#485 Why Thinking Together Boosts Team Performance

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Helen and Sarah explore how to help teams think better—together. They share simple but powerful tools you can use to encourage reflection, collaboration, and better decision-making in your team. Discover a practical matrix to help you choose the right thinking tool for your team—whether you need to improve performance or inspire new ideas. From “worry lists” to “borrowed brilliance,” you’ll learn how to create space for smarter, more intentional team thinking. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Intro: Welcome to the Squiggly Careers Podcast 00:43 Why We Struggle to Think as Teams 01:56 Who Are Your Thinking Partners? 02:18 Team Thinking Drives Team Performance 03:02 Principles for Better Team Thinking 07:38 Signal Thinking Activities in Your Team 08:46 Turning Thinking into Action via Experiments 09:43 The Team Thinking Matrix Explained 11:48 Idea for Improvement: Worry Lists 17:20 Idea for Improvement: What's Not Working (The "Knots") 23:30 Everyday Idea for Inspiration: Borrowed Brilliance 🎯 What You’ll Learn: - Why teams need more time to think (and how to make that time work) - 3 powerful principles for better collective thinking - Tools like “worry lists,” “what’s not working,” and “borrowed brilliance” - How to run quick team exercises - Ways to turn thinking into action—without overcomplicating it For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free careers tools https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 🏃‍♂️ Sign-up for our Squiggly Careers Skills Sprint https://bit.ly/skillssprint2024 📮 Sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action, a weekly summary of the latest squiggly career tools: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books ‘The Squiggly Career’ and ‘You Coach You’ www.amazingif.com/books/ http://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah.
0:03.4	And I'm Helen.
0:04.4	And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.
0:06.9	Each week we talk about a different topic to do with work and share some ideas and actions so that we can all navigate our squiggly careers without a bit more confidence and control.
0:16.7	And if you don't already know, every one of our episodes comes with a Podsheet.
0:20.0	So everything we're going to talk about today is going to be summarised. It is definitely worth you getting the pod sheet
0:24.2	today because we're going to go through a matrix. And I always think there is only so far you can do
0:29.7	like a matrix like over audio. So have a look at our website, amazing if.com. So you can get all that
0:36.1	information. And you can also sign up
0:37.8	for Squiggly Careers in Action there, which is our weekly newsletter where we pull all of our ideas
0:42.0	and tools and Squiggly support together for you. So today we're talking about how to help teams
0:47.1	think better together. And often I think one of the common complaints, if that's the right word,
0:53.6	but I think we all do complain about it a bit, is not having enough time to think.
0:57.8	Don't talk to anyone who's like, do you know what, I've just got so much time to think.
1:02.2	I'm like, curating.
1:03.3	Yeah, if anything, I need less time to think.
1:06.6	So I think it's something that we all feel like we'd like more of, but we often see it through
1:12.0	the lens of like I. How do like I have more time to think? And yet we spend most of our time
1:17.4	working in teams. So a slightly different question is like how do we have more time to think
1:23.2	together? And it sort of makes sense because when you think with someone else, you've got like
1:29.0	a bad thinking partnership. So your thinking will always be better because you're kind of
1:33.9	involving other people. Even when you do some of the thinking by yourself first, there's still a
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