Unprofessionalism
What does it really mean to be professional?
For generations, professionalism has been associated with competence, composure and control. But many of the unwritten rules we follow at work were built for a different world, one that asked us to hide uncertainty, suppress emotion and prioritise appearance over connection.
Each week, Dr Myriam Hadnes, behavioural economist, facilitator and founder of workshops.work, sits down with people who've questioned those rules. Their stories start with a professional risk. Few set out to be disruptive. Most simply reached a point where the conventional way of working no longer served them or the people around them.
Together they unpack the risks they took: admitting they didn't know, showing grief at work, challenging authority, asking for help, dressing differently, changing careers, trusting others, leading in ways they'd never seen modelled.
This podcast doesn't ask you to reject professionalism, or treat authenticity as some ideal to reach for. It’s about judgment: Which professional norms help us collaborate, lead and build trust? Which ones create distance between people? And how do we recognise the difference?
If you've ever felt the gap between who you are and who you think work wants you to be, this podcast invites you to look again. Not every professional rule needs breaking. But every one is worth questioning.
Unprofessionalism
030 - The Only One Who Had Any Fun with Rob Evans
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This week's professional risk - inspired by Rob: Walking into the room without pretending you already know the answer.
Description
Most of us learnt early that being taken seriously means being serious. So we bring gravitas into the room and leave the warmth outside, because humour feels like a gamble: it might land, or it might cost us the contract, the promotion, the credibility we've spent years building. Safer to perform the professional and save the human for after hours.
In 1996, Rob Evans walked into an interview with twenty German engineers at Lufthansa, convinced he had no chance of winning the contract. So he stopped performing and started having fun. What happened in that room — and what the engineers admitted afterwards — changed how he worked for the next three decades. This is an episode about the professional risk of being warm.
This episode invites you to reflect on:
- Whether your own humour at work is exposure or armour — warmth makes you vulnerable, while sarcasm keeps you safely hidden behind a target.
- What playing it safe actually protects: the outcome, or your excuse when it fails.
- What your body has been trying to tell you while you were busy enduring.
Over to you!
How much fun did you have at work yesterday — and whose game are you playing if the answer is none?
About the guest
Rob Evans has spent decades designing and facilitating large-scale strategy and transformation processes for organisations around the world. His work combines systems thinking, dialogue, large group facilitation and deep human curiosity. Rather than positioning himself as the expert with answers, Rob has dedicated his career to helping groups discover answers that none of them could have found alone.
Links to learn more about Rob Evans:
What happens if we did tear off the mask of professionalism and actually risk showing up for real? I'm your host. You're unhappy. And this is an professionalism.
SPEAKER_01I'm an American, right? Why would you pick an American to be your quality consultant? And they said, well, to be honest, we would rather have picked a German. But of all the ones we interviewed, you were the only one who had any fun. Whatever we think professional means, it's probably somebody else's game. Probably somebody else's game. What if it were your game? What would that be like?
SPEAKER_03Wouldn't that be cool? Bob, it's so nice to have you back. Welcome.
unknownThank you.
SPEAKER_03I just start with the invitation for you to share a story when you have been unprofessional.
SPEAKER_01Is it okay if it's a story in a professional setting when I was somewhat semi or even unprofessional?
SPEAKER_03Oh, this would be a beautiful story.
SPEAKER_01Okay. All right. The year is uh 1996. I had just moved over to build up the European operations for a US-based consulting company that was focused on total quality management. Shortly after I got there, my boss said to me something like, Rob, we're in some uh financial difficulties here. If you need any money over there, sell something. Total. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I moved my family to the UK and I'm cut off. Well, not completely cut off, but yeah, you get them you get the message. Okay. So I got an invitation out of the blue to come talk to the engineering group at Lufthansa. A guy has worked with them, had heard about me doing some other things, and uh they invited me to present TQM with the possibility of being their total quality management consultant. And I went, all right, the odds of this playing out are very small. So basically I said, So you're an airline, right? Okay, you get me a ticket, and I'll see you in Hamburg. And so we did. I walk into a room. The 20 guys heading up Lufthansa Technik, Lufthansa's engineering group, are seated in a the usual U-shaped table, and I come in with my little briefcase full of overheads. Remember overheads? Oh my goodness. I had overheads and a flip chart and a marker, and I do my song and dance, and I'm doing my thing. And uh I was kind of like lighthearted because it seemed so unlikely. I wanted to get to know these guys. Who are you guys? Uh, you run a wonderful airline, you're superior engineers. What what's with you? So I do my thing, and then they say, uh, Herr Evans, would you please step out of the room? Okay. I'm on the hall for maybe 10 minutes, and they invite me back in. And in that very German way, they're all rapping on the table, which is applauding me. And they said, Herr Evans, we have decided you will be our total quality management consultant. I just started laughing. I said, Okay, I need to ask you a question. Why would a great German airline want to pick an American? You know, I'm an American, right? Why would you pick an American to be your quality consultant? And they said, Well, to be honest, we would rather have picked a German. But of all the ones we interviewed, you were the only one who had any fun. And like I had no idea, I had no idea that was a criteria. And apparently they didn't either. But there was something about the light-heartedness of it that allowed them to overcome some of their own bickering. German companies love to bicker, they had their own internal debate about what are we going to do, what should we do, boom, boom, boom. So there was something about the humor that helped them uh come to an agreement. And weirdly, an agreement about me. And so we did. And I worked all throughout the company. We had a great project, uh, great results, and that put the company on the map in Europe, and from that we were able to build out a great company. So I don't know that it was strictly unprofessional, but the the light-heartedness is certainly not what you would expect from a professional interview with engineers, with German engineers.
SPEAKER_03And I would be What have I got to lose?
SPEAKER_01What have I got to lose?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I would be curious to to learn more about that. Um, how conscious you were of the did you take a conscious risk? Were you aware of the lightheartedness? Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, that's it's hard for me not to be lighthearted. So that is the risk you get when you invite me in there. So is it risky? Uh yeah. I mean, human humor doesn't always work. And cross-cultural humor has more of a chance of failing than otherwise. What makes it less of a risk for me? So maybe it's not a risk, maybe we need to find something scarier. But what makes it less of a risk for me is uh uh warmth and heart. Now that alone is unprofessional. Um, to come uh exactly as in the as the uh English saying goes, with your heart on your sleeve, but to be willing to be warmly humorous rather than caustically or sarcastically uh humorous, I think is more of a risk. Sarcasm is safe.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Let's make fun of that guy over there. Okay, but then when is it my turn for you to make fun of me when I'm over there? That's the downside to it. And and warm humor is just warm humor. You know, like our conversation. Do they know we have conversations before this starts? Which probably I'm gonna like you can let them know. I'm gonna br I'm gonna break the third wall here and let them know. We had a conversation before we start. And uh the idea of warmth and heart, I really think is is the essence of the human. So if if if unprofessional is roughly defined at being more human than otherwise in a professional setting, I just made that up. But that sounds like it's what you're talking about. Are there risks in that? Totally. Absolutely. I mean, because then if it doesn't work or you're rejected, it can land a little harder. A little, a bunch of stuff can bounce off the armor unless you take the armor off. And it bounces off you. And that's just a different deal.
SPEAKER_03So the light-heartedness showing a part of yourself that is truly you. Yeah. And then the rejection is the rejection of you and not the rejection of a professional version of yourself.
SPEAKER_01It's it's not the little the hand in the puppet. It's not the little puppet version that I that I uh would otherwise uh, you know. Yeah. Here, hello. I'm here to talk about total quality. Um the combination of humor and uh being willing to follow my own curiosity seems somehow unprofessional in as it's mostly defined. What makes you say that? Professionals have mastered, well, I don't know. Let's let's let's talk about it. Professionals think they're on the scene because they've mastered some craft or body of knowledge or a technical skill, and they're getting paid for that. So, what do you mean you don't know what to do? I'm paying you to know what to do, uh, is the dilemma many consultants find themselves in. And the dilemma consulting finds itself in, and why I love what I do as opposed to that, is it's based on curiosity and discovery. What I do is based on curiosity and discovery, which can be very unnerving for a client when I'm so confident we'll find an answer and I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is, but I know together we're gonna find that answer. One, because we have to, and two, because we brought the right people together.
SPEAKER_03Would you say that to a client that you don't know the answer yet, but you're sure that you'll find it?
SPEAKER_01Totally. Oh, absolutely. I'd say, look, I don't know the answer. We got to put together a room of people out of which the answer will emerge. I know how to get us there, and I know how to hold the room together when people want to bail because they don't have an answer yet. I can do that. And we'll hold it together long enough to get the answer.
SPEAKER_03How do clients react to that? That's a great question.
SPEAKER_01You should probably ask them. They usually still hire me, which is probably a good thing. They know that I've gotten a lot of people into the promised land through this process, into a promised land better than the one they came there to get. And I can put my clients to be in touch with clients who will vouch for that. Along the way, like when client said to me, Rob, your confidence is excruciating. And uh, I think by that they meant they were semi-panicked because I I lead large group workshops, you know, and your uh your listeners. There's 50, 70, 100 people in the room, all on the basis of some individual or group that said, come together to do this seemingly impossible thing. And as one of the top guys at Ford once said to me, and forgive the language, he said, Rob, I'm bringing 90 people together for four days. This is a top four guy, he got a multi-billion dollar budget. I'm bringing 90 people together for four days. If this doesn't work, I'm gonna look like a shithead. And I I just started the lab. I said, Carlos, given who you are, if you end up looking like a shithead, you're going to kill me. So we're here together. All right, we're in this together, and we're gonna get through this together. And though there's at least one or two times where I'm just gonna say, You gotta trust me on this. And you can trust me or not. It's easier if you do. It's easier if you do. And he became a fast friend afterwards. Well, you know, we would call each other up just to see how things are going. But it's that that element of risk uh that feels unprofessional to managers who are facing that risk. They would like to manage risk. I feel that's part of their job, is managing risks for the company. And they're right, they're right, of course. But sometimes it's risky to manage risk, really manage risk. Playing it safe is not a good way to manage risk in every case. Doing what we've done, where do you think those risks came from? They came from the fact that we've done it that way forever.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01So to change that, ah, boy, that's a different deal.
SPEAKER_03Because otherwise, it's funny. If we play it safe, we always have the excuse. I couldn't have known it better because in the past it has worked.
SPEAKER_01Exactly right. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03And then it's then we're back at the image of the armor. Then if it if it lands, it lands on the armor. If I try something that hasn't been tried before, yes, it lands without the armor.
SPEAKER_01And uh 30, 40 years ago, there was a saying in management that IBM sales consultants would use. They would say, Ah, my friend, no one ever got fired for buying IBM. Well, it turned out not to be true after a while, but it was a great line at that time. Go with me, and that manages your professional risk in selling this internally to your organization, yeah, which is always a big deal.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And what I hear in the in the story was taking the risk and taking the your client by the hand and say, Okay, we both don't know how to do that, and we'll do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01Something like that, right?
SPEAKER_03I can still hear this lightheartedness in there. And I would love to understand what you mean by that. It seems like your superpower, where you walk into a high-risk situation with a light heart. What do we see or hear Rob do or say when he is performing with a light heart? Or being with a light heart.
SPEAKER_01Probably that's a great that's a thank you for that. I think that's exactly right. I don't think you can you can do lightheart. Then you're performing. Right? And you've got a pretty good nose for when somebody's performing. You know, exist people are performing all the time. We know when we don't believe it completely, right? If it's if it's performative. In fact, that's a pejorative now. Uh it's performative. You're just going through the motions. The the posts people put online are so painfully perform that it almost not worth reading anymore. Because it's I'm showing you a version of my life and my work, and man, everything's always great, which is why your podcast is so brilliant and why people tune in. Because they know they know it's not like that on all the time, they know it's not like the last guy's last LinkedIn post. Hopefully, they they just know it. Yeah, but how do you be what you know? That's that's the that's the question you're asking. How do I be when I know? I I actually don't know, but I know how to know, I know how to learn, and I know how to hold a group together while we learn together. What is uh in my wife's wonderful phrase, what is longing to happen in this situation? So it's we we're kidding each other about always going kind of lofty and woo-woo. Uh before see, this is what we talk about before we get online with, well, you know, we always go up. So this is a little like that, because what's longing to happen is tapping into what's really real in a group and in yourself. And what's longing to happen for me is not to be fake. And to when I then hear myself being fake anyway, going, hmm, hmm, wow, I wonder what that was about. And uh what's what's realer, what's more real than that? You know, it's not like there's any there's only one of us, there's only one person. Each of us is like a like a gem with many different facets, and many different Robs, many different Miriams. And some are more I was almost said acceptable, expectable in a in a professional situation. But the others are there. We all know the other the the the the other facets of the person are there. So let's just turn that around, see what what what kind of light comes through that facet into this situation.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And then and still you use the word fake, so there is a distinction between the different facets of us that are all true.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And I think of course we are adjusting our language, our being to the context. I think that's part of emotional intelligence or social intelligence. And then there is the code switching in the maybe the great dangerous sense where it becomes fake.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. When you're when you're obviously code switching and adopting language and adopting a stance and a persona and all of that, it it becomes we we call it code switching because we can see when people do it. Uh and we and we get the inauthenticity of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And I love that you mentioned that you catch yourself. Maybe this was in the past. I do catch myself. Um usually out of an insecurity. I there are some podcast episodes that I listen back to, and I'm sitting there with excruciating shame.
SPEAKER_00Ah, no, no, I did that on oh, and it's oh, it's out there.
SPEAKER_03Because I can hear how I am just performing the smart ass. Although, of course, I have no idea what I talk about compared to the person I'm interviewing. And then the question is, is that a part of me or is that fake?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a great question. And if it is a part of you, uh is that okay? Are there are there any facets that's just not okay? There's some that I'm ashamed of for sure. Okay. What does okay mean? Okay to who? Who, right? Yeah, okay in this situation. Yeah, there's some things I do that are are not uh helpful. Saint Paul, in one of the letters to one of the churches, said something like he said in Aramaic, so I don't know what he said, uh, or Greek, but he said something like, uh, all things are permissible, but not all things are helpful. And a version of that that I like modern days is Suzuki Roshi's, you're perfect just the way you are. And you could use a little work. So that paradox of uh that's the paradox of of authenticity, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yes. And why you were speaking, would no, let me first ask you, what do you mean by the paradox of authenticity?
SPEAKER_01Well, who's the one that's being authentic? Who's being authentic? Honestly, Miriam, we it when we were talking about facilitation and another thing. Um, the most powerful lesson I ever got in facilitation was working in a jail, doing a performance in a jail with my teacher, brother blue. Now let me show you, brother Blue. Brother Blue is an African-American man, was an African-American man.
SPEAKER_03Brother Blue, you're showing a picture of an African-American man with a butterfly on his palm. With a butterfly.
SPEAKER_01Very colorful, uniform barefoot.
SPEAKER_03Barefoot.
SPEAKER_01We were doing uh a performance in a prison, and I would drum for him. I heard the the rhythm in his stories, and I was so taken with this guy. I went out and bought a drum, big old plumba drum, and just showed up one day on the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would tell stories and just started drumming with him, and we became good friends. He was actually my spiritual godfather in so many ways. He's the he uh the actual godparent to my children. He's passed now, he's gone on to uh some more blessed realm, or he came back to be brother blue again, some other place, because what he was here for was help people find their own story. So we're we're on stage in a prison, and it's like all hell is breaking loose because who the hell is this guy? The the the uh African Americans are going, they were a little embarrassed by this guy dancing around looking like that, telling stories, and they're trying to be so tough. And the white guys are going, what is that white guy doing on stage with him? And the African American guys, all the Hispanic guys are going, when they kill the white guy, can we have his drum? It's like and I'm I'm uh just going, What are you doing here, Rob? Did you why did what are you what were you thinking? Did you come to save these people? Well, forget about that. If you're here in some kind of uh liberal guilty thing, you're you're gonna get killed. I mean, you're it not physically killed, maybe, but psychologically they're gonna rip you apart. I've worked enough in jails to know that's what happens. It's ripping people down if you can, because it's better than being ripped down yourself and you know, ripped or ripee. You ripper or rip-e, you pick. Well, that's the only choice. Yeah. Ripper. Uh so that's the choice people make. What happened to me on stage, Miriam, is I felt like uh the the thought came to me, if you're here for you, you don't have a right to be here, and they have a right to do whatever they want to you. If you're here for some higher purpose, which Brother Blue was, then get out of your own way and just be here. And I felt like uh I'd lived in England and I'd seen old cowhorn lanterns. So cheaper than glass, so you would make lanterns out of animal horns. So that it's they're translucent, but to really let light out, you one of the doors would swing open so you could shine the direct light on whatever it is you want to illuminate. Well, that's what I felt happen in me. I felt something happened in my heart that swung open a door, and I felt like there was a light coming through me that wasn't me, and that's okay, and that was a good thing. All I had to do was get out of the way, get Rob out of the way. And so, what is really authentic? I think what is really authentic about all of us is that inner light that is not ours, and it is ours, it's in us, but also through us. That's what's really authentic, and anything else is just one of the sides of the lantern to use another kind of facet metaphor. Yeah, but we do have the capacity of getting out of the way and and letting light come through us that really warms and illuminates it's not us, it warms and illuminates those who are around us. Well, no, that's worth doing. So that's all by way of what's authentic. The light is authentic. And anything else we just need to recognize is a form. Uh a lot of spiritual traditions would say an illusion, a dream. Okay, it can be a good dream, can be a bad dream, but what's really real is the divinity of all of us. My my my uh wife's late husband, I went to divinity school with, curiously enough, that's another story, would say God is that which is greater than all and present in each. So God language kind of puts people off. So the divine, the sacred, the the really real, is greater than all but present in each. And that's authentic.
SPEAKER_03So when you pull all the all the shields, all the protections, all the wounds, all the ego, pull all that back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, which is really hard to that's a lifetime.
SPEAKER_03And then it sounds, and I think that's um something that I have come to the conclusion too that being authentic is the most difficult thing ever.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I know.
SPEAKER_03Being truly us. Um because it's then we're back to the beginning of your story. That's where you're so vulnerable because every every criticism is on us.
SPEAKER_01Right. And how can I mean can you be authentic without feeling you need to be loyal to who you were a second ago?
SPEAKER_04Ooh.
SPEAKER_01Do I have to defend who I was at yesterday? I'm not even that guy anymore. But we do. I mean, we feel obliged to to we we feel we need the continuity of a person, a professional persona, for example. You know, I can I can be Rob the Consultant, I could put that on, I can give you chapter and births, I got a CV up on the web, I got blah, blah, blah, blah. I got a LinkedIn profile, I got all that good stuff. But uh, do I have to be that when I show up? People want to check that out to see if I've shown up anyplace else and they didn't kick me out. Yeah, once or twice, they didn't kick me out. Uh, okay. But then I then do I have to show up like that every time? I hope not.
SPEAKER_03I think I now can put my finger on the light-heartedness. And if I read it correctly, then it comes from this radical self-acceptance.
SPEAKER_01Of a higher self. Right. And and the the one that was here doing the best he can.
SPEAKER_03Because I think only when you totally self-accept yourself, and that's what I hear and what you describe is hey, I might maybe who I was a minute ago is not the same person I am today, and trusting the inner light, trusting your intuition. And then you don't have to take yourself so seriously.
SPEAKER_01Way and I wish I remembered that more. Send me a copy of this. I may need to watch this sometimes because you know I'll wake up and and I'll be an absolute worm. I'm like, oh my god, I can't do anything. Right. Everybody goes through that cycle of up and down and up and down and up and down. And and when I say light-hearted, I mean actual light.
SPEAKER_03Ah, you mean the light as you describe it.
SPEAKER_01But just my heart isn't all heavy and weighed. No, it's light-hearted, which is not something I've ever put together before. So thank you very much for that.
SPEAKER_03So, as I understand, this light-heartedness still shows up in all the work you do.
SPEAKER_01And that's in my best work. Yeah, in my best work.
SPEAKER_03What are the factors that might turn that lead to you turning off the light?
SPEAKER_01Great qu that's a great question.
SPEAKER_03Or closing the door.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. For me, often in my work, it's a f it's just a sense of professional responsibility when I feel I'm required to be responsible for something, and I don't do it as consciously as I would like. I get cranky. Or I'm I'm uh critical of the work of people around me in ways that don't recognize they're probably doing the best they can that day, too. You know, it I'm sitting here at my desk, it's early in the morning, I'm still being caffeinated. You know, it's good. I just had a hot tub, I had a swim, and then I rushed in to get ready to come here. It's been a good morning, and I'm not tired. So here I'm 74 years old, and what I discover is working uh 16-hour days takes a different toll than it did, and it actually took a toll when I started doing it when I was 45. I just could ignore it. The jet lag gets me harder and longer than it used to. So fatigue is a is a thing, managing the physical body, uh staying in shape, uh, dealing with the natural inevitable degradation of the body that happens over time, no matter what you do. Uh just accepting that and and um for me, Miriam, factoring that in so that I'm not you you've heard of Hangry, where you're angry because you're hungry. Yeah. There's probably a tangry version of that. You're angry because you're tired.
SPEAKER_03I think new parents can write books about that, right?
SPEAKER_01Good point. I mean, you have people who have little watching this who have infants at home. God bless you. I remember that. I have kids with grandkids, I remember it, and boy am I glad to turn that grandkid. I love my grandchildren, and I'm not sorry when they go back to their parents because I need a nap.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you chose the word endured, and enduring endurance is something that is such highly regarded.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's professionals.
SPEAKER_03We can endure.
SPEAKER_01Uh takes a the old time excrement takes a licking and keeps on ticking, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What price did you pay for the 16-hour stays?
SPEAKER_01Great question. So probably learning what price I paid. Uh it it brought me a I so being able to be physically, uh, I could take a lot of damage physically and still in the moment let the light come through and be energized by the group and energized by the situation. So extroverts, as an extrovert, maybe that's an extrovert strategy that uh allows me to now. When I say be on, it sounds kind of performative, doesn't it? But on in the sense of turned on and still the light coming through when it's required, and then when we're done, base plant. You know, it's like oh, exhausted, or even knowing that I need to, and I've been doing this forever, don't tell my clients all the time, but I would set up venues. And when I led the accelerated solutions environments for Cap Gemini and uh Ernst Young before that, we would always have a secret room in the venues that we built and created. And we when we could, that would be the nap room where the crews who started at 6:30 in the morning and might go until 11 o'clock at night and then come back in to start at 6:30, could disappear and take a nap during the day. Why did it have to be secret? Why indeed, because we were also pushing our clients, we should have given nap rooms to them too.
SPEAKER_03How unprofessional.
SPEAKER_01How unprofessional, how thoughtless of us to make give ourselves accordances that we didn't, affordances that we didn't give them.
SPEAKER_03That's I I thought the other way around. How unprofessional to even think of a nap room that people might need the nap.
SPEAKER_01Well, good point. Maybe that's why it was secret. We'd often have big stuffed animals around our centers for various reasons, one of which is they made good pillows when you took them into the nap room. And having a pillow kind of gave it away, you know, it was not good. So, but you could take a stuffed animal for a while. So your question was what did the endurance uh cost me? I think part of what it cost was the fiction that my body didn't have its own requirements that I might have listened to a little more carefully. And that when one is just gritting through it and enduring it, you kind of turn off the messages from your body, don't you? I mean, you just go, I'm I'm sorry, I don't have time for that right now. We've got to design this new module on the fly because the last one was didn't get the results we wanted. So we gotta do something different than we thought. Oh that. So it's um endurance is an override of the body, of messages from the body. Slow down, take a break, sit down. Will you just sit down for a minute? Meditate for 10 minutes, see what happens. Can't gotta go, gotta keep at it. And so the the distance from the the reaction, what's authentic? I mean, what's most most authentic is not I think, therefore I am, it's I've got a body, therefore I am. And curiously, most of our brain is designed to run our body, according to Michael Pollan and his new book on consciousness. It reminds us most of the brain, it's all about getting keeping the body going. Or where does the thinking happen? Good question. Interesting question. Not clear yet. Not clear yet. Do we think it all happens inside the skull? Not really, not anymore. The body knows it all. The body knows the score. That's right. The body keeps the score. Yeah, the body knows, then the emotions perceive, and finally the brain comes along and makes sense out of it. The brain is always the last to know.
SPEAKER_03How present are emotions in your work and the work that you do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they're very present, and I I would put it, I would frame it a little differently, and not just emotions, but energy. The energy of the room is the emotions of the room, the the the aggregate average emotions of the room, but managing the emotions of the room is a big deal. Because that's how come that's how people change. People change because you tuck them into it. No, they don't. People change because they have an experience, an emotional experience. The change is necessary and possible.
SPEAKER_03And why is it that it's easier to communicate about energy than about accumulated emotions in the room?
SPEAKER_01Because it's so unprofessional. Are you kidding? To talk about the emotions of a company? Why you can talk about the energy, and it sounds vaguely scientific. Unless you're from California. And then it sounds, well, that's pretty woo-woo, Rob. You're from Moran County, aren't you? Well, of course he's talking about energy. It's it's a cloak in a way, but it's also more than just the emotions. If emotions are I'm feeling good, I'm feeling bad, or I'm angry, I'm happy. Those are emotions, but there's something at a more fundamental level than the emotional flip show. Emotions are are constant, they're fleeting in a way. And there's something more substantial about energy that are maybe the source of all emotions reflect the body's energy of one kind or another.
SPEAKER_03Emotion being energy in motion.
SPEAKER_01Energy in motion. That's very good. I like that. I might use that. May I use that? I'll give you full credit. I didn't invent it. Well, yeah, I know, but I didn't hear it from whoever did. I heard it from you. So I'm giving you credit. You're gonna go in my book of black quotes. My black book of quotes. Um, you want to know what you're coming after? Yes, coming after a great, wealthy guy, successful organizer says the success of an intervention depends on the inner state of the intervener. That's good.
SPEAKER_03Somehow related.
SPEAKER_01I know. So this is this is this you came right at the right time. Liza uh Hester said, if I'm not in on the takeoff, don't expect me on the landing. Oh, that's good, right? Yeah, beautiful. And then my friend William Murray said, if it's predictable, it's preventable. He's talking about international conflict, but it works all sorts of places. If it's predictable, it's preventable. Yes, yes, and you get and next comes Miriam. Emotion is energy in motion.
SPEAKER_03I could go on and on there. I still have a very long list of topics that we haven't even touched upon, but I would be very curious. I hope that you'll be back.
SPEAKER_01I need to go off on something.
SPEAKER_03It's beautiful. And I would like to close with a question: What is an unprofessional advice that you would give to the listeners?
SPEAKER_01Well, it has something to do with fun. I would put advice about fun in a bunch of different ways. One of our axioms in the design shop world that Matt and Gail Taylor came up with is if you can't have fun with the problem, you'll never solve it. And I would use that, I would put that axiom out there and say, look, we're not here to have fun, but are you willing to have some fun? And I'll do it in a kind of a teasing way and invite them to think about that. So if you can't have fun with the problem, you'll never solve it. Um, and uh, my wife Carolyn Buckloose, who invented something called the decade game, as one of her axioms is if you're not having fun, it's because you're playing somebody else's game. That's good too, huh? So have fun. Try having fun, try having a little more fun on a scale of one to ten. How much fun did you have yesterday? Okay, what would it take to increase by one point today? How could you have just a little more fun today? You don't want to push it, you know, you don't want to burn out the system having too much fun. But how could you increase how could you increase your level of fun just a little bit today?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and by adding by making it a little bit of our own game.
SPEAKER_01By asking, whose game am I playing here?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01See, that's what I love about you. That's why you're doing this. I mean, you're doing this podcast for all kinds of reasons, but for one of the things I take as a good reason to do this podcast is you invite us to remember that whatever we think professional means, it's probably somebody else's game. Yes. Probably somebody else's game. What if it were your game? What would that be like?
SPEAKER_03Wouldn't that be cool? It beautifully connects back to the story with which you started.
SPEAKER_01How do you see that connection?
SPEAKER_03That you walked into the womb, you didn't expect to get the job. You were lighthearted, with an open heart, but also with the fun. Having fun with it, joy with it. Um since you didn't expect anything from them, you were playing your own game. Good point. And this left such an impression that they chose you over everyone else, over the German engineers.
SPEAKER_01Who knew? As they say.
SPEAKER_03Who knew? And what I find the most remarkable in that is that they even admitted it.
SPEAKER_01They did.
SPEAKER_03They didn't find all the reasons why you would outperform the others. No, you you bring fun.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Turns out they were fun too. They might not have admitted that either at the time.
SPEAKER_03You were it's always it's always a blessing to be in conversation with you.
SPEAKER_01Well, I feel the same way, Miriam, and I know that your your viewers feel the same way about you and your uh uh persistence, your insistence on moving to conversations that matter. And that's why I love uh talking with you. Because I feel like we don't it sounds like we don't have fun. We don't mess around, Miriam. We get right to the the the funnest stuff. And what but and this by that I mean uh the most true stuff. There's a you have a quality and you bring a quality to your conversations that invites the people you're talking with to really step up to what's true for them and cut the BS. I really appreciate that about you.
SPEAKER_03Means a doc.
SPEAKER_01Until next time.
SPEAKER_03Yes. This was a conversation without the script.
SPEAKER_02Now it's your turn. I'm Miriam Hapman, and this has been unprofessionalism.