Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:41: Adapting to different managers
00:05:15: A previous episode on managers
00:06:31: Four weekly ideas for actions...
00:06:55: ... 1: channel your inner anthropologist
00:10:10: ... 2: play the detective
00:14:53: ... 3: Guess What?
00:17:43: ... 4: safety in numbers
00:21:02: Turning awareness into action
00:23:35: Different levels of distance
00:24:48: 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 take a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions to help all of us navigate our Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence, clarity, and control.

Helen Tupper: And as well as the episode that you're going to hear us talk about today, we've got lots of extra support for you in your Squiggly Career, and we've pulled it all into a brand new newsletter called Squiggly Careers in Action.  So, you'll get the PodSheet that goes this episode, that's got the tools we'll talk through and some coaching questions; we've also added some extra things in.  So, you've got Sarah's borrowed brilliance.  This is Sarah sharing some insights and ideas she's got from different things that she's reading, watching and listening to.  You've got Helen's how-to, which is a video of me experimenting with a tool that we think could be useful for you in your career.  Sometimes it will be, sometimes it won't be, we'll see how it goes.  And then, we've also got Squiggly Careers behind the scenes, which is an ad hoc feature based on whether we think there's something that you might be interested in.  But if you're a Squiggly Career supporter, we thought you might like to know a bit more of what we're up to. 

Sarah Ellis: So, today we're talking about why understanding your manager will help you to do better in your job.  And in some ways, I think as Helen and I were exploring some ideas for today's episode, we were like, it starts to feel a bit borderline, manipulative and Machiavellian, but we promise it's not.  It's really just about sort of walking in your manager's shoes and then kind of figuring out what does that mean for you, being smarter, and hopefully to make your life that little bit easier.

Helen Tupper: I feel like an alternative title could have been, "How to take control of your manager so they don't take control of you"! 

Sarah Ellis: That probably would have been more clickable.  That's probably what we should be doing. 

Helen Tupper: Oh, never mind!

Sarah Ellis: But we know managers matter.  So, I think you always really remember the best manager you've had and you also remember the worst ones that you've had, where you feel like it's really not clicking, there's not the chemistry, you don't know why it's not working, and it just ends up feeling really frustrating.  And I think if you can work out what motivates your manager, what matters to them, and then adapt enough but while still being yourself, that's how you can end up working for lots of different kinds of people, and you learn loads from them.  Because I was thinking back to the managers that I've worked for, they're all really different.  There's not that many common threads that I can spot between them.  But actually, when it didn't work, it always felt like a bit of friction, or it felt like hard work, or you even felt like you were surprised by them, or you never quite knew what was coming.  I had that with a few managers.  Until I figured them out, I'd almost get a bit nervous.  I'd be like, "Oh, I'm not sure how they're going to react to this.  I'm not sure how they're going to respond to this idea, or am I positioning this in the right way?"  Whereas, once you've got that sense of who they are, then you can just be like, "Okay, well, I know they will care about this more than that, and so I can adapt my approach enough so that I can do the things I need to do in my job".

Helen Tupper: And I don't think it's about turning your manager into your best friend.  I think that's the wrong expectation.  I don't think understanding your manager is about suddenly, I know all about your life and what you're doing at the weekends.  I think it's much more connected to the work that you're doing.  And I think one of the risks sometimes is either you assume they need to be your best friend, that's one thing I think that we're not saying you need to do that for this to work; or, you have this parent-child dynamic, where you're looking to them for approval.  And so, rather than asking questions that help you understand them, so if you're my manager, and my aim is to understand you, then I'm going to be confident and curious about the questions that I'm asking; whereas actually, if I'm coming into this relationship, and I've kind of unintentionally created a parent-child dynamic, where I'm looking to you for direction and approval, then I'm probably not going to ask you curious questions because I just want to ask you, "What do you need me to do and do you think I've done a good job?"  I'm looking for your approval more than I am looking for understanding.  And so, we're not trying to do that, we're not trying to reinforce a parent-child dynamic, we're also not trying to say you have to be best friends with your managers in order for this to work. 

Sarah Ellis: And I think it is easy to assume that what's worked with your previous manager will work with your new manager.  And I think I've made that mistake before and thought, "Oh, this worked really well in my previous role.  This is how I approach one-to-one conversations, or this is how I did updates" and then suddenly, you've got a new person and you don't spot the changing situation.  So, you keep doing what you're doing, but then you suddenly get a sense of, "Oh, well, this is now not working", and then you can start to question, "Am I not doing a good job, or are they just not a good manager?"  I think it's more just everybody manages in a different way.  And managing is a tough job.  I think if we have a little bit of empathy for managers for a moment, they've often got so many demands on their day, they're trying to develop their teams, and they still have to do quite a lot of doing and they have to manage 4 million stakeholders.  And so, the asks on managers are wide-ranging and long and can feel really overwhelming. 

So, I think this will not only help you, I think it will help your manager too.  And I think, if you were you're being really ambitious, I guess if teams always did this with managers, everyone would work better.  But perhaps that'll come after you've had a go at doing it for yourself. 

Helen Tupper: That's an interesting insight, isn't it?  I think we've done this episode of you with your manager, but actually what you do want is everyone to have an understanding of the manager, because I think it's not just about an individual being at their best, actually, I think a team can be better with the understanding.  I was also thinking back in the Squiggly Careers back catalogue of episodes, do you remember that one we did with two of our previous managers, with James and Sarah?  That was a random episode.  So, we got my manager from Virgin, James, and Sarah from Sainsbury's, and then we just, I mean, what was the aim of that episode? 

Sarah Ellis: I think probably, we were partly just saying thank you to two of our best managers!  Also, Sarah will, I was thinking of her actually as we were preparing for this episode, because she always tells this story of how I walked into a one-to-one with her, and I basically did some of what we're going to talk about today, and how unusual it was.  And I think actually, it put her on the back foot a bit because people didn't have those kinds of conversations, but it was really memorable and it obviously stuck with her.  And then she said, "Oh, actually, it definitely made us work better together".  Like, I think we're quite different people, approach things in a different way, and she said, "Yeah, that always really stood out".  Even before the days of Squiggly Careers, I was trying some of these things. 

Helen Tupper: So, if you want a behind the scenes listen of us putting some of these ideas into action earlier in our career, maybe we'll put a link to that episode in the show notes. 

Sarah Ellis: So, we've tried to have a bit of fun with this today, and we've designed a kind of deep dive into your manager over a month, which does sound quite intense, but I think it will also be quite fun, and we've tried to do it in quite a playful way.  So, we've got four weeks' worth of actions to think about, and we're going to go through each of the weeks, and you could probably combine some of these.  But I almost think having a focus for each week is perhaps quite helpful.

So, week one, you are going to channel your inner anthropologist.  So, if we think about an anthropologist, their job is to observe, notice, see what's happening, but almost with a distance.  So here, you're just looking at how does your manager behave?  What kind of questions do they ask?  What seems to worry them or frustrate them?  When do you see them -- you know in conversations, I think there are moments where it's really obvious someone's got loads of energy?  They light up, they get really enthusiastic.  And then, there are other moments, I was thinking about this, I was on a call with you the other day and you literally put your head in your hands.  Yeah, and you covered up both of your eyes.

Helen Tupper: Are you allowed to say what it was about?

Sarah Ellis: What were we talking about?  It was on a Monday for a start.  Mondays are always our worst day. 

Helen Tupper: That's quite interesting isn't it?  Because if you're observing your manager put their head in their hands …!

Sarah Ellis: Well actually, what you did, which was a bit weird, was you put your eyes in your hands.  So, you sort of went like this.  And I wanted to point it out but we were mid --

Helen Tupper: What were we talking about?

Sarah Ellis: Oh, do you know what, we were talking about -- do you know what, you were thinking.

Helen Tupper: Okay.

Sarah Ellis: So actually, it wasn't that you were down. 

Helen Tupper: Don't look at me thinking!  That's probably what I was like. 

Sarah Ellis: You were thinking about something and we were talking about ideas for a project with somebody new.  And so, we were talking to this person and I just watched you and I was like, "I think this is her sort of going into her own head to try and figure out what she thinks".  But if someone didn't know you and actually, that person --

Helen Tupper: Yeah, and that's quite useful feedback.

Sarah Ellis: -- doesn't know you that well, they might've been like --

Helen Tupper: "Is she traumatised?" 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  And actually, that person did message me, because they'd had some other stressful things happen, and they were like, "Oh, I hope I showed up okay in that meeting", and I was like, "Oh, no, it was absolutely fine", but perhaps we looked a bit stressed, I don't know.  So, when you are in this anthropologist mode, if you think about what an anthropologist would actually do, they would make some notes.  So, you might just want to write a few things down.  And again, we don't have to write down everything.  But I think if you listen to people in a conversation, people's patterns of behaviour are quite predictable.  So, we were even reflecting on, the kinds of questions people ask, I think, is a really good starting place. 

So, I ask quite a lot of 'why' questions, because I'm a naturally quite zoomed-out person.  You would ask quite a lot of 'what' and 'how' questions, what do we need to do?  How do we make this happen?  Because you're a practical, 'let's move things forward with momentum' person.  And I think if you just spent one week with either of us, I don't think that's that hard to spot, when you're really noticing, when you're looking for those things.  So, I think type of questions is a good starting point.  What gives someone energy; maybe what do you see drains their energy, also really helpful.  And then, maybe just any other preferences.  What do you notice that somebody repeats?  When there's a problem, have you got a manager who's like, "Let's jump on a call quickly", or have you got a manager where they're like, "Can I have some time to think about it?"  Like, I will often use the phrase, "Okay, so let's just think about that a bit", and sometimes my partner at home will say, "Well, we haven't got time to think about it.  You need to make a decision".  Whereas I don't really ever hear you say, "Let's just think about it a bit".  You will just say, "Well, let's do this"! 

Helen Tupper: No, I did say today.

Sarah Ellis: Did you?

Helen Tupper: Because, you know I've got someone chasing me for something?  And I was like, "Actually, I need to have a bit of time to think about it".

Sarah Ellis: Yes, there you go, you see.

Helen Tupper: So, occasionally.  I mean, it's not my default response!

Sarah Ellis: No!  So, what happens next?  So, week one, you've been the anthropologist, you've made some notes, you've started to notice and observe quite intentionally, then what? 

Helen Tupper: This is where, week two, we're going to play the detective.  So, a detective is very good at profiling people, and we are going to use whatever data we've got at our hands to try and profile our manager.  This is not to put them in a box, this is just to gain a bit more insight.  So, this is using things like emails, so often people's tone in emails is quite telling.  Like mine would have like, I don't know, "How are you!!!" three exclamation marks.  I know that really annoys people. 

Sarah Ellis: Oh God, I hate an exclamation mark in an email. 

Helen Tupper: Probably a bit of an emoji.  Just all the things that people say you shouldn't do in communications, probably mine's got loads of that.

Sarah Ellis: You love a capital letter as well.

Helen Tupper: Do I?  What do you mean I love a capital letter?

Sarah Ellis: You know when you write titles?  You're like capital letter, capital letter, capital letter!

Helen Tupper: I don't think that's going to come up in a profile!  "Capitalise your emails for Helen, if you want to mirror her communications!"  Anyway, cut and paste some emails.  You might use presentations that people have done; you could use, like, depends how people communicate with you, but for example, we've got loads of WhatsApp messages; or you could transcript a voice note.  Like, on WhatsApp now, you can create a transcript.  So, you're going to basically cut and paste people's communications that you've got, your managers' communications, and then put them into something like Perplexity, ChatGPT, whichever one you like to use, stick it in there, and then ask it some questions like, "What three words would you use to describe somebody based on these communications?"  Or, "If this person had done a DiSC profile, what would they most likely come out as?"  Or Myers-Briggs, these are all different types of personality profiling models.  But you can ask it these questions so it can give you some sort of insight into this person's preferences and profiles and likely behaviours. 

So, I did do this for Sarah using Copilot, because we use Microsoft Teams in our company and it was just one that's integrated and it's closed and private for us.  And I asked it, so what did you say about you? 

Sarah Ellis: I was outraged!  I was like, "This isn't --" 

Helen Tupper: "Sarah prefers clear, concise, direct communication".  That's true.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but I was like, you know sometimes what's the opposite of those?  Who doesn't like clear, concise communication?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, but it implies, I quite like friendly, open, social. 

Sarah Ellis: Oh, okay, yeah.

Helen Tupper: But I don't think you're bothered about that.

Sarah Ellis: No, I think I just worried some of it was a bit generic.  That's kind of inevitable. 

Helen Tupper: "She appreciates those that are well prepared".  You do like that. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I do like people who are prepared.  But then I was like, "Oh, maybe this is just a self-awareness point for me", because I was like, "Oh, I'm naturally zoomed-out".  But it said I'm, "Deeply involved in various project.  I'm detail-oriented".

Helen Tupper: Oh, come on!

Sarah Ellis: Then I was like, "Oh, actually --"

Helen Tupper: That's true! 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but it sort of is, I don't know.  I think I oscillate between one and the other. 

Helen Tupper: We've got some episodes on self-awareness if you'd like me to refer you to those for future!

Sarah Ellis: Thanks!  There's loads of stuff I let go.  There's examples that we were talking about this morning where I think I'm either one or the other. 

Helen Tupper: That's true. 

Sarah Ellis: I think I'm a bit all or nothing.

Helen Tupper: That would be what I see.  I always notice the types of questions that you ask.  If I was in that anthropologist mode, when you start asking quite detailed questions, I'm like, "Sarah wants way more control over this"!  And then, I also know just let you have it, because the worst thing you could do is not give you that.  So, I found it quite useful. 

Sarah Ellis: Maybe it's more revealing than I'd like to admit then. 

Helen Tupper: Well, to your point, when I used Copilot, I was like, "How useful is this?  Is it a bit too generic?"  And so, then I asked it, "How does my profile differ from Sarah's?" 

Sarah Ellis: Okay, let's have a look then. 

Helen Tupper: And I think that is a really good question to ask, so it just helps you to tease out the differences.  So, it said similarities, "We both like clear communications, we both value feedback, we both like collaboration".  I would tick all that.  Differences, it says, "Sarah's more involved". 

Sarah Ellis: It says, "While both are detail-oriented". 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, that's probably not for me. 

Sarah Ellis: No?  I don't know though.  You have enough detail to get stuff done. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I probably don't dive deep enough.  But Sarah is more involved in project updates and book edits.  That's so true.  It must have gone through all of our emails, and Sarah does way more! 

Sarah Ellis: "This is literally the tasks that Sarah's doing!"  I like this though, "I'm particularly proactive in seeking feedback". 

Helen Tupper: That's true. 

Sarah Ellis: And it says that you're not. 

Helen Tupper: It says, "Helen is highly organised".  I was like, "Really?  I don't think I am that organised".  "Values clear communication in her frequent meetings".  I was like, "What's that implying?" 

Sarah Ellis: You have way too many meetings? 

Helen Tupper: Do you think so?  I was like, "You're being passive aggressive, Copilot!"  The point here is, this is week two of our exploration and understanding of you and your manager.  And so, this is just adding to the other things.  I wouldn't completely change the way that I worked with my manager based on this.  I think it's just giving me some incremental insight. 

Sarah Ellis: And sometimes in your organisations, you might just have actual profiles. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, that's true. 

Sarah Ellis: So, if you do do things like DiSC, or if you've done 16Personalities, there's loads of different ones that companies use, again, never take a profile as an answer to somebody or a way of labelling someone, but there's some insights there that you can work with.  So, week three is a bit of a spin on the game Guess Who?  But we're calling it Guess What?

Helen Tupper: When was the last time you actually played Guess Who?

Sarah Ellis: Oh, I've got a version of it for my son, How to Train a Dragon version.

Helen Tupper: Oh, and how often do you play this?

Sarah Ellis: Oh, it's really fun!  That's probably why I've put it down as an idea!

Helen Tupper: Don't you just memorise where the people are?

Sarah Ellis: No, because you change the blocks and they're in different places.

Helen Tupper: Oh, that's what I've been doing wrong, okay!  I think I got really bored of Guess Who?  Everyone knows who everyone is!

Sarah Ellis: It's just like, "I know that person is there!"  Yeah, I think you're playing it wrong.

Helen Tupper: Okay.

Sarah Ellis: So, yeah, I have played it quite recently actually.  But the Guess What? is from what you know so far, thinking about what do you think your manager's top three priorities and problems are?  And obviously, then you want to ask them.  But if you ask first, you're not challenging yourself to think, "Well, how well do I understand what's going on in my manager's world right here, right now?  What's most important to them?"  And I think in the past, sometimes that's where I've gone wrong with managers, because inevitably, our lens that we look at our jobs through is what's most important to us, so what are my priorities, what are my problems?  Whereas actually, I think just for a moment, if you do swap shoes with your manager and think, "What's going to matter most to them?" it could sometimes be things that are really different to what matters to you.  It could be things that actually contradict or challenge or put what matters to you much lower down their list, because actually, they've got something else that feels much more important or just matters more to them.

So, I think first of all, it's just a really good question to ask yourself, and then actually, you end up with a bit of a matching game here to go, "Well, just how accurate was I?"  And to be honest, if you get it all wrong, that's fine too, you've still learned something from that conversation with your manager.  And I think also, I was thinking back to even when we tried this when we were preparing for today, we didn't get it right or it wasn't that easy for us to answer for each other.  We could talk about our shared priorities, we were both quite clear on that, I think probably because we work together so much and we know things we're trying to do as a company.  But if you said to me, if I was imagining you were my manager, which I don't like to mainly, but if I was, if I was like, "Oh, what do I think Helen's top three priorities are for the next month?" I'd have to pause a bit.

Helen Tupper: It's actually quite a good build, you know whether, do you put a time frame around it, in the priorities and the problems?  Because it could be 12 months, it could be the next month, and I think the answers would be different. 

Sarah Ellis: And probably keeping it relatively short term, I think is more useful for this.  Because we're thinking about --

Helen Tupper: Maybe over the next quarter. 

Sarah Ellis: -- ways of working, what matters now.  People's priorities and problems change all the time as well.  So, I think I'd keep it quite short.  And then, I think you could ask this in a one-to-one really easily and in quite a low-key informal way, so you're not putting your manager on the spot too much. 

Helen Tupper: And I think a build on this links to our week-four activity.  So, my build on this would be, I think this is quite a good team conversation to have.  So, if you all went around the room, you all wrote down what do you think everyone's priority and problem is over the next month, and then you all said it out loud and just saw where you had alignment or misalignment, you'd learn a lot and you'd also see maybe how tuned in you were to other people.  That links to the week four, which we have called safety in numbers.  So, this is a way of learning about your manager sort of indirectly.  So, there are certain team exercises that you can run, which are designed to learn more about everybody.  But in running it as a team exercise, you're creating an environment where your manager just has to share some stuff that they might not do in a one-to-one. 

So, we've got an exercise called More About Me that we did in our team a while ago now, and it's sort of what do you come to me for help with?  What are you proud of?  And we will link to this in the PodSheet so that you can access it.  It's a really useful, simple tool.  But you could use things like, I've done before 16Personalities, as the free profiling tool.  And then, the point of that is you map the whole team and you're looking at, have we got the same personalities in the team?  What diversity have we got?  But I think these team exercises take the pressure away from this being something you're doing just with your manager, like you're trying to understand the insights of your manager, make it a team conversation and then everyone learns more at the same time.

Sarah Ellis: Well, I've done high-low learning before, actually, with a leadership team, and that was really useful.  So, everyone in the leadership team learned about each other and we learned about our big boss.  So, high-low learning is you just talk about a high from your career so far, and you basically just tell a story, like why was it so good? 

Helen Tupper: Like, when you started working with me!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, obviously that's where I was going with that.  To be fair, that was actually fun.  That was fun, I will give you that.  And the low learning is just a tough moment and a tough time.  And what's quite nice is that is a bit of vulnerability, but also people can choose what they want to share, what they feel comfortable sharing.  And also, everyone has highs and lows, so it's often quite an easy thing.  The other thing you could do is you could do it more short term if you wanted to make it -- that still feels like storytelling and you're sharing a bit.  If you wanted to make it, "Well, we don't do anything like this today", so any sort of sharing is going to feel maybe a bit uncomfortable, I think a version of our energy audit would work. 

So, you could say, "Over the last month, what's given you the most energy at work?  And what's one thing that drained your energy?"  And I think most people would be like, "Oh, that feels a bit more short term", easier to say.

Helen Tupper: Even Win of the Week, because I think Win of the Week is just, you get to the end of the week and everyone shares, either in a meeting or on a Team's channel, whatever you're using, what's the win that you've had this week.  I always think it's really insightful.

Sarah Ellis: It is.

Helen Tupper: Because some people focus on, you've got someone in our team, for example, and her wins, when they're about efficiency, you're like, "Oh, that's because that's your value".  You can really see that.  And then, you often see other people whose Win of the Weeks are probably more about how work has enabled what they like to do outside of work, so something with their family and it's the flexibility.  And it's just very interesting to see what comes to mind first when people think about success in a week. 

Sarah Ellis: So, you've done this month of really a deep dive into your manager, your poor manager.

Helen Tupper: I don't want to do it on you, because I don't have a manager now, but I feel like this --

Sarah Ellis: Feel like you're being really forensic.

Helen Tupper: Do you think you'd notice me doing it?  Like, "Oh, could you say that again, Sarah?"

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, "I'm just making a little note right now". 

Helen Tupper: "I'm just turning Copilot on". 

Sarah Ellis: "I'm just going to record this meeting"!  We could definitely do it for each other.  So, what do you do with this?  Because I think until this point, you've been data-gathering, you're increasing your awareness, but you always want to turn awareness into action.  So, I think this would change things like how you might structure your one-to-ones, so just the conversations you already have with your manager.  We talked about this idea of knowing what your manager's keywords are.  Like, when you do keyword searches, I think again, because people have got certain things that they are motivated by or that matter to them, you can just be like, "Well, I know this is the way to frame something that I need to talk to my manager about or a presentation that I'm doing". 

So, you were giving the idea to me earlier, you were saying, if you've got something to run by me, you could either say, "Oh, I'm going to go away and make these things happen", or you could say to me, "I've got some ideas to run by you".  And we're having exactly the same conversation, but I'm much more energised and interested in ideas, and you know that matters to me.  And so, again, I was like, it does start to sound a bit manipulative, doesn't it?  But I just think you're just being smart and you're just being sensible about going, "Well, I know this is important to my manager, so I want to connect the dots between the work that I do and what my manager cares about". 

Helen Tupper: You'd have to say something to me something like, "Oh, I think it's something that we all need to work on quite quickly".  "Yes, I agree, quick!"

Sarah Ellis: "Shall we do this this week?" 

Helen Tupper: "Shall we just do it now, Helen?"  "Yes, great!" 

Sarah Ellis: Well, I remember, so the Career Stage series that we have just released on the podcast, so that's an idea that we've had for a while, we've talked about a few different times.  And actually, I really remember the moment where I said to you, "Oh, well it's National Careers Week.  So, why don't we just make it happen and put it out that week?" and that's so easy to get you to agree to it, because you're just like, "Well, yes, that means we'll do it", because you always want to get things out there and you're less interested or motivated by ideas hanging around for too long, because you lose energy for them.  And yeah, there are some advantages and disadvantages.  We definitely made some mistakes with that series and we did it quite fast, but it's definitely the way to move it forward.

Helen Tupper: But it happened.

Sarah Ellis: It did happen, because I just said to you, "Let's do it then", and you sort of went, "Yes".

Helen Tupper: "I'm on it".

Sarah Ellis: And then you did all the work, so win for me and win for you!

Helen Tupper: We also thought that reflecting your insights in your communication, which might be the keywords, but it could be you might make things shorter because of things that you've noticed, or you might put a plan into your emails because you know that someone's going to like the detail and the dates and things like that.  So, just thinking about, "When are the moments that I communicate with my manager, and where can I put these insights into those moments?" 

Sarah Ellis: And then just the final thing is around different managers, I think, like different levels of distance from the work that you're doing.  And I think I've also learned this from experience.  So, it can feel like the classic thing that no one likes is, "I'm being micromanaged".  Or sometimes, maybe the opposite, "My manager's way too removed from the work that I'm doing, so they don't get it".  Neither of those feel good.  And I think actually understanding your manager gives you a sense of natural distance.  So, again, I mean, I must be a nightmare, right, because I oscillate between the two.  So, if you're in our team and you feel like you work with me, maybe rather than for me, you've got someone who really sometimes gets really into the detail; and then you've got someone who sometimes is very, very far away.  So, you might be like, "Right, okay, so I need to understand with Sarah which one".  Whereas with somebody like you, I think you're much more like you work alongside people to get stuff done. 

Helen Tupper: But I think my energy is more variable.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, okay.

Helen Tupper: I think with mine it's probably like, "There's certain things that Helen's obviously just more interested in", so that's my variability; whereas I think yours is the depth of detail.

Sarah Ellis: And yours maybe energy.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I think there's probably different sliders.  But I think probably working out what that's like, is it a distance slider, is it a depth slider, is it an energy slider, and then just tuning into that with your manager would be quite important.

Sarah Ellis: So, I feel like that's all of our words of wisdom, people are ready to go and do this.  I'd like some feedback, I'd like people to share.  What I'm now worried about is imagine if managers start getting in touch with us and say, "Well, my teams have all been doing this on me". 

Helen Tupper: Also, our team will probably do this on us. 

Sarah Ellis: I'd love them to do that though.

Helen Tupper: All right, shall we see if they do? 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Will we see them doing it?  We won't say anything.

Sarah Ellis: No.

Helen Tupper: We don't want to look really awkward about it!

Sarah Ellis: This is when we find out whether they listen to the podcast or not!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, very, very true!  Okay, so all of the ideas that we have talked about today are in the PodSheet, so hopefully it will be easy for you to almost tick off week by week as you go.  And we'll put some coaching questions in there just so that you can reflect and relate this to your experience right now.  So, you can find that either just go to our website, amazingif.com and go to the podcast page; or the best thing to do is to sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action, and then it will all come to you and save you loads of effort.  And the link for Squiggly Careers in Action, our new weekly newsletter is in the show notes as well.

Sarah Ellis: But that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now. 

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.