Unprofessionalism
Professional performance is exhausting. Maintaining the mask. Editing ourselves. Pretending we know when we don't.
This podcast is about people who dropped the performance. And what happened next.
Each episode features someone who broke professional conventions and found something better on the other side: the executive who disclosed grief in a corporate setting and found it opened new ways of relating; the coach who realised her authority came from integrity, not compliance; the designer who ignored the 'approved tools' and saved thousands of hours.
Conversations circle around three questions:
- What does it cost us to perform professionalism instead of showing up as ourselves?
- How do we create spaces where people can bring their full attention and humanity to work?
- When is the “unprofessional” move actually the most responsible one?
If you feel the tension between who you are and who you're expected to be at work, this podcast shows you what happens when people stop managing that tension and just stop performing.
Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes—behavioural economist and founder of workshops.work. New episode every week.
Unprofessionalism
004 - The Business Case for Belonging with Jon Berghoff
If professionalism is restrictive by design, asking us to shrink, perform, and drain our precious energy on keeping up appearances – unprofessionalism is the undoing of the rules. It's the freedom to be our full, unequivocal selves.
And who better to teach us about the business of belonging than Jon Berghoff? He's the founder of Xchange and one of the most sought-after facilitators in the world.
He also does his best work barefoot.
Jon's early years were marked by doubt and displacement. Instead of performing his way into acceptance, he learned how to regulate his own nervous system so he could hold space for others to feel safe. Now guided by that learning, Jon helps people speak their truth and connect to something greater than themselves. In this conversation, he shares the risks he's taken, the stories he's collected, and what happens when you stop performing and start belonging.
Find out about:
- Jon’s experience of being unprofessional – and his learnings from leaning into risks
- Why feeling safe to be yourself starts with creating the right conditions to regulate your nervous system
- How facilitators can expand their capacity for self-regulation, in order to expand the room's collective capacity
- How to spot when professional performance is draining your energy – and more importantly, how to challenge it
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If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/
