Unprofessionalism
Professional performance is exhausting. Maintaining the mask. Editing ourselves. Pretending we know when we don't.
This podcast is about people who dropped the performance. And what happened next.
Each episode features someone who broke professional conventions and found something better on the other side: the executive who disclosed grief in a corporate setting and found it opened new ways of relating; the coach who realised her authority came from integrity, not compliance; the designer who ignored the 'approved tools' and saved thousands of hours.
Conversations circle around three questions:
- What does it cost us to perform professionalism instead of showing up as ourselves?
- How do we create spaces where people can bring their full attention and humanity to work?
- When is the “unprofessional” move actually the most responsible one?
If you feel the tension between who you are and who you're expected to be at work, this podcast shows you what happens when people stop managing that tension and just stop performing.
Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes—behavioural economist and founder of workshops.work. New episode every week.
Unprofessionalism
069 - Unflattening: An Attitude that will Expand Our Thinking with Nick Sousanis
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workshops work is a podcast for facilitators, by a facilitator, about facilitation… so why have I invited Assistant Professor of Humanities and Liberal Studies at San Francisco State University and comic book artist Nick Sousanis to join me in this episode?
I read Nick’s remarkable work ‘Unflattening’ recently and immediately knew that the world of facilitation needed to know about it. I was delighted when he accepted my invitation!
What followed was a beautiful exchange of ideas and reflections from two distant fields, worlds that do not normally collide but have more in common than you might first think.
This is a very special episode of workshops work – and one that I think could change our practice in a deep and powerful way.
Listen to find out:
- Why trying to think outside of the boxes we are in isn’t necessarily a good idea
- The most important question Nick believes we need to answer in this moment in time
- Why unflattening is a journey, not a destination
- Why images aren’t simply aesthetic, but communicative in novel and detailed ways
- How creative constraints and limits help us learn, grow, and unflatten
Don’t miss the next show: Subscribe to the show with your favourite podcast player.
A huge thank you must go to SessionLab, the sponsor of Workshops Work. Claim your free two months of SessionLab Pro now – this deal is exclusive to Workshops Work listeners!
Questions and Answers
[01:44] Is it correct that Unflattening was your dissertation?
[02:33] What prompted you to draw your dissertation?
[05:25] Where was the idea of Unflattening born?
[08:58] How does Unflattening relate to ‘thinking outside the box’?
[12:47] Did you create Unflattening to intentionally remove as many of these ‘boxes’ as possible?
[17:47] What is the magic ingredient for hearing each other’s arguments?
[22:27] Is Unflattening a journey, a philosophy, a destination?
[27:51] How can we practice Unflattening when it comes to emotive topics?
[31:50] What can pictures teach us that words cannot?
[36:21] How do you encourage people to follow the path of your writing without being too explicitly directional?
[45:05] – What makes a workshop – or a class – fail?
[01:02:13] – What is the one thing you would like listeners to take away from this episode?
Links
Connect to Nick
Any thoughts? Share them with us!
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If you miss the "workshops work" podcast, join us on Substack, where Myriam builds a Podcast Club with monthly gatherings around old episodes: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/
