Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:20: Announcing the Skills Sprint

00:01:37: Rebel Talent, by Francesca Gino

00:03:32: Constructive non-conformity

00:10:45: Useful rebel vs unhelpful rebel

00:13:27: Ideas for action…

00:13:53: … 1: find freedom within existing frameworks

00:16:41: … 2: define your own why behind your work

00:20:53: … 3: join or create your own non-conformist community

00:23:55: … 4: provocative prompts

00:27:34: … 5: know, show and scale your rebel strengths

00:32:12: 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 take a different topic to do with work, and we share some ideas and some tools that we hope will help you to navigate that Squiggly Career with just that bit more confidence, clarity and control.

Helen Tupper: And before we get started with this week's episode, which is all about how to release your rebel, we just want to let you know about an exciting thing we've got coming up on the podcast, which is a bit of a takeover.  So, in August, it won't be the normal one episode every Tuesday.  Instead, we are launching the Squiggly Careers Skill Sprint.  It's 20 episodes, so one for every weekday in August, and each episode is only 7 minutes long. 

We focus on a specific skill, like feedback, leadership, conversations, assertiveness, and in the episodes, we talk about what the skill is and why it matters for your Squiggly Career, an idea for action from each of us, and a go-to guru and another Squiggly episode if you want to learn a bit more and dive a bit deeper. It is designed to help you create a bit of learning momentum.  And so we would love it if you signed up for the sprint, so you want to come and learn with us.  We'll put the links on the show notes for this, and you can also get in touch with us, helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com, and we will send you the link.  And also, worth following Amazing If on LinkedIn, because that's where we're going to put all the conversations so that every day, we'll connect the community who are part of the skills sprint there, and we'll talk about what other advice or insights you might have on that skill, and just basically help everyone stick to their sprint and create a Squiggly Skills streak.

Sarah Ellis: And so today's episode, as we said, we're talking about rebellion, and this was really inspired by a brilliant article by an academic, called Francesca Gino, and she talks about something called Rebel Talent, that if you want people to be engaged, you've got to let people kind of break the rules and create an environment where it's okay to disagree and to do things differently.  And this got us thinking about careers. Career ladders are all about conformity, so developing in one direction, we're all trying to do the same thing at the same time in the same way.  And we work hard for the promise of promotion and making progress on the next rung of the ladder.  And there's lots around us that reinforce that career ladder, despite all our work on Squiggly Careers.  I saw another article last week on careers where there's another career article, another ladder at the top of the article. Helen Tupper: I saw something that said, "What's the next step in your Squiggly Career?" and I was like, "No!"

Sarah Ellis: I did too!

Helen Tupper: "I'm not talking about steps.  I'm really glad you're supporting Squiggly, but let's lose the word step"!  So yeah, there's lots for us still to work on.

Sarah Ellis: And even beyond careers and career constructs, there are social norms that feel familiar for all of us, so that need to fit in, people-pleasing, not feeling like we can be ourselves in our organisations and in our roles, and therefore we sort of become a bit sheep-like, we all follow each other and do the same thing, whether it's down to how we dress going to work, or just the fact how we show up, so you feel like you can't disagree or even have a different point of view.

Helen Tupper: And I guess when we're thinking about what it means to be a rebel, I have to say, I was mentioning to some friends that we were going to do this episode, Sarah, and they said to me, "Helen, you don't need any help to be a rebel.  Sarah might need some help to be a rebel", but they were like, "You don't need any help to be a rebel".

Sarah Ellis: Really?

Helen Tupper: I know.  But I think that's because people think about rebellion as sort of being a bit naughty.  But it's not really about that.  We were saying, it's not really about breaking rules, it's not about going rogue in an organisation.  When you look at some of the research behind this, like the stuff that Sarah was mentioning, it's referred to as constructive non-conformity.  So, it's not just breaking rules for the sake of it or being really disruptive just because you can, because that would be unconstructive non-conformity.  It's more about thinking about useful rebellion, so where is this actually better for you and better for the business, but it might be different to what's currently being done; that's what we're talking about. You are the person that's spotting the opportunity for something different to be done, and then you have the confidence to make that happen.  And that means that you can sometimes be more authentic at work, because those ideas that you've got, those insights that you might have, you're not scared to share them.  It probably means that you might be going against the crowd sometimes, because not everyone is doing this all the time, but that can often make you just stand out because you'll be the person who is challenging the status quo.  And I've done this in companies. 

I feel like I've actually been hired to do this. There was one organisation that I worked for where there was just a lot of conformity, a huge amount of conformity.  And I think the part of the reason that I was hired was because I was, in their minds, a bit of a rebel.  I didn't have the same career journey, didn't have the same experience, I didn't kind of show up in the same way, and I think they wanted that difference.  And what I would say is, it can be quite hard to do this.  So, it definitely accelerated my career in that organisation, I definitely made change happen, but I would say it can feel like it takes a lot of energy.  And we've got some ideas for you that will help later so you don't feel like you're going alone on this.  But sometimes being a rebel in an organisation that's very used to conformity can feel quite difficult to do.  But if you can do it, you can make a big difference to that business and it can have a big benefit for your development as well.

Sarah Ellis: So, Helen, listening to you then, it sounds to me like you're self-identifying potentially as a natural rebel.  So, if you're reflecting on your Squiggly Career so far on a conformity at one end and rebellion at the other end of a scale, where do you think you fit on that scale?  And do you think it's changed over time or do you think it's stayed quite consistent?

Helen Tupper: I think, if I don't think about rebels as breaking rules, because that doesn't really resonate. if I think about it as being non-conformist in my career, I would put myself quite high up at that scale.  So, I haven't stuck at a particular profession, like I moved from sales, innovation to marketing.  I did not stick around in a particular industry, I moved when I think other people would have been afraid to, because I was confident in my talents rather than titles.  I knew that was what I was bringing to an organisation. If I think about when I left Microsoft to work on Amazing if full-time, that was 2018, and that was way before we were ready.  We did not have a business then.  So I think, actually, I would put myself quite high up at that scale.  But I think I've got increasingly confident with it.  So I don't think I was maybe lower than five ever, but I've got increasingly confident with non-conformity because I've seen the difference it's made to my development.  Like, I'm really happy, I can see the value I can bring when I'm non-conformist, and I can see like the benefits it's had for the organisations that I've worked in.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: So, one of the things that I was wondering is whether it's harder to be a useful rebel when you're in the earlier stages of your career, you know, when you're still figuring out how to navigate work and your organisation, and you're probably still increasing your self-awareness, you perhaps don't know yourself that well yet, because you've not had lots of experiences to draw from.  Because, when I think back to my career, and that might not be true, I don't know, I'll be interested to hear from people listening, but in my early career, I think my conformity was really high.  So, I worked very hard to fit in, and would never consider challenging the status quo.

Helen Tupper: But you did!  Look at Boots, when you went totally rebel, I was going to say rogue, but I'll say rebel, and you created your own role in a different company that nobody had done before.  That was rebel, and you were 19!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it?  And I do wonder whether, because then when we were preparing for this podcast -- we do prepare, everybody -- and we were both thinking of examples, which we'll talk about in a second, of when we've been rebellious, I just wonder whether, in some ways, this word gets in my way.  Because, to your point, I'm like, "Oh, I do quite like a rule, I'm good at following rules, I'm definitely not a rule breaker, I feel really uncomfortable breaking rules".  And I suppose you can't help but think back to times in your career where maybe you've felt like you weren't yourself, or you weren't challenging the status quo as much as you could have in hindsight. I think as I was going through this, I was actually beating myself up a bit and thinking --

Helen Tupper: You're such a little reflective rebel!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I know.  I was like, "I spent too long not rebelling and I should have done it more".  But then actually, to your point, I think I might have more examples than I'm giving myself credit for.

Helen Tupper: Well, if you haven't got them, I can give you them, because I've known you for a very long time and I can probably spot them for you!

Sarah Ellis: Well, that's interesting though, isn't it?  Because like that one you just described, I had completely forgotten about that or I hadn't really thought of that.  You know, that didn't kind of pop into my mind, partly because it is so long ago.  But there are other examples.  So things like, I worked a four-day week at a time when it was a very unusual thing to do, that sort of non-conformity, kind of going against organisational norms.  Obviously, together, we started a side project.  And I actually started a lot of side projects, I did a lot of stuff on the side.  We've both negotiated time off for learning when we've wanted to learn and do different things, even when we started Amazing If. I don't think we ever said it really explicitly, but just from day one, we were like, "We're just not going to use PowerPoint.  We're never going to use slides".  And we haven't used a single slide, as far as I know, in any career development workshop or presentation or anything that we do since 2013.

Helen Tupper: And I remember when I was at Microsoft -- I think I started writing for Marketing Week maybe when I was at Virgin, and Virgin just let me do everything.  I feel like that is a company of natural rebels, and I was, in that sense; but Microsoft less, less like that.  And so I remember when they were like, "Oh, well, obviously you write for a publication, so we're going to have to approve that".  And I was like, "Oh, that's interesting".  I just never, ever let them approve anything, because I knew I wasn't saying anything that was going to be bad about the brand or the business.  Of course, I would never say anything like that.  And so I just thought, I don't want another hurdle in the way of getting my words out into the world, so I'm just going to do it.  And you know that, what's that thing about the seeking forgiveness, don't ask for permission, that thing?  I definitely think the rebel has that approach, like don't ask for permission, just seek forgiveness.  I think it's that part of the rebellious mindset.

Sarah Ellis: And I think it is important to recognise the difference between being a useful rebel and an unhelpful rebel.  So when you're a useful rebel, you're being really proactive and you're solving problems, you're using your strengths to challenge status quo or do things differently.  Perhaps you are creating new roles and projects, as Helen described.  I've forgotten, but I have actually done that a couple of times.  Maybe you're bringing new insights and ideas from outside your organisation into your organisation, being really curious.  I think all of those are characteristics of kind of useful non-conformity. I think when you're being an unhelpful rebel, it feels a bit more random and rogue, essentially.  So maybe you're forcing your point of view in a way that isn't useful, or you're being disruptive for the sake of it, or making it too much about you and your ego, rather than why is this useful for my team and my organisation.  And actually, I don't know if you thought the same, Helen, but as I read this, I can pinpoint unhelpful rebels that I've worked with.

Helen Tupper: Me too!  I was literally just thinking, scouting across my people and thinking, "Oh yeah, that was an unhelpful rebel, definitely".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah!  I think it's often because those people, maybe they've got some of the personality traits that you need to be a useful rebel, but maybe they've not quite found a way of doing it yet.  Because actually, often I do think with those people, I'm like, "Oh, they're prepared to speak out and they don't mind disagreeing", but often they do it in a way where it then becomes almost destructive.  And then they actually stop having impact.  I see that those people often don't have that great an impact or influence in organisations.

Helen Tupper: I think there's a matrix in this.  That's my favourite statement.

Sarah Ellis: Is it a rebel matrix?

Helen Tupper: Yes!

Sarah Ellis: Could it not be a two-by-two; could it have more than four boxes?  What would happen if a matrix had more than four boxes?

Helen Tupper: It's very anti-rebel, isn't it, to have a two-by-two, it really is, but just bear with me.  I think that the random rogue ones, they've got quite a lot of confidence in their rebellious nature, "If I see it, I'm going to say it, I'm going to do it, because I can".  But I don't think they've got necessarily a lot of competence in how you manage those messages with people, how you use other people's words to support your work.  I don't think they've -- that's quite a lot of competence in how do I understand and influence other people.  And I think what we're trying to get to is this bit where you've got that competence of understanding and being able to influence other people, and then that confidence of that rebel.  When you bring those two things together, I think that's where you're kind of making this really effective.

Sarah Ellis: So, we've got a few ideas for action now that we're going to talk through, about how to be a useful rebel.  And I was thinking about these and thinking, "Oh, God, I hope someone doesn't try these, and then they email us going, 'Yeah, I got fired because of this'".  I don't think any of them are that dramatic as scenarios.  Hopefully, there is something here where you think, "Okay, I could do that, and that would feel something that might be helpful for me and helpful for my team and organisation".  I think that's the win-win that we're looking for here.

Helen Tupper: So, idea number one is to find freedom within existing frameworks.  So, you don't have to start everything from scratch and launch a brand new idea to your business.  A framework, when we're saying frameworks, we mean like a standard way of doing something in your company, and everyone has standard ways of running meetings or sending weekly updates, or whatever goes on repeatedly.  I often think about what are those repeated moments or communications that are happening in your company?  Those are the ones to look at.  And when you're looking at those things, what we're trying to do is think, "Well, what could you do to make it that little bit different, that little bit better?" because that's the kind of freedom that you're going to access. So, for example, in a weekly team meeting, maybe you could take ownership of one element of the agenda.  Maybe it's going to be the curiosity input, like the insight in the meeting, or something, where you're bringing the insight from outside the company inside the company.  I think Sarah used to do this at Sainsbury's.  Were your meerkat moments at Sainsbury's?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Kind of getting your head out of the busyness of the business and bringing something new in.  Maybe you own the meerkat moment in the meeting.  Or maybe what you do is you find freedom within that framework, the meeting being an example, you say, "Oh, let's rotate roles so everyone gets more of a chance to speak up".  And there's a really good book, called Creative Acts for Curious People, that we've talked about on the podcast before, and there are some really nice ideas in there for how you could inject more creativity into those meetings and moments. So, it might be a project status report, maybe you're going to redesign that in Canva in some creative way, rather than using the standard PowerPoint slide that goes out.  Maybe it's where you do feedback.  If that is something that happens frequently in the business, and it's normally done on some internal tool, maybe you could experiment with doing "what went well", "even better if", as an alternative approach.  But look at what already happens, they're your frameworks, and then think about, "How could I do this differently to make it more useful and better for everybody?"

Sarah Ellis: And here, if you're in a leadership role or you're managing teams, and this is inspired by Francesca Gino's article, when you read through the work and the research you've done in organisations, make sure you give a lot of clarity on the "what".  And often, the "what" is more fixed, "What needs to happen; what needs to get done?"  But you can give a lot of freedom on the "how", like how people go about making that thing happen.  And that's where you give people the chance to challenge the status quo. So, just because we've always done it in this way, doesn't mean that we have to keep doing it in this way.  Yes, we need to get to an outcome, but how we get to that outcome, maybe you've got a completely different idea or perspective. 

So, both as an individual, you might find there's more freedom to rebel in the house, but also that might be an opportunity for you to create that freedom for other people too. Our second idea for action is defining your own why behind your work.  So, these are sometimes described as personal mission statements.  And they're just one or two sentences that you need to create for yourself. 

So, no one else can do this for you because you need to feel ownership and also they need to feel like they work for you, and they describe your own reason for doing a role, so sort of your connection with the job that you do.  And so I was reading one really good example of this by a company called Morning Star, and their founder is Chris Rufer.  And before I tell you what they do, I'm just going to read his personal mission statement, because it really made me smile.  So, his is, "To advance tomato technology to be the best in the world, and operate these factories so they are pristine".  So, this guy runs a tomato company, and I was like, "This is incredible!"  I really enjoyed it as an example. But then they also share some other examples from people who do very different jobs.  I mean, most examples do have tomatoes, tomatoes do feature in them, but this is really thinking about, I guess, how you create something that works for you.  And so I was having a go at this because I was like, "Oh, does this work when, as co-founders of the company, together we talk about, 'Our role is to make Squiggly Careers better for everyone'?" 

But actually, when I wrote this for myself in my own way, I came up with, "To create useful ideas to support everyone to succeed in their Squiggly Career".  So, you can connect the dots between our mission as a company, but also what you start to see in there is some of our company values, some of my individual values, as well as obviously Squiggly Careers, which is probably what you'd expect to see. But the reason this helps you to rebel a bit more is it just gives you a sense of what's most important to you and what matters to you, and then almost how you might rebel.  Given that is what you are here to do, if I think then something isn't going to be useful for someone's Squiggly Career, it gives me a bit of a framework maybe to say, "Okay, well I want to challenge that idea [or] I want to challenge the status quo of how we usually help people with their careers, because maybe we don't need to always do things in the same way, in terms of ladderlike learning or ladderlike thinking".  Helen what do you reckon you'd come up with?

Helen Tupper: Well, I mean being put on the spot, I literally grabbed a Sharpie while Sarah was reading hers and I was like, "I need to do mine".  So, this isn't quite right.  I feel like it's missing a few words, but just as a starting point, because I was intrigued to see how different would mine be from you, given that we're driven by very similar things and we do a very similar job, I've written down that, "It's to bring the energy that unlocks other people's potential", because I feel like energy is a really big thing for me, like a big bit about me is bringing energy.  And the thing that I care really about is helping other people to be at their best.  I really feel strongly that so many people sit on their potential because they haven't got enough self-belief or they haven't been given the opportunities, or they just need that energy, they just need someone rooting for them and encouraging them and helping them with a matrix!  But so, yeah, "To bring the energy and the matrices to unlock other people's potential".  It needs a bit of refinement, but I think it's very helpful.

Sarah Ellis: But I guess the other thing it will help you to do, I think, is maybe give you a bit of confidence and self-belief.  It reminds you what's most important to you, because I reckon everyone's would have some clues as to what their values might be in those statements.  And maybe if you're doubting yourself like, "Oh, should I challenge this, or should I just go with what everybody else thinks?" maybe it just gives you a bit of an anchor to keep coming back to.  It might just be worth having a go at.  I never think you should try and craft these things or spend too much time on them.  I think actually the best way to do this is exactly what Helen did, just do it in two minutes and just see where you get to.  It might not be perfect, you might not want to say it out loud straightaway, but I bet you'll get further than you imagined by doing it actually quite quickly.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and I feel like just in having done it really quickly with Sarah, I can see the words that are right, "potential's" right, "energy's" right, and then I'm like, "Oh, there's some other bits that are missing, and that's fine, you just play around with it and you get to it.  

But I do think the more you can say it out loud, even to yourself, the more you'll get that feel of, "Is this me?  Is this who I am and who I want to be?" So, idea number three is to join or create your own non-conformist community, your team of fellow rebels.  And the reason this helps is what I said earlier, it can be quite hard to do this on your own because you can feel like a bit of an outlier or maybe a bit of an outsider.  And actually, having some other people who are also these rebels who want to do something different that's better for the business, or whatever it's better for, it can give you the confidence and the support that you might need. I remember, for example, when I mentioned that company that I was brought in for, there were some other people that joined not too long after me.  So, the company was obviously on a mission to bring in some people from outside to change some stuff up.  And when I felt like I was doing it on my own, that felt quite hard. 

But when I suddenly found these other new people, we became like a small group within a very large company.  But it was really, really helpful because we were all spotting the same things, we were all encouraging each other really to have the conversations that we intuitively thought were the right things, but it was quite nice to have somebody giving you a bit of a boost. That was one that I created with other new people who I could see had that same inner rebel, that they'd been brought in to change things.  It could be employee resource groups.  They're often about changing things.  You'll often find people who are passionate about the same thing within those communities and companies.  Or it could be outside, outside too.  You might find communities will give you confidence outside of your company that can help you to be more of a rebel inside of your company.  And don't forget, we've got communities too, like the Squiggly Careers community.  People could just join ours.  Join the Skills Sprint, everybody.  That's a community of people who are rebelling against ladderlike learning, because you're going to do seven minutes a day with us.  But join one of ours or create your own, whatever works, but try not to do this stuff on your own, I think is the main message there.

Sarah Ellis: There is even one community that actually calls itself the Rebel Book Club.  I really like that community.  We followed them, we know some of the people involved in

that.  They choose a book, I think the community chooses a book, they have two or three to vote from, and everybody reads it and they get together.  And again, I think the other one that actually I would look at is Corporate Rebels, great book, you can follow them and the work that they do.  So, sometimes people even explicitly are naming themselves as like, "Well, we want to be rebellious".  People like Sam Conniff, Be More Pirate, that's a relatively rebellious stall to set out, isn't it, to be more pirate! So, I think you can start to find the people who maybe are natural rebels or who relish rebellion, and they might push you or give you confidence or just get you to think differently.  I think I've spent time in all of those different places and all of them I feel like I'm better because of it.

Helen Tupper: I feel like there's these mini profiles emerging, where there's the people that are relentlessly rebellion or reflectively rebellious or regrettably rebellious.  Which kind of rebel are you?  I love it!

Sarah Ellis: I feel there are definitely some where they're unknown, they don't know that they're doing it and it's just really, really unhelpful.  So, our next idea for action is called provocative prompts, and I think these are particularly powerful when they are led by leaders because it can be quite hard to be a rebel if you're, as Helen described, in a culture where that's not typical.  So, you're trying to do something different and it's where you're trying to create an opportunity to have dissent by default. I quite like this idea of dissent by default, because I think sometimes we shy away from some of these questions because they feel like they activate the fight or flight response in our brains, and we know that and we're also very empathetic.  My observation is, in most organisations, and maybe we're just lucky with the ones that we work with and the people that we work with, people are very empathetic.  It's the reason people don't give feedback, because they're so worried about, we want to be really caring and we want to be supportive.  So, I wonder whether sometimes that actually gets in the way of asking some of these more rebellious questions. 

But the whole purpose is that we're doing it together.  We're not trying to put anyone in the spot in a way where we're critiquing them as an individual.  It's more about trying to be better together. So, the ones that I came up with were, who would disagree with this?  What data do we have that would tell us to do something different?  Why do we do this?  What are we worst at?  What have I done this quarter that I'd change?  And, what's the opposite point of view?  And I feel like they're all -- I don't feel too scared by any of these, as someone who likes following the rules, because I'm not sure I would be a natural rebel.  I felt all of those, I'd love to hear everyone's point of view when we're working on a project, or actually when we're just thinking about everything that we do as a company, almost practising these provocative prompts.  I think if everyone gets more used to hearing them and answering them, it just becomes part of how we do things around here.  And then I think it becomes way easier. So, maybe the first time you do these, you might want to share them with teams beforehand.  I'd probably only pick three, I think three is always usually enough.  And perhaps you repeat those three.  The reason I said, "Led by leaders", is I think it's often really helpful if you hear leaders talk about these things first.  So, why do we do this?  Maybe I might talk about something in Amazing If that I'm very close to or I spend a lot of time on, and maybe the team hear me challenge myself on, why do we do a podcast every week?  You're like, "Oh, that's a good question.  Why do we?"  I quite enjoy it.  There should probably be some more reasons.

Helen Tupper: Well, I like talking to you, and we get ideas when we talk to each other.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we do.

Helen Tupper: And I always feel better afterwards.  That's my reasons.

Sarah Ellis: But it would be equally interesting to say, well, why wouldn't we do it?  And I think it's just, often we get quite attached to, "Oh, well if we explore something, that means that then we have to do it, or we have to take things forward".  But you don't.  You're just interrogating and you're trying to be almost rebellious through the questions that you ask.  What do you think, Helen, would you be all right with all those questions that I've come up with?

Helen Tupper: I think I'd be really interested in them.  It reminds me a little bit of challenge and build, like creating a safe space for people to critique an idea; and it reminds me a little bit of, I think they're called project pre-mortems, you know before a project starts, and I don't really like it, but it's almost like before the project starts, it's almost like how can we kill it?  And I've never quite found a comfortable way to do it, but I do quite like the idea of, let's think about all the things that could go wrong with this so that then we can pre-empt them or respond quickly if that stuff does happen.  But no, I like it, I think they were good questions. 

We should have more of those in our meetings. Idea number five is about knowing, showing, and scaling your rebel strengths.  So, this is like, how do I take what I'm already pretty good at and imagine that was outstanding and in every moment, what could that look like?  So, the way to think this through, first of all, is the knowing.  So, write down maybe three to five things that really make you you, things that really give you energy at work in terms of the work that you do.  So, for example, connection definitely makes me me.  I'm very into building relationships and connecting with people.  Pace is one of the things that really makes me me, like moving things forward fast is a very Helen thing.  So, you just write yours down. Then the next one is show.  So, for each of those ones that you've written down, on a scale of one to ten, write down how present is that in your work today.  So, I would say, for example, actually connection for me is present in the sessions that we run, but I actually probably do quite a lot of my connecting outside of Amazing If, because of the communities I'm part of.  Whereas, pace is probably quite a lot of what I do at Amazing If, moving things forward faster.  Taking Sarah's ideas and putting them into action is kind of part of our partnership.  So, give yourself a score of one to ten. Then the scale bit is the bit where I think this gets really interesting, because then you're thinking, "Well, how could I 10x this?"  For example, my -- Sarah probably wouldn't like me to 10x my pace, but imagine; how could I 10x my pacing?

Sarah Ellis: Oh my God!

Helen Tupper: Can you imagine, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: No!

Helen Tupper: I could have a pacy one day where it's all about speed.  So, the rest of the week is a normal rate, but then like on a Friday, no, not a Friday, it'd have to be early, like a Thursday, I'm like, "This is the day when everything gets supercharged in terms of its delivery and development".  I mean, I quite like it.  I think you'd be like, "I'm not talking to you that entire day".  Or connection, if I was going to 10x connection, what would that mean?  That would probably mean I started every day with a curious career conversation, or I ended every day by connecting two people together. 

And I think with this, 10xing it just gets you to the ideas. The reality is, well, what one of those things could I do next week?  Because I think it would be exhausting to 10x your strengths all the time.  But if you want to be a rebel, I think we are trying to get some cut through.  And so taking what you're already doing and the stuff that you want to be known for, and finding some moments to supercharge it a bit, that's the stuff that we're looking for with this idea.

Sarah Ellis: Well, I guess what's interesting about that just listening to you there talk about pace, is my assumption is the best thing for you would be to sometimes slow down and to find some space, but what you could argue is the opposite.  It's like, okay, well you're naturally really pacy, and so it does feel quite rebellious to go, well, okay, what happens if you just get faster and speedier?  What happens if you created that chance to really put that pace to work in a way where it challenges the status quo, challenges the way that we work at the moment?  I think you naturally make some assumptions about right answers or the right approach, and what this gets you to do is go, "Oh, yeah, but there's another way of doing this".  And like you said, I would be fascinated. I mean, like you said, I don't know if I'd want to be with you.  But if you suddenly went, "Okay, in a day, I'm going to try and create 20 new book ideas", for example.  Usually we might be like, "Okay, well, one or two is enough, and even that's a lot of work".  And almost, you add your constraints before you even get started, don't you; you can't help but do that.  I wouldn't bet against you being able to come up with 20 book ideas in a day, to be honest; if anything, that might be conservative.

Helen Tupper: I was about to say, it's not the ideas, I'd want to be like, "I want to have 20-page proposals".  I'd be there!  But I guess that's the point, and I think what's important here is the authenticity, it's the knowing bit, because I don't think it would be authentic.  Whilst I should slow down sometimes, 100% definitely, if I'm trying to really own my rebel, that bit, then I think you've got to start with what you already do really well.  And I don't work slow well, that's just not who I am. That might be yours, you might be like, "Well, what if I had a whole slow month?"  That would be counter to our company, wouldn't it?  But that would be quite rebellious, because it's counter to the company.  But actually, that's what you already do well.  You're already thoughtful and reflective, and you're already quite focused.  So, you give yourself that a slow month, you could do something really transformative, I think, if you had a slow month.  So, I think you don't try to own somebody else's strengths to be a better rebel, definitely start with the stuff that you're already quite good at and you want to be known for.

Sarah Ellis: So, a quick summary of five ideas for how you might be an even more useful rebel.  (1) find freedom within existing frameworks; (2) define your own why behind the work; (3) join or create a non-conformist community; (4) use provocative prompts to get some dissent by default; and (5) know, show and scale your rebel strengths.

Helen Tupper: And we will summarise the ideas for action and some of the details in our PodSheet.  You can always get that from our website, amazingif.com, or in the show notes.  And don't forget the Squiggly Career Skills Sprint.  I'm going to say that so many times.  We've already got over 500 people signed up for the sprint.  So, come and join some like-minded learners for seven minutes a day, every weekday in August, and we'll do the rest for you.  We'll give you all the stuff you need to know, you've just got to show up and learn with us.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening today.  As always, if you rate, review, and subscribe, we are incredibly grateful.  And we do read every review, and they mean an awful lot to us.  But that's all for this week, so bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.