Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen and you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast. This episode is part of our Skills Sprint series. We've recorded 20 episodes each less than seven minutes long that we hope we're going to help you to build some career development momentum. In every episode we talk about a squiggly skill, what it is and why it matters, share an idea for action each and give you a go-to guru and a podcast episode so you can learn more.

And we want you to turn your skills sprint into a learning streak.

And so for everyone who completes a 20-day learning street, we'll be offering you a free five skills to succeed in a Squiggly Career virtual workshop in September. If you post about your progress on social and taggers

at Amazing If and we'll be in touch to tell you more. And this sprint is all about the topic of

asking for help because we know it is a really important skill in a squiggly career because

nobody succeeds by themselves.

The more support we have from the people around us, the further we can go and the faster we can get there.

But lots of people struggle with getting the help that they need, me being one of them.

And there's all kinds of reasons for this.

Sometimes it's because people think that when they're asking for help, it's a sign of weakness. Sometimes it's because, and I think this is probably more me,

is because I have this sort of relentless desire to get it done myself. I'm like, if I just work

a bit harder and a bit longer I can get it done, and then I realize it's taken twice as long

it should have done, and it's not as good as it could have been. It's normally when I realise that I should have asked for help sooner. And sometimes it's because people don't want to be a bother.

There are all kinds of reasons why people find asking for help hard,

but it is such an important skill to help you be at your best in a squiggly career.

And Sarah, from your perspective, you don't find it as hard as I do to ask for help.

So, well, what are you doing differently? I don't know if I did anything differently.

I think I just know that I need help. I think, and I'm very happy to need help. I also think it's

useful to ask the question. How do you feel when you're asked for help? So Helen, if you were answering

that question, someone in our team or someone you've worked with before came to you and said, oh, Helen, I could really deal with your perspective or some help on. Like, generally, how does that make you feel?

Nice. I care. I care. And I want to help people. So whenever someone is confident I have to ask

for help, it makes me very comfortable to try and help them. And that's often described as the

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