Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction 00:02:01: Locus of control 00:03:46: Two practical exercises… 00:03:51: … a scale of control 00:04:22: … the rollercoaster of control 00:07:16: What you can and can't control about your career 00:09:30: Four ideas for action… 00:10:08: … 1(a): Amazing If mind map 00:11:19: … 1(b): coach-yourself questions 00:13:39: … 2: identify your possibility people 00:19:58: … 3: develop skills scenarios 00:25:26: … 4: invest in your reputation readiness 00:34:16: Summary of ideas for action 00:34:46: 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.  We're a weekly show to help you navigate the ups and downs of your Squiggly Career, and we share lots of practical ideas for action and tools to try out that we hope leave you, as well as us, with a little bit more confidence, clarity and control. Helen Tupper: And control is the topic of the day.  I hadn't made that connection until now, which is bad, isn't it?! Sarah Ellis: That's why there's two of us, to join the dots where someone doesn't! Helen Tupper: But I think we've talked about doing this topic, How to Take Control of Your Career, for a while, and I think we've avoided it.  I remember we've had conversations and gone, "Can you really take control of a Squiggly Career, and is that a little bit of a false promise when everything's changing?" and we are going to tackle it today, because we do think that really approaching your career, having a sense of clarity and feeling like you've got a sense of control over what you're doing and why you're doing it, is important. But there is a bit of a distinction between being able to plan and predict and pre-empt everything.  So, that isn't what we're talking about, because that is a false promise, because we're all going to do jobs that don't exist yet, we're all going to need to develop skills that we're not sure what they are yet, so being able to plan, predict and control for that kind of future just isn't possible.  But what we can do is help you have a sense of control over your career, where you at least feel prepared for the changes that are going to come, and you can be proactive about your development. This ability to take control of the uncertainty is very much a skill that Sam Conniff talked about, and he talked about it on the podcast with us and through a lot of his work on uncertainty experiments.  So, we want to give you the skills to take control of inevitable changes, like restructures and upskilling and reskilling and promotions, and all that stuff that goes on in our careers and our organisations, and that's really the approach for what we're going to talk about today. Sarah Ellis: And it's interesting, as you start to dive into this idea of control, is this idea of something called "locus of control".  And what locus of control means is your own starting point, in terms of how much control do you feel like you have in terms of impacting your life?  So, I suppose it's how in control do you feel generally, and that is quite an interesting, big, zoom-out question, I appreciate, to ask, but it's that sense of almost feeling like, "Can I create opportunity?"  How much do you believe in fate, or other factors outside of you really impacting you; or how much do you want to take control; how much do you believe that your destiny, it's sometimes described as, which I think sounds quite dramatic, but is controlled by you? I think, within our Squiggly Careers, to Helen's point, we both believe, both Helen and I believe, that actually there is still a lot you can control.  Yes, there's the context of uncertainty and change, and some of those external factors in our careers, we might not be able to influence all the ins and outs of those, but we consistently see that when people take ownership and control for their Squiggly Careers, they have much more meaning and motivation as a result. One of the things that Bruce Daisley says in his new book, Fortitude, where actually he talks a bit about control, kind of bigger than careers, just generally when we have a sense of control in our lives, is that, "Control over our destinies ensures a sense of self-esteem and a feeling of empowerment".  And, when you do start to dive into this topic, there's a really clear link, I think, certainly for everything I've seen, that control equals more energy, more passion, more purpose, probably across all of our lives; but today, we're really going to dive in a bit about control and careers. So, maybe to make that really practical, two exercises to think about.  Firstly, on a scale of 1 to 10, how in control of your career do you feel right now?  So, as you're listening to this, where are you on that scale?  What we hope is, by the time you get to the end of this podcast, that perhaps if you take some of the actions we're going to talk through, we can move you up that scale by at least, I'm getting to set up the goal, Helen, of at least two points. Helen Tupper: Okay. Sarah Ellis: If you're a 6, I want people to be able to get to an 8.  If you're a 2, I'll get you to a 4.  If you're an 8, I'm not sure about getting to a 10, but we'll give it a go!  So, it's always good to know your starting point.  And then, maybe to be a bit more descriptive, at the moment does your career feel more like you're a passenger on a rollercoaster, you're driving the rollercoaster, or you're designing your own rollercoaster? So, when you're just thinking about where would you be putting yourself at the moment, do you feel like you're sitting in the middle of that rollercoaster, almost with nervous anxiety and breath, like when's the next dip or the next high, and you probably feel pretty out of control, someone else is driving that rollercoaster; maybe you feel like you're at the front, maybe the actual track is ahead of you, but you do feel like you've got some aspects of control in terms of how fast or how slow you go, but maybe you still feel like somebody else is building it or designing it; or do you really feel like, "I'm designing the rollercoaster.  Maybe it won't even be a rollercoaster, who knows"? Helen, I think you've got a few good examples of how different stages of your Squiggly Career have felt different in terms of your rollercoaster. Helen Tupper: Yeah, because I was thinking, "What would I say right now?" and I would say, "I'm designing my own rollercoaster", but I don't think that's that helpful for people, because we run our own organisation and we absolutely love what we do, and I recognise that that is not the case for the majority of people.  So, I was trying to think in my career, when has it not felt like I was designing my own rollercoaster?  And, I've definitely had situations where I've been in more of the other positions that you've talked about there. For example, when I was at Virgin, I loved working for Virgin, I have really positive memories of it, but I think I felt more like a passenger, to be honest. Sarah Ellis: That's interesting. Helen Tupper: I sort of felt fortunate to be there.  And Virgin moved so fast that I was just, "You're lucky to be on it for the ride".  That was probably my experience.  I was like, "Just ride this rollercoaster --" Sarah Ellis: You'd got a ticket. Helen Tupper: Yeah, that is honestly what I felt like to be at the centre of Virgin; I was like, "You are really fortunate to be here", and particularly because I'd had a bit of a tricky time before I joined.  I was like, "Just be grateful and ride the rollercoaster", but that probably meant that I was a little bit more reactive to what was happening there, rather than feeling I was really in control of what I was doing with my career.  And for a period of time, that was okay. But if I then think about, I moved from Virgin to Microsoft, and I felt much more like I was driving my career there, and it is an organisation that also supports that.  I think that is also important, the context that you're managing your career in, and Microsoft is very encouraging of people driving their career and thinking about, "Where are you going to move to in the organisation, and what could that move be?"  There are very active conversations that support it. So, I have definitely been in different positions on the rollercoaster in my career.  It's not that the other ones are bad, I think it's just the main reflection for me is, "Where are you on the rollercoaster now; and where do you want to be?"  If you want to be in a different position than you are, then the things that we're now going to talk through will hopefully help get you there. So, on that point around where are you now and where do you want to be, I think it is useful to reflect on what you feel like you can control in your career and what you feel like you can't; because, to the examples I just talked about, I can't necessarily change Microsoft's culture, I can't necessarily change Virgin's culture.  So, for a moment, I would just sit down and think about you, in your career right now, what are the factors that you feel in control of, so maybe that might be what you work on or where you work; and what are the factors that you feel like you're not in control of, so maybe that might be, "Well, I can't change who I'm working with [or] I can't change my manager", for example, "I want to have more control of my career, but I'm stuck with the manager I've got". I would just take a little bit of time just to really think about control, specific to where you are right now, and you'll have a list on the left of things you can control, and a list on the right of things that you can't control.  Then, I would recommend that you take that list and you talk to someone else about it, because what we need to do is increase the stuff on the left, the stuff that's in your control, as much as possible.  And sometimes, when we're in a situation, we can't always see that for ourselves. For example, if I had a conversation with Sarah and I said, "This is the job I'm doing at the moment, this is the stuff I think is in my control and this is the stuff that I think is out of my control", Sarah, as a particularly challenging person, in the nicest possible sense -- Sarah Ellis: I feel like that's just a fake caveat there you've just added! Helen Tupper: It's not, you are a challenging person, you challenge my thinking, which is a good thing!  But I think you would take a lot of the stuff that I had put in my, "Well, this isn't in my control right now, I'm stuck with this stuff in this situation", and I think you would say, "Why do you believe that to be true?  What could different look like?  What would need to be different for that to be on the left-hand side of the list?"  And I think, if you could have a conversation about these two things, with somebody that was naturally challenging, has more of a coach approach, so asks you those sorts of hard questions sometimes, what you might be able to see is that some of the things that you think are out of your control are actually more in your control than you realise. Sarah Ellis: So, we've got four ideas for action about how to really create this idea of control, so this really "create, don't wait" mindset that we want to have when it comes to our Squiggly Careers.  The way that we've done these, we hope, is that each of the ideas is going to build on the previous one.  So, it's something you can almost start with idea for action one, which would then help you with idea for action two and then three and then four.  I think these will probably work in isolation, but we have tried to actually design them so that they do build on the previous one.  So, it might be worth trying to do these in order and see whether what we've tried to do actually works for you. The first idea for action, we're calling "the Amazing If mind map".  The way that this works is we're encouraging you to just take five minutes, so it's a five-minute mind map; you might even want to set a timer, so you're keeping this quite a focused piece of work that won't take you very long.  You can do this as the first thing in your day, or the last thing in your day, depending on when you're at your best, when you think you'll think at your best.  And your mind map is ending this sentence, "Wouldn't my career be amazing if…", and just keep trying to end that sentence for five minutes. You could probably do this going for a walk if you were like, "Well, I think better when I walk", and you could just have your notes section, and I genuinely do this.  I go for walks and I just stop on the pavement and write something in the notes section of my phone, and then I keep going.  So, a five-minute walk, five minutes maybe sitting in a coffee shop.  Really try and stay focused though on answering that question.  So, trying to get rid of all your distraction downfalls, make sure you're not going to get interrupted during that time, so five minutes of really focused time, just exploring the end of that sentence, "Wouldn't my career be amazing if…"; see where that takes you. Part two of that is then to ask yourself some coach-yourself questions, "What knowledge do I need to grow; and what strengths do I need to show?"  So again, just starting to increase our self-awareness, in terms of some of the things that might be important as part of exploring possibilities and our potential, and where our career could take us.  So, the reason this first idea for action helps with your control and your feeling of control is, you are imagining your career and options that feel motivating for you.  You're not waiting to be told what to do or where to go; you're creating, you're in creator mode here. When we are in creator mode, we feel more in control, because this is coming from you.  This is coming from your brain, from your head, these are the things that feel important for you.  And it might feel really hard the first time you do that five-minute mind map.  And if it does, because you probably don't spend all of your time thinking about careers and career development, like we do, you might want to have a go at it a few times.  You might be like, "Well, I'm going to have a go at the five-minute mind map three times this week.  I'm going to do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I'm just going to see how I can build on that mind map throughout the week, with these short sprints and bursts of thinking. Helen Tupper: What I like about the way that you framed it, Sarah, is you ask yourself the, "Wouldn't my career be amazing if…" multiple times, because I think one of the ladder-like traps that we can sometimes fall into is we would just answer that question once.  We would go, "Wouldn't my career be amazing if I was a manager?" and you're like, "Yes it would and I'm going to go after that".  Yes, it might be, but maybe, "Wouldn't my career be amazing if I could do a side project?  Wouldn't my career be amazing if I could be brilliant at storytelling?"  Actually, if you take a bit of time to answer that question several times, what you create is many more options for your career. The whole point of taking control of a Squiggly Career is that you give yourself lots more options and opportunities.  We're not looking for one right answer, because as soon as you fix your future to one right answer, you actually become a little bit vulnerable, and we're trying to make you really resilient to all the change, and give you lots of opportunity and possibility; and that's part of this taking control point two. The second idea for action is to think about your possibility people.  So, that exercise with the Amazing If mind map will create you lots of different possibilities and give you a bit of self-awareness; now we're going to think about possibility people.  So, look at the answers that you've written down in that exercise, and then think about 3 career possibilities you are interested in exploring over the next 12 months. We are getting a bit specific here.  We're going, "3 possibilities; next 12 months", just to give you a bit more focus here.  So, maybe that is that manager role, maybe that is a sideways move, maybe it's something different than what you're doing today, I don't know, but write those possibilities down.  Then, for each of those possibilities, we're going to focus on people with insight, influence and people who can make introductions. So, first question, "Who has insight about that area that you're interested in?"  Second question, "Who has influence in the area that you are interested in?"  And, third question, "Who could make an introduction to somebody in that area?"  Those answers are your possibility people.  If you can connect with them, if you can have a curious conversation with them, they will get you closer to that career possibility that you are interested in. Sarah Ellis: So, just to bring that to life even further, we've got some examples of some of the questions that you could ask as part of these conversations, so what would this sound like, just to really be specific.  So, if you're talking to someone who you think is going to have really good insight about one of those possibilities, you might be asking things like, "What's the one trend you've noticed that's accelerating really quickly within your area or your industry?"  Or maybe you'd ask something like, "What do you think is the most important skill to develop to be successful in your team?"  So, you're really trying to pull out of somebody their insights, you're giving someone the opportunity to share their insights, make it easy for them to share what they know with you. If you're talking to someone with influence, maybe you'd asked questions more about, "What's the biggest opportunity that you're focused on?" or, "What's the biggest challenge that you feel like you're trying to overcome?"  So, you're trying to understand what are the things that they are trying to influence at the moment, so you can connect the dots with then, "Okay, so what might that mean for me and for my career?"  Or maybe something about pride, so you could ask a question like, "What stands out for you as the thing you're most proud of this year?" That's always quite interesting when you talk to someone with influence, because it's interesting to see that standout thing might not be the thing that you had imagined.  Maybe it's been something that's really difficult to get off the ground; or, maybe it's been something where they've worked on it behind the scenes, and it's taken a lot of influence to bring people together.  People who have got really good influence are often good at spotting connections between different people that they need to bring together in a new way to create value.  So, you're trying to understand that. Then, introduction, which is probably the easiest and the most straightforward, is you're asking questions like, "Who's one other person you would recommend I connect with to learn more about this area, or to learn from?" or, maybe about community, so it might not just be an individual, "What is one community that you feel I could go and learn from?"  And of course, you might talk to one person who has influence, insight and can make an introduction, and that is often the case.  We've broken it down just to make it simple and straightforward, and hopefully that almost gives you a bit of a conversation menu of the kinds of questions that you might ask. I think again, the reason that gives you control, if that first idea for action is about almost your purpose, so we feel more in control when we feel purposeful, and that's about creating possibilities, in our Squiggly Careers the relationships that we build belong to us.  So, when you're got the right people around you, you will feel more in control of your career.  If you feel isolated or by yourself, your ability to navigate all of the ups and downs of your Squiggly Career I think goes down, and I have definitely experienced that. If I think about one of the biggest lows early in my career, I think part of the reason I found that moment so difficult was because I'd almost not quite had the chance yet, or certainly not prioritised, having my possibility people.  So, when I got stuck, or when I wasn't very sure what to do and I wanted to do something different, but I couldn't make it happen, it felt like it was all down to me; and we know that no one succeeds by themselves, in a Squiggly Career or really in any career.  Even in ladder-like careers, which we don't like to dwell on, you don't succeed by yourself.  So, I think if you're feeling more purposeful and you've got the right people around you, again I think that increases your control even more. Helen Tupper: I think we've missed one, Sarah.  You know we've got the insight and we've got the influence and we've got also the introductions, I think another person in your possibility people group could be the ideas person.  I was just thinking, when you were just saying that, about my career, and let's say there was an area I was interested in, which actually you didn't have a lot of knowledge on; you haven't got insight of it, you don't have a lot of influence and maybe you don't know anybody. But say, for example, you are brilliant at ideas, and I could just talk to you about what I'm interested in, what that possibility is I'd like to explore.  And I think because you are an ideas person, and potentially because you're not that close to it, you would bring a really fresh perspective of how I could progress that possibility.  So, maybe we'll add an extra person in there, the ideas person as well. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I like that, and I do think this doesn't need to be loads of people.  This might just be making the time and really prioritising just spending time with a few new people, or people that you already know that you've not reconnected with for a while, because I think this can sometimes feel a bit daunting.  And I suspect again, like Helen was saying, for both of us now with where we are in our career, I feel really confident about my career community, and I've got lots of people I could go and talk to; but I can definitely remember a time when that wasn't true.  But I think just one person can make a really big difference, just two people can have a really big impact in terms of how in control of your career you feel.  So, this doesn't need to be hundreds of people, this can just be two or three people. So, our idea for action number three is about skills scenarios.  This is really starting to think a bit about, what do you need to learn, and is this about stretching your strengths; is this about learning new skills and being a bit of a beginner; is this about upskilling?  There's lots of talk about upskilling and reskilling in our careers today, in our Squiggly Careers, so this starts to help you to hopefully answer the question of, "So, what does that mean for me?" rather than just these big upskilling, reskilling words; what might that look like in my world? So, write down three career scenarios that you could imagine might happen over the next 12 months.  So, one or two of those scenarios could come from your possibilities, they might come from your Amazing If mind map, or you might have some other ones that you just imagine happening.  And we've gone for 12 months just to make this a bit more short term, because we've started very zoomed out, with idea for action one, and we're starting to zoom in a bit more at this point. For each of those scenarios, what we then want you to do, and this could even become a table, though I'm always loath to create a table, but I can imagine how a table could be helpful here, is for each of those career scenarios, write down the skills that you think would be most helpful and most useful, and maybe most important, for each of those scenarios. Then I think, what you can start to do is a bit of almost a gap analysis in terms of, "Where am I with each of those skills?  Which are the ones I need to get good enough at?  Are there any where I'm already quite good, or maybe even very good, and I want to try and get great at?"  And then, my final build when I was thinking about this earlier is, if there are skills that go across multiple scenarios, you might even want to double-down on those skills. Helen Tupper: The super-skills. Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  They do become super-skills, because I was checking this exercise works, I was doing it for myself.  I was, "Right, imagine if Helen fired me, what am I going to go and do?" Helen Tupper: Well, have you been looking at my email drafts?! Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I've hacked you!  I was like, "Okay, when that happens…" scenario one, I could go and work at maybe schools or colleges or university.  So I was like, "Maybe I could do career development for a different group of people".  That was scenario one for me.  Scenario two, I could go and do learning and career development in a company; I could imagine that.  Or, scenario three, I could do some freelance project work on careers and career development.  So I was like, "Here are three things that I could imagine doing as and when Helen fires me, when she sends that email that's in her drafts!" Then, when I was starting to think about the skills that you would need across those, I was like, "There are some that would definitely be different for the different contexts", but there were a few things where I thought, for example, being really curious about the latest developments in what's happening in careers, so being really on top of trends or what's changing, that would be important across all of those three things; so, almost accelerating my curiosity around career development, something I already have today, but I might go, "Right, I'm going to really overinvest in it, because I can't see a scenario where that wouldn't be helpful". So, that feels like that sort of rises to the surface of all of the different things that I could spend time doing.  Also, for me, that's also something I really enjoy.  So that kind of wins on every level.  So, I'm sort of imaging here, you could start to either create a table, or this could be multiple mind maps, where you're dotting all these skills and then you're starting to connect the dots between these skills about going, you might have some dots which are about being good enough; some dots which are about, "I want to do this because I enjoy it and it's making strengths stronger"; and then, you've got the biggest dots where it's like, "This skill keeps showing up again and again, so that really feels like it's worth my time and energy. That kind of creates a learning plan for you.  And again, when you are in control of your learning and you feel like you're growing, you will feel way more in control of your career.  If you just feel generally like you haven't got the skills that you need, that's I think often when we feel really out of control.  Or, if you feel like you're being left behind in terms of the skills that might be useful, again you feel like you're losing control of your career; whereas, this is taking really quite an active and very intentional approach to skills development. Helen Tupper: Before I share the last ideas for action, I would like to make two points. Sarah Ellis: You're not going to fire me?! Helen Tupper: Yeah, that is the first.  I've decided that you're quite useful; it's borderline, but I've decided that I'm going to delete the email, so feel reassured!  The second thing that I'm going to say is, I'm conscious that quite a lot of what we're talking about, Amazing If mind maps and some of the things that Sarah's talking about there, they're quite visual concepts, and this is an audio format.  So, if you're like, "I kind of get it, but I'd like to see what they're talking about", PodPlus is back everybody; it's back every week on Thursday, and what we essentially do, it's a Zoom session where we bring to life these concepts for you, we literally draw them out for you, and it's a lovely community of people. So, if you're thinking, "I like this, I'd just like to get it a bit clearer", either the PodSheet, or joining PodPlus might be really helpful for you, and we will put the links to both of those things on the show notes, which I think are most easily found on Apple Podcasts, to be honest; they're the easiest place for you to find them.  And if you ever can't find them, just email us at helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com and we'll give you the links for those things. But the last idea for action, the last thing that we think can really help you to increase your sense of control over your career, is your reputation readiness.  So, reputation is one of the things that you own, it's one of the things that you take with you as you squiggle, and what we really want to help you to do is to build your reputation beyond what you do today.  So, we do want you to be aware of the reputation you have right now; but what we want you to think is, forward into your future, what do you want to be known for, and how could you almost build your own bio to believe in that future that want to be known for? The way that this works is, you're going to take a bit of time to create three biographies that you want to believe in.  There's going to be the bio today, so where you are right now; one for 12 months' time; and one for 24 months' time, so 2 years' time.  I'm trying to get you a little bit into that future that feels meaningful and motivating for you.  And when I say a bio, if you're like, "What is a bio?" this is just a paragraph.  If someone was introducing you, or if you had a paragraph on that back of a book, or something like that, or you had your own website and there was a little statement about you and what you do, what would it say? Sarah Ellis: Or your summary on LinkedIn. Helen Tupper: Yeah, your summary on LinkedIn, your personal statement, that's what we're talking about; a bio's no more than that really, so it's a paragraph.  So, for example, if we were creating a bio about Sarah and me and what we do today, it might include a true fact, "The UK's number one careers podcast", that would probably be part of our bio today.  But then if I thought about, "Well, what do I actually want to be known for?", we want to be known for making careers better for everyone.  So, how could that biography, that bio, evolve over time? Well, maybe in 12 months' time, maybe what we would want that bio to say is that we've got 5 million listeners of the Squiggly Careers podcast, which is roughly double what we've got today, and that definitely is a bio that I would like to believe in, definitely!  That means we can help more people.  And then you kind of go further out into the future, 2 years' time, what's the bio that I want to believe in in 2 years' time?  Well actually today, we have just heard that we have made the home page of Apple's podcast page, as one of their podcasts that they've recommended listening to.  So, a bio I would love to believe in, in 2 years' time, is a statement that says, "We are Apple's globally most listened-to careers podcast".  I mean, I would love that.  That means we're helping and we're reaching lots of people who might need different career support. It's just about giving you that insight in, "What's the bio you want to believe in now, in the near term and then slightly more into the future?"  Then, we're trying to think about, if that is what you want, what could you differently?  What could you create to make that true over time?  So, could we create more assets; could we start to share "speak what you seek until you see what you said", for example, is that part of this?  But you have to know what you want your reputation to be in order for you to start taking action on that today. Sarah Ellis: Okay, this is interesting, because I think this gets close to personal branding.  People would talk about this as personal branding, which is always one of those I'm never quite sure about that phrase.  I suspect it's not only just me, but I always prefer reputation to personal branding as a way of thinking about what we can control with our careers.  And our reputation is important to us, because it's what, when people know us for those things, we get more opportunities to do those things, which is great for us, and it opens up doors that we can't anticipate, and probably that we can't control. You can control your reputation to a point, and then hopefully really good things will happen around that reputation that you just don't know about yet.  It's sort of, imagine what things might come towards you if you could do this really well.  But I don't think this is an easy thing to get your head around, and I think it might be helpful then to do an example of, let's imagine you're, like I used to do for a long time, we both did, we both worked in marketing for a long time, I'm working in marketing now and I'm working in Sainsbury's, as I did, and I'm thinking, "Right, I work in marketing, and I want to be known as a real ideas guru within marketing". So, perhaps my bio today, if I've understood this and used this in the right way, might be, "I work in Sainsbury's in a job developing content, and I use my ideas skill to come up with ideas for what that content could be, in the context of Sainsbury's".  So, that's what my bio today would be.  And that's believable; I guess the today one is often the easiest, because I think that's the, "What do you do today; how would you describe what you do today?" So then, Helen, perhaps you could help me, you could do a bit of live coaching, because that would have been me sitting in Sainsbury's saying that.  Then, if I'm trying to do bios to believe in in 12 months' time or 24 months' time, what might help me to come up with what that would sound like, because I would find those leaps quite hard to make? Helen Tupper: So, if you want to be known for ideas, maybe the one in 12 months' time could be something about, "I am an idea activator, or I'm an idea catalyst.  I work with people on their careers to develop ideas for how they could develop in different directions".  So now, in 12 months' time, you've taken that skill you want to be known for of ideas, and it's no longer just become about your day job, it's become about how you are using that skill of ideas to actually help other people with their careers, which I actually think that is one of the things that you are very good at.  Whether that is the bio you want to believe in, I don't know, but that would be the sort of 12-month move on. Sarah Ellis: And I think what's interesting about that is then, what it starts to get you to is, for me, that might have been about a squiggle and stay move.  That might have then started to activate me taking control of thinking, "Okay, so in Sainsbury's, if I want to actually use my ideas strength in that different way", and automatically I go, "well, that's outside of my day job, because that feels easier"; at the same time, I then might be starting to create a bio about going, "Okay, I actually want to use ideas in my day job", and maybe that's the 24-month one of going, "It's not just about outside my day job, it's all of my job to use ideas to help people with career development; perhaps that's the 24-month one that I would love to be true. So, I guess what we're trying to do here is, you're sort of fast-forwarding, so going, "What would you want that reputation to be?" and then you're rewinding, you're fast-forwarding and rewinding at the same time, and then you're going, "So, what does that mean for me today in terms of the actions that I can take, or the things I can control?"  When we talk about coach-yourself questions, we always emphasise the importance of having "I" in that question, because as long as you've got "I" in that question, what action -- if I want to use ideas for career development in two years' time, who could I go and learn from today; what could I create this year?  You start to get to this sense of, "What are all the things that are in my control that would help me to build that reputation".  And I think it also helps you to let go of maybe those things that are out of your control. I remember thinking, "It might be amazing if I could go and work in learning and development in Sainsbury's", but those possibilities and options weren't really there at that moment, and that's because of loads of things outside of my control.  You can't go and do a job if someone else is still doing that job; it's those kinds of constraints that we've talked about that will always exist in your career.  So, I think probably this process also helps you to think, "Yes, but I know --" your reputation, I think, often stays quite steady. So, in all the squiggliness of things changing, this is something that not only you can control, but that often is quite constant.  It doesn't mean it might not have some shifts and moves along the way, because both of ours definitely that's happened, but I think the reputation that you're really committed to probably does have at least a medium-term longevity that's important to you, and is a good career constant that, yes, might shift along the way, but when we think about career constants, there aren't that many of them.  But career constants are quite good to think about in a context of control, because people and relationships, they're a career constant; those possibilities, they can be a career constant that you'll keep making progress towards; and I think your reputation fits in that category as well. Helen Tupper: And the alternative is, you don't take control of your reputation, you go, "This idea of creating bios I believe in sounds too hard.  I'm just going to leave it to chance.  I'll be known for what I'll be known for", but there are loads of risks in that.  You'll reduce the amount of opportunities that are really interesting to you.  And the more that you take control of your reputation, the more that you take control of what things come to you, the more you're a magnet for the things you want to do.  So, that's really the "why" in investing in this reputation readiness. So, let's just summarise the four different ideas for action that we've talked about.  The first one was, do the Amazing If mind map; the second was to identify your possibility people; the third was to develop some skill scenarios; and the fourth was to invest in your reputation readiness.  We will summarise those ideas for action, the different things we've talked about, in the PodSheet.  And as I said, if you want to dive in a bit deeper, you can see us bring it all to life in PodPlus, which is on Thursday at 9.00am. Sarah Ellis: And if you have any other questions or feedback, we always love to hear from you.  In particular, going through this today, I do have the feel or the sense that this could become potentially a useful addition to our free toolkit on our website.  So, if you go onto amazingif.com, we have now put all of our free resources in the same place, and it's not perfect, we're still developing it, but also we will continue to add to that all of the time. So, if you've listened to today and thought, "I would love to have a downloadable tool that puts all this in one place", get in touch with us and let us know, because we do that for the things that we think are going to be most useful for people.  And as Helen said, even as we've been going through this, I've been imagining tables and mind maps and spreadsheets and all sorts.  So I was like, "Maybe this is one that we could invest in", but we're always deciding which are the ones that will be helpful as part of that. Again, you can email us, you can connect with us on LinkedIn, or you can just send us a message on Instagram, whatever is easiest for you. Helen Tupper: So, thank you so much for listening today, and we'll be back with you next week with another Squiggly Careers podcast. Sar