#593 No Regret Skills: How to Get Better at Adaptability

Sarah Ellis (0:00)

Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper (0:01)

And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis (0:01)

And this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast, where every week we borrow some brilliance and turn that curiosity into useful action for you and your career.

Helen Tupper (0:10)

And today's episode is part two of our No Regret Skills mini-series.

We were honestly, the honest story here is we were going to do it as one episode, and then we realized actually, we got carried away with decision-making. I'm so excited about developing and teaching each other some No Regret Skills that it's probably worth its own episode. So in last week's episode, I talked about the No Regret Skill of decision-making, and I borrowed a bit of brilliance from a poker player called Annie Duke and applied it to our career. And today it's Sarah's turn and the No Regret Skill that she's going to be focusing on is adaptability.

Sarah Ellis (0:45)

So adaptability, why did I choose this, my No Regret Skill? Well, one, I can hear people talking about it a lot at the moment. So actually last week, we did talk about, you know, that kind of trade off between like hot skills, like what is almost like trending right now versus No Regret Skills that kind of go beyond that. So, you know, there's an interesting dilemma here. Like is, does this go beyond just of the moment? I felt like it did. And the reason for that is I was looking at the World Economic Forum work again around skills and actually they don't use the word adaptability, but they just use three words that sort of mean adaptability.

So they say resilience, flexibility and agility.

Helen Tupper (1:27)

Oh yeah, the agility word often.

Sarah Ellis (1:28)

Yeah. And I, do you know what? I nearly went for agility instead of adaptability, but I was like, actually, no, I do think adaptability feels consistently useful. I liked this definition. I was playing around with like, we're actually using Claude with trying to get to a really simple definition of what is this skill. And it's the one that I liked the most that was sort of a bit half me, half Claude.

The skill of changing...

Helen Tupper (1:53)

What would that be? Claude. Claude-dera?

Sarah Ellis (1:56)

I don't know.

Yeah, so the definition I liked was the skill of changing how you think or act when things change. So the skill of changing how you think or act, or I guess it could be think and act, when things change.

Helen Tupper (2:13)

I quite like the thinking part, like thinking agility or adaptability. We often think about it, I don't know, it's like changing the action that you take.

Sarah Ellis (2:21)

Yeah, and sometimes I think it might be about thinking.

I think the better you are at this, the more well-equipped you are in a squiggly career to navigate ambiguity. So you just don't know what you don't know, work through challenges when not all the information is clear or even known. One of the things actually we talked about when we talk about adaptability briefly in Learn Like a Lobster, is this adaptability paradox, which is that the moment where we often need to be the most adaptable, is when we're the least adaptable. And in lots of ways, that does make sense, because you need to be really adaptable when things change at the last minute, we're under time pressure, it feels really stressful. So you know when you're like, of course, that's when you're likely to be most fixed, because it's also hard. But that's also when it's most useful. And one of the examples that has always really stuck with me, is the difference between flexibility and adaptability.

And that is the idea of flexibility is, you're in a situation where maybe something's changed. And if you're flexible, you were going to take one tool from a toolbox, a hammer, and you're like, oh, I need to be flexible here. So I'm going to switch up the hammer for a spanner. You can tell I do zero DIY. I feel like they're real tools.

Helen Tupper (3:38)

Talking to me about sport.

Sarah Ellis (3:39)

Yeah, I was like, that feels right. So you're like, but you're still using the same toolbox, be like, I've switched up the tool. I've been flexible about the tool that I use to do this job. Whereas adaptability is knowing that you need a new tool that isn't in that toolbox. You know, like you need something different. So I think it feels harder, more like it's a more sophisticated, more nuanced skill.

The other reason I picked it is I always get a bit frustrated with these really massive skills that everyone says are really important, but no one ever breaks down the specifics of like, what is it? And if you're telling me it's really important, I think you've got to help people with, well, what does good look like? What does it mean to make to make progress in this area?