Loading summary
Transcript99 lines
- [00:00]
A
We have a belief that the idea of ladder like careers holds people back because it's very determined by the level that you're at. It is all about life and work being very linear. So we don't think that's great. We believe squiggly careers are a much better solution because they give people that choice and control, and they also result in careers that are much more resilient.
- [00:22]
B
So lobsters are brilliant for three reasons. One, they never stop growing. Two, they grow the most in hard moments. And then finally, lobsters fuel their own growth. Learn as you go. The difference between out loud and quiet. Thinking. Thinking better than others means that you'll have more free time and fewer problems.
- [00:42]
A
If you would like to learn more about learning like a lobster, then pre order the book quickly, quickly, quickly. Because it's limited by time.
- [00:51]
B
Hi, I'm Sarah.
- [00:52]
A
And I'm Helen.
- [00:53]
B
And this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast. And. And this week we have big news. Sound effect.
- [01:00]
A
Sound effect.
- [01:00]
B
I'm trying to make a sound effect.
- [01:03]
A
Not to give the big news away too soon, but what would a lobster sound effect be like?
- [01:07]
B
Like claws. Like, our podcast is so unprofessional. You know, now people's podcasts are so slick.
- [01:15]
A
And there's me clicking my claws like a lobster. It's fine. It's authentic, Sarah.
- [01:19]
B
It's authentic.
- [01:20]
A
Right, right.
- [01:20]
B
Okay. So, yeah, I mean, there's absolutely no surprise, but pre orders for our new book, Learn Like a Lobster, are now live, which is not exciting for anyone. And we know that it's exciting.
- [01:33]
A
It is exciting.
- [01:34]
B
It's not because you have to wait for ages to get the book, but we're going to make it exciting. Right?
- [01:38]
A
I know, but also, some people have got, like, they've bought the first two books, and it's like a little. Like a little library that they're building up of squiggly. Squiggly learning.
- [01:45]
B
I know, but the book doesn't come out until February.
- [01:48]
A
But we've got good stuff.
- [01:49]
B
We have got good staming. So this is why you should care. You should care because hopefully it'll be. It's a brilliant book that we do feel really proud of. But we know you're like, okay, but I've got to wait till February to start learning like a Lobster. But you don't. We have come up with a way where you can start learning with us straight away. So we're recording this in September. If you pre order the book now, you will be able to join our newly launched. And this Is exciting. Learn Like a Lobster library.
- [02:18]
A
Yay.
- [02:19]
B
Everything in the library is free. And if you Pre order between 23rd September and 1st October, there is something extra special coming your way that is awesome. That I love. Yeah, it's very exciting. And three reasons why you might want to join the library. First one, we're going to do three live learning workshops in October, November and December. And we'll give you a bit of a flavor for some of that content in the podcast today. So these are workshops with Helen and I, really interactive, informal, no pressure, just turn up and learn loads with like, I can guarantee a great group of people because they always are who turn up to our learning sessions. So you'll get all three of those for free.
- [03:01]
A
And they're virtual.
- [03:02]
B
And they're virtual. Yeah, Anywhere. Anywhere in the world. And if you do miss one, we will record them if you're in the library. So you can go back. But good to join live if you can. As soon as you join the library, you will get a 10 minute learn like a Lobster tool that you can use for yourself and share with your teams, which is all about experimenting so you can learn more from meetings. It is possible. And then the last part, I think is just the opportunity to be part of an amazing community, a community who will be curious, who will have brilliant ideas that we've not even thought about, who they will share generously because our squiggly career community always do that. So I think you will be smarter, more able to navigate your squiggly career if you become part of that library. And all you have to do is once you've pre ordered, you just email that Pre order to helloearnlikealobster.com and then that's it. We send you the link so you can get into the library, get all of the workshops to kind of sign up and put those in your diary. You can download the tool straight away. And if you want to, we will have a WhatsApp group as well. You can join. Not mandatory. I know some people already have too many WhatsApp groups in their life, but if you want a learning one, it will be there and ready, ready and waiting for you.
- [04:14]
A
I think if any of you have done the Sprint, you probably had a little bit of a flavour for what it feels like to be part of like the Sprint community. Whether you've had one in your team or whether you maybe joined some of our LinkedIn lives. We had about 1400 people join our LinkedIn live to kick off the Sprint and I saw so much support in that community, like people buddying up to learn with each other. And I think that is what the members of the Learn Like a Lobster library will be like. These are, you know, people that are committed to their learning. They want to grow, they want to develop and they're willing to kind of invest a bit of energy and give, I think, give a bit of energy to other people as well. So if that feels like you, we would love you, love you to become a member. So today's episode, as Sarah said, we want to give you a little bit of a flavour for what learning like a lobster look like. And also to just connect a few dots between squiggly careers and learning and why, I think, why we think this is such an important thing for people to focus on right now. So, as you know, if you've been following squiggly careers for a while, we have a belief that the idea of ladder like careers holds people back because it's very determined by the level that you're at. It is all about life and work being very linear and that doesn't really reflect our reality. And also it doesn't give people the choice and control about the direction they want to develop in. So we don't think that's great. We believe squiggly careers are a much better solution because they give people that choice and control and they also result in careers that are much more resilient to all the changes we're experiencing. Sarah and I have now been working on squiggly careers for over 10 years, which is. Which is crazy. I think it's probably going to be nearly 15 soon.
- [05:47]
B
Is.
- [05:47]
A
Yeah, we've been at this for a while and I think we have seen universally in the organizations that we work in, the countries we work and the people we work with, that there is like a super skill that helps people succeed in squiggly careers and that is learning. It's people's openness to learn, it's people's ability to learn, but also it's their recognition that learning looks different in a Squiggly career. So this isn't about going on courses and acquiring qualifications and learning taking lots of time. The best learners in squiggly careers see that learning is something that you add in to your work rather than it always being something that you add on. It's far more about curiosity than it is about courses. And it's simple things like the quality of the questions you ask, not the number of qualifications that you get and what we are trying to do with learn like a lobster. For reasons that we will tell you about these very, very amazing lobsters in a moment. We are trying to use some of the brilliance of lobsters to help people reconnect with what learning looks like at work. Because we often say that you used to go to work to learn to do the job and now learning is the job. We just need to look at how we do that job and we believe that lobsters are the answer. So I'll let Sarah tell you why.
- [07:07]
B
Of course we do. Everyone, everyone sort of looks at the book cover and the title and everyone's like, oh, yeah, that's brilliant. That's really surprising and playful. And then everyone just says, why lobsters? Why? Why? But why not? Is the question. So lobsters are brilliant for three reasons. One, they never stop growing, so there's no point where they kind of stop growing throughout their life. Two, they grow the most in hard moments, so they shed their hard outer shells and in that moment they get really jelly like and vulnerable. And to be honest, having watched quite a lot of videos online of this process happening to make sure that we understood what I mean, it looks so exhausting and energy zapping and difficult. And we all have shell shedding moments, right, in our careers and in our weeks. I'm having some fun ones of those this week, which perhaps we'll talk about later. And so the lobster sort of doesn't have any choice. That sort of happens to them. And I think often that is the same for us. With the amount of uncertainty and change in our careers, there will be shell shedding moments. They're sort of inevitable. But can we grow, can we grow as a result? And sort of in those moments as well? And then finally, and this is, I think my favourite lobster fact. I never thought I would say that sentence. Lobsters fuel their own growth. They are so resourceful and they're like a sustainable little system because those old shells that they shed, they then eat because they are. That's a really weird sound. Don't do that. I'm banning that.
- [08:37]
A
Never do that again.
- [08:38]
B
I'm vetoing that sound as part of our promotions for the book. Because the shells are full of calcium, so they eat them, which is smart, right? So they don't have to wait for kind of food to come their way. They've sort of created their own way of continuing to grow. And, you know, we, we probably don't need to dive into lobsters any more than that, but there will be lots of lobster puns coming. Your way because it is irresistible. But sometimes I think having a playful and surprising way to look at learning hopefully helps it to feel like something we can all just, like, have some fun with. I think learning should always be something to look forward to. And actually, often when we talk to people and we ask about the barriers, it's not something to look forward to. It's something that people feel frustrated by. I haven't got. I can't find any time to learn. I never get to learn, or there's no money for me to learn. There's lots of kind of these things that just feel difficult about learning. Oh, I'm going to wait to learn till this busy period is over. And I think our worry is, is if we wait, if we try to find the time, if we rely on other people, you could end up getting left behind in your squiggly career. And we want you to have as many opportunities and possibilities as possible. And we think if you learn like a lobster, you stand a really good chance of making that happen.
- [09:54]
A
I just see this, like, big march of lobsters. I'm like, we're going to take over with, like, these learning lobsters. Surely they are, like, marching into companies and saying, I demand learning, I demand learning. But just, I just want to make the sort of parallels between kind of lobsters that have these three sort of traits that Sarah talked about with learning really clear. And that'll be the structure of what Sarah and I share next. So if lobsters never stop growing, then what we are talking about is, is never stopping learning. We want everyone to learn as they go every day so that learning becomes continual. And if. If lobsters grow most in these, like, hard moments when they're really, really vulnerable, then that's when we want to learn. We want to learn the most in our hardest moments. Maybe when you feel like you're failing or you've made a mistake, or maybe when you get feedback that feels really hard to hear and you really feel vulnerable, that's when we want you to learn the most. Because, yes, you're a bit exposed, but there is enormous learning in that moment. If you just look at it slightly differently. And then the last thing about the lobster eating its shell, we don't want you to. We don't want you to eat your shell. That would be weird. But what we do want you to do is fuel your own learning. So we want you to be really resourceful about how you create your own learning. And in the book, we cover loads of different ways that are in your control. So you don't have to ask for permission, you don't have to wait for someone else to say that it's okay to do it. We want you to create as much learning and fuel as much learning as you can. And that's, that's how we structured the book and that's how we're connecting, connecting the dots between the two.
- [11:30]
B
So today, Back to Normal podcast, to be honest, we're like, we're now going to be really practical and we're going to talk about learn as you go, learn in hard moments, lead your own learning. And we're going to take one example that's in the book and we're going to talk about it so you get a bit of a flavour and a bit of a feel for the sorts of things that we'll be describing. So the first one, learn as you go. One of those chapters is about easy and everyday experiments. Back to Helen's point about, let's add experimenting in to what we already do rather than feeling like an add on. And the experiment we're going to talk about today is the difference between out loud and quiet thinking. And I really like this quote from Shane Parrish. He says thinking better than others means that you'll have more free time and fewer problems. And I'm like perfect. I want, I want the free time and I want fewer problems. And I think we all have a natural preference probably in terms of our thinking styles. You're either more of an out loud thinker or you're more of a quiet thinker. But when you expect experiment with different ways of thinking, I think you, you learn more, but you're also sort of more agile and you're more adaptable in your creative thinking, your ability to solve problems. So if I describe like some of the examples of like what out loud thinking might look like and what quiet thinking might look like, then Helen, I are going to talk about our natural preferences and then what we might experiment with to kind of see what we learn. Good question. That we repeat actually a lot in the book is like, what will I learn? Keep asking yourself that, like, what will I learn? So if you're an out loud thinker, as the name suggests, you probably want to talk to other people. So you want to, you want to sort of run your thoughts past somebody. So that might be a voice note to someone, could be a walk and talk with someone saying, can I share my first thoughts with you? Maybe it's talking through like a mind map, but it probably involves having a conversation maybe with a group of people. But could, could kind of be one to one. Quiet thinkers are much more likely to sort of hold the thinking and the ideas in their head. So an out loud thinker would probably create a mind map to talk to somebody about. A quiet thinker would just create a mind map for themselves. They're much more likely to go for like a walk and just think for themselves rather than talk to somebody else. Maybe people. You even voice note to yourself. You know, people voice note to themselves and get that kind of. They'd get like a transcript of like, well, what are they thinking? And actually there's some really interesting research that we found throughout the book. We have these expert insights and one of the expert insights in this section is around self explaining. And actually the skill of self explaining is really helpful for creating clarity. So if you're ever feeling confused or overwhelmed, actually sort of talking to yourself, this idea of sort of quiet thinking but just sort of with, with yourself actually can help you to sort of make sense to make sense of your thoughts. So, Helen, naturally more of an out loud thinker or more of a quiet thinker?
- [14:25]
A
Much more of an out loud thinker. And I, yeah, it's just like a way of process. Even the podcast, I think the podcast a lot for me is me out loud thinking I will come up with ideas in conversation with you. And it has its benefits and its drawbacks. Its benefit is as a result of a conversation, I often create ideas I didn't have when I went into it. Like super helpful. But the downside is I'm very dependent on people like having time to have a conversation with me and, and also like a particular kind of person who's willing to like just sit with me in that kind of weird, ambiguous conversation space where I can come up with ideas. So it's, you know, I can't do it on a train, for example, with a random person who sat next to me. And so I, with this one, I actually did this yesterday. I've been experimenting a lot more with a quiet thinking. I did a mind map which is not, I know you've done you like quite like a mind map. It's not always the first thing that I, I would do for my thoughts, but I was thinking a little bit about my network and I'd reread some research on the importance of weak ties and all kinds of stuff. Basically it talks about weak ties and building your network and you don't want really far out. Weak ties are people that you really don't know very well and you don't Want people that are really quite close to you. Want people basically in the middle. So I was doing this like mind map of leapfrog, leapfrog week times. I was like who do I know? Who's the one that they know? And I was trying to get. And I was just sort of mind map. I just sat there not long, like five minutes. And I didn't, you know, this is the first time I talked about it and I didn't talk about that idea or anything. I just sat there and with my own thoughts for 5 minutes just drawing it out to see what it. It came up with. With no real expectation. But I found it very useful. So I think I might just build, you know, rather than my first point of call being I need to hold this thought until I have a meeting and I can talk to some, talk it through, run my thoughts by. I think actually I might try more often to use a mind map first and just see how much clarity that creates before I have the conversation. What about you? What's your default?
- [16:26]
B
So I think this is interesting because I think people might assume certainly people who know as well because I'm definitely more introverted. You're definitely much more extroverted. But I am also an out loud thinker. I like when I look at the majority of my thinking, it is done, it is done with somebody else. And I think that's often like if I think about much. One of my best thinking it's often in a.
- [16:49]
A
Via voice note.
- [16:50]
B
Yeah, I mean you have to. But weirdly I only do that mainly to you.
- [16:54]
A
Thanks.
- [16:55]
B
And I do feel like sometimes I definitely do it to you. But I was thinking about. So when we were together over the summer and we were talking about learn like a lobster. I was like that's my like happiest thinking. Space and place was sort of is almost like facilitating that conversation. I've done some thoughts beforehand but we're creating and we're kind of thinking like as a duo. But it's very, it's quite high intensity and quite high need. It's almost like you can't create that. That opportunity very often. And again I think I was thinking for myself like sometimes I think I sometimes share too soon, you know, almost because it's like probably the way that we work. Like we're not in an office. You don't even have random chats with people because you just. We don't in the work that we do in how we work. And so I think sometimes my voice notes are. That is like thoughts just in my Head that I should probably just write down in something like a to think list. So one of the ideas that we've got in the book before, out loud and quiet thinking, is to think lists. And this is the idea of not only having a to do list, but having it to think list to maybe write it down as a series of questions or things that you want to think more deeply about, but again, not holding it in your head. And I've done that a bit, but not consistently. But again, it's a bit September cliche. I bought a new notebook and I very intentionally.
- [18:21]
A
I haven't seen this new notebook is. What does it look like?
- [18:24]
B
So it's bright yellow. A4.
- [18:27]
A
Yeah. Sarah.
- [18:29]
B
Also plain paper. Plain paper.
- [18:32]
A
A3 notebook.
- [18:33]
B
Once. Yeah, once. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's plain because I don't like lines or dots. I showed someone on our team and they looked almost angry about it. They were like, where are the lines? And I was like, no, I like the plain. And they were like, no. You could just see that they were like, that's absolutely not for me.
- [18:49]
A
I feel like there's someone in our team who might say. And I feel like she might like lines on a page.
- [18:54]
B
But I sort of showed a page of it and it's like my writing and style of thing, it is just messy. But I've decided that I'm just gonna embrace. Embrace that. So I. So for me, my experiment at the moment is sort of connecting the dots with thinking is like actually what quiet thinking looks like for me is having it a think list. And I'm gonna do it like on a big heart, like on a big page. And that I'll just keep coming back to, keep adding to. To the point where I'm like, oh, and now I need to do a new one and update it. But I'm going to set myself the challenge of between September and Christmas. I want to be able to look back at that notebook and very clearly see a series of to think lists. And just to a. Sometimes I think I rely on you too much. You know, sometimes I think you can get over reliant on one person for your thing. I think. I think I do overly rely on you.
- [19:43]
A
Am I being dumped for a notebook?
- [19:45]
B
You are. You are being dumped for a giant yellow notebook. So that's going to be my. That's going to be my. That's gonna be my experiment. I also think this is a great chat to have as a team. You know, we've talked before about, like, how do you work together as a Team. How do you think together as a team? Actually almost saying, well, how. How do you think today? Which we've both described. But then it's like, how else. How else could you do thinking? How else could you experiment? Because I just think you're. The more different approaches you have, the more kind of creativity you'll have. And also just the more options you give yourself.
- [20:16]
A
Just your point there about doing as a team activity. I think learning like a lobster is even better when you do it together as a team, because I think that creates a commitment and a shared understanding of what learning looks like. So all these things that we're talking about, I think however you can buddy up or do them together, I think it'll be even better. You'll learn more about yourself, you'll learn more about them. You'll create an environment that makes learning easier for everybody.
- [20:41]
B
It's just better.
- [20:41]
A
So please take. Talk about these ideas together as a team. So our second thing. Yeah, Sarah talks about shell shedding moments. We, in the book, we call this section Learning in Hard Moments. And I mentioned earlier, some obvious ones are like moments where, I don't know, you've made a mistake or you feel like something's kind of failing, or it's more difficult than you expected, or you've had some feedback that's maybe, maybe jarred. Jarred a bit with you and how you want to come across to people. Well, sometimes I think a hard moment is when it feels really overwhelming. You know, you're trying so hard, you're maybe not making the momentum that you've got. I think we've all experience these moments. And the challenge for your learning, I think when you're in the middle of one of these hard moments, is that you can potentially lose a bit of perspective. So either you just want to get it over and done with. So learning is not top of your list because you just want to get through it and get on with the next thing. And then rushing through the moment, or maybe you kind of lose a little bit of perspective. I think sometimes emotions are higher in these moments. You get a bit like, oh, it's just awful. Everything's awful. It's all too hard. It's all too difficult. And that's not really putting our brain in the best space to extract the learning from that moment of which there can be lots. There can be learning about the relationships you are building with other people. There can be learning about what you bring to the situation. There can be learning about what you do differently. Next time you might be in it and we lose all of that learning. Unless we find a way to sort of relook at learning in that. In that hard moment.
- [22:13]
B
Yeah. And one of the things actually we do at the start of that chapter we talk about almost like how your kind of preferences and personality can mean that you miss out on the learning. You lose it. And so, and this is I think a bit different for all of us. So imagine you're in like a bit of a shell shedding moment. Like things are really difficult. Helen is definitely someone who is so optimistic that she, she just moves on too fast. Right. So you're like, well, it's done now. And then you just, you, you talk yourself into the I'm fine. We get lots of I'm fines. And then you're like, but then you've moved on, but then you kind of leave the learning behind. So that kind of almost over optimism can kind of get in the way. I get into sort of almost analysis paralysis. So I'm like, well why? Why has it gone wrong? And. And why and what? And I dig and dig and dig and I'm really. It's like sort of you're trying to get to root causes, but in a way that is really unhelpful, you know, because you start to get into like too many details and you want to understand absolutely everything about it. And again that stops you. You don't look for the learning. You're almost sort of more in the. I'm trying to like overly explain and overly understand because that's my version of trying to make sense of it. But it's too, it's too y. Like so I don't learn either.
- [23:30]
A
I feel like I've got a visual now of like a squiggly career and mine has lots of little brains dropped along the way. You know, like I've dropped little bits of my brains that could have been learning at different naughty moments. Yeah, and yours has these naughty moments where there's just a brain going around in circles in it. It's just like spinning a little bit.
- [23:46]
B
Yeah.
- [23:46]
A
We want to bring the brain with us in our squiggly career.
- [23:49]
B
And actually what's so interesting is when we were researching for this section and we had a book in beta group who we researched all the ideas with and we've tested everything that's in the book loads of times to make sure that it will practically works. Because obviously the thing we care most about is being useful. Everybody shared with us actually the time they think they have learned the most has always come from a hard moment. So we know it's there, we know the learning is there. But I suppose what we don't want to do is rely on a hard moment. But also I think there are smaller hard moments and smaller hard sort of shell shedding situations where people are like, oh, I just don't have the capacity to learn when that's happening. And so our challenge to ourself was like, let's use that constraint as a way to go. Oh, but what if you could learn in those moments where people in that group were saying to us, I just can't learn. Then we were like, okay, but what if you could, like, what would we need to come up with so that you could learn in those moments? So that's what we're trying to do.
- [24:44]
A
So the idea that we've got here is called fly on the wall facts. And what we want to imagine here is we're trying to create a little bit of distance between you and this situation that you're in so that you can be slightly more like in observer mode. You know, you're kind of flying at the edge of it and you are kind of questioning and curious about what you're seeing and what you're happening. You're gathering facts because facts are information. They can give us insight, we can learn from them. And they're a little bit more objective than the feelings that you might have in the situation, which might be distracting from the learning. And Sarah mentioned we're going to, I think, maybe experiment with this, live with you now, because Sarah mentioned that it doesn't all have to be like hard, naughty moments in our career. Like, I don't know, you're going through a restructure or you've got a, you know, a manager that you're really struggling with. It doesn't really have to be the big hard ones. This could be a bit of a small hard moment, which I would say Sarah and I are in right now. Like this week we've had definitely had a few WhatsApp messages which have been indicative of a, let's say, a hard week. It's, it's a hard week. And that I think is a flag to say, oh, but there could be a lot of learning in this. Like, I think anytime you're in a hard moment, a hard week, a hard day, hard meeting, just rather than going, oh, it's awful, just go, but if I looked for the learning, what would I see? And this is where fly on the wall facts come in. Sarah, would you like to lead us through our Fly on the wall facts for this week.
- [26:08]
B
Yes. I mean, you say this week, it's like 10 o' clock on a Tuesday.
- [26:12]
A
Yeah, I know, I did think that.
- [26:15]
B
So, I mean, there's definitely a things can only get better mindset that can come from this. But when we were thinking about the podcast, I was like, well, this, this can be the. This is the turning point. I've decided for the week. This is the. Yeah, this is the learning point. Very good, very good. That's why you can write the lobster puns. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to ask Helen a series of questions and we're just going to see what happens, see if she can kind of get some more learning from what's happened so far in the first day and a bit of the week. So, Helen, I want you to imagine now you're a fly buzzing around what's going on and what's gone wrong so far this week. And because you're a fly, you can only observe, you can listen, but you don't know what anyone's feeling. You can only really see actions and behaviors. You know, you can only see things that are observable. You don't know what anyone's thinking or feeling. So you sort of have to imagine. You don't know what I'm thinking or feeling, which could be quite tricky. But you're sort of. Yeah, you're like one of those really annoying flies that you can't kill, buzzing around from like, wall to wall, et cetera. And you're really thinking about, like, the facts of a situation. And a really useful prompt here is what do I know to be 100% true about this situation? So you're really going for kind of those concrete observations. So tell me one thing that you kind of know to be true about this week so far.
- [27:40]
A
This is our busiest moment of the year in our business.
- [27:45]
B
Okay, so this is the busiest moment of the year so far in our business. So that's really helpful. And actually, you and I haven't said that out loud to each other. What we've done is dived into, like, this is hard, this is annoying, or whatever. So you're like, okay, so that's quite a good context point. Right? So that's given you some distance, some perspective. This is the busiest week. Okay, let's do a what else question. Like, what else do you know to be 100% true about the last day and two hours?
- [28:08]
A
We have got new people working in our business that haven't worked in our business? Before, and we've got existing people that worked in our business doing new things.
- [28:16]
B
Okay, interesting. So there's a. Quite a lot of. There's newness on newness there. There's new people and then there's kind of new, new work. So quite. Quite a lot of newness. Okay. And then if I was to push you for one final observation that that fly has seen in the last day and a bit. What else do you think the fly would say?
- [28:39]
A
Different working patterns mean that things don't get resolved as quickly in the moment.
- [28:48]
B
Okay. So the fly might have seen our team were working because our team will work at different hours and different days. So they would observe that and then they would have observed. Okay, well then when you've got to fix something, it takes a while because you have to sort of wait for all the stars to align kind of essentially. Okay, so you, having answered that question, so three. Same question, really, just in three different ways, kind of me prompting you, how does that then make you kind of feel about, like, where. Where we are? So actually kind of, you're. You're putting the fly down and kind of coming back to yourself.
- [29:25]
A
I'm not allowed to make it a feature.
- [29:26]
B
Yeah.
- [29:28]
A
Do you know, it does make me, honestly, it does make me think differently because I think until I just said those things out loud, I think I was doing a bit like, you know, like, whack a mole with a problem. Like, yeah, that's annoying. Whack that problem. That's annoying. Whack that problem. And actually, when I say it, when I say it out loud to you, I'm like, there is a bigger thing going on that will probably lead to lots of other problems unless it gets solved. You know, like the. Oh, actually, we're all working at different times, but we need a few core hours, core meetings each week. Otherwise we're not. We're not kind of solving things quickly, you know, like, solve it sessions or something.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah.
- [30:04]
A
Or we. Maybe there's a bit like almost not onboarding. Feels a bit old school. But I don't know, maybe there's a, you know, the newness thing. I'm like, oh, we need to kind of also check in with the people about how they're feeling about the newness rather than assumptions that we're making. So it's just, I think maybe it's made me think about the problems that I'm solving, whether I. I could be whacking a lot of moles rather than actually going, well, how do we more significantly address some of these Things that we stop. We stop creating the problems in the first place. That's what it's made me think also.
- [30:38]
B
Just like listening to you and then reflecting on what you just said. You know, there's the, well, if this is how we are feeling, how is everybody else feeling? Question, which I don't think you and I do always think about because we are so in it and often so trying to solve the problems or to get stuff sorted or to think about, like, what do we need to put in place, you know, just that kind of question or that checking in with people. And actually, I. It's interesting, like, just listening to you there. I did do that with somebody in our team who is new at the end of last week, and I was. I'm often kind of quite surprised by how people. They're like, oh, I wasn't. I was feeling a bit worried that I wasn't doing that well. Or it's felt a bit hard. But now I'm feeling much better and more focused and I know what needs to get done. And that was quite a spontaneous conversation, which is not a bad thing, but it was a bit more of a happy accident rather than me sort of being intentional kind of about that. And so I think what the Fly often does as well is it encourages you to see to. Yes, to zoom out, but also to see things from other people's perspectives. But then you do also start to get some quite meaningful actions. Like, I can hear you, like, getting to some without diving into loads of detail about our company. But I can hear you starting to get to. Okay, well, as well as sometimes you do have to whack them all. That does. That does have to happen. But actually what you don't want to do is keep doing that the whole time. You know, like, that's not sustainable. It's also not fun for anyone if that's what we're doing. So then you get into, like, a bigger, probably more useful learning question. Like, well, what do we need to do differently? What are we not doing that we need to start doing? So it just helps you be calm.
- [32:15]
A
Yeah, it does. It does, yeah. And I honestly think I've got a little bit more empathy in just talking, which I think, you know, like you said, the Fly's zooming out a little bit and seeing it from other people, People's perspectives. But I genuinely think the idea of solve it sessions, I'm like, we should just have those because it's inevitable. This is the busiest time of our year and people are doing things. They're not done before. It's inevitable there'll be problems that can't be fixed very quickly because people are working different patterns. So we'll just put some solve it sessions in and if we don't need them, amazing. Not only do you get time back, we've not got stuff that we need to fix. Fantastic. It's a double win.
- [32:45]
B
And I think for me, I was, I was reading this and thinking about this in a. In a very different situation. So this week, out of my control. We've had some storms in the UK and my Internet broke.
- [32:57]
A
I can't control the weather.
- [32:58]
B
I know, it's outrageous. Yeah. And my Internet broke. And our Internet is particularly important for the jobs that we do. It's important for most people, but it's quite hard to do our jobs without the Internet. And if I actually answer these questions as a fly, I actually feel very differently about what's happened over the last day or so because I was feeling, obviously you get. It's really frustrating. I've had to find other places to work. It's been really disruptive. It's felt really stressful. I felt really stressed. Whereas actually, if I just go, if I'm just the fly and I'm ignoring all my own feelings, what the fly would see is, okay, well, I haven't disrupted any of our learning partners that we work with. We've delivered all of the learning that we committed to and I still feel like I did a decent job of that. Like, I got a good engagement and did some good sessions, some good workshops. Um, I have been able to quickly, with some help from you, sort myself out to be in other places. So, like, I'm in a very random hotel room right now. Um, but that the hotel room has got Internet. And right now, team, that's all we care about. Um, and so you actually, what the fly would be, the fly would be like, well, it's fine. You've. You've sorted it all. You, you were in the places you needed to be, you've delivered everything you've needed to do and actually where you needed to make changes. So, like, you and I have had to change some things because. Because of it, you have done that too. And so actually, in terms of outcomes and delivery, what I know to be 100% true is I've done all the things I need to do. It hasn't felt very fun, but the fly doesn't care about that. And so, you know, sometimes if you're just trying to make yourself feel a bit better about the last. I Don't. I don't feel very good about the last 24 hours, or certainly I didn't this morning. But actually, when I go, when I look at it from the flies point of view, I actually almost start to feel. I'm like, oh. But I am quite proud of the fact that we've sorted it and that we haven't let people down and that I have done the things that, like, the team or our partners need us to do. And so if anything, you just go, okay, well, there's something quite good to be taken from that. I've learned that actually when unexpected things come our way, we will find a way. I feel like that is our best key on mantra, like, we will find a way.
- [35:09]
A
It's fine. I like it.
- [35:10]
B
Yeah. And the fly would say, it's fine.
- [35:12]
A
So the last area we want to talk about then is going back to that idea that the lobster is fueling its own growth. So we want you to lead your own learning. And the idea that we've got for you here is all about being a beginner and finding small firsts in your work. So being a beginner means that we are able to start from scratch. We're not letting our existing knowledge and expertise get in the way of our learning. And it is a really helpful and healthy place to put your brain in. That kind of beginner's approach to looking at a situation and sort of seeing it, seeing it for the first time, seeing it with fresh eyes. And sometimes we need to, I guess, kind of look quite carefully to find those firsts. It doesn't always come, obviously to us because we're so used to working in the same patterns and, you know, picking up the same routines in our work. So we might want to get a little bit creative about how we find some small firsts in our work that can help our brain to just be. Be a bit more of a beginner.
- [36:11]
B
I also have a bit of a hypothesis that in a squiggly career, there are just loads more beginner moments, you know, because of new skills, new jobs, uncertainty. So I sort of go, we, we know already. I think you can anticipate loads of beginner moments. And so the more you practice being a beginner, then you're like, well, they're the ones that you're in control of. Like, I'm going to choose to be a beginner. So that then also when you have no choice but to be a beginner because team changes, or suddenly I've got a new skill, or suddenly I need to use AI In a whole new way. Actually that doesn't feel quite as daunting because being a beginner always feels a bit daunting because you don't know what you don't know. But if you've almost got used to the feeling, you know, like the uncomfortable feeling that comes with being a beginner, the sort of slight sense of you get better quite quickly and then you usually get quite a lot worse, I found. And that's actually like they call it like the U shaped learning curve of being a beginner. And if that is only happening to you, I just feel like you have a really different relationship to it versus if you are making it happen.
- [37:16]
A
I had someone that got in touch with me yesterday on LinkedIn so we'd done a LinkedIn Live and they messaged me afterwards and they said, oh, you know, what technology do you use to do your LinkedIn lives? It's the different to the one that we do and I'd like to give it a go. And I think that was that person probably without knowing that that's what they're doing, but that was that person finding a small first because they'd seen something they do done differently by us and they were reaching out to try and, you know, be a beginner, to learn in a new way. And to your point, it is quite exposing because that was like a bit of tech but you're like, oh, I don't know what buttons to press or I don't know how to do it and I'm probably going to make a mistake. And it is, you know, being a beginner isn't easy, but the more that you do it, the more open you are to new learning because it's just, it's all just less daunting.
- [38:01]
B
So we think this is one to have a bit of fun with and we've come up with beginner bingo. So we'll put this, I think we're going to create this as sort of A1 pager. So if you want a kind of beginner bingo card to just use and sort of cross off because that feels quite fun and satisfying to do, we'll put that online. We'll obviously we'll do a link in the show notes and we'll put it.
- [38:21]
A
In the library as well. So you know, earlier we mentioned people that pre order the book, we will put this as a one pager in the lobster library as well.
- [38:27]
B
So that's where we've created some ideas. So if you're like, oh, I could do with a bit of inspiration to get me started. But obviously you can also just create your own beginner bingo. Again, quite a fun one to do with maybe with someone else or maybe to do as a team. But the sorts of things that you might have on there could be things like, I'm going to have a curious career conversation with someone outside of my organization. Maybe you've never done that before. And I know that people get nervous about doing those things because I get whatsapps from people going, oh, I've got a curious career conversation with that person. Do you know them? Anything I can ask? You know, you can sense the sort of the, oh, sort of nervous anticipation of like, of that kind of moment. So maybe it's something to do with kind of conversations. It could equally be in a different team if that felt like it'd be useful for you. Maybe it could be about spending a day with a different team. Like could you spend a day shadowing? Could you go to someone else's team meeting? Could you take on a role that you don't do today where you be a beginner? So that might be leading a team meeting. Maybe that's leading a team away day, leading a session, a learning session on learn like a lobster for your team the next time you're together. Maybe it's mentoring, mentoring someone for the first time or maybe being a mentee. Like either way, could you be brave and be a beginner around LinkedIn? Maybe that's about starting to comment. That's being a beginner. You're just like, I've not done that before. And if you're anything like me, every time I write anything on LinkedIn, I'm like, and this is the opposite Tellen. I'm always like, oh, does that make sense? And I'd like really overthink it.
- [40:03]
A
But look how much people loved your last post. Sarah did a very lovely post on LinkedIn maybe like a week ago about different people to follow to support, support your learning. And it got a lot of love.
- [40:13]
B
It did it. I get a bit nervous about those things. So that's definitely like, that's a good example of me being a beginner of thinking that's not something I normally do. Like, how can I post in a way that works for me? Or it could be something like asking for a LinkedIn recommendation. I think probably the best ones on your beginner bingo are ones where you can begin and then build. I think because sometimes you're being. It's more about kind of the beginner mindset. So you're just doing something you've not done before. And that's great. That's like, that is a good thing to do. So asking for a LinkedIn recommendation, great, because you like that takes a bit of bravery. So you're kind of stretching that courage muscle. I think probably even better if you're like, right, I'm going to be a beginner in terms of maybe is around like networking and then actually I'm going to find a small, first curious career conversation with someone else at my team. And maybe your whole beginner bingo card is actually themed around networking. So I think you can do your beginner bingo card in lots of different ways. So I could do a whole beginner bingo card just around LinkedIn. Like, oh, I'm going to start to post. Oh but then I'm going to post at least once a week. I'm going to start commenting more if I, if I wanted to do that. You could do a whole one around mentoring. You could do a whole one around AI. AI would be a great one for beginner bingo. Use our AI sprint, our AI Skill sprint as your starting point. So your first thing on your beginner bingo card could just be complete the AI Skill sprint. That's free. Just do that. And then you could kind of build up that beginner bingo card all around AI. You can have a lot of fun with this. Actually, the more I talk about it, the more I'm like, that would work.
- [41:50]
A
That was so funny because I was like, begin and build. I was like, that is you thinking out loud.
- [41:54]
B
You know, you're like, actually it's just goes, that needs to go on the to think list.
- [41:58]
A
Yeah, it needs to go on to think list because we should definitely have some of those begin and build little bingo cards for people to play.
- [42:03]
B
I was also thinking, then I need to create this to go on the library.
- [42:06]
A
That was why I was thinking the same thing. We were thinking out loud and quietly together at the same time. At the same time. Oh, dear me. We're already lobsters.
- [42:14]
B
We're like, we're like lobsters, lobster like learners.
- [42:17]
A
And hopefully that we have inspired you to be a lobster like learner as well. Hopefully you can hear in our voices that this is fun. This is. It's a fun way to learn. It's a fun way to train your brain to be more receptive to new knowledge. It's a really fun thing to do it together. And whether that's like we said as a buddy or as a team, I think this just makes it easier for everybody to do. So we will summarize all this for you so that you've got it and you check out, check out the show notes that you've got that. But please, please, please, if you would like to learn more about learning like a lobster, if you want to do that together with other people, then pre order the book from wherever you get your book and all you need to do is just send us the receipt for that can be a, you know, whatever the email. Just forward the email onto hello, learn like a lobster dot com. We will then reply. We will send you your link to the library and as Sarah said, if you do it by like early October, is it like the 1st of October? I think you do it by then. There is a special thing for people who do it first which may come in the post to you.
- [43:21]
B
Don't give it away though.
- [43:22]
A
If you would like a bit of lobster mail, then get ordering quickly, quickly, quickly. Because it's limited by time for our earliest pre orderers.
- [43:30]
B
And I would say if you're like a doll, you know, I've not got the space for the library or that just doesn't feel right for me. Pre ordering books really helps us. So if you just want to pre order the book, I promise it will pay off in February and it is a great way that you can support us and squiggly careers and the work that we do. So please don't feel like you have to join the library. If you're super up for it and you've got the kind of space and you're like, oh yeah, I'd love to do that. Great. If you just pre order it, we will be just as grateful whether we see you in the library or not. But if you do, thank you. We do really appreciate it. We know that it's one of those funny things about publishing where it's really helpful for us if you pre order, but then you have, you do have a bit of a wait. But hopefully you can just keep learning with us, the podcast and the library and it will be worth the wait.
- [44:18]
A
Thank you so much for listening, everyone. We'll be back with you next week for another episode.
- [44:22]
B
Bye everybody.
- [44:23]
A
Bye.