018 - The Norm Breaker's Privilege with Benjamin Taylor

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.

Professionalism. Professionalism is usefully seen as a mask, but as a mask that can be put on and can be taken off, but is optional. You know, you pay a price if you break the rules, but it is a choice. And I guess my message all the way through, like with that very first example, is see that as a choice. See that as an opportunity of exercising free will rather than just a straitjacket.

Benjamin, welcome back.

Thank you. It's lovely to be here again. I really appreciate the opportunity.

It's always nice to chat with you and I'll just dive right in. We had our chit-chat to warm up already. Could you share an anecdote, a short story when you did something that could be considered unprofessional and still seems in retrospect that it was the best thing you could have done?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of examples of this, Myriam, for me, and Not all of them worked out perfectly. As you say that, I'm thinking of one that really did work that we might get to better later, but I'll stick with the thing I was thinking of. And this is a situation where I was an alumni of a community-focused, very liberal leadership training, which kind of seeks to bring different sectors together and got some good facilitation tips from it. And it was very kind of focused on how people can share and work together and achieve common goals and all of those kinds of things, but was a little bit nicey-nicey for me. Nevertheless, I got invited back to sort of continue that connection across boundaries thing that they do very well as an older person to a younger person's development session. I mean, as an adult, I'm an older person now, but I wasn't an older person then. And there were 2 things that really stood out that slightly pushed me to the side of the group and didn't get massive approval on the day, but which I think were probably okay and probably good. There was one session where they had a flip chart and they were asking people to shout out all the words that they associated with power, right?

Mm-hmm.

So it was kind of like passion and community and together and all kinds of Again, very sort of middle-class, positive motherhood and apple pie kind of things. And I shouted out anger because anger is a power, obviously. I mean, yeah. And I followed it up with saying something about Nelson Mandela and the righteous anger of the African National Congress and so on. But the theme never got explored. All of the rest were all motherhood and apple pie kind of positive things. And lying is a power. I mean, If you, what are we, what are we doing here? And that kind of came to a head when we did, um, uh, a community simulation. So they brought us all together in the final sort of half day. And it was, it was really well done and really well managed. And everybody was given different roles and there was a kind of a developer, there were community members, there were counselors, there were people, all the rest of it. And there was this development that was going to go ahead.

Mm-hmm.

Probably, and they kind of bought off the councillors or, you know, and the concept was how do the community, the developers and the councillors engage with the community and get buy-in and obviously negotiate and balance out all the rest of it and so on. So I broke 2 boundaries there really. The first one was that I think as an adult in this development, I was probably supposed to play a bit of a backseat role and kind of encourage the younger generation and so on. And the second was we were probably supposed to have a nice talk about it and come out with a negotiated agreement. I guess that seemed to be very much the flavor. But what I did was I organized the picket and a strike and a line of protesters and a chant. And we just kind of chanted out and stomped our feet for everybody who opposed the development to come and join us and so on. And again, modeling a type of power Albeit bottom-up is not the obvious type, but a type of power that gets exercised or can be exercised in the real world kind of thing. So it was kind of leading a revolt. And again, I was looked at askance by several of the people there, but I didn't actually break the rules, but I broke some kind of an expectation, didn't I? And I'd just like to think that that might have been a useful intervention. In what otherwise would've been a training in how to be an acceptable part of society, which is maybe a valuable thing in its own right. But yeah, it's not the only option.

Not so useful in this context.

No, no. I mean, you know, maybe people need a bit of punk, maybe people need a bit of anger, maybe, you know, and I don't think that anger's the most constructive energy, but it's also very important energy, isn't it? And we wouldn't have had a lot of freedoms and so on and collective organization Similarly. So yeah, that wasn't being touched. So I guess I brought that flavor to the event, but definitely unprofessional.

Thank you. Many thoughts are popping up in my mind. And one is what you already mentioned, it sounded a lot like unspoken rules. Yeah. And that's something that I hear a lot when it comes to professionalism, that there's something That is not really made explicit.

Yeah.

That is under the surface that apparently everyone has subscribed to and nobody is supposed to break.

Yeah.

What I find interesting, fascinating in your story, and I would love to dig deep in that, is the fact that it's so different from what we would consider unprofessional in the corporate world. Where usually the one where there might be a more harsher tone and then the unprofessional one is maybe the one who brings in some niceness.

Oh, interesting. That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. And here it's breaking the rules by maybe pointing at a reality that wants to be, that is, might be uncomfortable. Or to bring in emotions that are unpleasant, put under the carpet. And this is a facilitation conference. I find this fascinating.

Yeah, it was a facilitation-heavy leadership development program. Yeah. And I guess I have a sort of, and maybe a lot of the people you're talking to have a slightly pathological urge to discuss the undiscussable, if you see what I mean, which is not necessarily a good thing. There's a fantastic couple of pieces by Marvin Weisbord, super famous facilitator, in which he talks about his time early on in his career and how he would go around pulling up rocks to see what was underneath them and bringing out people's hidden agenda. And of course, one of the 10 principles in his and Sandra Yanov's book is let people hide their hidden agendas. So I'm not saying that unprofessionalism and being a stuck-up punk is necessarily a recommended form of action. I just think if it's not available to you, then you've reduced your repertoire of power, if you see what I mean.

Yeah.

Breaking the rules is quite important as an option. That's what I mean by that. If you are always taking all the context cues and all the social cues and all of the behavior cues from around you, then there's going to be a certain set of patterns that don't get challenged and don't get changed. That's, that's what I mean, I think.

Yeah. And what I find funny somehow is that as a facilitator, we often go into spaces and are expected to provoke the group. to maybe say the thing that hasn't been said, point at the elephant in the room and all of that. And then what you described, what did you say? Nicey nicey?

Yeah. Yeah. I often use that, you know, in Britain, class is everything. So I often say middle class slightly dismissively, obviously being intensely middle class myself. Nicey nicey, motherhood and apple pie. I find this all the time in the systems change community. I'm constantly wanting to go to systems change events. I'm really sitting on my hands, which a very astute facilitator noticed me doing once, sitting on my hands or holding my hands, legs crossed, biting my tongue or biting my lip, literally. And I really want to go, you know, you're not, you're all working within a set of really assumed norms. You know, why aren't we talking about this? Why aren't we talking about that? You see what, you see what I mean?

Where do you think comes this notion of professionalism? Where does it come from, this unspoken rule?

Well, it's really interesting. I recently had the opportunity to see the Mike Jackson lecture. Mike Jackson is a big systems thinker with a great history at the University of Hull. He's still around, but I still think of it as the Mike Jackson memorial lecture. And I always forget the chap's name, but I think it's Mervyn King. I'm just going to try and check it while we talk. He was the lecturer. former governor of the Bank of England. No, I don't think that's the right name, but it'll come to me. And he has sort of embraced and discovered and engaged with complexity. So great, a really big name, a really good writer, and so on and so on. And he was talking about the need to reestablish a proper profession of management and a corpus of knowledge and really established management, not leadership, all that, none of that, just good management. And I can see it, although obviously that's kind of what business schools kind of do and kind of supposed to do. But he started off by showing examples of a priest, a military man, and what was the third? I can't remember. But he said, these are true professions and they're all wearing silly clothes. So I think there is something about preserving, as the ancient City of London guilds have it, and for a while I was a member of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, the arts and mysteries of the profession and having a branding and set of norms and a way of doing things which protects the ability to practice in that profession, if you see what I mean. So I think it comes from that quite deep. Well, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but as a shortcut, gatekeeping is the reason for professionalism and perhaps for good reasons. Oh, maybe the third one was a surgeon or a doctor of some kind, because you need to have some gatekeeping in a profession where the quality is important and where the quality reflects on all of the members of the profession. So yeah, I think there's a deep reason there, isn't there? Deep history.

Absolutely. And Back in the days, it made total sense.

Yeah.

Until industrialization, where suddenly professionalism wasn't tied to the profession, the vow to a profession, but suddenly was kept to organizations and the loyalty to the culture and maybe unspoken rules of these organizations.

Yeah.

And what I found interesting in your story was that apparently there's an unwritten rule to be nice to each other, and this is perceived as professional.

Yeah, I think that's very often the case. And I'm thinking that, you know, the whole profession of management, profession of management consultant, a lot of that traces back to the kind of the engine, as they called it, of mid-20th century American growth, where there was this sense of profession, of continuity, that there was no split loyalty, that you, you know, being a good company man, and it was all men, of course, and There was a uniform, which is the suit, which we still wear to this day. I went to a very nice, very productive networking event reception at the Houses of Parliament yesterday, which was great, but some really super building to be in and really interesting and all the history and everything else. But they made a point of the dress code. They made a point that we should wear business attire. And part of me is like, yeah, so we're all going to cosplay as 20th century business people. But for those people, and the House of Commons, House of Lords as well, is the home of male, pale, stale, besuited, pinstriped 3-piece suits and all the rest of it. That is a norm and that is an expectation and that is comfort. But for me, as I say, I think I said this first time we talked, I have every kind of privilege going in many, many ways, but to go into a room and suddenly see a room 90% full of men, all of them in suits, almost every single one of them wearing a tie, it's like, oh, this is a really weird thing. I could be in lots of different rooms. I don't— this is only one room that I could be in right now. Why am I in the room full of men wearing ties? You know? Yeah.

Yeah. And the costume is just one, and I wonder to what extent it is A sort of armor to protect from, yeah, the humanity, because suddenly everyone looks the same. And I would be curious about your experience back there and the level, how easy or difficult is it to then have human conversations as opposed to the professional conversations that you would have behind the armor?

Well, you know what's interesting? I think it might be surprisingly easy. I think actually that depending on the context, and I was told off a few times for not wearing my tie properly and not making enough of an effort and so on. But I used to go to dinners with the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants. And yesterday, you know, in that conversation, there were canapés and drinks and, you know, all the, as I say, mid-20th century kind of norms of networking. But I had some great conversations and actually, so it's quite surprising. It's quite interesting that that felt like an oddity. And perhaps this is more like my central point, I guess, is that I think professionalism is usefully seen. And I see that several of your podcast guests have made some version of this point as a mask, but there's a mask that can be put on and can be taken off, but is optional. You know, you pay a price if you break the rules, but it is a choice. And I guess my message all the way through, like with that very first example, is see that as a choice, see that as an opportunity of exercising free will rather than just a straitjacket, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I think it is a good reminder that it is a choice, although how do we define this professionalism? Because I imagine that If you didn't comply with the dress code, they wouldn't let you in. So, um, and as you described it, I was actually thinking of school uniforms. So there can also be a benefit of everyone looking alike, and then you can put this aside and have a real conversation.

Sure. Although interestingly, my, my, uh, my dad, when he was a, uh, headteacher, he became a headteacher for the first time and he was a child of the '60s, you know, I mean, he was born in '45 and so on. He abolished school uniforms in this very deprived school, very deprived area. So I think, yeah, I don't know what I think about that one. I understand the sympathy with the everybody looks the same. And in a way, loads of what we're talking about comes down to status anxiety and defending your status. I was irresistibly drawn. I've used this as an example in some of my teaching materials. So most humor comes from status anxiety, right?

Yeah.

people mistaking status and breaking the status game in various ways. So there was a 1980s or '90s sitcom in the UK called Dear John about a guy who was left by his wife and had to sort of reacclimatize himself in society. I don't remember it being particularly good, although some people said it was quite good. And there's this scene where him and this kind of support group of single people that he goes to, I think, are standing drinking tea from cups in a very socially constrained, very Normed, you know, kind of context. And there's an older woman there who's suffering terribly from flatulence. And so he's there as the kind of everyman figure, and he's got this friend who had a very kind of radical name, who's the kind of hipster dude who doesn't quite get it, but is kind of out there. And so the woman farts, but one of the men very gallantly says, oh, excuse me. And so the hipster guy's like, what?

What?

What? You know, he's like, pointing out the gap in credibility and the strangeness of this situation and so on. And then it happens again. She farts again. Another person says, oh, I'm very sorry. It must have been something I ate. And then the third time it happens, he's like, I've got this. I've got this. I understand the social norm of what's happening here. So she farts again and he says, that's all right, Mrs. Wiggins. You have this one on me. Totally subverting the norm.

Yeah.

And of course it's about bodily processes. So it's extra embarrassing and funny because of that. And I think that's a great example of the way that these norms work and the humor and the status issues around breaking the norms, if that makes sense. He's a kind of Kramer-like character from Seinfeld who doesn't relate to the norms in any normal way.

Yeah. And is it then, do you, I wonder to what extent, I love the example. And the joke around it. And I wonder whether it only works if you know about the norms. So what is the impact of knowing about the norms and breaking them consciously versus not knowing and then stepping in all the hidden traps?

Well, I mean, I think it comes down to one word for me, which is, which is agency, because I think not knowing or Well, there are 2 forms of not knowing, aren't there? There's the not knowing that the Kramer-type figure has, which is he just is an alien to the norms. And there's a not knowing that everybody else in the room has, which is they are under the power of the norm, if you see what I mean. And it's only when he breaks the rule that they kind of realize that they've been following a rule. Does that make sense?

Mm-hmm.

It's not always like that. Some norms are explicit and policed and managed. But so many of them are implicit. And even if they are policed and managed, they are very much context, not text. And therefore they're constraining and controlling and shaping the things we do. Yeah.

Yeah. And then it becomes a power game if you're aware of these rules.

Yeah. A power game or a game of disruption to the norm and to the context and so on. 2 examples. There's a brilliant quote from Erving Goffman, the famous sociologist who wrote his book, The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, which is all about this. He says, I'm slightly misquoting, but he says, in the nudist colony, it's the glances that are veiled. So even when people are naked, then we, in the changing room, we don't stare, do we? We just look past nudity and so on. So I've always come back to that because I'm really interested in this way of thinking about the norms and about how we're kind of fitting into them. And I've forgotten the other one, so sorry.

That's okay.

Very unprofessional of me.

There are 2 things I would like to get to. One is coming back to the status anxiety. If I understand it correctly, it means that Because we are so anxious about our status and fitting in and complying to all the rules.

Yeah.

What is the consequence of that?

I mean, the worst thing and why that comedy scene is funny is to break a rule without knowing it's a rule. You know, that's the scary thing. The consequences is, I think, loss of social status. If you're shown not to be able to play to skillfully follow the rules, then you are not a properly paid-up member of the society, right?

And then it's, and then you can turn it around if you are conscious of the rules and you decide to break it. There can be status gain in that, but you do need to have the privilege.

You do in some sense, but it can be an empowering thing. I mean, I think it It can't but be an empowering thing to know that there is a possibility of breaking those rules. And we were talking before we started recording about how much harder it is for people from marginalized groups to talk about this topic or be unprofessional. And yet the breakthroughs happen when they are unprofessional, when people insist on their community's norms being acceptable in a dominant community, for example. So I think that's important. I had a colleague, a very brilliant and valued colleague, really great change person, and they were very offended when I made this example. But nevertheless, I've shared it a couple of times recently. I'm just going to, I'm going to share it again. They belong to quite a marginalized group and quite a stigmatized group in British society, but they used, in my opinion, a version of the caricature of that, not caricature, but the way that that group is, what's the word? It's not quite caricature, but the sort of way people talk about that group to put them down as a way of asking honest questions and getting deeper and speak, discussing the undiscussable. Because they could say, oh, I'm only, you know, I'm only this and that. I'm, I'm, you know, call me stupid or whatever, but why don't we try this? Or just, just, do you see what I mean? So. It's my opinion, and I think they thought that the idea that they were using that identity intentionally for some kind of benefit was offensive, and perhaps it is. And so I'm not certain about this, but I think they used that marginal identity in a powerful way. So by being somebody who was necessarily small and unthreatening because they leaned into that role slightly, could achieve a hell of a lot.

Yeah. So using their disadvantage actually then for their advantage.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a version of that, which is obviously like the jester role. I mean, you know, we have these paradigms, don't we? The outsider, the jester, the people who break the norms, the people who are unprofessional. But that person as a change agent was also super status aware in a constructive way and built coalitions of people who were either the power dynamic drivers in the situation or had direct access to an influence to them in a way that I was a little bit, oh wow. When they told me this, when they came clean and said, I brought you into this cohort because you have this access to one of the very senior people. I was like, oh right.

Oh, okay.

It was super interesting to me that they'd been thinking, they were very genuine and very authentic and committed to the cause and a really great all round, but also thinking very instrumentally. And that was a breaking of a norm. That was a breaking of a norm, kind of like, well, I would only ever associate with people who I would just naturally associate with for their own value. I would never associate with something I can get out of them, which of course is a total lie because we're all instrumental in the way we engage with people and so on, aren't we? And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, but again, it's another norm.

Yeah. And then How we play the games, the unspoken rules to get what we need. That's another one. I would love to come back to an example that you shared when we were scheduling this call of a situation where you were preparing a meeting with CEOs.

Yeah, 11 chief executives of councils all about to be merged together. And so I was kind of Struck by the fact that, so, so that we've got going through local government reorganization in the UK at the moment. So from these 11 councils, there are now going to be 4 or 5. So what does that mean? They all want different things. They all report to politicians who want different things, but who might be out before the reorganization happens because there's an election in between. And most of the 11 people in this room are not going to come out with jobs out of the end of this process that we're trying to kind of take them through. And I really wanted to say that honestly and to bring it out and to kind of model a kind of critical friend, proper partnering kind of thing. And a very, very experienced person in this space who was part of our team said, well, let's not embarrass them. It's going to be important for them all to remain professional. And I couldn't stay professional in that moment. I said, John, I think the single biggest risk to this succeeding is going to be this chief executive remaining professional. And unfortunately that wasn't a very successful breaking of professionalism because there was a bit of awkward silence and then we moved on because it was hard to resolve. We were both right. There's something deeply respectful about allowing people their mask and their professionalism and if it's important to them, I suppose. And he was right that we weren't going to curry favor by breaking it. But I think I was also right that unless you can break it at some stage in some way, And of course, the patient thing to do is to build trust and to build access and to ease into it and to do some self-disclosure first, for example. So that would probably be the mature way of going into that. But yeah, it really struck me that that professionalism and that kind of game face and pretending everything's fine when internally you're screaming is going to be a huge part of the problem in this kind of organizational work, if you see what I mean. Um, and you can't say it because immediately people say, well, I'm not screaming internally.

Because it would be unprofessional or immature, or what is, what is the thinking behind we cannot possibly do that?

I mean, it is very much about discussing the undiscussable, isn't it? And you can't raise the topic of discussing the undiscussable because it's literally undiscussable. So there's a strong double bind that gets built up in organizations. I was lucky enough to spend the day working on the model called Discussing the Undiscussable. It originally comes from Chris Argyris with a guy called Bill Noonan who wrote this lovely book on it. And it's super interesting because even broaching the topic of, you've probably all got a lot of personal feelings about this, opens up the topic of their actual personal feelings about this in a way that would be unacceptable to them. So there's no way into the conversation, if that makes sense.

And I—

no easy way in.

So what is the fear?

Well, one fear is being the only one to break ranks and to go, oh yeah, God, yeah, God, it's so stressful for me. I'm not sleeping. I'm so worried about losing my job. You know, I've just bought a second house and, and then for all your colleagues to go, oh, oh, well, that's a shame for you and not break role as well. Um, if that makes sense. So that's clearly a part of it.

To be singled out and to be the only vulnerable one while everyone has their shit together.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's, you know, somebody once said to me, people invest a lot and it's an incredibly valuable thing to them to have a socialized identity. I think it was Jen Maitland Hudson, who's a brilliant thinker. And a lot of personal development talk, and by implication, a lot of adult development stages and stuff, by implication, a lot of organizational development, leadership development, facilitation as well. is premised on kind of like trying to, you know, challenging them in their socialized identity. That's a really risky thing to people's psyche, isn't it? So it's a genuine challenge. So I think the other anxiety is just, can I cope if I break this? I mean, another story, we were doing consultancy training with a group of people from quite a small consultancy, small consultancy, but successful and a growing one. And they very much modeled themselves on the, on the Big Four. In fact, I went and looked at their website. This is now Probably 13 years later, and I went and looked at their website and they still have like their people listed under 12 different layers of hierarchy on the website. And it's a 3-day in-person simulation where we simulate a service and you can go and gather data and interview different stakeholders and managers. And it's a really good thing. And we'd done loads of it in the public sector. And in the public sector, the people were not invested in that identity. And so they were running around getting really, really stressed. And it's like 3 days and the morning of day 3, They give the presentation of the recommendations for savings and improvements, and they stay up all night and they tear their hair out and they get stressed, but they get through it and they get a real buzz and they come up with the ideas. It's fun. This was the end of day 2, and this bunch of consultants were just calm and serene and sailing through it. And they would go into an interview and instead of going like, oh my God, I've just got to find them. Sorry, I'm just going to find them. They just sit down and they'd have a pre-prepared semi-structured interview thing and they'd run through it and then take it back. can analyze it, so on. And I thought, hang on, there's a little sort of spidey sense going of something's strange here. This isn't quite right. So I ran, I called a pause and I ran a thing called the Time Out of Time, which is a method from Barry Oshri where you sit people in their groups in a system and you interview them as a group and you just ask, what's the experience like of being a this in this system? So I had everybody kind of ready to go, semicircle, me in the middle to interview these different groups. And I said what I've just said to you. I said, we do this in the public sector. Everybody's really, really stressed and tearing their hair out. You guys, you're so calm and professional and composed and collected. What's going on inside? What are you thinking? And oh my God, if you believe in psychic energy, it was like this huge wave of stress washing over me in the focal point of this semicircle. And this is not one of my proudest moments. Somebody had a bit of a nervous breakdown.

Oh, no.

There was a lot going on for them in the organizations. It wasn't entirely because of that, but it was provoked by that. And that's a great example of the risks of pulling people out of the uniform, out of the professionalism, out of the mask. And it turned out they were just bottling it up like crazy. They were just keeping it all back. I mean, my friend did a 2-week induction for one of the big consultancies in their kind of core method. And they were literally locked in a chateau in France for 2 weeks, not allowed to go out of the gates. They were told, whoever your partner is at the moment, expect that you'll be separated within a few years. Make sure you've got a good cleaner because all of this stuff to prepare them, to socialize them in an almost cult-like way. In that case, it wasn't the same with this little consultancy, but they'd imported a version of that. into being, I mean, slightly psychopathic, sociopathic at least, but being somebody who can always front up. However, you've worked 90 hours a week, however your personal life is in pieces and so on.

And that's fascinating because it's basically, it's learned behavior to keep it all together. Because as a consultant, even if you're stressed, you owe your clients to have a solution or to give them the sense that they're in safe hands.

Yeah.

And I would be curious from your perspective where you had, um, and we spoke about that in the previous podcast where you apply facilitation methods and the facilitation mindset to your consulting. And I think by the move that you did there to call a pause and ask, okay, so what's going on here? And then holding the space for someone to break down. What is the other side of it? What is possible if you show maybe a little bit to be a human consultant? That's where I want to go with my question.

Well, and we're, we're experimenting with that. We're very much trying that. And, uh, I have had a couple of clients pull me aside and say, you know, working with your people, it's not the same as working with other consultants, is it? And it's an ambivalent, it's not like a, God, this is amazing. These are fantastic. But it's not a condemnation either. It's just the, oh, this is, yeah, they're sort of being really quite honest and there's something there. I mean, Peter Block has the most wonderful, I have to always mention him, I'm afraid, definition of authenticity. He said, authenticity is to be able to put into words what you are experiencing. And I think that's great. And he talks about it as a power. So I guess that's what we are trying to practice.

Because it's basically self-awareness.

Yeah. And of course, I mean, I'm terrible. I mean, I am terrible and I'm a British white man at age 50. I've got no idea what my own emotions are. Don't get the wrong idea. A very limited emotional palette and understanding and self-interrogation and all of those kinds of things. There's limits to everybody in every circumstance, I guess. But yes, exactly that. Emotional literacy. And my wife and I just read a book, Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing, which I remember from my childhood as a Southern African kind of piece of classic literature. She won the Nobel Prize, maybe not for that piece, but, and it's a tale of emotional incompetence, systemic emotional incompetence, but personal emotional incompetence as well. It's a tragedy. It's a breakdown. It's a miserable thing to read in some ways. Um, but it is a better world. We might be over-therapized. We might have too much descriptive language. We might have too much indulgence at times to some of these things in our society, but it's a better world that we're in because we allow that possibility of communicating the way we're feeling.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I, I can relate. So I think it was 2, 3 years ago, maybe 4, that I thought that all my emotions happened between my ears.

Right.

And whenever a coach or a therapist asked me, so where do you feel that? Where do you feel sad? I'm like, what do you mean? I feel it here and pointed at my head.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you mean feel? No, no, no, no. I'm just angry.

I think, yeah, I know that I'm angry. Yeah. Yep. And what I learned by connecting to the emotions and actually increasing the literacy is the power of co-regulation.

Right. Yeah.

So the moment we can voice an emotion honestly, it's like this collective sigh that goes through them. Oh.

Nice. Well, you know, that makes me think another one of Peter Block's great bon mots. He says, I think one of my strengths is that I'm not angry with my clients. And I think perhaps in that moment, I was angry with my clients or I was angry with society and everybody who makes us wear a mask. And if I hadn't been, then that release of emotion could have been quite different. That co-regulation thing could have acted in a very different way, if you see what I mean.

And how unprofessional would it have been to state that this makes me really angry to observe that and see what happens then?

I even thought of that possibility. That's great. Yeah. Well, it would have provoked a very different emotional response, wouldn't it? There is, I think it's in transactional analysis that they say all tears are repressed anger. Yeah. So perhaps I would have hit the anger vein instead of the breakdown vein. Yeah. But also, I mean, this just makes me realize, you know, I'm not qualified to be playing with some of this stuff. And yet as human beings, we always are. And we are in these situations and we have to respond. participate or refuse to participate and so on. So maybe that's not such a terrible thing, but I do kind of want to acknowledge at this point that I'm not always psychologically informed when perhaps it would be better if somebody psychologically informed was engaging in this kind of thing. Do you see what I mean?

Yes. By psychologically informed, you mean trauma-informed?

Yeah.

Protecting psychological safety and being—

I mean, trauma-informed is perhaps the most important part, but it's only one part of it. But of course, that concept in a way implies, well, no, there is a higher level of knowing. There is a professional level of knowing about people's internal psyche and what might be going on at least, or what really you can sense is going on if you're expert. So there's an important professionalism there that I'm kind of pointing to, I suppose. But there's also the risk then of arrogance and overreach. reading into what other people are experiencing, isn't there?

Um, and I, oh, have a light bulb moment of this distinction. And I'm so glad that you share that you wouldn't consider yourself as psychologically informed enough to, to lead people to these places, right? Because there's, I think it's, um, it is our duty as facilitators to be self-aware of what we can do and what we cannot do. So, and then to acknowledge and know that the professional mask under certain circumstances, if we don't have the tools to deal with it, then these masks or this level of professionalism is a safe container. And then it would be really unprofessional in the HR toxic sense. Toxic container.

Yeah.

To invite people to put down their mask and be human if we cannot actually hold that space, because then it becomes dangerous.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. I mean, it's a container. It may be still a toxic container, but it's maybe a container and a container that people may have chosen or may need and so on. It makes me think it's really important to introduce the other point that another way of sort of getting at this whole thing is Intentionally using masks. I love the fact that on the Rolling Thunder Tour, Dylan often wore a mask, or when he didn't wear a mask, he had Pierrot's face paint on. He said, we need more masks. And Goffman talked about masks, although he talked about the risk that it gives you an edge. Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face. That's what he said, but actually allowing people— where's the quote I was looking for? Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth. That's Oscar Wilde.

Hmm.

So the possibility of inviting people into another role where they can put on a mask and be acting something out, where they can be inauthentic, of course, and nobody can believe that that's their true suspect that that's their truth, you know, that, that's a useful part of the repertoire, isn't it? So if I'd found a clever way to reframe that situation in the training, as one of the things you might have to do in this situation is coach a junior member of the team who might be feeling really anxious with all this pressure, how might they be feeling and how might you advise them? You know, I don't know, you could, you could imagine a way in which somebody could put on a mask of, yeah, I'm pretending to be a junior consultant and actually it's I'm near a breakdown and, you know, there might be some possibility there, mightn't there?

Yeah, to make it safer, to wear different masks that might then reveal. That reminds me of a friend who always said, in every joke, there's a piece of joke because all the rest is truth. That's great.

That's a joke.

So offering them a mask to pretend it's all joke, it's all a mask to give them the safety to actually reveal Part of themselves.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I want to also, so, you know, I think we sort of talked about professionalism, breaking professionalism, about some of the risks of that and the possibility of letting it go. We talked about, you can take a different direction and you can bring in a different mask. Augustus Boal talks about donning the cloak, the mantle of the expert, you know, so sometimes as a consultant, you want to go, I'm now going to assume my expertise and lecture you from great height. And by exaggerating that, you can impart it without getting associated with the mask, if that makes sense.

It's almost like a persiflage or a cartoonization.

If nice. Yeah, absolutely. But there's a thing that I always want to talk about in this space with people who are interested in being different. And it's another sociological thing called Optimal distinctiveness theorem has a nice Wikipedia page. And it's this concept that we deeply, as humans, value being part of the group, but we also deeply, as humans, value being special. There's this model that Tony Robbins uses that talks about the trade-off between being special and being part of a group. And one way to have these 2 needs met is to be part of a group that's rebelling against the larger group. And some people find, and so, and again, that can become a trap that can become pathological. Some people are constantly clustering in a little support group of rebels who all disagree with the main system, but can't make headway. And, but you know, that can become really comfortable and a really great way of maintaining your specialness, but also your group membership, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it's, um, the fight between authenticity and belonging.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But then how do you know that you're not then in bad faith? How do you know that your, that your authenticity isn't just a bad faith way of seeking distinctiveness and pretending to be special? If you see what I mean.

Yeah. Yeah. And then it's interesting. And then the entire Unspoken rule and the dress code of professionalism is a means to create the sense of belonging. We know that we are part of this group. We can identify each other. And then it also makes sense that there's so much unspoken to keep the status we know without talking about it.

Yeah. And, and, and there are tests of group membership as well, aren't there?

Religion is the best example, maybe.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I, yeah, I can't really talk to that, but it's a hugely powerful example, isn't it? Test of group membership. I think I read this in a book about Morrissey. There was this quote along the lines anyway of, I'm going to reject you. I reject you first. So you don't have the opportunity to reject me. If you see what I mean. I went to Oxford University and I did that as a very chip on the shoulder. We have this English expression, chippy. You know, how does that translate? Oh gosh. Having a chip on the shoulder means always feeling that you are inadequate in some way because you don't meet the social norms, but being angry about it and raising it as a problem that you externalize to the mainstream group rather than being something that you should address and is part of you. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So lack of Perceived autonomy or agency.

What's ChatGPT telling me? A lingering sense of grievance or resentment. And my point is, it's like, you don't accept my identity. Um, and so I'm going to make it a core part of my identity that I am angry at you for not accepting my identity. Does that make sense? And that I'm not, and that I'm not you. I mean, yeah. And so to matriculate to Oxford University, You have to wear subfusc, which is like mortarboard and black gown and white shirt and white bow tie for men and black trousers and black shoes. So I kind of read the rules carefully and I had to do that, otherwise I wouldn't be able to go to university. But I spray dyed my hair pillarbox red for the event, which sounds quite punk, but it wasn't really. It was a bit pathetic. I mean, I like the fact that I'm on the photo and every other single person is there and I've got I've got the bright red hair, but because I carried on that attitude and I didn't participate in a lot of the Oxford norms and events and all the rest of it, I mean, I got a lot out of my time at university, but I missed out on a lot as well because I was like, oh, I'm not going to go to a summer ball because that's all posh people dressed up in gowns and black tie and that's not for me. So that's what a chip on the shoulder means, right?

Yeah.

And I think it's important to play with identities if you want to kind of have this kind of agentic power and ability to influence, which, you know, I think both of your podcasts are partly about having, not necessarily for mostly for people's own good, but to, you know, be able to have influence in the world and have some kind of power. Then I think it's important to play around and to experience and to experience going too far in unprofessionalism, but going too far in professionalism and, you know, all of those dynamics to build some of that literacy in this kind of space.

Yeah. Yeah. And I like the, what I hear from your story with the red hair and having the chip on the shoulder.

Yeah.

That what is the price we pay of not, so there might be the benefit of playing by the rules and being so professional because then you're part of the in-group. And then if you don't want that, are you willing to pay the price then to missing out? And maybe that's the reason why then the rebels create their own little in-group.

Exactly. Yeah. And for me, there was definitely a strong element of the insecurity of if I go to the ball, I won't know how to behave. I might get picked on. I'll look odd. I won't I'll be the guy who doesn't know the social norms. I'll be the guy who stands out and for the wrong reasons and I'll lose status. So because I am worried about losing status in that way, I'm going to nuke my status and go for another type of status, an outsider status. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Or break the state. Then it reminds me of what we spoke about earlier, the status anxiety that you break the rules. Consciously.

Yeah.

Because then it basically gives you carte blanche. Then people don't know whether you're doing it on purpose or not.

Exactly. That's a very good point. It gives you plausible deniability when you break the social norms. Yeah. I was once asked to do a training session in a Dutch bank in Den Haag. Very nice. I nearly got arrested on the way back because I had one of those fantastic apple cakes from Den Haag and I had a knife in it because I'd been, long story, but I'd been cutting myself a slice, a whole apple cake I was taking home to the family. And I brought it through Eurostar and they x-rayed it and saw the knife in the cake. Anyway, I was asked to deliver this training and for some reason I was also asked to deliver a training on, what was it? It was like how to eat properly. How to attend a formal meal and like the cutlery, where all the cutlery and the bread roll and how to pull off a small piece of the bread roll and all the glasses, which was kind of hilarious to me. But the thing I really enjoyed about it is that I told them at the start of that, what's the word of like proper behavior? Bon ton. Etiquette. That was right. Yeah. To teach people etiquette is hilarious. My wife found it Absolutely hilarious. And at the start of the etiquette section, I said, I'm going to make a deliberate mistake this evening, and I want you to point out to me at the end when I made the deliberate mistake in etiquette. And of course, at the end, they pointed out 5 or 6 guesses where I'd broken etiquette, including that I'd referred to one guy by the wrong name throughout the whole session. But at that stage, they thought it was deliberate, so I got away with it.

Interesting. Yeah. And this etiquette thing is another professionalism thing that might be there for a very good reason, but it's also, it creates an in-group and out-group and privilege because if you weren't lucky enough to grow up with family or have Benjamin as a teacher for etiquette, it's difficult to get into certain positions. Yep.

And I think that was an explicit thing in the Dutch social context of country clubs and the membership clubs of that kind of nature, where that was considered that it would probably be an important part of people. This was only 10 years ago. It might be an important part of people's progress and networking and acceptability in the bank as they progress. So fascinating, really.

Yeah. Lots of food for thought. Um, for the thin line between also what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, because I think unprofessionalism, you can only push it that far, but you don't want to be disrespectful or inappropriate. Um, and I think that ties back to the self-awareness. Yeah.

Yeah. There's always, there's always a rule you don't want to break, isn't there? Uh, in, in every, in every situation. It makes me think of John Lennon was going through some kind of weird psychotherapy. where he was expanding his ego so large that it would explode and disappear. And at one stage, there's this scene in the book where he's lying on the floor offering his mouth to be used as an ashtray by people at his party.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think this is the point, is you've got to have a different frame. Again, Irving Goffman has this wonderful phrase, extra-theoretical function, a capability outside of the game, if you see what I mean, in order to make assessments about whether and how far it's appropriate to be unprofessional.

Yeah. Final question. What is an unprofessional advice that you would still give other people, the listener?

Oh, good. I've got a good one. I, Once did some shamanism training with a really great teacher, really good guy. And at one stage, having called in our spirit animals, we were dancing around the Scout Hall in West London embodying our spirit animals. And in a later Q&A, he made the point that that was a very good type of exercise to help people with losing their sense of self-importance. So I think that's really good. And then my business partner, a few years later, when I was trying to encourage a group of people in the training to do some sort of fairly self-exposing task, present or be dynamic or the rest of it, he took me aside and he just said, Benjamin, I don't think people, everybody has done as many of these kinds of things as you have. So, you know, remember what normal expectations are. Kind of thing. But yeah, I think losing your sense of self-importance, but then also respecting that other people's sense of self-importance is very important to them, is a good combination.

So your unprofessional advice would be to help people to lose their sense of self-importance from time to time?

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you so much. And I'm very curious about the shaman experience and your spirit animal, of course.

Well, I'm not allowed to disclose that, but the teacher was a guy called Jonathan Horowitz of the Shamanic Center in Scandinavia, who is well worth looking up, full of wisdom and unprofessional ways of doing things. Yeah.

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