered that question with one of our values.  So, I said "ideas" and Helen said "energy", and I think the next layer to this is once you've thought about, what's the one thing you want to be consistently visible for, is then connecting that with the frequency of how much you think that value is visible today. 

So, if you're using that value all of the time in terms of what you work on, the day-to-day stuff that you do, you sort of end up with a really useful level of natural visibility. Let's take Helen as an example, and she said "energy".  One of the things that we were both talking about is, Helen brings energy to the podcasts she records, the workshops she delivers, her client meetings when she's creating career development programmes, her one-to-ones with the team.  So, she felt like there were lots of examples of going, "Well, I bring energy to that", and then she goes out socialising and she brings loads and loads of energy, and she could think of loads and loads of examples.  So I thought, "Okay, brilliant, you're in the right sort of job that will connect those dots, great". Whereas actually, when I then thought about it, I was thinking for ideas, and particularly my ideas tend to look like creating new things, starting from scratch, I then thought about my week and got to a very different conclusion which is, "That doesn't naturally happen".  And so actually, if I asked our Amazing If team, if I asked maybe our clients or partners, they wouldn't necessarily say that about me.  If I'm going to increase my visibility about creating new value, I'd probably have to be intentional about making that happen. 

So, I'd perhaps have to do something different, I'd perhaps have to think about the projects that I work on, or I'd perhaps have to think about how I say these things out loud to other people, so that I signal, "That's the thing I really want to be visible for". Actually, when Helen and I were talking about it, Helen mentioned something different to me.  She was like, "I think I'd say this about you, in terms of something that's really visible", and it wasn't that that was wrong and I didn't feel bad about that thing.  But I also thought, "If that was Helen's go-to, I'd want that to be slightly different".  So, you know that point about, "You have to speak what you seek until you see what you said", I think that really applies here.  And this is the one I guess you would probably keep coming back to, because lots of the others are a bit more tactical, you increase your visibility for a project or in a certain moment to maybe try and make something happen, and then you might not do it in quite the same way.  So, you might put a bit more energy into something and then pause it for a bit and then come back to it.  But this is the one that I think you want to keep coming back to and thinking, "Am I visible in the right way so that I can go back to opening up those options and opportunities and possibilities that make our Squiggly Careers so interesting?"

Helen Tupper: And I think this one as well, when you get this one right, it feels more authentic, because your values are you, and it also takes less effort.  I don't have to work hard to add energy, I just have to make sure that's part of what people see when they work with me. So, we've got two final tips and tactics which we'll go through quite quickly.  The first one is to own your headlines, and make them memorable. 

So, if I give you an example, if I want to be known for energy, I want that to be as easy as possible for people to say about me when I'm not with them.  So sometimes, if you can come up with some little sticky statements that people associate you with, that can make it easier.  So, I haven't done this, but let's say I wrote a weekly newsletter for the team on everyday energy, like two or three ways to increase more energy into your every day.  It was the sort of thing I definitely would have done in corporate life.  We've got enough that we share with the team at the moment, I don't feel like I have to do it! But what that means is people might say, "Oh, do you know Helen Tupper does this weekly post about everyday energy that's really useful?"  So, all of a sudden, I start to get associated with energy because I've created something memorable and unique to me that does the job for me.  And we've both done things.  It's whether you name the way that you run meetings, or I had a manager who used to do Three Things on a Friday that was always quite succinct and funny, and he was more visible because of that because people would be like, "That's my favourite email that I get each week", and then people would be like, "Tell me more about it".  So, other people start sharing you on your behalf and that makes your work and your words more visible as a result. So, own your headlines; what do you want people to say; and make them as memorable as possible so that it's easy for people to share on your behalf.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think just remember people can't remember very much.  Remember people don't remember!  And so, I was just thinking about the people I know who do this really well.  What they do is they do it consistently, back to your examples there just listening to you, and I was thinking, someone we both know, called James Watley, does Five Things on a Friday.  Now, does he do that every single Friday?  No, he sometimes misses a few weeks, and then he's always funny about, "Oh, missed those couple of weeks", or whatever, "because obviously work got a bit busy".  But what he has done is he's done that for quite a lot of years.  So, for years he's kept coming back to that and he is naturally curious and thoughtful --

Helen Tupper: And provocative, right?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, he's provocative.  He has this phrase, "Always go the extra click", you know, to just dig a bit deeper into something.  And you feel like he really lives and breathes that philosophy, as well as recommending that to other people.  I think he gave us that career advice for Squiggly Careers, I think that's in The Squiggly Career book.  He does that and you just see that every time I read Five Things on a Friday, I just think, "He always goes the extra click", and that's brilliant, because then he summarises it for me in a really helpful way.

Helen Tupper: But those are his statements that Sarah has now shared, so he's increased his visibility, because he's made it easier for Sarah to say that, because it's so sticky and memorable.  That's exactly what we mean.  So, just think about what that might sound like for you and your work. Then, the second tip and tactic is explicit asks versus assumptions.  What we're saying here is that you will increase your visibility if other people are sharing your work and your words on your behalf, but we can't just assume that someone's going to see it and say it, or see it and share it; sometimes, we have to ask.  I will give you an example of this. So, one of the things that Sarah and I want to be known for is the impact of our work, not just how many bits of career development we put out into the world, but the impact of it.  And recently, there is an award for CEOs for high-impact CEOs, and we said, "That would be a good award for us to go for, because that's what we want to be associated with".  Now, I can't just assume that someone's going to know that and nominate --

Sarah Ellis: Hope for the best!

Helen Tupper: Hope for the best that someone's going to nominate me for this award!  So instead, I made an explicit ask of someone who I feel is in a position of influence, and I explained why I wanted to be associated with that particular award, and I asked them to put me forward for it.  So, I do think if you want your work to be more visible, you have to recognise that other people can help you to do that, but you can't assume that they'll know to do that automatically; sometimes, you do need to ask for that help.

Sarah Ellis: It's so interesting, isn't it?  I definitely sometimes get this wrong where I think, "Surely people know me really well [or] they would know that that's really important to me", and I thought that about when I've had people in our team and stuff.  And then you have the very open conversations and you realise, I'm often surprised, "Oh, I thought you knew that about me", or I thought I knew that about someone else.  So again, you don't have to be aggressive about these asks, because again I was just thinking some people listening --

Helen Tupper: "Share my post"!

Sarah Ellis: -- might be like, "Please could you do this?"  But I just think this might just be thinking about, I would always be very explicit in my asks to those people in my career community who are my cheerleaders and my champions.  They would be my go-to people here.  So, whether it is because I want to have more space to start stuff from scratch and I'm looking for some support to do that and I want people to advocate that on my behalf; or, whether that is a piece of work that I really want them to help me amplify, etc, I just think know who those cheerleaders and champions are, and they are great people to ask for explicit asks, because they will want to help you succeed, they will want to see you succeed in your Squiggly Careers.  So if anything, you're just being specific about how they can help you. We actually did this on Friday.  So, I had made an assumption about an idea that we'd had that it wouldn't work.  I said to Helen, "I'm not sure".  Basically I said, "I don't think we are cool enough or interesting enough to make this work" and Helen was like, "Okay, maybe".  And I said, "Do you know what though, I could explicitly ask someone who is one of our cheerleaders and champions; let's test the assumption.  I left her a voice note and said, "I know you've done this thing. 

We would like to, but we're not sure", trying not to talk myself out of it too much, but gave ourselves the caveat. What is so interesting, and I shared this with Helen, the voice note we got back from that person was so upbeat and positive.  And so by me explicitly asking, I'd shared something that had increased our visibility, it had reminded her about something we're going to do, and she's actually then gone on to introduce us to the person that we need to talk to.  So, it may or may not happen, but we have been very explicit about that ask, and it just reminded me that sometimes you just hope, don't you? Going back to, "Your work will speak for itself", in my ideal dream world, this thing that we would quite like to do would have come to us, and it just pops up in your inbox, "Hello, Sarah and Helen, here is this interesting and intriguing opportunity", and it all just comes to you and you just pull everything your way.  But unfortunately, I would say, the reality is there are times where you just need to really explicitly ask.  But if you're doing it with people who support you, it's not too scary.

Helen Tupper: So, hopefully that has given you a few things to think about and some ideas for action in terms of you and your visibility.  As we said at the start, all of those five ideas for action will be summarised in the PodSheet, so hopefully you've listened, but then you can read that and almost work your way through each of those.  And if you've got any questions or feedback as you do start to do that, you can always get in touch with us.  We're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone, and Mel!