After six years and 355 episodes of the workshops work podcast, I was left with a paradox: The more we strive to be professional, the harder it becomes to connect to one another honestly, vulnerably β as humans. With my podcast and newsletter, I want to inspire the courage it takes to bring more of ourselves to work. Each week, I dig into moments of professional risk, from my own life, and from conversations with guests on my podcast, Unprofessionalism.
The value of (im)perfection || π€ EP 31: Who Do You Actually Work For with Esther Ifrah
|
Hi Reader, One of the biggest challenges I'm facing right now is hearing clients wonder whether to replace live workshops with AI-powered, self-guided learning β which is basically upgraded e-learning. My first instinct was to become even better, more polished, more structured, more ... professional. But then it hit me. The response to that threat must lie at the opposite end of the spectrum, by which I don't mean lower quality but more humanity. This might result in more messiness and I wonder whether it's not the messiness that we actually sometimes long for. A live workshop is one of the last places where people know they're interacting with another human being rather than an algorithm, so if we try to compete by becoming as flawless and scripted and predictable as AI, we've already lost. Why would anyone pay for an imperfect imitation of something that machines do faster and cheaper? Why would someone sit through a training if they could watch the same thing pre-recorded? Our value isn't that we're more consistent than AI, it's that we're less consistent. Last week I facilitated a workshop on challenging conversations. I started with acknowledging that everyone was there for the same reason: they were facing a conversation they'd rather avoid. They laughed and I could feel a relaxation going through the room, allowing participants to turn towards each other as peers, in the same boat instead of colleagues needing to pretend they had it all together. π€ Waiting for you on the Unprofessionalism podcast:Esther Ifrah was a hard-ass. She pushed her team hard. Worked long hours and had high standards. Everything she demanded of herself she demanded of them. And then she started pushing in a different direction. Instead of the team, she pushed back when work came down from above and nobody was replaced. She negotiated a Friday afternoon off when she couldn't get anything else. She once helped a team member polish her CV and rehearse for an interview at another company, and cheered when she got the job. It was when she started caring less about her career that she dared to care more about her people. When she stopped needing the promotion: "Maybe it's because I was ready to get out, but I switched to being much more human." After her ambition loosened its grip, her people started to care. They told her more, they shared what they needed, they stopped being afraid to fail. People left other teams and not hers. Maybe instead of telling managers to care more about their people, we should tell them to care less about the company. π§ Click here to listen to the interviewπ₯ Download my 1-page summaryβUP_031_Summary.pdfβThat's it from my side. I hope to see you next week! Myriam
|
What does it cost to be yourself β at work?
After six years and 355 episodes of the workshops work podcast, I was left with a paradox: The more we strive to be professional, the harder it becomes to connect to one another honestly, vulnerably β as humans. With my podcast and newsletter, I want to inspire the courage it takes to bring more of ourselves to work. Each week, I dig into moments of professional risk, from my own life, and from conversations with guests on my podcast, Unprofessionalism.
Hi Reader, When I fell in love with a woman four years ago, I decided it wouldn't change anything about who I was. I had been with men all my life, and now I was with a woman. End of story. Nobody's business who I sleep with. That's the story I told myself until this year when my good friend Laura spoke about cultural aspects of queerness: how being queer shapes far more of us than our sexuality, and how many gay people go through very similar journeys without noticing. As a side-story, I...
Hi Reader, I am German, living in Amsterdam, and after almost a decade my Dutch is β as we say in German β too small to live and too big to die. To change that, I'm officially out of office this week to immerse myself in a full-week intensive Dutch class. And to make it compleet, my partner and I agreed to only speak Dutch at home during this week, hopefully building the routine of speaking Dutch with each other from now on. While stuttering like a ten-year-old, I realise how much we attach...
Hi Reader, Let me start with an update: After six months, I have disentangled the two podcasts again. Workshops Work and Unprofessionalism now have both their own home and feed: Unprofessionalism Podcast Workshops Work Podcast Here is the long story of why and why now. A while back, "The final episode of workshops work with Myriam Hadnes" pulled a few hundred downloads per week. That's unusually many for an episode that's months old and where I hadn't said anything particularly brilliant to...