Are you feeling stuck in your career? Do you wonder if there’s a better way to navigate the modern work landscape?
The nature of work has transformed dramatically since the early 2000s. The Squiggly Career, a book by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, explores this shift. They argue that success in today’s job market requires five key abilities.
Read on to discover how you can thrive in the new era of squiggly careers.
Overview of The Squiggly Career
Since the early 2000s, the nature of work has changed greatly, and as a result, so has the nature of career paths. Factors like increased flexibility and access to opportunities due to the internet have changed how and why people work. It’s no longer the norm to stick to a single profession and company and climb the corporate ladder to achieve financial stability. Instead, people frequently move between professions and companies looking for a job that brings them passion and fulfillment.
However, navigating this new approach to careers requires a different skill set than what traditionally ensured success. The Squiggly Career, a book by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis, argues that success in this new era requires five abilities: unique talents, strong values, self-confidence, networking, and foresight.
Tupper and Ellis are not only coauthors of The Squiggly Career (2020) and You Coach You, but are business partners as well. They’re the founders of Amazing If, a company dedicated to helping people navigate squiggly careers, and hosts of The Squiggly Careers Podcast. Their TedX talk “The best career path isn’t always a straight line” has close to two million downloads and continues growing in popularity.
In this overview, we’ll explain why the nature of careers has changed, the five abilities you need to succeed amid these changes, and how to apply these abilities in your professional life.
The Changing Nature of Careers
According to Tupper and Ellis, modern workers are following nonlinear career paths rather than moving up the career ladder due to three main factors.
First, the type of work we do in our jobs is changing. This is because technological advancements have automated most repetitive tasks, meaning we now do different tasks and use different skills each day. Further, companies must constantly develop to stay afloat, requiring workers to be adaptable and have a broader range of skills than ever before. Finally, rapid change means organizations’ lifespans are too unpredictable for them to guarantee workers an internal ladder to climb—who knows if their jobs, or the company, will exist in the future?
Second, how we work is changing—employers are giving us more autonomy and less direction. To highlight this, the authors point out that fewer and fewer people are working nine-to-five, on-the-ground jobs. Instead, they’re being given the ability to work wherever they want with more flexible hours. This requires employees to take control of their career growth—without constant guidance from managers and peers in person, they must autonomously set their career goals and determine how to direct their time and attention to reach them.
Third, the authors explain that the reason we work is changing—rather than working for financial stability, we’re prioritizing jobs that make us feel passionate and fulfilled. Tupper and Ellis note that this is partially because people are living longer and therefore working longer—they want to enjoy the jobs they’re spending the majority of their life performing. They note that 48% of Baby Boomers and 30% of Millennials report prioritizing a job they’re passionate about over income or status. This leads many people to try numerous roles and professions throughout their careers.
Ultimately, the authors explain that these three main factors—the diminishing of structured career ladders, increased autonomy, and the drive for passion over money—have led people to abandon linear career paths. They explain that to succeed in a nonlinear career path, workers must develop five key abilities. We’ll discuss these abilities and how to put them into action.
Ability 1: Unique Talents
Tupper and Ellis explain that workers must develop and leverage their unique talents to reach peak performance. Unique talents, or super strengths as the authors call them, are not just your strengths but the things you’re best at and love doing. Leveraging your unique talents is crucial in a nonlinear career for two main reasons.
First, the authors say that leveraging your unique talents in your career makes you exponentially more productive and effective than those who don’t—this makes you a valuable and timeless asset in ever-changing organizations. Second, knowing your unique talents helps you identify valuable opportunities and make effective decisions with minimal employer direction—an opportunity is only worth pursuing if it makes use of your talents.
Second, research shows that leveraging your talents productively makes you happier; therefore, using your unique talents in your career will arguably make you happier and more satisfied with your job. This is crucial for those prioritizing passion over comfort.
Identify Your Unique Talents
According to Tupper and Ellis, the first step in leveraging your unique talents is identifying what they are. To do this, they recommend the following four-part exercise.
First, brainstorm 15-20 of your strengths. Then, the authors recommend writing down three weaknesses and three strengths you have that counter each weakness. It’s often easier to identify our weaknesses, and our weaknesses often parallel some of our greatest strengths. For example, a weakness may be organization but a parallel strength may be creativity—maybe you’re a scattered person, but that helps you think outside the box.
Second, the authors say to make a list of things you’re naturally gifted at. Then, ask three people with whom you have different relationships to provide a few words that describe you and an explanation behind each word—your gifts tend to stand out to others. Finally, compare the words and explanations from friends to the natural gifts and strengths you’ve listed and identify overlaps.
Third, after listing strengths that come naturally, the authors say to list those you’ve learned. To do this, consider your daily personal and professional tasks and responsibilities and the skills they require. For example, maybe you learned to cook by paying attention to details of recipes.
Finally, the authors’ last step to identify your unique talents is to select six strengths from the lists you’ve made so far that you’re exceptional at and want to explore more. Then, give each talent a 1-10 score on four factors: how successful you’ve been using the skill, how often you use it, how visible it is to others, and how happy using it makes you. Total your scores for each talent so you get a number out of 40—higher-scoring talents are the ones you should consider unique talents, especially the ones that score highest in happiness.
Leverage Your Unique Talents
The authors provide a few recommendations for leveraging your unique talents to benefit your career.
First, spend time on your unique talents—the majority of your time should be spent practicing and developing your talents while under a quarter of your time should be spent improving weaknesses that are hindering your talents. For example, if you’re a great written communicator but you struggle with speaking, spend most of your time on your writing but occasionally practice sharing your ideas verbally so you can strengthen your communication skills overall. Further, consider how you’re using your unique talents in your current role and how you can use them more. If your current job doesn’t use your unique talents, consider switching to one that does.
Second, look for new opportunities to develop your unique talents. One way to do this is to use them for personal projects, side jobs, or volunteer opportunities. You should also let others know about your talents and make them evident on social media sites like LinkedIn—when other people know your talents, you’re more likely to be offered valuable opportunities.
Ability 2: Core Values
The second ability Tupper and Ellis say workers must leverage to succeed in a nonlinear career is having core values that guide their actions. Core values are the most important things to you, and knowing what they are is crucial for a few reasons.
First, core values provide a simple decision-making system—if something doesn’t align with your values, it’s not for you. This will help you easily sift through opportunities so you can find what’s right for you. Further, making decisions with less deliberation allows you to more quickly move toward your goals and find a job you’re passionate about.
Second, having a strong commitment to your values will help you understand other people—how their decisions and actions are based on their commitment to their values. This will increase your ability to collaborate with others. Collaboration and decisiveness are both skills that make you a timeless asset in ever-changing organizations.
Identify Your Core Values
Tupper and Ellis explain that core values are the most important things in your life that you prioritize over all else. Therefore, you can have only three to five core values. Further, core values are universal. They’ll guide your actions and decisions in all areas of your life, whether personal or professional. The authors recommend following a four-part exercise to identify your values.
First, the authors say to consider all the jobs you’ve done in your life. How happy or unhappy did you feel in each one and why? Based on the best and worst job experiences you’ve had, what are three things you require to be happy and three things you want to avoid at all costs?
Second, evaluate your previous response and consider what’s most important to you about four factors: the people you work with, the roles you perform, the company you work for, and your work environment. Which factors are more or less important to you?
The third step of Tupper and Ellis’s exercise is to brainstorm a list of 10 traits that encompass the different concepts you’ve recorded in the previous steps. For example, if something important to you is being friends with your coworkers, you might want to write something like “authenticity.”
Finally, the authors say to identify your core values from the list of traits by weighing each trait against the others to identify which is more important. To start, compare trait one to trait two and mark a check next to the more important one. Then compare trait one to trait three and so on until you’ve reached trait 10. For round two, compare trait two to traits 3-10. Repeat the process for each trait until they’ve all been weighed against each other. At the end of the exercise, the traits with the most checks will indicate your core values.
Once you have your core values, the authors add, define exactly what they mean to you and what they require you to do. For example, you might define your core value of “genuine connection” as “relationships and environments where you can be your authentic self and speak your mind without feeling pressure to hold back or be something you’re not, and where others do the same.” This core value might require you to leave relationships and work environments where others or the organization are inauthentic, or where you feel pressure to censor your authenticity.
Leverage Your Values
The authors explain that identifying your values isn’t as simple as doing an exercise—you may realize over time that what you prioritize in real life differs from what you identified on paper. As such, you must regularly reflect on your daily life and how your core values play into it—how many of your core values can you remember off the top of your head and how often are they contributing to your life? If you find that one of your core values on paper isn’t a core value in real life, you should reevaluate.
Further, the authors recommend making the effort to integrate your values into your life—especially in areas that may stray from your values. The authors say that when decisions arise, you should use your values to guide your choices. For example, in prioritizing authenticity, you may have to decide between agreeing with someone to maintain peace or speaking your mind and risking conflict. Following your values would require you to speak your mind respectfully.
Ability 3: Self-Confidence
Tupper and Ellis’s third ability for succeeding in a nonlinear career is self-confidence—believing in your capacity to achieve your goals, acknowledging your success, and being resilient in the face of challenges. Self-confidence is crucial in non-linear careers for three reasons.
First, self-confidence inspires you to take action toward your goals with less deliberation, helping you forge your own path and achieve goals faster. Second, self-confidence helps you persevere when you encounter setbacks and challenges. Third, being confident in yourself inspires others to be confident in you as well, making you a valuable asset to teams and organizations.
Tupper and Ellis offer three main methods you can use to build your confidence.
Method 1: Overcome Limiting Beliefs
Tupper and Ellis’s first method for building your confidence is overcoming your limiting beliefs—thoughts that diminish your self-worth and hold you back from reaching your goals. For example, believing you can’t learn a hard skill or that others will always be better than you.
The first step in overcoming your limiting beliefs is identifying them. To do so, consider what you’re afraid of, what you want to do but don’t, and what negative thoughts you have about yourself. Then, ask yourself why you believe these things—for example, you don’t like talking to new people because you’re afraid they’ll reject you.
Next, Tupper and Ellis say you must face your fears and challenge your limiting beliefs to disprove them. For example, face your fear of talking to new people by finding someone new to start a conversation with. Most of the time, you’ll realize that your fear doesn’t manifest or that it’s actually not as bad as you thought. This will help you build confidence in yourself and overcome the things holding you back. Regularly challenge yourself to continue making progress.
Method 2: Acknowledge Your Success
The authors’ second method to build self-confidence is to acknowledge your successes. Many people struggle with self-confidence because we have the tendency to remember our failures more than our successes, therefore building a false negative track record for ourselves in our minds.
To counter this, the authors say you should start recording all your successes of the day—how you helped yourself, and others, in different contexts. Further, remember that success is subjective—rather than comparing yourself to others or an objective idea of success, consider what success means to you.
Method 3: Build a Support System
Finally, Tupper and Ellis argue that it’s crucial to have a solid system of supporters in order to build self-confidence. You should ensure your support system includes at least one person who can offer unconditional love (like a parent), one who can empathize with your circumstances, one who can give situational advice, and one who can give honest feedback.
Further, say Tupper and Ellis, ensure there’s balance in these relationships—don’t rely too frequently or heavily on someone. You also want to ensure that the relationship is somewhat mutual—that you or the other person isn’t expecting support without returning it. Failing to do these things can create dependent relationships that hinder autonomy.
Ability 4: Networking
Tupper and Ellis’s fourth skill for succeeding in a nonlinear career is the ability to network. Networking is building a social web of people who offer mutual benefits—they help you build your career, and you do the same for them. This can be by providing advice, mentorship, skills, other connections, and so on. Networking is important for three reasons.
First, strong networking skills help you to build meaningful relationships with people. This is important because having a smaller network of close connections who are willing to help you is more effective than a large network of loose connections that you can’t leverage. Second, your network will provide a diverse web of knowledge and perspectives that help you develop your career and branch into new territory. Third, networking helps you spread your name—the more that people know you, your goals, and your talents, the more opportunities will come your way.
Build Your Network
The authors provide a few recommendations to build your network.
First, be calculated when deciding who you build relationships with. You can only keep up with a certain number of people, so it’s crucial that the people you let into your network are highly valuable to you. To ensure your network is intentional, identify the skills and benchmarks you need to meet to achieve your goals and seek relationships with people who can help you.
One way to do this is by considering what you need to reach your goals in three areas: your current job, your future career, and your personal life. You should seek out people with the specific experience, knowledge, or connections that you need to progress in one or more of these areas. For example, if you’re interested in transitioning into a new industry for your future career, look for someone with experience in that industry who can give you advice or help you build more connections in that area.
Further, once you have a network, the authors note that it’s important to use it. One way to do so is to share your skills and interests with people, and ask if they have recommendations or connections that may be of use to you—even if they don’t in the moment, they’ll think of you if something does arise in the future and spread your name to others in relevant situations. This will attract more opportunities back to you. You can also start a side project that will help you develop your skills and ask one of your network members to help you.
Finally, write Tupper and Ellis, be sure to find ways for your network to benefit from you so the relationship is mutual. Sharing your skills is one way to do this—once they know your expertise, people can ask for assistance when it’s relevant. You can also directly ask people what you can do to help them.
Ability 5: Foresight
The authors’ final ability for succeeding in a nonlinear career is foresight—the ability to strategically envision your desired future and possible career paths so you can develop truly fulfilling goals in the present. These goals will be based on genuine interests rather than objective metrics of success (like a promotion) and will be enjoyable and fulfilling to work toward.
Having foresight in a nonlinear career is crucial for three main reasons. First, it allows you to plan a fulfilling career trajectory autonomously. Second, when you work toward an interest-based goal and enjoy the process, you’ll discover additional interests and meaningful opportunities along the journey. Third, when you’re focused on pursuing your genuine interests, you ensure that your decisions guide you toward a career you truly want—many people switch to equally unsatisfying jobs just to escape their current one.
We’ll discuss how to practice foresight by identifying possible career paths and developing the skills necessary to pursue them.
Develop Foresight
According to the authors, the first part of developing foresight is identifying the possible directions your career could go in. There are four directions you should consider: 1) the logical next step based on your current job, 2) a job you’ve thought about pursuing but made excuses not to, 3) the job you’d do in your dream world, and 4) a job that’s parallel to your current job—it’s a different industry or career path but uses your skills and strengths.
Further, the authors write, the most valuable possible career directions are those that promote the five abilities of nonlinear careers. To ensure the possible career direction will benefit you long term, consider the following: 1) How often will it have you practicing and developing your unique talents? 2) In what ways will it allow you to live your values? 3) How will it help build your self-confidence? 4) How will it help you use and give back to your network? 5) What future opportunities might it open up for you?
