How coaching yourself can help you progress

Our focus for this Season is on ‘Getting to the Top’ and I’m delighted to welcome Helen Tupper as my guest. Today, we’ll be talking about how coaching yourself can help you progress in your career.

A big thank you to Gail Morgan Style for sponsoring this season. Focusing on mindset, colours, style and wardrobe management, Gail has inspired me and thousands of other women to increase their visibility, impact, and influence by reducing wardrobe overwhelm and confusion. She truly is a master of her craft and completely understands how the ‘right’ clothes can immediately increase your confidence and credibility. Gail Morgan Style is offering our listeners 15% off all colour analysis sessions, and any of her other styling services, when you reference this podcast. To find out more, call 01442 262696 or visit www.gailmorganstyle.com.

About this episode

Our focus for this Season is on ‘Getting to the Top’ and I’ll be talking to some incredible women and experts from around the world to share their real-life stories, advice and tips, to inspire you in your career. 

It is an absolute pleasure to welcome Helen Tupper as my guest today. Helen is co-founder of Amazing If and together with Sarah Ellis is host of the Squiggly Career podcast and author of The Sunday Times Bestseller’ The Squiggly Career’ and their new book ‘You Coach You’. I’m delighted she’s joining me today to talk about how getting to the top can sometimes be a bit squiggly and ‘How coaching yourself can help you progress’.

Resources

Gail Morgan Style: Gail Morgan Style is offering our listeners 15% off all colour analysis sessions, and any of her other styling services, when you reference this podcast. To find out more, call 01442 262696 or visit www.gailmorganstyle.com.

Amazing If: https://www.amazingif.com/

Amazing If on Instagram: @amazingif

Books, The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/

Episode transcript

Joy Burnford: Good morning, Helen, and welcome to The Confidence Conversation.

Helen Tupper: Good morning Joy, thank you very much for having me.

Joy Burnford: And thank you so much for being on the podcast. I've been a massive fan of yours for the last few years listening to your Squiggly Career podcast, and I think you're probably my inspiration actually for actually doing my own podcast. So thank you.

Helen Tupper: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for listening. We started it in 2017 actually, and it was mainly because we'd written this short ebook on how to overcome your confidence gremlins. We always kind of tried to do like experiments and thought, well, let's try talking about the book in a slightly different format. And so we went into a studio and recorded these 10 episodes. And that was all it was supposed to be. And those first episodes I mean, they're still there. And some people tell us that like, Oh, I've started listening to your podcast and I started at episode one. I was like, don't start there, go to Episode 150 we get better! We learned a lot. And then I think we went to a weekly podcast in 2018.

Joy Burnford: Yeah, amazing. So tell me a little bit, obviously I know a little bit about your background. But tell our listeners a little bit about you and your background and what inspired you and Sarah, your co founder to found Amazing If and also to write your first book ‘The Squiggly Career’.

Helen Tupper: So Sarah and I have been friends now for over 20 years, we met at university and found that we had a connection for our desire to learn, our interest in our careers, and I think lots of people are interested in learning and their careers but probably we were kind of geekily so. So there was an intensity towards our enthusiasm that we both connected on. And as we started to sort of explore our careers in the early stages, you know, moving on from graduate schemes to kind of core roles in businesses and moving around different organisations, we really became each other’s support team, we never worked with each other in the same organisation. But we were always there behind the scenes supporting each other. And we shared tools, and we went on similar courses. And that continued for quite a long time until 2013 when I was working in Virgin and Sarah was working at Sainsbury's. And we decided to do something with this shared passion that we had. We've both done different projects, we were both mentoring lots of people and we thought why don't we take this passion we have for learning and for careers, and try and help other people with some of the things that have helped us. And so we started this side project, very happy in our corporate roles. And we started a side project where we just ran these evening sessions in London and we'd run off after our busy day of meetings or doing whatever we're doing, we'd rent this room in London. And people would join us, we'd advertise these courses, and people were joining us and we sort of learned by doing. We learnt what stuck and what people enjoyed. And we also found that we really liked working together and you know, Sarah and I have lots of differences but that shared passion and that desire to keep learning and improving together has been what you know, 10 years on from that point now has meant that that side project became a business it was never the intention, but the side project became a business. The business became a book, and then another book. I don't know what it will become next Joy but I know that I like working with Sarah. And I still like learning. And that's sort of, I guess that's what started it all off. So I hope it's going to keep us going for quite a lot longer yet.

Joy Burnford: Amazing. And it's amazing you're still friends after 20 years. So tell me a little bit about the concept of a squiggly career, how would you describe what a squiggly career is?

Helen Tupper: So a squiggly career is how we describe the careers that lots of people either want or are experiencing today. So it's one where there's a lot of fluidity and movement and change. There's lots of opportunity, but at the same time, quite a lot of ambiguity. And it's really the opposite of the staircase. So the staircase as a concept for careers has stuck around for a really long time, 100 years. And it was designed for a world of work that's very different than the one that we experience today, it assumes that everyone wants to develop in the same direction, and move towards the same destination, which is about being more senior, because that's what a successful staircase is. And it doesn't give you a lot of freedom to deviate from that. And it sort of creates a situation where there are a good careers and bad careers. And if you're not progressing in that linear fashion, then you're falling behind, you start to compete and compare. And ultimately, we don't think it creates a great environment for people to succeed at work. The squiggly career gives you much more freedom. It is as individual as you are, there aren't good careers and bad careers. And success isn't one size fits all. But it does mean that you need a different skill set. And that's where we come in as much as we can, to help people develop the skills to succeed in a squiggly career, whatever ultimately, success means to them.

Joy Burnford: Interesting. And you know, I'm writing a book at the moment as well, which is being published in November called ‘Don't Fix Women: The practical path to gender equality at work’. And interestingly, I changed my whole kind of idea of the book about six months in from thinking about sort of a ladder, a career ladder, and it's now a mountain, it's kind of a career mountain. So it's definitely exactly the same, a different path. And mine's all about clearing the obstacles from that path. And also to say that you might want to just take a break for a bit on the mountain side and organizations can do a lot to create that different environment for women in my case, but yeah, really interesting. Often it can be when you have children or other caring responsibilities as well, it can cause women to change careers, and maybe go on a bit of a squiggle. And I know you've got children too, like me, and I've had a bit of a squiggly career as well, you know, jumping in and out of corporate life. So tell me a little bit about your thoughts on balancing a career alongside personal life.

Helen Tupper: I guess when I first started to think about this was pre kids. And I, at the time, I was doing a job where I was travelling a lot. And I was thinking, I think, I think I want a family, I hope I can have a family. But I'm not sure I know how I'm going to make this work. I think I was at that stage. And it's like, can you try and have a family if you don't can't help work, how you can fit it in and what comes first, do I have the family and then work it out or work it out beforehand, and all of that, all of that. And I had a conversation with a mentor at the time, who talked to me about the importance of childcare, and the support system you have around you. And she's like you can do, you know, whatever you set your mind to, but you do need a lot of support around you. And it was a really honest conversation. And she said, spend whatever you can afford on childcare that is stable. And I remember, just, you know, save for it now, if you want to be, you know, ambitious, and you want choice and freedom and flexibility, and that is what matters, she said save what you can, spend what you can afford, but get stable childcare, because that is the crux of it. And she said it to me. And it really stuck with me. And so as I have embarked on the journey of parenthood, and I have two children, Henry now he's seven, and Madeline, who's five, that stability of the support that I have around me has definitely been an enabler of my success. And an amazing woman called Amanda, who's worked with my family now for sort of seven, seven years, she's been with us and she knows us inside out, she knows my children, I trust her implicitly. And that has been the biggest investment that I have made like financially, but that means that I have a stable, secure childcare solution for my children. And that makes me feel happy, and it makes them happy. And it also gives me the freedom to do other things that I love as well, because obviously, I adore my children, but I also love my career. And there are compromises that you have to make along the way, and choices that you have to make along the way. And I also feel that it has been a constant calibration, you know, like to the choices that you had in place when they're a baby and you were, you know, getting home for feeding and all that kind of stuff are different choices than I now need to make where you know last night it was parents evening, and tonight his parents evening and then two different choices. So it's constantly calibrating, I think and recalibrating to make it all fit together. But we, Sarah and I often talk about it as work life fit rather than work life balance. And I think that's what it is for me. It is constant calibration to find work life fit. But if you do want to be a parent who's also juggling work responsibilities, whether you're a man or a woman, I think having secure childcare support in place, whether it's an amazing person like Amanda, or a nursery, or after school club or a grandparent, whatever it is, is very important to have.

Joy Burnford: I remember being given exactly that advice, actually, when I was thinking about having kids, somebody I used to work with said exactly the same said, if you can get your childcare sorted.

Helen Tupper: I see the stress it places on people, when, you know, actually my business partner, I've seen it directly. A little boy, Max went to school last year, started a school. And she was trying to find, you know, wraparound care. And it was in such high demand that the school weren't able to offer all the places that she wanted. And then she had to run around to find, you know, childcare. And that was so in demand. And I think it just places a huge stress. But when you've got it sorted, it is an enabling factor in your career.

Joy Burnford: Absolutely. And actually, it just reminded me of a friend of mine, who I haven't spoken to for a long time rang me the other day and said, I've got an opportunity to go for this really high powered job. But she's got a three year old and she said, I just wanted to ring you join us have a chat to you. Because I don't know whether to go for this job. This is my dream job. But I just don't know whether I can do it with all the challenge of having a child and you know, and I was suddenly like, Oh, my goodness, you know, this is this is what's happening every day with women in particular who got caring responsibilities about thinking about can I do I have to put my career on the back burner, or should I just go for it, because it's a gruelling process going for these top jobs as well. But I thought it was really interesting that these, these are daily, as I'm sure you find with your conversations, you know, daily challenges with women who are trying to have it all, as you say, having a good fit between career and family.

Helen Tupper: And also knowing that sometimes you get it wrong, like I don’t get it right all the time. But I try to sort of be kind and fair to myself and recover quickly when I get it wrong.

*** Joy Burnford: I do hope you’re enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a moment to tell you a little bit more about my reasons for doing this podcast. At My Confidence Matters our mission is to work together to navigate a path to gender equality through building confidence and capability. I’m passionate about enabling every woman to have the confidence to progress in their career, and I love talking to, and sharing women’s stories to inspire others. This podcast forms a small part of what we do, and if you think there’s room for improvement in the way your organisation understands and manages the issues, barriers and obstacles that women face in the workplace, please do get in touch or tell your HR contact about us.

And don’t forget, developing a consistent personal brand can help you build your confidence and achieve your ambitions. So, if something as simple as clothes is standing between you and success, the amazing Gail at Gail Morgan Style is offering you 15% of all colour analysis and other services when you reference this podcast.***

Joy Burnford: So moving on to how coaching yourself can help you progress in your career. It's quite a nice sort of segue really into that, you know, how do you coach yourself as opposed to relying on an external coach, tell me about your new book, which is out now called ‘You Coach You’ or in the case of my book called ‘Joy Coach Joy’ because you very kindly sent a copy with my name on the front, which was amazing. So yes, the book is called ‘You Coach You: How to overcome challenges and take control of your career’. I'm partway through reading it at the moment. And there are some great frameworks and things in there. So really simple, but really powerful. And I know from my perspective, you know, we offer coaching, and it's often only available to a handful of people in organisations. It's so beneficial having a coach, but not everybody can have a coach, I think it's just pure magic your book because it means that you can get coaching out to more people, which is fantastic. So, sorry enough of me burbling but perhaps you could tell us, the listeners a little bit about the book in a nutshell and what it covers.

Helen Tupper: So our mission is to make careers better for everybody. It's quite a big mission, but we find it quite compelling to think about how we do that. And one of the ways in which we think we do that is by democratising development. So rather than limiting learning by a ladder, for example, or making something like coaching only available to the fortunate few, if you can find a way to take those skills that can support people with their self-development and make them available to everybody, you start to move towards that kind of mission about making careers better for everyone. And so coaching and coaches are brilliant, you know, I think I think if you're fortunate to have a coach and then amazing, but most people aren't. And so the more we can think about coaching being about an approach rather than just a person, the more we can start to unpack that skill to support people. And so that is what You Coach You is all about. It's not about replacing coaches, we love coaches. It's not about replacing the value of brilliant mentor or a career conversation with a manager. But it is about starting with yourself first so that you can get yourself unstuck and you don't make your development dependent on anybody else. And it also means that if you can increase your self-awareness and the insight into the actions that you can take, you can be much more specific about the support you need. So when you do have that conversation with the manager, or the mentor or the coach, you can be much clearer in the conversation, and then you can get more out of it, which I think is better for everybody. It's better for those people in the conversations and for the action you take for your development as well.

Joy Burnford: Yeah. And I think actually, I should be recommending your book, before we do any of our coaching and say, read this first before you have a coaching session. And it just gets it gets the sort of cogs whirring, doesn't it and thinking about what you really want to get out of it. We all can sometimes feel like we lack motivation, or we get stuck in a rut, what can we do to help ourselves? And I suppose specifically, what questions can we ask ourselves? I know in the book, at the end of your book, you've got your coach framework, which I think it's so simple, but so powerful. Yeah. So just perhaps tell me a little bit about some of the questions we could be asking ourselves.

Helen Tupper: Yes, I wonder whether we use the coach framework because that gets repeated quite a lot in the book, because we think it's an anchor, even though there are chapters on lots of different career conundrums, like time and resilience in relationships, is that they sort of all anchor towards pulling your reflections to get through the coach framework at the end. So let's take that scenario, someone who might feel a bit stuck in their career at the moment. Coach is an acronym. And so you start with C, which, which stands for clarity. So the question that you would ask yourself here is, you know, what is the ultimate problem I'm trying to solve? Or what is the opportunity I'd like to explore depending on kind of how you're feeling at that moment? Am I in an opportunity mindset? Or do I feel particularly challenged right now. And it might be someone saying, you know, I want to get myself unstuck, or I want to feel like I am progressing. Or I'd like to feel like I am growing, learning and developing more than I have in the last 12 months, whatever it is, but you do need to start specific, because otherwise, your mind can meander all over the place, you don't really help yourself when you're getting to action. So the first C for coach is all about clarity. The second is about options. So what are the options that you are aware of? So if I think about, okay, what I want to do is invest in my learning and development more this year than I did in the last. That's what I want to do, okay, options. I could go on a course I could get a mentor, I could join a learning community, I could start a podcast, I could experiment with some tools that I've read about in You Coach You, like get all your options down. And then when you think you're finished, don't stop. My best tip there is go, and what else could I do? And if I was Joy answering this question, what would Joy do, and just push yourself to come up with more options, because we tend to move on a bit too quickly and just with the first things that we've generated, and there are often better ideas below the surface, if you can think a bit longer about it. The A is for action. So what are the actions that feel most meaningful for you right now? Or what are the actions that are most effective for you to take forward? Because not every option are you going to act on so you know, pick the ones that feel effective. The C is for confidence, I tend to use a scale on this one. So those actions that I've identified for each of the actions, I think to myself on a scale of one to 10 how confident am I in taking that action? And sometimes you're like 10, out of 10 on it easy. Let's go. And some of it, I think, five out of 10, am I brave enough to ask Joy to be my mentor. I don't know that feels a bit hard and all those sorts of things. But the reason you want to ask yourself that question is because the H, the final letter is all about help. And what help do I need? So it's often if I'm a five on my confidence level, for example, you know, what help do I need to get to a seven or an eight or even a nine. And that can sometimes help you to be more specific about the support that you can sequence if you've worked your way through that framework. So I just find it a particularly helpful framework to unlock my thinking if I'm feeling stuck, or I want to uncover a few new insights about my development.

Joy Burnford: And actually, that leads us really nicely with the C for confidence into the fact that this podcast is all about confidence, The Confidence Conversation. So we do find that, I know confidence is a barrier for a lot of people, men and women. But we do from our research, we found that women do tend to struggle with confidence a lot more than men in a very generalist term. I wondered if this is something you've personally experienced in your career? And also what advice would you give to our listeners about dealing with a lack of confidence in the workplace?

Helen Tupper: So yes, it's definitely definitely something that I've experienced in my career. And it's something that I you know, we talk to people about on different programmes. So we call it having confidence gremlins, because I think it makes this really deep psychological challenge that you might have, sort of a little bit more manageable when we kind of frame it as a gremlin. And there are 10 gremlins that we see most frequently in the work that we do with men and women that we do see a skewing of women towards a couple of them, one of which I have in particular, one of the gremlins that I have had and has affected me in my career has been a need to be liked, or a need to show up as sort of nice and friendly and perpetually positive. And I am naturally quite a positive person. That's not really the issue. It's when you feel that you can't be anything other than that, you know, you can't be difficult, you can't be demanding or you can't challenge because then people might think I'm difficult and demanding and challenging. And that will be doom and gloom for my career. And we do see women skewing more to that gremlin than men. And I think when you look into societal expectations of how girls behave, like you know, be nice and be friendly, and all of those sorts of things, I kind of think, gosh, we are, we're setting that gremlin in quite early, I think into girls in a slightly different way than we might do to boys. And I'm very aware of with my children. And the way that that holds me back at work is that there have been times when I have wanted to raise an issue and I've maybe thought twice about it or not done it because I didn't want to be difficult. Or maybe when I've heard something in a meeting and I want to you know, inside me, I'm like, no, I don't agree, I disagree. But externally, I'm borderline nodding. And it's creating an internal sense of friction, it's also not changing some of the things that I think might need to change in the world of work around me. So confidence gremlins get in our way in all kinds, all kinds of different ways. And I think the first thing that we need to do is know you're not alone in having them, like everybody has beliefs that hold them back. It doesn't, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, it means you're a human being. But what we do need to do is understand well, what is that belief that's holding you back, because saying it's a lack of confidence, that's big, like we've got to sort of unpack confidence a little bit and identify the gremlin. So that's the first thing I think you've got to be aware of it. And we often talk about the importance of observing your gremlin in action. So for example, my need to be liked, or maybe someone else's fear of failure, or a fear that they're not good enough, or they don't know enough, it might not show up in every situation at work, it might show up in a specific meeting, or with a specific person, there's often triggers for your gremlin, it's not there, every minute of every day in every meeting in every way, there'll be some kind of trigger for it. And it's useful to know what your triggers are, because then the action that you take will be much more meaningful. So I can be quite difficult. My business partner, it’s not her that I have a challenge with it’s other people, so I don't need to test and experiment my gremlin, you know, hiding tools on her, it's those other meetings that I need to do it. And then the other thing that we talk about, there's a whole series of actions, I won't go to them now. But one of the things that I think is very helpful is to is to change the narrative that you tell yourself in that particular moment. So what effectively you're operating with is a limiting belief. So if I give you mine, for example, my gremlin is all about this need to be liked, the limiting belief and then the story it tells me is that Helen, if you ask a difficult question, people are going to think you are a difficult person. So don't ask that question. That is what it says to myself. It makes me smaller in that situation, because of the story I tell myself. And so what we need to do is reframe it from being a limiting belief that ultimately holds you back, to a limitless belief that will help you to move forward. So my reframe that I say to myself in that moment when I'm triggered, and I know that because I've gathered all that data is difficult questions create different outcomes. And so now whenever I'm in whenever I'm in that meeting, and I know what the meeting is, I know the conversation. I know the type of person because I know my triggers. What I very consciously say to myself, is oh, this is going to feel really hard Helen but ultimately difficult questions create different opportunities. And I’ve said it enough that I believe it, it doesn't mean it's easy, but it does mean it doesn't hold me back anymore.

Joy Burnford: And you might find that actually, people's estimation of you actually goes up rather than the other way.

Helen Tupper: Well, that's the thing about confidence gremlins as well Joy, we put ourselves on this really, really like high pedestal like someone who has a confidence gremlin about not knowing enough, for example, they think they have to know everything, pre-empt every question or every answer. But everybody else, they're completely forgiving of someone saying, well, actually, I don't know that yet. Let me go and have a look at it. Or I don't know, great question. I haven't got the answer. But they are like, wow, that's empowering.

Joy Burnford: That’s me, totally, that’s my big gremlin. So just before we finish, I'd love to talk very briefly about your three top tips for anybody who wants to reach a more senior role or become more successful in their career. I suppose we were going to touch a little bit on what does career success mean to you?

Helen Tupper: I think the first thing would be to have some form of vision. We talk about like purpose in progress. And I think a lot of the time our careers are work in progress as well. We learn more about ourselves the more things that we do. So I never really, I never really advocate people really fixing themselves to a future because I sometimes think that makes you quite blinkered to opportunities. I think having a vision for your future of what it might look like and feel like can give you a sense of direction without fixing you to a destination. So things that I've done before have been things like vision boards, I found that really useful, particularly when I couldn't articulate exactly what I wanted to do, which was fine, but I could visualise what I wanted my future to look like. And that gave me that sense of direction and that informs some of the decisions that I made, and that’s useful.

Joy Burnford: One word, we were talking about earlier, but having your word for the year, actually, you know, having that vision for the year even in one word is really lovely.

Helen Tupper: And I think it sometimes creates a bit of clarity. And when you've got lots of stuff going on in work and home, and having that vision or that word can just help you to connect things together a little bit more in a way that gives you a sense of control, because often squiggly careers might not feel fully in your control. So I would say that's the first thing, some kind of vision. The second I would say, is cultivate career curiosity. So we talked about the importance of possibilities rather than plans. So just be constantly exploring, don't only look at roles when you decided you want a new one, because it's a bit like looking at the housing market, when you think I need to move in the next few months and you're basically stuck with what's there. Whereas if you explore in advance, you might work out a new area that you hadn't considered or all this, and it's the same sort of thing for our career, just go get curious, what is that job like? What skills do you need? And then the last thing that I would say is like, invest in your career community, because so many of our opportunities wherever you want to go in your career, so many of our opportunities come through who we know and meet. And that's not you know, if you know any of that stuff on kind of strong ties and weak ties, it's not always the people that you work with everyday that know you really well, that will unlock those opportunities. Sometimes it's the casual conversation that you had with somebody, even on the school run, and you discover that you know, the same person and they make an introduction. And it's that openness to building a community around your career, and not creating an echo chamber. But just connecting with different people in different places, I think can create the opportunities that you're not even, you're not even able to predict because you don't know about.

Joy Burnford: Thank you. That's really helpful to me as well to have those top three tips. That's fantastic. If people want to find out more, where should they go?

Helen Tupper: I would say either amazingif.com, our website, there's loads of stuff on there, or Instagram if you like Instagram @amazingif and that's probably where we share most regularly.

Joy Burnford: Thank you so much. And we'll put a link in the show notes as well so people can access that there as well. And that’s it for this week. Thank you very much for listening and I’ll be back again soon with another Confidence Conversation. If you know anyone who might find this podcast useful, please do pass on the link and it would give me a real confidence boost if you could subscribe, rate and leave a written review (on Apple podcasts here or on Podchaser here). If you like what you’ve heard, sign up for updates where I’ll be sharing tips and notes from each episode and you can send in your ideas for future topics.

And remember you can get 15% off all virtual and in-person colour analysis sessions and other services at Gail Morgan Style when you reference this podcast. To book, call 01442 262696 or visit www.gailmorganstyle.com.

Thank you, and until the next time, bye for now.