#579 How to build an M-shaped career

0:00Hi everybody, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and before today's episode starts I wanted to let you know about something that Sarah and I have created for the summer. We are going to be launching a series all about a career well spent. We're going to release four episodes, one every Tuesday and it's going to be us in conversation with an expert who can give us a different perspective on what it means to have a career well spent. we'll talk about longevity we'll talk about relationships we'll talk about time we'll talk about making a difference we wanted this to be a community learning moment too so on Thursdays we're going to have a LinkedIn live where you can bring your questions you can bring your reflections and we'll discuss the episodes together as a community all the links you need are going to be in the squiggly careers newsletter so if this sounds like something you want to get involved in and we really, really hope you do.

0:53It's all free and it'll be a great learning moment. Then all you need to do is sign up for the newsletter. Just go to squigglynewsletter.com. That's squigglynewsletter.com and we will send you everything you need to know to get involved. But for now, let's get on with today's episode. You were never meant to master just one thing. You were meant to be the person who can see how everything connects.

1:18We've borrowed brilliance from lots of things in the past, but we have never borrowed brilliance from a letter. M-shaped people have multiple elements of mastery and they're able to connect the dots in their career. Why we should care or why this might be interesting, it can make you more resilient. It perhaps feels harder to replace or to replicate. People that might succeed with a different shape can sometimes be quite confronting to other people's idea of success. This is about having multiple areas of mastery. If you were picking one area of mastery today, Helen, where would you start?

1:59Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance from a person, a place, something we've read, or something even more unusual, which is what we've got in store for you today. and we try to turn that brilliance into something useful for you and your career. And today's episode is another one in partnership with Post-it. We are going to be making use of Post-it Super Sticky, which is basically just a giant Post-it. And we'll be bringing to life today's ideas with their products. And so we've borrowed brilliance from lots of things in the past, but we have never borrowed brilliance from a letter.

2:38I do love the randomness of our borrowed brilliance. I feel like the ones that I come up with are often quite left field. Yeah, I know. I feel like at the beginning I was like chairs and you're like, this is so weird. And now I feel like now you've gone with it. Yeah. Now I'm like, I've got a matrix and you're like, that's not new. We're going to go with a letter. So the letter that we are borrowing brilliance from is M. Because I had been reading a bit about M shaped careers. And some of you might have come across this before. So certainly when we started our careers and there was lots of generalist versus specialist chat, people talked about I shaped careers, which were specialists like I've got deep specialism in one area, which I can't relate to because I had none of that during the start of my career.

3:21and then I think as I progressed in my career I definitely heard other leaders talk about this idea of like t-shaped leadership in particular which was almost you should have already had your specialism like ready to go and now you needed some breadth you've got depth and depth and breadth yeah and I remember always thinking oh well I've got breadth but I but I haven't got the depth so oh have I done that the wrong way around and actually I was like researching this And that's sometimes called like dash because it's like it's like a dash. And I was like, oh, that doesn't sound brilliant. Dash shaped careers.

3:57I remember I got feedback once. I actually really remember I was at Eon. And because I had much more breadth, because even I mean, I'm going back. But even then I'd worked in quite a few different industries, mainly sales, marketing, innovation. So that was the kind of theme of my career. But I remember a senior manager saying to me, like implying your career is going to topple over because you've not got. depth in a particular specialism and I remember being like oh but I don't I like I like my dashiness I like my breath but I do think sometimes it can be quite confronting you know when people when people see themselves as shaped so I think that individual was eye shaped yeah and therefore anything other than an eye can potentially be a bit I don't know a bit like because it's easy to think I'm right right yeah I am deep I'm especially so people that might succeed with a different shape can sometimes be quite confronting to other people's ideal success but my my dash has been fine so I'm very intrigued about M because I actually don't know about M that much no and so this quote really stuck out to me um so see if you're listening or if you're watching if this feels appealing to you maybe M-shaped careers might be a useful framework you were never meant to master just one thing you are meant to be the person who can see how everything connects okay okay so m-shaped people have multiple elements of mastery that and they're able to connect the dots in their career yeah and it's very sort of cross disciplinary okay and the point of like why we should care or why this might be interesting is it can make you more resilient so as we talk about this like think think about oh would this help to increase my resilience in my resilience yeah career resilience in my squiggly career and it perhaps feels harder to replace or to replicate so as I was going through this I was like oh this maybe makes you more uniquely you and I would just give a shout out to um obviously I went quite deep researching this um and I discovered a new website where the person who creates this content keeps themselves Anonymous so I can't name them but it's called the unordinary mind the unordinary mind.com and there's a brilliant video from them on YouTube about M-shaped careers and then on their website they've got a whole let me find what it's called it's called the polymath feel guide where you can work it through you can pay how much you can afford they like suggest how much but it's a really nice model and it's actually not just about M-shaped careers so the website has loads of useful concepts and ideas on it and you know when you think how have I not discovered this before that's what I love about doing these podcasts I'm like I've just got a new learning discovery I was very intrigued by the secretness of it well I think I liked it I was like oh basically when I obviously I was trying to find out who it was yeah um did you search yeah yeah loads because also because I was like I don't want to reference someone then not yeah not actually kind of give them the shout out they deserve and they were just really clear they were like oh i i sort of want it to be about the the work the work and it's it's sort of not about me and they liked the anonymity i mean i can sort of see the appeal to be honest i love it oh yeah it does make me want to go hunting to see i mean obviously that's not what they know it's the opposite of their attention banksy's got a side gig as someone who's really interested in the learning world maybe exactly um but really good short illustrative videos i would really recommend so the way that we thought we'd bring M-shaped careers to life is we are going to have a go at mapping Helen's M-shaped careers and so I'm just going to get the M ready what you prepared earlier what I prepared earlier I do feel like this is like my being a teacher moment for everyone that's listening and not watching on YouTube Sarah on her super sticky has drawn a giant M yes for reasons that will be explained So I am going to sort of ask you some M-shaped career coaching questions that I've just come up with.

8:09I don't want anyone to think these are anything more than things from my head. As we go through, I'm going to jot down some of what you tell me. Then we'll discuss kind of how it all works. So the idea with the M-shaped career, I think there are two key concepts to get your head around. One is this is about having multiple areas of mastery. So if you are listening, if you think of the M now, it's got the kind of two long sides. It's got two long legs. Two long legs. That's a good description. It's got the two long legs. And the idea is to kind of think about, well, having at least like two areas of mastery.

8:44So let's just start with that and we'll kind of keep building it. So if you were picking one area of mastery today, Helen, that you feel like you've already got, you you want to keep building on you enjoy but you're already pretty like capable and kind of competent in that area so you're like I would describe it as mastery yeah and I think it is important that you that you enjoy it as well yeah and where would you start is like career development too is that too broad because there are quite a few elements of it yes so so I did mine and that's the first thing I wrote down and then I realized it's not that helpful because it is too zoomed out you know I think I think you could do it but I found it more helpful when I then asked myself well within career development like what am I trying to master because you can break that down into so many areas it would be a bit like when you and I both used to work in marketing you could say well my mastery is marketing now if you genuinely wanted to be brilliant at every single area of marketing which some people might then you could argue well that's one of those long legs i reckon though like when i was in marketing i was nowhere near being equally good at all of them okay so i'm going to be more specific help me pick you can kind of give me some feedback at the same time i'll be like no i think the elements of career development that i demonstrate mastery in um i think i'm really good at unlocking people's thinking so it's sort of like the listening challenging creating clarity which i'll just call unlocking people's thinking about their career I think I demonstrate mastery in my delivery which is a mixture of sort of clarity of what I'm communicating engagement of my message I think they're probably like the two the two elements that are stand out okay so what I might I'm sort of picking for you for now that's fine um I'm gonna pick learning delivery okay because and actually having watched a few uh videos on this it's quite useful to have one of your legs of mastery where you've got quite a lot of experience in it already and also it feels quite stable yes you're like oh I'm I know I'm like at least an eight out of ten I want I want to kind of keep going but it's helpful for your career like where you are right now okay so we're going to stick that on your first long leg my stable leg yeah learning delivery yeah got it and so let's now pick another area of mastery so maybe this might be more of a growth area of mastery so this is your second long leg maybe it doesn't feel as deep in terms of the area of expertise today but you sort of feel like you're quite motivated to keep investing in it it feels quite energizing maybe quite interesting but it's not the important thing is it doesn't have to be connected to learning delivery at all it could be completely different okay so I think I have like a natural talent I enjoy it I don't have to work too hard at it like in building relationships and I think people would see that and know that they would associate me with that skill yep however I think I could get better at managing that like I don't think I do it in a particularly strategic way I think there are techniques and tools and models like when I think about uh you know like Robert Caldini was on the podcast ages ago and he talks about influence and persuasion and there are some specific skills within that research that you could apply to how you build relationships and you could do it better but I don't think I do that today I think I just enjoy and I'm like a seven out of ten in building relationships but I think I could get to like a nine out of 10, 10 out of 10, if I really approached it strategically and with additional skill.

12:28Okay. So we're going to put building relationships. I always remember that for years ago, like this is what I mean. I mean, this is an outdated reference, but I always remember years ago, you saying, this is like 20 years ago, you would be talking about somebody, somebody you knew or someone your mum knew or something who had like a, the Rolodex of like facts about people. Oh yeah. I've always stuck in my head because I always thought that's so amazing. Like they met somebody. I think you said they met somebody. Filled out a card. Yeah, they filled out a card. I can't remember me that was now.

12:58But I've always remembered like, wow, imagine like you're listening to somebody, you're collecting that insight about them and their interests and you capture it so that you can make connections and bring that into conversations. Like I've always really, I mean, I know we don't have that Rodex vibe anymore, But I've always that's what I mean about next level skill that someone's capturing that information. I think I just go, hi, I sort of bowl people over with enthusiasm. But yeah, I think I could get better at it. And then one of the things that I found helpful is when you're thinking about those kind of two long legs of your M is you don't have to put equal energy into both of them.

13:39So, for example, and this is this is actually where you make a choice. I might ask you to kind of make a choice. you might say well my learning delivery one is a stable one it obviously still needs like it needs some continual improvement it still needs some effort but actually it's an eight out of ten and I'm sort of aiming for like an 8.5 or whatever it might be but I am going to really intentionally try and think about building relationships what does good look like I sort of want that mastery to increase or the opposite way around so one of the things I found interesting in one of the videos was sometimes you want to build that stable long leg because actually then it gives you freedom for for other things um but what you don't need to do is you know like if you're trying to do two areas or even maybe three areas of mastery all at the same time that's actually a really big ask you know in terms of like what mastery actually is so if you were prioritizing at the moment in those areas of mastery what would be the one what would be number two um one is actually prioritise would be building relationships because I think I do it unconsciously and I think if I did it better it could have more value for our business like building better relationships to support our business and I think with learning delivery I've already got I have a lot of moments of practice I get a lot of feedback yeah I also have a peer that I can learn from so I already have a lot I think I could get better definitely but I already have a sort of a system a learning system in place yeah that steadily increases my mastery whereas I think the relation I don't have the same reflection the same learning the same kind of peer to learn from in an intentional way don't think we think about it as a practice skill so that would be I think my I've got a bigger learning gap on the relationships okay so let's move on to the other part of the m which for people listening is sort of the v bit is that the best way to describe like the v in the middle of I have questions in my head.

15:35I'm like, could this be a W? But I'm just trying to put it to one side. I got lost in letters at one point, I have to say, researching this. So there isn't sort of one definitive, like this is an M-shaped career that's been really well researched. So actually, when you read some of the links that are put in the show notes, some people take this, use this V in kind of different ways. And I think there are two ways that stood out to me as feeling particularly useful. one is what are your connecting the dots skills so these are sort of bridging skills so regardless of whether you're in learning delivery building relationships anything you're doing for work yeah these are those skills that kind of help you kind of regardless of kind of what you're doing maybe where you're working the job you've got so I'm calling those connect the dot skills and then you've just got things I am curious about and want to dabble in and want to have a play with so let's do first your connect the dots I'm going to do a little picture connect the dot skills if you were picking let's say three connecting the dot skills that you think you have what do you think they would be what would your starting point be uh I think that I I'm oh I don't know whether you'll have this as a skill I'm very good at making something happen you know like is that can I have like you know like my my pace to go from like I was doing some research actually on um I think I can't remember why but I was looking at the connection between you and me and like you're brilliant at coming up with ideas and I'm really good at putting ideas into action like yeah like that ability to sort of activate you know we've talked to like Helen's a bit of a catalyst she's an activator is that prototyping is it or is it just action I think it might just be action because I think prototyping is another skill so what I can do is make I can make ideas real you know like someone can say oh I've had an idea about um this I don't know this new way we could run team meetings and I'd be like okay well why don't I create a team meeting gender generator using an agent and it could look like this and I could do that in five minutes but it's I'm quite good at like using technology to prototype so that's probably quite a specific I can bring ideas to life to make them tangible which is always quite useful in innovation when I worked in innovation because there's loads of ideas and I can make them tangible for people and I wonder if you're you know going back to what you said in learning delivery your alternative was about creating clarity I'm wondering if that's a connect the dot skills because actually what what would we have where is that not helpful yeah you know like the I sort of feel like that's consistently useful yeah so um without wanting to tell you your own strengths um so I've got just action prototyping brackets tech um and creating clarity yeah so you can see right how it's like it doesn't those mastery areas could be completely different I guess this is like maybe a good test, a good stress test.

18:35If you replace those with different things, action prototyping and creating clarity still remain useful bridges like across those different areas. If you were just now being given sort of full freedom, which I know you'll like because that's one of your values, and you're just going, right, what am I really curious about generally? Like outside of work, things you want to have a play with, this is where we can sort of be. Oh, in and outside of work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is where actually if you do that prototyping field guide, which I did, they call this the curiosity playground and actually are really encouraging you to say, this is your no commitment zone, your weekend projects, your three week obsessions.

19:18This is where you dabble freely and collect the dots. And so actually that prompt got me to some different things to like the connect the dot skills. So what would go... Three week obsessions, I have so many of those. I know you do. When I read that, I actually thought of you. I was like, oh, that's like Helen randomly getting a chicken. Or suddenly she's done a vegetable patch. I was like, this is really you. Yeah, yeah. Shall we just go through my three-week obsessions? Yeah, let's go through it. Okay, chickens. Yeah, chickens. There's quite a few pet-related ones. Bees. Yes. Yeah, bees. Gardening, but specifically vegetable gardening.

19:52Vegetables, yeah. Actually, I'm not really interested in the rest of gardening. Botanical drawing. Yes, yes. That's quite a new one. I mean Poetry Yeah Oh I wish I could spend more time doing poetry You and your obsession Anything else? Ice cream making at the moment Oh yeah Oh yeah I forgot You just announced that in the tea meeting yesterday Quite obsessed with ice cream making at the moment I mean just I mean cooking generally I'm so Like the nutrition of cooking Yeah That is That's more than a three week one I love that I mean There you go There you are some of I suppose Because I think That's where it's Psychology actually i'm like that's more than a three week one are we having more right i like that one i've actually run out of room i'm just gonna stick these up okay oh that was fun okay um i feel like i've got a very heavy middle bit of my m yeah i guess that's probably because i think as you go through this you'll start to see almost like how useful it is for you okay and i suspect for you it will be quite useful because you are quite like polymathic if that's a word in your and we both are right because that's why we do what we do so you've got these areas of mastery that you're building up but your bridge is strong because you're it's that I think this is like the collecting the dots to connect the dots yeah um whereas that when I did it I found the connecting the dots skills easier like I don't have three week obsessions in the same way so I was like I actually found that a bit harder okay um but it made me think well what would I like them to be it honestly has made me look at doing seaweed pressing because I would quite like to have a go at that but you know like sometimes you need permission to yeah I actually think you could frame some seaweed stuff in your home and I could imagine you doing that I've got some that I bought yeah I've got I've got framed seaweed in my study that's what I'm thinking you could actually have your own but I could do I could do my own okay so having I suppose I've almost live half coached you have talked you through your your m-shaped career what it might look like okay what would you do with this what how would you make this useful do you think in terms of what you'd so turning these reflections into action yeah i'm looking at it and i'm like interesting so what kind of thing i'm going back to what you said at the start so your point you said at the start was that m-shaped careers help with career resilience and distinctiveness yeah kind of resilience and rarity okay resilience and rarity all right so with that in mind how do i think having put this down i suppose it's or i could put it on a piece of paper how do i think this would help with my career resilience is an interesting one like how would this help me with resilience because i've basically come it's created clarity the legs have made me think this is where i have strengths today and where i could get better in i can see one way it'd make you're resilient if um our business folds tomorrow yeah um your learning delivery could disappear like you might suddenly find yourself in a job that has nothing to do with learning delivery but what's always going to be helpful building relationships you know like you've you know if you were going oh I've got learning delivery and then just the other things that we've talked about actually your resilience would be lower so you know if like things changed where so if you were If I'm just going to be a master at learning delivery and suddenly avatars completely replace people delivering, then I've got...

23:21Which could happen. I don't know, what's the career zero? I don't know. Whatever that is. Okay, so the point with Emma is if one of the skills that you have mastered suddenly have less relevance in the career market, you have another one to fall back on. I guess that's just one way of looking. I mean, it's a bit bleak, but it's one way to look at it. I was thinking something more positively. Oh, okay. I was thinking, okay, now I've got the clarity on there, my legs, what I could almost do is sort of scenario plan around them and say, okay, so in the context of career change, what might happen with learning delivery over the next 12 months, 24 months, what might happen in the way that relationships are being built over the next 24 months?

24:04I guess what you could do, combining our different ideas and a sort of medium optimism approach. is going if one scenario is that less and less learning delivery is done by humans yeah you you might start thinking now about well what would i like my next mastery long leg to be yeah so you're like oh if it wasn't learning delivery what what else it's kind of a what else question and that's where you might get to actually i want i'm going to move prototyping from a kind of connecting bridging skill into actually i want to be a master prototyper that's interesting so then you sort of go well my next area of mastery is prototyping and that might be like a two out of ten today because you're like well at the moment it's a bridging one it doesn't need to be more than a two oh but at some point i might want it to be a seven or an eight and so you might just have like one eye on like okay i'm just gonna that's interesting could one of the bridging skills become a leg yeah which again to emphasize we've made that up yeah this is us interpreting i like this though because sometimes i think you have these career concepts and i think you have to really play with them to go why is it useful how is this useful the other thing i was thinking was you could do an m-shaped career pre-mortem so this is where this is what i was just saying is almost putting a label against that idea of going well the pre-mortem is going imagine that this was no longer relevant what would you do differently now so would i do something different with learning delivery would i then bring one of my bridging skills down and so that's that i can see how that would help me to increase my career resilience my career rarity i haven't quite worked out how i bring chickens into my squiggly career story but what it's making me think there is something very uniquely me about this like no one else i think is going to have this is how you are uniquely useful yeah in the world right and unique well some of that stuff i think is uniquely me it's not always uniquely useful like it's uniquely me i'm not sure all of this is uniquely useful but i think there is something in this about i don't think anybody else is going to have that m-shaped career because it's the mixture of the middle the bridging skills with the legs that i think is a very unique thing so if you are able to tell your story yeah if I was going to introduce myself and say you know two of the things that I think I add value to organizations in are learning delivery and building relationships and that's valuable because and actually some of the things I really enjoy doing just keep learning and I tell some of that story yeah no one else is going to tell that story and I wonder whether looking at your m-shaped career in this way helps you to get to elements of your story i think you've got to put it together in a way that has flow and it's not like me just going chickens rabbits well you don't want to one of the things actually in that really good video i watched the sort of setup to the video was that often people who are like this um it makes them feel quite anxious um and quite worried now i don't think that would beat us because we've probably got confidence in our skills and spend a lot of time doing this kind of thing but um I think people who are naturally their own worst critics who might be m-shaped go oh but I'm interested in lots of different things and that's that's a bad thing um or I can't stick at stuff because I've got three week of sessions yeah um so that makes me not very valuable or I've got these couple of areas of quite deep specialism or like deep mastery oh but they feel really disparate and so people can end up telling themselves quite a negative story about being m-shaped can i borrow a post-it note for a moment because i just want to draw the other the other reflection that this is making me have is that when you once you've done that first exercise so you go what are my two legs what are my bridging things i think one thing that it makes me want to do is almost apply a width to things okay does that make sense so i'll draw it and describe it for the benefit of people who are listening i'm watching um this has only just come from me just reflecting on it so learning delivery i think that's quite a fat leg because i practice it a the width of the layer.

28:13And then I think I actually have a very big bridge because of the amount of stuff that's in there. Yeah. And my relationships, I think, are good, but it's a bit skinnier. So that makes me think, you know... So you've almost applied a scale. I mean, it's really bad. It's really ugly. But do you know... That's not as dramatic as I... I think it should be more dramatic. Do you think... Oh, my gosh. More dramatic. So I think one side, yeah. No, because I think my fat bit... Oh, that's so mercy. Well, it's not supposed to be perfect, But my point is, I look at that and go, hmm, that M is maybe, it's not a beautiful M, is it?

28:47Sure. It's not a beautiful M. Every inch of me wants to redraw that. Sarah's need for like, visual control. I'm just like, oh, that's making me really tense. Please go and just watch this bit of the podcast so you can see Sarah looking uncomfortable. But my point is, this doesn't look like a very good M, both because I'm not good at drawing, but also because it's not very balanced. because maybe I do have a bit, it makes me think, okay, maybe I should make a few choices about this. Maybe I should invest a bit more effort into that so that my M is a bit more balanced. You see, that's just, you know, because you asked me like, why would this be?

29:23It wouldn't stand up at the moment, would it? It'd fall over. My M would fall over. It's too heavy in the middle. So it just makes me think, or maybe have a few less three-week obsessions, maybe put a bit more effort into consciously developing this skill, like try to have a bit more of a balanced M is where this conversation has taken me in my reflections. Would you like your pen and your post-it back? No, it's fine. He's like, don't draw anything else. You keep them. I think we're about done. Okay. Based on that, we've probably, I think, added enough to what is probably quite a straightforward, simple concept of like, it doesn't matter about I's and T's, you can be M's.

30:01And there's actually not loads out there on this. I would recommend that Unordinary Mind video, So particularly if you are someone who maybe doesn't feel great or that confident about where you are. And I think probably what we've helped you to do today is actually for everyone, I think mapping out your today or the shape of like where you are. One, see what you notice. Always a really good question. Like, well, what do I notice? Because I think listening to you, I'm like, you've started to do that process, right? Well, what am I noticing? And you've gone to width and my bridge is quite wide and everyone's what all they notice will be different.

30:34and then answer that question like well what does that mean for me does it mean uh things like learning goals like what do my learning goals look like does it mean thinking about where you're putting your attention and your effort what does it mean for your day job you know like conversations around job crafting one-to-one conversations are the things that you might volunteer for at work um I can I can almost see how you could take this in like loads of different directions but I think if you are someone who is interested in like more than one thing seeing that as a positive and then being confident to articulate that i think is really helpful well thank you you're very enjoyable chat about careers of my career yeah i quite like to manage to get chickens this podcast again it's a win so we will summarize all of this on our pod sheet um every one of our episodes has a pod sheet you can get that from our website which is amazing if.com is also worth signing up for our newsletter because that means every tuesday you get the links to learn from The pod sheet is in there.

31:31It just makes it really, really easy. So we'll put the link to sign up to our newsletter in the show notes. Go to the website to get all of our past pod sheets. And if you ever can't find anything, the easiest thing is just to email helenandsarah at squigglycareers.com. But that's everything for this week. Thank you so much for listening and be back with you again soon. Bye for now. Bye, everyone.