Squiggly Careers Podcast

Episode: AI Skills Sprint – How To Identify Your Values (Your Filter For Your Future)

Hosts: Helen Tupper & Sarah Ellis

Date: September 16, 2025

Overview

In this episode of Squiggly Careers, Helen and Sarah focus on the importance of understanding and identifying your core values as a foundational skill for career development. As part of their five-day "Skill Sprint," this episode dives deep into why values matter, how to discover them (with the help of AI tools), and fun, practical team exercises for exploring values together. The tone is conversational, practical, and playful, making values work feel approachable rather than abstract.

Key Topics & Insights

1. Why Values Matter in a Squiggly Career

• Defining Values: Values are what motivate and drive you—they’re not just for work or home, but central to who you are. (00:38)
• Decision-Making Filter: With more choice and change in modern careers, identifying values helps make confident, authentic decisions (e.g., when to take risks or steer clear of distractions). (01:18)
  • Quote: “When you understand your values, they are a brilliant filter for your future… When I’ve used my values, I’ve made what might look like brave decisions to other people, but have actually been brilliant decisions for me.” — Sarah (00:38)
• Values and Confidence: Clarity around values directly boosts confidence and connects with tackling career challenges. (01:51)
  • Quote: “I am more confident as a result of the clarity I have in my values. I can run my own race because I’ve got such clarity on what makes me me.” — Helen (01:51)

2. Team Benefits: Values in Collaboration

• Empathy and Collaboration: Knowing team members’ values increases empathy and collaboration. (02:25)
  • Quote: “When you understand each other’s values, you collaborate better… when you make time for it, it does make a difference.” — Sarah (02:25)
• Start with ‘Who’ as well as ‘Why’: Inspired by Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why,” they suggest also starting with “who we all are” for richer team connection. (02:40)

3. Practical Tool: The Values Institute

• Introduction to the Tool: The hosts strongly recommend using the free Values Institute tool to explore and clarify your personal values. (03:19)
  • The tool asks questions to narrow down your values, offers detailed descriptions, helps initiate discussions, and suggests practical actions.
  • Quote: “It’s the best thing I’ve seen to support values. I’m a big advocate of this tool.” — Helen (04:50)
• Action-Focused Outputs: Beyond listing values, the tool:
  • Generates descriptive profiles to aid conversation.
  • Offers action prompts—choose actions to take in one day, a week, or as a mindset shift.
  • Helps tackle challenges based on your values.

4. AI as a Values Coach: Using Gemini

• AI Prompting for Value-Driven Actions: Sarah shares her experience using Gemini as an AI career coach. By telling Gemini her core values and their current prominence in her work (“achievement, ideas, learning, and variety”), she asks the tool for ways to strengthen each value. (05:24 – 08:30)

  • Quote: “If you don’t write a good prompt, ask the tool to write you a better prompt. Top tip!” — Sarah (06:32)

• Examples of AI-Generated Ideas:

  • Adding dedicated thinking time for “ideas”
  • Preparing a new idea to share in meetings
  • Piloting a new process or tool

• Prompting Advice: Don’t be afraid to ask AI to organize its responses in different formats (bullets, tables). Even free tools can increase self-awareness and inspire concrete actions.

5. Fun with Values in Teams: The Songs Exercise

• Values Playlist: To make values visible and memorable in teams, each member picks a song that represents one of their core values. Teams create a playlist and guess the value behind each song. (08:41 – 09:59)
  • Memorable Moment: Helen sings George Michael’s “Freedom” to represent her value of—what else—freedom, while Sarah chooses Kate Bush for “ideas.” (09:24 – 09:55)
  • Quote: “Go as deep as Sarah or go as shallow as me, but you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.” — Helen (09:55)
• Playfulness as Engagement: The hosts note that playfulness makes an often-serious topic accessible and sparks authentic conversations about what matters to each person.

Notable Quotes

• “When you understand your values, they are a brilliant filter for your future.” — Sarah (00:52)
• “I am more confident as a result of the clarity I have in my values.” — Helen (01:51)
• “If you don’t write a good prompt, ask the tool to write you a better prompt.” — Sarah (06:32)
• “Go as deep as Sarah or go as shallow as me, but you’ll have a lot of fun in the process.” — Helen (09:55)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:04 – 01:18: Introduction to values and why they matter
• 01:51 – 02:25: Values and confidence in careers
• 02:25 – 03:07: Team collaboration and starting with “who”
• 03:19 – 05:24: Introducing the Values Institute tool
• 05:24 – 08:30: Using AI (Gemini) for value-driven action prompts
• 08:41 – 09:59: Team playlist exercise—using songs to share and guess values

Episode Flow & Tone

Helen and Sarah maintain their signature conversational, supportive, and action-focused tone throughout. They combine reflective personal stories, actionable tool tips, and playful exercises, encouraging listeners to experiment and lower the stakes around values exploration.

Takeaways

• Identifying your values is a career superpower—clarifies decision-making, builds confidence, and strengthens team culture.
• Tools like The Values Institute make values work practical and actionable.
• Experiment with AI prompts and playful team activities (like the values playlist) to make values visible and memorable.

Next Episode Teaser: Tomorrow’s Skill Sprint is all about growing confidence and banishing “gremlins” (the beliefs that hold you back).