#488 Coping with curveballs – what to do when your day doesn’t go to plan

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we talk about the ins, outs, ups and downs of work to give you some tools and advice to help you feel a bit more confident and in control of your career. And along with today's episode, we've got lots of other resources for you. So make sure you're following Amazing If either on LinkedIn or on Instagram and sign up for our Squiggly Careers in Action newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter and it has things like our pod sheet in there, our latest tools and resources, lots to help you keep learning and also ways in which you can connect with your career.

0:30Helen:with the squiggly careers community so today we are talking about coping with curveballs what to do when your day doesn't go to plan um i feel like we've done a few like tougher subjects career therapy for you and me i don't know if this is a reflection of us so i would say i don't know we've we have had some quite big curveballs happen to us both recently i also wonder whether we create curveballs i suspect for other people too yeah i thought you meant for us oh I think we probably do create curveballs for the I think we I think we probably create curveballs um well and I say that as I put this in our team's chat I said oh we're thinking about doing a podcast on curveballs what what examples have you got and it didn't take our team very long I got I got a lot of responses very quickly and then what's so funny is um one person who's a bit newer to our team said um oh but but this is from other teams obviously this is not for Amazing If and I was like oh it's fine if it's from amazing if um and then other people felt like they had to say oh yeah some of these were not were not here so it was it was quite funny but we did get a lot of fast responses which usually means people recognize it as a challenge and have got lots of examples and what we are talking about today is very much day-to-day curveballs so there are those big career curveballs which i think are you know the really big knotty moments like restructures redundancies probably things like your manager leaving or a big change in leadership like those very big moments but we are talking about the small ones the ones that happen to all of us probably quite frequently last minute requests probably from your manager or from helen and i if you're in the amazing if team so you know like the oh could you just dot dot dot and you think well no because when is when is that going to happen um but that you know we that probably feels familiar I would guess for everybody when people change their mind I think that's a bit of a curveball oh we thought we were going to do this and then actually we thought about it a bit more we think we should do something different I think Helen and I would change our minds some of the time and that again for the team that might they might go we thought we were going in this direction and now you've just said something different um being put on the spot this is also a very common confidence gremlin so we talk about gremlins um in our work this is one where everybody's like oh I hate it I hate being put on the spot and it's not being put on the spot as such it's being put on the spot and not knowing the answer it's always the second part it's like oh if someone asked me a question I know the answer I feel really good it's always the I hadn't anticipated that or it's just a real curveball question that really throws you um I think that those those are hard Helen and I have this one a lot tech or logistical challenges so because we work for so many different companies who potentially all use quite different tech or every room we're in is different.

3:21Helen:To give you one example, I was in the same hotel last week delivering learning for the same company, but in two different rooms that were three doors down from each other. And in one room, the tech worked beautifully. And in another room, the tech just didn't work. But you were like, take me back to the other room. That was honestly one of the solutions at one point. I was like, can we not just go back to that room? where I know with whoever's in there, they can have my room. Well, that same company was still in there. And I was like, well, do they need that tech? Because if they don't, can I just go back in that room?

3:54Helen:And so I was like that. It really made me laugh, actually, in terms of like, you know, like so much of it had stayed the same. And yet suddenly this curveball that I hadn't had to deal with in the morning was suddenly there in the afternoon, even though loads of stuff had stayed the same. Travel, yeah, travel. You know, we said tech, but yeah, travel could also be a big curveball. oh I got off a train the other week that um it's not funny but when you told me was I was that when I was in Barcelona for work in a field in Wales yeah well I hadn't I hadn't quite made it to the field in Wales so what I was stuck next to a race course in the middle of the UK in the middle of nowhere it was boiling we're having a heat wave in the UK which never happens um and then I thought do you know what it's okay I'll get a taxi to where I need to get to and then I looked I'm like oh I'm still two hours away I'm still really far from where I need to be um and so because you do I think the more you travel the more likely those kind of curveballs are to come your way um and I think this is a really common one I've had this happen to me a lot in kind of corporate life you know when your meeting agenda gets derailed so someone throws a curveball early like well I think we should talk about this and everyone sort of goes and jumps on it and like oh we should you're thinking oh but I've I've got a whole agenda that I thought we were going to talk through and that's sort of gone out of the window and even if you try and get it back you can tell you've sort of you've lost the opportunity to I don't know be able to get agreement on something that was important to you I wonder whether you know before we get even into why curveballs kind of create problems for us um I wonder whether you just spent a week you know just like spotting the curveballs the ones that come your way the ones that you see go other people's way I wonder if you just wrote a list of curveballs that come up in a week it could be an interesting little bit of insight to capture well we said didn't we because we were preparing for this there was an example even this morning where we both thought oh I wonder if we created a curve ball for someone in our team where uh unanticipated bit of work needs that the royal way yeah you need it too don't stop you start blaming me for the kerfels I recognize that we needed something doing um you I like that you're like you're you're uh are you disowning the I'm not I'm not catching I'm not I'm not throwing it with you you're throwing it to me you're like you created the kerfels yeah which which is true um and I think if you if I wouldn't we were both saying I wonder if you sort of acknowledge it or even just start using the word like when I did put that message in teams everybody got it straight away like I think we all instinctively know what a curveball looks and feels like I wonder if it just feels better if you say to somebody appreciate this might be a bit of a curveball in your day we're going to need to create this and we're going to need to do it quite quickly does that then help people does it give people permission to be like oh it is a bit of a curveball and that means that this won't be able to get done or like just to have a bit more of a conversation around it and also to have a bit more empathy for all of around receiving a curveball is always quite hard.

7:05Helen:Whether you're, you know, whether it's like stuck on a platform, on a train platform, and you're like, right, well, that was a bit of a curveball happening right now, or whether that is, you know, a meeting going in a different direction. I do think having a bit of empathy and support in those curveball moments makes a massive difference. If I think about, I've had a few recently, where having someone by my side, even though they weren't physically by my side I did feel like someone was sort of just there being like it's going to be okay it does make quite a big difference so we talked a little bit about why do they feel hard in the moment and then also why we might need to develop this as a skill um for the longer term in our times of our career so I'll do kind of why it feels hard in the moment I probably don't need to dwell on it to be honest because I think we all get it when when you have a curveball particularly you know if you're having a weaker curveballs that can often feel like it It feels really frustrating because you maybe haven't been able to do the work that you wanted to because you spent so much time sort of responding to other things that have been coming your way.

8:05And it can feel I think it can feel a bit unproductive because you can often I think when curveballs come my way, it depends. It depends if they're coming from people. Sometimes I feel like other other people's sort of urgent important might not be mine, but I have to sort of pick it up. So that never feels great. but I think if it's sort of things you know like tech or logistical curveballs I think it just takes a lot of resilience to keep responding to them so also if you've had quite a few of those in a week you know like your tech goes wrong on a Monday then your trains are rubbish on a Tuesday and then there's something going on with your kids on a Wednesday like the cumulative impact of curveballs I think requires a lot of resilience to respond to so then by the end of the week I think you're just quite tired and that is you know in the short term why I think we need to be able to have ways in which we can cope with them so you don't end up at the end of the week depleted but Sarah's going to talk about actually why maybe over the long term having ways to cope with them is also quite useful.

9:02Helen:So when we reflected on curveballs in the context of squiggly careers we think they are more likely which makes the skill of coping with them and being able to stay calm and making sure they don't zap too much of your energy, even more important. Because I was reflecting on kind of ladder-like world of work, ladder-like careers. You'd got predictable weeks, more fixed tasks, probably one boss that you reported into, that one person mattered, more in a kind of silo, limited tech. You're using probably tech, but probably the suite of tech would be smaller than it is today. squiggly careers uncertain days uncertain weeks kind of more complexity flexible roles so less fixed tasks more like working across different projects probably with more different people you've perhaps got multiple leaders that matter so rather than just like one person you go well actually there's five or six I've got to manage rather than these silos you've perhaps got like I was thinking of it as a bit more like spider webs you know like you're connected in lots of different ways to lots of different groups um maybe working in lots of different countries and rather than limited tech we've kind of got limitless tech so it's like we're always connected you've potentially got like that kind of collaboration overload so i'm like oh there's more people who could create curveballs for you there's more uncertainty and complexity that creates more curveballs and then you're like oh but and then i'm working in a much more flexible way and things are changing much more so therefore again more curveballs are more likely to come my way I was thinking actually about and maybe it's a little bit the nature of the stage of your squiggly career but the amount of curveballs definitely increased the longer I was working for and I don't think that was like just me or about how senior I was I think it was just like that's how work was changing things changed a lot more and there was a lot more kind of unexpectedness to my days and same now.

11:00Helen:So without getting into our tips to help people cope with curveballs what do you what do you think you do naturally and where would you rate yourself naturally on your curveball capability? Oh I like it curveball capability so I think I'm a natural five out of ten so I am not spontaneous I like to be strategic and planned and I'm really thoughtful about how I imagine like a day panning out and so um yeah yeah no thank you I don't want any curveballs ideally and so it's not I don't think I am naturally wired in a way that makes me brilliant at this like my own like my personality um and then I think I've learned it so I actually now would rate myself at like a seven and I think that was there's two things that have really helped me one working in a team where there was millions of curveballs all the time so I worked in a corporate affairs team where their job is basically quite a lot of the time dealing with crisis stuff going wrong unexpected things and they are so good at it so you're like oh I'm suddenly working with people who are so good at something that I'm not so you sort of you learn by watching and kind of bit by osmosis and then obviously I have to do some of it myself and then I think you're really good at it and so I think that has been a forcing function you know when you do see someone I think because I've also seen you do it I've seen what you do in that moment I've just copied you like you know as in like actually imitated going and now I some of those curveballs that come my way I honestly do think I'm like right well what would what would Helen do and I have to slightly fight against my natural tendency when a curveball comes my way because I will sort of try a bit but but because I like things to like work in a certain way I'm so tempted to like give up I'd almost be like well this has just gone wrong now so we just have to accept it's gone wrong and we'll almost like we'll try again another day or we'll try again another way yeah and then I watch you in action who does neither of those things and I'm like oh there is a different way to cope with curveballs which I think is way better well yeah maybe not better in every situation so I guess to Sarah's point of what what do I do so I would probably my natural it's got it's got its challenges but my natural coping with a curveball I probably rate myself a bit higher maybe like an eight on my sort of cope with a curveball in the moment I think I stay very calm and I adapt very quickly like in in the moment so I don't I kind of don't panic and I can I actually had like a family curveball last week you know when something came and my first response is like don't panic this is what we'll do and so I kind of have that response to most curveballs that come my way and so it is good and there's some things that I've learned in order to do that which we'll talk about with kind of the ideas for action but I would say the only challenge with my way of coping with a curveball is um which is a common common reflection from my style generally is that um i don't it takes me quite a long time to then go oh i've had that curveball before i should actually do something more you know long term about it so i'm very very good at repeatedly coping with curveballs in the moment so we can move forward but what i'm less good at is almost looking at the root cause of the curveball so that it it gets resolved over the long term so i'll kind of hold that as an even better riff but generally this is of some of the things that I do you can throw me a curveball and I will I will help you work through and respond to it pretty quickly yeah you're a good person like when I was stuck um on a platform in the middle of the UK by myself you were in Spain helping me cope with that curveball and it was like it was so it was so funny sort of having you in a very different reality like what was happening to you was very different but you are very good at just like staying very calm and I'm then going I think I might do this I think I could do this and you're like so impressed by you though like I was I was actually like because I was there obviously thinking what can I do to help and I was like could I find tax companies and you and I was like I actually got to the point I was like oh I don't know how much I can help here it's probably going to get more annoying me trying to help and so when you sent me a picture you sent me a picture about like 15 minutes after this of you um I think you were in like a Starbucks or somewhere weren't you just doing some work having a drink and and obviously just kind of going well the best way I can cope with the kerbal right now is to sort of sit this bit out until the the you know the solution is is kind of resolved but that actually was not normally it might be a bit flappier a bit panicky and I was like that is a very that was the best that was the best way of coping with the curveball that moment you'd kind of created another opportunity from it which is just I'm going to create a bit of space I'm going to get something done and then this will be resolved yeah I think I said just gonna reset yeah because I felt like you know you kind of got a choice haven't you you can get more and more wound up by curveballs or you it's how quickly I think can you accept the curveball and I think that's what I've got a lot faster at yeah because I want to fight it because I don't want it to be true so but you can't fight most curveballs you can't fight yeah it's like they're usually out of your control and they are happening and so I think my like the window between a curveball and acceptance for me is now like yours is almost instantaneous I would say almost you're like in the moment I'm there I've accepted it let's go let's follow it let's sort it mine is not quite as quick as yours but I think it's now really short but that's taken so much practice also to be clear I also don't enjoy it yeah I would like everything to work all of the time but you also back to the squiggly career thing I think you just also understand of course there are going to be curveballs and so actually I think it becomes better for you to take control if that window can be shorter.

16:52So we've got a couple of different ideas for actions now, three different ones, so that when a curveball comes your way, you're able to respond to it. Sarah, do you want to do the first one?

17:01Helen:Yeah. So action number one is pre-think about your what to do whens. So this is a bit about anticipating curveballs because I think you often can. It's really easy to name the curveballs. We came up with those quickly. Our team came up with them quickly. I then put one into ChatGPT to see what examples it gave me. And the one that I used was, what do I do when a manager or someone else senior asks me a question I don't know the answer to? And I put also a prompt, like, I want to stay calm and credible. Because I was like, well, how do I want to show up in that moment? So I tried to give it a bit to kind of work with.

17:37Helen:Also, I like that ChatGPT often gives you positive feedback. It's like, that's a great mindset. That's the first thing it said to me. I was like, no, thanks. um so I was like I'm like weirdly needy for like praise for chat GPT but what is good is I think what chat GPT does is it gives you a range it gives you a range of answers now some I looked at and I was like well I'd think of that anyway or that was obvious but there was one where I thought okay that's kind of new to me or I wouldn't have thought of that which was offer what you do know so like let's say Helen puts me on the spot and she's like oh um do you know the latest data around the podcast for June what's been listened to what what are people responding really well to like kind of like like what do you know and I would think I don't know which is that's also true um so I I would be like okay well I don't know the answer to that but what I can think about is well what do I know and so you're not trying to hide from the fact you don't know some of it so I might say to Helen do you know what I actually I haven't got the data for June at the moment so I can I can go away and I'll definitely share that with you what I do know is that the episode that we did with Jefferson uh Jefferson Fisher where we talked a little bit about having like great conversations I know that those videos went really well um and they were kind of some real standout videos so what we should do is particularly for those think about like why was it the topic is it because he was so great which he was he got a lot of clarity in his delivery um really kind of personable he's kind of good to watch so is it about the guest is it about the topic is it a bit of both and so there what I've done is I have acknowledged and been honest about the fact that I don't know don't know the answer to Helen's question but I have still shared some insight a point of view or a perspective and I think you know you're not shying away from well I still need to go find that and share it with you but it still feels like I've been part of that conversation so I liked that I liked the it's okay to say you don't know but it can also be useful to share what you do know which could just be an opinion and again I think that helps you to feel just a bit more just a bit more in control a bit more control at the moment because I think the curveball can feel like it takes away your control so anything just saying I do notice I don't know this it's just you're back in control rather than the like waffling your way through something to sort of find your find your answers definitely and then the second part of this we've kind of two-parter here so that's the kind of the anticipate you're using a bit of scenario planning essentially to kind of figure out what to do and if I was you I would pick the curveballs that happen to you most and if you've not already like put those into an AI see what it tells you then Helen and I were chatting about the reality of what we actually do and it's really helpful to have some workarounds ready to go for common your most common curveballs and I think often we have or sort of my observation was we have one workaround so I'll think okay well if the tech doesn't work today for when we're recording the podcast I've got one idea for a workaround okay so we could use like a different platform or we could you know so I've got like one one thought but sometimes one is not enough and I think when I cope the best with curveballs is it's because I've got more than one workaround I've got two or three kind of it's almost like you know like pulling rabbits out of a hat I feel like I'm like right well the first rabbit out of a hat is let's change cables this is how boring our life is everybody the second rabbit out of the hat is let's switch from this to this you know so I think when Helen and I both do use a lot of technology I think now I've got a kind of a number of rabbits to pull from the hat to go if this goes wrong work around one work around two work around three and as you go down those workarounds to be honest they get less and less ideal but they are still something almost to the point where I go like say for technology there's then a point where I say well no technology flip chart still still good because I can still do the drawings or show some of the diagrams to a group and then you do get to the point where you're like when I've run out of workarounds okay no tech no flip chart I do know the content so I can just talk to people and even if that is the workaround I might be on work around four or five by then but that did happen to me recently and you know what it was absolutely fine it and I did I had to adapt quite a lot in the moment and like I say I wouldn't want to do it all of the time because you know like the energy that it takes you because you've gone through all of those workarounds and they're failing so you like work around one fail work around two didn't work work around three still not getting anywhere and then there's often a point where you have to make a call and just go okay we need to sort of think quite differently here um but I think if you've only got one workaround you're sort of limiting your response to that curveball and that I think is what I've learned from Helen she's just like she's relentless in her workarounds I do I think I'm probably aware of my most common ones aren't I I'm aware of my most common ones I think I have some I think I just have a list in my head that I'll just cycle through but I think the other thing that helps me is the second idea for action on even with curveballs which is buy yourself some time so if I just take there are other things obviously other than tech that create curveballs but if I just take that one because it's such a common one for me and Sarah what I will often do is I don't want I don't particularly want people to see me cycling through my workarounds like I would find that a little bit stressful and so what I will tend to do is I will go off camera so I'll say to people I'm just going to take two minutes to fix this and I've said that to groups of like 500 people before because I know that if I'm trying to stay smiley on camera and fix all of this stuff.

23:20It's not going to be possible. And it's going to take me a lot longer. So I say, I will often say, I'm having a bit of a problem moment. I'm just going to take two minutes, fix this and come back. I put my camera off. Then I'm in a right flap going through. I'm like, OK, try one, try two, try three, try four. But on the fourth one works, I put the camera on and I'm calm again. And I think the however you buy yourself sometimes. So sometimes it's, you know, camera off, let me come back to you. sometimes it might be i've i this is a very kind of learned thing for me which i've seen other people do well is if i get a question that um completely throws me off and sometimes sarah and i definitely get those questions from people i will say oh that's a really interesting question what's your perspective and i'm basically buying myself time to think i'm also seeing what the other person's agenda is like you know sometimes sometimes people just ask you hard questions

24:07Helen:because they've already got an opinion or they're asking a hard question yeah because they want to yeah they want to tell you what they think they're very clever thoughts on it um so it gives you time to sort of work out where they're coming from but it also gives me time to it gives me a bit more to work with you know when someone asks you that like a hard question out of nowhere like what's your perspective on how this political thing is going to affect the business and i'm thinking i have got absolutely no idea um so mine might say oh it's really the gosh that's a big question like what are your thoughts and they might say something and then that just might give me the hook for me to kind of catch a thought and so I think creating yourself time in order to sort of like I always think like hold the curveball just just for a moment just hold it so you can work out how do I want to respond to this and also like I always want to come across quite obviously with energy but like in situations when I've been thrown a curveball I want to come across a sort of calm confident in control so what I will try what I will do is anything that is not that as a response so if I'm panicking inside I will often like just breathe I'll often like be like okay breathe um if I'm panicking outside I will have to put my camera off because I just for me my response in the moment to the curveball is very important for the impression that I create with people like I want them to see I can hold this like I'm not panicking I'm not flapping that's going to make me feel worse it's probably going to make me look worse so I'm just trying to hold the curveball just for a moment so that I can do whatever it is I need to do to sort of stay calm in control and confident and then I'm just better able I'm better able to go back to it whatever it is which I then think gets us to like the third I almost feel like these are a bit like stages of a curveball because I feel like they I feel like there's a curveball process that sometimes takes five minutes but sometimes can take five days depending on what kind of the curveball is and the third one is a bit of a watch out what we don't want these curveballs to become we Helen and I decided in potentially a moment of late night thinking we don't want the curveballs to become snowballs so what we don't want them to do is once this curveball has happened we sort of want to deal with it and sort of go right that's it put the curveball in the corner we don't want it we don't want to give it any momentum and we don't want to give it more kind of more attention headspace than it deserves and I often think when curveballs do come your way or where I can see I've probably thrown curveballs to other people it's it's sort of how you respond and what happens next that matters most not the fact that it has happened so as Helen was saying like I did feel quite proud of having I had some really I had a week of really bad travel logistical stuff going wrong almost everything you could imagine there was there was a fire at one point honestly I've like loads of weird stuff happened in one week and so you know like the the stack of curveballs was kind of going up and up and up and I really could have started you know actually I think I could have really started to feel sorry for myself I think that that's the temptation I think you probably could have cried yeah there was that at one point but I was like well there's no point you know I don't want to feel sorry for myself and actually I'm doing some things that I really care about so how I turn up and show up makes a makes a really kind of big difference um and also it's I think sometimes it's reminding yourself that other people haven't experienced those curveballs with you so as much as you know people have a little bit of empathy like trains can be bad um your meeting can be derailed by a manager request those sorts of things sort of nobody else has seen that you know like they've not seen the kind of messiness of the curveball what they see is what you say how you show up um like how you respond that's kind of it and for sometimes you'd quite like them to feel the pain i think of the curveball but most of you know what it took for me to be yeah to get here yeah whereas i don't see it's really interesting because you you know people always ask you like we when we do travel around people will often say to us like oh you know how was your journey um and i'll be like oh it was it was a bit tricky you're getting here you know like train train but you move on so quickly and I'm like it's taken me a day to get here but they've moved on because what do they care about they care about what's coming and so you have to you know like you've got to meet people where they are right that's what they care about and that is what you are there to do and so I find letting that sort of feeling sorry for myself spiral that's not good that's not going to help me it's not going to serve me well whereas actually if I think oh I feel proud about how I responded to that and it's not easy I did reset I did give myself some space I did take a moment then actually you can then you know you can continue to perform well and so I think that's just uh it might be it'll feel often quite big for you but you sort of want to let it go I'm like kick it away kick that curve ball away as quickly as you can and go back to what can I control how can I respond and then just the last thing on stopping curveballs becoming snowballs is this what Sarah's talked about is like very in the moment so how you stop it become a snowball in your mind in the moment and the other thing is if you spot the same curveball that keeps coming this goes back to my thing about I can fix it in the moment but hang on it keeps coming back I think if you do see the same curveball meetings always get derailed tech always fails you consistently have problems with your travel I think that's where you kind of have to think well there is something bigger I need to do differently here I can't just keep coping with the curveball I need to you know I need to find a new ball or something because this this one just keeps coming back and there's only so much coping that's going to be efficient I think for you yeah and I think one example of that which is again it's quite boring because it's just in Helen and I's world but because we know travel travel is an obvious curveball we always go to when we are traveling for work we always go the night before and that's something we started probably about a year or 18 months ago because even on those all those examples I gave around those curveballs I had in that week there was space and capacity for me to if I could have kept traveling through the night and I would have made it I was going to make it to these I was always going to make it to these places and so but that comes from anticipating and like Helen said almost like being a bit more strategic about going ah that is that trains will break down travel logistics will be difficult tech will break down and like again we've now started asking for flip charts to be in some rooms where if we're a bit unsure about the tech if the tech looks great you're like 95 % of the time it does work but if we're like okay that building looks 200 years old and doesn't look like it might have that much tech in it I'm not sure they're going to have airplay or whatever actually having a flip chart but that curveball can come your way and suddenly it's a load less stressful if you've got a manager who's always derailing your day you might want to talk to them a little bit about like how you plan your work or even like using the word curveballs as a team might be quite helpful and so I think it's just you know like you don't want to be too accepting of just being like yeah yes it's about coping and staying calm which is a lot of what we've talked about today but there's also that bit about like how can you take initiative and be proactive because for someone like me who isn't a natural curveball coper I'm not a natural Helen I can do the second bit I'm good at the second bit I'm good at thinking well what could we do differently that reduces the likelihood of those curveballs having a really big impact I can't stop the curveballs but I can stop the impact of the curveball and so if you're more like me you might be more motivated also by knowing that that second part is possible too.

31:54So we will summarise that curveball process, how you can cope with it, the three different actions. We'll put that in the pod sheet. You can get that on our website, amazingif.com. Just go to the podcast page or you can find the link in the show notes. And if you have any feedback or reflections, please do get in touch. We're just Helen and Sarah at squigglycareers.com.

32:11Helen:Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon. Bye for now. Bye everyone.

32:21Thank you.