Hi everyone and welcome to the squiggly careers podcast. I'm Sarah Ellis and I'm Helen Tupper.

And we're here to help you with all the ins and outs of work and careers which seem to be getting increasingly squiggly as every week goes by.

And this week we're talking about memorable managers. And we know that managers have a really big

impact on how we feel at work, the work that we do. There's lots of research and studies that say

about 70% of our engagement at work is impacted by the person that we work for, which I always

think feels like a massive responsibility if you're a manager.

So we thought what better way to approach this topic than to invite two of our memorable managers from our career to join us for today's conversation.

So I invited Sarah Warby, who was my manager at Sainsbury's.

She was on the board of Sainsbury's.

And she also managed me when we started

Amazing If as a side project. And I invited James Tipple, who is my manager when I was at Virgin.

And actually, it's interesting, I think. It was the same time that Sarah was being managed by

Sarah. Not confusing. I know. So there were both our managers when we started Amazing If. And I think

it's quite interesting, actually, that they are the two memorable managers that we went to at such a pivotal moment in our careers when we were working for them and like enjoying our jobs but also started our business.

And I think when we first thought about doing this episode, we were like, oh, there's some funny stories to share, quite a fun kind of part of our lives with lots of different things

going on. So, for example, I really remember telling Sarah I was pregnant. I was basically

being very, very sick, and I'd got neurovirus, and it was all really dramatic. And I sort of rang

out of the blue, I think it was like 10 o'clock on a sunday night i don't know what i was

thinking i don't know why i didn't think i could just not wait till the next day but you know when

you just like have lost all sense of what's happening and i think i was really panicking and i really

trusted sarah i just like i think i just got a ring her and so bless it out of the blue on a Sunday night she got a phone call from me going I've got norovirus I'm really

sick oh and I'm pregnant it's like that's not what you need to hear from someone is it and I'd like

...