Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:22: Ego
00:02:37: Ego becomes a problem
00:04:56: Ego quiz
00:06:04: Looking at your answers
00:09:08: Ego clashes
00:12:28: Ego action 1: Listen than talk
00:14:05: Ego Action 2: cultivate your critics
00:17:21: Ego Action 3: experiment with assumptions
00:20:06: Ego problems at work
00:21:04: Ideas for action: crowdsourcing perspectives
00:24:27: Idea for Action: moving from "I win", to "We win"
00:26:57: Idea for action: mindset
00:29:30: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hello everybody and welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast; I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: This is a weekly podcast to help you navigate through all the ups and downs and ins and outs of your careers, where we hope that we can provide a community of people all working on their Squiggly Careers together and give you some ideas of actions to support you as you progress your way through it all.

Sarah Ellis: Today we're talking about I think quite an uncomfortable topic; one that when we've mentioned to a few people we're going to talk about it, you can see people wince and get a bit tense.  But never one to shy away from a different challenge, we're talking about ego; ego at work, your ego, other people's ego, what it means.

Helen Tupper: Sarah's ego.

Sarah Ellis: Yes, to be honest when we've tried to design today, we tried to make it very practical; so, the only way to do that is with lots of examples, so this is going to be fun.  Let's see how I feel by the end of this; probably not great about myself.

When we think about ego and its relationship with Squiggly Careers, it's interesting because Helen and I had quite different initial reactions to the relationship between ego and Squiggly Careers.  I actually felt really positive, I thought, "Maybe quite a lot of ego is tied up in command-and-control environments, being more hierarchical".  There is a relationship I think between ego and power, so perhaps as our organisations get flatter, ego might be a bit less of a challenge.  Maybe everybody can sort of feel more confident in themselves and it's less about the kind of position that we are on an organisational chart.

I was feeling really upbeat about that and then Helen had a different perspective, it was quite a bit more challenging, weren't you?

Helen Tupper: It sounds like I was really negative, which is not normally my normal stance.  But I was thinking, "If you get rid of the hierarchy, I don't think that automatically means that you get rid of ego", because you have to have a deep-rooted sense of self so that you are confident in the work that you do and the worth of your work, independent of other people.  I think you have to both get rid of the ladder, which has all these slightly ego appealing things attached to it, and at the same time develop your own sense of self-belief. 

If you do that together, then I think Squiggly Careers are amazing, but if you just get rid of the ladder and you don't help people to develop their self-belief, then I think maybe people feel a bit lost and then start to fall into more career comparison.  Then, as we will talk about, that can be one of the traps for ego to start to thrive.

Sarah Ellis: Essentially, our summary was there's pros and cons, probably like most things.

Helen Tupper: More great insights coming up in this episode.

Sarah Ellis: Yes.  When we think about what is ego and as we have said, it probably will feel quite uncomfortable to think about, we also had a discussion about, "Is ego inherently bad?"  I think, and we aren't real psychological experts in this area, ego seems to just really mean our sense of self.  It just actually means "I", your sense of who you are, and the challenge is when your ego becomes inflated.  It's at that point where your sense of self you maybe feel superior or better, or as Helen said, you're comparing yourselves to others because you want to make yourself feel like you're better than they are, then that's where it creates a challenge; that is where you can get in your own way.

When we have talked before about fixed mindset, it's interesting that fixed mindsets often come from one of two places: fear and ego.  I think we recognise and almost feel happier thinking about fear, because we talk a lot, don't we, about fear of failure or fear of not being good enough and somehow, that feels maybe more familiar; but when we talk to people about fixed mindset around ego, I think that's just a topic that it's almost got inherently all of these quite negative connotations and we don't like to think of ourselves as having an ego.  Even the word has quite bad associations, I think.

Helen Tupper: What we just want to start with is a bit of an honest assessment of your ego and we have six different statements which we are going to say out loud, and I guess the question for you to answer for yourself is which one of these or which ones of these six statements feel familiar to you.  What we'll do as well is we'll put these six statements on the podsheet, so don't worry about having to listen and reflect and write all this down all in one go.  We'll put it on the podsheet that you can get from Amazingif.com.

Also, to make it a bit more real, I am going to ask these six statements to Sarah, and she's going to answer whether, yes or no, these feel familiar to her, so you can get a bit of an insight into her and the questions as we go.  Are we ready?

Sarah Ellis: You just want me to do yes/no, or do I elaborate, or do we just go really straight binary, yes/no?

Helen Tupper: See how you feel when I say the questions.

Sarah Ellis: Okay, okay.  The idea with this, so people know what we're aiming for, what good looks like, is we thought it would be really helpful to be able to answer the question, "My ego is most likely to get in my way when … ".  So, we were trying to figure out how do you develop your self-awareness knowing that we all probably have moments where our ego does inflate and isn't helpful.  Just as we're going through these questions, that's ultimately what we're aiming for.  That's just me putting us off, Helen.  Right, let's go, I'm ready!

Helen Tupper: You can ask them back to me as well afterwards, this isn't just about you!

Sarah Ellis: There you go.

Helen Tupper: I feel really bad putting you on the spot, okay, are you ready?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: So, which of these feels familiar, yes, or no.  You get defensive when someone disagrees with you?

Sarah Ellis: Yes.

Helen Tupper: People around you feed your ego rather than give you feedback?

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: You rarely change your mind?

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: You need other people to give you praise?

Sarah Ellis: Yes.

Helen Tupper: You view your career in comparison to others?

Sarah Ellis: Sometimes.

Helen Tupper: You are more likely to think that you're right than that you're wrong?

Sarah Ellis: Sometimes.

Helen Tupper: You've snuck a "sometimes" option into it.  If you were to use your insights to answer the question then, "My ego is most likely to get in my way when … ", based on the things that you answered yes and sometimes to, what would you say?

Sarah Ellis: I think what's interesting as you're going though these questions is, which are the ones that feel very familiar?  I think it is almost we were quite binary there, but in your head, I think you start to develop a bit of a sliding scale.  The one that sticks out for me is praise, I definitely have a need for validation and praise.  I just know that about myself because I think that obviously feeds your ego, so that one was the one that stuck out the most.

The other ones that were sometimes is, I can probably spot certain points in my career where it was more true, so if I think about getting defensive when someone disagrees with me, that was more true at the start of my career than it is now, and I think that's because I'm more confident now.  So, we talked about that relationship between confidence and almost being able to keep your ego in check; I think when you're more confident in yourself, you are more open to people having different points of view, disagreeing with you and you perhaps feel less like you have to protect your point of view. 

I think that maybe, it was your starting in your career or you learning to influence and persuade and those kinds of things, you feel like if someone disagrees, you're doing something wrong; or I think that's how I felt.  But that one has changed for me over time, so that's why I was like, "Sometimes", but I think I've learned to manage that and be much more open.  I feel good about my progress in terms of managing my ego in that area.

The career comparison one I know is wrong, I know is unhelpful.  You know when you think, "I know this is not useful", but I do think that's one of those traps you can fall into very occasionally and I actually now, particularly on social media, really manage who I follow, the time I spend on social media, because that's my downfall when it comes to comparison.  It's not actually my peers or people that I've worked with or people I know who actually I'm just really happy for; it's almost the people I don't know and I'm like, "I don't even know these people".

Then the, "You're right then you're wrong", I think I can be guilty of that sometimes of thinking, "I can be quite decisive and I'm competitive and I definitely have got an assertive personality".  The wrong side of that, I think if you catch me on a bad day, on a day where you're not at your best and perhaps you're stressed, perhaps you're tired, perhaps your kids come home from nursery with a Covid test, just to give you an example.

Helen Tupper: Insight into Sarah's life!

Sarah Ellis: Yes, insight into my life at the moment!  I think if you got me on the wrong day, I could let my ego inflate to be like, "We don't need to talk about this because I know the right answer, I know how this should be done" and that is your ego talking and hindering you rather than helping, I think.  It feels like they feel hard questions to answer, they're not very nice things to acknowledge about yourself, because clearly this is not you at your best.  Okay, now let's talk about you for a minute, I'm really sweaty!

Helen Tupper: I can see Sarah on camera, and she definitely didn't like talking about that!  Whilst you were talking there, you did make me think both about myself and some of the stuff around ego.  It made me think about what are some ego activators.  For example, if you feel that you are more susceptible to viewing your career in comparison to other people, you might say, "That is activated by social media", it would be useful to think when does that get triggered.

The other thing I was thinking based on which question for me felt most familiar, which is that I'm more likely to think I am right that I'm wrong, I think that's definitely one that I get into; but I was thinking, "Isn't it interesting when you work with somebody who has the same ego activator as you?"  Then I think you get into an ego clash, because let's say mine isn't, for example, the career comparison one, I don't have that one, and so our egos don't necessarily clash if you have the career comparison and I have the, "More likely to think I'm right than I'm wrong".  I'm not saying that they're good, but they don't clash.

But when we both come at ego with the same one, which is we are both more likely to think that we're right than we're wrong, that's maybe where ego can feel really uncomfortable at work, where you both rarely change your mind, or you both end up getting defensive when you're disagreeing with each other; it really starts to create an uncomfortable climate for ego at work.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's interesting because I recognise that in both of us, I think we probably both recognise it in each other.  What happens I think, is us together at our worst, you go from two individuals that have the potential to go from very good to great when we're together and at our best, to when both of our egos are clashing and then you both individually and together get even worse, if that makes sense?

Helen Tupper: Yes.

Sarah Ellis: It dilutes any of the brilliance and the strengths and all the good stuff and I think we both bring to the company that we run.  You kind of see that dissipating and really getting diluted and you're not even individually brilliant, because that goes as well.  And so, I think it's almost like the worst‑case scenario. 

So, I think if you have the honesty and the awareness to spot this in yourself, but also to feel okay and to acknowledge that everybody has some of these things.  I don't know if there's even a phrase for, I suppose if you've got lots of humility, that means that you don't have a really big ego; but we all must have moments, right.  I really hope, I think I'm saying that in hope, we all must have moments where we our ego gets in our way.

Helen Tupper: Yes, and also awareness of ego in a team, talking about this in a team I think, whether you can all have humility all the time I don't know, but maybe just more awareness of what your ego is, when it shows up and how it holds you back.  Those are probably brilliant conversations to have in teams, which hopefully you can start doing with those six questions and then you can take some of the actions that we're now going to talk through, so that you can not get to that destructive situation that Sarah talked about where you're all a bit worse off because of it.

We've got three actions for you and your ego, which I'll talk through, and then we've got three actions for how you can work more effectively when other people's ego might be getting in your way.  Hopefully this will give you some things that you can take away and do after you've listened today.  Shall I go first?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, go for it.  That's me being egoless, by the way.

Helen Tupper: Thanks.  Is that me being egoful?  Is that word?

Sarah Ellis: I don't know.

Helen Tupper: Oh gosh, now we're just going to real suck at a live situation.  I'm just going to go first everyone.

Sarah Ellis: Go for it.

Helen Tupper: The first thing: if you recognise those six statements in yourself and also where they might get in your way, one of the things that you can do is to more consciously listen than talk.  Think about if I was in a meeting with Sarah, for example, and I was recognising that maybe the last meeting that I'd had, my need to be right had resulted in the meeting going wrong, then what I might think is, "Do you know what; in this next meeting, I'm going to put myself in listener mode.  That hasn't helped us move forwards, so I am going to consciously do much more listening than I am talking".

There's a really nice quote from George Clooney, who I'm not sure we've ever quoted in the Squiggly Careers podcast before.

Sarah Ellis: No, but I'm very onboard with it.

Helen Tupper: Me too -- who said in his wise ways that, "You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak".  Maybe it's true.

Sarah Ellis: It is probably true, isn't it?  It does make you stop and think a bit that if you want to have more humility.  I saw one of our previous guests, Alex Cole from on the podcast talking on LinkedIn last week, where she talked about this idea of inverting the hierarchy and as a leader you should always be learning to listen and that's what you should be spending most of your time doing.  So, whatever level you're at, but certainly if you're in any position of leadership or influence, just thinking about if your priority for this week was listening, what would you do differently?  I think you would really change your approach to conversations, to meetings, to projects.

Helen Tupper: I won't talk now, but it's not because I'm not listening, just to put that out there.

Sarah Ellis: Yes, you've got yourself really stuck in a corner there.

Helen Tupper: I know, oh dear.  The second one, which I think I do really well with Sarah, is to cultivate your critics.  This is basically the other point that we mentioned earlier, one of the questions about, are you spending time with people who feed your ego rather than give you feedback.  It's about consciously spending time with people who have a different perspective, who might challenge you, they might sometimes give you some of the harder news, some of that challenge that you might not always give yourself.

Thinking about people who maybe sometimes make you feel uncomfortable, either because they say things that you wouldn't or see the world in a way that you don't, is a really good way to make sure that you don't get in a bit of an ego echo chamber.  I have looked back on my career and thought about some of the people that I found hard to work with at the time, because of the day-to-day work, but actually become really beneficial people to spend time with in a slightly different context, because they naturally see things differently.  That’s one of the ways that I have cultivated some of the critics that will say some of the things that I don’t always say to myself.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I was reading one of the articles in preparation for today and someone had put a really lovely phrase where they said, "Honesty equals humility".  It's like if you've got that honesty with each other, if you can find people who will be really honest with you, it helps you to have humility because it helps you to see things clearly, but I think it also gives you confidence, because it is a fine line, isn't it?  I suspect loads of our listeners, at times, will have also had challenges around, make sure that you're confident enough.  We've talked a lot about caging those confidence gremlins.

Sometimes I feel like it's a real tightrope walk isn't it, this having a strong enough sense of self and self-belief and self-esteem to have the confidence to navigate your Squiggly Career, whilst keeping your ego in check at the same time.  I think we are asking quite a lot of ourselves.

Helen Tupper: Very true and actually just thinking about it because I was thinking I think you're one of those people for me and maybe it's not just cultivate your critics; it's cultivate your critical friends.  This isn't people who want to just say bad things to you, this is people who want to help you to be at your best.  Whenever Sarah gives me feedback and you deliver feedback in a very clean and clear way, Sarah, which I think sometimes can almost feel brutal.

Sarah Ellis: It does.

Helen Tupper: You don't mean you be brutal, you mean to make me better and that's why I don't go home and cry, because I know that you're saying it because you care, and you have that ability to see how things can be.  It's like we've talked before about Bruce Daisley, who's one of our mentors, and when he gave us feedback on our TED talk, which again was delivered cleanly and clearly, which can sometimes feel brutal but in support of us getting better; it's those people that you want around you.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I think they are so important.  There're the people, those critical feedback friends, make sure you say thank you to them because they are worth their weight in gold, because there's just not many of them.  I think there's not many people who are prepared to be I'm going to say honest, to help you to have that humility, rather than brutal, which is a word you used about three times there, Helen.

Helen Tupper: I'll say, "Thank you".  I'm supposed to thank you now, right.

Sarah Ellis: To describe both me and Bruce, so, yeah, I'll put us in that same corner.

Helen Tupper: Bruising maybe.  The third and final action to help you manage your ego is to experiment with your ego assumptions.  Often there are a lot of assumptions we make about our work, the way that we do it, when we have to do it.  So for example, I might think about social media.  I need to be the person who does all the social media stuff for Amazing if, our business, because I know how it needs to be done and when it needs to be done and what gets the best responses.  Or I need to be the person that does all this stuff on the website because that's the thing that I'm best at.

Sometimes when you put yourself into a little box like that, and you've sort of wrapped it up with a lovely ego-based ribbon, you don't really test those assumptions.  Unless I take on a different role and say, "Well, maybe I won't do that, maybe someone else could do that, or they might do it differently", I don't see how it could be done better.  I don't give myself the space to do other things, we just create all these assumptions over our work and our worth that we don't really challenge and that starts to hold us back, but it also starts to hold other people back, because you don’t give them the opportunities to develop in different ways as well.

Sarah, what are some of the ego assumptions you think you might have had in your career?

Sarah Ellis: I think there have been times where I've been really flying in a role where I found it really hard to let go.  I think partly because I was enjoying it and I felt like I was doing a really good job.  Even small stuff like that idea of, "I can't go on holiday".

Helen Tupper: "I'm so important."

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, "Nobody could possibly pick up this work and do it in the way that I can".  That has even led to me probably working on holiday before where I haven't needed to, because you are just not letting go of things.  I specifically remember a couple of examples of that earlier in my career, I have a lesser problem with that now.  It's a good thing about having a good co-founder, I'll just be like, "Helen can do it.  It'll be fine".

Helen Tupper: Thanks for that.  Maybe just on that I think the question to reflect on there is probably what could you learn to let go of, is probably the thing to think on afterwards.

Sarah Ellis: In particular, I would say there has been some things where I've let go, perhaps because it's even been slightly forced or I've had no choice, I have been consistently surprised/delighted because people might not do things in exactly the same way that you do, but difference doesn't necessarily mean worse.  Different can often mean better and I think every time I've let go of something very rarely have I ever thought, "Oh that's been a disaster", or, "That was the wrong thing to do".  All I've usually ever thought is, "I've learned something, someone's surprised me.  Someone's got even more potential than I'd perhaps given them credit for", so I've never really had a bad experience of actually letting go of some things that I think were probably all to do with my ego.

Now, let's talk about some ideas for action if you are working perhaps with or for someone where you think maybe their ego is a bit inflated and it is hindering rather than helping you.  I think this is really hard because Helen and I were chatting beforehand and we were saying, "Obviously, it'd be great to be able to give these people feedback", maybe that slightly brutal feedback that Helen referred to.  We were also thinking, "That feels really hard".  That's quite a hard ask to do.

Of course, if you can have an open constructive challenging conversation about the impact that somebody's ego is having on you or on a team, we would always advocate for that and we would always say, "That's a great thing to do, if you can".  However, we've got three different ideas for action that perhaps feel like an easier place to start or perhaps feel like if you're not sure where to start, this doesn't feel like you're having to go out in a real limb to do something about it.

The first thing is an idea we're calling crowdsourcing perspectives.  This is the idea that if somebody's got a really big ego who you're working with, they often do think, as Helen described, "It's my way or the highway.  I know the answer".  If you're trying to challenge that one-on-one, that can feel quite black and white.  You've got one idea, "Well, I disagree I've got another idea", and it can almost feel a bit like tennis or ping pong, you're just going back and forth and you're not really making any progress. 

Whereas if you can create moments either in team meetings or project meetings, or just any kind of catch-ups that you have a few people, where there is part of that meeting or even that meeting might be designed with the purpose of sharing different perspectives, that can be really useful to encourage everyone involved to appreciate that there's more than one way to see the world.  That's what we're trying to get to here.

It's almost a little bit by stealth; I would say it's helping deflate someone's ego, in a slightly stealthier way, which actually quite appeals to me, so I can imagine doing this.  You might say in a team meeting, "Let's just spend a couple of minutes and perhaps could everybody share one other way that we could approach this", or, "One thing that perhaps you've done before that might be really helpful for us all to learn from".  You're just creating those moments where you're getting perspectives and it's less about there's a right way or a wrong way here.

Let's say we were updating something on our website and Helen was like, "I think we should do it this way", and I was thinking ,"I think there are some other ways, I'm finding it quite hard to get Helen to maybe listen to me".  What we could do, as a group, we could say, "Let's all share one website we really like and what's really good about it".  It's just a different way of encouraging a different type of conversation, I think, that helps people to let go of their ego and it encourages that listening that we were talking about.  So, I like that as an idea, because I can imagine doing it.

Helen Tupper: I was just thinking of like team exercises that could encourage that culturally.  It could be like the challenge and build approach.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Let's take an idea and everyone gives one challenge, and everyone gives one build or the, "How might we" questions that we have talked about or the pre-mortems, when you take a project and you imagine if it failed.  It just gives people that safe space to say, "Oh well, imagine this was going to go wrong, what we do differently?" those sorts of exercises that just give people the space to challenge in quite a safe way.

Sarah Ellis: I actually remember doing that very successfully once with a big project I was doing for Sainsbury's when it was about food waste.  It was something I'd designed, so I was holding on quite tight to it, but I recognised I was like, "I need everybody's involvement with this".  Honestly, we just did an exercise where it was like, "How can we kill it?  Let's kill this project".  The other thing that was really good from my perspective was it demonstrated to everybody I really wanted everybody involved and also, being open enough to if there is a real hole in this, we either need to fill that hole or perhaps that hole is there for a good reason, and we need to think differently.

I wasn't the most senior person in that room by a long way, but I could create that opportunity.  There probably were some relatively big egos in that room who had gots lots of expertise, who knew a lot, and there was probably some people who were starting out in their careers, but it just created that chance for everyone to share, which I think was really useful.

The second idea for action is about moving from an "I win" to "we win" mentality.   This is really about collective success rather than individual success.  I think now, in the work that we do, I was trying to think of any example of anything I've done this year, where you'd be like, "This is purely about me", because I think we work in a small business and even with everything that we do, you're always involving other people, whether that's inside your organisation or outside of your organisation; clients you're working with, partners you're working with.  We are recording this actually the day after England lost the European Cup Final in the football.

Gareth Southgate, who's their manager, and quite a few of the players I saw have said this phrase as well today, which really inspired me.  They all said, "We win together and we lose together".  I think that both shows real humility, but also a bit of letting go of egos, which I'm imagining in football you must have to have some quite big egos, because some of these players are incredibly talented, but it's this idea of it's not about one individual.  It's not about blaming one individual, but it's also not about having one superstar either.  Everybody's got a role to play and actually recognising that everyone has a role to play.

Helen, what's that really nice phrase and sentiment that you often share about rushing and pointing to celebrate other people's successes when something goes right for you.

Helen Tupper: It is actually another football related point.  Who knew that I had a football related?  It's Abby Wambach who I think I'm going to embarrass herself now.

Sarah Ellis: She is a footballer.

Helen Tupper: American soccer captain, I think she used to be, but she says that, "When you're successful, what you should do is point to other people who have helped you to be successful; and when other people are successful, you should rush to celebrate their successes".  It's this idea of really rushing and pointing out other people's success.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I really love that.  You can do that as a team.  If you feel like perhaps you've got, and this does happen and we know this happens to people's careers, sometimes where there's one person taking all the credit.  That always makes me really sad when that does happen and perhaps that comes from people's egos getting in their way, or perhaps they've had it happen to them, who knows.  It's always really disappointing when you do experience that, but the thing that you can take responsibility for is when you're successful is also thinking about who else can you include; who else can you involve; whose success can you celebrate at the same time as recognising the contribution that you've made too?

Then the last idea for action is really a mindset point, which is about not internalising someone else's ego.  It can feel really hard when you are working very closely with someone whose ego perhaps has got inflated, perhaps even unmanageable, at the very end of the spectrum, that can really start to impact your days.  It can feel like it seeps into you.  I think you have to remind yourself what's important to you, and also give yourself some space.

If you are in a situation now where you are finding perhaps that ego assessment that we just did, perhaps you can notice that someone you work with would be a yes to all of those, but they wouldn't even have the awareness to know that they would be a yes.  That to me would be the absolutely worst-case scenario.  I think then you have to figure out, can you put as many boundaries as possible around that person in your relationship with that person, if you can, and I know this is much much easier said than done, but not let their behaviours impact on you too much in terms of what you want to stand for and how you want to work?

Then I think very practically, when I've experienced this at some points in my career, I've always found this helpful as a tactic, try and then gravitate away from those people with these kinds of really big egos and go towards those people you really admire, who've got humility and kindness and who are interested in other people's perspectives and want other people to win and who maybe, when we went through those questions, they are open to disagreement, they give you really positive and useful feedback, they're prepared to change their mind, they praise other people because they want them to succeed, they don't worry about comparing themselves and they create this humble environment where everyone can be at their best.

None of us are perfect, none of us do this all the time, but I've definitely worked with leaders where that's a good description of how great they are.  So, I think spend as much time as possible as you can surrounding yourself with those kinds of people, of course recognising as we have hopefully demonstrated today, everyone has those little moments of ego. 

Once you have the awareness, I think you can spot for yourself the actions that you can take, but also spend time with those people who have that humility who demonstrate all those really good behaviours, because you will learn loads and I think then, you also set yourself higher standards as a result of spending time with people like that.

Helen Tupper: I know today has probably been a bit of a harder topic.  We definitely debated it a little bit, "Shall we talk about this; shall we not talk about this?"  We decided to, but I hope you have found it useful.  I feel really happy having talked about this, like recognising the stuff that works for and against us and things that I could differently, and taking away some different things to do for myself.

As I said mid-way through about the podsheet, lots of the questions that we have shared for you to reflect on, the ideas for actions, they will all be summarised on the podsheet.  So, just go to Amazingif.com and the podcast and you will find that, and we'll put it in the link to the show notes as well. 

In PodPlus this week, rather than diving even deeper into ego, because we hopefully have given you enough in this conversation, we're actually going to be doing something slightly different.  We have a guest, so we have Zara Easton from LinkedIn who's going to be running a Rock Your Profile session for us.  It is free for you, it's 60 minutes to help you build your brand on LinkedIn.  Zara will be covering everything from how you write your statements about yourself, how you get recommendations, all the ins and outs and top tips of how to build your profile on LinkedIn. 

If that is useful, please join us for PodPlus and we will put a link as well to that in the show notes.

Sarah Ellis: That's everything for this week, thanks as always thanks as always for listening, we really do appreciate it, and we'll speak to you again, soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.