I attended a training course at Thames Water recently that recommended the book "The Squiggly Career Guide" by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis. These are my thoughts and what I learned as I worked my way through this book.
I picked up this book because I will be coming to the end of my job soon but do not know what I would like to do next. One thing I do know, however, is that I would like my next role to excite me and allow me to use my strengths, work flexibly and learn new skills.
According to The Squiggly Career, to find happiness in the world of work, the following are required:
- Strengths- know what your strengths are and make sure your strengths stand out across everything you do
- Values- what makes you you, what motivates and drives you
- Confidence- stop the things that hold us back and build resilience by focusing on your strengths and having a strong support system
- Networks- build an effective network based on what you can give rather than what you can gain
- Identify future possibilities and take action to explore them now
A good pause for thought is why do you go to work? Why that role? Why do you do the thing you do?
Super Strengths
According to The Squiggly Career, strengths are the things you are naturally good at and the skills and behaviours you have developed through your experiences. Your super-strengths are the positive attributes you would want people to talk about when you're not in the room. This chapter is on identifying your super strengths.
The reason why the book focusing on your strenghts on not your weaknesses is that it says you should spend 80% of your time improvng your strengths and 20% mitigating the specific weaknesses that hold you back. This is because it is not possible to be good at everything so focung on your weaknesses will only increase your concern.
Activity 1: First ideas of things I am great at
The first thing the book gets you to do is list 20 things you feel you are great at. It was very difficult to list 20 and it took me far longer than the allocated 1 minute but I wanted to make sure I completed the list. Here is my list so you can see the kind of things I wrote, as an example:
- Getting people involved
- Being self motivated/doing the things that others can't be bothered to do
- Thinking differently from other people
- Organising others
- Self organisation
- Record keeping
- Presentation
- Seeming passionate about my work
- Explaining things to people in a really basic way
- Finding alternative paths or ways of doing things
- Being dedicated to see something through to the end
- Keep going even when things are tough
- Posting on social media
- Trying to help people
- Planning events
- Being persistent
- Staying positive
- Being adventurous/living life like an adventure
- Trying new things/experimenting
- Adapting quickly and happily to technology
In summary, the first thoughts I had on my strengths were that I: including/helping people, self motivated, organisation, communication (presentation), resilience, out of the box thinking, positivity, trying new things/adaptability.
Activity 2: First ideas of weaknesses I have
Then you had to list your weaknesses. You were only supposed to come up with 3 but, yes, I wrote 8. As the book said, thinking of weaknesses was far easier than strengths. Here are my "3" weaknesses:
- Not keeping in contact with people/getting lost in my own world
- Not switching off
- Appearing too keen/trying too hard/not seeming normal
- Looking at content on social media
- Stopping/giving up/not trying
- Feeling like I'm letting people down
- Maths/statistics
- Hiding my emotions
You then had to look at all of your weaknesses and covert them into positives. here are my converted weaknesses, as an example:
- Focus on the present
- Always ready to help
- Determined/work hard
- Focus on the present
- Determined to finish a given task
- Want to work hard and not disappoint others/Care what people think
- Words/written communication
- Am open
Overall, my converted weaknesses were: focus, including/caring about/helping people, work hard, determined, communication.
Activity 3: My natural talents
Next, you had to write down your first thoughts about what your natural talents are. Here's mine:
- Writing- note taking, writing long bodies of text
- Wider communication
- Caring/thinking about people
- Try very hard
You were then provided with a list of natural talents, which were much better than the ones I had come up with!
Here's what I selected from that list:
- Activation- you make things happen
- Focus- You can shut out all distractions to achieve your goal
- Inclusiveness- You make sure people don't feel left out
- Listening- You give people your full attention
- Organising- You create order and bring things together
- Resilience- You are able to bounce back
So my natural talents are caring about people, communication, activation, focus, inclusiveness, listening, organising and resilience.
Activity 4: My learnt strengths
The following exercise was to think about your present and past roles, what you did in those roles and how you did it, for example what strength you had that made that responsibility possible. For me, I chose all of my active current roles:
PhD Researcher
- Kept going despite challenges- determined, resilience
- Developed my skills, especially in presentations and knowledge about the water industry- identify knowledge gaps, commitment, want to learn/improve
- Communicating in a way everyone can understand- communication, empathy, inclusion
- Stakeholder engagement- empathy, communication, adaptability, strategy, organised
- Keeping people updated- organised
- Project management- adaptability, determination, development, hard worker
Brilliant Club Tutor
- Presenting work- communication
- Providing feedback- flexibililty, empathy
- Dealing with difficult questions and topics- flexibility, empathy
- Being adaptable/flexible
- Staying on top of work/organised
- Bein dedicated even when it's difficult- determined
- Being prepared to have no technology/support- flexible/adaptable
- Adaptability to new schools, needs etc
RSB Chair
- Finding time to fit in extras/organised
- Supporting people- empathy
- Organising events- empathy, organisation
- Being fair/flexible
- Making decisions- decisive
- Leading meetings- organised
Presiding Officer
- Responsibility
- Leading a team- leadership, empathy
- Attention to detail
- Occupying myself when bored- hard worker
- Finding time to fit in extras/organised
All of the skills that I most use are: identifying knoledge gaps, commitment, want to learn/improve, determined, resilience, communication, empathy, inclusion, adaptability, strategy, organised, development, hard worker, flexibility, adaptability, empathy and decisive.
Activity 5: Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020
As an added extra to the book, I also used this form to evaluate my research skills from the Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020, available here.
This determined that the research skills I am confident with and enjoy are:
For me, this means I enjoy communicating (both in ways like teaching, public communication and writing), learning and making an impact.
Activity 6: My super strengths
As an added extra to the book, I also used this form to evaluate my research skills from the Career Management for Early Career Academic Researchers MOOC FutureLearn 2020, available here.
This determined that the research skills I am confident with and enjoy are:
- Critically synthesises complex information from diverse sources
- Willingness and ability to learn and acquire knowledge
- Effectively supports learning and advises others when appropriate, for example through teaching or demonstrating
- Constructs coherent arguments and articulates ideas clearly to a range of audiences, formally and informally
- Can produce high quality academic writing
- Contributes to increasing public awareness, engagement and understanding of research
- Recognises and understands the wider impact of research on society, and is keen to make a contribution
For me, this means I enjoy communicating (both in ways like teaching, public communication and writing), learning and making an impact.
Activity 6: My super strengths
The penultimate step in the exercise what to think about the 6 strengths you feel most confident about, taking all the other exercises into consideration. You then give yourself a super strengths score out of 10 based on a selection of parameters: Success (Has this strength helped me to be successful two times in the last month?), Frequency (How many times have I used his strength this week?), Openness (If I asked people, would they identify this strength?) and Happiness (Does using this strength make you happy?).
To do this, I looked back through all my activities so far to see which strengths most frequently occurred.
Interestingly, I also asked my family and friends for what three words describe me and saw how these words fit with my own musings.
To do this, I looked back through all my activities so far to see which strengths most frequently occurred.
- Activity 1 the first thoughts I had on my strengths were that I: including/helping people, self motivated, organisation, communication (presentation), resiliance, out of the box thinking, positivity, trying new things/adaptability.
- Activity 2 showed my converted weaknesses were: focus, including/caring about/helping people, work hard, determined, communication.
- Activity 3 found my natural talents are: caring about people, communication, activation, focus, inclusiveness, listening, organising and resilience.
- Activity 4 described the skills that I most use are: identifying knowledge gaps, commitment, want to learn/improve, determined, resisilance, communication, empathy, inclusion, adaptability, strategy, organised, development, hard worker, flexibility and decisive.
- Activity 5, the MOOC, meant the research skills I use and enjoy were: communicating (both in ways like teaching, public communication and writing), learning and making an impact.
Interestingly, I also asked my family and friends for what three words describe me and saw how these words fit with my own musings.
- Family- Intelligent, adventurous, quirky
- Work friend- Organised, resourceful, chatty
- Partner- Polite, tenacious, compromising
Here is my overal super strengths list:
- Organised- This strength helps me be successful almost every day. I wouldn't be able to fit in everything I do without it. I think people are very aware of this strength, especially when they see my social media posts which show all the extra things I fit into life. Being organised specifically does not make me happy but getting to do everything I want out of life really does, although sometimes I take it too far and to do much instead of relaxing at home. 9/10, 10/10, 9/10, 8/10, total score 36/40
- Determination/Resiliance- This skill doesn't always equal success for me, in fact I would probably be more successful if I moved onto other tasks instead of sticking with what I started. I do have to use this skill on a frequent basis. I think people really close to me, who know the difficulties I have had, will identify it but not those who only see me through the eyes of social media. Using this skill does not make me happy but it makes me productive. 3/10, 8/10, 7/10, 3/10, total score 21/40
- Dedication to learning/development- I feel like this does make me more successful in the long run but it is less frequently acted upon than, say, organisation. I don't feel many people see this strength because I don't really shout about the things I learned. It's on my blog but I don't think a lot of people see that. It makes me very happy. 10/10, 5/10, 5/10, 10/10, total score 30/40
- Inclusion- I don't feel like this skill makes me more successful but I try to use it as much as possible. I think the people who work close with me might identify it but I don't feel like others would really know about it. It makes me very happy but it makes me feel sad when people don't want to be included. 3/10, 8/10, 5/10, 8/10, total score 24/40
- Adventurous/finding opportunities where others don't see any- I feel like this makes me really successful and helps me a lot. I take every opportunity (maybe even too much?) to do this as much as possible. I don't think I talk about this very well and people wouldn't identify it. It does make me very happy, except for when I can't keep up, then everything feels like a chore instead. 9/10, 10/10, 3/10, 8/10, total score 30/40
- Ability to speak or write about things in a way that everyone can understand- Right now it is helping me be successful. I take every opportunity to practice this skill. I think people are seeing this more and more about me, which is nice to see. It does make me happy but I think I do also take it for granted quite a bit. 9/10, 9/10, 7/10, 7/10, total score 32/40
Those skills that make you happy are the ones to really focus on working into superskills. So, for me, Dedication to learning/development comes on top with 10/10, followed by Advatnurous/ finding opportunities where others don't see any (8/10), Inclusion (8/10), Organised (8/10) then Ability to speak or write about things in a way that everyone can understand (7/10). Determination/Resilience at 3/10 defintiely falls off this list as I feel like I'm good at it as a necessity to keep me going and not because I would like to be.
Final Words
Next the book askes you for ideas on how to increase the sucess, frequency, openness and happiness of these strengths. Some examples of this are:
Next the book askes you for ideas on how to increase the sucess, frequency, openness and happiness of these strengths. Some examples of this are:
- Ask your team how your skill can be used to support/benefit your team
- Ask your manager for feedback about how your skill could increase your impact
- Volunteer to mentor or train others in your skill
- Update your LinkedIn profile to show that skill
- Join a network of people who also have a passion for the same skill as you and see what you can learn from them
- Read/watch/listen to something that will inspire/challenge this skill
- Demonstrate how you have used this skill in three different time steps
- Identify a side project where you can use your skill
- Write a blog post about your skill and how to apply it to work.
To get feedback on your super strengths from your manager, consider asking questions like "Can you tell me where you think I added most value to this project" or "Can you tell me when I've been at my best this week?". You can additionally ask your friends, family and co-workers for how they would describe you in three words.
