#594 How to increase your autonomy

0:00Hi, I'm Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening to one of our weekly Squiggly Career Shortcuts. These episodes are designed to be quick to listen and full of simple and effective actions to support you in your career. Today, I want to talk a little bit about autonomy and how you can earn more of it at work. Maybe before we get into the how it's useful to talk about the why, why do we want to bother earning more autonomy? Well, the research around this shows that the people who have the highest levels of autonomy are the people who have higher levels of well-being at work, and they are much more satisfied with the work that they do.

0:35I think as a topic, it's something that I probably first started to consider when I came across Dan Pink's work on drive. and he talks about drive as a different way of talking about motivation and the people that have the most motivation are people who have purpose, so the why behind the work, mastery, the skills to do the work and autonomy, the freedom and space to do the work in the way that works for them. And so today I just want to talk a little bit about well how do we earn more autonomy if that's the payoff we get when it's present in our work. The first thing to think about is autonomy, it is something that you earn rather than you ask for.

1:10So there are certain things that we need to do to make it easier for us to get it at work. And the first thing is trust. If you want more autonomy, so the ability to work in the way that you want to and work on the things that you want to, perhaps even when you want to, you have to develop trust. People have to trust that you are going to do what you say you're going to do in the way that you want to do it. And trust takes time. So you're not going to get all the freedom that you might want straight away. Now, ways in which you can increase the amount of trust that you get and you can accelerate how quickly you get to that trust is to be really, really clear with people about their expectations of the work that you're doing.

1:53So let's say this is your manager. If you can ask some really good clarifying questions up front. What does success look like for you? What are your worries about this work? When do you need this work by? What level involvement do you want in it? If you can ask those clarifying questions up front, it makes it much, much easier for you to deliver on those expectations. And it's that delivery that is going to make the difference to the amount of autonomy they are willing to give you with your work. Now, the other side of this is sometimes you might not be able to deliver on their expectations. We're not all superhuman.

2:32Things get in the way at work and outside of work. And what is really important when that happens is that you quickly and clearly communicate when you cannot meet someone's expectations. Otherwise, all the trust that you've earned can be lost. So you might say, I'm really sorry, I know you need this report on Friday. day. It's not going to be possible because of X, Y, Z. So this is what I suggest I do instead. Or maybe you don't even have the answer, but at least you have the conversation. Don't leave people guessing. Don't leave them worrying about the work because then you'll lose the trust that you've earned.

3:06So that's the first thing. Build trust. Ask those clarifying questions up front. The second thing that is really important for you to earn autonomy is not making the assumption that autonomy means going it alone. And this is a mistake that I make, I'll be really honest. I love autonomy, I have a value of freedom, so it works really well for me. But my trap with this is sometimes I think, well, I'll just go do it in my own way, on my own, and then I'll kind of come back when it's done. But often if you go away from people for too long, they can start to worry because they can't see or, you know, not in conversation with you.

3:43And that gap creates It's uncertainty for people that can reduce your autonomy. So make sure you're saying to people really clearly, I'm going to work on this until Wednesday and then I'll be in touch. Or I'm going to take a week or so just to get my head around this and then I'll share some first thoughts. So set people's expectations in return about when you will engage with them. Don't just think this is me doing it all on my own. make sure that you engage people at the right points in time so that they don't feel that you've just gone rogue. If you've gone rogue, they might not value the autonomy that you want for yourself.

4:18And the third thing is to be visible about your work. So when you have gone away, you've worked on that project, you've pulled that proposal together, you've solved that problem, whatever it is that you want that autonomy to do, when you've completed that piece of work, talk positively about it. What you're trying to do here is to create an association in someone's mind with when you give me autonomy, good work gets done by me. If you can create that thought process in their head, they're much more likely to give you that space again in the future. But I think sometimes because people feel a bit uncomfortable about talking positively about the work they've done, maybe they've got a bit of a confidence gremlin about coming across as too arrogant, they just assume that their work will speak for itself that people will see the brilliant work that they've done but the reality is you it's you are going to have to share it now that can be really simple you could say in a team meeting one of the things that i'm really proud about over the last month was delivery of this project i'd love to talk through some of the things that i've learned so think about how what you have done could be helpful for other people and it could be something think that you talk to your manager about feedback.

5:30You could say, I'm really pleased that this project got finished or the presentation got completed on Friday. It's something I've worked really, really hard on. I'd love to get some feedback from you. So you don't have to just talk about it in a self-celebratory way, but you do want to own the outcomes and make sure that people see that you have delivered that thing that you were given the space to do. So if you are building trust, if you're not assuming that autonomy is all about going alone, and if you are really owning the outcomes and talking about them in a positive way then you can earn the autonomy the space and the freedom to do more of the work that you want to do in the way that you want to do it which based on the research means we all get to be happier and have more well-being at work so i hope that has helped you think maybe slightly differently about autonomy and recognize that it takes a while for it to come but it has a big benefit for you when it does don't forget that our squiggly shortcuts that's out every Thursday.

6:25So if you want more of these, subscribe to the Squiggly Careers podcast. And Sarah and I will be back next week with one of our Borrowed Brilliance episodes on Tuesday.