Squiggly Careers

Building self-belief into your working day can help you feel more confident. In this Shortcut, Sarah shares five ways to have a more confident day at work, practical ideas to try if something feels missing, and two watch-outs that can get in your way.

🎯 What You'll Learn

- Spot and use your strengths to help your team

- Find five-minute favours to experience the helper's high

- Zoom in and zoom out to recognise how you're being useful

- Capture very small successes to cage your confidence gremlins

– Navigate daily difficulties to recognise and build your resilience

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email: [email protected]

Need some more squiggly career support?

1. Download our free career tools: https://www.squigglycareers.com/toolkit/

2. Sign up for our Skills Sprints: https://www.squigglycareers.com/squigglysprints/

3. Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Newsletter, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools: https://bit.ly/squigglynewsletter_pod

4. Order our new book Learn Like a Lobster: https://www.squigglycareers.com/books/

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What helps us connect with the people we work with, and what happens when that connection is missing?

In this episode, Sarah is joined by organisational psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant to explore his new book, Vibe, and what the science of connection can teach us about our Squiggly Careers.

From seeing someone else’s ‘snow globe’ to sharing what brings out your worst, Adam shares practical ways to understand each other and work better together. He also answers questions from the Squiggly community about difficult feedback and feeling disconnected when working remotely.

🎯 What You’ll Learn

– How curiosity about someone else’s world helps you build connection

– Why sharing what brings out your worst can reduce misunderstandings

– The difference between social and task cohesion, and why shared goals matter for teams

– How to use a reciprocity ring to ask for help and share your knowledge or connections

– How to respond when your boss says “your vibe is all wrong”

– Practical ways to connect and learn from others when working remotely

📚 Resources Mentioned

Vibe - Adam Grant: https://bit.ly/3WsyYXO

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email: [email protected]

Need some more squiggly career support?

1. Download our free career tools: https://www.squigglycareers.com/toolkit/

2. Sign up for our Skills Sprints: https://www.squigglycareers.com/squigglysprints/

3. Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Newsletter, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools: https://bit.ly/squigglynewsletter_pod

4. Order our new book Learn Like a Lobster: https://www.squigglycareers.com/books/

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What’s one small thing you could do today that your future self would thank you for? In this squiggly shortcut, Helen shares four high performance habits that compound over time to build a resilient and successful career.

Drawing on the time-tracking insights of Laura Vanderkam, Adam Grant's research on the power of giving, and Helen and Sarah's own 'Learn Like a Lobster' framework, learn how small, intentional behaviours in learning, tracking, reflecting, and giving can transform your day-to-day work and build long-term career resilience.

🎯 What You'll Learn

– Why little and often learning is the secret to keeping your skills relevant

– How tracking your time and energy provides vital data for your development

– What your default response to reflection reveals about your working pace

– How to use the 'What Worked Well, Even Better If' framework for quick daily reflection

– Why giving and 'career karma' can generate 50% more success and reciprocity

– How to choose and build just one high performance habit at a time

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email: [email protected]

Need some more squiggly career support?

1. Download our free career tools: https://www.squigglycareers.com/toolkit/

2. Sign up for our Skills Sprints: https://www.squigglycareers.com/squigglysprints/

3. Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Newsletter, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools: https://bit.ly/squigglynewsletter_pod

4. Order our new book Learn Like a Lobster: https://www.squigglycareers.com/books/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Profilers can help you understand yourself, find words for your strengths and choose where to focus your development. But your results are clues to explore, rather than labels that limit you.

In this episode, Helen and Sarah borrow brilliance from three profilers: Lynda Gratton’s Living the 100-Year Life diagnostic, 16Personalities and the Squiggly Skills Profiler. They share their own results, what they found useful and what they questioned, with practical ideas to turn what you learn about yourself into action.

🎯 What You'll Learn
– Understand the benefits and common pitfalls of using career profilers
– Discover Lynda Gratton's 100-year life diagnostic to assess your life threads
– Learn how to use 16Personalities to identify your strengths and blind spots
– Find out how to use profiling data to communicate your value on LinkedIn
– Explore how to map team profiles to identify gaps in diversity of thought
– Try the new Squiggly Careers Skills Profiler to identify your super skill and gap for growth

📚 Resources mentioned:
-100-Year Life diagnostic: https://www.livingthe100yearlife.com/assessment
-16Personalities: https://www.16personalities.com/
-Squiggly Careers Skills Profiler: www.squigglyskills.com

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email: [email protected]

Need some more squiggly career support?
1. Download our free career tools: https://www.squigglycareers.com/toolkit/
2. Sign up for our Skills Sprints: https://www.squigglycareers.com/squigglysprints/
3. Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Newsletter, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools: https://bit.ly/squigglynewsletter_pod
4. Order our new book Learn Like a Lobster: https://www.squigglycareers.com/books/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When your week gets busy, do you find yourself dropping the things that help you feel good? It can be easy to put rest, support and time outside work on hold just when you need them most.

In this Squiggly Career Shortcut, Helen shares six small actions you can build into your week to support your resilience. Pick one or two that feel useful to you and try doing them regularly, before things start to feel difficult.

🎯 In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

– Find something to look forward to, even in a hard week

– Work out what help you need and ask for it

– Notice and celebrate your wins

– Find someone you can talk to when things feel difficult

– Protect the rest and recovery that works for you

– Make time for your world outside work

For more free tools and ideas to support your Squiggly Career, visit https://squiggly.me and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

For questions or feedback, email [email protected].

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is something at work feeling harder than it needs to be? It could be a meeting that takes too long, a decision that goes back and forth, or a process with more steps than it needs.

This week, Helen and Sarah borrow brilliance from The Friction Project by Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao. They explore how to spot the friction that slows you down, what you could subtract to make work easier, and why some friction is worth keeping.

🎯 In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

– Spot where friction is showing up in your work

– Ask your team what’s making their work harder

– Subtract steps, meetings or handoffs that aren’t helping

– Add useful friction through better questions and saying the hard thing

For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, email [email protected].

More Squiggly Career support:

1. Download our free career tools: https://www.squigglycareers.com/toolkit/

2. Sign up for our Skills Sprints: https://www.squigglycareers.com/squigglysprints/

3. Sign up for our weekly Squiggly Careers newsletter: www.squiggly.me

4. Order Learn Like a Lobster: https://www.squigglycareers.com/books/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this shortcut, Helen, talks about a matrix that can help you to understand where your ambition is right now and what is the most effective action to take to support your development.

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Could putting more constraints on your career actually create more possibilities?

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The people you work with make a significant difference to your development. In this shortcut, Sarah shares 3 ways to learn more from the people around you.

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Getting ready for a job interview can feel daunting, but what happens when you have to face an AI interviewer or answer tough questions about how you use artificial intelligence?

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