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Squiggly Careers

#496 4 Team Habits That Are Holding You Back (and What to Do Instead)

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Business, Management, Careers

4.9838 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

🥇 Sign up for the sprint here: https://bit.ly/41jasYO This week, Helen and Sarah shine a light on the unhelpful habits that teams often slip into without even realising it. From meetings that drag on autopilot to one-to-ones that don’t deliver what you need, these routines can waste time, reduce energy, and stop people from working at their best. In this episode, they share the four most common team traps and practical alternatives to try instead. You’ll hear how to spot unhelpful routines, reset them without blame, and create new habits that help your team feel more energised, inclusive, and effective. ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Announcement 01:02 Introduction 05:15 Why teams get stuck in autopilot 08:20 Trap #1: Repeating the same roles in meetings 15:40 Trap #2: Defaulting to recurring meetings 21:58 Trap #3: One-to-ones that lack focus 29:45 Trap #4: Unhelpful communication and collaboration 38:37 How to experiment and reset as a team 42:30 PodSheet and next steps 🎯 What You’ll Learn 4 common team habits that hold people back Why recurring meetings and default roles reduce effectiveness Alternatives to traditional 1:1s that create more value How to reset team communication for clarity and collaboration Simple experiments you can try together to build better ways of working For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 🏃‍♀️ Join our next Skills Sprint: https://bit.ly/skillssprint2024 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://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

I kind of think a team is like a puzzle.

0:01.7

I think sometimes we have to put the puzzle pieces together and go, what's the picture?

0:06.1

Sometimes that pictures are just a bit messy, and sometimes you realise the whole piece missing.

0:09.7

I think we have to have these conversations quite regularly, or there are gaps that we just can't see,

0:15.1

and there are problems that we're not aware of.

0:18.7

We all get stuck in status quo, acting on autopilot and doing things that you would never design from scratch.

0:26.0

Like how are we going to work together as a team? How are some of these things going to work?

0:28.9

Most teams probably make a decision at some point about using a particular platform and not talking to each other out of hours.

0:36.2

Then what happens over like a three to six month period,

0:38.9

a sort of bad habits creep in.

0:41.0

And we're messaging each other on WhatsApp at 9 o'clock

0:44.5

or emails where the action that you need from someone isn't clear

0:48.0

or where actually the emails are really, really long.

0:52.1

Hi, I'm Sarah.

0:53.4

And I'm Helen.

0:56.1

And this is a squiggly careers podcast.

0:59.9

Every week we pick a different topic to do with work and your career.

1:04.5

And we share some ideas and some actions so that we can all navigate these squiggly careers, the ups, the downs, the opportunities, the obstacles, just with a bit more

1:09.4

confidence, clarity and control.

1:11.9

And before we get onto what we're going to talk about this week, I just want to let you know

1:14.9

about a pretty important milestone for the podcast, which is that we are very close to hitting

1:19.1

500 episodes, which you may not care about. But what is useful to know about this milestone is

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