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
026 - The Corporate Drag with Charlie Robertson
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This week's professional risk - inspired by Charlie
Make the thing you've always kept furthest from work the centre of it.
Description
Charlie Robertson spent years keeping two lives carefully apart: the consultant at a well-respected firm, and Charlene Coco, the drag persona he performed in nightlife and mentioned to almost no one at work. Then he left the consulting career, went freelance as a facilitator, and — only about a year ago — did the thing that still makes him flinch when he posts about it on LinkedIn: he brought Charlene into the boardroom.
What follows isn't a coming-out story so much as a working theory of costumes. Charlie's argument, borrowed from RuPaul: we're all in drag, every day — the suit, the meeting voice, the confidence we perform. Most of us just never chose ours. Drag queens choose everything: the wig, the makeup, the walk, the reaction they want from the room. So what happens when you bring that level of intention to how you show up at work?
Along the way: why Charlene was once braver than Charlie in gay bars and is now more nervous than him in offices; the workshop participant who paces her flat in her highest heels before big video calls; what Charlie's dad means when he calls all of this "my Britney thing"; and a discovery neither of us saw coming until it happened mid-conversation — why an audience wills a drag queen to succeed, and what that reveals about which leaders we're actually willing to get behind.
This episode invites you to reflect on:
- Where the line sits between adapting to a room and disappearing into it
- What your version of the high heels is — the small, deliberate thing that switches your confidence on before you walk in
Over to you!
What's the one part of yourself you edit out before every meeting — and what would it take to wear it on purpose instead?
About Charlie
Charlie Robertson is the co-founder of Make it Werk, a consultancy helping organisations build teams worth being part of — and cultures worth staying for. He and his best friend Safiya started it after realising the inclusive spaces they created in nightlife were exactly what companies were missing. He facilitates trainings, offsites and workshops — sometimes in full drag, as Charlene Coco.
Links to learn more about Charlie:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsoncharles/
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