Roi Ben-Yehuda was one dissertation away from finishing his PhD when he realised he didn't want what was waiting on the other side. He walked away. Then years later, settled into a good job he liked, with a new mortgage and two small babies at home, he felt that pull again and walked away from that too, right in the middle of a pandemic. 

Both times, the "thou shalt” voice telling him to stay on course was very loud. Both times, he ignored it. But the last one he gave himself nine months to make it work or face the consequences.

In less time than that, he built a company centred around the virtue behind his "unprofessionalism". One he believes to be the source of all virtues: courage. 

He even has a mathematical formula: courage = power x purpose ÷ dragons. The dragons are the doubt, the fear, the inner voice that tells you the risk isn't worth it. And his whole work is about shrinking them — not by ignoring them, but by naming them, auditing them, and asking one simple question: what is the cost of doing nothing?

He also makes the case that we celebrate courage only when it works out. And that this is exactly how companies train people out of trying.

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Leanne Hughes wrote the name of a podcast she didn’t have on a blue Post-it note, dropped it in a hat, and when her name was called — walked on stage and described the show as if it existed. It didn’t. A few months later, the First Time Facilitator was born. That’s also how she landed a Wiley publishing deal, and sold out a 50-person consulting conference in eight days.

The pattern is always the same: claim it first, build it second. Resourcefulness shows up after commitment, not before it. Waiting until you’re ready is the riskier move.

In this episode: why tight deadlines are a gift, what happens when you fuse your identity with your work, and why disliking failure and fearing it are two very different things.

Links to learn more about Leanne:

Website: https://www.leannehughes.com

Work Fame Substack: https://workfa.me

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leannehughes/

Instagram: https://www.youtube.com/@LeanneHughes

YouTube: https://www.instagram.com/leannehughes/

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When Martin Frederik Garbers’ company was acquired, he was handed the unenviable job of letting twenty-five people go. His own days were numbered too, but he chose to spend them sitting through the hard conversations, one by one, as a human being first – a CFO second.

As he walked the Camino after redundancy, his body told him with every fibre of his being, that he wasn't going back to corporate life. Now he lights a candle in the early hours of the morning, takes executives for long walks in nature, and asks his coaching clients to slow down long enough to hear what their inner tutor would tell them.

We talk about why the unspoken rules often do the most damage, what gets buried when leaders aren't allowed to feel, and why two hours walking in nature will do far more for your business than a back-to-back calendar full of big, important meetings.

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As her classmates chanted the purpose of business (spoiler: to make money), Philippa White couldn’t help but feel like she'd wandered into the wrong room, as the business school black sheep.

She'd grown up watching her uncle bridge worlds in apartheid South Africa – endlessly curious, fascinated by people and possibility, and the doctor of Nelson Mandela. He taught Philippa something that no business school curriculum was ever going to: the return on being more human. Today, she takes this conviction into boardrooms across the world.

We got into what happens when people genuinely care about each other at work, and what it costs when they don't. As Philippa will tell you, connection and belonging isn’t the soft, smushy stuff in business, it's by far your greatest asset.

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Alex McCann isn’t a qualified career coach, occupational therapist, or psychologist. But he’ll be the first to tell you that.

He walked away from a six-month internship, would sneak off to watch films when he should've been serving popcorn, and then decided he was done pretending he had it all figured out. Now at just 25 years old, he’s figuring it all out in public. After hundreds of conversations about why people feel lost in their careers, he’s building an AI career coach for the ones tired of faking it.

Alex doesn’t claim to have all the answers though – and that’s precisely the point. We talk about what happens when you stop performing expertise — and start solving problems from the inside.

Links to learn more about Alex McCann:

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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/

Anna Lundberg had spent her whole life being the good girl. Top of the class as valedictorian, Oxford graduate, and the shiny P&G title to show for it. She’d ticked every box, perfected the image, and then she did something very off-brand: she quit.

What she didn’t expect was how long the good girl mindset would follow her. Even now, a decade into solopreneurship and 370 episodes into her podcast Reimagining Success, Anna still feels the pull of the old scripts. Say yes, never chase, be likeable, and fill up your diary to feel important.

We talk about what success looks like once the gold stars disappear and you’re left to figure it out on your own. Anna’s advice? Bring your A game, set the boundary, go the extra mile – but whatever you do, don’t go two.

Links to learn more about Anna Lundberg:

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Mark McCartney showed up to facilitate a C-level team in Berlin on the hottest day of the year, drenched in sweat, and opened by pointing out his own stain marks. They laughed. The room shifted. That's Mark — someone who left a 15-year finance career, spent a year in Peru, and has since asked 300+ people the same question: what is a good life?

We got into why real vulnerability isn't the rehearsed trauma story but the small, mundane thing you say in the moment that reminds everyone they're sitting with a human. We talked about boundaries as a source of connection (not walls), why agreement is overrated in teams, and what happens when senior leaders can't admit they're overwhelmed even though it would be weirder if they weren't.

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Sometimes, just sometimes, the rules are there to be broken. Because when you dare to break them, miracles and moments of beautiful humanity could be waiting just on the other side.

Rotem Kazir was trained never to let her coaching clients know anything about her. Keep distance. Stay neutral. That's professional. Until a founder she'd coached for two years said something that broke the rule for good.

She's spent 20 years working with startup founders — first in HR, then on the VC side, now as a coach — and what she keeps seeing is that the performance breaks down at the exact moment people need each other most. One founder walked into his board meeting and said he didn't know how to take the company forward. The room shifted from performance review to actual problem-solving. He went on to raise $100M. We talked about why that almost never happens, when vulnerability is strategic versus reckless, and why she now opens meetings with "What's hard?" instead of status updates.

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Jon Berghoff walked into a room of C-level executives from billion-dollar companies and noticed they'd all filled the back rows first. He spent two hours debating whether to say something. Then he got on stage and asked them to move to the front. The looks he got said: nobody has ever told us where to sit. Three Fortune 50 companies in that room ended up hiring him.

Jon is the founder of Xchange and one of the most in-demand facilitators in the world. He also spent five years running global conferences in a suit on top and barefoot on the bottom. We talked about why that's not a gimmick — it's connected to something he's learned about nervous system regulation and what happens when the person holding the room is actually relaxed. We got into the inner work behind facilitation, why the moments that go sideways are the ones that build the most trust, and what it actually costs to keep performing a version of yourself the room didn't ask for.

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Early in her career, Tieren Scott was told she needed to sound more "bubbly" when presenting. Her manager pointed to a colleague in the room as the example. Tieren's natural voice — grounded, measured, clear — wasn't the problem. It just wasn't the default. That moment taught her something black women in America already know: professionalism was never a neutral standard.

Tieren has a doctorate in organisational leadership and a decade of experience as an instructional designer and coach. We talked about what it actually costs to mask every day — adjusting your tone, reading the room before you've even opened your mouth, teaching your kids to do the same. She was honest about the exhaustion of it, and honest about the risk that comes with stopping. This conversation changed something for me: the freedom to be "unprofessional" is itself a privilege. Not everyone gets to drop the mask and call it brave.

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