Unprofessionalism
Most career advice tells you to hide uncertainty, perform confidence, and never let them see you sweat.
This podcast is about what happens when you ignore that advice.
Unprofessionalism is a series of conversations with people who broke professional conventions and discovered something better on the other side: the designer who ignored the 'approved tools' and saved thousands of hours. The founder who built a practice by openly admitting gaps in expertise. The consultant who called out dysfunction everyone else had learnt to work around. The people who recognised that professionalism had become performance theatre: a mask hiding the messy, human work that actually creates value.
Hosted by Dr Myriam Hadnes—behavioural economist and founder of a global leadership training practice—each conversation dissects a specific moment where someone chose effectiveness over appearance, then reverse-engineers what made it work.
You'll hear the friction before the decision, the immediate aftermath, and what changed months later. The pattern recognition across these moments becomes your playbook.
If you've ever sat in a meeting thinking 'this is broken but I can't say it', this podcast tells you what happened to the people who did.
New episode every week.
Unprofessionalism
066 - How to Guide Teams Through Conflictual Conversations with Marcus Crow
Teeth gnashing, fists waving, pulses racing… Conflict conjures up a certain image in many people’s minds.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
In fact, conflict can be one of the most powerful tools we have to drive meaningful change.
In this episode of workshops work, I speak with Marcus Crow, co-founder of 10,000 HOURS and specialist in high stakes facilitation, about his brilliant approach to diving headfirst into conflict in a way that puts safety and growth at the heart of the discussion.
Whether you’re the kind of facilitator who avoids conflict at all costs or loves to embrace it, Marcus shares such a breadth of great ideas and insights from his own facilitation practice that there is something in this episode for everyone.
- Why the dominant narrative in management prevents meaningful change
- How Marcus helps teams face up to their conflicts whilst fostering an environment of safety
- What we can learn from ‘low stakes’ conflicts and how we can use these situations as practice for bigger conflicts
- How Marcus helps his clients ‘depathologise’ conflict
- Why Marcus believes a ‘Royal College of Facilitation’ would help advance our industry
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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
[01:11] When did you first start calling yourself a facilitator?
[02:55] If you were a hashtag, what would you be?
[05:03] How do you help groups benefit from their collective intelligence?
[07:43] Can managers be facilitators for their own teams?
[10:40] Do we need 10,000 hours to become a facilitator?
[14:29] How do you prepare yourself for ‘high stakes’ facilitation in settings with lots of localised context?
[21:04] What is the difference between standing at the front of the room and being in the room?
[26:00] How do you confront the group and its conflict?
[28:48] What does it mean to conflict safely?
[31:29] Do you see replicable patterns between high stakes and low stakes conflict?
[38:48] What makes a workshop fail?
[45:24] What about the facilitation ‘industry’ are you opposed to?
[52:28] If someone fell asleep at the start of our conversation, what is the one thing you’d like them to take away?
Connect to Marcus Crow
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You can now find the podcast on Substack, where your host Dr. Myriam Hadnes is building a club for you to find fellow listeners and peers: https://myriamhadnes.substack.com/
