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
034 - Taking Responsibility with Amar Dhall
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This week's professional risk - inspired by Amar Dhall
Taking responsibility for what went wrong, even when someone else clearly made the mistake.
Description
What if your first question when something goes wrong wasn't "Whose fault is this?" but "What could I have done differently?"
It sounds generous until you try it in a room where everyone else is still holding their position. Going first means being the one who visibly failed, in front of people who have conceded nothing. It doesn't mean taking the blame. It means starting with the part of the system you actually have the power to change. Amar Dhall began his career teaching law, where he did something several colleagues considered rather unprofessional: he cared less about proving how difficult the material was and more about creating the conditions in which his students could actually learn. That instinct took him out of law, into therapy, and towards a much bigger question. What does it take for human beings to flourish?
He describes preparing two senior leaders for a conversation neither of them wanted, one in the C-suite and one a step below, working with each separately from a position of full responsibility. Their views stayed irreconcilable. The relationship got stronger anyway. Which is the case for why any of this belongs at work, because the inner child having an argument in the boardroom doesn't disappear when the meeting ends.
This episode invites you to reflect on:
- How quickly you reach for someone else's mistake, and what that reflex protects you from.
- The line between attunement and rescuing, and which side of it your care usually lands on.
- What your body and your relationships already know about a situation before your thinking catches up.
Over to you!
Think of the last time something went wrong at work that genuinely wasn't your fault. Knowing what you know now, what could you have done differently?
About the guest
Dr Amar Dhall started out teaching law and left it for psychotherapy, having decided he could not understand law without understanding people. He now runs Neuro-Somatic Leadership, working with executives and founders on what happens in the body when the pressure is on. He chose to work with leaders for the multiplier. Change how one CEO shows up, and five hundred families have a different experience of work.
Links to learn more about Amar:
What happens if we dare to tear off the mask of professionalism and actually risk showing up for real? I'm your host. You're unhappy. And this is unprofessionalism.
SPEAKER_04Unprofessional advice for someone in a position of authority would be start with yourself, right? If there's a problem, start with a lens of 100% responsibility. Even if objectively you could say that someone else made a mistake. But if you start with a lens of deep responsibility and go, what could I have done knowing what I know? What could I have done that would have been different in that particular situation? I think that would be something unprofessional for the leader to say, Amma, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Miriam. It's lovely to be here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We just warmed up a little bit already. And you told me about your upcoming leadership book. And I got so excited that I almost forgot to hit the record button. So hopefully we can share some of that with the audience. And before that, I always start with the same invitation for you to share an anecdote of a time when you were unprofessional.
SPEAKER_04So the one that came to mind when you asked me that question was back when I was I was teaching law in my past life before I changed careers. And one of the roles or one of the classes that I had to teach was for first years. And so people coming into law school from first year, like on the one hand, as a teacher, our job is, or a lecturer, is to present the material and make sure people understand it. So the unprofessional piece was what I noticed was that people going to university, particularly into law, most of them were some of the smartest people in their school, smartest people in their year. And they had been told that their whole lives and had performed really well to get into law school. And then when they arrived, suddenly they're average. And then on top of that, people going to university for the first time, they've left home, the food might be different, the culture is different, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, all of that happens. And so what I the pivoted to, and this was really um the unprofessional bit, was I realized that the work was less about me really teaching them the stuff because they were smart enough to do that. It was more about me caring for the person and creating an environment conducive to learning in the room. And so that would mean that I would talk to students maybe one-on-one outside of a classroom just to see how they were actually adapting.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I have this little itch. Then we're like, oh, I wish I had a lecture like that at my uni time because I truly recognize that. What made you decide to do that? Because I imagine that when you just joined as a lecturer, you might have done what everyone does, and at some point you changed that approach.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I thank you. That's a good that's a great question. I think a few things. Firstly, as I taught the unit a few times over a number of years, the material didn't really require much effort from me. Right? It kind of was in my bones. So the I think the question then becomes, well, what am I going to do? And how how do I show up and still feel like I'm not just going through a process like an automaton? Right. So I think there was part of me that was going, well, where's the challenge in this? What is the thing to do? The second thing was I think even at that stage, this was so I I changed hack and and left law and then trained as a therapist. And this was coming to the end of my time with law. I I already was starting to really be interested in people and and the human side. And I was doing some work in the a voluntary capacity with men at the time in a men's organization. And it was a mentor who was saying, who had said to me, Oh, well, I think you might be find this, you know, very particular modality really interesting. And so this the the idea of what I was going to do was was alive. And and I hadn't thought, I hadn't decided anything, but at that point in my life and in my career, the idea of serving people at a really in a human way was was starting to come through.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. And what I somehow sense in that is the and you mentioned that they're smart people, so they will learn it anyway. So the the trust you put in the students that it's easier to catch up with the content, but the inner work, what will help you to apply the content or stay within law school or to go through the difficulties.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, well, I mean, we we know this now, right? Like the that if we were going to talk in terms of neural circuitry, play and learning, the circuits are the same. And in order to really play, we have to feel safe. And so it's just a precondition. And and a way of uh exemplifying this is if we were to think if you've ever played any kind of sport where there's a physical aspect to it, and you can have friendly competition, and then something might happen, and then suddenly in that moment the competition isn't so friendly. Right? So that felt sense it's no longer a game in the way that it was, and so learning is like that too.
SPEAKER_01Interesting because it's almost like a primal instinct, it's a change of a dynamic or a glance or something, and then our body knows it's no longer a game.
SPEAKER_04That's exactly right.
SPEAKER_01I used to do boxing.
SPEAKER_04Oh, nice, me too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I um from the time in the ring sparring with colleagues, there's you're sparring, it is a game, it is play, and suddenly there's something that shifts, and both are a little bit more ambitious than they should be. That's where the game ends almost. The play ends.
SPEAKER_04Yes. That's an uh it's an elegant turn of phrase to say that you know, to say that the that in that shift, absolutely, that's what happens. But even in inspiring, I think that there is this sense, right? So the the the nervous system has shifted, changed gears, but there's still this sense that you're not trying to take the head off, you're not trying to kill the other person, right? But just that subtle shift. So even there it it still is meter, but that that sense of what it is to to lose the play side of it is a re is a is the perception of threat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And then to be aware of that and to shift it back, that's the high art, I guess.
SPEAKER_04That's right. That's exactly right. That's emotional intelligence in action.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I wasn't I wasn't there back then.
SPEAKER_04No, no, me neither.
SPEAKER_01And I would be curious how back in the after the classroom, I assume students speak, the lecturers speak. How did your fellows, how did the other academics react to that, if at all?
SPEAKER_04The head of school was very, very supportive. So the dean, that the yeah, the dean was very supportive. I think some other academics had a problem with that, definitely. They I think for some people that came up I think the the similarity between doing law and as an undergrad and a PhD, which I know you've got, right? That I think they're both protected by the people who who have done it, and there will be some people who think that they need to make the journey really quite hard, as hard as possible, uh which you know is not necessary, but I think it's a way of them keeping a sense of of their own power rather than being true, someone who really thrives by empowering other people, I don't think would approach education in that way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Interesting. I two things came to my mind. One, I remember in undergrad economics, we had to read through the German textbooks that were utterly complex and nobody understood a word. And the same topic written by an American academic so easy to understand. And I think there was a difference in perception of the um the German academics believing that it was so difficult for me to get there. Why would it be any easier for anyone else? You need to to suffer for it, you need to earn it. So there's a gatekeeping. And the Americans apparently have a different approach where if I can make it so easy that everyone understands it, then I gain in status. And the other thing is the the notion of profession. Because as a lawyer, you have to profess a vow. It is a protected thing. And hence there might be more gatekeeping.
SPEAKER_04What you're saying is one of the ways of defining a profession in a really literal sense, right? Because a lot of vocations would call themselves professions. One of the ways that a profession has been defined has been the control of supply, which is precisely what you're talking about, the gatekeeping. And and so this is why even today, if someone I I don't know how it is in other jurisdictions, but in Australia, if someone becomes a lawyer or anywhere in a common law country, they still need to study for the bar.
SPEAKER_02Right?
SPEAKER_04If they're gonna be a barrister or if they're gonna be a solicitor, they still need to then go and get a practicing certificate, which is then more study, which is really controlled by the profession.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Which makes sense. And this is an absolute rabbit hole. I am more curious in your learnings from that time from the students and you interacting with the students as a lawyer, not yet therapist, about leadership.
SPEAKER_04I think uh that's a it's a really interesting question. It was, I think, hang on, let me think about that. That's a really interesting question because I didn't choose to work in leadership. That way I I didn't wake up and say, oh, I want to work with leaders at all. How that came to be was I looked at what it was. So if I was going to go back to that law school time, it was that I I realized without knowing it that it was really important to create an embodied sense of safety in someone for them to be open to learn. Right. And and if I was to to stick with this in terms of leadership, the kids that get into a law school are high performers for the most part, right? So the idea of looking after people who are used to being at the top and then going into a different environment and then supporting them to come into that, I think that whole environment taught me a lot. But for me, you know, how and then how I came to actually work with leadership just to kind of close that loop was so what I was looking at was really what is it for human beings to flourish? Right. So I wanted my students to flourish. And then even when I did explore therapy, I mean there was there was a bit more to it than just um I left law and went to therapy. And I I think that to be a good, you know, lawyer, I had moved away from it, but we still need to, I still wanted to understand human beings. I mean, how could someone this isn't in any way being derogatory of anyone else's path through life, but for me, I felt that for me to understand law, I needed to understand people. And so there was really in my brain, it was just this continuation of a of a line of exploring. And then leaders, just the reason why I wanted to work with leaders was because when I came up with with okay, this is what I think really works the best and will support people to thrive, when I thought about okay, who am I going to share this with? How I came to leaders was it was about impact. It was if I support a leader to be a good, embodied, you know, human, a good person, then that actually ripples out, and that sh that affects a lot of other people's lives, right? If someone's a CEO and they've got 500 employees, that's 500 families that are going to have a different experience of their parents at work and the way their work shapes them. So that's that's how that all came to be. So lessons from there, and then I kind of just carried it all forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I you just said something that really sparked my curiosity, that those who study law must also understand people. Because law applies to people and is supposed to organize society.
SPEAKER_04That's right.
SPEAKER_01And I would assume that this as such is a highly air quotes, unprofessional statement.
SPEAKER_04Well, I I think it's a yes and, right? Like I went what how so how I really think about this was if we look at the data on lawyers, then this is a while ago that I was looking at this. I haven't spoken about law. I mean, we've just gone there because this is where the question of professionalism, but lawyers statistically as a group, this is American data. I think it was uh about 20 to around about 20% above average IQ, but then about 15 to 20% below average EQ, right? So so and I when I thought about this, and this is a bit of a um, and this is very recent that I only had this this thought. So I was I was thinking about this, right? That's a bit of a cliche that lawyers can be a bit abrupt or that they're not necessarily human focused. What I would be curious about would be to understand how neurodiversity plays into this equation, right? I think law, IT, I think there are certain professions or certain vocations where the the type of work will be easy for a particular type of person to do compared to someone else. And so I I would be very curious to know if that perception of high IQ, low EQ is a character trait. Is it a temperament thing, or whether there's actually a a neurodiversity cohort that skews that a little?
SPEAKER_01And I think the another one could even be a social adaptation thing of a reinforcement if you're among people who don't pay so much attention to EQ topics, to emotional intelligence, then it might reinforce that pattern. Because I think lawyers are also one of the profession that mainly stay within inside their own group and talk about things related to their profession, similar to similar to medical doctors.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So if I was going to then bring this into a more general leadership context, right? So for me, what's alive, and this has been something that I've put some thought into, which is where where there are high performing teams or in particular industries, how leaders handle neurodiversity. Right. Because I think that's a hugely interesting, challenging, and incredibly important. Um what would I say? It's an important aspect of what it what is required. If I'm going to assemble a great team of human beings, right, a really high-performing um team, well, I want diversity. I want diversity of gender, I want diversity of ethnicity, I want diversity of or you know, plurality of perspectives.
SPEAKER_01Cognitive.
SPEAKER_04So we can that's exactly right. And and neurodiversity, really. If we look at neurodiversity and we'd say, okay, well, there are going to be certain types of task that people with different types of neurodiversity are going to be able to excel at versus someone who is different or neurotypical. Well, we we want all of those people, in my judgment, in working together in an environment where they all feel safe, because if we go back to that con that piece where you spoke about boxing, right, where that that friendly competition can just become competition. So if we're create if leaders are creating an environment where it's just not safe for people, and that doesn't mean overly woke, that's not what this means, right? It means it means compassion, it means boundary, it means really understanding ways of communicating that that are human, then we actually then that well, they can create a team that is going to solve complex problems in in really unique and exciting ways. So I think everything we're talking about has real practical application.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And in your work, what do you think is in the way of leaders to step into that space where they can hold really diverse teams and help them to become high performing instead of in conflict, because diversity also creates conflict because we love it when people think like us and behave like us.
SPEAKER_04100%. I think there's a few things. One, I think leaders are busy, right? I think and depending on the type of role they're in, depending on the type, you know, there's there's a difference between a founder and a senior leader, right? In in my experience, there's a difference between, or there can be a difference between a founder and other C-suite, right, in in the way that they do things. So so even amongst leaders, we're not talking about a homogenous group, right? They're gonna have their own quirks. So then, so firstly, I'd say they're busy. Secondly, I would say that for how real that work is, right? If I'm gonna treat, if I'm gonna learn how to really humanize the interaction, but still keep it professional, that's not a five-minute job, right? That's a pretty deep human level up for that leader. If they're the kind of leader, and I I've because I've spoken to so many going through the vetting process for my training, who we let in, who's suitable, who's not, you know, all of that, because uh the work isn't about getting as much money as possible. It's about you know supporting people to change. That's actually enjoyable. So for me, if if I see someone who tries to put their development into a box where they go, I'm I, you know, I need this to be, and a lot of people will do this if they view their professional development, where they go, well, I I want this to be 35 minutes per week, and uh I'm gonna be maybe twin screening at the same time, then they're going that then to make the kinds of shifts that they're going to make is going to be very difficult because for me to really meet someone who's different than I am, but as you said, it's so much easier when people are like me, but if I'm going to make that leap, then I actually need to get alive to, for example, the way power works. Right? And that's a that's an enormous body of work in itself to get conscious to the way power works, right? If I am a cisgendered male and I'm and I'm that's the way that I move through the world, that's a very different way to dealing with a migrant woman, even if we've got the same intellect, right? So as an example, and then we get more subtle and granular. So there's a whole art to understanding power dynamics that takes time and effort, which someone who's trying to fit their PD in a small box may not, you know, they want it to be easy. Right. I've got a lot of podcasts, and that's one of the things that people go, what's the five-minute tip to kind of do this? And I go, well, the five-minute tip is there's not a five-minute tip. It's a lifelong change. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, you can't spell unprofessional without professional, right? So there's still that effort to cultivate mastery.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and only I had an interview with um Benjamin and he said something that really resonated that you in order to be unprofessional in the sense that I use it, you first need to know the norms, and then you can break them deliberately. If you're breaking the norms without knowing that there were norms, you're just unprofessional in the worst sense.
SPEAKER_04That's right. Well, yeah, but even the broken clock can be right twice a day, right? Like that that disruption, like that's the can work, but yeah, for most people, they may inadvertently trample all the flowers without realizing it.
SPEAKER_01And you first need to earn the status maybe of professionalism to then see where you can add your own attunement where you can be more prof emotional. And I would be curious because it's n um I feel like in a maze you opened a lot of doors, and I could step to any through any of those, and then we'll speak until tomorrow. The one that I'm choosing for now is a sentence you made about still being professional while emotionally attuned.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Might have used different words. And I would be curious about that line. So when are we professional without being emotionally attuned? And when do we become as a leader? Emotionally attuned, losing our professionalism.
SPEAKER_04Uh well, I would say that attunement, if someone's attuned rather than merged, and this is a little bit of you know physiology that will come into the conversation, I don't think someone could be attuned and unprofessional. Attunement is is um the sense I what that would look like in practice would be that sense of being with someone where you feel got. You go, yeah, they get me. Right? That's not unprofessional. In fact, I I would I would say that if I'm going to give have a feedback conversation with you, it might be extremely difficult for me to have that with you if we don't have attunement. That it's going to land very differently. So I I would um I would start with that and uh you know as a as a concept, and then uh, you know, I don't just underline, I would say that what you're doing is great, right? You're driving a conversation of what fits outside the boundaries, but I think if we were to jump forward 50 years, I would imagine what your position is on unprofessionalism would be called professionalism, and the people who aren't doing what you're doing would actually be considered unprofessional.
SPEAKER_01Can you tell me more about that? So, fast forward 50 years, what has changed?
SPEAKER_04Well, I think we would understand that to solve complex problems, people need to feel safe and we need diversity, and that we need, you know, if we if we treat people instrumentally like they're a cog and a machine, then aid is going to be like the the metrics of that and how that performs, when people feel like that, it's it's rubbish. Like people leave cultures, right? They're gonna it's it's rather than than jobs. So I I think that would be, you know, oh yeah, I'd want to just say that.
SPEAKER_01So what I hear is regarding the professionalism and the emotional attunement, that when the attunement is more than attunement, but more almost stepping into the drama triangle, trying to either fix someone or rescue someone, so we're maybe projecting our own emotions on the other person or trying to get something from them, then we are no longer professional.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, so with the specific examples of the drama triangle, right? If I was going to say, okay, so yes, you're absolutely right, there's no attunement between the people there. What there is, if we if we were to say, well, where does that even come from? Where does the drama triangle dynamic come from? And and uh in my view, it comes from very early childhood, right? Two years old, two years old Miriam would have been told, go to bed, and you would have said, I don't want to go to bed, and your your caregivers would have said, you have to go to bed, right? And in that moment, you would be in your room seething, and the and it would be very easy to say, you've made me angry. Right? So so that is a very deep concept th through conditioning that says my emotional state is dependent on what other people do. Right? So when we talk about the drama triangle, that's that's you know, literally it depends how dick you want to go into that, but literally the movement is around, right? Someone doing something and it affects me, and then instead of dis knowing how to handle my emotional energy, I discharge it at them. Right? And and ideally, whoever's got the biggest victim is going to win, win that round of the of drama. Yeah. Yeah, so so I would say that that's it to be overly attuned would if we're gonna use the drama triangle, would be someone who's constantly in the rescuer role. But e even there, that's not really full attunement in the sense that the the it's and it can be an enmeshment, right? It's the difference between sympathy and empathy that we're now that we're now distinguishing.
SPEAKER_01Where sympathy keeps the distance, so you are you with your experience and I'm me, where empathy is I put myself in the shoes of someone else.
SPEAKER_04Almost, almost other way around though. Oh right? Sympathy would be I could be sorry for you. I'm sorry for you. Empathy is I'm I would be curious about how that is for you, right? Sympathy would be, oh my god, that must have been so terrible when this thing happened. Empathy would be, wow, when I hear that, I'm thinking that would be hard for me. How was that for you? Right? And then and so I've got a really strong sense of myself, and I'm I'm exploring how that is for you, and together we walk forward with a sense of me and you with a sense of you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think I I started reading the book Um Against Empathy.
SPEAKER_04Oh, well that would explain it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I had this little mishmash in my head. Um other rabbit hole. On my previous podcast, I had a conversation about um boardrooms that are basically consisting of all the inner children shouting at each other and hence not getting anything done. So one of the reasons for organizational failure. And I would be curious about your perspective or experience on how to deal with that fact. Because it from how you smiled and nodded, it looks as if you resonate. Yeah. And I wonder what it would it take to make this conversation something that is accepted as professional.
SPEAKER_04I think when people see the dollars of not doing it made plain, right? So basically I think business people or the board have a choice, which is uh on the one hand, they can preserve their ego and they can have their their dominion and and not challenge themselves. On the other is the overall profitability and success of the organization. And I think the world, you know, the the the world being the way that it is, that people who use ways of optimizing human performance are just going to get better performance overall financially. So I think there's a really, really pragmatic aspect to this which will exerts its own gravitational pull.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And when you say it, it sounds so easy and so logical. And as a person who has done tons of self-development and woke up at 40 angry at the world, because nobody have has told me that growing up didn't stop at 18, but will never stop. I know, and I think the most of the listeners have a sense of it, that personal growth is painful and it's difficult. So I'm confronted now with the knowing-doing gap. Yes, the dollar signs are there. Everyone would agree that it's better to have emotionally mature leaders than not. And how do we how do you get them there? How to have this professional conversation about personal growth? Unprofessional conversation.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think I like that you went there, right? That's it, that's a good Freudian slip. I think that there's a few things. One, not everyone is going to want to learn this, and that's fine, right? There's a there's a spectrum of humanity, and and people are welcome to hold their own views. Having said that, what I have found is that when I, you know, I've worked with different people, and in my brain, I've had this idea of, oh my god, that's this this particular group, right? Oh, they're going to be like this, and this particular group might function like that, or they're in this industry, and and I've I had at the start of my work this real sense of cliche, uh, of cliche about who is what in the world. What I've found is that when we actually get in the room, everyone is just a human being. And the way the way that I do leadership is I would I believe leadership is life, right? I think that it is a verb, not a noun, right? It's not a role. It's a it's a dynamic organizing principle of a complex system, whether that's a group of humans or a group of animals or our own body and mind, right? Is a complex system which which will form some type of an or it's going to be moving towards an equilibrium. So for me, leadership is about is a word that I use to describe that process of organization. And which means, you know, because for me, a leader isn't always the one out the front, right? They might be, but then a leader has to, a good leader will know when to step back, when to empower, when to hold a boundary. It's a very dynamic principle that's there, right? If someone is a leader and they're the smartest person in every room, they're not a great leader. And their organization that they'll actually be the bottleneck to their organization rather than surrounding themselves by people who are differently capable and brilliant, and and then be in the role of going, how do I support these people to blossom in this context? So, you know, the way that I start to teach people to do that within themselves, I I haven't found, you know, I'll get some people who just don't like what I do. And and I, you know, I think a huge, really fundamental principle of this as well is a leader, uh the kind of leader who I can't work with is someone who says everyone else is the problem. Right? They because there's they're not coachable, they have no sense of self-responsibility, they're they're rigidly hierarchical. So, so for those people, I I don't I don't think I'm gonna I can't communicate with everyone, but I you know, I think for the rest, you know, what we're talking about, yeah, because here's the other thing. If they're little children in the boardroom, there is 0% chance that that's the only place where they're like that. They will be like that everywhere in their life, right? It'll affect their relationships, it'll affect their relationships with their children. Now they're either going to be ambivalent to that and and or that there will be a part of them that actually says the lack of, I mean, if they're narcissistic, okay, right, fair enough. That's that's how they roll. But if they're if they're connected to their to the quality of their life, then they're going to actually notice what we're talking about around relational dynamics and go, oh, and because this is the thing that I've found. When I really get into it, 90% of the questions that I would get. So I'll get in and I'll run a workshop around around the nervous system and how it works. And I'm doing it in a professional environment geared around um having a literacy of how to function better better as a team. 90% of the questions that will come will be uh about oh, this other this thing that's happening with my child, would this work with them or this this other situation completely removed? And so they there is this understanding that you know when you humanize yourself, it's it's a domino that's going to fall and it's going to affect every aspect of your life. And and that's okay, and that also has its own gravitational pull.
SPEAKER_01I can see, and I have witnessed it myself in myself, the moment I realize that emotions are not only happening between my ears, but I actually have a body that has carries so much information for me and data. Everything shifted. And I think that might be the entry point to remind leaders or anyone who doesn't have time that they actually have a body that they can listen to.
SPEAKER_04100%. Yep. That's so that is that is the way so the way I see it, I I will develop three concurrent types of intelligence that people have. Their cognitive intelligence, which most people over-identify with, their emotional intelligence, which is not only their emotions, but also the human need for belonging and and connection, which which we know is the single biggest predictor of of um positive outcome in life through the work of the Harvard study of relationships, right? Well, it was actually that not designed to be that, it was just the study of people, and it turned out to be that actually relationships were the quality of relationships was absolutely the biggest predictor of uh of living a good life. So I think you know, being able to have those. So there's emotions, that's the emotional intelligence, there's cognitive intelligence, and then I also talk about the instinctive intelligence, which is the the nervous system and um really it's the the sense of interoception, right? People have eight senses, not five or six, right? When people would think about oh, the sixth sense is like a supernatural knowing. I think that would be that'll be further down the list in that we have eight senses, right? We have our sense, we have the five external senses, then the our sense of balance, our sense of awareness of body position. So if you close your eyes, or if I close my eyes, I know my arm is out straight and I know that it's bent, even though I can't see it. And then the eighth sensory system is called introsception, and that is my body is an antenna, right? And and how do I learn to use that? And so that's so for me when I talk about intelligence or I talk about quote, you know, uh the the ways that leaders can harness their intelligence, for me it's it's each of those three streams.
SPEAKER_01And then I can see the the light bulb moment, and once you see it, you cannot unsee, and then you're open for that change.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, yeah, or not, right? People are gonna take it how they do, but might be good safe. Yeah. It's hard, it's hard to ignore it if you're a rational person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I would love to go down this path. And I realized that I would also be very curious, actually, now knowing about all the body of knowledge you have accumulated since you left law school. How did you personally manage this shift that you took the decision my time as a lawyer has ended and I need to focus on something different?
SPEAKER_04I learned the difference. So I was doing some work and I was actually offered uh partnership in a small law firm. And when I got that offer, I knew it instantly. I I realized that I I wanted to want it, but I didn't actually want it. And so that that it was done. And fortunately, it I was in a position where I could choose to follow, I I could honor that rather than I didn't have a family with dependents, I didn't have children. Um, I was in a position where I could be really agile and go, well, this isn't my path. This is a beautiful path, but it's not my path. And so um, and and I didn't really fully leave it. Like I I still have done, I've still presented at conferences on on leadership in law. Uh, and and you know, I I do it a little bit, but yeah, I my path took me in a different direction. It is what it is.
SPEAKER_01And now looking back with the knowledge you have, what have you opened for your students back then? Are you maybe you're still in touch with someone, have followed some path?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, uh, I I have had a few come up to me and and um and say hello and uh r fondly um remember our previous, you know, our previous interaction. My classes weren't easy. My classes were hard. I said a lot of reading. Like I I I I I felt at the time that the best way to learn law was to read if you could, if you you needed to know how to read and interpret a case, particularly in the more advanced unit. So yeah, the students that I've connected with, it's it's super sweet. But you know, they they come up and say hello. I can't speak to what they got from from my classes, but I really appreciate that they felt positive enough to be able to come and say hello. Like I think that's that's an an express gratitude. Like that's I mean, it what would I say? I would have felt it would have been a little self-gratifying if when they came up and said hello, I was like, oh great, so what exactly did you get from my classes?
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, of course. I I was and I think how you described the interaction already gives a lot of insight because what I hear is the removal of some sort of distance that often exists between the lecturer, the teacher, professor, and the students. And the same is true for the leader, that there is a sort of pedestal. And I think to remove that and bring people on eye level without removing the professionalism or the respect or the teacher-disciple role.
SPEAKER_04Beautifully said. Well, that's that awareness of power that that I was saying earlier, right? Like that the idea of imposing a hierarchy, which which occasionally will be really necessary, but also often won't be. And at the end of the day, if the similarity between education and work is people in positions of authority do well to empower the people under them, and they're trying and to see that as a responsibility rather than um being able to get to the top of a pyramid and then believe that what that gives me is absolute impunity, absolute authority, and that everyone needs to bow down, then then I think that individual is poorer for it. And and so I would say again, I think that it comes back to precisely what you play with in the way that you approach this, what is professional and what is unprofessional. And I mean to me, in in your in the way that you frame uh you know unprofessionalism, it you're kind of making you're you're you're making a joke at the expense of people who have an idea of rigid hierarchy because you're standing in this and really owning what you know is correct. Right? Even if that may, you know, so I think that it's it's something there's something in that that that you're alive to you you're taking the power back in that. And I think that's that it's the that awareness of power brought into an organizational group context is is precisely what makes the the whole experience better for everyone.
SPEAKER_01Because again, again, coming back to what you said, it helps harness all the different intelligences and diversity in the space.
SPEAKER_04100%. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01What would be an unprofessional advice that you would give to the audience?
SPEAKER_04Unprofessional advice for someone in a position of authority would be don't assume other people that start with yourself. Right? If there's a problem, start with a lens of 100% responsibility. Even if objectively you could say that someone else made a mistake. But if you start with a lens of deep responsibility and go, how what could I have done? Knowing what I know, what could I have done that would have been different or created something different in that particular situation? I think that that would be something unprofessional for the leader to say it's always start with you from a place of accountability for what went wrong and then see where that goes.
SPEAKER_01Do you have an example where you've successfully applied that to yourself?
SPEAKER_04Oh, uh anyone who works with me for any length of time, that's the that's the exercise that we do. I mean, most recently, there was a conversation that needed to be had between one C-suite and someone that was one step down. So a very senior leader in a in a big organization, and I happened to be working with both of them in and they were both doing my leadership training. And so before that conversation, we were able to explore separately from a position of 100% responsibility for that difficulty that that you may be trying to navigate. If you took responsibility for that, how might you be able to show up differently? And and it really was, I would say it was sweet. Like I the the views of the two people was different, irreconcilably so, but the ability to do that, you know, in an empathic, connected way. This goes all the way back to the beginning, right? If I can deliver a boundary in a way that is empathic and connected, then we don't the real the relationship not only fail, it doesn't suffer, but actually the relationship can be strengthened through that.
SPEAKER_01This would be a start of another podcast episode. So I just drop the mic here. Thank you so much, Emma.
SPEAKER_04Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's lovely chatting with you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was delightful and very thought-provoking.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it is. It is. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01This was a conversation without the script. Now it's your turn. I'm Miriam Hapnus, and this has been unprofessionalism.