Hi, I'm Helen and I'm Sarah and you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast and this episode is part of our Squiggly Skills Sprint series where we've recorded 20 episodes. Each of them are less than seven minutes long to help you build some career development momentum. In each episode, Sarah and I are going to talk about a squiggly skill, what it is and why it

matters. We're going to share an idea for action from each of us, give you a go-to guru and a podcast

episode so that you can listen and learn a bit more. And we really, really want you to turn this

squiggly skills sprint into your own learning streak. And for anyone who lets us know how they're getting on and who

completes the 20 day streak, we can't prove that, so we trust you. But if you tag us that you've

done the sprint, you've completed the streak, then what we will do is we'll get in touch with you

and we will invite you to a free five skills to succeed virtual workshop that Sarah and I are going

to be running in September so we can help you dive even deeper into the world of squiggly careers. All you've got to do is tag at Amazing If

in any of your social posts and then we'll be in touch. In this skill sprint, we're talking about

listening. And I always find listening is an interesting skill because I think we feel like we are

listening all the time as part of our working week.

But it's one of the few skills where we overestimate our capability.

So I think I'm an eight out of ten listener.

A fly on the wall observes me for the week.

And in reality, I'm maybe more like a five or a six.

And that's because I think active listening is really hard to do because it means listening

with your full attention being 100% present.

You're not thinking about what are you going to respond with, the question you're going to

ask, how do you make sure your voice is heard?

And I think often it's a learnt behaviour in lots of organisations where we feel like our value is based on how much we say, not how much we listen.

And when I say that an organisation, you always get loads of people kind of nodding along.

So you feel like that's how you have to contribute is by talking rather than listening.

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