Hi Reader,

I sent a former client my new pitch deck and asked for his candid feedback.

He replied fast. And candid he was! A long list of bullets that took me weeks to digest.

He asked me if I collaborated with AI on it. Ouch. And pointed out that my uniqueness in the way I operate and facilitate didn't come through. In its current format, I would blend into the background of other leadership training providers was his conclusion.

I first brushed it off, thinking that leadership training in 15 different languages should be a sufficient differentiating factor. It's ok not to be too different, otherwise I might scare big corporates off. I was telling myself that I wanted to build a boring business. A simple model without drama, no heroics, nothing that depends on me performing miracles every quarter. Boring, to me, was the goal.

What I hadn't noticed is that somewhere I'd confused building a boring business with making it sound boring. Those are not the same thing. One is a strength. The other is just voiceless.

And voiceless is exactly what the deck was. I'd written "leadership training" — because that's what I thought we offer and corporates buy. That's what the category says, that's the phrase that sounds credible in a room full of procurement people. But it isn't what we do.

Thanks to the feedback I received, I realised that what we actually offer is training people skills for people who work with people. As soon as I wrote this down, I felt lighter and excited about our offer. It's specific, it's a little odd, and it's mine. I'd swapped it for the safe one without even noticing the trade.

Why would my pitch deck sound so vanilla?

Because the moment I opened the deck template, the professional reflex took over. And that reflex said: sound like your category, because sounding like a category reads as serious. Specificity feels risky. Sameness feels safe. So I reached for the language everyone reaches for, and it made me indistinguishable. That's what professionalism does.

I do see the irony! If anyone should be immune to the vanilla-deck reflex, it's me. And I wasn't. The pull is automatic. It caught me on the one document where I most needed to sound like myself.

The only reason I caught it is that someone refused to be polite. He's a former client who knows precisely what everyone else sounds like and luckily he knew that this wasn't me. He could have said "looks great, good luck." I did get that response from others. It would have been easy to listen to them and reject the odd one. I decided to do the opposite.

The deck still isn't rewritten but the transformation has started.

🎤 Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:

This week's Professional Risk, inspired by Mariam Halfhide

Telling someone honestly how their behaviour affected you, instead of hiding behind professionalism, blame or silence.

This episode invites you to reflect on:

• Why do we suppress a difficult emotion although we know that it makes it even stronger?
• Why feedback falls flat when we can’t name what a behaviour actually did to us.
• Why the leaders people trust most build the conditions for others to grow, rather than solving every problem for them.

Most of us were trained how to behave professionally. Almost none of us were trained in how to handle frustration, disappointment, or hurt. So we hold it in, stay composed, and let it surface later as a clipped reply, a quiet withdrawal, or blame aimed at someone who never heard from us the true impact of their behaviour. The more “professional” we try to look, the harder an honest conversation becomes.

Mariam Halfhide does the opposite, on purpose. When something gets to her, she doesn’t swallow it, and she doesn’t fire back — she steps away, settles herself, then goes to the person and tells them plainly how their behaviour landed on her, without assuming they meant harm. She’s found that these conversations end with more trust than they started. Across feedback, leadership, altered states and emotional regulation, she keeps returning to one question: how do you become more honest without becoming less trustworthy?

Would you dare?

The next time someone’s behaviour unsettles you, could you tell them how it landed on you — as a person, not a process — instead of letting it leak out as a rant or complaint?

About the Guest

Mariam Halfhide works at the intersection of AI strategy and human connection. Having lived and worked across many cultures, she brings a sharp perspective on adaptation, belonging, and the courage it takes to choose a workplace where more of yourself is welcome.

🎧 Click here to listen to the interview

📥 Download my 1-page summary

​UP_025_Summary.pdf​

That's it from my side. I hope to see you next week!

Myriam