#440 How to take initiative at work
Squiggly Careers
The Squiggly Career
5 • 809 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
Taking initiative often feels like a nice idea that people don't quite know how to action. In this week's podcast, Helen and Sarah talk about why it's a skill that matters for squiggly careers and practical ways to increase your opportunity to take initiative at work. They share 4 different ideas including the importance of focusing on minimum viable progress and why you need to know the what and own the how. You can find the PodSheet, PodNote and full transcript for the episode at https://www.amazingif.com/listen/
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen. |
| 0:05.1 | And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. |
| 0:08.1 | Each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share some ideas and actions that we just hope will help all of us navigate this squiggly career with some confidence and control. |
| 0:18.9 | And every one of our episodes comes with other resources to help |
| 0:22.2 | you learn. So we've got pod sheets, they're one page summaries that you can print off and go through. |
| 0:27.4 | We've got pod notes. So they've kind of got swipable insights just to make stuff stick. And then |
| 0:31.7 | we've also got Pod Plus, which is a weekly conversation with our Squiggly Career community. And all of |
| 0:36.8 | that is free for you. |
| 0:37.7 | And all of the links that you need to get access to that stuff are either in the show notes |
| 0:42.1 | or on our website, amazing if.com. So our topic for today, we've had some interesting chats about |
| 0:48.1 | this one, trying to get a head around it and make it useful. But the topic is how to take initiative |
| 0:53.0 | at work. And I guess the context for this conversation |
| 0:56.9 | was just Sarah and I thinking about you know what's really useful where do people make the biggest |
| 1:00.7 | difference and our insight was that initiative is something that really helps but as we started to |
| 1:06.3 | explore the topic there's not a lot of easy solutions we could find to help people with it. So we've |
| 1:12.6 | had to work really, really hard to try and help you with it. So let us know, let us know if we've |
| 1:16.4 | managed to achieve that. But let's start with what initiative actually is. What do we mean by |
| 1:21.1 | initiative at work? Well, we think this is about taking a proactive and confident action without looking for approval from |
| 1:29.9 | other people. I guess a more simpler definition might be it's about starting and suggesting |
| 1:35.6 | stuff. It's sort of that being that person who brings something into a conversation or |
| 1:42.5 | creates energy that makes something happen. |
| 1:44.9 | It's sort of taking the lead even when you are not the leader, |
... |
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