Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:33: What is meant by "data"
00:04:09: Squiggly skills and useful tools …
00:04:41: … 1: know your strengths - three-word comparison
00:11:07: … 2: you and your values - create a drive scale
00:17:31: … 3: confidence - do a success streak
00:22:15: … 4: networking - strong vs weak ties
00:27:22: … 5: possibilities - have a sense of direction
00:32:35: … 6: learning - talking vs listening ratio
00:36:01: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we dive into the ins, outs, ups and downs of work and share some insights, some ideas for action and some tools to help you take a bit more control of your career development. 

Sarah Ellis: And today we're talking about data points that will support your career development. 

Helen Tupper: That sounds very formal, Sarah! 

Sarah Ellis: It does, doesn't it?  But also we can't come up with a shorter title, so that's what we're going with everybody.  It's very "does what it says on the tin", I would suggest.  It is worth just thinking about when we say data, what do we mean?  I think data is something that you can track over time to increase your self-awareness, and that prompts actions for you.  So, almost if you can't track it, it might still be useful but it's probably not data.  So, I was really trying to think about this.  When we were coming up with ideas, I was like, okay, could you see where am I today, and then could you come back to it in a month's time and be like, "Right, well how has that changed?"  So, sometimes that will be numbers, like the obvious data that probably we all think about, but it could also be somebody writing something to you, like giving you feedback, it could also be your own feelings or reflections.  Some of this will be about your own data, some of this will be about gathering data from other people too.  And I think we want a number of different data points, because I suspect when you put all this together as well, it paints a bit of a picture of where you are in your Squiggly Career at the moment. 

Helen Tupper: And I think actually, in the world that we work in now, I think we've got more data points than ever that are available to people, like how many emails that you get versus how many emails you send, how many minutes a day you spend in meetings, how many hours you sleep.  There's actually quite a lot of data-capturing tools, and I think we're trying to go a bit beyond the tech and the tools and think a bit more about what can you observe; what is the data that sometimes we miss; and what tools have we got to help you to see and surface some insights that you might not be aware of?  I think that's where we've tried to get to you with some of the ideas for action that we're going to share today. 

In terms of, why bother, why bother to collect more data, I'm already surrounded by it, in the context of data for your development and a Squiggly Career, this really, really helps you.  In a world full of change, where sometimes you might not feel that you have control of your career development, because it can feel a bit ambiguous and uncertain, the more data that you can collect that is specific and unique to you, the more insight you get and the more that that gives you clarity on how you're working and is that the way you want it to work, and that clarity then can give you back that control.  So, I think often in a Squiggly Career, we're sort of managing this tension between change and uncertainty, and the desire to have clarity and control.  And the more data that we can collect to support our development, the more I think we win that battle a little bit. 

Sarah Ellis: I also think I'm quite anti overcollection of data.  I don't need my phone to tell me how long I'm on my phone and I don't want to track my sleep, or any of those things.  But some of the areas of career development I think naturally can end up feeling a bit abstract.  So, when you're like, "Well, how self-aware are you?"  It's like, "Quite; very; very self-aware".  And I think some of these areas could feel vague, or maybe even feel a bit fluffy.  And so, actually putting some data around them I think helps it to feel more real and tangible, and something that we can do something with.  When I was going through this, I was like, "Oh, that's really interesting.  I can do something with that data.  It can prompt me to do more of the same if I get really good data that I like what I see".  Or there's some data that definitely I got as part of preparing for this where I thought, even though I perhaps half knew this about myself, sometimes seeing something in the cold light of day with data really makes you stop and think, "Oh, but that's not how I want to show up, or that's not what I want to do", and maybe that's just the nudge that you need.  So, I also wonder if it could be the nudges that you need. 

Helen Tupper: So, the way that we have done this is we have taken the five squiggly skills.  And if you don't know what they are, where have you been?  Don't worry, we'll go through them.  We'll go through the five squiggly skills.  And then we've also added one extra, because we think that the sixth skill we're going to talk about learning is a bit of an enabler for everything.  And it's so important that it's not something that we can ignore when we're collecting data for our development.  So, we'll go through each one of those six areas and for each one, we will share a specific tool that will help you to collect data for your development on that particular skill. 

We're going to start with the squiggly skill of knowing your strengths.  And the tool that we suggest that you use here to collect some data on your development will help you to understand the difference or not, it depends what your data says, between your intent, so what strengths you want people to see and associate with you, and your impact, so the actual strengths people see and associate with you.  And the way that you work this out, the way you collect data, first of all, you need to write down for yourself what three words do you want to be known for.  And then, you want to go and ask a couple of people, so we would suggest at least two or three people here so you've got a bit more data for development, really the more the better, but at least two or three; the question that you're going to ask people is, "What three words would you use to describe me at my best?"  And what you're doing with this data is comparing your three words with the three words that you get from other people. 

If you've got an overlap, so similarity between your three words and what they say about you, then that's really good.  That means you're showing up as you want to at work.  And if you've got a bit of a gap, so your three words are very different to the three strengths people associate you with, then that is a bit of a gap that you might want to close in terms of how your strengths show up at work.  So, Sarah has done this, she's put this data to the test very, very recently so that she can see whether she's got that kind of gap or overlap.  What did you find out, Sarah? 

Sarah Ellis: So, the three words that I wrote down, so my intent, what I want to be known for, were optimistic, ideas and determined, so they were my three words.  And I asked four people and this is what they told me, and this took two seconds.  It was a really quick bit of data to gather and everybody else seemed to be able to do it within, like, half a day.  People very, very quickly sent this to me, so really easy thing to do to get started. 

Helen Tupper: You didn't ask me. 

Sarah Ellis: Yes, I did, I asked everybody in the team, you just didn't respond to the team's message, Helen!  I mean, do you really want to go down that path?

Helen Tupper: I'm so sorry.  I think you're great.

Sarah Ellis: Thanks!  "You didn't ask me", oh my God, yeah, right, sure!  That gives you an insight into the world of Amazing If, doesn't it?!

Helen Tupper: That you didn't need! 

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so do you want to know what everyone else in the team told me but you just didn't do the action? 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, absolutely. 

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so first person said, "Motivated, pragmatic, insightful"; second person, "Perceptive, inspiring, wise", I was like, "Oh, wise!"  Third person, "Visionary, leader, creator"; and the fourth person said, "Curious, creative, ideas".  And so, what stood out for me there was, "Ideas".  I feel like people don't always say the exact same word that you use, but I think when it's roughly in the right area, you feel good about overlap, which I think you want to be consistent, you want your intent to match your impact.  So, I was like, pretty much everybody sees that idea, see that kind of creativity.  Nobody really said optimistic. 

Helen Tupper: That's what I was thinking. 

Sarah Ellis: But then I was also thinking, that's perhaps not that much of a surprise, because you're very optimistic, and so I often feel like I don't have to be as optimistic at work as I am maybe some of the rest of the time.  And so I was like, "Oh, that's interesting".  And actually, one person on our team used the word "pragmatic".  I connected to that word.  I would describe myself as pragmatic.  And the point about strengths is that you choose them, you choose what you want to be known for.  Do I think someone was being kind when they said, "Visionary"?  Yes.  Do I think I go, "I don't necessarily want to be known for being visionary"?  But actually, pragmatism, that feels like me, that feels right for me. 

Helen Tupper: I was just thinking I can see Sarah's words in front of me, so it's actually quite useful, if you're using this bit of data in conversation with people, I actually think it's useful to have it in front of you.  Sometimes you can see the connections that you might not always be able to hear when people have shared them.  But I kind of think the words "inspiring" and "visionary" connect to the optimism. 

Sarah Ellis: Maybe, yeah.

Helen Tupper: I kind of think the fact that you inspire people is because you're optimistic about opportunity.  The fact that you have got a vision is you're optimistic about what's the potential.  So, I see that in there, but I also get your point that actually, maybe that connection isn't quite so clear in what people see on a day-to-day basis, which is interesting, isn't it?  Because you might think, if that's what you want to be known for, maybe I'm drowning out your optimism with my enthusiasm.  Maybe that's feedback. 

Sarah Ellis: Or, maybe I'm not quite as optimistic as I like to think that I am. 

Helen Tupper: Also insightful. 

Sarah Ellis: Which I think also might be true.  And a couple of people said, "Insightful and perceptive", and I thought, "Oh, yeah, I can see how that shows up in the work that I do.  And that's something that I was like, "Oh, I feel good about that".  I mean, the other thing about collecting this data, this is like feel-good data, right?  So, I got this data at the start of today and I was like, "I feel incredible"!

Helen Tupper: Hi, wise, visionary, curious, creative person, how are you today?! 

Sarah Ellis: I'm like, "Brilliant!  Apart from the fact my co-founder didn't do the exercise, I'm really good"! 

Helen Tupper: She was busy building our business. 

Sarah Ellis: I know you were, I know you were busy.  Do you know what?  It didn't even cross my mind that you would do it, because I obviously knew what you were doing.  So, it's a really good place to start.  And what I would say is if you can ask a few different people, you get those different perspectives.  So, yes, ask people who work really closely with you, but maybe ask people who've worked with you previously, like previous managers, or maybe just people in different teams that are slightly further away from seeing you day to day because also, it's always interesting to see, does your intent and your impact change across different groups of people, or depending on how connected they are to you? 

Actually, when I look at my LinkedIn recommendations, which I think intent and impact, that's a very public way of doing that, I always see "ideas".  So, of everything, that's the one I always feel most confident about because I love it, people see it, all good.  So I'm always like, well, that's the one that my strength stands out and shows up.  And then, there might be work to do, choices to make around some of the others. 

Helen Tupper: Okay so Squiggly skill number two is all about you and your values, so how do we collect some data on this?  Well, we are going to borrow some brilliance from Dan Pink, who wrote a book all about drive and has got a great podcast all about drive and motivation.  And he talks about three components that contribute to how motivated you are at work, how driven you are.  And we talk about values as the things that drive and motivate you.  So, you can see this connection between what he talks about in terms of drive and motivation and our definition of values.  So, the three things that he talks about, in terms of how driven are you and how motivated are you, are your purpose, so do you feel connected, personally connected to the work that you do, that purpose element; mastery, so do you feel that you've got the skills to do the job that you're doing; and autonomy, do you feel that you've got the space to own your role and succeed independently in what you're doing?  So, these three elements, purpose, mastery, and autonomy contribute to how motivated you are at work. 

How you turn this into data, which is our build on this work, is you create a drive scale.  So, for each of these elements, purpose, mastery, and autonomy you want to reflect on, on a scale of 0 to 5, what kind of score would you give it today?  So, let's say "purpose", for example.  If I was to scale, so I'm CEO of Amazing If, so if I was to give myself a scale, 0 to 5, on purpose, I'd actually give myself a solid 5 out of 5.  I mean, you'd hope, given that Sarah and I founded this business about making Squiggly Careers better for everyone, you'd hope that we were connected to purpose.  So, for me, in terms of my values and taking purpose as part of that, then I'm 5 out of 5 on that particular one. 

Mastery, which is interesting, so 0 to 5 on that one, I would go lower.  So, have I got the skills I need to succeed in my role?  So, officially, I'm CEO of Amazing If.  I don't think I spend lots of time doing what I would define as the role of a CEO, probably because we're in a small company and actually the nature of mine and Sarah's roles is we're writing, recording podcasts, we're designing training, we're delivering training, we're working with organisations on how they structure for Squiggly; there's a lot to do in our job.  So, the percentage of time I actually spend being a good CEO is quite small.  So, I'd actually probably give myself kind of small on the mastery scale.  And autonomy, which is have I got the space and freedom to do my role, I'd probably score that quite high.  I'd give that maybe -- 

Sarah Ellis: Would you? 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, well, I would actually.  Yeah, I would.  I'd probably give it a 4 out of 5.  The only reason it's not a 5 is because sometimes there are days that I would like to redesign so that they worked for me, and I don't feel like I can because of the amount of things that Sarah and I are committed to do.  We're committed to a weekly podcast, everyone, we're committed to writing books --

Sarah Ellis: I mean, whose idea was that?

Helen Tupper: -- we're committed to certain things and actually, our diaries are committed quite a long way in advance because of the work that we do with companies.  So, sometimes that doesn't give me the freedom to design my day in the way that I'd like it to, but ultimately I would still want to do exactly what I'm doing, I would still want the mix.  Everything I'm doing, I would still choose.  And so, what that helps you to do is go, "Well, how am I feeling right now?  In terms of my motivation, my drive to do what I do, what does that look like; where have I got some gaps?"  So, for example, I might say, "Okay, well if I want to be a better CEO, if that's going to help me be more driven and motivated, how do I go from a 3 to a 4, or a 4 to a 5?"  Any time you use a scale for your development, it really helps you in talking about improvement.  Like, what would it take for me to go from that number to that number?  And also, if you use 5 out of 5 on each one, then your total score is 15 across purpose, mastery and autonomy.  You end up with like a total score, which is quite useful to look at that total motivation score as well.  So, quite a nice, simple way of reflecting on your kind of driver motivation at work. 

Sarah Ellis: I also think this would be a brilliant thing to include as part of a career conversation.  So, that career conversation could be with a mentor or with a manager.  But you've just heard Helen describe very high scores, so I think it's worth saying that for lots of people, their scores would not be as high as that and that would definitely be true for Helen and I. 

Helen Tupper: I don't have a manager, so I get to manage myself broadly.  I mean, Sarah is sort of my co-manager.  But yeah I think if I was feeling managed by, there's definitely been jobs that I've done where that autonomy, I might have felt connected to the purpose and I might have felt like I was quite good at what I was doing, but autonomy, like do it in the way that works for me, would be much lower. 

Sarah Ellis: So, I think firstly, don't worry if you feel like your scores are not as high.  But I think this would be a really good thing, you know if you're struggling to describe to somebody why you feel like you've maybe lost your mojo, or you don't feel like you've got the meaning, or you're not getting the fulfilment that you're looking for from your job or from your role, that can be quite a hard thing to describe, and then you can get a bit waffly or you talk about it in a way where it's hard for someone to help you.  I think actually by talking about these three areas, if somebody said to me purpose, mastery, autonomy and Helen, let's say, said, "Oh, I'm a 3 for mastery, specifically around being a CEO", then you can go, "Right, what would it take to get from a 3 to a 4?"  And then you get into actions, almost together in that conversation.  You can start to go, "Well, have you thought about, have you considered this?  Which of these actions feel like something you could prioritise?"  So, that data then leads to a decision to do something, and I think that's what you're trying to get to. 

Now, you might not need someone else, you could do this yourself and that's enough.  But often, I think this area, if your scores are not as high, it's often quite good to have someone else who can give you that perspective and maybe zoom out a little bit from the situation that you're in. 

Helen Tupper: It's like a career data analyst.  It's quite nice, isn't it? 

Sarah Ellis: Oh, yeah, maybe we should find -- I'm sure I would know some really good data analysts.  And maybe, if you're a data analyst and you're listening to this podcast, get in touch with us and tell us how we can make this more data analytic.  I assume that's probably the word they use, right? 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I think that's exactly what these people would say, yeah!  I'm sure they're also like, "These scales that you're saying, 0 to 5, no!  There's better ways you could do this".  Okay, we'll just move on from that, but do get in touch. 

Sarah Ellis: And Squiggly skill number three is confidence, so believing in yourself and other people believing in you too.  And this one can feel particularly difficult I think sometimes to get some data for.  We talked very recently about this idea of gremlins, those beliefs that hold you back, and when those gremlins take charge, that doesn't really feel like data, that just feels like it's very difficult.  Often, you're in a knotty moment that you want to get out of and you're not sure what to do differently.  This is when we would suggest having a go at doing a very small success streak.  So, you might have heard us talk about this before, but this is the idea of at the end of every day, you write down three very small successes from all of your day, I think really important that you do all of your day.  And each of those very small successes just nudges those gremlins back towards their cage, back to where they belong.  And if you can do a success streak of, say, 14 days and you did 3 very small successes every day, you get to 42 very small successes in two weeks.

If you said to me, "Have you had 42 successes over the last 2 weeks?" I'd be like, "Absolutely not".  But you almost gather it, like you gather the momentum, and I think you get a sort of snowball effect around these successes.  And the reason I actually like doing three, this is always actually what I recommend in workshops now rather than just doing one a day, is I think if you do three, it's a forcing function to go small, and I think that's a really good thing.  And so you do think, "Oh, do you know what?  I responded to that difficult email that's been lurking in my inbox; that's one.  I did get out for a walk at lunchtime; that's one.  I have spent some time reading with my 7-year-old", I mean I am going to do that after this, I'm just pre-empting that very small success at the end of this day.  And often this feels really hard on days one and days two, and then I think it just gets easier and easier, and you often get to the point where you're like, "Oh, which ones do I pick?"

But you can't imagine that when you first start, because even when I talk to people about this exercise, they'll be like, "I haven't got one".  And you can really see people frowning, trying to think of something.  But then once they get going, you're like actually, it's just that our brains tend to skip past them.  We very quickly move on from small successes, so we are not used to noticing them.  It's not that they're not there, it's just that we're not very good at seeing them. 

Helen Tupper: I also think when you've got 42 small successes, you can look across them and you really get a sense of what matters most to you.  Because these things that you collect, you'll start to see some patterns because you'll be like, "Isn't it interesting that half of my successes are all about efficiency [or] half of my successes are all about helping other people", and that goes right back to your values about, what are the things fundamentally that matter most to me at work and how do I get more of that.  So, it is a good exercise for your confidence, it's a brilliant one, and I think particularly this one is good when you're in a knotty moment, because when you're in a knotty moment, that's when your gremlins grow, all those doubts creep in.  So, it's a really good one to have in your back pocket for a bit of self-belief. 

But the zoomed out view on this is, what does good work actually look like for me?  And if you just capture your small successes, that stuff will start to surface across those 42 ones.  So, I always look at that.  When I do my success streaks now, I'm quite retro with it.  I've tried tech and I don't do that anymore.  So, I just get a piece of paper, A4 piece of paper and I divide it up.  I do 14 days down the left-hand side and then I do three boxes for each day, so basically a very big grid, 42 boxes on that.  And then, I can see all my successes on one piece of A4 and it's a really good way to do what I've just said.  So, you can see your streak, you want to fill in all the boxes so you don't miss a day, that keeps that intention going.  But at the end of it, you've got a page full of your successes, which is really useful to look at and reflect.  So, that's how I do it.  I'm sure you could use an Excel spreadsheet and do some semantic analysis, or whatever, but I go retro with it. 

Sarah Ellis: The other thing, and we're not really talking about this as much today, is I do wonder how many of these exercises you could do as a team.  We've gone, "Do these as an individual", but actually everything we've talked about so far, but particularly this one, you could just all do this as a team and all put them in the same place so you get to see everybody else's along the way as well --

Helen Tupper: Oh, that would be so nice.

Sarah Ellis: -- which would be so good.  I was just thinking as you were describing that, I was like, "Oh, maybe we will experiment with that with our team", because I would love to see everybody's very small successes, like three a day for a couple of weeks, and just see what was there, see what we all noticed. 

Helen Tupper: So, the fourth squiggly skill is all about networking.  This is about making sure you're building a community around your career based on the principle of people helping people.  So, when we're talking to people about building these communities, we think this idea that you just know people, people knowing people, which is kind of traditional networking, isn't really that useful, because just knowing a lot of people doesn't really mean that it's particularly useful for your development.  But when you've got this people-helping-people principle, then actually that's much more active, because if I'm helping you or you're helping me, that's an active relationship, and it's much more effective because actually people like helping people, and it also creates reciprocity in a relationship.  So, if I help Sarah, for example, in the future she's much more likely to help me.  So, that's the principle we talk about with networking. 

In terms of the data, we think that it is really useful to reflect on the number of conversations you are having, so you could do this across a week or a month, whatever feels right for you, with your strong versus your weak ties.  And I'll just kind of pause and talk about what is a strong and a weak tie.  We've also done a podcast episode on this, so we'll link it in the PodNote and the PodSheet for you, which are the summaries that you can download from our website, because it might be useful if you want to dive into this a bit deeper.  But a strong tie is effectively somebody who is very close to your career.  So, this could be because you work with them on a day-to-day basis, this could be because you've known them for a very long time, this could be because they're very close to the context that you work in.  They're very close to your career.  Strong ties are brilliant for support, so you definitely want to spend time with strong ties. 

So, for example, Sarah is obviously my strongest tie because I've known her for 20 years, I've worked with her for 10, and we message each other a million times a day. 

Sarah Ellis: I win!

Helen Tupper: Sarah wins the award of my strongest tie. 

Sarah Ellis: The strongest-tie award! 

Helen Tupper: So, she gets me, she knows what I do, she's there to support me, she is my strongest tie, which is brilliant for my career.  But actually the research shows that an awful lot of our opportunities come from weak ties.  So, these are people that are further away from what you do on a day-to-day.  So, these could be, there's some form of connection, so it's not a random tie.  It's not, "Oh, I just met someone on the street and had a chat", it's not that.  There's some form of connection.  So, maybe you are in the same alumni network because you've done the same programme, for example, or maybe you've been part of the same university, or maybe you've both worked in the same company at some point in time.  You might not have worked with each other but there's some form of connection, there's an association between us that creates, "I get you, you get me, we just don't work together very closely".  And the research shows that when we spend time with weak ties, we tap into curiosity, so they know people and things that we don't know, and you also unlock opportunity, because they might open doors for our development that we can't see or open for ourselves. 

So, you really want to look across your week and think, "Of all the conversations that I had this week, what percentage were with my strong ties versus my weak ties?"  Now, it's very likely that strong ties will be your majority because they're very easy, very easy to talk to those people.  They often feel comfortable, they're easier to get to.  But if week after week, 100% of your conversations are with your strong ties, the risk for your career is that you're operating in a bit of a bubble.  You're talking to people who know what you know and who see what you see, and your career opportunities will be weakened as a result of that.  So, if we spend time with people who operate outside of that context, you're more likely to unlock other opportunities for development. 

Sarah Ellis: So, I always find the phrase, "Weak ties" a bit problematic, because it almost implies they're not as useful.  But I think about this as the difference between staying in your lane and straying from your lane.  So, I am someone who could definitely, as an introvert, end up staying in my lane, spend time with people I really like, and you get stuck in that echo chamber trap that you described.  And so, almost a question I often ask myself is like, "Who am I straying from my lane with; who could help me to get a window into a different sort of world?"  And that ends up being a really good filter for me in terms of the conversations that I'm having, because then if I'm like, "Oh, I'm only having conversations with people maybe a bit like me, who've got experiences like me, or who I would come into contact with anyway, who I just know really well", and then I always feel like I'm limiting my learning. 

So, when I do spot and see those opportunities to spend time with people who are just further away from what we do, if anything, I'm more interested.  In my head I'm like, "Oh, they're the intriguing people", because I'm like, "What do they do, and how does that work?" and then I would make extra effort, because I think those people are harder to find.  And I think to our point around percentages, that percentage will always be lower, of course it will, but if that percentage is zero, then I think that's when it becomes a challenge for your career. 

So, squiggly skill number five is possibilities.  So, this is about being really curious and exploring where your career can take you.  So, in some ways this one feels quite hard to find data for, this has taken Helen and I a bit of thinking through, and to get started here, you have to have a sense of direction.  So, as we've talked before, we definitely want to let go of destinations and plans and being fixed to a future, but we do want to have a feel for, "What direction do I want to take my career in for now?"  Of course, we give ourselves permission to change direction along the way.  And there are a few ways that you can do this that you need as your starting point before you can get to some data.  And Helen and I would do this really differently. 

I would write a work-in-progress Squiggly Career success statement, and that's what I do.  And it's funny, I think Helen and I do this bit in workshops quite differently, because I'm like, "Oh, I like this one", and Helen's like, "I like something a bit different".  And so, the reason I call it a work-in-progress success statement is it's no more than sort of five lines, and it just describes, "Success in my Squiggly Career is …".  How would you end that sentence?  Just write down, you can write down bullet points, you can write down sentences, it doesn't need to be perfect but it does give you a sense of clarity for what does being successful look like, what's the direction I want to head in.  Some of those things might be true today, some of those things might be missing, but you've got something to compare and contrast to.  So, Helen what would you do? 

Helen Tupper: I'm not sure I've ever seen you do one of these, but I would do some form of a vision board.  I feel like I might need a different word because people make that sound, "No!" when they're using a vision board, and actually I find that they're so useful.  So, I've done a vision board for this year, for example. 

Sarah Ellis: As long as it works for you.

Helen Tupper: It does work for me and it's worked multiple times for me.  So, the way I use a vision board to give me a direction for my development is I collect a load of images, again, I feel like I'm really retro in talking about this today, I rip out pictures from magazines.  Yes, I know there's Pinterest, but I use pictures of magazines.  But because I collect them over like -- I'll decide I want to do a vision board, so I did one in January, for example, and I'll spend a month or so before that just ripping pictures out, and I do that very intuitively.  It might be colours, words, just images that appeal to me.  And then I pick a day and I set a time and I put all those images together in some way, and then I sort of sit back and go, "What is this saying to me about what I want for my work?"  And actually, mine often goes a bit broader in terms of, "And how does my work feed my life?"  So, those two things, I look at it together.  

I've done one for this year and I put the word "quality" at the heart of it and I put all these things around it.  And some of the words for you and me were like "forces for change", for example, was one of our words; the word "experiment" was in there.  And it's given me a real sense of direction for my development that over the next 12 months, that's what I want my work and life to feel like, and I think I emotionally connect more both to that process, because maybe a bit more involved, I think it does potentially take a little bit more time; and also, that visual outcome.  I have it on my phone, it's my screensaver on my laptop, I put it in my diary.  I look at that very regularly as a reminder. 

Sarah Ellis: What is really fascinating about that is, I love visuals and spend a lot more time drawing than you do, and you love words, as in you do a lot more writing in workshops, I draw a lot more in a workshop, and yet we seem to sort of reverse when it comes to doing this idea of like, "Where's our career taking us?"  But I think any version, whatever works for you, but that I think probably gets it out of your head.  I think that's probably what's the most important thing here, is that you've not got thoughts fizzing around, you're trying to give them a little bit of a framework, a bit of a structure, so that then you can look at them, and what you're then doing is looking for data points to support that direction. 

So, I think this is probably something that you could do once a month.  At the end of every month, I'd be putting a reminder on my calendar, otherwise I'd never remember, and I reckon it's 15 minutes.  And you're just looking back over that month and you ask yourself, "What data points do I have to support the fact I'm going in the right direction in my career?

Helen Tupper: And I've probably gone even further with mine.  So, I took my visual, of course I did!  I've gone really far, everyone.  So, I took my visual, I then turned it into a monthly, like, "What does that month look like?"  So, now I've got a table.  So, I've gone from a visual to a table of what things in that month would happen.  And then, I've got an accountability WhatsApp group where every week, there's three of us in this WhatsApp group, it's not massive, but three very committed people, every week on a Saturday morning, we WhatsApp each other about our progress.  And it's the nicest thing.  So, for example, one of the things on my vision board was about saving money, I literally have the word "save" on mine.  And every week I'm like, "The quality of my financial metric is still missing a little bit". 

But do you know what?  It holds me to account, it's a group that celebrates my movement towards what's sort of most important to me.  So, I've probably come back that little bit/a lot further with making this something very data-driven to have those weekly data points, but that's how that is working really well for me.

Sarah Ellis: And then our final one, which we've sneaked in because we couldn't not mention learning, so we were like, "Oh, we'll do the five skills", and I was like, "We've got to have learning in there", because I just feel like that's at the core of all of our Squiggly Careers.  We know that we're all unlearning, relearning all the time.  Learning is now our job.  We're all in these infinite learning loops, we want to be learning and growing all of the time.  And one very specific data point around this is your talking versus listening ratio.  And the reason that it's a really good learning data point is, when you listen, you learn.  So, when you talk, you're sharing what you already know.  Yes, you might get some learning, I guess, from your clarity from what you're saying out loud.  But actually, when you're really listening, that's when you absorb new information, that's when you learn new things, that's when you challenge your assumptions. 

We put this to the test this week.  We use some AI called Fireflies that basically, in a slightly spooky way, appears in your meeting as if it's a person.  I mean, it's not.  It listens into your conversation and then really does give you some data for your development.  I would say this is very unavoidable data.  And so, we were doing a one-to-two conversation with somebody in our team, and I can tell you that the person in our team whose career conversation it was, so you'd expect them to be talking the most, they talked for 50% of the time.  I talked for 32% of the time, and Helen talked for 18% of the time.  And Helen's words per minute were 217 and mine were 221, so we're almost as bad as each other on that basically. 

But I was like, as somebody who knows that I would like to get better at listening, and I think if I got better at listening I would learn more, seeing the reality of that on a little diagram where I was like, "Oh, okay, that 32% I think is higher than it should be.  I think Helen's about right at 18%, and she's better at listening than I am, and I see that, and I'm sort of watching and trying to get better", but I do find that really helpful because I've got another one-to-two conversation with someone else in our team in a week's time.  We can use exactly the same tech and I can aim to reduce that number, and I will know whether I've reduced that number.  And I don't think I have ever felt so motivated to listen because I really want that number to go down.  Now I have known this before, this is not new news to me, but I think there is something about the stark unavoidable reality of seeing, like I would set myself a target, for example, of that being 25%. 

Helen Tupper: You're not now competing with me are you?  It's not become like a Sarah competition to be a better listener in a meeting?

Sarah Ellis: No, I mean, yeah, whatever floats your boat right?!  But I actually just look at it and just think, "Well that's too high".  And actually, do you know what, it's funny, I didn't go to, "It needs to be as good as Helen", otherwise you and I won't be speaking in meetings, and then it could get really weird.  So, I go, "Oh, I don't need to be the same".  But what I do think is, 32% is too high in someone else's career conversation.  I think that should probably be 25% at most in terms of the airtime I'm taking up, because how can I learn about that other person and what's important to them if I'm speaking, because I don't know what's important to them.  And so, my ambition for our next one-to-two, which I think is next week, is going to be 25%. 

Helen Tupper: So, we hope that has given you maybe a different way of thinking about your career development, and hopefully made data not seem so scary.  I sometimes think data can feel like, I don't know, we're talking about development and career development is like this nice thing and data feels really hard.  But actually, I think when you put the two things together, you make it much more useful and it becomes actually much more constructive in conversations when you can use data as part of them.  We will summarize all those different tools that we've talked about to get more data on your development in the PodSheet.  The PodSheet we link to on the show notes in Apple, but if you listen on different platforms, don't worry, just go to amazingif.com, go to the podcast page on our toolbar, and then you'll be able to get the PodSheet there.  Also, little secret for you, we are heading towards episode 400 of the Squiggly Careers podcast. 

Sarah Ellis: I mean, absolutely meaningless.

Helen Tupper: Well, but it's a lot of podcasts, everyone.  But the reason that I'm saying that is, we will do another PodBook.  So, when we get to episode 400 --

Sarah Ellis: Oh, yeah, that is actually meaningful, there we go.

Helen Tupper: -- yeah, that's exciting. 

Sarah Ellis: Maybe I'm not that optimistic.  I don't know what I was thinking, saying I'm optimistic. 

Helen Tupper: What were you thinking?  Miss pragmatic!  No, but anyway, the PodBook, everyone, is a collection.  The last 100 episodes each have a PodSheet and we'll pull that all together into one basically super, free book of actionable support for your Squiggly Career.  Make sure that you're signed up for PodMail because that will be the first people that get access to that.  Links to all that stuff is on our website as well.

Sarah Ellis: So, that's everything for this week.  We'd be really fascinated to know if you found this useful talking about data for your development.  We both found it really interesting and we feel like this is maybe the start of something.  Maybe we could think about team tools and data for teams for their development.  Maybe we could visualize some of this.  So, we could take some of this a bit further, but we thought we'd start it out, experiment, see what you think.  And so if this has been particularly helpful, you can email us, we're helenandsarah@squiggycareers.com or just connect with us on LinkedIn and just send us a message because we always really appreciate knowing how we're doing, what gaps we've got, what you'd like more from us on and what you'd also like less. 

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.