Skills Sprint: How to Learn in Hard Moments (Without Spiralling)

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is day three of the Squiggly Skills Sprint. We are continuing with the theme of learning in hard moments. And so we're going to dive into some new ideas to help you learn more at work. So as a quick reminder, the fascinating feature that we're focused on here is lobsters grow the most by shedding their shells. It's energy zapping. I mean, it looks really hard when you watch the videos of lobsters shedding their shells. We have a lot of empathy for lobsters when you see this. They look jelly-like and it looks very tough, but they grow back these new shells.

0:32They're bigger, they're better, they're stronger. And what has really stood out from everybody who's done the profile so far, we've had thousands of people now who've completed their lobster profile, is that learning in hard moments is definitely the area that people need the most help with. People are pretty good at leading their own learning, but definitely want some extra ideas and inspiration. Getting better at learning as you go, but this is the one where we're like, we need to keep focusing on that. So that's why we've done two days on this. So when we're in a hard moment, we want to think about how can we reflect as we go?

1:03Because if we reflect as we go, we learn so much more. If you reflect after a hard moment, what tends to happen is you forget a lot. You lose the learning, don't you? And you lose lots of the learning. Recency bias, you tend to actually be reflecting on the last week. Or you're probably reflecting on those really big things that might have happened that you can still remember. but there's probably lots of smaller things that you lose along the way it's why things like I'm sure lots of people who are listening will have done these you know the big project post implementation reviews and those things actually aren't that effective unless you have captured learning throughout the process or when something's gone wrong and then you're trying to like diagnose like what was it and like what do we want to do differently if you've not learned as you go with like in through these kind of hard moments it just feels really hard I also think it's a way that you can take control.

1:55So in a hard moment, you might feel like something is happening to you that it is out of your control, a difficult conversation, feedback that you weren't expecting, a restructure or a change. And that can feel that can just feel very hard. Whereas I think if you can start reflecting in the moment, it is not only a way that you learn more, but I feel like it is something that you've got more control over, which is a bit more of a positive experience. And so we need a way of doing this which feels fast, realistic, because there is a lot going on. Something hard is happening. And also one that works, whether you are more of a thinker or a doer.

2:32So I'm a thinker. So when things are hard, I actually go into reflection overdrive. And so what that does is it slows me down. It means that I overanalyze. I really want to understand. you know like I really try and get to like root causes um but that can mean you end up going around in circles and you keep sort of questioning and you know like you're looping and your brain is is looping and probably spiraling and you're looking in lots of different directions that's what would happen to me in a hard moment how about you as a doer well I just don't do it do I she's like there's no reflection there is no reflection I'm reflecting so much and you're like there's zero reflection I've got I've got a lot of other things to do and I sort of in my mind I'm like well I don't want to be distracted by reflection and I sometimes find it hard but we'll sometimes be in the same hard moment because we're in a business together so we're often experiencing hard things at the same time and you'll want to reflect and I'll just want to move on distract myself that's probably what I do I use doing as a distraction rather than reflecting to get the learning so we we kind of want to be in the middle here we need an action that means you stop over reflecting and I have a quick way that I can learn in a hard moment without feeling like it is distracting me from the action that I want to move on to.

3:45And so long-time listeners will be familiar with our WWWEBI sort of tool, if you want to describe it in that way, which is what worked well, even better if. And we think this is really useful in hard moments because it is easy to remember. It's easy to have a go at. It's hard to get wrong, which is good news. And I think it's also something that is very flexible. there's lots of different ways that you can use www ebi whether you're a remote team whether you're doing this for yourself whether you're doing it every day whether you're doing it once a week so we thought we would bring to life some just ways that whatever your hard moment might be right now whether it's just a hard week or you're in something very difficult like what this would look like if you were going to start using this so the first way we're going to talk about is the five to one formula.

4:34And we thought we would bring it to life with a real example, as always, of a hard moment that Helen was in. So the hard moment was I was presenting to a company, which is kind of part of the job that we do. It was a really important moment. And unfortunately, traffic had meant that I didn't get there at the time that I wanted to. And so that I arrived a bit stressed, I felt like I was letting people down. It was a really hard moment for me to be in. and then as a result of that afterwards it was difficult to look for any learning. Like I just thought, oh, that was a disaster. And did some of your tech go wrong as well?

5:08My tech went wrong. There was just a lot and I was disappointed and like my immediate thought was not what can I learn from this hard moment? It was, that's a disaster. That was a disaster. I've just got to forget about it and move on. Like because that's the doer in me. But what happened was I messaged Sarah which tends to be what I do when I've had a disaster or something goes wrong. Like, oh, this is such a disaster. and we quickly went to the five to one formula. And the five to one formula is you reflect on five things that went well. So what went well that day was I actually delivered a good presentation.

5:41The actual learning experience was really good. There were lots of people that messaged me afterwards. I did some fast fixes so that people knew that I cared about the fact that I'd arrived late. There were lots of things that went well. And the five to one formula is a forcing function for you to look for what worked well first. And then you can still do an even better if. But I think when you're just doing one, it's not that the inner critic is not in control. I think you become much more constructive. So, OK, if you are late because of traffic again in the future, which is probably going to happen, what would make that situation even better if?

6:17and there were loads of ideas that kind of we kind of talked about there but it felt more constructive and I was able then to move on with my day having learned from the situation that I had been in as a result of that whereas without it I think I probably would have felt worse for longer and I definitely wouldn't have learned what to do differently in the future. Another way of using what worked well even better if that we actually do as our team that's really helpful and means that you definitely do the learning in the kind of hard moments is if you've got a project or a process that isn't working.

6:49You create a, we do Teams, so a Teams channel, but it can be Slack or whatever, but it's something remote. Like you're not having a conversation. You're actually doing it by writing stuff. And everybody just puts in their what's working well, their even better ifs along the way. And I think what's nice about that is it's good to sometimes not put people on the spot. It's sometimes good for more senior people to not go first. So there's some really good evidence around things like brain writing, like giving people space to like write things down first and then share it's more inclusive you don't just feel like you've got to follow what's gone before somehow disagreeing in a conversation is actually sometimes harder I think than maybe disagreeing if you're just going oh I didn't spot I'm not sure I agree with that even better if I think I would have a have a different one um and I also think it it means people can do it really quickly it feels quite informal the last idea for what went well even better if and how you can add it more into your days and you can use it to drive reflection is more about a long haul hard moment.

7:47So I guess the probably obvious ones are like restructures or I had a long haul hard moment with a manager. I was going to say, or a manager who you can't get rid of. You can't get rid of it if you feel a bit stuck in this situation. And I think that's the thing, like you feel stuck and you don't look for the learning. But one of the ways that you can is by using what worked well, even better if, to reflect on people and progress. So your what worked well, if I take the manager example, what worked well might be, well, I have got some other colleagues that I've got a lot of connection with, or I've got some communities out of work that I feel really supported by.

8:16And my even better if might be, but I've not got a mentor in this company. I'm very dependent on that manager for that kind of input. And so that might help me think about someone else. And that's, again, that's in my control. And then the what worked well, even better if on the progress, if I take my situation, what worked well, I definitely got more resilient. I developed a stronger shell, definitely at that moment so I would acknowledge that but my even better riff might be I should have made my work a bit more visible so it did more of the talking for me I was having to do a lot of the talking for myself but maybe my work could be more visible to other people.

8:50And I think what this tool helps you to do is it really drives a kind of continual improvement mindset but in a way where it doesn't feel unhelpfully relentless because I'm like you're already in a hard moment. So this shouldn't feel like, oh, I'm just adding loads more expectation on myself. It should feel, I think, helpful, you know, to give you momentum so you don't feel stuck. It should help you to move forward. I think that's how you know it's like working for you. And the other thing that I think this does for you is it gives you perspective. So often when things are hard, you're so in it, you've maybe emotional, hard to see the wood from the trees, it all feels really messy.

9:28I think as soon as you do what worked well, even better if it just creates a clarity and a calmness and puts you back in control. So we're going to end day three of the sprint just like we have on our other days. We've got a bit of inspiring advice to help you keep growing and we've got a 24-hour action to help you keep going with your learning. So the learning advice that we've picked out from the book for today is from Claudia Harris, who is a CEO at a company called Makers. And she says, seek out the hard. Try hard things and take them on. Learning is a muscle. It takes commitment, willingness to be uncomfortable and willingness to fail hard but true yeah but true and our 24 hour action which you can do on your own you can do as a team if you've got a sprint team we want you to use the five to one formula and we've created a template to make this really easy for you so that's in your daily email so make sure you check out that today but we want you to think about a recent hard moment that you have been in reflect on five things that you did well five things that went well for you and just pick out the one even better if.

10:29If you want to share that with us, we'd love to see it. You can do it on LinkedIn, you can email it. But most important is that you capture the learning from that moment. So that's the end of day three of our sprint. And the good news is we've done our two days of learning in hard moments. So tomorrow, day four, we are moving on to leading your own learning. And we're going to get very fun and playful over the next two days.