Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:49: Reasons behind the latest HBR article

00:02:44: Four career challenges

00:04:52: Discover your career challenge

00:09:04: The "when" challenge - create a five-minute me map

00:13:13: The "who" challenge - increase your sideways support

00:17:46: The "what" challenge - create a learning navigator

00:21:47: The "where" challenge - prototype your progression

00:26:49: 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.  Every week, we share ideas for action and tools to try out that we hope will help you, and us, to navigate your Squiggly Career with a bit more confidence, clarity and control.

Helen Tupper: And in today's episode, we're going to be focusing on the topic of our latest article that we've written for Harvard Business Review, which is about Creative Ideas to Overcome Career Development Challenges.  And we thought in the episode today, we'd talk a little bit about why we wrote that article, why we think it's an important topic for people right now, and then we'd go into the ideas for action that we've shared, just to bring them to life for you, so that it's a bit more easy for you to think about how you might apply this to you and your own career, and your own career development challenges.

So, in terms of why we wrote it, when we were thinking, we always do a bit of scanning where we're like, "What feels like a really relevant topic to write about for people at the moment?" and we were thinking a little bit about challenges and confidence in the context of what's going on in the world right now, and the issues that might create for people's careers. 

We did do a survey on LinkedIn and we said, "Are you feeling more or less confident in your career at the moment, in light of some of the stuff that's going on in the wider world of work?" We got a vast majority of people saying that they were feeling a bit less confident, so Sarah and I were then thinking about, "How can we help people to take a bit more control to overcome some of the constraints that might be getting in their way, and make it easier to take action with their career development?" and that was really the start of the article that we've just written.

Sarah Ellis: We identified four common career challenges that we both experienced all of the time.  I'm not sure these career challenges ever go away as such, I think we just find smart ways to find our way through them, or to get untangled; and also, they're definitely things that we hear in our workshops with all the people that we talk to.  We're obviously really big advocates and spend our days on career development, but I'm actually always interested in, sometimes it's the cynics, the people who are like, "Is this a waste of time?"  I always think that's really interesting to know, "Why do you think that's a waste of time?" 

Maybe they've had bad experiences or they've not found it useful before. Or just when people are saying, "This is all really good, Sarah, but…"  I'm always really interested in what comes after the "but", because I think that's almost often the crux of the challenges, where if you can help people with the buts, the first part's easy.  When we're all feeling like we've got time or we're really motivated and energised, career development probably comes a bit more naturally.  But this is, "How do we keep it going, even when times are tough?" So, these four challenges, we're just going to describe each of them, then we'll perhaps talking about the one that we're experiencing at the moment, and you can probably experience more than one of these at once as well.  So, there's the "when" challenge, and "when" challenges sound like, "I'll get around to career development when I've got the time". 

The career risk with this is your development feels separate from your day job.  I think everybody will recognise this.  You know the, "I just want to finish this project, then I'm going to spend some time on my career", or, "I'm just going to get over this busy period", or, "Just when life calms down a bit".  We all say those things.  The problem with that is I think we are always deprioritising our development.  It never ends up rising to the surface.  So, that's the "when" challenge. Then you've got the "who" challenge.  That sounds like, "I don't have anyone who's helping me to develop my skills, or just to help me develop".  The risk for our careers here is that you feel like your progression is dependent on other people.  So again, it feels out of our control. 

Maybe we feel like we're waiting rather than creating, in terms of our career development.  This could be because maybe you're in an organisation where you don't feel like you're getting the support you need; maybe you've not got the best relationship with your manager; maybe you hear people talk about this idea of things like mentoring but you're like, "How do I get one of those?"  Maybe that just doesn't feel accessible for you. 

So, that's more about having the right people around you. Then you've got the "what" challenge, and that sounds like, "I'm not sure what to develop in".  This is really about feeling like, "Everyone talks about upskilling and reskilling, and we all feel like this is important, but what do I actually need to learn?"  The risk here is that if we keep searching for one right answer, it can stop you from getting started, so the overwhelm gets in our way and it means that we stall and get stuck. Then the final challenge is a "where" challenge, and that sounds like, "There are no career development opportunities where I work", or maybe, "There are no career development opportunities in the industry that I work in".  The risk here is that you feel really frustrated and you probably just lose a bit of motivation, you lose a bit of your mojo along the way. So, coach-yourself question just to ask yourself at this point is, "Which of these challenges feels most significant for me at the moment?"  Maybe there's one here that really stands out for you, or maybe this feels like there's a couple of constraints getting in your way.  So, Helen, where would you be on those common career challenges; any that stand out for you at the moment?

Helen Tupper: I think I might have spent 12 months with one challenge and not really being that aware of it, until writing the article created a bit of clarity, and it's the "what" one for me so, "I'm not sure what I want to develop in".  In our end-of-year review podcast, I was reflecting on stuff I'd learnt this year and I realised that in 2021, I did Yellow Learning.  That was a learning thing that I committed to and I really enjoyed, because I did it with a small community of people and it was a nice amount of learning for me to do and took my brain to a different place. Then I realised, I've done nothing like that in 2022. 

I like being on a learning programme because I find that I formally fit that into my working week, and I do it with other people, I enjoy meeting other people.  And then I was like, "Oh my gosh, I've gone through a whole year and I've not done that", and I didn't realise it at all.  I think part of the problem is I've gone, "I might like to do something on behavioural science, or I might like to do something on psychology, or I might like to do something on design", but you know that searching for the one right answer stopped me getting started?  That is exactly the challenge that I have faced. So, as a result of one of the actions that we are going to talk through in a minute or two, I am going to find a bit of focus and move that forward and stop looking for the perfect solution for the thing I want to learn.  What about you?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I really recognise that too, that sense of almost feeling like -- I think mine might have come a bit not from complacency, but from almost enjoying what I do.  So I think previously, I've perhaps been in positions or in roles where I've thought about the moves I'd like to make, and then that's created clarity for me to think, "Those skills will be really helpful, because I'd like to go and transfer my talents into a different team" or, "I want to move into a leadership role", so I maybe could just see that more clearly.  Whereas now, I'm doing the thing that I want to do, and I've almost stopped the searching but not in a way that feels motivating. 

So I think for me, it's been the same challenge, but perhaps for some different reasons. I also really recognise the "who" challenge.  I think I have been guilty of almost thinking, one of the things I miss about working in big organisations is almost the variety of people that you end up spending time with.  Also, I'm very lucky that I've worked with some brilliant people and been in some great leadership teams.  And at times over the last year, I think I've been a bit like, "I really miss those people".  I feel like maybe I've not quite got the right people around me, but in a sort of waiting way; I'm waiting for these new people, and I recognise that those people are probably not the right people that I need around me at the moment in terms of some of the learning I want to do, but then I think I just hoped that they were going to show up in some way and almost be like, "Here I am to help you with your career and your career development". So, in an abstract way, I know I want those people, but I've not really done anything to make that happen.  And then, I've almost got a bit frustrated that it hasn't.  I've almost been blaming imaginary people for not popping up into my life!  So actually, that "who" one was quite a confronting one for me.  I think I've started to realise I've definitely fallen into that waiting trap a bit.

Helen Tupper: I feel like it's the opposite of manifesting!  You've been blasting them away --

Sarah Ellis: The anti-manifest!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, the anti-manifest, "Why have you not shown up in my life?" rather than creating this positive environment where people want to come to you!  The waves of negative energy may make them stay away!

Sarah Ellis: To be fair, that is how I feel about manifesting, for anyone who's listened to that podcast episode.

Helen Tupper: That is actually one of my favourite things that we recorded last year, was that episode.

Sarah Ellis: It was actually a really fun episode.

Helen Tupper: It was a really fun episode, getting Sarah to confront her cynicism around manifesting.  Listen back, everyone, listen back!  So, what we've got is four creative ways that you can unlock those four different challenges.  So, Sarah and I will talk each one of them through and share the idea for action that we think will help you. So, the first one was that "when" challenge.  So, if your development challenge is about when you can do this stuff, then we recommend that you start with a five-minute me map.  And the aim is to take a little-and-often approach to your career development, so it becomes part of the way that you're working, rather than another big thing that you've got to do today.  So, for the five-minute me map to work, we recommend that you create a recurring calendar invite to yourself and you give it that five-minute me map title, and then you're going to put yourself in a place where there's no distraction, so you're not checking out your emails, you're not looking at Instagram, you're not listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast, or whatever else it might be that you do; you're just going to have a bit of silence for you. 

And during that five minutes, you're just going to mind-map your thoughts in response to a coach-yourself question. We've got a list of loads of coach-yourself questions on our website on amazingif.com; there are 21 coach-yourself questions that we took from our book, You Coach You.  So, that would be a good starting place.  You're going to have 21 different things to prompt your me map there.  But an example of one would be something like, "What do you want to be true at the end of 2023 that isn't true today?" and then you could just map all the different thoughts that come to mind, just for five minutes.  It can help you just to fit a bit more reflection into your day, and also identify some different things that you can do, but in a very deliberate and quick way, rather than it feeling like this thing that you're just going to put off until you've got the perfect time.

Sarah Ellis: Do you know what I've been thinking about this one, and it's too late because we've already written the article; but I think a good build, an exclusive for our podcast listeners is, I know that when some people are writing for a living, so their day job is writing, they will often join writers' forums, where they all get together online at the same time to write but they're not writing together, but they're creating a shared space where it almost helps you to be purposeful about writing, which initially sound a bit like, "Well, surely you could do that by yourself?"  But you know, there's that accountability of doing it with other people. I wonder if we're going to make development by doing, you know that kind of "we learn by doing", just part of how we all work as a team; if three times a week as a team you all had that same five minutes, and it wasn't just an intention and it wasn't a thing that got deprioritised because you suddenly realised you'd not finished your presentation, but actually you all got online together, certainly if you're working in a hybrid way, or you just got in a room if you're all physically together, and you just do five minutes and you all do the same coach-yourself question, and then that's it, you go and get a cup of tea or you get on with the rest of your day.

I think that would make quite a big difference for me in terms of, I would show up, because you'd feel that sense of, "This is a shared thing that we are committed to".  I can imagine, even if I just saw it in my diary, I would find it quite easy to deprioritise it, because I could see that email had popped up, or something.  So, I like that as an extra build.  You're still doing it about me, it's still your me map, but maybe you're doing that together, you're all increasing your self-awareness.  Imagine if you did that, even twice a week as a team, imagine how much self-awareness and how much more reflection time you would have had versus what you normally have. Helen Tupper: So, you could do it in your team, like you have just suggested, or alternatively there is, and this isn't pre-prepared, everybody, I remembered it when Sarah was talking, but there's something called focusmate.com, which is a website that you can go on. 

You get three free sessions a week, and you basically find sort of an accountability partner. So, let's say I was going to my me map at 9.00 on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I would find a focus mate on that website who wanted to commit a bit of time; they don't have to do the same thing as me, but they are committing to an activity at the same time as me, and it's almost like this accountability partner that you don't really have to know them or talk to them, it will help match you to that person, but there's something psychological as having someone showing up at the same time as you to work on something that they want to do that can help you maybe get committed to that action.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea number two is related to if your career development challenge is "who", so that's the one that I described I'd maybe been guilty of just hoping this was going to happen.  And the idea here is about increasing your sideways support. 

So, not hoping these people are going to appear, but actually thinking, what is it that you want to learn and who else might want to learn that same thing as you; who else might have those same development needs, development priorities?  That might be in your organisation, that might be within your industry, or that just might be in the world; you can set your own context in a way that feels useful for you. So, if I was going to do this, for example, because I was really challenging myself to think, "Okay, practise what we preach, what would this look like for me?" one of the things I'm really interested in is this idea of good growth, of being purposeful as an organisation, so being able to combine purpose, planet, people and profit; so, all of those Ps that feel very important.  I see that as good growth, that's where you're contributing in a really positive way as an organisation.  So, I would really like to create some connections with other people who feel that same sense of, "Oh yeah, that's what I'm trying to do". I think we're a mission-led organisation at Amazing If, we've got a very clear mission to make careers better for everyone, so I could think, "Okay, I'm just going to put it out there". 

I could do it on something like -- going within Amazing If wouldn't be right for me, because we're too small.  It's not like when I worked in big organisations, where I could have probably done this sort of thing internally.  So, maybe I'd put it on some WhatsApp groups that I'm already part of to say, "I'm going to set up a really small group of about ten people who are all interested in … does anyone fancy joining?"  I could put it on something like LinkedIn, I could connect it to some networks I'm already part of.  And I would always keep it really small. I could imagine myself even saying something like, "I'm just looking for ten people who would be interested in joining an online group and maybe getting together virtually once a month to talk about, 'How do you combine all of those four Ps in a way where you can lead and grow a mission-based organisation?'" and hopefully then people gravitate towards you, because they feel that shared sense of purpose.  And I think you can then start in a really easy way.  I think those things can feel a bit intimidating, because you might think, "I want to learn that thing, so I don't know that thing yet", but you can just ask everybody, what's one thing they've read; what's your listen-to that they've found helpful so far.  You could ask who they admire, who do they think are doing a really good job in that area. Then I think you can encourage new ideas and new stimulus into that group by saying to everybody, maybe after you've met two or three times, you give everyone the option to invite one more person to join.  I think as long as you've got a super-clear purpose, as long as you've been really clear about what you're hoping to learn, then it makes your ask very specific, so people will be able to easily opt in or opt out, because they'll either think, "That's for me [or] that's not for me". So, I would probably, even as I'm describing it to you now, I would probably be really clear about, "I'm looking to connect with people who are founders of organisations, so people who've started things from scratch, who are growing a purpose-led business and want to learn from each other, and are very happy to share and borrow brilliance".  And I suspect if I put that in a few groups that I'm part of and put that on LinkedIn, I would hope that some people might put their hands up and go, "Oh, yeah, I'm interested in that too".

Helen Tupper: It reminds me a lot of the Authors Anonymous WhatsApp group that we are in, Sarah, which is definitely a sideways support group.  So, that is a group not set up by us, but from somebody who probably had the same kind of instinct and idea a while ago, for a community of people who were all working on a similar thing, writing a book, but who didn't individually have all the answers.  That has been an amazing sideways support group, because I think there's a lot of generosity in those sorts of groups and there's quite a lot of openness and a little bit of vulnerability as well. It's just a very, very different support environment than I would get from somebody that I would consider my go-to guru, you know if you're going to someone who's, like in that example, someone who's published multiple books and is an expert in that area; I maybe wouldn't be as vulnerable with that person, and there maybe wouldn't be quite the same level of generosity and sharing that there is in the sideways support group.  So, they're really powerful, whether you join one that exists, or create one for yourself. So, the third challenge was that "what" challenge, which is the one that I said is my priority to fix a little bit.  So, if your career development challenge is "what", then what we recommend is you create your learning navigator, and this is what I'm going to do for myself so that I can find my focus for this year with my learning.  What this helps you to do is look at your learning from two different dimensions.  The first is all about knowledge and the second is about skills, and it's a matrix, everybody, so we'll make sure we --

Sarah Ellis: We haven't actually had a matrix for a while, have we?

Helen Tupper: No, we haven't!

Sarah Ellis: The matrix is back!

Helen Tupper: The matrix is back, and it's back in the article too.  Our matrix has been included in Harvard Business Review's matrix bank; it's very exciting! Sarah Ellis: I feel like that is literally only exciting for us, but we're very excited about it!

Helen Tupper: That's the sort of thing like, our matrix has made it, in my mind!  So, the way that this matrix works is on the knowledge, we want you to think about what's the knowledge that's relevant for your role today.  So for me, for example, knowledge that's relevant for my role today is things that, I mean there's some commercial stuff that I need to do, there's some management that I need to do, there's some business operations that's really useful knowledge for my role today.  And then, what's knowledge that's important for your future?  So, if I was to think about where my career could go and how I could grow, and different possibilities that I'm interested in, that might take me to a different place, in terms of the knowledge that I might want next for me and my future.  So, that's one dimension; knowledge, now and next. Then the other dimension is about skills, skills that you need, so skills that are essential for what you do today.  So that might be, I don't know, that might be negotiation, it might be leadership, there might be some technical skills that you really need to do what you do. 

And then, the skills that are nice, so things that you maybe enjoying doing a bit more, like you think, "These skills are important and I like doing them", maybe like storytelling; or for me, design thinking.  I don't need design thinking for my job, but I do really enjoy learning about it, I enjoy learning about innovation practices and I enjoy learning about how different technology platforms all work together.  But that's a nice thing for me to learn. What you do is you plot your learning on the matrix across these four different dimensions, and it helps you just take your brain to a different place, in terms of what the learning could look like, and then create a learning goal for each of those areas.  So, what is knowledge that you need and what skills are nice, for example, what would fall into that box?  And, what is something that you might need for what you're going to do in the future?  When you do this, what you'll end up with actually is four different learning goals, but those four different learning goals have got different focus for you and your career.  And it's not that one is any more important than any other, it's just trying to help you to think about you and your career, what you enjoy, where you are now and where you're going, and what's a learning goal that could support you.

Sarah Ellis: What I think is nice about the learning navigator is the range of goals that it gives you.  It helps you to balance short and long term, it helps you to balance doing a brilliant job of where you are today, whilst investing in your future and the moves you might want to make in terms of progression and what that might look like for you.  And though four learning goals can sound like a lot, those learning goals could be quite small. So, one that we've got in skills that are nice to have and knowledge that you might use now, is around storytelling.  So, a learning goal on storytelling, for example, could be to read, watch and listening to something on storytelling every week, and to share that once a month with your team, to share some insights with your team.  So, it can be something as simple as that, or it could be much more significant, about leading a new project, or maybe it's about getting a mentor in certain areas. 

So, I think though having four goals could sound a little bit overwhelming, the scale of those goals can be quite different. So, final one, if your development challenge is "where", so this is you thinking, "I feel like there's no development opportunities where I am", this is the classic one of, "I feel stuck, there's nowhere to go, it feels like there's lots of barriers that are outside of my control", our idea for action here is about prototyping your progression.  The aim here is to unlock new ideas and options when you feel maybe the obvious way to develop isn't an option.  That's often when you do end up feeling a bit like, "This is a bit demotivating, because I do know how I'd like to develop", so maybe you do know your "what", but it's not possible here. Let's imagine, for example, you want a training qualification and your company have said, "No, we can't afford to fund that"; or, you'd like a promotion, you went for that promotion and you didn't get that promotion. 

So, you're feeling like you've done something, but it's not quite worked out.  What prototyping helps you to do is to almost embrace that, embrace where you are, and see what else and where else could you develop.  If you think about both what you want to do, in terms of your progression, but also why that's important for you, we always find that's what unlocks the prototyping. So, just to give you a really specific example, because I think that's how this brings this to life in the best way, if what you would like to do is lead a team for the first time, if my "what" in terms of progression was, "I'd like to lead a team for the first time", if we jump straight to the "how", we get to, "Apply for a job", and we either get it or we don't.  If, before we get to "how", we go to the "why", "Why would you like to lead a team for the first time?" I might then say, "Because actually I've started to realise that I really enjoy the opportunity to develop other people, or to support people with their career". If that is your "why" and that's your jumping-off point then to get to your "hows", of course one of the ways that you could do that is potentially to get a promotion; but you could also offer to support people joining your organisation for the first 100 days of their new role; you could offer to mentor people in their early careers; you could offer to support team development for the rest of your team; you could put yourself forward for a lead for a new project where you know maybe you're going to have more cross-functional responsibilities, so you're managing and developing people through influence, rather than maybe direct management.

Often what's interesting is, when you start to prototype progression, lots of those "hows" that you come up with, you will have much, much more control over.  So, lots of those ideas that you'll generate, you'll be able to make those things happen; there'll be less barriers to you being able to move forward; and even better, what we always notice is that when people start to get really good at this, then the likelihood of maybe their ultimate outcome that they're aiming for happening also increases, because if you're investing in your development, doing all this really good stuff around developing people because that's what's really important to you, sometimes even better opportunities might come your way. My one top tip on prototyping progression is, especially if you are feeling a bit stuck, if you can find someone to do this with, I think often it can just support your thinking, because it's almost a bit like doing a mini brainstorm but for you in your career development. 

So, maybe it's a work best friend, maybe it's someone you've worked with previously that you got on really well with, and you might have come up with a couple of ideas.  But when I do this exercise a lot in workshops, I will often ask everyone in a workshop to prototype a sort of progression maybe where someone feels stuck; maybe they want to work a four-day week but they're not able to for some reason; maybe they can't get the money they need for training.

I ask everybody to do all of the "hows" and it's almost like everyone is smarter than one of us; it's that philosophy of, if you can involve and include lots of people in prototyping your progression, you'll just get more ideas, and you'll also get probably more objective ideas, because those people are not quite as close to it, and you might have put up some blockers and some barriers because something's felt hard for you, whereas someone with a bit of distance could say, "Have you thought about this?" or, "What about that?" and then you actually think, "Oh, yeah, that is a good idea.  I could go away and do that volunteering; I could ask that person for some support".

Helen Tupper: I think it normalises discussions about development as well, because it's often this thing that you're supposed to do with your manager, if you're being quite ladderlike about stuff.  But actually, when you're in a Squiggly Career, the more you can discuss this with other people, I think the more possibilities you create.  And just doing this with other people just makes it easier, it makes it easier to say, "I would like to do something different, and what could that look like?" and, "Who do you know and how could I get there?" and curate lots of other people's input into that, rather than feeling like you have to be dependent on one person.  So, I think it really helps with just making a more open conversation about career development too.

Sarah Ellis: So, we hope you found this a useful episode.  If you've also had a chance to read the HBR article, we would always love to know your feedback.  What's working well for you about those articles; any even better ifs?  Also, ideas for topics that you'd really like us to cover, whether that's podcast episodes you want to listen to, or articles that you would really like us to write.  We always really love hearing from you, that's how we make sure that we stay relevant and we stay helpful with everything that we're creating.

Helen Tupper: And in the PodSheet that will accompany this episode, what we'll do is we'll put the links to the other Harvard Business Review articles that we've written, just in case you haven't read them or you don't know where to find them.  So, we've got things on learning more at work, how you make that part of your everyday; how you can coach yourself; how you can reimagine retention; and obviously, there's the latest article too.  So, if any of those topics are interesting, we'll make sure that it's easy for you to access. But thank you so much for listening today and we will be back again soon with another episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you, everybody.  Bye for now.