Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:35: Announcing the Skills Sprint
00:02:21: Making "when" become "then"
00:03:13: The "say-do development gap"
00:05:15: Being too internal-focused
00:06:51: Ideas for action…
00:06:58: … 1: share your learning goals
00:10:15: … 2: knowledge swap sessions
00:18:42: … 3: manager/everyone microlearning moments
00:25:47: 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 ideas and tools that we hope are going to help you to navigate your Squiggly Career with that bit more confidence and control.  This week, we're talking about the topic of our latest Harvard Business Review article, which is called How Managers Can Make Time for Their Career Development.  And don't worry, please don't stop listening if you're not a manager right now, because I think the things that we're going to talk about are universal for all of us, but sometimes perhaps they can feel extra challenging if you're a manager. 

Helen Tupper: And before we get started, we wanted to let you know about some exciting news in the world of Squiggly Careers, which is that in August, we're going to do something a little bit different with the podcast.  We are going to do a bit of a Squiggly Careers podcast takeover, and every working day in August, we are going to release a seven-minute episode, so super-short, as part of our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series.  Alliteration overload!

Sarah Ellis: Catchy title!  Just think of it as a Skills Sprint, that's what we're calling it. 

Helen Tupper: We've got 20 episodes, each episode focuses on a different skill, and we want to talk about what the skill is, why it matters, and we've got an idea for action from each of us and a go-to guru so that you can go and learn a bit more.  And we're really trying to help people create learning momentum.  We have got a link.  If you want to sign up for the sprint, please, please come sprint with us.  We've got a link for that which we'll put on social, we will also put it on the show notes of this podcast.  If you can't find it, email us, helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  When you sign up to the sprint, we will email you back a ready, steady sprint document that's going to have all the details in, it's going to have all the episodes, it's going to have lots of ideas that you can keep committed. 

We're also going to be creating a bit of a community on LinkedIn of sprinters who are listening and learning together.  So, if you fancy that, then get involved, find the links, email us, and we will get you started with your sprint. 

Sarah Ellis: And if you are going on holiday, which is absolutely allowed in August, we do know we're doing this at a time where lots of people go on holiday, but we also know that people listen to our podcast on holiday, please don't worry if you miss a week, they're not going to go anywhere, you'll be able to catch up and we'll keep talking about the Skills Sprint and getting your feedback on it.  So, please sign up whether you can make all 20 days or not. 

Helen Tupper: So back to today then, how managers, and to be honest all of us, can make more time for our career development.  The first thing really is, well, why do we need to?  We've got loads of things, why does career development make it to the top of my to-do list?  There are a few things for us to focus on here. 

The first of it is managers and many of us all get stuck in this time trap, where career development becomes one of those things that we say, "Well I'll get round to it when I'm not in back-to-back meetings; I'll get round to it when I've emptied my inbox; I'll get round to it when I've ticked off all these things on my to-do list", and the problem is "when" never becomes "then", because there's just more meetings and more conversations and more things to do.  And so we need to make sure that our career development doesn't get prioritised in favour of the things we have to get done every day, because then we're more likely to be stuck in our Squiggly Careers and stagnate with our career development. 

For managers, in addition, when this time trap gets in the way of their development, it not only affects them, but it also affects the people that work for them, because it creates something that we call the "say-do development gap", which is if I imagine that Sarah works for me and I'm this super-busy manager that hasn't got time for me to ever get my development done, but I say to Sarah, "Oh, it's really important that you ask for feedback.  It's really important that you stretch your strengths", but Sarah doesn't see me doing what I'm saying to her to do, it sort of affects the credibility of career development because Sarah might be thinking, "Well, why should I do it if you don't do it?"  And so we really want people to make a commitment to their career development and for managers to sort of engender that commitment in other people too. 

Sarah Ellis: I also think it's more fun and interesting when we learn together as a team.  And I think historically, if you think about ladder-like learning, it was like, well, as a manager or as a leader, you do different learning, it's separate to what we all do as a team.  And I think in Squiggly Careers, this idea of what do we want to learn as a team, and almost learning from each other and with each other is much more powerful.  And also then, we all hold each other to account a bit, because at Amazing If, we do quite a lot now together and I think that means that we all show up and it becomes a must-do rather than a nice-to-do. 

Helen Tupper: I forgot to tell you, talking about learning together as a team, you know I had a party at the weekend? 

Sarah Ellis: I do know, which I didn't go to! 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, you were invited, let's just be really clear, you were invited, you didn't want to come to my party; conversation for another day!  She gave me some chocolate, everyone, that was very kind.  Anyway, at the party I brought out your Desert Island Crisps exercise that we talked about on the podcast last week; went down a treat! 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I bet it did.  Helen is getting a lot of abuse on social media for not liking crisps and I've really enjoyed it, it's been the best week of social media ever!

Helen Tupper: Me just getting abused!  Someone liked those Nik Naks that are really smelly, what are they called?

Sarah Ellis: Those ones that I like, Nice 'N' Spicy.  They're my favourite.

Helen Tupper: Oh, no!  Someone else like discos as well.  I mean, it's good chat, crisps chat!

Sarah Ellis: Who would have thought that crisps would be the thing?  Actually, I would have thought crisps were more interesting than careers apparently! 

Helen Tupper: No!

Sarah Ellis: I think the last challenge that we're trying to address today is only developing and learning internally.  So, if we do that, we have quite a narrow view of the world, we sort of reduce and limit our learning and curiosity, and I think we get stuck in that trap of doing things in the way we've always done them.  So, perhaps you are doing some learning as a manager or as a team, but you're sort of doing what's provided to you, either what you're told to do, or you maybe feel quite passive, and you just sort of receive some learning along the way.  Whereas actually, if we think about what the sort of outside-in learning and development look like, that's when we get to spot new opportunities and create new connections.  But understandably, that often feels really difficult, because you're like, "Well, how do I make that happen?" 

When I tested this idea, actually, before we'd written the article, I had about 50 managers all together in a workshop I was doing, and I tested these three things, the say-do development gap, being too internal focused, and the, "I'll get to it when…"  And as I was going through, people were getting more and more enthusiastic about just how big a challenge it was.  So everyone was like, "Yeah, there is a bit of a say-do development gap", sort of nodding along.  And then I got very enthusiastic nods about, "I'm too internal focused".  But then when I got to the, "I know it's important, but it will happen when I finish recruiting for my team, when I finished this project", everyone was like, "Oh my God, I said that yesterday.  I said that to myself last Friday.  I will get to it, but I'll get to it when this magical point of career development comes along".  So really, we're going for a "create, don't wait" mindset here when it comes to your career. 

Helen Tupper: And we've got three ideas for action to help you, whether you're a manager or just somebody who does want to make more time for their career development. 

So, idea for action number one is all about sharing your learning goals.  When we share our learning goals with other people, it increases our accountability.  So, if I'm sharing them with Sarah, for example, the fact that I've been confident enough to communicate them increases my commitment, but also Sarah being aware of them helps her to support me with my accountability.  So, it sort of helps us to set them and then to stick with them.  And you can do this in loads of different ways. 

We've done learning frameworks before, which we've talked about, which can be really useful, which is where you set yourself a learning goal, like mine might be I want to learn more about design thinking, and you create a learning framework, which is kind of what education am I going to get involved in to support that?  So, that could be what books am I going to read or what course am I going to go on; who am I going to be exposed to, so that could be a mentor; how am I going to put that into action, so my experience, so what am I going to do differently in my day to day; and then also how am I going to extend that knowledge, so how am I going to share it with other people?  You could literally write that down and I could share that with Sarah and she could support me with it. 

Or it could be some statements.  So, rather than it being a framework and a document, it might sound something like, "The learning that I'm looking forward to doing this year is…" or, "By the end of the year, I want to be better at…"  So, whether it's a statement that you all talk about in your teams, or whether it's a document that you share and maybe you refer back to, you could do like a red/amber/green status on your progress, so it's something you come back to.  I don't think this is a share and then leave it alone, I think it's a share and how can you come back to it in a conversation.  I think that's the thing that makes this stuff stick. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think just keep this really simple because one of the things that we talked about as the challenge, is often these things get overcomplicated or you feel like you're filling out a form.  I think one sentence can be enough.  If you knew for a group of six to eight people, "The one thing I want to get better at, and the learning I'm most looking forward to is…", that would be really helpful, it creates that conscious bias.  Like, if I know that Helen wants to learn about and get better at design thinking, you spot that, "Oh, someone was talking about that on LinkedIn", and then I send you that post.  Or I see an article, and it mentions design thinking in a different industry, and suddenly I share that with you.  And it's that whole point about learning together.  Your goals don't need to be identical, but you all feel like you're supporting each other to make progress on your learning. 

I think that's a really good conversation as well for one-to-ones.  So, when managers are having career conversations, this doesn't always have to be as part of a big group.  So, if I'm managing Helen and we're having a career conversation, I might say, "What's one of your learning goals for this year; what's your most important learning goal for this year?"  I hear Helen's, but I think it's really important to then reciprocate, to kind of go, "Oh, that's so interesting.  Actually, one of my learning goals for this year is I really want to learn more from other managers, from my peers".  And then you might say, "Well, actually, that manager I used to work for, they were great".  I'll probably be jealous!  I'm like, "Oh, why?"  But then, "Maybe you could introduce me". 

So, again, getting away from sort of seniority and places on a hierarchy being like, "Oh, well, I would never ask Helen for help because she works for me".  I'm like, "Well, why not?"  Helen might have been in this organisation for longer than me, she might know different people to me.  So, I think career conversations is a really good place for sharing learning goals too. 

Helen Tupper: And we often talk about, in Amazing If, the importance of democratising career development and I think sharing learning goals is a really important part of just making learning equal and for everybody. 

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action number two is called knowledge swap sessions.  So, we think this is a really efficient way to bring the outside in.  And this is connecting with non-competing teams and organisations to do team development together.  So, pretty much everybody has team days of some description, and often you're scrabbling around for what's going to be on the agenda, maybe you leave it a bit until the last minute.  But I think these times together are only becoming more important, whether they are virtual or whether they're in-person.  I think a really good opportunity for everybody to learn is to think, "Well, who could we do this knowledge swapping with?"  Because I think you get so many different benefits. 

Helen and I have done two or three of these this year.  Some of them, just Helen and I, some of them with everybody in our Amazing If team.  And the list of all the upsides of this is, you create new connections; you're learning from people and you're getting a window into their world who you wouldn't normally spend time with; I think there's often things that surprise you or feel unexpected; and also, you're coming up with the agenda together.  So, you're probably doing 50% of the work, but I think you get more than 100% of the gain. 

Helen Tupper: I think it acts as like a mentoring multiplier as well.  So, if you think a mentor is just somebody who has done what you would like to do.  So, when a manager brings teams together, you often find out, "Oh, you've done that project [or] you've been on that course [or] you've done that presentation before".  Most people have done something you would like to do, so by managers bringing teams together, it's a bit of a mentoring multiplier.  I feel like you're creating this environment for knowledge share that happens really quickly between people.  And it gets rid of the confidence barrier.  That's one of the things I think managers really help with is, not only is there a moment where this happens, which does make it easier for the rest of the team, but also the fact that they've organised it, they've maybe brought that team together, that gets over the confidence of, say, one individual in the team reaching out to a peer in a different company.

Sarah Ellis: And I think anyone can do this.  So, a manager might organise the first one to kind of lead the way, a role model, so we don't get that say-do gap that we talked about.  But I think anyone in the team can make these happen.  And though we are trying to bring the outside in, if you want to make it particularly easy, if you're in a big organisation, the outside in could be a team in a different country, or it could be just a very different team to your team. 

So, in Amazing If, we do tend to do it with different companies because we're a small company and it would be quite a quick process if it was just the other people in our company.  But I'm thinking, if I was back in my Sainsbury's days, if in marketing we had shared our team development day with a team in procurement, actually that would have served us really well in terms of just opening our eyes up to people spending time in a different way with very different challenges.  But also you're often surprised, I think, by how much you have in common. 

Helen Tupper: So, to bring this to life a little bit, in the article we suggest some agenda items, and you can just steal these and use them, so it speeds the whole thing up a little bit.  So, the first thing that you could have a go at is a "what-if wall".  This is where each of the teams would share an idea or an objective that you're working on at the moment, and the other organisation then creates a what-if wall of questions designed to spark new thoughts.  So, "What if Amazing If was famous for their customer service?  What if your product solved twice as much as it does today?"  And a team who isn't so connected to what you're doing, not so close to it, they're not doing it every day, they can often create what-if questions that might take you quite far away from where you are and open up a whole new area of interest for you to explore.

Sarah Ellis: The next one is called "surprise stories", and this is where each team shares an example of something about their organisational function that just might surprise other people who are not on the inside.  So, I think that might be to do with like a process, how a project gets done.  It's sort of lifting the bonnet often on what can't be seen from the outside.  So, for example, I think if we shared maybe like the process for writing a book, I reckon people would be quite surprised by some of what has to happen along the way and how difficult it can be.  You know, from the outside in, writing a book, I just think, "Oh, do you not just write the document in Word and then give it to somebody to print out?" and you're like, "Well, nothing could be further from the truth", but I didn't know that until we did that for the first time.  And so you could even give the other team the choice. 

So, you could sort of say, "Okay, well, we could talk about these three or four things" and you just give quite fun headlines, and then let the other team choose and be like, "Oh, actually, we'd really like to hear about how you made a book, or we'd really like to hear about what you did in lockdown one, when previously all of the work that you've done have been in person".  Often, I think with surprise stories, people like a bit of jeopardy. 

Helen Tupper: Like our pandemic pivot! 

Sarah Ellis: Our pandemic pivot, yeah, you could write some quite fun headlines; people love a failure!  Or it could even be sort of surprise skills, that's always a nice question that you can ask people, "What's a skill that you've got that other people might not know about you?"  And then actually, your team is getting to know you better, but then the other team hear that too.  That could be quite a fun way to get to know everybody in a room quite quickly. 

Helen Tupper: And the final idea here for an example agenda item is "superpower swaps".  I really like this one.  This is where a team, it could be an individual in the team or the team in its entirety, identifies something that they are particularly good at.  Maybe that is negotiation, maybe you are a sales team that is amazing at closing the deal, or maybe you work in marketing and you are amazing at building brands, or I don't know, maybe you're brilliant at creating communities, or whatever it is, but this is where a team gets to be confident about what they do well and then communicate that superpower to another team so the other team can learn from it.  I think that's why the non-competing thing is quite important here because you get to be really curious about that skill, how do you use it, how to develop it, what would you do in this situation, but it's a really nice way to hear what other people do brilliantly.  And I think calling it "superpower swap" as well, no one's feeling arrogant about this, I think people should be feeling really proud, like this is what we as a team do brilliantly. 

Sarah Ellis: I'm just trying to think what we would do; what would we do; what would our superpower swap be do you think? 

Helen Tupper: Well, I think we talked about how we connected our communities and our podcast to help us grow Squiggly, so I think we're doing -- well, I think I shouldn't be modest about it, we are scaling Squiggly as an international way of really looking at career development.  So, I think we did do one of our superpower swaps with talking to a team about how we were doing that.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think it's really nice there as well just remembering this doesn't have to be the manager of a team presenting all of this.  This is about including everybody.  If you can, unless your team is massive, you want everybody's voice to be heard at some point, you want everybody to be included, everybody to feel involved.  I don't see this as, "Oh, I sit and listen to another company for three hours", and then the other company listens to you for three hours.  I think this can be really short and sharp, it could be a power hour, a bit of curiosity, a bit of outside-in curiosity.  And it's amazing how much you can learn when you've got a focused agenda and everybody's clear about what they need to prepare and how to show up. 

Helen Tupper: Also, it's quite a good way of spotting teams that you might want to talk to, because if you think, what's a superpower spot?  You know, like a superpower that you've not got, and you're like, "Oh, do you know what, that team's great at…"  That can also be a really good starting point for suggesting one of these sorts of sessions. 

Sarah Ellis: That's true actually.  I was thinking the other day about a team that I used to work with who were very good at process and checklists, and I keep talking about process and checklists at the moment. 

Helen Tupper: She's such an exciting business partner! 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I know.  Who wouldn't want to spend time with me?  But equally, I'm not very good at either of those things, but I can see the value in those things.  So, again, you go, "Oh, we could do a superpower swap", and that could be the only item on the agenda, and you just do that for 20 minutes, and then you might say to the other team, "Well, these are some of the superpowers we've got, which one of these would be interesting for you?" 

Helen Tupper: And then it's back to, well, how does this make more time for career development?  It means that lots of people are learning at once.  So, I think there's often with career development this like Helen has to go do it on her own and Sarah has to go do something else, but if you can, the collective career development is actually really, really efficient.  So, when you make those moments, more people learn together in a time-efficient way. 

Sarah Ellis: And idea for action number three is manager/everyone microlearning moments.  One of the things that we are seeing more and more is that we've got to make development part of our day-to-day.  So, we've got to add it in rather than feeling like we're adding it on.  It's a bit like with the team day idea.  We're doing a team day anyway, so let's just really make it an amazing learning experience.  So, we've got to do things that feel simple and unashamedly easy, I think.  And I always want people to give us feedback.  I'm like, "If this is not easy, what would make it easier?  If this is not useful, what would make it more useful?" 

Helen Tupper: Useful-er!

Sarah Ellis: I was actually going to go with that, but then I was like, no, that's not a word!  And so, I think even setting ourselves some parameters of going, "Well, this needs to feel like it takes less than ten minutes".  One of the reasons we're doing the Skills Sprint in August is to do something really short and specific, to see if we can do that and still be significant in our impact; because our hypothesis is that it will work, but you've got to try some things out just to see what happens when we start to commit to continual learning. 

Helen Tupper: So, a couple of ideas here for microlearning moments that you might want to explore.  The first one is fast feedback.  It's as simple as asking your team members to answer the same fast feedback question, "What three words would you use to describe me at my best?"  I'm going to put Sarah on the spot now.  She has answered this for me before but she hasn't done it recently.  So, Sarah, what three words would you use to describe me at my best? 

Sarah Ellis: Energy, doer, enthusiasm. 

Helen Tupper: I could critique energy and enthusiasm!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I was critiquing it in my own brain! 

Helen Tupper: I could hear it!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I wasn't happy with the third one but then I was like, optimism, but I didn't know if that was too similar to energy, so the problem is as a thinker I could get to two, but even then you go, "Okay, well that's quite useful, I could do two really quickly", but there wasn't -- actually, I want to say relationships; does that work as one word?  That works as one word.

Helen Tupper: I'll take it, yeah.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, relationships, there you go.

Helen Tupper: My point in asking, I don't mean to give myself an ego trip on the podcast, was that it's actually quite easy.  It's easy for somebody and it's positive, there's no kind of awkwardness about that.  And I think the benefit of doing it, as well as it passing the can-you-do-it-easily checklist, the more that you do that, the more data you get for your development.  So, let's say I ask Sarah and then maybe ask someone else in the team, are those strengths consistent; are they what I want to be known for?  So, of course you can take fast feedback further, but just getting into a habit of asking that in the team is a really useful way of getting a bit more instant insight. 

Sarah Ellis: So, our next microlearning moment is a one-minute weekly review.  When we ask people, "Have you had any time to reflect or to think this week?"  Most people are like, "No, absolutely not".  And I think because we put too much pressure on ourselves in terms of what that has to look like, I honestly think if on the last day of your week, so whether that's Thursday or Friday, you had in your diary a ten-minute meeting, you can call it whatever you want, but essentially it's a quick review of your week, and you're just asking yourself two self-awareness questions, "What has given me the most energy this week?  What could have been better this week?"  Or you could be even more specific and say, "What's the one thing that could have been better this week?" because that just makes it even easier.  Back to our example of going, "Oh, what could have been better?" you might be like, "Maybe that, maybe that".  If you're like, "What's one thing that could have been better?" I might go, "Okay, well, that meeting because we didn't have an agenda [or] that document because I wasn't clear about what I was writing", like, why not? 

If you just did that and you did a one-minute mind map, you jotted those things down in the same place every week, that I think would propel you and give you some really good learning momentum into the next week.  And once you get into a habit, it just becomes a ritual.  You might just jot them down, you move on really quickly.  You've not got to, especially if you're someone like me, I think the thing that might get in your way is you then might get a bit obsessed with, "Why not?" and it would often lead to more and more questions.  But I think sometimes it's okay to ask and answer a couple of questions quickly and then sort of almost like let it go and just be like, "Okay, that's great, and I'm just going to go into my next week", because I think each week you just get a bit smarter. 

Helen Tupper: I saw someone on LinkedIn who said, I don't think I've never thought of doing this, but they WhatsApp themselves. 

Sarah Ellis: I didn't even know you could do that. 

Helen Tupper: I didn't know you could do that, but when they basically use it, and there's lots of other apps, things like Pocket that you can do this kind of thing with, if they've got interesting articles that they wanted to read, they would just WhatsApp themselves so they could scroll through the WhatsApp and it would be there. 

Sarah Ellis: "Hi Sarah, love Sarah"! 

Helen Tupper: "Hi Sarah, you'd like this article.  Have a great day.  Bye, me"!  In the context of this idea of action, the weekly review, like a WhatsApp weekly review, you could just at the end of the week answer those questions that Sarah said like, "What's the one thing that's giving me the most energy?"  It might be quite interesting just to scroll through after doing it a little bit, just to see what's consistent in that and what's different. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, the thing I often find the hardest is the mechanism.  Because I ask myself loads of questions about self-awareness, I'm always reflecting because I'm a thinker.  What I often need is a little bit of a nudge or a place where that thing goes, and then I think my learning gets a lot better.  So, because we do Win of the Week every Friday as an Amazing If team, and that goes into Teams, and we all do it, and it's all in the same place, I never, ever fail to do that because I think it's got a home.  I think sometimes if something's got a place or you're sharing it, both of those things help to make it easier and also to hold you to account. 

Helen Tupper: And our last idea for action for a microlearning moment is called strength accelerators.  So, this is where you pick a skill that you want to strengthen, so I might pick maybe my storytelling skills, and then you identify an action related to either regularity, so using it more; range, so that's the different places that you use it in; or reach, so that's the different people you're using it with.  And you could just pick one of those, or if you really want to accelerate it, you could do one of each over the week, for example.  But it's just quite a quick way when you think regularity, range or reach, it's quite a quick way of thinking about how you could stretch your strengths. 

Sarah Ellis: And I think all of these small moments of career development learning all add up to more, you know when the whole equals more than the sum of the parts.  And so I think it's giving ourselves that confidence of going, "This doesn't need to be a lot and this doesn't need to be overwhelming, this just needs to be some small moments of my week".  And then actually, I'll get to the end of a month, a quarter, a year, and I'll be so much further forward than I was before.  You're also increasing your career resilience. 

So, we often talk a bit about what makes you more vulnerable in your career is when you're not making time for your development, when you're only looking on the inside, when you're not learning from different people in different places.  And I hope that the things that we've talked about this week would just help you to feel like, okay, well, in a Squiggly Career, we know that stuff can change, we know there's uncertainty, but if one of those knotty moments happens to come your way, it gives you a bit more confidence that you're like, "Okay, but I'm doing things that I can do".  You know we often say, "You can't necessarily control everything about your career, but you can control your career development". 

Helen Tupper: What we'll do so that you can easily get to all of these easy actions is we'll summarise them for you in the PodSheet, and that will be on our website, so on amazingif.com.  If you go to the podcast page, you'll be able to download the PodSheet.  Or, we do put it on Instagram @amazingif, and on LinkedIn @amazingif as well.  But hopefully that might be something you might want to download, you could share it with your team, you could say, "Where do you want to get started?"  Making this a conversation, rather than a dictation from you as a manager is probably the best place to start with it. 

Sarah Ellis: And please do have a read of the HBR article, let us know what you think, please share it with as many people as possible, that really helps us to spread the Squiggly word.  And if there's ever a podcast episode idea that you've got, or a topic that you'd like to see us write an article on, please get in touch.  We're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.   

Helen Tupper: Bye for now everybody. 

Sarah Ellis: Bye for now everyone.