Skills Sprint: How to Lead Your Own Learning with Adaptability

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is day four of the Squiggly Skills Sprint. Today, we're going to be talking about how you can lead your own learning. We've already covered quite a lot so far in the sprint. So we've talked about learn as you go. We've done learn in hard moments. And now we've got some lots of fun ideas that you can take action and take control with your learning at work.

0:20Helen:so the third and final fascinating feature of the lobster is they are a resourceful self-sustaining growth system and the way that they do that is when they shed those old shells they don't sort of leave those behind they bury them somewhere close by for a handy snack I think it's my favorite lobster fact and they go back to those old shells and they eat them because they are packed full of calcium. So when they're growing back those big new shells that they need, it just helps them to kind of grow faster. They're not relying on other food sources. I feel like they've really kind of taken control of their growth.

1:01Helen:It's so smart. I mean, it's weird, but it is a very smart way of guaranteeing your growth. And I think that's the thing we know in squiggly careers. We don't want to make our development dependent on other people or other places. And I definitely remember at the start of my career, like waiting. waiting for my manager to tell me what to do I was very up for it I was very obedient I was like you tell me what to do and I'll absolutely do it I'll tick every box give me the list and I'll tick the boxes or expecting your organisation to have defined well this is what you need to learn and this is what's most important and then being like and I'll follow somebody else's development plan or the kind of curriculum like at school where someone kind of tells you what you have to learn someone giving you permission almost like I have to wait permission to learn and grow and do something that's going to be good for my development.

1:47And so we don't want this. We want you to create as much learning as you can, because that is the thing that is going to help your skills to stay relevant. It's the thing that's going to help your squiggly career to be much more resilient, which is what we all want at work. And so today we're going to talk about one of the skills to lead your own learning that we talk about in the book, which is the skill of adapting. So why does adaptability matter as a skill that helps us to lead our own learning? I think this is a really, like, it's a realistic thing. Like, we can't, we don't have a perfect situation for our learning at work.

2:17And there's lots that can get in the way. We hear all the time, people don't have time to learn. I'm too busy to learn at work. Sometimes the things that we might want to do might require investment. And there's definitely been times that you and I have wanted to learn. And actually, it has required some money to do it. And that's been difficult. Or maybe some other people need to be involved in it. There's things that can get in the way. And what we don't want is those issues or barriers to be a blocker for your learning. And so adapting is this skill that helps us to get around it. It means that our learning doesn't stall, even when it might feel difficult to do.

2:53And the reality is it often does feel difficult to do. But the people that are adapting keep learning and growing even in those moments. So that's why it matters for us as a skill with our learning.

3:04Helen:it's almost knowing now that you will need to adapt and then being proactive and intentional about it rather than being surprised by it and being then I think you're more likely to stall or get stuck one of the expert insights um from someone called Heather McGowan that we have in the book and we have lots of expert insights sort of dotted through on different areas um but this one's really stuck with me you know when you write something and I've like I've shared it with people I keep coming back to it and she talks about the difference between flexibility and adaptability and she describes flexibility as, imagine you've got a toolbox and at the moment, I don't know, you're doing some DIY, which I never do.

3:41Helen:So I would have to imagine that. Okay, we'll just go with it. Imagine I was doing some DIY and you're using a kind of a spanner. That's the tool that you're using. When you are flexible, you recognise that sometimes a spanner might not be what you need. I need to swap it for a hammer. I mean, I was really grasping there. How many things do you know in a toolbox? Those two. I was like, is that a knife? That was the other thing I was going to say. Not in most toolboxes, but I get it. Like a Stanley knife. Yeah, I was really grasping there. But so you've got, when you're flexible, you sort of, you recognise sometimes you need to change, but based on sort of what you've already got.

4:17Helen:When you are adaptable, you notice that actually that toolbox isn't the right toolbox. I kind of can't iterate. There's not something I've already got that's going to solve my problems. Actually, I need to think differently. I need a different kind of toolbox maybe I don't even need a toolbox anymore for this job I need something completely different in my case I would need a person who would know how to do that thing but I find that I think that is a useful distinction to make because I think sometimes we do just need to be flexible but when we're adaptable it often is about going I still want the same outcome but I am going to need to approach this in a new way because maybe I haven't got the cash or I haven't got the support that I did have.

4:59And sometimes I think with this skill of adaptability, sometimes you get, oh, you know, just be more adaptable.

5:04Helen:And you're like, yeah, nice idea, but how, how can I do this? And so the way that we would like to help you with the how is to use AI as a bit of a helpful hand in this. And so we have got a prompt which will help you to think about your learning, like what you want to learn. And it will help you to think about why you and how to adapt your response so that barriers that might come up don't get in the way of your growth. So the way the AI prompt works, and you'll have this, so you can just cut and paste this from the emails and all the resources that we send to you, is you first of all start with my role is, so tell the AI a bit about what you do.

5:40Helen:Then where do you work? The organisation that I work in. So describe that. Is it a big company, small? Is it fast growing? What does it kind of feel like? then share the learning goal that you've got for the next three months and then you want to kind of ask the AI this week in the AI to do the hard work is what are some scenarios that could get in the way of my learning you could tell it I want three scenarios I want five or you could just ask it for as many as it will come up with and then really importantly and then how could I adapt and what actions could I take to serve and to approach to kind of overcome some of these potential obstacles because where I think this becomes particularly useful is actually when you read those actions, if this is helpful, they are often things that you could do now anyway because that will never be wasted.

6:24Helen:If anything, you're just going to learn even more. So what we're not saying here is, oh, then wait to see if that happens. And then, oh, when that happens, at least I've got some ideas. I think you are preempting. You are preempting things that could get in the way of your learning that could stop you from leading your own learning so that you can take action today. It's like adapting in advance, really. rather than having to adapt in reaction to something that's happening. So you're on the front foot with your learning. So we've both had a go. Okay. What did you put in for your learning goal?

6:51I put in for my learning goal that I wanted to learn a bit more about innovation models and how they could be applied to our company. It's kind of a relearn thing because it's something I used to do earlier on in my squiggly career, and I'd like to relearn and apply it to our company. So that's what I put in there.

7:07Helen:And how did you get on? What did it come up with in terms of scenarios? Well, first of all, it came up with some, you know, like the actual things that might get in my way, which I found quite useful. I was like, yes, these might get in my way. It's just kind of like you're empathising with me. Like the urgent importance. Don't make friends with your GPT. Don't be lulled in, Helen. Don't be lulled in by it. Cognitive overload. I'm like, yes, yes, chat GPT, this is it. But in terms of what it said to me, adaptations, it's really useful. Micro innovation tasks, 15 to 20 minutes every week. Use models as springboards, not straight jackets.

7:37It knows I like alliteration. It's spent enough time with me. Create an innovation dashboard with three indicators. and so it took what I found really useful is it took every challenge that I'm likely to have and it gave me one adaptive response and to your point I'm actually I look at them I'm like oh yeah why wait these are these are good things that I could do right now yeah what about you my learning goal

7:57Helen:was to spend time in organizations listening to people talk about careers and learning so what we would call like a squiggly career safari yeah so sort of spending time outside of our day-to-day but in kind of learning from other people like what's on their mind like what's getting in their way um I asked it to share the scenarios and actions in a table because I sort of wanted it I actually wanted it kind of laid out in that way um and again like you the potential scenarios they don't really feel like scenarios they just feel like things that are definitely going to happen yeah so one of them was like client organizations are too busy to host you and you're like yeah some of them will be kind of too busy and then it talks about oh you could offer shorter micro visits virtual ones join an existing meeting so you're just turning up to one meeting and then one of the other ones that I really liked was um it talked about my internal workload spikes I was like yes that obviously always happens and it said block non-negotiable field days into your calendar so it was like almost going oh but that is just part of your work don't see that as like a if your workload spiked you can't just kind of take that away so I then found it really useful actually more useful for probably just like what I would do now versus oh like I can't ever imagine that scenario I guess you could ask it to do if you felt like some of the scenarios weren't almost like worst case scenario enough or more ambitious you could build on it you could say well what would some worst case scenarios be and we know that there are hundreds of teams that are sprinting together and I think this is a really nice thing to share in your team because not only are you sharing learning that you want to focus on which is really really helpful I think then with these sort of adaptive responses people can also support you with them so you can say like this is the adaptive response that I want to action and then there's almost like a bit of accountability a bit of support that I might get from people in my team I think it's a really useful team conversation to have.

9:46Helen:So as we've done on the other sprint days we're now going to finish today's episode with an inspiring quote to keep you growing and a 24-hour action to keep you going. So the quote that we have picked out is from Cajal O 'Rourke, who is the group CEO of Lange O 'Rourke, a company that we work with. And his quote is that when you come across something challenging, view it as a great opportunity for curiosity and learning rather than as a stumbling block. I think it talks so well to the point that we've said today about adapting. And your 24 hour action is have a go at that AI scenario planning prompt.

10:21Helen:we've already written it for you so that might be a good place to start but also have a play around with writing your own versions also with how you want the information presented I think it's often just a good way to kind of think how could this work for me and if you can do it as a team I think there is a lot of value in sharing learning goals together. That's the end of day four of our Squiggly Skills Sprint tomorrow we're back with our final day so make sure that you come back make sure that you complete the sprint we've got a really good day we're going to focus on lead your own learning and we've got some great ideas for how you can get sharing your learning.