Squiggly Careers

Over the next month, Helen and Sarah are focusing on Squiggly Careers 'life skills'. They will be covering health, sleep, money and relationships and understanding the practical actions you can take to create the strongest foundations for squiggly career success. Today, they are talking about money and borrowing some brilliance from Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money, and 'badass' Je...

Over the next month, Helen and Sarah are focusing on Squiggly Careers 'life skills'. They will be covering health, sleep, money and relationships and understanding the practical actions you can take to create the strongest foundations for squiggly career success. Today, they are talking about sleep and deep-diving into 2 books for inspiration. Helen reviews Life Time by Russell Foster and Sarah ex...

Over the next month, Helen and Sarah are focusing on Squiggly Careers 'life skills'. They will be covering health, sleep, money and relationships and understanding the practical actions you can take to create the strongest foundations for squiggly career success. Today, they are talking about health and deep-diving into 2 books for inspiration. Helen reads and reviews the advice of Dr Rangan Chatt...

If you have a holiday ahead, chances are that you're already thinking about how you're going to get everything done before you go. Even worse, you might worry about work when you're away and get the 'back to work blues' when you're home. Instead of experiencing a holiday hangover, Sarah and Helen have got lots of practical ideas for action to help you prep before you go and make sure you're coming...

This week we have an ‘Ask the Expert’ conversation between Sarah and Jennifer Moss. Jen is an award winning journalist and author of The Burnout Epidemic. Together Sarah and Jen discuss the causes and consequences of burnout. They also explore what we can do individually and as organisations to go beyond burnout and create an environment where everyone can do their best work. To learn more from Je...

Having the freedom and autonomy to work in a way that works for us and on the work we find meaningful is a significant contributor to our motivation. This week, Helen and Sarah talk through practical things you can do at work to create more freedom and give yourself the space to succeed. They address the biggest barriers to finding freedom and what you can do to respond to it. Ways to learn (even)...

The majority of people look outside of their company first when they are considering making a career move. This means that companies risk losing their best people and individuals might miss out on valuable opportunities for learning and growth. This week, Helen and Sarah take insights from their most recent article with Harvard Business Review about how managers can help people to squiggle and sta...

With so many things drawing on our energy reserves, it's not surprising that we can often be left feeling drained by the end of the day. This week, Sarah and Helen talk through 5 areas you can focus on outside of work than will help you to feel more energised inside of work. Expect lots of practical ideas for action and don't forget to download the Squiggly Careers podcast to help you reflect on t...

We're all told that failing is a good thing, but it doesn't make it that much easier in the moment and we have a tendency to miss out on the learning that could help us on the way. This week, Helen and Sarah talk about how to move forward from failure by practicing 'pre-emptive' failure and working out how best to respond to failure depending on the situation. There are lots of practical ideas for...

Saboteurs are the negative voices in our head that generate stress and get in the way of our ability to handle work and life challenges. They often operate on autopilot and limit our happiness and performance potential. We can all learn to limit the impact of our self-saboteur and this week Helen and Sarah talk about how. They share ideas for action to increase you saboteur self-awareness and the...

There are times in our careers when we are all faced with a decision about whether to switch or stay in our roles and it's not always easy to know what move to make. This week, Helen and Sarah talk about the factors to consider when you are in this position (and how to help other people who may be coming to you for advice). They discuss the importance of learning vs. loving your job and the differ...

Working with people who work in a different way isn't always easy but with awareness and skill, it can create lots of opportunity for everyone to be better because of it. In this week's podcast, Helen and Sarah talk about how to understand what makes you different and how to work effectively with other people who may work differently to you. They introduce the concepts of 'heated hexagons', 'data-...

A big part of our happiness at work depends on the people we spend time with and finding genuine friendships impacts our engagement and performance. However, it's not always easy and remote work, comparison and conflicting priorities can all create pressures which prevent meaningful friendships from forming. This week, Helen and Sarah (friends, co-hosts and co-founders) talk about the ins, outs, u...

As part of Learning at Work Week, Helen and Sarah share their best ideas to invest in your learning whether you have £50 or £500, lots of time or non at all! This episode is full of ideas on events, courses and resources to support you and your learning. Ways to learn (even) more: 1. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summary of squiggly career tools https://mailchi.mp/squigglycareers/podmail 2. Join t...

Managers have a significant impact on people's engagement in their work and squiggly careers can often feel like it makes the job of being a good manager even harder. This week, Helen and Sarah go back to basics on the 5 factors that make a 'good' manager and share 3 ideas for action to support managers in their role. They discuss the importance of aligning the contributor with the contribution, s...

Experimentation is a great way to learn at work and accelerate opportunities for your career. This week, Helen and Sarah talk about practical ways you can put experiments into action and try out different approaches to support your development. Ways to learn more: 1. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summary of squiggly career tools https://mailchi.mp/squigglycareers/podmail 2. Join the live PodPlus c...

Making our work and our career work for us takes self awareness and assertiveness, skills we can all develop but ones that aren't always easy to do! This week, Helen and Sarah taking the skill of assertiveness and make it as simple and practical as possible to take action. They explore the difference between assertiveness and aggression, how to be adaptively assertively and have to practice your a...

This week, Helen talks to Pritesh Chauhan, Head of Community for Sedex and one of the 100 people who become part of the 2021 Squiggly Career Advocates community. Together they talk about the importance of building a community around your career, the communities they have benefited from being part of and what they have learnt about how to give and get the most from them. Ways to learn more: 1. Sign...

Squiggly Careers are full of change and that can some times create confusion about where we should go and how we can grow. Creating your career criteria is a really useful filter for you decisions about your development. This week Helen and Sarah talk about how to create your career criteria, how to understand the constraints that might get in your way and use your insight to have more effective c...

Manifesting is having a moment and this week Sarah and Helen take a critical view of the role it can play in career development. They talk about the value of vision boards, whether you can think your way to success and how to respond when your dreams don't magically materialise. Whether you're a fan of the manifesting concept or a curious critic, this episode has lots of reflect on and is full of...

This week Sarah and Helen are talking about the benefits of creating challenge at work vs waiting for it to come to you. They talk about why pandemic driven ‘boreout’ makes this a need for many of us and practical actions you can take to stretch your strengths and stop the risk of ‘stagnate while you wait’ Ways to learn more: 1. Join the live PodPlus conversation on 31/03/22 at 9am https://www.ama...

Trust in teams make a big different to work and wellbeing. This week Helen and Sarah explore the practical ways trust shows up and ideas for action to create teams where people feel respected and able to be themselves. They discuss the importance of assessing the practical and emotional aspects of trust, how to make mistake moments part of your team ways of working and the role of red table talks...

Lots of fall into people pleasing at work and while it's nice to be helpful, constantly prioritising other people's needs before our can have a big impact on how motivating and meaningful feels for us. In today's episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast, Helen and Sarah talk about the 8 signals of people pleasing and share ideas for action to help you respond in a way that can help you to be at you...

This week is National Careers Week and Sarah and Helen are shining a spotlight of squiggly career possibilities with 4 conversations with people whose careers are as individual as they are! Today you'll hear Eric Sim. In the rest of the series you'll hear career stories from people starting a new career from scratch, squiggling and staying in organisations and creating their own unique opportuniti...

This week is National Careers Week and Sarah and Helen are shining a spotlight of squiggly career possibilities with 4 conversations with people whose careers are as individual as they are! Today you'll hear Simon Mundie In the rest of the series you'll hear career stories from people starting a new career from scratch, squiggling and staying in organisations and creating their own unique opportun...