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Hi, I'm Sarah.
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And I'm Helen.
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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.
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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 pod sheet 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 the song 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.
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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, like, what does that mean for you, being smarter? And hopefully to make your life that little bit easier, I feel like an.
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Alternative title could have been how to take control of your manager so they don't take control of you. We can't. We can't.
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That probably would have been more clickable. That's probably, probably what we should be doing.
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Oh, never mind.
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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. You know, 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 sort of 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 kind of common threads that I can spot between them. But actually when it didn't work, it always felt a bit like the 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, are they going to. 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 kind of 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.
B
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 we're. 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. Yeah, that's one thing I think we're not saying you need to do that for this to work or you, you kind of have this like 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, 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 how do you think I've done a good job I'm not really understand. 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.
A
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 sort of spot the change in 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're 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. And so I think this will not only help you, I think it will help your manager too. And I think if you were going, if you're being really ambitious, I guess if teams always did this with managers, everyone would work better. But perhaps that will come after you've had a go at doing it for yourself.
B
That's an interesting insight, isn't it? I think we've done this episode of a 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 if I think a team can be better with the understanding. I was also thinking back in the Squiggly Careers back catalog 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 like my manager from Virgin, James and Sarah from. And then we just. I mean, what was the, what was the aim of that episode?
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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 kind 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 we're quite. 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.
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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, in the show notes.
A
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 sort of actions to think about and we're gonna 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 sort of observe, notice, see what's happening, but almost with a distance. So here you're just sort of 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're like, they light up, they get really enthusiastic. And then there were 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.
B
And you covered it, both of your eyes. What were we talking about?
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What were we talking about? It was on a Monday for a start. Mondays are always our worst day.
B
It's quite interesting, isn't it? Because if you're observing your manager put their head in their hands.
A
Well, actually what you did, which was a bit weirder, was you put your sort of eyes in your hands. So you sort of went like, you went like this. And I wanted to point it out, but we were like mid. Oh, do you know what we were Talking about. You were thinking, okay, so actually it wasn't that you were like, dad, don't be thinking.
B
That's probably what I like.
A
It was, 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 doesn't quite useful feedback doesn't know you that well, they might have been like, is she traumatized? Yeah. And actually that person did message me and say 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 kind of in this anthropologist mode, you might just want to. If you think about what an anthropologist would actually do, you know, they would make some notes. So you might just want to kind of 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 behavior are quite predictable. So like, 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. Cause 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 kind of practical, let's kind of 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 kind of looking for those things. So I think type of questions is a good starting point. What kind of gives someone energy? Maybe what do you see? Kind of drains their energy, also really helpful. And then maybe just sort of any other preferences, you know, what do you kind of 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 like 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. So, you know, like, I think noticing.
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That 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 before. So occasionally, occasionally. It's not my default response.
A
So what happens next? So week one, you've been the anthropologist, you've kind of made some nights you've started to notice and observe quite sort of intentionally. Then what?
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This is where week two, we're going to play the detective. So detective's very good at, like profiling people. And we are going to use whatever data we've got our hands to try and profile our mind. 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. Everything from, like, mine would have, like, I don't know, how are you? Three exclamation marks. I know that really annoys people, but.
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Oh, God, I hate an exclamation mark.
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Probably a bit of an emoji. Just all the things that people say you shouldn't do in communications. Probably mine's got loads.
A
You love a capital letter as well.
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Do I? Yeah, I love a capital letter.
A
You know, like when you write titles, you're like, capital letter, capital letter, capital letter.
B
I don't think that's what's that going to come up in a profile. Capitalize your emails to 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. It depends how people communicate with you. But, for example, we've got loads of WhatsApp messages. Or you could transcript a voice note 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 managed 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 like 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 behaviors. So I did do this for Sarah Using Copilot because a lot of we use Microsoft Teams in our company and it was just one that's integrated and it's kind of closed and private for us. And I asked it, what does it say about you?
A
I was outraged. I was like, this isn't.
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Sarah prefers clear, concise, direct communication. That's true.
A
Yeah. But I would like, you know, sometimes what's the opposite of those. Who doesn't like clear, concise communication?
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Yeah, but it implies I quite like friendly, open, you know, like social. I don't think you're bothered about that.
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No, I think I just worried. Some of it was more. Some of it was a bit generic, like, you know, that's she appreciates that.
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They were well prepared.
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Yeah, I do like people who are prepared. But then I was like, oh, maybe this is just like a self awareness point for me. Because I was like, oh, you know, I'm naturally zoomed out. But it said I'm deeply involved in various projects. I'm detail orientated.
B
Come on.
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And then I was like, come on. Oh, actually that's true. Yeah. But it sort of is. I don't know, I think I oscillate between one and the other.
B
We've got some episodes on self awareness. If you'd like me to refer you to those for future.
A
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.
B
That's true, that's true.
A
I think I'm a bit all or nothing.
B
That would be what I see. You know, when 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 that you could do is not give you that. So I found it quite useful.
A
Maybe it's more revealing than I'd like to make.
B
Well, to your point, when I use 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. And I think that is a really good question to ask. So it just helps you to tease out the differences. So it said, like similarities. We both like clear communications, we both value feedback, we both like collaboration. I would tickle that differences. It says Sarah's more involved.
A
It says, well, both are detail orientated.
B
Yeah, that's probably not for me. No.
A
I don't know though. You have enough Detail to get stuff done.
B
Yeah. Probably don't dive deep enough.
A
But Sarah, it's more involved in project.
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Updates and book edits. That's so true. It must have gone through all of our emails for Sarah.
A
This is literally the tasks that Sarah's doing. I like this, though. I'm particularly proactive and seeking feedback.
B
That's true.
A
And it says that you're not.
B
It says Helen is highly organized. I was like, really? I don't think I am that organized. Values clear communication in her frequent meetings. I was like, what's that implying?
A
You have way too many meetings.
B
You're being passive aggressive. Co pilot. The point here is this is one of. This is week two of our kind of 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.
A
And sometimes in your organizations you might just have actual profiles, you know, so if you do do things like disc or if you've done. There's like 16 personalities, there's loads of different ones that companies use. Again, never take a profile as an answer to somebody or a kind of way of labeling someone. But yeah, there's some insights there that you can. 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.
B
When was the last time you actually played Guess who?
A
Oh, I've got a version of it for my son. How to train a Dragon version.
B
Oh, and how often do you play this?
A
Oh, it's really fun. That's probably why I put it down or something.
B
Can you just memorise where the people are?
A
No, because you changed the block so they're in different places.
B
That's what I've been doing wrong. Okay. I feel like I'm really bored of Guess who.
A
Yeah, I think you're playing it wrong. So. Yeah, no, 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 sort of 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 sort of 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 kind of contradict or challenge or, or put what matters to you much lower down their list because they're like, well, actually they've got something else that feels much more important or just matters more to them. And 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 kind of 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 kind of 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 and 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.
B
It's actually quite a good build, you know, with it. Do you put a time frame around it, the priorities and the problems? Because you could. It could be 12 months, it could be the next month and I think the answers would be different.
A
And probably keeping it relatively short term, I think is more useful for this because we're sort of thinking about ways of working what matters now. People's priorities and problems change all the time as well. So I kind of, 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.
B
And I think a build on this links to our week four activity. So my kind of build on this would be. I think this is quite a good team conversation to have, like. So if you all went around the room, you all wrote down what do we think everyone's priority and problem is over the next month and Then you all kind of said it out loud and just kind of saw where you had alignment or misalignment. You'd learn a lot. And you'd also see kind of how 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 kind of 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 pod sheet so that you can access it. It's a really useful, useful, simple tool. But you could use things like I've done before 16 personalities. It's like a free profiling tool. And then the point of that is you kind of map the whole team and you're looking at have we got the same personalities in the team? Have we got what diversity have we got? But you can, I think these team exercises take the pressure away from this being something you're doing just with your manager that you know, you're trying to understand the insights of your manager, make it a team conversation and then, you know, you learn, you let everyone learn more at the same time.
A
Well, you could do. 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 kind of big boss. So high, low learning is you just, you talk about a high from your career so far and you basically just tell a story like, why was it so good?
B
You started working with me and that was.
A
Yeah, that was 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 that low learning is just like, you know, 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, wow, 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 giving you the most energy at work? What's one thing that drained your energy? And I think most people would be like, oh, that feels a bit more short term, win of the week.
B
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 teams channel or whatever you're using. What's the win that you've had this week? I always think it's really insightful what people. Because some people focus on someone in our team, for example, and her wins. When they're about efficiency, you're like, oh, that's because it's their 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, it's just very interesting to see what, what comes to mind first when people think about success in a week.
A
So you've done this month of kind of really a deep dive into your manager, your poor manager. By this point.
B
I want to do it on you because I don't have a manager now.
A
But I feel like you're the. You've been really forensic.
B
Do you think you'd notice me doing it like, oh, could you say that again?
A
Yeah, I'm just making little notes right now. We're 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 sort of 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 kind of knowing what your manager's keywords are like. You know, when you do like keyword searches. I think again, because people have got certain things that they are kind of 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 say, if you've got something to run by me, you could either say oh, I'm going to go away and kind of 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 energized and interested in ideas and, you know, that matters to me. And so, again, I just think it just starts to sound a bit manipulative, doesn't it? But I just think you're just being smart and you're just being kind of 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 kind of what my manager cares about.
B
You have to say to me something like, oh, I think it's something that we all need to work on quite quickly. And I'd be like, yes, I agree.
A
Quick, shall we do this this week?
B
Should we just do it? Wow, Helen. Yes, great.
A
Well, I remember the, so the Career Stage series that we have just released on the podcast. So that's an idea that's been, you know, 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 accretive because you're just like, well, yes, that means we'll do it. And like, because you always want to get things out there and you're less interested or motivated by kind of like ideas hanging around for too long because you lose energy for them. And yeah, there are some advantages and disadvantages to that. Like, we definitely made some mistakes with that series and we did it quite fast, but it's definitely the way to move it forward.
B
But it happened.
A
It did happen because I just said to you, let's do it then. And you sort of went, yes, I'm on it. And then you sort of did all the work. So, you know, win for me and win for you.
B
We also thought that reflecting your insights and your communication. So which might be the keywords. But it could be, you know, you might make things kind of shorter because of things that you've noticed, or you might put more. You might put a plan into your emails because you know that someone's kind of likes the detail and the dates and things like that. So just thinking about when the moments that I communicate with my manager and where can I put these insights into those, into those moments.
A
And then just the final Thing is, around different managers, I think, I think, like, different levels of distance from the work that you're doing. And I think I've also kind of learned this from experience. So it can feel like, you know, 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 a 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 kind of 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 kind of 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 the. You kind of work alongside people to get stuff done.
B
But I think my energy's more variable. You know, I think with mine, it's probably like, there's certain things that Helen's obviously just more interested in, so that's my kind of variability. Whereas I think yours is, like, the depth of detail you kind of.
A
And yours may be energy.
B
Yeah, I think there's probably, like, different sl, but I think probably working out what that slider. Is it a distance slider?
A
Is it a depth slider?
B
Is it an energy slider? And then sort of just tuning into that with your manager would be quite important. 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.
A
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 also.
B
Our team will probably do this on us.
A
That's good. I'd love them to do that, though.
B
All right, shall we see if we can. If we see them doing it, we won't say anything.
A
No, they can feel really awkward about this is when we find out whether they listen to the podcast or not.
B
Very, very true. Okay, so all of the ideas that we have talked about today are in the pod sheet, so hopefully will be easy for you to almost tick off, like, week by week as you go. And we'll put some coaching questions in there just so that you can reflect and kind of 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 of effort. And the link for Squiggly Queers in Action, our new weekly newsletter is in the show Notes as well.
A
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.
B
Bye everyone.
Episode Title: Why Understanding Your Manager Matters For Career Growth
Hosts: Sarah Ellis and Helen Tupper
Date: April 8, 2025
This episode of Squiggly Careers explores why taking the time to understand your manager—what makes them tick, what motivates them, and how they like to work—is key to excelling in your own career. Sarah and Helen offer a practical, four-week framework for deep-diving into your manager’s strengths, communication style, priorities, and pressure points. The discussion is filled with relatable humor, examples from their own experiences, and actionable advice on transforming awareness into practical strategies for working better with any manager.
Not Manipulative, Just Smart: The episode opens with Sarah and Helen addressing discomfort around "studying" your manager, assuring listeners that it’s not about manipulation but about empathy and strategic adaptation.
Manager Dynamics—Not Best Friends, Not Parent-Child: They stress that understanding your manager isn't about becoming their best friend or falling into a child-like quest for approval. Instead, it’s about being confident and curious at work.
Adapting Communication: Use what you’ve learned to frame conversations, updates, or presentations in ways that resonate—while staying authentic.
Reflecting Patterns: Tailor the level of detail, structure, or delivery to match your manager’s preferences, increasing your chances of alignment and success.
Understanding Distance: Recognize if your manager is prone to micromanagement or is hands-off—and flex your approach for better mutual understanding.
Sarah, on empathy for managers (04:04):
“Managing is a tough job... The asks on managers are wide ranging and long and can feel really overwhelming.”
Helen, on profiling using AI (12:03):
“Sarah prefers clear, concise, direct communication. That’s true.”
Sarah, on adapting communication (22:20):
“You could say to me, I’ve got some ideas to run by you... But I’m much more energized and interested in ideas.”
Helen, on team exercises (19:07):
“Team exercises take the pressure away from this being something you’re doing just with your manager... you let everyone learn more at the same time.”
Sarah and Helen wrap up by inviting listeners to try out the four-week challenge, reflect on their experiences, and even share feedback—lightheartedly acknowledging the possibility of managers realizing their teams are “studying” them.
All the tools and coaching questions referenced are linked in the episode’s PodSheet and available via the Squiggly Careers in Action newsletter.
This episode underscores that understanding your manager is a powerful, career-enhancing act of curiosity and empathy—not manipulation—and lays out a playful, practical roadmap for anyone ready to give it a try.