May 20, 2026 • 24 mins
Helen Tupper, co-author of Learn Like a Lobster, shares tips for building a resilient career
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a slightly longer one
part of the series where I interview fascinating people about
how they take their days from great to awesome and
any advice they have for the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So today I am delighted to welcome Helen Tupper to
Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Helen is the co author with Sarah Ellis of the
new book Learn Like a Lobster. So Helen, welcome to
the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, I run a company called amazing If. We have
a mission to make squiggly careers better for everybody, which
is really the idea of non linear becoming normal, which
has been talked about for a while. But what we
tend to find is that often individuals don't have the
skills to make that possible. At what are the skills
I need to manage a squidly career and organizations aren't
(01:02):
always set up to support them. So in our work,
we work with large companies all over the world to
support skills and structures for squidly careers. And along the way,
we've learned a lot about learning, which led to our
third book, Learn Like a Lobster.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And I'm sure everyone listening to this is like, what
on earth a lobster like?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So why a lobster?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, I'm going to say why learning first, because I
think that is the most important thing. So on this
sort of journey on squiggly careers, what we have seen
is that the people that are most adaptable at work,
the people that are most resilient to change, the people
that create the most opportunities for their career, are the
people that are most able to learn at work. And
it's sort of an easy thing to say, but it
(01:44):
is not an easy thing to do because people say, well,
I kind of get I need to learn, but I
don't have the time to do it. I find it
too hard to work out when in my week I'm
supposed to add on learning when I've already got so
much to do, and there's so much to learn my
organization outside of my organization that's just so overwhelming. And
so we've got this sort of tension between well, the
(02:05):
people who are most set up to succeed are the
people who are most able to learn, but the majority
of people are finding it too hard to do, and
so we want to solve that tension. And what we
recognize is that sometimes we need role models. Sometimes we
need these people who just know how to do it brilliantly.
And unfortunately there aren't loads of people at work who've
learned brilliantly today, but there are lobsters. And what lobsters
(02:28):
do brilliantly is they grow. They are inspiring and how
they grow, so first of all, they never stop growing.
They have something called indeterminate growth, so they grow and
grow and grow until the day the lobster is no
longer here for whatever reason. And the way that never
ending growth is enabled is they have to shed their shell.
So their shell becomes a constraint to their growth. They
(02:48):
recognize that, they feel that tension, and rather than stay
safe in the in the shell, they shed it. And
that is a really hard, vulnerable process for the lobster.
They takes a lot of energy and when they shed
that shell, they're very exposed. They look like jelly, like
a jelly like lobster. And it's high risk but high
reward because the reward is a new shell grows back,
(03:09):
and that shell is bigger and better and stronger than
the one that they shed. And they do this on repeat.
And then the third fact is that the shell that
they shared does not go to waste. They are very,
very resourceful. They eat the shell that they shed to
fuel the next phase of their growth. So they basically
evolved this self sustaining system for growth. And so what
(03:29):
we are saying to people is you can evolve a
self sustaining system for learning where you never stop learning
because you learn as you go, rather than waiting for
a day for learning to happen. You learn in your
hardest moments when you are vulnerable. You know when you
fail or when you get that feedback that makes you go,
oh that's hard, dear. But that's when you learn the most,
(03:51):
because that's when the lobster growth the most, and you
lead your own learning like the lobster fuels its own
growth by being adaptable, by being a brilliant beginner, by connecting,
by sharing all these things that are in our control.
And so that's why we've written the book because we
want people to succeed in scribby careers. Learning is a
very helpful way to do it, and lobsters are our
way into looking at learning differently.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I love it. I love it well. I love that
you talk about the time there.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I mean I would say this is a time management podcast,
and sure a lot of people hearing this, so like, yes,
I need to find time to learn, and you suggest
that that's not the right way to look at it. Instead,
we need to be learning from the things we are
already doing. So I'm wondering if you could talk me
through like a typical workday, what would that look like
to learn from things you are already doing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, so I guess framing here is rather than looking
at learning as something that has to be added on,
you are looking to add it in. And so the
obvious ways that you add this in are things like meetings.
Lots of people are meetings, So how do we add
more learning into meetings? In conversations we're having conversations as
a recurring part of our working week. Well, those I
(05:00):
would also say, spot the situations, the situations you're in
regular So, first of all, if we're going to add
it in, I would think about meetings, conversations, situations in
an average week, and then some simple ways that you
can add more learning in One is experiments like experiments
are they're like ready made for learning because they an
experiment is not about does it work or doesn't it work?
(05:23):
Like it's not it's not really that, it's what do
you learn from doing something differently? And so we take
these conversations, these meetings, these situations and we deliberately do
something different but with the desire to learn from it.
Now that could look like agendas. So one of the
things we write in the book we write about decision
discussion agendas. These have massively changed my meetings. I've learned
(05:46):
so much more from doing this. So traditional agenda, if
you even have an agenda, so many meetings without agendas,
but and then you kind of get into a different
question about why we're having this meeting. But let's imagine
there's an agenda. Traditional agenda tends to look like a
list of things that you and we should talk about, Laura,
maybe with aob at the end, just to cover stuff
that we forgot to say a bit at time at
(06:07):
the end, and it's not particularly focused, and people just
kind of work through it, try and fit it in
a decision discussion agenda. I think is a better use
of time. Now the point is experiment and learn whether
it works for you. But the way that this works
is at the top of the agenda, you have what
are the decisions that we need to make today, and
having those at the top is a real focus for
(06:27):
people's attention. And also if there are any decisions, you
might question, do we need to have this meeting? Is
this something we could just do over Microsoft teams for example.
So you have the decisions at the top, and then
you have the discussion items. But what makes this different
is you frame the discussion items as a question that
our brains are very attracted to question and we almost
can't help but think about a question. So rather than
(06:50):
just a list of event X, project, why you know
budget B, you would say, how do we make next
month's event the most memorable the team have ever attended?
How do we operate the plan on a ten percent
budget cut? And you frame it as a question. And
(07:10):
that is even better if you can send that out
in advance, if you can be super organized, because then
people think ahead of the meeting and you have a
higher quality conversation rather than people trying to work out
what the intent of budget B actually is when you
see it on agenda. And so there are so many
experiments that you can do in meetings that you are
already in and the point is to run the experiment.
(07:33):
You can do it secretly, you can do it openly,
but run the experiment and then to reflect, because it's
when you reflect that you really log the learning loads
of You can literally ask yourself what did I learn?
But my favorite simple reflection tool is to do what so?
What now? What so? What was the experiment? So what
did I learn the affection? And now what am I
(07:54):
going to do? And if you compare like a very
simple experiment that's already in the work of your doing,
with some very fast reflection, you will automatically learn much
more from your work.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Absolutely all right, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Helen Tupper.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well, I am back talking with Helen and.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Tupper, who is the co author of the book Learn
Like a Lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more at work,
and advance your career.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So, Helen, you also talk about.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Learning and hard moments when we are shedding our shells,
and I think this is somewhat difficult because a lot
of people get very sort of defensive in moments of challenge.
So how can you sort of manage yourself to be
still open to learning in situations where where it's clear
that something has gone awry.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, yeah, we know that people find this hard. So
in the book there is the idea of learning as
you go, learning hard moments lead your own learning. And
we've got a profiling tool that about nearly eight thousand
people have taken now and it helps to see what
lobs the day are most like. And the lobster that
people are most least to be like is the learning
hard moments lobster like. People find this really hard, So
(09:09):
just to make it more tangible, I think some very
common hard moments at work are feedback feels exposing like
the lobster. And failure, Oh feels dreadful, no one, no
one loves it, and people flippantly say, oh, you know,
you can learn from failure. It feels horrible, It feels
and met people avoid it. They stay safe because this
(09:30):
feeling of failure is so awful, and so we need
to we need to make it easier. There's so many
different ways. Maybe I'll just talk about to one connected
feedback one connected to failure. So let's start with failure.
First of all, failure, I think is too big a
starting place when we're thinking about learning from failure. I
think the word failure is too If you are in
a situation where you feel like you've failed and you
(09:51):
haven't developed the muscle to learn from failure, it's too
hard to start there. So the way we tell people
to develop this is to start smaller. And a small
failure is also known as a mistake, So it's much
easier to start learning from your mistakes than it is
to learn from your failures. Also, you have more mistakes.
We all have lots of mistakes, so there's lots of
(10:11):
sort of ready made learning waiting for us. So mistake
moments are something that you can do on your own,
but I think it's even better if you can do
this in a team environment. So I'll talk about how
we do it, and we use Microsoft Teams for the
way that my company runs. We have a channel on
Microsoft Teams called mistake Moments. I saw someone on my
team foot one in today actually, and mistake moments is
(10:33):
part of our language and our company. So whenever you
make a mistake. The rule is within twenty four hours
of you making the mistake, you have to share it,
have to share it, and so you have to stop
worrying about it, stop turning this sort of you know,
molehill into a mountain in your mind, and you have
to share it and that gets the weight off you
(10:54):
and it puts it into an environment where other people
can support and everyone can learn. So the process the
mistake moments, you share what the mistake was. So, for example,
a mistake some one made in my team today was
we were in a meeting that we weren't as prepared
as we should have been for and we both reflected
afterwards that that was a mistake moment. And so she's typed,
this is a mistake moment, this is what happened. Then
(11:15):
you have to type what did I learn? Okay, so
you know I learned to gather some more information in
the emails that I've got and make sure that was
shared various things. And then what you get, like I said,
is you get the support the individual has processed the
moment and turned it into learning, and then that learning
is shared beyond the individuals that everyone gets better and
so you can do mistake moments on your own, but
(11:37):
I think the power of the learning is better when
you're doing it in teams. So that's a really really
useful way builds up the learning muscle so that when
a failure happens, you've almost got that trigger of I
need to share, I need to reflect, rather than the
fear of the failure. So that's one. And on the feedback.
Was so much with feedback that I could talk about,
(11:58):
but I think one of the things that we see
a lot where our response gets in the way of
learning from feedback is when someone gives you feedback. So
if you gave me feedback, now, maybe I wasn't expecting it.
What a lot of people do is rush to respond
because they want to show you that they're going to
do something that they're slightly panicking. They're just rushing to
(12:19):
respond to feedback. And what we want people to do
is to pause for thought, to create space between what
someone has shared with you and how you are intentionally
going to respond to it, because often the response of
the default and then the learning doesn't happen. The learning
happens in the pause. So pause the thoughts. I'm hearing
what you're saying The first thing is we call it think,
(12:41):
feel doom. So the first thing is like, where do
I think this person is coming from? Are they trying
to help me? Have they got my best interest at heart?
Are they having a bad day? Like? Are they just
a super critical person? Like? Where is this person coming from?
That's the think. The second is the feel that how
do I feel about this? Feedback probably awares a bit
of psychology around name it to tame it. So often
(13:04):
that default response is emotional, whereas if you can just process,
like how am I feeling, Oh, I'm surprised that Laura
said that about me, or I'm feeling embarrassed that we
didn't show up in the way I want to do
in that meeting. That if you can name the emotion,
you can take back a bit of control, and that
means the do becomes intentional, like what do you actually
want to do? Maybe what I want to do is say,
(13:26):
appreciate you sharing that with me, Laura, I'd like to
go away and reflect on this and come back to you.
Or maybe what we want to do is say, oh,
I wasn't aware of that. I might want to ask
you a question, but that becomes an intentional response rather
than default, and so it's just mistake moments and think
feel do are both ways that we can just learn
a little bit more from situations that can feel quite hard.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Absolutely, So let's talk about I mean giving other people feedback.
I loved one of the framings you had in is
using the language of brilliant because that if you're giving
like positive feedback somebody instead of just a good job,
which is hard to do anything with, talk about what
this brilliant because.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, it looks like So I think lots of people
confuse praise as feedback. And I'm not saying praise is bad.
Like we all we all need a stroke every now
and again when particularly when it's hard. It's nice for
someone to say, oh, great job, love that podcast. You
know that was great, that we need that. But in
terms of learning, like feedback that fuels learning, praise doesn't
(14:28):
really do it. It creates an emotion, but it doesn't
necessarily lead to learning. So if you can start with praise,
so I can say, oh, I love that podcast episode, Laura,
I can start with that, but for learning to happen,
I need to give you a bit more detail. And
so brilliant because it's like this connecting statement that I
think if you use it, it can almost become habitual.
(14:49):
So I might say, oh, I love that podcast day, Laura.
It was brilliant because I thought you really asked the
questions that I was thinking about and that I didn't
think anyone else would ask. And so you're like, oh,
so it's the quality of my questioning. That's that's the
thing that's really connected. And it's just a forcing function
for adding a little bit more detail and data, and
(15:11):
that is the thing that people can learn the most from.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
So let's talk about leading your own learning. You had
a lot of sort of cute names of practices on
these things, and that makes it a little more memorable.
I will give you the feedback of that. It's brilliant
because it makes it more memorable. So for instance, like
beginner bingo, Yeah, what is beginner bingo?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Okay? So so yeah, in leader o Learning, we have
these seven different ways that you can lead your own learning.
And the essence really is like take control, do not
wait for learning to happen, create it for yourself. That's
what this part of book's all about. And so beginning
is one of the ways that we can create more
learning for us, but it can often feel hard for
people to do because it can again it's like that
(15:59):
hard moments, so they can quite vulnerable to be a beginner.
You know, if you're an expert in one area suddenly
to do something you've not done before and other people
see that you don't know what you're doing, it's quite
it's quite exposing. It can also be quite overwhelming because
going from knowing nothing to becoming knowledgeable that can be
a wide gap. Like, for example, I've started gardening this year.
It is a very wide gap that I'm currently on
(16:21):
from knowing nothing about gardening to maybe growing something this year.
And so beginner bingo is about breaking it down. So
you want to take the goal, which is let's say
gardening because it's easy to get our heads around, or
you could take a AI because it's probably more relatable. But
I want to be proficient at using AI in my
work by the end of the year. That is a
big goal for learning. So we want to break it down.
(16:43):
And so I actually use AI quite often to do
beginner bingo for me. So I'll say, come up with
twelve small firsts for how I can use AI more
at work. I might give it a bit more context,
Like I run a company, we do career development, I
might give it a little bit more insighting to me,
and so then I will end up with these twelve
small firsts and beginn a bingo is basically saying every
(17:05):
week or once a day, if you're if you're that committed,
you're just going to tick one off. You're just going
to try and create bingo. And the idea of like
ticking it off, breaking it down, creating some momentum. I
always think like doing creates dopamine, and beginner bingo is
like every time you tick one off, you're kind of
creating that that buzz in your brain that makes you
want to do more. And if you do twelve small
(17:27):
firsts on your beginner Bingo chart, you've actually logged quite
a lot of learning and it's a lot less so
overwhelming than just saying I want to get good at
you know, whatever, whatever the thing is.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, making it a game can always make anything feel
more like you're making progress. Well, we're going to take
one more quick ad break and then I'll be back
with more from Helen Tupper. Well, I am back talking
with Helen Tupper, who is the co author of the
book Learn like a lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more
(17:58):
at work in advance your career. So Helen, I always
like to ask my guests a bit about their own
personal productivity practices. Do you have any sort of morning
routine that you think helps make your days better?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Well, I'm an early riser, much to my business partner's
mockery so late she's a late night version, and I'm
an early riser. But it basically just makes me have
very long days with lots of messages along them. But
I typically get up about half past five and I
do that. I think it's when I'm at my best. Also,
it's when no one else in my family is around.
I feel like I get this one hour window where
(18:33):
I can think and sometimes I'll journal, and it's quite sweet.
My nine year old daughter has started journaling, so it's
quite sweet. We'll kind of do that together. I feel
like she's motivated by that now, so sometimes I journal.
I will try to read in the morning. I find
that it's very hard for me to fit reading in
later in the day because it always seems to be
competing with my work, Whereas in the morning, before work
(18:56):
gets started, I, yeah, I can do that. And it's so.
I'm in the UK and the mornings are getting lighter
at the moment. So I sat on my sofa this
morning and I was reading a lovely book on my sofa,
like watching the light come up, and it just sets
me up. I feel like there is something in how
I feel. It's a bit of an achievement because I
know that was a choice. It was a choice to
(19:18):
start my day like that. So I feel a sense
of achievement. And I also feel like work hasn't dominated everything,
like work is quite dominating. I love what I do,
but I feel like at that moment, I made a
choice to do something different and I'm sort of better
because of it. So the.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, this sounds like a lovely little morning routine.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I'm curious with your business partner and co author, given
that you guys do have such different schedules. What is
the process of co authoring something or working together like
when you keep different.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
How Oh my gosh, Well, we are three books in
and this process worked the best. So I think the
first time our business wasn't as big. The first time
we've writ in a book is in twenty eighty and
so Honestly, we had more time, and so I don't
think we we really experienced that much of an issue
with it. We sort of luxuriated in the writing process.
(20:08):
And then our second book came out during the pandemic,
and that that was hard because it was all virtual,
so it had its kind of you know, it had
to be very scheduled as all virtual. This this book
was hard because our business has got a lot busier,
and so it was competing writing the book was competing
with a time and there was definitely a point attention
where I'm a I'm quite a speedy worker. I suppose
(20:31):
like I have a task, I want to get it done.
I'll write ten thousand words and I'm like, onto the next.
Whereas my business partner is highly thoughtful, highly reflective. She
would take my ten thousand words and say only one
thousand is good enough. And so there were definitely these
moments of I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Very she wasn't telling you it was brilliant, because she
was like, those thousands are great, these nine thousand need
to go.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
But as I'm a very efficient person, and so then
you get into this, oh, this is time waiting, and
she sees it as additive to the book, so it
was definitely put attention. So we actually got to a
point when we were writing where we decided to sort
of like just draw back a moment and think, where
do we both add the most value to this and
where is our energy? And basically we decided to reshape
(21:16):
how we were doing the book. So Sarah would do
the first draft, so we'd work out the key messages together,
the structure. Then she would do the first draft and
she would for a week. For a week, she would
write that draft because she enjoyed that process. She's very
good at going deep. I ran the business, and then
we both critiqued each other's work. So at the end
of the week, I would take all of her work.
I'm a fast reviewer, I'm a quick thinker, I'm a
(21:38):
quick builder, so I could add value there. I had
much more energy. She could quickly kind of look at
what I've been doing in the business, give a bit
of steers, share some ideas for things. And for about
six weeks we completely changed our roles in order to
do our best work. Because our bigger picture was like
what's best for the business, and that is that we
can write a good book and we can run a
good business. And so we've got good at We got
(22:00):
good at doing that with each other.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Now figure out what your best at and run with that.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So Helen, I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a date from great
to awsome?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
It's very random, but it is taking many of my
days from great to awesome. I've got chickens of court.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Chickens, chickens, honest labsters, chickens.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yes, yes, I'm probably not gonna put the tree together.
I've got chickens. I live in a forest and I
decided to get chickens and I just went I just
went outside just before this to get some fresh eggs.
I've been in my office all day and the chickens
flew to me, and you know, you know when you
have you have a meeting and like, oh, I'm not
sure about that meeting, and then you go outside and
some chickens fly to you, Like this is great, I
(22:44):
can go back. I take that energy into whatever else
I'm doing that day. So yeah, seeing them in the
morning part of the morning routine, Like I go and
feed them. They're very happy to see me, and you know,
of course they are just feed them.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So they think you're brilliant because you're bringing them to feed.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I mean it's a very it's a very fickle source
of affection, but it is quite nice in a day
to just start and end your day with some flying chickens.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yes, I love it. Well, well, hopefully the work that
it takes is worth it for them.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah. So Helen, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Then you can find me on LinkedIn. Just helen'suppa on LinkedIn,
regular share career tips and support there, and also the
podcast is Quickly Careers Podcast excellent.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback about
this or any other episode, you can tell me it's
brilliant because but you can also just give me feedback
in any other form you would like. You can always
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:15):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good Morning, This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's episode is going to be a slightly longer one
part of the series where I interview fascinating people about
how they take their days from great to awesome and
any advice they have for the rest of us.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So today I am delighted to welcome Helen Tupper to
Before Breakfast.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Helen is the co author with Sarah Ellis of the
new book Learn Like a Lobster. So Helen, welcome to
the show.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Thank you so much. I'm excited to talk. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit
about yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, I run a company called amazing If. We have
a mission to make squiggly careers better for everybody, which
is really the idea of non linear becoming normal, which
has been talked about for a while. But what we
tend to find is that often individuals don't have the
skills to make that possible. At what are the skills
I need to manage a squidly career and organizations aren't
(01:02):
always set up to support them. So in our work,
we work with large companies all over the world to
support skills and structures for squidly careers. And along the way,
we've learned a lot about learning, which led to our
third book, Learn Like a Lobster.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
And I'm sure everyone listening to this is like, what
on earth a lobster like?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So why a lobster?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Well, I'm going to say why learning first, because I
think that is the most important thing. So on this
sort of journey on squiggly careers, what we have seen
is that the people that are most adaptable at work,
the people that are most resilient to change, the people
that create the most opportunities for their career, are the
people that are most able to learn at work. And
it's sort of an easy thing to say, but it
(01:44):
is not an easy thing to do because people say, well,
I kind of get I need to learn, but I
don't have the time to do it. I find it
too hard to work out when in my week I'm
supposed to add on learning when I've already got so
much to do, and there's so much to learn my
organization outside of my organization that's just so overwhelming. And
so we've got this sort of tension between well, the
(02:05):
people who are most set up to succeed are the
people who are most able to learn, but the majority
of people are finding it too hard to do, and
so we want to solve that tension. And what we
recognize is that sometimes we need role models. Sometimes we
need these people who just know how to do it brilliantly.
And unfortunately there aren't loads of people at work who've
learned brilliantly today, but there are lobsters. And what lobsters
(02:28):
do brilliantly is they grow. They are inspiring and how
they grow, so first of all, they never stop growing.
They have something called indeterminate growth, so they grow and
grow and grow until the day the lobster is no
longer here for whatever reason. And the way that never
ending growth is enabled is they have to shed their shell.
So their shell becomes a constraint to their growth. They
(02:48):
recognize that, they feel that tension, and rather than stay
safe in the in the shell, they shed it. And
that is a really hard, vulnerable process for the lobster.
They takes a lot of energy and when they shed
that shell, they're very exposed. They look like jelly, like
a jelly like lobster. And it's high risk but high
reward because the reward is a new shell grows back,
(03:09):
and that shell is bigger and better and stronger than
the one that they shed. And they do this on repeat.
And then the third fact is that the shell that
they shared does not go to waste. They are very,
very resourceful. They eat the shell that they shed to
fuel the next phase of their growth. So they basically
evolved this self sustaining system for growth. And so what
(03:29):
we are saying to people is you can evolve a
self sustaining system for learning where you never stop learning
because you learn as you go, rather than waiting for
a day for learning to happen. You learn in your
hardest moments when you are vulnerable. You know when you
fail or when you get that feedback that makes you go,
oh that's hard, dear. But that's when you learn the most,
(03:51):
because that's when the lobster growth the most, and you
lead your own learning like the lobster fuels its own
growth by being adaptable, by being a brilliant beginner, by connecting,
by sharing all these things that are in our control.
And so that's why we've written the book because we
want people to succeed in scribby careers. Learning is a
very helpful way to do it, and lobsters are our
way into looking at learning differently.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I love it. I love it well. I love that
you talk about the time there.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
I mean I would say this is a time management podcast,
and sure a lot of people hearing this, so like, yes,
I need to find time to learn, and you suggest
that that's not the right way to look at it. Instead,
we need to be learning from the things we are
already doing. So I'm wondering if you could talk me
through like a typical workday, what would that look like
to learn from things you are already doing.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, so I guess framing here is rather than looking
at learning as something that has to be added on,
you are looking to add it in. And so the
obvious ways that you add this in are things like meetings.
Lots of people are meetings, So how do we add
more learning into meetings? In conversations we're having conversations as
a recurring part of our working week. Well, those I
(05:00):
would also say, spot the situations, the situations you're in
regular So, first of all, if we're going to add
it in, I would think about meetings, conversations, situations in
an average week, and then some simple ways that you
can add more learning in One is experiments like experiments
are they're like ready made for learning because they an
experiment is not about does it work or doesn't it work?
(05:23):
Like it's not it's not really that, it's what do
you learn from doing something differently? And so we take
these conversations, these meetings, these situations and we deliberately do
something different but with the desire to learn from it.
Now that could look like agendas. So one of the
things we write in the book we write about decision
discussion agendas. These have massively changed my meetings. I've learned
(05:46):
so much more from doing this. So traditional agenda, if
you even have an agenda, so many meetings without agendas,
but and then you kind of get into a different
question about why we're having this meeting. But let's imagine
there's an agenda. Traditional agenda tends to look like a
list of things that you and we should talk about, Laura,
maybe with aob at the end, just to cover stuff
that we forgot to say a bit at time at
(06:07):
the end, and it's not particularly focused, and people just
kind of work through it, try and fit it in
a decision discussion agenda. I think is a better use
of time. Now the point is experiment and learn whether
it works for you. But the way that this works
is at the top of the agenda, you have what
are the decisions that we need to make today, and
having those at the top is a real focus for
(06:27):
people's attention. And also if there are any decisions, you
might question, do we need to have this meeting? Is
this something we could just do over Microsoft teams for example.
So you have the decisions at the top, and then
you have the discussion items. But what makes this different
is you frame the discussion items as a question that
our brains are very attracted to question and we almost
can't help but think about a question. So rather than
(06:50):
just a list of event X, project, why you know
budget B, you would say, how do we make next
month's event the most memorable the team have ever attended?
How do we operate the plan on a ten percent
budget cut? And you frame it as a question. And
(07:10):
that is even better if you can send that out
in advance, if you can be super organized, because then
people think ahead of the meeting and you have a
higher quality conversation rather than people trying to work out
what the intent of budget B actually is when you
see it on agenda. And so there are so many
experiments that you can do in meetings that you are
already in and the point is to run the experiment.
(07:33):
You can do it secretly, you can do it openly,
but run the experiment and then to reflect, because it's
when you reflect that you really log the learning loads
of You can literally ask yourself what did I learn?
But my favorite simple reflection tool is to do what so?
What now? What so? What was the experiment? So what
did I learn the affection? And now what am I
(07:54):
going to do? And if you compare like a very
simple experiment that's already in the work of your doing,
with some very fast reflection, you will automatically learn much
more from your work.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Absolutely all right, We're going to take a quick ad
break and then I'll be back with more from Helen Tupper.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Well, I am back talking with Helen and.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Tupper, who is the co author of the book Learn
Like a Lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more at work,
and advance your career.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
So, Helen, you also talk about.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Learning and hard moments when we are shedding our shells,
and I think this is somewhat difficult because a lot
of people get very sort of defensive in moments of challenge.
So how can you sort of manage yourself to be
still open to learning in situations where where it's clear
that something has gone awry.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, yeah, we know that people find this hard. So
in the book there is the idea of learning as
you go, learning hard moments lead your own learning. And
we've got a profiling tool that about nearly eight thousand
people have taken now and it helps to see what
lobs the day are most like. And the lobster that
people are most least to be like is the learning
hard moments lobster like. People find this really hard, So
(09:09):
just to make it more tangible, I think some very
common hard moments at work are feedback feels exposing like
the lobster. And failure, Oh feels dreadful, no one, no
one loves it, and people flippantly say, oh, you know,
you can learn from failure. It feels horrible, It feels
and met people avoid it. They stay safe because this
(09:30):
feeling of failure is so awful, and so we need
to we need to make it easier. There's so many
different ways. Maybe I'll just talk about to one connected
feedback one connected to failure. So let's start with failure.
First of all, failure, I think is too big a
starting place when we're thinking about learning from failure. I
think the word failure is too If you are in
a situation where you feel like you've failed and you
(09:51):
haven't developed the muscle to learn from failure, it's too
hard to start there. So the way we tell people
to develop this is to start smaller. And a small
failure is also known as a mistake, So it's much
easier to start learning from your mistakes than it is
to learn from your failures. Also, you have more mistakes.
We all have lots of mistakes, so there's lots of
(10:11):
sort of ready made learning waiting for us. So mistake
moments are something that you can do on your own,
but I think it's even better if you can do
this in a team environment. So I'll talk about how
we do it, and we use Microsoft Teams for the
way that my company runs. We have a channel on
Microsoft Teams called mistake Moments. I saw someone on my
team foot one in today actually, and mistake moments is
(10:33):
part of our language and our company. So whenever you
make a mistake. The rule is within twenty four hours
of you making the mistake, you have to share it,
have to share it, and so you have to stop
worrying about it, stop turning this sort of you know,
molehill into a mountain in your mind, and you have
to share it and that gets the weight off you
(10:54):
and it puts it into an environment where other people
can support and everyone can learn. So the process the
mistake moments, you share what the mistake was. So, for example,
a mistake some one made in my team today was
we were in a meeting that we weren't as prepared
as we should have been for and we both reflected
afterwards that that was a mistake moment. And so she's typed,
this is a mistake moment, this is what happened. Then
(11:15):
you have to type what did I learn? Okay, so
you know I learned to gather some more information in
the emails that I've got and make sure that was
shared various things. And then what you get, like I said,
is you get the support the individual has processed the
moment and turned it into learning, and then that learning
is shared beyond the individuals that everyone gets better and
so you can do mistake moments on your own, but
(11:37):
I think the power of the learning is better when
you're doing it in teams. So that's a really really
useful way builds up the learning muscle so that when
a failure happens, you've almost got that trigger of I
need to share, I need to reflect, rather than the
fear of the failure. So that's one. And on the feedback.
Was so much with feedback that I could talk about,
(11:58):
but I think one of the things that we see
a lot where our response gets in the way of
learning from feedback is when someone gives you feedback. So
if you gave me feedback, now, maybe I wasn't expecting it.
What a lot of people do is rush to respond
because they want to show you that they're going to
do something that they're slightly panicking. They're just rushing to
(12:19):
respond to feedback. And what we want people to do
is to pause for thought, to create space between what
someone has shared with you and how you are intentionally
going to respond to it, because often the response of
the default and then the learning doesn't happen. The learning
happens in the pause. So pause the thoughts. I'm hearing
what you're saying The first thing is we call it think,
(12:41):
feel doom. So the first thing is like, where do
I think this person is coming from? Are they trying
to help me? Have they got my best interest at heart?
Are they having a bad day? Like? Are they just
a super critical person? Like? Where is this person coming from?
That's the think. The second is the feel that how
do I feel about this? Feedback probably awares a bit
of psychology around name it to tame it. So often
(13:04):
that default response is emotional, whereas if you can just process,
like how am I feeling, Oh, I'm surprised that Laura
said that about me, or I'm feeling embarrassed that we
didn't show up in the way I want to do
in that meeting. That if you can name the emotion,
you can take back a bit of control, and that
means the do becomes intentional, like what do you actually
want to do? Maybe what I want to do is say,
(13:26):
appreciate you sharing that with me, Laura, I'd like to
go away and reflect on this and come back to you.
Or maybe what we want to do is say, oh,
I wasn't aware of that. I might want to ask
you a question, but that becomes an intentional response rather
than default, and so it's just mistake moments and think
feel do are both ways that we can just learn
a little bit more from situations that can feel quite hard.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Absolutely, So let's talk about I mean giving other people feedback.
I loved one of the framings you had in is
using the language of brilliant because that if you're giving
like positive feedback somebody instead of just a good job,
which is hard to do anything with, talk about what
this brilliant because.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, it looks like So I think lots of people
confuse praise as feedback. And I'm not saying praise is bad.
Like we all we all need a stroke every now
and again when particularly when it's hard. It's nice for
someone to say, oh, great job, love that podcast. You
know that was great, that we need that. But in
terms of learning, like feedback that fuels learning, praise doesn't
(14:28):
really do it. It creates an emotion, but it doesn't
necessarily lead to learning. So if you can start with praise,
so I can say, oh, I love that podcast episode, Laura,
I can start with that, but for learning to happen,
I need to give you a bit more detail. And
so brilliant because it's like this connecting statement that I
think if you use it, it can almost become habitual.
(14:49):
So I might say, oh, I love that podcast day, Laura.
It was brilliant because I thought you really asked the
questions that I was thinking about and that I didn't
think anyone else would ask. And so you're like, oh,
so it's the quality of my questioning. That's that's the
thing that's really connected. And it's just a forcing function
for adding a little bit more detail and data, and
(15:11):
that is the thing that people can learn the most from.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
So let's talk about leading your own learning. You had
a lot of sort of cute names of practices on
these things, and that makes it a little more memorable.
I will give you the feedback of that. It's brilliant
because it makes it more memorable. So for instance, like
beginner bingo, Yeah, what is beginner bingo?
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Okay? So so yeah, in leader o Learning, we have
these seven different ways that you can lead your own learning.
And the essence really is like take control, do not
wait for learning to happen, create it for yourself. That's
what this part of book's all about. And so beginning
is one of the ways that we can create more
learning for us, but it can often feel hard for
people to do because it can again it's like that
(15:59):
hard moments, so they can quite vulnerable to be a beginner.
You know, if you're an expert in one area suddenly
to do something you've not done before and other people
see that you don't know what you're doing, it's quite
it's quite exposing. It can also be quite overwhelming because
going from knowing nothing to becoming knowledgeable that can be
a wide gap. Like, for example, I've started gardening this year.
It is a very wide gap that I'm currently on
(16:21):
from knowing nothing about gardening to maybe growing something this year.
And so beginner bingo is about breaking it down. So
you want to take the goal, which is let's say
gardening because it's easy to get our heads around, or
you could take a AI because it's probably more relatable. But
I want to be proficient at using AI in my
work by the end of the year. That is a
big goal for learning. So we want to break it down.
(16:43):
And so I actually use AI quite often to do
beginner bingo for me. So I'll say, come up with
twelve small firsts for how I can use AI more
at work. I might give it a bit more context,
Like I run a company, we do career development, I
might give it a little bit more insighting to me,
and so then I will end up with these twelve
small firsts and beginn a bingo is basically saying every
(17:05):
week or once a day, if you're if you're that committed,
you're just going to tick one off. You're just going
to try and create bingo. And the idea of like
ticking it off, breaking it down, creating some momentum. I
always think like doing creates dopamine, and beginner bingo is
like every time you tick one off, you're kind of
creating that that buzz in your brain that makes you
want to do more. And if you do twelve small
(17:27):
firsts on your beginner Bingo chart, you've actually logged quite
a lot of learning and it's a lot less so
overwhelming than just saying I want to get good at
you know, whatever, whatever the thing is.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, making it a game can always make anything feel
more like you're making progress. Well, we're going to take
one more quick ad break and then I'll be back
with more from Helen Tupper. Well, I am back talking
with Helen Tupper, who is the co author of the
book Learn like a lobster, accelerate your growth, achieve more
(17:58):
at work in advance your career. So Helen, I always
like to ask my guests a bit about their own
personal productivity practices. Do you have any sort of morning
routine that you think helps make your days better?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Well, I'm an early riser, much to my business partner's
mockery so late she's a late night version, and I'm
an early riser. But it basically just makes me have
very long days with lots of messages along them. But
I typically get up about half past five and I
do that. I think it's when I'm at my best. Also,
it's when no one else in my family is around.
I feel like I get this one hour window where
(18:33):
I can think and sometimes I'll journal, and it's quite sweet.
My nine year old daughter has started journaling, so it's
quite sweet. We'll kind of do that together. I feel
like she's motivated by that now, so sometimes I journal.
I will try to read in the morning. I find
that it's very hard for me to fit reading in
later in the day because it always seems to be
competing with my work, Whereas in the morning, before work
(18:56):
gets started, I, yeah, I can do that. And it's so.
I'm in the UK and the mornings are getting lighter
at the moment. So I sat on my sofa this
morning and I was reading a lovely book on my sofa,
like watching the light come up, and it just sets
me up. I feel like there is something in how
I feel. It's a bit of an achievement because I
know that was a choice. It was a choice to
(19:18):
start my day like that. So I feel a sense
of achievement. And I also feel like work hasn't dominated everything,
like work is quite dominating. I love what I do,
but I feel like at that moment, I made a
choice to do something different and I'm sort of better
because of it. So the.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, this sounds like a lovely little morning routine.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I'm curious with your business partner and co author, given
that you guys do have such different schedules. What is
the process of co authoring something or working together like
when you keep different.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
How Oh my gosh, Well, we are three books in
and this process worked the best. So I think the
first time our business wasn't as big. The first time
we've writ in a book is in twenty eighty and
so Honestly, we had more time, and so I don't
think we we really experienced that much of an issue
with it. We sort of luxuriated in the writing process.
(20:08):
And then our second book came out during the pandemic,
and that that was hard because it was all virtual,
so it had its kind of you know, it had
to be very scheduled as all virtual. This this book
was hard because our business has got a lot busier,
and so it was competing writing the book was competing
with a time and there was definitely a point attention
where I'm a I'm quite a speedy worker. I suppose
(20:31):
like I have a task, I want to get it done.
I'll write ten thousand words and I'm like, onto the next.
Whereas my business partner is highly thoughtful, highly reflective. She
would take my ten thousand words and say only one
thousand is good enough. And so there were definitely these
moments of I'm.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Very she wasn't telling you it was brilliant, because she
was like, those thousands are great, these nine thousand need
to go.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
But as I'm a very efficient person, and so then
you get into this, oh, this is time waiting, and
she sees it as additive to the book, so it
was definitely put attention. So we actually got to a
point when we were writing where we decided to sort
of like just draw back a moment and think, where
do we both add the most value to this and
where is our energy? And basically we decided to reshape
(21:16):
how we were doing the book. So Sarah would do
the first draft, so we'd work out the key messages together,
the structure. Then she would do the first draft and
she would for a week. For a week, she would
write that draft because she enjoyed that process. She's very
good at going deep. I ran the business, and then
we both critiqued each other's work. So at the end
of the week, I would take all of her work.
I'm a fast reviewer, I'm a quick thinker, I'm a
(21:38):
quick builder, so I could add value there. I had
much more energy. She could quickly kind of look at
what I've been doing in the business, give a bit
of steers, share some ideas for things. And for about
six weeks we completely changed our roles in order to
do our best work. Because our bigger picture was like
what's best for the business, and that is that we
can write a good book and we can run a
good business. And so we've got good at We got
(22:00):
good at doing that with each other.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Now figure out what your best at and run with that.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So Helen, I always ask my guests, what is something
you have done recently to take a date from great
to awsome?
Speaker 3 (22:12):
It's very random, but it is taking many of my
days from great to awesome. I've got chickens of court.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Chickens, chickens, honest labsters, chickens.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yes, yes, I'm probably not gonna put the tree together.
I've got chickens. I live in a forest and I
decided to get chickens and I just went I just
went outside just before this to get some fresh eggs.
I've been in my office all day and the chickens
flew to me, and you know, you know when you
have you have a meeting and like, oh, I'm not
sure about that meeting, and then you go outside and
some chickens fly to you, Like this is great, I
(22:44):
can go back. I take that energy into whatever else
I'm doing that day. So yeah, seeing them in the
morning part of the morning routine, Like I go and
feed them. They're very happy to see me, and you know,
of course they are just feed them.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
So they think you're brilliant because you're bringing them to feed.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I mean it's a very it's a very fickle source
of affection, but it is quite nice in a day
to just start and end your day with some flying chickens.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
Yes, I love it. Well, well, hopefully the work that
it takes is worth it for them.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah. So Helen, where can people find you?
Speaker 3 (23:14):
Then you can find me on LinkedIn. Just helen'suppa on LinkedIn,
regular share career tips and support there, and also the
podcast is Quickly Careers Podcast excellent.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, Helen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback about
this or any other episode, you can tell me it's
brilliant because but you can also just give me feedback
in any other form you would like. You can always
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In
the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
to making the most of our time.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(24:15):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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