I'm a recovering academic who uses her insights from behavioural economics to develop methods that facilitate collaboration. In my weekly newsletter, I share the summary of my latest interview on the "workshops work" podcast along with an application of facilitation as a life and leadership skill.
Calling out mistakes || 🎤 Episode 1 on (Self-)Permission with Jillian Reilly
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Dear Reader, What makes it difficult to call a mistake what it is? This week, I posted a list of some of my biggest business and podcast mistakes on LinkedIn and it went mini-viral with 300+ reactions. The post ended with: 'Some mistakes led to surprising outcomes. All led to a waste of time and money.' The comments were thoughtful - and revealed something. What caught my curiosity was the pushback on 'waste.' Many offered gentler words: investment, learning, growth. I chose 'waste' deliberately. Because mistakes do waste time and money we will never get back. When I paid designers (more than once) for courses and products I never tested, it was expensive procrastination, a hobby at most. Don't call it investment. I believe that we can learn from wasteful mistakes. Waste and learning, both can be true. But I find it striking that we cannot call mistakes and waste for what they are. When we try to be honest about failure, stating that it sucks shows more compassion than trying to find the silver-lining. This happens so often! When we share hardship, we get a compassionate "it will get better soon" instead of an honest "oh fck! How are you holding up?" Is it LinkedIn culture demanding constant growth mindset? Or have we forgotten how to sit with regret? When we don't regret, we don't learn. And to regret, we need to acknowledge the loss, the waste, first. 🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:We grow up waiting for permission. But at what point do we stop waiting and start taking it for ourselves? Mentor, facilitator and permission advocate Jillian Reilly took hers early on in her career, during a US-sponsored AIDS programme that she was leading in Zimbabwe. Shaking in her shoes, she chose to speak her truth and honour her integrity, even if it meant going against the grain of expectation. For our first unscripted exploration of Unprofessionalism, Jillian joins me to deliver an important reminder: no one is coming to give us permission. We must resist the micro-moments of suppression, we must break the invisible rules of what we think is allowed, and we must take up the space we deserve. Find out about:
🎧 Click here to listen to the interview 📥 Download my 1-page summary: 🎧 Join the next podcast club gathering - ‼️ Updated Date!Now that the workshops work podcast has retired, you may want to find peers with who to listen back and discuss some of the old episodes, to deepen our understanding and to link the content with our lived experience. All you have to do to join the Podcast Club is to join me on Substack: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/ ‼️ On January 28th, we will gather around the theme of Polarisation in Facilitation. Click here to sign up for free. That's it from my side. I hope you find permission in here to call your mistakes what they are. I wish you a moment of spaciousness to sit with what you've been trying to fix. Hope to see you next week! Myriam
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How can we facilitate collaboration?
I'm a recovering academic who uses her insights from behavioural economics to develop methods that facilitate collaboration. In my weekly newsletter, I share the summary of my latest interview on the "workshops work" podcast along with an application of facilitation as a life and leadership skill.
Dear Reader, Do you have a new year's ritual? A word or a commitment for the months to come? Since 2016, I write my 10 commandments and choose a word every January. A few years ago I shared my commandments in this newsletter. One reader (and good friend in the meantime) started writing hers too. Now she sends them to me every year. It reminded me that sharing our commandments turns them into commitments. It makes it real. What makes it even more real is looking back at the changes and...
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Dear Reader, What tells you that you’ve done a good job? Pause for a second before you answer. Is it a number, a feeling, a comment from someone else, or the simple relief of being done? Most of us have a metric, even if we’ve never named it. And once it’s there, it starts steering far more than we realise. I noticed this recently, in the most unlikely of places: on my meditation cushion. Before my last Vipassana retreat, a “good” meditation was easy to define. It was a sit where my mind...