B (2:06)

And, you know, maybe I Wonder if anyone. I'd love to know. Email us if you do. Helensahsquigglycareers.com I wonder if anyone uses these episodes as like an excuse to escape over Christmas. You know, when you're like, escape the Christmas escape, as in, I just need to go for a walk or. And they put this podcast on as just like a bit of, I mean, light relief. I'm not sure if it's light relief, but you know, just like something different, not, I don't know all the logistics and interesting vibes that can come from family.

A (2:38)

Family vibes. Family vibes, yeah. If you use us for an escape during your Christmas, your Christmas period.

B (2:45)

Do you know, I volunteered today. I'm going to write over kind of Christmas New Year, which makes me sound like I'm really committed to work, but I'm definitely doing it for different reasons. I was like, oh, yeah, I'll write a book club gu for Learn like a lobster. Because I was just like, perfect. That just gives me, you know, if you just need a bit of time to be like, I just need to spend an hour. That's really important. I write this ready for the book coming out now. Does that theoretically need to be done over Christmas New Year? Probably not, but. But will that become important? I think so.

A (3:15)

I have exactly the same thing with my vision board because it's also because everyone's seen me collect everything at home. I'm like, I need just a couple of hours on my own in my office. Just to pull that together is, you know, it's really important for the rest of the year. All of which is true. But it's very intentional so that I can just leave me alone, everybody, just for a few hours.

B (3:32)

It makes it sound horrendous, doesn't it?

A (3:34)

I know, I know.

B (3:34)

Please keep the joys.

A (3:36)

Please keep listening. We're not as bad as we sound and we have some useful insights to share with you because this is part two of our trends slash themes for 2026. So we have talked about six different themes which we think are going to have an impact on you and your career in the new year. And our intention is to talk about what the theme is, why it matters, and what you do about it so that you are able to respond and feel kind of, kind of clear about how you can respond and confident about what you're doing and ultimately a bit more in control so you feel less surprised by this stuff. As I said, this is part two. So in the first one, if you haven't listened to that, we talked about AI agents, we talked about connection and disconnection, and we talked about employee influencers as three trends. And we've got three more to talk about today. Do you want to kick us off with the first one?

B (4:22)

Sarah, you give me the hard one. Sorry. So we did think about whether to include this or not, because it doesn't feel super cheery to talk about. But we also decided it is the reality. And I think everybody will experience this more than once, and that is restructures and redundancies and they're also on the rise.

A (4:43)

I think that's the point for next year. Like, everyone's going to experience more than once in their career. And next year all the stats are showing that this is happening more, more frequently, partly because of AI. And potentially there is a bit of a. Some people using AI as an excuse for it, but there's definitely more chat and uncertainty around it.

B (4:58)

And I think what is important to remember with this, and like Helen and I have both been through this multiple times ourselves, is no job industry organization is so stable and secure that you are immune to this. So I think just remembering that, like, everybody knowing that thinking, even if you're like, well, my company is growing or it seems to be doing really well, even if that's true, they might need to make some shifts, they might need to change team structures, they might need some different skills. And it could just be that what you bring isn't what that organization needs in the same way, or that team or the focus of that just might, just might change. And so I almost think if you, if you almost accept, oh yeah, that that could happen at any point because there is that change in uncertainty. I think you have a very different relationship with it. And I think you can be proactive about actions now that you don't want to take in these moments because there is nothing, there is nothing you can do about when it does then happen. I think it's confusing that it's really complicated. There's lots of emotions to deal with. And so I was thinking, I was talking to BBC about this yesterday for an article for the New Year. Also cheery. So I was like, oh, well, maybe at least we're along the, along the right lines. I was saying, you know, the moment this, this conversation happens, you're never expecting it. Like that day. Typically, typically you might have got some signs, but typically you don't know it's coming. And then your first thought is, not usually I need to update my LinkedIn profile. You know, you like that. That doesn't feel like the right moment to sort your LinkedIn profile out? Because I often think actually what's more important in those times is, you know, giving yourself time to reflect and process the conversations that you're having, exploring possibilities. But your LinkedIn profile is really important because 97% of people look at it if they are going to recruit you. And so in my head I was starting to kind of divide out actions into like, what you can do now so that actually when this does happen, which it will, you're not, you're not doing those things that you sort of wish you'd done. You know, thanking your future self. What will you, what could you do now where your future self will really thank you? Like, I'll look back and go, oh, Sarah, like, well done for sorting your LinkedIn profile in January so that actually if I need it later in the year, it's there. Or well done for updating my CV for 10 minutes every month. Or rather than suddenly being like, oh my God, I've not updated my CV for five years and then it just becomes such a big task. So that's where I was starting to get to in my head is like, what could you do now? So you're actually in a. You need to be smart, basically. And also if you never need it, is it good to have a better LinkedIn profile? Yeah, you might need your CV for other things. You're probably not going to stay in the same job forever so that those things feel like a good use of time versus there are some things that all you can do is think about once it actually kind of happens to you. And those things you can't preempt in the same way.

A (8:05)

I was thinking the same questions, actually. I was thinking, what if, if you knew now that you were going to be made redundant next year, what would you do? So I would like, okay, well, now I would build out my LinkedIn profile. My. After some recommendations, I maybe prioritize three relationships I wanted to invest in, put time in with those people. I've maybe explore some jobs that I'd like to do so that I could do a bit of a, like a bit of an assessment of what experiences or skills are they that they need that I might not have right now. Like, that's some of the things that I would do. And then I think the second question is, why wouldn't you do those things anyway? Like, there is, you have nothing to lose from investing in LinkedIn profile. You investing in those relationships, doing a bit of job scanning and gap filling that you you won't lose. But I think it's just doing it with that intention, you know, putting the time in, prioritizing those actions. And I also think not. And it's easy to say, isn't it, but not being too hard on yourself if and when this happens, because I think it's really easy to do that. You know, we talk about those pessimism, the PISA pessimism from Martin Seligman, where we personalize it like, why is this always happening to me? Or we. You kind of make it quite pervasive. Everything's going wrong at the moment, everything's a disaster. Or you make it really permanent and you go, oh, my gosh, everything in my.

B (9:32)

It's never going to get better ever.

A (9:34)

I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of one of those responses to this kind of a situation. And I think the reality is a lot of this probably won't be about you. A lot of this will be about a company responding to a challenging environment and having to make some commercial decisions. And you, You. You can only do so much. You know, you can only do so much, and you just might not be the right answer. A bit like sometimes when you go for a job interview, you're just not the right person. It doesn't mean you're. It doesn't mean you're bad. It just means you're not the right person. And so I think if you can retain a bit of perspective and you can create a bit more control now, then if and when this doesn't happen to you, I think it means you're less likely to fall into one of those sort of pessimism traps that make it all just feel so much emotionally worse.

B (10:20)

Yeah, I really like those questions. It made me think, because the way that I think about this for Amazing if is I'm probably not going to make myself redundant, but our company could go bust, right? That's our equivalent, right? Our company could have a really bad year. Things could go really wrong. Crikey, imagine the podcasts about that. If that's what happens. It would be dramatic, if nothing else, because that is our equivalent. It's slightly different to when we were in companies, but that's. It's exactly the same thing in terms of what would happen. And I always ask myself, who are five people who, I think obviously, outside of Amazing, if, who either might give me a job, like, if. If there was a job to be had or would do their best to connect me, introduce me, support me to find something, you know, like naming Those five people. So I was actually going through, you know, that rolodeck in your head of like, who would those people be for me? And I could come up with two or three quite quickly. And then I was like, oh, actually I should probably think about that a bit more. So I'd like, oh, I've probably got a couple of gaps because then I was thinking to your point about the possibilities, like, oh, what jobs could I actually do? Probably, probably to think about that a bit as well. The other thing that's worth mentioning before we move on is we do have a free redundancy reset toolkit where you can access that at any time. Restructure or redundancy. It's completely free. There's a video series, there's tools, there's loads of links to. Links to learn from, some from us, some from other people, zero questions asked. So even if you, if you're like, oh, I need that now because I think I'm going to get restructured and you want to be super proactive, like go and use it now, it's absolutely fine. It's all on the website. It's just there for when people need it.

A (12:04)

Yes. So this is the fifth one in our little six parter. This one is about autonomy times accountability. And the reason this is a theme is because it is something that we are hearing in the conversations with people that we work with. So there are sort of two sides to this. The first is autonomy. So people wanting to have freedom and control over how they work, what they work on, when they work. We are seeing a lot of that in the sessions that we are in. That that is something that people expect and value from their employer or but on the flip side from the employers that we work with. We are also hearing a greater desire for accountability. So this is feeling like there's a lack of clarity about who is doing what when, and a desire for more people to take accountability for their actions. And we think it's a really. I don't think it needs to feel like attention. I just think it's a really interesting opportunity. Like the ideal is that people feel like they've got autonomy and organizations feel like there's a great sense of accountability. That's the, that's the ideal. But at the moment, moment I think there is a little bit of tension between what people want, what companies need and that it doesn't feel like that we've reached this kind of equilibrium or balance with the two. What are your thoughts?

B (13:22)

Yeah, well, I think we know from. I really remember this Research, I think it was from Tammy Erickson at London Business School, where she said, an organization's job is actually to be very clear on the what, which is actually that that helps with accountability. What needs to get done, what are the outcomes that matter most? What do we need to prioritize? And when you say organisation, it's funny, isn't it? Because you're like, well, what is an organization? It's just people. So actually, let's say for us, for our team, that's really important that we help everybody with that, like, what. What is most important, what needs to get done, what are the outcomes that matter most? And then she said, and if you do that really well, then you can give loads of autonomy on the how, how do you reach those outcomes, how do you do your work, how do you make that happen? You don't need to micromanage that because then the accountability and the autonomy can go hand in hand. And so one of the, I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself, so if you're a manager or a leader listening to this, and I think we hear this from a lot of people, like, we need more accountability, we need more ownership in our teams. I think you have to also be quite critical of yourself and go, what have I created? The clarity that people need to be able to do that. Because even that word, accountability is not, it's not a super friendly word. I don't think people always know what accountability looks like. Often when we're working with companies, I use a lot of, what does this look like? What does this sound like, you know, to like, as examples, to really bring this to life. And so I think if you want people to be more accountable and if you, like, you all as a team, want to be more accountable, you have to have something that you can point to that goes, well, this helps us to be accountable. And then sometimes, you know, opposites can be helpful, maybe describing, well, what does it mean to not be accountable? Because then you're. You're sort of playing with the word. So one of the things that we've done this year, actually only in the last sort of couple of months that has really helped us with this is we've done clarity creators. And it's funny, every time I mention this to organizations all across the world who are incredible and doing very good work, they're like, can we use that? Well, you can, but Helen and I created it on Canva and I think we had like one inspirational walk where we were going back and forth and being like, what would Go on this Clarity Creator. And then you just sort of wrote it all down. And we were like, meh, like something like this, give it a go. But it's actually really stuck. It's really stuck for us and it's really stuck for our team. And it is just a one page on, you know, what is somebody's job in a kind of short sentence, kind of a summary, like, what is that job? What are the priorities we use now versus not for now. We're really clear on like what people don't need to do yet. We might come back to it. And then we also link to our behaviors and what that means for that role. And so I suppose now when I'm thinking about accountability, before in our team it would have been vague. No one could. There was nothing written down, there was nothing you could point to. Whereas now I think I would have a sense of people's levels of accountability because I would have something that would help me as a starting point. But also more importantly, I think our team have something that helps them so they can sort of question, am I spending time in the right areas? How do I want to get this work done? That I've kind of agreed together. And I think the last build on that, in case it's useful for people, is the process of making those Clarity creators. We've had really good feedback from our team on and it's not like our team always say this, so you know, they're very happy to tell us where things are not, not working as well. But we, we created the template. We actually had one person in our team who was essentially our guinea pig. And that actually did work well. Like one person volunteering to kind of go first. And they worked with you like quite hard to get that to a kind of a good place. So that then everybody had like a, again an example to look at. Even though her job is very different to everybody else's. And then the way that we've done it is everyone has written their own first version. So it's not like we have kind of, you know, like the tell, oh, here is your job. It's like, well, who knows their job the best? The person who does it today. So everybody, it starts always with the individual. They write their first version, they send it to Helen and I, we might write some comments on the canva, like, oh, I changed that around. Or that, yeah, that sounds really good. Or brilliant. And then they always have a follow up Clarity Creator conversation, typically with Helen actually, because Helen is a natural Clarity creator. Like that's a skill that she's got. So we recognized, let's use that super strength. And then people are coming away from those conversations. And I think people feel more motivated. They like the woolliness of things have gone. It's made it easier for people to say no and they have something to point back to, to say, oh, that's in my not for now list. And then you go, yeah, fair enough. Like there's that. Or you have a conversation and you make some changes. It's not that it's not flexible, but it has been. It sounds like a small action, but I think it's started to make a real difference for us around that. We already have quite a lot of autonomy in our team. It's just the way that we are set up. But if I was giving us scores out of 10 and I always find this helpful, I would say in our team, generally, if I was scoring the team as a whole, we have like 9 out of 10 autonomy, but perhaps we would have been a 5 or a 6 out of 10 for accountability. Which doesn't mean that people don't care or they're not trying hard or they're not doing their jobs. But I think it's asking yourself, where are you on those scales? Because your autonomy might be lower, it might not be that way round. And then what are the actions that would increase up that scale? Because I think the higher up that scale you go as a team, the more impact everybody has and the more satisfied people are at work.

A (19:16)

So just a couple of things. We'll share that template, I think obviously a blank version of it without here's my clarity creator. Yeah. And we'll put our behaviors on there. So you can see, because I think we have our behaviors and then people personalize them to their position.

B (19:28)

But.

A (19:29)

So we'll put that in the show notes. We'll also post it amazingif on LinkedIn. So if that's useful for you, check that out. And then the other thing that I would say is that, that the word clarity, I think is more appealing to an individual than accountability. Like if I had the accountability audit, it doesn't sound appealing. It sounds like it's being done to me. Because to your point, accountability can sometimes feel like a slightly negative word, whereas I think most people want more clarity. So a clarity creator, it benefits both the manager and the individual. I think it just. It's just, you know, we always say how important getting the language right is. And I think like, if you want people to engage in a behavior or a conversation or taking action, getting the language. Right. Is useful and Clarity Creator seems to be working well. That was the other thing that I was going to say, the other thing. I think Clarity Creators are a foundation for driving higher performance. So I think where Sarah and I actually started from was we want our team to be this like amazingly high performing team. And we don't think that we can really look at what that means and potentially make changes that would drive that unless we've got a foundation of clarity. So for us, this is sort of part one of us really looking at what is. What is us becoming the highest performing team we can be. What does it mean? So just a kind of a few builds, but we'll put the link for the Clarity character in the show notes. Last but not least, what is our final theme?

B (20:47)

Well, I feel like you'll talk about this because I feel like you're just determined to make this happen because you've suggested this to me a few times with some interesting ideas. I was trying to find the right word there. Back to words that matter. So our final theme is learning that gets recognized and rewarded. So, Helen, bring to life for us what this could look like.

A (21:10)

Well, let me take literally a step back to the ladder, like world of career development, which is where I think we celebrate and recognise people who have climbed the ladder. Like, I mean, I literally, when I used to work, and this is nothing against Capital One. I love Capital One. I had a brilliant time at Capital One. But I remember in Nottingham, in Capital One, people got put on billboards or whatever the British word for a billboard is. It's called billboard, isn't it? It's called giant posters by the road. The giant posters by the road. The billboard people got put on a billboard because they'd got promoted. And I remember that was a real moment of pride and it was. And I'm not taking anything away from those people, but that is what we visibly reward and recognize is like this, you know, you've got promoted and. And I think that in a squiggly career where learning is much more important than the level, because I think learning is going to feed your career development for much longer and actually has much more dividends in the long term. Anyway, I think we should be celebrating and rewarding and recognizing learners and I think there are, I mean, there are lots of ways that you can do that. I think there are sort of gamified ways that you can do it. So, for example, you know, we do.

B (22:23)

This a little bit.

A (22:24)

So super sprinters, we send different emails. So we've had 30,000 people now who have been part of our squiggly career sprints also sign up for one. That's happening in January. Everybody go to squigglysprint.com but we've had 30,000 people who have sprinted with us. People that have sprinted more than once get different emails from us. Did you know that? Everybody. So our super sprinters.

B (22:44)

I'm trying to work out whether I knew that.

A (22:46)

They do.

B (22:46)

I think I did.

A (22:47)

Super sprinters, they get different emails from us because we recognize how committed they are to their learning and they get different badges. So when people are sprinting with us, they get different colored badges depending on are they a super sprinter? Like, have they sprinted us more than once? And that is a very simple way that I think you start to recognize people for continually investing in their career development and making sure that that is known, seen, and, you know, I'm kind of respected. And I think we just need more ways that we celebrate learning as a form of progression, not just levels, as a form of promotion. That's what I would like to change.

B (23:23)

I'm sure at one point you pitched to me.

A (23:25)

What did I pitch?

B (23:26)

Learning is a currency for your career. So you wanted to create learning coins. I think you won.

A (23:32)

And I remember years ago, I feel like this was a lot, but I do think what I would like. Yeah, I do think, like learning credits. Like, how can you. Learning credits which you could redeem for holiday. Maybe learners can redeem. Well, they could. They could choose what they redeem it on. Maybe they could redeem it for more learning. That's what I'd do. I've got learning credits. I can now spend it on more learning. But it's. I think it's just the idea that there is a value to learning for the individual and for the organization. And I think we should be putting learners. I think we want. You know, we've written a whole book about lobsters being the ultimate role model for learning. What I really want is for learners to be the ultimate role model for learning. I really want people, learners. I want learners to be on the pedestal and they can sit next to our lobsters. But I think in order for that to happen, you know, we need to make learning cool. We need to make learning rewarded. We need to recognize learners in companies.

B (24:29)

That's what I think. Yeah. One of the things I thought about, I even thought about doing a post on LinkedIn about it, but then I was like, oh, no, I'm me.

A (24:37)

She must be passionate if she thought about it.

B (24:41)

Well, I Like the idea of leaders that learn loudly. And so I think, you know, when you talk about role models, I do think leaders and managers in organizations, their behaviors have a really big ripple effect. So who do we look to for signals of like what good looks like and what, what does success mean here in a company, in a culture? It's what you see your managers and leaders doing because doesn't matter what they say or what's on any bit of paper, it's what everybody does day to day that makes the most difference. And I was like, oh, I have probably only worked in my whole career for one leader that learned loudly. Now I think, I think I was probably that to, to an extent but I was nowhere near as senior as she was. So I did work for one leader who took learning seriously, would talk about it, would share what she was learning, would prioritise it. And I think then no surprise, like a, I love being in that team, but also that team was a really good team to be part of. Yeah. And, but I don't think it's that common. Like even if I was thinking about LinkedIn and you know, like the people that you follow and stuff, you don't hear that many Senior people on LinkedIn sharing like what they're learning or how they're learning or you know, things they're really curious about, what you see them sharing is sometimes company updates, you know, like quite like my company's profitable or whatever or they might share something maybe about like work life fit or something personal, which is always, I'm like, oh, that's good, that's always interesting. But I don't see that many posts on learning. So I was wondering whether, I wonder if there is like, I wonder if AI could do this for you. But you know, if you took like a week on LinkedIn and then you took people in certain. If you just took positions as like a proxy as a starting point and then you looked for the word learning. How many people use the word learning in post on LinkedIn for example? I don't think you see that that often. And so if we are arguing oh it's like critical to succeed in squiggly career learning is critical. I was trying to imagine what would we want to see read that doesn't happen today. So you would want the word learning to be in every FTSE 100 annual report. Like is it at the moment? Probably not. I know that it is in some, but probably not in all of them. You'd want it to be really visible. You'd want the word to be used a lot on LinkedIn. So I'd love to see learning in annual reports in LinkedIn. Anywhere where people are talking about work on CVs. Imagine if every CV had a learning section.

A (27:16)

What I've learned this year or what I want to learn more of.

B (27:19)

Yes. Learning objectives. Yes. Yeah, maybe. And maybe everybody in every job, you know, you have performance objectives. You always have a learning objective as well alongside it. Yeah, I think we could get quite carried away with this.

A (27:30)

We probably could.

B (27:31)

We probably could.

A (27:32)

So this is our final theme, everybody. We want learning to be the thing that gets recognized and rewarding. And whether you are a leader or just a learner, make sure you are learning loudly in 2026. And don't forget to come learn with us on the Sprint. So sign up squiggly sprint.com so to.

B (27:45)

Everybody who's listened in 2025, thank you so much. I always love seeing everybody's like year wr, but they're like, oh, I spent all this time listening to us and I feel so grateful and we really appreciate you spending your time with us. If you ever have any feedback on the podcast, if you have ideas, if there are things you'd like us to borrow brilliance from, we are just helen and sarahquigglycareers.com but thank you again. That's everything for now and we'll be back with you in 2026.

A (28:12)

See you and speak to you next year, everybody. Sam.