014 - The Cost of Being Yourself with Michael Bungay Stanier

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.

In the earlier days of Box of Crayons, we had our biggest client fire us at one stage simply because the CEO had heard that some of his people were using a company called Box of Crayons. And he's an ex-McKinsey guy and he's like, I'm not ever going to hire a company called Box of Crayons. And so he fired us from a $300,000 a year contract, which was like A big percentage of our revenue for the year. So it was a shock, but it didn't make me want to change the name of my company. It made me want to go, I need to go find people who love the fact that we're called Box of Crayons.

Hello, Michael. Myriam.

It's nice to be back on the new iteration of the podcast. It was nice to be on the old iteration. It's nice to be here in the latest way it's showing up in the world.

Yeah, it was Workshops Work Before, now Unprofessionalism. Congratulations to your 10-year anniversary.

Thank you. Yeah, 10 years. It's, uh, 10 years and we're recording this on the 23rd of February. It's 10 years and 1 week since the, uh, the book came out in the world. And it's been a book that has, you know, changed my life. And, uh, been helpful for others as well. So it's a pretty, it's a pretty great moment.

Yeah, I think it has changed the lives of many others, over a million copies sold. But—

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, so that's impressive. Uh, so we are looking forward to learn more about Michael, the Michael behind the book.

Um, the man behind the book, the man behind the mask behind the book. Exactly.

Nothing less than that will be accepted. And maybe we can start it off with a general question that I ask. When has being, air quotes, unprofessional been the best thing you could have done in that moment and maybe for your career?

Well, I've got a couple of answers for that, but before, we kind of talked a little bit about this before you hit record, but tell me what unprofessional means to you at the moment because It's a loaded word, and I'm curious to know how it's landing and how it's evolving for you.

Thank you. So professional is also a loaded word with a lot of history. To cut it short, what I see is that many professionals, experts in their field, forgot how to be human, which means forgot how to leave the professional mask aside and Dare to be curious like a child. Ask if they don't know, admit that they made a mistake, ask for ideas, share a laughter, arrive without makeup to work. So for me, um, unprofessional, and that's why I use it as a provocation, means do we dare to step out of the professional mask?

Mm-hmm.

Which does not mean that professional is something negative.

Right. Yeah. It's interesting because as I have been mulling this idea over, there's a play to be countercultural, to be different, to kind of be disruptive in the way that you show up. And there's been moments I've done that. I mean, you mentioned you could show up without makeup. Well, I showed up with makeup on for a job interview 30 years ago or thereabouts, So I was dressed up, but I had eyeliner on. Not a whole lot of makeup, but I just decided to put eyeliner on. I was like, this will either make this or break this.

Mm-hmm.

And you've attached this a little bit to authenticity. I wouldn't have said in that moment I was being authentic particularly, but I was deliberately trying to be a bit provocative and a bit disruptive. And it wasn't in a particularly showy way. I mean, I didn't come kind of naked, but for a G-string with makeup on, I was dressed in kind of business clothes and I showed up and I tried to be employable in that job interview, but I also had eyeliner on. And even when I go back to an earlier moment for me, which is applying for the Rhodes Scholarship and The Rhodes Scholarship is this fairly prestigious scholarship. If you win it, you go to go study in Oxford. It's often a career launching pad for people who are in power or in politics or whatever. And I was probably in my mid-20s and I just knew, I got onto the shortlist of about 10 people. I just knew that if I was trying to compete with them head-to-head, I just was going to lose. Like, they were smarter and faster and cleverer than I was. So when I showed up, everybody else was wearing kind of 1990s business outfits. So, you know, kind of blue suits with padded shoulders and the women had pearls on and a blouse and the men had a white shirt and a red tie. And I had long blonde hair. I had earrings in, I had a pink tie-dye tie. And I was kind of placing my money on, look, I'm either going to come last by a long way because I'm too weird, or I'm going to come first. But again, it didn't feel like I was trying to be authentic. It did feel like I was trying to stand for something that I thought was important. I thought that was true about who I was, but I was also putting on an outfit. You know, I was like deliberately making a decision around it. So, you know, it's a very, it's an interesting question to wrestle with, which is what do you do that is different? What you do is you, but what's the strategy behind why you might be doing that?

Yes. And of course, I will ask the question whether it did work out, whether you did come in Yeah, it worked out in both of those.

All the times it hasn't worked out, I've clearly forgotten about because it was too traumatic. But I won the Rhodes Scholarship and that was a very big deal for me. And it meant I left Australia and studied in England and met my wife and didn't become a lawyer. And really it changed so many things that I wouldn't be talking to you today if I hadn't won that. And I got that job. So those 2 things absolutely did work out for me.

And it's funny, I remember I watched the video of your launch of the, um, 10-year anniversary and you wore a little bit of nail polish.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

A tie and a little bit of nail polish. It goes in the same direction. It's this thing that makes you stand out, being a little bit provocative, different.

Even my company, a company I started called Box of Crayons, you know, it's a training, it's a learning and development company. It's in the world of B2B, so it tries to sell training programs to big companies like Microsoft and Salesforce and Apple and all of those sort of big companies. But Box of Crayons is a bit of a slightly different, slightly unexpected name. But the thing is, I am trying, you know, Box of Crayons shows up in extremely professional. We do a great job. We have a great product. We have a good legal contract. We have a bunch of things that are exactly the way they need to be. But on some of the things, it's really interesting to kind of play with how do you be different from what's expected? In some ways, this is a nod to things like Blue Ocean Strategy, that book from what, 10 or 15 years ago, which is like the way you stop competing in the red ocean, red ocean stained with blood because you're Same is fighting same. You're trying to find blue ocean, which is like, where are we the similar, but what are the 1 or 2 or 3 things we're really trying to be different on so we can stand out, so we can get to a place where there's less competition? Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot to unpack. And I think the thing I'm most interested in is the thin line of standing out by being Potentially weird by not overcrossing it? Because there's, as you said, with box of crayons, you're highly professional, meaning that you're doing excellent work. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to survive in the blue ocean, right?

Yeah, that's right.

So what is it? When have you earned the place where you can stand out as weird and being appreciated for it? As opposed to stand out as weird and dismissed because, boy, go home, you don't know what you're doing.

Yeah, too weird, too weird, too odd. Yeah.

And maybe not competent enough because I think with every degree of competence, you might win a degree of freedom for weirdness.

That's right. That's right. It's an interesting equation. I'm not quite sure. It's a really good question. In some ways it takes me to a bigger question, which is like, what's at risk?

Hmm.

Because the invitation to be unprofessional in some ways means you've perhaps considered the question, what's at risk here? And if I think about it, I would say generally speaking, there are 4 things that can be at risk. There's your physical state, you can get hurt. There's the time you have, there's the money you have, And there's the reputation that you have. And one of the liberating things for me is going, look, first, actually 2 liberating things for me. First of all, in terms of reputation, because time and money and physical harm, you can kind of figure out, can I afford to lose this amount of money or not? Of all the ways I could be spending my time, is this my best guess or not? It's just, am I at risk of life and limb or not? Reputation's trickier to pin down. One of the liberating things was to discover that actually almost nobody knew me or cared about me. So in terms of like, what reputation am I managing? I'm like, what reputation? Like, you know, I'm basically a complete unknown. And even in the small fields where I am, you know, a little better known, like in the world of coaching or the world of learning and development, I'm still mostly completely unknown. It's like I'm at best a small to medium-sized fish in a small pond and I'm not in a big pond. So that is freeing. And then it's a book like Seth Godin and Purple Cow. I don't know if you know that book, but it's fantastic, which is like, look, if you want to stand out and you're a cow, there's no point in being a brown cow because there's a lot of other brown cows. The way you stand out is by being a purple cow. And I've just always had a bit of a wiring to want to be that person. Like there's a gin out in the world called Hendrick's Gin. It's made in Scotland. It was kind of the first boutique gin to kind of crack the market. It used to be just the 3 big London gins like Tanqueray and Beefeater and Gordon's, I think the 3 other brands. But then this weird Scottish gin showed up and it's not like, hey, have a gin and tonic with a bit of lime or lemon in it. It's like, have a gin and tonic with a slice of cucumber in it. Because they're like, we are about cucumber and rose petals. And it was like, what the hell? And they've got this kind of steampunk, gothic-y kind of feel to it. And the bottle is this brown medicinal Victorian bottle rather than clear glass bottle. And I remember reading in the literature attached to one of those bottles, it was like, this gin is preferred by 1 in 1,000 gin drinkers. And I was like, I want to be that 1 in 1,000 gin drinkers. I want to be that person. So for me, Myriam, I've always had a bit of an inclination to say I'm more interested in being a bit quirky and standing out, and I'm willing to pay a price for that, which is for a bunch of people to look at me and go, you're a bit weird and you're not my type of person. And for me to look at a bunch of people and go, and you're a bit boring, so you're not my type of person.

Thank you. I'm just wondering that especially nowadays, being a bit weird and finally being someone who is different than the crowd, something that AI could have not made up is so refreshing.

Well, there's something about, I mean, there is something interesting about finding a voice, finding a presence, finding a way of showing up and going, how do I turn up the volume on that? And you don't have to dye your hair blonde or start wearing nail polish or Whatever, various other things that I've done. That's just me. But going, how do I lean into a strength? How do I actually, if this is a value of mine, for instance, score of 1 to 10, how are you living that at the moment? And what would take you from living at a 6 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10? What would change? What would you do differently?

2 things just come to my mind. One is, what if you dare to go to 12 out of 10? So yes, you do have the talent, you do have the strengths. Do you dare to overdo it just slightly without it becoming your shadow?

Right.

So that you can lean into this weirdness because I mean, as you used the word authentic in the first, when you were telling your story twice, I think. And now again, you refer, you don't have to dye your hair blonde as I did because this would be unauthentic. Just copying you wouldn't do the job.

So it's a terrible idea to copy me in almost everything. Like, it's just a terrible idea to copy anyone.

Wasn't it Seth Godin who said, uh, uh, be yourself because everyone else is taken anyway?

I think it was somebody else who said that. I can't quite remember who, who it was, but the sentiment's a really good one, which is like, be yourself. everybody else has taken. And it is an interesting idea around what does it take to be 11 or 12 out of 10 in terms of who you are. If nothing else, as a thought experiment, just go, if I was absolutely living this particular aspect of myself out loud, what would I stop doing? What would I start doing? What would I do more of? as a way of inviting you to show up. Oh, I had one other thought and it's vanished. It'll come back or it won't.

Something around authenticity, maybe?

It was something around the price you pay for showing up. I mean, I'm now thinking of a writer called Adam Morgan, who's a British writer who talks about branding. He wrote a book many years ago called Eat the Big Fish, and it's talking about kind of the number 2 players in a market and how they had to do things differently to get noticed because they weren't the number 1. They weren't the incumbent, so they couldn't just rest on their laurels. They had to kind of be a bit more creative. And one of his strong metaphors is you need to be a lighthouse by which people navigate to who you are, and your beam will attract the right people and repel the people who aren't right for you. But you have to get comfortable then with more people saying, yeah, no, you're not, you're not my vibe. Because it's just one of those paradoxes, if you like, which is every good yes has a whole bunch of nos attached to it.

You're Vegemite. I think this was—

Vegemite. Exactly.

Either you love us or you hate us.

And as an Australian, yeah, exactly. I'm like, I'm a bit, I'm pro-Vegemite. But there's, uh, I'm, I'm the minority here in Canada.

Yeah, I bet. And so there is a price you need to be willing to pay for it. And I, I would be curious to hear your perspective and experience in the 2 different worlds. So you made yourself a name and independence through your book and, um, starting your own business.

Yeah.

And at the time, same time, you are consulting large companies in their change processes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now you lead with, I think one of the sentences you lead with is no, no BS.

Exactly.

So where's the, how much air quotes unprofessionalism can companies afford? Or maybe the other way around, how much professionalism can they still afford?

Yeah. I can only speak from where I stand, Myriam. So this isn't a generic answer. It's just for me at the moment, I'm now in that phase of my career where I can much more often go, look, I don't care if you like it or don't like it. I don't care if you use it or don't use it. My job is to show up, do my best, do it in my way to the best of my ability to give you all I've got, to put it on the table and then go, I've done my side of the table. Your side of the table is to use it or not use it, to like me or not like me. What can I do? I can't do anything about that. I've done my very best. And so you get a kind of bravado when you're able to do that. And partly that's because I've got other ways of earning money. So in a very kind of bottom line way, I sell enough books to cover my costs. So I'm like, I've got a degree of freedom around that. And classic Bob Dylan quote, freedom is when you've got nothing left to lose. And I'm like, I don't mind. Like me, don't like me. I certainly didn't have that bravado when I was younger, when I was more kind of like, I'd really like this job, please. But there is a degree in which you I guess, choose to bet on yourself. I mean, we, in the earlier days of Box of Crayons, we had our biggest client fire us at one stage simply because the CEO had heard that some of his people were using a company called Box of Crayons. And he's an ex-McKinsey guy and he's like, I'm not ever going to hire a company called Box of Crayons. And so he fired us from a It was like $300,000 a year contract, which was like a big percentage of our revenue for the year. So it was a shock, but it didn't make me want to change the name of my company. It made me want to go, I need to go find people who love the fact that we're called Box of Crayons.

What I would call integrity.

Yeah, or stubbornness. I mean, you could, you know, We can frame it as integrity. That makes me sound better.

Yeah. So back to these companies, because that's a reality out there, and you might have now become better in filtering out the companies you work with. So they might be more open to a little bit of air quotes, unprofessionalism, by which I mean allowing their people to show up more human at work.

Well, So much of this depends, I think, on who and what you're talking about. In some ways it comes down to how do you play the game between the 2 states in this world, which is me and we. Me as I stand out, we as I fit in. And what you're really looking for is to say, what's the dance and what's the moment and what's the game? And how strategically, what's the smart move for me to be doing here? Because there are times where the smart thing to do is not be weird, not be authentic, not be crazy person finding their own vibe, because that's not what's required of the situation for you to be successful. It connects what we were talking about before around what's at risk. And kind of weighing that up and measuring that. What's the reward and what's at risk around that? But I do think there are times where if you're an individual practitioner or a thought leader or somebody like me, where actually there's quite a lot of usefulness in being distinctive and standing out. There are times in organizational life when I've had a job where my tendency to stand out has cost me. You know, it's like not getting promoted, not getting, not being respected, not really having the influence I would've wanted to have in an organization, 'cause I was a bit too prone to throwing myself on landmines and blowing myself up.

Yeah. And I think this is the, this is a dance a company must do because the professionalism from industrial age and later was basically ensure that there is a reputation of the company that is maintained by the employees of that company following a certain script and a certain culture.

Exactly. And based on the industrial age, being a cog, like we want you to fit into this shape because that's that role.

Exactly.

But it feels, I suspect, and maybe a little more with the rise of AI, that Well, I don't know, actually. Do you think, do you think the rise of AI is making it more or less likely that people need to be cogs?

Yeah. I, and that's the funny thing. I think to stand out or to provoke just for the sake of it has never been useful. Um, and that's, it's not the, it's not the bottom line or the moral of your stories. It's, there must be an intent and then it must be connected to who you are. And I think a business who is only attracting the weirdos, either they're in art publicity.

Yeah.

But I think there's only that much of that that you can afford. But then there's, I think the other, the other side, you don't have to be necessarily weird to, to be human, to, um, to ask your colleague for help. to admit that you don't know. And I think nowadays where it's so easy to get all the information from AI, but it's not necessarily the same information you would get from asking your colleagues and it wouldn't have the same impact on the culture of the company.

There's no doubt that if you frame professionalism as a, how do you be a good corporate citizen in a way that people who design organizations from the 1960s would like, which is like, it's best if you are a replaceable cog and a non-troublesome part so we can just swap people in and out and they're human resources. So they're not even human, they're just a kind of a human part. It's one of the great tensions, I think, which is organizations and capitalism, really work best when you move people towards being less human, less vulnerable, less quirky, less distinct. Because at scale, you're like, we're just trying to get some stuff done here. And the messier and human it is, the less efficient it is. But there's also that force pulling you the other way to say, but actually it's the humanness and the quirkiness and the messiness and the creativity of that that can make organizations feel a brilliant place to be, a great place to work, a good place to learn, a wonderful place to grow, and that often get interesting work done because you've got this kind of collision of human spark happening.

Yeah. And you have immediately also hooked what to talk about. It's not just the mundane, the same sameness. It's, if everyone looked the same, what kind of question would you ask them?

Right.

But if they give you something, a little crack in the surface, in the mask, then suddenly there's, yeah, much connection.

That's right.

I was wondering about back then. So you did get the scholarship, you did get the job by being different. To what extent did you have, and you said that it was a part of you, but maybe not the authentic you. So what I understand is not something that you would've done every day. As a routine.

Right.

To what extent did this shape the Michael as he had to, as he thought that he had to show up or the box in which you were put?

Yeah. Well, if you think of that job that I got, the one where I wore eyeliner too, they're like, you know, we're hiring you in part because you're like quirky and different and interesting. I was like, great, because I am a bit quirky and different and interesting. And they're like, yeah, we think you could really shift the culture a bit in terms of how we work around here. But actually, I came in and I kind of was, the system kind of rejected me. I was like, they're like, yeah, you're interestingly quirky and different and smart and the like, But I don't need that right now on my team. Why don't you go find another team to go work on? And one of the things I think is true is organizations, actually systems, don't really like to change. Systems are kind of set up to maintain themselves. Homeostasis is the long word for that. They're like, let's just keep things the way that they are. Status quo, A-okay. We love that around here. So what happens if you bring in an element that's a bit different to that is the system's going to try and reject that because you're disrupting the status quo here. And typically individual versus system, there's only ever one outcome, which is the system wins and the individual doesn't win. So I never really found my place in that organization because I was always on the margins. I was always a bit peripheral. I never really made my way into where power was in that organization. Now, part of that is I quite like being on the margins and I'm not as interested in the power of the center, but also it made for a literally a less profitable career because I earned less money and I had less influence and I had less control. I had less agency because of those decisions I was making.

Oh, it paved the way to give you all the learnings that you then needed to have a successful career outside of the system, creating your own.

Exactly. So partly it's like, oh, okay, so This is helpful to realize that it's hard for me to work in an organization because I am inclined to be like this and the organization's never going to fit around me. So I'm increasingly unemployable. So if I need to get a job, I might have to start my own company because then when I'm complaining about my boss, at least it's me that I'm complaining about.

Yeah. Yeah. Reminds me, I, um, I quit my job in academia at some point and I remember one of my very good friends, she said, Myriam, the problem with you is that once someone hired you, they wouldn't want to get rid of you, but nobody would ever know what, what to hire you for.

Right.

I'm pretty unemployable. So, yeah, that was the start of my sort of trajectory. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. So what would it take? Because I, it's fascinating your own story of you were hired at the company because clearly some of the bosses wanted that change and saw in you this catalyst for that change that maybe you could, like a little bushfire kind of in life.

Yeah. I mean, they were also hiring me because I'm like, I've got skills. I've got skills and a reputation. I know how to do some of the stuff. So it's not just, hey, he's a quirky guy. Let's hire him. It's like, oh, he's probably a good pair of hands to get work done. And bonus, he's going to be a bit weird. He's going to shake up our culture a little bit.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Clearly, this was the differentiating factor, if I understand you correctly, from hiring you over the others. And maybe this vision did not work because the system is all— so from where you are today, Is change then actually possible? So the change in terms of changing the system in a human way instead of just implementing new tools?

Well, I think it's, I mean, systems are changeable for sure, but it's unlikely there's going to be a single intervention that's going to make the difference. You know, the so-called silver bullet. First of all, terrible metaphor because silver bullets don't work. But also, even if they did work, there was no silver bullet. So me coming in as a, oh, here's our magical thinking. We'll just introduce Michael and he'll help be the catalyst that changes the system. There was no chemical reaction. I was not a catalyst. But if they're like, we need a culture that's a bit more creative, then there's like, okay, so what are our levers for doing that? And hiring some people like me could have been good, but it would also need— some degree of intervention at the senior team level and some degree of intervention at the systems level, how we're rewarded, how we're paid, how the teams work together, how the teams are created, some degree of intervention at the business level, which is like, what work are we doing and who are we saying yes to and what work are we going to stop doing and how's our ideal client profile changing? All of that stuff. You need to understand that you're working with a system, so you need to be taking your best guesses at different places to intervene to try and help the system evolve.

Yeah, thank you. Because otherwise it's basically just a lazy solution. So to put all the—

It's magical thinking. It's like, it's just not going to happen. And what then happens, what a system then develops is a scapegoat. That's just the nature of a system, which is like, ah, something didn't work. We need somebody to blame. That means that we can maintain the system the way it was and we can blame the other thing. So in this case, I became the scapegoat, which is like, so we hired the guy with the eye makeup and you know what? He just let us down badly. So it was kind of my fault that it didn't work. And of course it was like, well, it was kind of the system's failure, not my fault.

Yeah, because it's, uh, it is not a, yeah, silver bullet, but you have to do the work. And then it was just an excuse for not putting that in. Yeah. Thank you. Makes a lot of sense. What would be an, again, air quotes, unprofessional thing that you would still advise others to do in the professional setting?

Well, you know, it, it depends on the context in which you Currently exist as to what unprofessional would look like because you're framing unprofessional as contrary to some version of professionalism and it's going to be different in every company, every culture. So I think it's interesting to show up curious, show up kind, Show up generous, show up brave, and show up bold. And I would say in many organizations, any combination of those things, 1, 2, 3, or 5 of them would be a countercultural act, which is, I think in the way you are framing it, perhaps an unprofessional act.

Thank you. Thank you.

What do you think? Is that, does that answer feel helpful or does it feel just a bit too air jazz hands and vague?

It, um, it does make sense. And I think for me then the big question is, is there actually, for people who dare to be a little bit more unprofessional, um, even by just showing the few attributes that you named or just one of them, is there actually an opportunity for them than in the system? And how can you survive the system?

Well, you survive the system by also figuring out what really counts as success. Because if you're like, look, I'm kinder and more generous than most people, and also I have a way of delighting my clients. I make sure that they always sign a return contract. I mean, in some ways this is playing the game. You got to be political, you got to be strategic, you got to be smart. You're like, what does my boss care about? What does my boss's boss care about? So I might not be able to do all of those things, but if I can absolutely crush one of those things or do a really great job with that, that gives me money in the bank to do it my way and be quirky and different and unprofessional and whatever else. But if you're like, look, you're part of my organization, you're not really contributing, and you're also a bit weird, I'm just going to say your time is not long at that organization.

Yeah. Back to the degrees of freedom that you need to earn.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Great food for thought.

My pleasure, Myriam.

This was a conversation without the script. Now it's your turn. I'm Myriam Hadnes, and this has been Unprofessionalism.