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. This sprint is all about the skill of questioning.

And sometimes I think people just take questions as a skill as like as given like we all ask questions but actually

it is something that we can invest and improve as a skill for our squiggly careers and it is one that

when we do when we get really good at it it has lots of big benefits for our careers so a better

questions help us to understand ourselves more so increases our self- self-awareness. It also helps us to understand

other people too. It means that we're better able to get unstuck from situations that might feel

complicated or complex, lots of the things that we might find a bit messy in a squiggly career.

The ability to question ourselves helps us to sort of navigate through that. And it also means we

unlock new knowledge. Somebody once said to me in an interview actually, someone very senior at

Microsoft, we'll just have a good debate about learning and knowledge, which is great. Of course you

was great. I was like, this is going to be the right company for me. But I remember we were talking

about when you ask someone questions, you're creating space for new knowledge. It's almost in

that sort of unlocking that curiosity that you're allowing new knowledge to be formed. So, you know,

these are really big benefits. Awareness, getting unstuck, getting new knowledge are big,

big foundational things that enable us to succeed in Squiggly Careers. So our first idea for action here is a simple one, but one that sometimes I think we forget

or it's also easy to get wrong.

...