013 - The Mask I Still Wear with Myriam Hadnes

What happens if we dare to tear off the mask of professionalism and actually risk showing up for real? I'm your host, Myriam Hadnes, and this is Unprofessionalism. The president walked up to me And reflected that I got away with a lot of things and I should keep in mind that it won't last because now I was young, pretty, and female, and hence I could do all these things. Today I see how it really connects to the overall topic of unprofessionalism and The role of status and privilege that's related to it. My Vietnamese counterpart doing the same job, surely she wouldn't have been able to get away with all of that. She had to show up in the office. She couldn't say, oh, I do the work from home. Oh, I meet the students in a café because it's more convenient for me. But I could. Hello. Today, it's only me on the show because after 15 weeks of the Unprofessional Podcast, I made a few observations that I would like to share and reflect upon because having these conversations with professionals from across the globe, I realized that unprofessionalism is a status game. To be unprofessional comes easier for those who have been born with privilege or who have earned status throughout their career. And this gives them permission to write their own script, to show up as their full human selves, be a little bit quirky, and dress in the way that they feel comfortable instead of ways that have been Defined by an organization or by some unwritten rule. I realized over the past weeks that it is much easier to find male podcast guests to speak about their unprofessional edge and how they have dared to be courageous to leave the script behind to follow their heart, their human side. And all of this is super inspiring. And I hope, and this is the ambition of the podcast, that I can, that we can inspire the audience to drop the professional mask so that they can show who they are and be more authentic and more connecting and generous. Um, at work. For women though, there's more at stake because the label unprofessionalism still comes as a threat. And I'm wondering now whether it is more risky for women and actually for minorities in general, for people of color to put their name next to a label, Unprofessionalism, the name of the podcast, and therefore more difficult to actually come on the show to share how they have liberated themselves from that. And these reflections actually brought up a memory of mine back when I was Living and working in Vietnam. I worked at the university and I was about to leave. And over the past 3 years, I have taken some liberties to make it just more comfortable for myself. So I went off script. I wrote my own script. I didn't like the long travels to work, so mostly I worked from home. I Taught in ways that could be called unconventional. I used classroom experiments and used comic books to teach the content of economics. So I think one of my final days, the president walked up to me and reflected that I got away with a lot of things, and I should keep in mind that It won't last because now I was young, pretty, and female, and hence I could do all these things. And that landed pretty hard. And today I see how it really connects to the overall topic of unprofessionalism and the role of status and privilege That's related to it because my Vietnamese counterpart doing the same job, surely she wouldn't have been able to get away with all of that. She had to show up in the office. She couldn't say, oh, I do the work from home. Oh, I meet the students in a café because it's more convenient for me, but I could. So the mask The professional mask is not optional to everyone. It's not as easy to just put this mask down for everyone in the same way. For some, it is a protection, and there are reasons why the professional standards have been defined, and it's quite obvious by whom. When I look back, the moment I started my freelance career, I put my academic title back into my email signature and into my LinkedIn tagline. I've never used it before because at university, being a doctor is nothing special. It's actually, that's the minimum you could see there. So that was nothing. It wasn't worth anything. But as soon as I started my freelance career, I knew that I would get away with many more things. If people could assume that I was smart. So I suddenly was free to ask the weird question, to admit that I didn't understand, to ask for more explanations, or to just be weird and silly me, because this title was a sort of shield that protected me. And still it doesn't mean that today, because I'm hosting this podcast and these times are almost a decade ago, I'm still not in the model of unprofessionalism. And maybe that's the very reason why I started this project in the first place. Sometimes I have the impression that as entrepreneurs, we are deep down all trying to solve our own problems. So maybe this entire journey of unprofessionalism is my way to liberate myself, to become more unprofessional myself. And because when I listen to, let me give you an example. After every podcast episode that I record, I put it, I, we listen to it. To learn, to see what I can make, do better, what I can improve and what I wanna keep, and also to write the summary. What I also do is I take the transcript and put it into an AI agent, and then Claude gives me their feedback, very candid feedback. And I noticed that when I listen to myself, I can hear the voice masking, and voice masking is a term that I learned from a voice coach. Who will hopefully come on the show soon to speak more about that. But it means that our voice changes if we are nervous, if we want to, not necessarily pretend, but if we want to perform well. So you might hear me be a little bit more thoughtful. Or, hi, this is Myriam. Welcome to the show. You can hear the change in the pitch. I kind of suck my belly in and my voice is in my throat, and you can hear that something is wrong with this voice. And it's a sign of discomfort, of trying to play a role who's maybe a little bit less authentic. And I would do that when I'm particularly nervous about a guest. And when I'm nervous, I also For sometimes forget to listen, and I start to stack questions so that the guest forgets or doesn't know what I'm actually asking. And every time that I ask Claude for feedback, there's usually always the same things coming back, that as soon as we enter the territory of my expertise, I become a smartass. I have a tendency to start lecturing, to show off all my expertise, everything that I know about facilitation and psychological safety and all of that. And I only do that when I'm nervous. And as a podcast host, despite all these many hours that I have recorded, I still remain nervous. And I find it striking to see that there are certain moments that trigger this behavior. And it actually helps me to also be compassionate, to be compassionate towards people who we quickly put into a box, how they're arrogant, they're smartass, they want to show off, because I realize that I am falling into the same trap as soon as I believe that I have to sound smart, be someone, impress someone, despite the fact that I cognitively know that I do impress people more when I just shut up and listen and ask the follow-up question instead of sharing everything that I know. And most of us know, and still we somehow have been raised with the thought that we have to prove ourselves because otherwise we might not be enough. So what I'm trying to say is that by playing all these roles and trying to be smart and to sound smart and to impress others, these are all signs of the professional mask that we are putting on to protect ourselves from judgment of others and judgment from ourselves. And with this podcast, my real ambition is to showcase that it doesn't have to be that way. We can be incredibly successful when we start writing our own script and when we have the courage to show up. And I acknowledge that this, as I said in the beginning, is more difficult for some than for others. And still it is an opportunity for all of us. And I think it is a matter of practice. So I'm thinking back of my time as a PhD student. I wrote my very first paper on the impact of superstitious beliefs and witchcraft on economic decision-making in Sub-Saharan Africa. And my supervisor back then, he had the best intentions and he advised me to switch my topics to the study of the economic impact of witch hunt in Middle Age Europe, because he thought that this would give me a higher chance of being published. But being published wasn't my goal. I was passionate about the topic of learning about the impact of superstitious beliefs on economic decision-making and showing that there is a very rational underlying principle to that. And so you can imagine that I did not follow his advice. I stuck to my topic. And this brought me to amazing conferences. I was invited to prestigious universities and research groups to present my work, to discuss my work with other experts. And it was the topic that made my eyes sparkle and that gave me the motivation to go further, to dig in deeper. And it was my passion and my devotion that made me successful in this field. I would not have had the same success if I had followed a research topic just because I thought this was a safer bet. And I think we all have these examples in our life where we're confronted with 2 choices, right? The blue pill and the red pill. For those who remember The Matrix. Which way do we want to follow? Do we want to pretend or do we want to be honest with ourselves and the world around us? And being honest and courageous might not come easy, and it's not always risk— it's never risk-free. There's always a risk. But if we succeed, I think it's just worth the payoff. The other example, more recent, I don't only want to speak about my good old PhD times, then I sound like a middle-aged woman. Jeez. So when I, it was a pandemic and I started NDB, Never Done Before, as a festival, online festival, because I lost all my clients and I had no idea about event management. I had no idea how to do that. And still I thought that I can pull it off. I invited my podcast guests. I had a network, invited them. And at the festival, the only condition for them to present a workshop was to do something that they have never done before in front of a paying audience. How unprofessional. If you're on stage, hugely, we want to show the best version of ourselves. We want to show our expertise, the polished, The performed, the tested. And here we were doing the exact opposite. And what it created was a space where everyone could learn, but nobody was teaching. And that brought us closer together as equals, as human beings. But, and this brings me back to the initial opening of this episode, I was able to do that because I did have the network. I could reach out to the podcast guests with whom I had established a relationship, so they trusted me. I had built a trusting relationship with the audience, so they knew that if they're buying a ticket for my festival, they could trust that I have put thought and effort into it, and that I cared for their experience. Because we could also see it in a different light. Oh, you come, you present something that you have never rehearsed, that you don't care about, and then you make mistakes and you are not honoring and respecting the audience and their time. And this was not what we are doing. What we were doing were thoughtful experiments from which we could all learn. And there's the nuance that I see in the notion of unprofessionalism as I promote it. It's not the reckless, the careless, but it's the deliberate art of coming back to the learner's mindset, the growth mindset, the thoughtful and caring authenticity. And for me back then, it was the status that I had earned that gave me the permission to approach something as serious as a professional conference from a highly unprofessional edge and rewrite the script of how professional conferences are done and approached. And this wouldn't have been possible without this status and network and the work that I have done before. So where I'm landing for now, and the question for you is whether you would act And behave differently at work, whether it's employed or self-employed, if you knew you had permission. And I'm not speaking about the courage because these are 2 different things. If you knew you had permission to be a little bit more yourself and a little bit off script. And I think that naming the difference between permission and courage is very important and might open a door to more liberty. And if you are someone, or if you know someone who has given themselves permission to drop the script, to put down the professional mask and to show Please reach out to me. I would love to hear your story and see how we can feature you on the show. Bye for now. This was a conversation without the script. Now it's your turn. I'm Myriam Hadnes, and this has been Unprofessionalism.