Squiggly Shortcut: 3 Self-Awareness Habits That Increase Your Career Growth

0:00Sarah Ellis:Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you are listening or perhaps watching if you're on YouTube, in which case say hello in the comments. It's always lovely to hear from our Squiggly community. But yes, you are watching one of our Squiggly Career Shortcuts. These are, as the name implies, short episodes which focus on a topic we think is important for you in your Squiggly career. And we summarise a couple of actions so that you can get started with it quickly.

0:29Helen Tupper:generally all of these squiggly shortcuts are linked to a longer episode that we've done

0:32Sarah Ellis:so if you do want to dive deeper you can do that and so today we're going to talk about self-awareness we have done a longer episode it is episode 459 of the squiggly careers podcast and we will link to that below and you can also search for it on our website amazingif.com so self-awareness what is it what does it matter how do we do it and i think the best thing on the the what and why comes from Tasha Urich. So what is self-awareness? First thing is, it is not just you knowing you. It is also you knowing how other people see you too. And I think that is something people miss because they just think it's journaling.

1:10Sarah Ellis:And, you know, I'm not anti-journaling. I quite like journaling, but that isn't effective self-awareness. You also need to get some feedback. You need to have some data about what other people see and feel when they work with you. And that's part of what makes self-awareness too. So that's what it is. Why it matters, Tasha Yurik, the academic who I really would recommend on this topic, has said that it is the meta skill of the 21st century. And I would also add learning as a meta skill. I think learning how to learn at work is a very crucial skill. But I do agree that self-awareness is very important because otherwise we are operating at work without the insight of our impact or information about how we could improve.

1:54Sarah Ellis:And I think you just miss out on a lot of moments of development if you haven't got self-awareness. So we don't want to miss out on moments for our development. We want to make sure that we are learning, growing, improving all the time. And self-awareness is a skill that's going to help us do it. So three things you can do to increase your self-awareness, three ideas, three activities. You don't have to do all these three. So please don't be overwhelmed. Just pick the one that feels right for you. First is an exercise called at my best, at my worst. This definitely touches on Tasha's point around how you see you and knowing how other people see you too.

2:28Sarah Ellis:So the first thing you do is you reflect on when do you think you are at your best at work? the moments, the meetings, the situations. And when do you think you are at your worst? I appreciate that is confronting. My recommendation there is to write this down. I think if these thoughts about when am I at my worst run riot in your head, it can sometimes it can trigger confidence gremlins. So we don't want to do that. We're trying to be really constructive here. So I just write it down. And then what you're going to do is you're going to ask for some feedback from some trusted colleagues, colleagues who know you well, colleagues who you trust to give you this insight because you are going to ask them when do you see me at my best when do you see me at my worst and you are going to contrast what they come back with with what you have written down now if you get very similar stuff that indicates a high level of self-awareness which is great if you get different stuff um it's either might have some blind spots you might think oh i didn't i didn't know that that's what people saw me as being good at or oh I didn't know that that was an area for improvement.

3:30Sarah Ellis:You might also think oh I'm probably being a bit self-critical because at my worst has no no one else I've asked has seen that so why am I why am I thinking that's not me at my best. So it's a really it's a useful a useful way of quickly getting some insight to inform your self-awareness so that's one exercise. The second is about energy flows. I love this one. So we spend time with people all day, all week. And I don't think we often stop and think about the impact those people have on our energy. Now, as an example, it is, let me check the time, it is 9.23. So, you know, I've not been at work very long, but already in my day, here's people I spent time with.

4:08Sarah Ellis:I've written them down. My husband, my children, I spent time with three people on YouTube, probably not the best use of my time this morning. My child finder, I spent time with Sarah over WhatsApp. I spent time with Vivi, who works at Amazing If over Microsoft Teams, and it's only 9.23. These are already a lot of people I spent time with that I have given and potentially gotten energy from. This is the point. At the end of the day, I want you to reflect and write down everyone you spent time with that day. To be honest, so you don't forget, you might want to track the names through the day. You just write them down.

4:41Sarah Ellis:And then what you're going to do is do an arrow. The arrows away from you are you've given energy to that person. The arrows kind of towards you are they have given you energy. Or if it was kind of an equal energy exchange, you just do a line with an arrow on both end. And that is data. And the data you are looking for is how much energy are you giving and how much energy are you gaining? And does that feel in equilibrium? Do you feel like you're getting as much as you're giving or is it a bit off balance? and it could be off balance in either way, but it is insightful. You know, we need energy at work to sustain our impact and you need the self-awareness to see where your energy is going.

5:21Sarah Ellis:Really useful exercise. I mean, you could do it over a week, but I actually think it's quite insightful just on an average, just an average day at work. One more, because I need to keep this short. I would also reflect on saying the nice things to yourself and saying the hard thing to yourself. So the nice thing might be you thinking about, you know, the things that you're proud of at the moment, thinking about your strengths, thinking about the difference you're making to your team. That's all the nice thing. Saying the hard thing might be, when am I getting in my way? What am I not doing well?

5:50Sarah Ellis:Where am I not delivering on what I want to do? The point of doing this exercise is for you to kind of then take a step back and say, which voice is louder right now? And we don't really want the say the hard thing voice to be louder. Now, I don't think that should be silent because I do think there is some insight in saying the hard thing to yourself about where you could improve. But if that's the loudest voice day after day, week after week is likely to be getting in the way of your growth because that voice, if it's too loud, is demotivating. I think, I mean, you can reflect on what the right ratio is for you.

6:26Helen Tupper:Personally, I think maybe like 60 % say the nice thing, 40 % say the hard thing is the right ratio for me. But maybe you've been through a tough time and you need to up your ratio. You need to say the nice thing to yourself a little bit more right now to get you through a bit of a tough time. You don't know unless you give it a go. So you're going to write down the nice thing, the hard thing from your own perspective. And then you're just going to think about what's the volume on these things right now? And is it the right volume for me? So those are three exercises.

6:55Sarah Ellis:As I said at the start, just pick one and give it a go. don't need to do all of them straight away and if you do want to dive deeper episode 459 um different ways to you can um develop your self-awareness is an episode sarah and i recorded together and we'll put the link in the show notes feedback questions always welcomed it is just helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com thanks so much for listening