#574 How to Adapt Your Skills for Career Growth

0:00Hi, I'm Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening to another one of our Squiggly Shortcuts. These weekly episodes are designed to be really easy to fit into your week because we make them super short. And today I want to talk to you about what got you here won't get you there. Now, this is a brilliant book that you've probably already heard about, but I wanted to take that statement, which I've always found really, really sticky, and think about what has that meant for my career? What are some of the things that I have learned that might help you with your career too? So what got you here won't get you there.

0:33I've got three things that definitely got me somewhere in my career, but then I had to do something quite different to help me get to the next stage of my squiggly career. So let's talk about number one. The first thing is giving answers versus asking questions. So early on in my career, I definitely thought that being the person that had all the answers was what gave me lots of credibility. And to be honest, it did really help. It made me a bit of a go-to person. I had a wide breadth of knowledge. And so lots of people would come to me when they needed the answer to something. But then as my jobs became a bit more senior, some of the work that I was doing became a bit more complex.

1:15I realized that I just didn't have all of the answers. And that was going to create quite a lot of stress for me if that was the expectation I was creating for myself. And so I made a really big shift that instead of being the person that had all of the answers, I would be the person that asked the really good questions. And so I would go into the meetings where maybe I didn't know all the details, I definitely didn't have all the knowledge that maybe some other people had. And instead of worrying about that or feeling less confident, what I did instead was I asked some really good questions. I would ask clarity creating questions like what are we trying to get out of the meeting today?

1:54What has worked well before? Who has done this that we could learn from? And I would always try to ask two or three questions in every meeting. And it meant that I added value. It meant that I could have an impact in that meeting, but it came from a place of competence and confidence, whereas I couldn't do that with the giving people the answers anymore. So that's the first one. The second thing about what got you here won't get you there from my experience was shifting from a getting things done mentality to a doing the right things approach. So getting things done, I mean, that is so popular that books have been written on the GTD method.

2:36And I definitely thought like, you know, doing a lot of things, getting to the end of a day or the end of the week and having ticked everything off my list. Like that was, that was success. That meant I was doing a good job. And again, I got to a sort of a pivotal point where I realized I just wasn't getting everything done. And the idea of, well, just work longer or work harder, just work more so that you can get more done, didn't feel very sustainable. And so instead I started to think about, well, how can I get the right things done? And it might not be as catchy and I don't think it's a book yet, but it has definitely helped me to succeed more in my squiggly career.

3:17One way that we practically do this within our company is we have a now versus a not for now list. So you take all the things that you want to get done and then you review it and say, well, what is important to do now? What's kind of the right thing for right now? And then what goes on the not for now list? And it's a really useful way of prioritising. I think prioritising that feels really practical. You don't need another framework. it's just a simple set of lists. And then when you start spending your time on the not for now list, something else has to come off the now list. So it's quite a useful tool that you can have in your team.

3:50So now the third thing, the third thing that helped me make sure that I wasn't kind of taking the thing that got me to a certain place and expecting that to get me where I wanted to get to was shifting from nice as an approach, which meant that I would often say yes to everything. Yes, of course I can do that. No problem, I can help. So shifting from niceness, which again, did work quite well for me for a really long time. And I enjoyed saying yes to things too. But shifting to more of a negotiation approach, which meant that when someone now asks me to get involved in a project or I don't know, speak on a podcast or work on an initiative that's happening, I have much more of an if then approach.

4:36So yes, I'd love to get involved in that. And if I'm involved in that, then we need to prioritise this other project, then we need to look at who else we could bring in to help. And I am now like I've trained my brain to have this sort of if then negotiation. And it stops me automatically saying yes, without considering the consequences. And it also means that I'm much more confident in asking other people for something in return. But it's in a very, I think it's quite a subtle way. And I think it's quite a human way. And I'm sure there's lots of other things that have got you to where you are that you might want to think about, well, what do I need to do differently to get me to where I want to go?

5:17But I would really recommend those three shift. So instead of all the answers, start asking all the questions. Instead of trying to get everything done, make sure that you're doing the right things and then make sure you're not just being nice about everything you're doing. Start thinking about how you can negotiate your way through some of those conversations too. I hope you have found this Squiggly shortcut useful. They come out every Thursday so you can listen to all the previous ones we've done and you can subscribe to the Squiggly Careers podcast so that you don't miss out on any of our shortcuts or episodes in the future.