Sometimes the best decisions only reveal themselves after we’ve made them.

Six months ago, I merged my new podcast, Unprofessionalism, with the existing Workshops Work feed. It felt like the right move at the time. But the download statistics told a different story.

Many listeners searching for Workshops Work kept finding only the episode titled “The Final Episode of Workshops Work” and understandably assumed the podcast had disappeared.

In this short episode, I share why I decided to separate the two podcasts again—and why both shows now have their own dedicated homes.

If you’re interested in facilitation, workshop design, group dynamics, and the philosophy behind meaningful conversations, you’re in the right place.

If you’re looking for the Unprofessionalism podcast, you’ll find it here: https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/

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👉 What happens when being “professional” gets in the way of being human? My new podcast Unprofessionalism explores the rules we’re taught to follow at work, and what happens when we break them. Listen here: https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/  👈 

This week's professional risk

Questioning the professional rules we’ve always followed, without ever choosing them.

Description

Every now and then, a conversation comes along that completely breaks my understanding of unprofessionalism. This episode starts with one of those moments. I realised that simply breaking professional norms isn’t enough. Some people challenge conventions to gain attention, power or status. Others do it because they’re trying to make work more human, more honest or more courageous. The difference matters.

But perhaps the most interesting part isn’t what my guests do. It’s what happens inside us when we hear their stories. That little voice saying, “You can’t do that.” Where does it come from? Is it protecting something you deeply value? Or is it repeating a rule you inherited without ever questioning it?

If this podcast has ever made you uncomfortable, this episode explains why.

This episode invites you to reflect on:

• Why feeling uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean someone crossed a line.
• How to tell the difference between breaking a rule that’s outdated and one that’s worth protecting.
• Why most of us follow professional norms that nobody ever explicitly taught us.

Over to you!

The next time you catch yourself thinking, “You can’t do that,” ask yourself: What professional rule did they just break? And do I still believe that rule deserves to exist?

About the guest

Myriam is a facilitator, behavioural economist and the host of Unprofessionalism. After interviewing dozens of leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives, she has realised that every time she thinks she understands unprofessionalism, a new conversation stretches its boundaries.

This episode is one of those moments.

Links to learn more about Myriam Hadnes:

LinkedIn 

Website 

Myriam’s personal newsletter

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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/

instagram.com/thecharlenecoco

https://www.makeitwerk.co/

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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.

Links to learn more about Mariam Halfhide:

LinkedIn

Watch on YouTube: The Projection Exercise

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Jamell Crouthers has held a full-time job the entire time he's been writing. Sixty books in eight years, a podcast, blog posts, all of it built in the hours around his day work. He writes fiction about social issues — race, workaholism, homelessness, addiction — the kind of conversations most workplaces won't touch directly.

When he worked at a medical office, he used to sit in the break room before his shift with his laptop and coworkers walking past started asking what he was writing. Some began buying his books. His supervisor became a regular listener of his podcast.

At his current job in banking, almost nobody knows. The difference, Jamell says, has less to do with courage of opening up or wanting to remain professional but more about whether the environment makes curiosity possible at all and how fast a numbers-driven, fully remote workplace can make that kind of connection feel like effort.

We talked about what happens when work becomes only about hitting targets, and what it takes to bring the parts of yourself that don't fit the job description into the room anyway.

Links to learn more about Jamell Crouthers:

eBook

Paperback

Audiobook

Blog

Podcast

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Donatella Caggiano was living in a Best Western while her flooded apartment got fixed when she watched a SWAT team raid a neighbouring house to catch a fugitive. She caught herself rooting for the person running and then realised she was the person running. Donatella accepted the hint her body and the universe were giving then drove to her office that morning and quit.

The job she walked away from was a corporate role she had stayed in through a merger and acquisition that kept her and her team in the dark, and left everyone working in an unfinished office surrounded by moving boxes for months. The message was clear long before the layoffs: stop investing. Stop expecting. Just wait.

The hotel window was Donatella's accidental third space — the room outside both home and work where she could finally see herself. She now designs that room intentionally, for teams. She helps organisations have conversations the office wasn't built for, to rebuild belonging in places where gratitude is demanded and silence is rewarded.

We talked about why grief gets skipped when organisations change, what happens to a team when a leader hands back agency instead of holding the line, and what four haircuts taught her about leading through change.

Links to learn more about Donatella Caggiano:

Website

LinkedIn

Newsletter

Substack

Podcast

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Gustavo Razzetti once sat next to a woman at a corporate conference, judging the regional VP presenting on stage until she revealed that was her husband. Instead of backpedaling he apologised, then stood by every word. That instinct of owning the mess without pretending he didn’t mean it is the backbone of his work.

He has spent decades inside corporate and agency life watching great ideas die because of terrible culture. He now works with teams on what he calls conversational debt: the gap between what people nod through in meetings and what they actually act on. His research found that when people are asked why others don't speak up, the answer is fear, but when asked why they themselves don't, the answer becomes pointlessness: a learned belief that nothing will change anyway.

Gustavo refuses to live that way. He fires clients before the work even starts if the fit is wrong. His rule is that he'd rather lose his job over one conversation than avoid a hundred — and he did.

We talked about the power dynamics that shape what is considered professionalism, the most dangerous type of silence in organisations and why we should all drop the invisible contract nobody handed us and stop waiting for permission to speak.

Links to learn more about Gustavo Razzetti:

Forward Talk (Gustavo’s new book)

Website

Substack

Workshops

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Rori DuBoff once took an unused office at Accenture, tore it down, and built a virtual reality studio from scratch with no formal approval and that's how she got the firm into the metaverse. She didn't wait for the green light. She brought in a few people who were equally excited, and delivered.

She's spent decades in digital innovation and marketing, watching organisations say they wanted disruption and then treat the people delivering it as the problem.

That’s made her conclude that 80% of innovation is change management. Rori explains how most of us obsess over the idea while it is actually the smallest part of the problem. The larger part is whether the people around you feel safe enough to hear it.

She acted before consensus throughout her whole career, took the heat for it, and now she is sharing the blueprint.

Links to learn more about Rori Duboff:

LinkedIn

Website

All Things Trust

Substack

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Emanuele Mazzanti is a day one rule-breaker. When he moved to EY Italy, his boss asked to be called "Dottore." He noticed the distance being created and suggested, politely, that they drop the formalities and just use first names. Surprisingly, the answer was yes.

That’s a pattern he kept running into. Different countries and roles but the same kind of distance disguised as formality to keep things simple and boost performance. In consultancy, where everyone is climbing the same ladder, connection becomes a liability as only one person can move up at a time.

The irony is that the performance everyone’s after lives exactly in the connection they've learned to avoid. That’s the space Emanuele keeps moving towards for nearly two decades. Sometimes the barriers are pushed and sometimes they push him. His solution? Love - the deepest form of connection.

Emanuele firmly believes that love belongs at work and is a core leadership trait and nothing will inspire people to do and be their best at work like feeling loved.

Links to learn more about Emanuele Mazzanti:

LinkedIn

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Cathey Armillas built her career the way most people are told not to. She doesn't separate what she loves from what she sells. Her sneaker collection became a filter for clients. Her obsession with waterfalls became a corporate training product. Her decades as a competitive softball pitcher became her coaching methodology. Her background in marketing psychology became her speaking framework.

She coaches TED speakers and executives to do the same. To stop becoming a flatter version of themselves the moment they walk into a professional space, and to trust that what makes them recognisable outside of work is exactly what will make them land inside it.

She has a name for what happens when people don’t believe who they are is enough: voice masking. Her argument is that the moment an audience senses someone performing instead of connecting, they stop listening. Not consciously. Viscerally. And no amount of memorisation fixes that.

We talked about the wall we are told to build between our personal and professional lives, and why Cathey's career is a case for replacing the bricks with glass so you can see what's on the other side and decide what's worth bringing through.

Links to learn more about Cathey Armillas:

Website

LinkedIn

Speaker Skills Academy

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👉 Are you looking for an old "workshops work" podcast episode? You can search and find all 355 episodes by keyword here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/267818/episodes 👈