This week, Helen and Sarah explore how to spot the red flags that get in the way of your career success. They discuss short and specific ideas for action for 5 common career red flags including 'directionless development', 'enmeshment', and 'busy burnout'. Spotting and solving your red flags can help you get unstuck and navigate your squiggly career with clarity and confidence. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Pre-order our new book Gremlins: https://bit.ly/gremlins-book 2.Sign up fo...
Feb 13, 2024•37 min
In this weeks Ask the Expert episode Sarah talks to author and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Cheryl Strauss Einhorn about problem solving and how to make smart decisions. Sarah and Cheryl talk about 5 different problem-solver profiles and how these profiles provide useful perspective for improving your decision making skills. Together, they also discuss the importance of self-awareness when problem-solving, decision-making myths, and go through practical strategies to help you p...
Feb 06, 2024•42 min
This week, Helen and Sarah are deep diving into the world of deliberate practice to explore how it can apply to what we do at work. Together, they talk about the process of deliberate practice and use their own examples to bring it to life. If you want to make your learning more intentional and your career development efforts have more impact, this week's episode should be a useful listen for you! More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summary of the latest s...
Jan 30, 2024•32 min
In squiggly careers, if we want to be at our best at work, we need to punctuate our days with pauses. This week, Helen and Sarah talk about how adding long or short pauses into your day can help to increase your performance and productivity. From playing around with pauses in meetings to reflecting on your levels of 'space and speed', they discuss ideas for action that can prevent sameness and help you to get unstuck. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly su...
Jan 23, 2024•33 min
This week, Helen and Sarah are tackling a topic that's close to home. Having worked together for over 10 years, Helen and Sarah have learnt to bring their opposite profiles together to increase the impact of their work. It might not always have been easy, but over time they have learnt how much more effective they are when they bring the best of their introvert and extrovert tendencies together. Listen and learn from their ideas on how to approach 'you/me/we' work and the benefit of noticing wha...
Jan 16, 2024•25 min
Starting from scratch is an important skill in a squiggly career and the more we use our ability, the better we get! This week, Helen and Sarah share 3 ideas for action to help you to find more ways to start from scratch and to feel confident doing it. They talk through the importance of taking an MVP approach, Scratch Stacking and Smart Copying. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Sign up for our Squiggly Career calendar: https://bit.ly/squigglycalendar_signup 2. Sign-up for PodMail, ...
Jan 09, 2024•25 min
Whilst the idea of a brand new role can be appealing, the reality for most of us is that we are more likely to stay in our current job than leave to do something different. However, staying does not have to mean stagnating and this week, Helen and Sarah talk about how you can grow your role. They share 3 tried and tested actions that can help you to increase your opportunities and the variety of what you are working on. From spotting problems and pitching ideas to finding mutual work wins, growi...
Jan 02, 2024•31 min
This week Sarah talks to futurist, speaker and author April Rinne. Together they discuss what we need to unlearn and relearn to get better at navigating change in our squiggly careers, skills you can develop to support you during career change and practical ideas for action when creating a portfolio approach to careers. Find out more about April's work here: https://aprilrinne.com/ More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Sign up for our Squiggly Career calendar: https://bit.ly/squigglycale...
Dec 26, 2023•38 min
This week, Helen and Sarah use reflection questions to discuss their impact and insights from the year. If you're a regular listener, you'll hear what happens behind-the-squiggly-scenes and if you're new, you'll get some coaching questions to end your year with and set 2024 up for success. Download the podsheet with the questions at www.amazingif.com and read Helen and Sarah's latest Harvard Business Review article for more end of year inspiration https://hbr.org/2023/12/how-to-create-your-own-y...
Dec 19, 2023•48 min
This week, Helen talks to musician and author James Sills about how singing can be used to create connection in teams. Together they explore the insights in James' book 'Do Sing' and his experiences of working with teams all over the world. As part of Amazing If's 'teach a team to sing' campaign, at the end of the episode you'll also hear a squiggly sing-a-long with the Sales team at Cochlear. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint: https://bi...
Dec 12, 2023•20 min
This week, Helen and Sarah explore what to do when guilt is getting in your way. They discuss the four types of guilt, moving from your 'shoulds' to your strengths, understanding circles of control, influence, and concern and lots more practical ideas for action to transform your relationship with guilt. All of the actions are summarised in this week's PodSheet - head to https://www.amazingif.com/listen/ to download. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers S...
Dec 05, 2023•31 min
This week, Helen and Sarah are focusing on the quick things you can do to invest in your career development. If you want to accelerate your learning, rapidly increase your impact, boost your career community and get some fast feedback, this episode has got lots of ideas to help! All of the actions are summarised in this week's PodSheet - head to https://www.amazingif.com/listen/ to download. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint: https://bit....
Nov 28, 2023•31 min
This week, Helen and Sarah talk about the biases that can hold your career development back. They explore the issues that affinity bias, confirmation bias and recency bias can cause, sharing their own experiences of these at work. They then talk about how to increase your awareness of these biases and what actions you can take if you think they may be getting in your way. There are lots of useful actions in this week's PodSheet - head to https://www.amazingif.com/listen/ to download. More ways t...
Nov 21, 2023•31 min
his week Sarah talks to Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson to explore the concept of intelligent failure. Together they discuss why not all failure is born equal, why some types of failure are how we make progress and the importance of learning over knowing. To dive deeper into Amy's work we'd recommend reading her new book Right Kind of Wrong - the science of failing well (her other book, The Fearless Organisation is also excellent if you'd like to learn more about psychological safety) To read th...
Nov 14, 2023•32 min
This week, Helen and Sarah are talking about strategic thinking - what it means, why it matters and how you can develop the skill at work. They discuss some useful strategic questions that you can apply to your career and some tried and tested frameworks that can help you zoom out and structure your thinking. To read the PodSheet that goes with this episode head to https://www.amazingif.com/listen/ More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint:...
Nov 07, 2023•36 min
This week, Helen and Sarah talk about the importance of creating clarity at work and the techniques and tactics you can practice to do it. They discuss how to use clarifying questions and the role of a clarity co-pilot to reduce confusion in conversations and communications. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint: https://bit.ly/scskills-sprint 2.Download our Squiggly Careers PodBook: https://rb.gy/orb0n5 3. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summa...
Oct 31, 2023•39 min
It's a special episode this week, recorded at Squiggly Careers Live on October 17th. In this recording, you'll hear Helen and Sarah talk to Anna Whitehouse (aka Mother Pukka), Lucy Aylen (Founder of Never Fully Dressed) and Peter Komolafe (financial expert). Together they discuss how to build communities, the things which drain and drives you and your how your mindset influences your approach to financial management. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers S...
Oct 24, 2023•1 hr 17 min
This week, Helen and Sarah talk about the factors that contribute to a high performing team. They dive into Patrick Lencioni's work on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and share ideas for action to help you address common issues that impact teams. If you feel like your team would be 'even better if.....', this episode will be a useful listen. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint: https://bit.ly/scskills-sprint 2.Download our Squiggly Careers ...
Oct 17, 2023•36 min
This week Helen and Sarah talk about pressure and the tipping point between productive pressure and pressure that negatively affects your performance. They discuss how different types of pressure (anticipated and unanticipated) and your sense of control of a situation (high and low) affect the most useful response you can take. They share their own high pressure moments and different ideas for action that have helped them to respond with confidence. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.S...
Oct 10, 2023•34 min
This week, Helen and Sarah are talking about learning agility. When we are primed to learn from our experiences we are better able to perform in situations we haven't experienced before. Squiggly Careers have lots of newness and learning agility means you are better able to navigate it! When you develop your learning agility you can move with confidence into your courage zone and make a faster impact. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1.Sign up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint:&nb...
Oct 03, 2023•32 min
This week, Helen talks to author Jenn Granneman about Sensitivity and the benefit sensitive people bring to businesses. Together they discuss what it means to be sensitive, how you can spot it and how you can support it in organisations. You can find out more about Jenn's book "Sensitive; The Power of a Thoughtful Mind in an Overwhelming World' here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/444843/sensitive-by-solo-jenn-granneman-and-andre/9780241525760 More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Downl...
Sep 26, 2023•30 min
The words we use at work affect the quality of our career conversations and the way we approach our development. When we use 'ladder-like' language, we limit people's potential. Making some simple 'squiggly swaps' opens up conversations and creates more opportunity for people. This week, Helen and Sarah talk about 5 common examples of ladder-like language and what a squiggly word swap might sound like. They also share coaching questions to make it easy to use squiggly language when you're thinki...
Sep 19, 2023•33 min
Judgement isn't a skill that often gets put in the spotlight, but it's something we regularly rely on at work. Decisions about people, projects, priorities and purpose all require us to use our judgement. In this week's podcast, Sarah and Helen explore what we can do to become more conscious of our judgement detractors and the actions we can take to improve our use of judgement at work. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Download our Squiggly Careers PodBook: https://rb.gy/orb0n5 2. S...
Sep 12, 2023•31 min
This week Helen and Sarah discuss what we need to do to create more time to think in our week and why it matters so much for our development. They have lots of practical suggestions to create thinking patterns and techniques to help personalise your approach. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Download our Squiggly Careers PodBook: https://rb.gy/orb0n5 2. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools https://rb.gy/2xyo8i 3. Read our books 'The Squiggly Care...
Sep 05, 2023•41 min
In this weeks episode Sarah talks to Pinky Lilani, CBE about her squiggly career story. Pinky shares how kindness, courage and people helping people have helped her to navigate her squiggly career so far. More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 1. Download our Squiggly Careers PodBook: https://rb.gy/orb0n5 2. Sign-up for PodMail, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools https://rb.gy/2xyo8i 3. Read our books 'The Squiggly Career' and 'You Coach You' https://www.amazingif.com/books...
Aug 29, 2023•32 min
In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series Helen and Sarah talk about strengths and how practising strengths stories can increase your confidence in talking about what you want to be known for. There are 20 episodes in the Skills Sprint and each is designed to help you create a regular learning habit to support your squiggly career development. Each episode in the series is less that 7 minutes long and has ideas for action and go-to-gurus on a specific topic. Sign-up for to rec...
Aug 28, 2023•7 min
In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series Helen and Sarah talk about building your personal brand and the importance of reflecting on what you stand for, who you stand with and what makes you stand out. There are 20 episodes in the Skills Sprint and each is designed to help you create a regular learning habit to support your squiggly career development. Each episode in the series is less that 7 minutes long and has ideas for action and go-to-gurus on a specific topic. Sign-up ...
Aug 25, 2023•6 min
In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series Helen and Sarah talk about grit and how the 4Ps of purpose, positivity, people and progress can help you stick to your longterm meaningful goals. There are 20 episodes in the Skills Sprint and each is designed to help you create a regular learning habit to support your squiggly career development. Each episode in the series is less that 7 minutes long and has ideas for action and go-to-gurus on a specific topic. Sign-up for to receive ...
Aug 24, 2023•7 min
In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series, Helen and Sarah talk about leadership and how to prioritise involving rather than solving and the importance of closing the say-do gap. There are 20 episodes in the Skills Sprint and each is designed to help you create a regular learning habit to support your squiggly career development. Each episode in the series is less that 7 minutes long and has ideas for action and go-to-gurus on a specific topic. Sign-up for to receive our Ready...
Aug 23, 2023•7 min
In this episode of the Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint series Helen and Sarah talk about conflict and what you can do to fix fiction fast. There are 20 episodes in the Skills Sprint and each is designed to help you create a regular learning habit to support your squiggly career development. Each episode in the series is less that 7 minutes long and has ideas for action and go-to-gurus on a specific topic. Sign-up for to receive our Ready, Steady, Sprint guide here: https://bit.ly/scskills-sprint ...
Aug 22, 2023•5 min
