Skills Sprint: How to Learn From Feedback (Even When It’s Uncomfortable)

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is Day 2 of the Learn Like a Lobster skill sprint, and today Helen and Sarah focus on one of the hardest - and most important - career skills: how to give and receive tough feedback. Learning doesn’t just happen after the difficult moment has passed - some of the most powerful development happens while things feel uncomfortable. In this episode, Helen and Sarah explore how to learn in the hard moments — particularly when feedback feels awkward, emotional, or risky. 🦞 Join our Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://bit.ly/4oZzJ3F 🦞 Pre-order Learn Like A Lobster: 🇺🇸PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn 🇬🇧 Amazon UK - https://amzn.to/3KcRZaR ⏱️ Timestamps (00:00) Lobsters grow in hard moments (02:00) The fear of asking, giving & receiving feedback (08:15) The “say the hard thing” framework (05:55) Organisational silence (06:54) A real feedback conversation (09:12) Inspiration & 24hr action 🎯 What You’ll Learn Why tough feedback moments are powerful learning opportunities A practical framework for navigating difficult conversations How speaking up unlocks learning for individuals and teams 📚 Resources Mentioned Say the Hard Thing Scenario Planner - https://www.saythehardthing.ai/ Margaret Heffernan on Organisational Silence - https://heffernanm.substack.com/p/the-silence-is-deafening Sophie Williams on challenging the unquestionable - https://www.amazingif.com/listen/progression-with-sophie-williams/ Learn Like a Lobster Profiler: https://www.learnlikealobsterprofiler.com/ 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 Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://bit.ly/4oZzJ3F 📮 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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm Helen. And this is day two of our squiggly careers sprint. We hope you had some fun,
0:06.1	knowing your notifications and starting to collect some data for your development. And today we're
0:11.0	going to be diving into learning in hard moments. So this links to the fascinating feature
0:16.8	lobsters have, which is that they grow the most when they shed their shell.
0:21.9	So I think we're so used to seeing pictures of lobsters with their very beautiful shelf.
0:26.7	And what actually happens is that that shell becomes a constraint to their growth.
0:31.1	And so they break out of their shell.
0:33.5	It is an energy zapping process.
0:35.5	They leave that old shell behind and they have this period of vulnerability.
0:40.3	They're kind of like a little jelly like, almost like see-through.
0:44.0	There's quite a lot of risk in this moment.
0:46.1	But there is also a lot of reward because what happens is that shell that they shed can grow back.
0:51.7	And when it does, it is bigger and stronger than it was before.
0:56.0	And we think this is the same for our learning. We think there are moments in our careers,
1:01.2	which are shell shedding, where we become vulnerable. We feel at risk. And these moments feel
1:07.6	difficult for people in terms of their development. But they are the moments when we can learn at the most. So that's what we want to encourage you to do today.
1:14.6	So it's sort of hard and worth it is always my conclusion here. And the thing that we really
1:19.7	recognise is when we were doing a lot of research on this and talking to lots of our community,
1:24.6	people do know that hard moments have lots of learning, but they tend to wait until
1:30.5	after the hard moment. So then you've got to look back. You've probably missed out on some of the
1:35.1	learning from that moment. So what we have really challenged ourselves to think about is like learning
1:39.7	in that hard moment. So during a hard time, so moving beyond just being in like make it through
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AmazingIf, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of AmazingIf and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.