038 - No Process to Hide Behind with David Pearl

This week's professional risk - inspired by David PearlClosing the distance between yourself and your work, with no process to hide behind if it fails.DescriptionDavid Pearl once joked that he would only run a workshop for a cosmetics company if everyone brought their mums. The client said yes, and his own mother stood up in the middle of the advertising agency’s pitch and punctured the professional bubble in the room. Behind the story sits a bigger question about what professionalism protects us from.David has moved between the arts and business for his whole career, and he holds both up to the light. Artists are judged by the outcome, often by strangers who owe them nothing, with very little distance between themselves and their work. They make much of very little, and they need a dose of self-deception to start anything at all. In business he found long hours, a cool professional distance and less invention than he expected, and also people who get things done in ways he calls quite magical. Professionalism, in this light, can work as armour: when a decision goes wrong, we can say we did what was expected.As AI takes over more of the expertise, the question becomes which of these habits professionals need more of. David leans towards judgement, imagination, lightness and the courage to stay with questions that have no answer, the kind the arts have always asked. This is an episode about the professional risk of closing the distance between ourselves and our work.This episode invites you to reflect on:What we are protecting when we hide behind the professional process.What artists and business professionals could learn from each other, from making much of very little to getting things done.When would wandering serve you better than marching towards a predetermined destination?Over to you!If you think you’re a different person at work than at home, check at home. Ask someone who lives with you what mood your working week leaves you in on a Friday night. Listen without defending yourself.About the guestDavid Pearl has worked on both sides of this debate for over thirty years. He started in music: he toured as an orchestral player, presented a primetime music series on BBC2 and set up two opera companies. In 1994, one of the world’s leading service firms asked for his help in boosting creativity, and he has worked between the arts and business ever since. As an experience engineer, he designs and leads high-stakes meetings for leaders around the world. He founded Street Wisdom, which has taken the practice of purposeful wandering to tens of thousands of people. His books are Will There Be Donuts? on meetings, Story for Leaders on storytelling, and Wanderful: Human Navigation for a Complex World.Links to learn more about :Street WisdomWebsiteLinkedIn

This week's professional risk - inspired by MarilynChallenging a rule, a KPI or a person in authority when following along would be easier, safer and more professional.DescriptionWhen Marilyn was told to cut a third of her marketing budget, she suggested cancelling Dubai’s New Year’s Eve celebration instead. Her team produced it.The room froze.For Marilyn, that was precisely the point. An absurd demand sometimes needs an equally absurd response before everyone stops hiding behind the process and starts having what she calls a “mature adult conversation”.From there, we talk about what happens when we give our human agency to systems somebody designed years ago. We follow KPIs even when they create the wrong behaviour. We complain about leaders in the town-hall side chat instead of speaking to them. We build rules to protect ourselves from bad behaviour, then discover that those same rules make it harder to care for one another. Having worked across North America, Europe and the Middle East, Marilyn has seen a manager who asks about a colleague’s sick mother treated as a role model in one place and as an intrusion on privacy in another. And she holds everyone to the same standard, down to the youngest intern and the words they use in a meeting.This episode invites you to reflect on:what would change if we approached someone senior as a thinking partnerhow much responsibility employees have for the culture they criticisewhen protecting professional boundaries begins to undermine communityOver to you!Which decision are you working around right now, instead of taking it to the person who made it?About the guestMarilyn Zakhour is the founder and CEO of Cosmic Centaurs, a Dubai-based organisational development consultancy that works with leaders on how they think about work and the workplace. Before that, she was chief marketing officer of Emaar, where her team produced Dubai’s New Year’s Eve celebration, and she headed Dubai Opera. She is Lebanese, and her career has taken her across North America, Europe and the Middle East. She calls herself a systems person, which is exactly why she keeps asking how a process will behave on a bad day, and why she will take that question to whoever is in charge.Links to learn more about :Marilyn’s TEDx TalkLinkedInWebsite

This week's professional risk - inspired by Piero GandiniRisking status and authority by refusing to let your title determine how you relate to people.DescriptionWhat happens when you gain status but refuse to behave as though it makes you more important than the people around you?When Piero became a Colombian consul, his new team had only ever called his predecessor "Consul". On the first evening, a colleague asked, "Mr Consul, what do you want to eat?" He answered, "My name is Piero." She was shocked.That small moment says a lot about how Piero thinks about leadership. "The job that I'm doing is not who I am," as he puts it.Throughout our conversation, Piero takes us from humanitarian missions and overcrowded prisons to embassies and consulates. He tells me why he made visiting Colombians in prison a priority when others avoided it, why he worked reception during mobile consulates, and why sharing lunch with his team became part of how he led. When a colleague had to record testimonies from victims of the Colombian conflict in front of everyone, he pushed the ministry for a private office. Some of these choices earned him recognition for innovation. Others made fellow consuls uncomfortable, because his way of working showed what they weren't doing.This episode invites you to reflect on:How can you meet people at eye level while still holding authority?How does your behaviour change when you gain status?When does challenging the status quo become an act of service?Over to you!Pick one thing you dropped to fit a role, maybe sharing lunch with your team, a kind of joke, or being called by your first name. Bring it back for a week and notice what returns with it.About the guestPiero opened a bar at 21, ran an NGO soon after, and then spent years in humanitarian work. It took him from Angola and South Sudan to a prison in Peru and the MSF mission in India, which he led. An ambassador who knew him from the parties at his house in New Delhi brought him into Colombian diplomacy. He served as second-in-command and consul at the embassy in India, and later as consul in Gran Canaria. In both worlds he kept the habit of asking people what they need, whether in a prison in Mumbai or at the reception desk of a mobile consulate. His book of stories from the humanitarian field, Agunamakuash, is out now.Links to learn more about Piero:Website Piero’s book AgunamakuashLinkedIn 

This week's professional risk - inspired by Kate Raynes-GoldieTrusting yourself enough to break the rules that are supposed to keep you safe.DescriptionProfessionalism feels safe. Kate calls it a false safety: the suit, the right behaviour, the private life kept at home, all so nobody sees the part of us that might be judged. It is also what we ask of each other, when we expect a colleague to show up in a way that isn't confronting for anyone else in the room. Once Facebook opened up beyond college students, those lines collapsed. People were fired over what they posted. One woman in Kate's PhD research never drank, yet her landlord questioned her over a photo of her pretending to chug a beer as a joke. In 2007, Kate asked Mark Zuckerberg whether Facebook would let people keep their different contexts apart. His answer, she recalls, was no. In his view, being different in different parts of your life was lying.Kate's own way through is to choose where she is real, and then build the structure that lets her. It started with a salary number she was ready to hear no to. Today she is open about her ADHD, so a missed detail can be understood as how she is wired. She uses a first conversation with clients to test the fit, because how a client behaves at the start is how they will behave later. And when she brings Lego into sceptical rooms, her research, her PhD and the word "serious" in LEGO Serious Play are her safety net. This is an episode about what those rules were protecting us from in the first place.This episode invites you to reflect on:The parts of ourselves we keep out of work because they might be judged, and how much safety that really buysWhat a first meeting could reveal about fit if we showed up as we areHow we read a colleague's lateness or small mistake, and what we tell ourselves when we make oneOver to you!Which professional rule are you following simply because breaking it feels scary?About the guestDr Kate Raynes-Goldie was told by people in academia that a TEDx talk was not serious. She went on to speak at TEDxPerth and SXSW, and to create SUPERCONNECT®, an evidence-based method built on LEGO® Serious Play® that optimises for curiosity, connection, belonging and psychological safety. Born in Canada and now based in Western Australia, she wrote her PhD on privacy and identity on Facebook, and has worked with organisations including Google, Microsoft and the Mozilla Foundation. She is Chief Curiosity Officer at The Up Next Company.Links to learn more about Kate:Website

This week's professional risk - inspired by Amar DhallTaking responsibility for what went wrong, even when someone else clearly made the mistake.DescriptionWhat if your first question when something goes wrong wasn't "Whose fault is this?" but "What could I have done differently?"It sounds generous until you try it in a room where everyone else is still holding their position. Going first means being the one who visibly failed, in front of people who have conceded nothing. It doesn't mean taking the blame. It means starting with the part of the system you actually have the power to change. Amar Dhall began his career teaching law, where he did something several colleagues considered rather unprofessional: he cared less about proving how difficult the material was and more about creating the conditions in which his students could actually learn. That instinct took him out of law, into therapy, and towards a much bigger question. What does it take for human beings to flourish?He describes preparing two senior leaders for a conversation neither of them wanted, one in the C-suite and one a step below, working with each separately from a position of full responsibility. Their views stayed irreconcilable. The relationship got stronger anyway. Which is the case for why any of this belongs at work, because the inner child having an argument in the boardroom doesn't disappear when the meeting ends.This episode invites you to reflect on:How quickly you reach for someone else's mistake, and what that reflex protects you from.The line between attunement and rescuing, and which side of it your care usually lands on.What your body and your relationships already know about a situation before your thinking catches up.Over to you!Think of the last time something went wrong at work that genuinely wasn't your fault. Knowing what you know now, what could you have done differently?About the guestDr Amar Dhall started out teaching law and left it for psychotherapy, having decided he could not understand law without understanding people. He now runs Neuro-Somatic Leadership, working with executives and founders on what happens in the body when the pressure is on. He chose to work with leaders for the multiplier. Change how one CEO shows up, and five hundred families have a different experience of work.Links to learn more about Amar:Website

This week's professional risk - inspired by Alissia QuaintanceSpeaking about the female cycle and women’s health in the corporate environment.DescriptionTalking about our health at work is easy while we are healthy. Admitting that our body is not delivering is already a taboo for many. Women's health and periods more so, although half the workforce is affected. Thirty per cent of women come to work through intense cycle-related pain and say nothing. Two in five consider leaving or cutting their hours over health topics they don't feel permitted to talk about.Alissia Quaintance opened a meeting at one of the world's biggest tech companies by asking every woman present where she was in her cycle. The answers became planning data. Ovulating means fast, associative thinking, the days before a bleed bring deeper focus. Teams that name this stop guessing at each other's bad days and start planning around something real. Her sharpest point is the inversion: the female cycle is the predictable one. Testosterone drops without warning, for an unknown length of time, when a man's team loses a match.This episode invites you to reflect on:Why you keep pushing through pain instead of calling in sick.The assumptions you make about a colleague who calls in sick.What your ambition to deliver the same output every day is actually costing you.Over to you!What opportunities are my colleagues and I missing by not openly speaking about our health conditions?About the guestAlissia Quaintance built her first career in tech until motherhood confronted her with a version of her own body that none of the available narratives fitted. She founded Cycle Positivity to bring menstrual cycle awareness, fertility, motherhood and menopause into corporate strategy, and works with organisations including Amazon and Microsoft. Her insistence on pairing intuition with hard data comes from knowing exactly how quickly this conversation gets filed under wellness and forgotten.Links to learn more about Alissia:WebsiteLinkedIn✏️ Illustration credit: WolfiSchmid.

This week's professional risk - inspired by Thomas LahnthalerLetting a room see you're human at the exact moment the role expects you to hold it together.DescriptionMost of us carry a private rulebook to work: be on time, stay composed, sit properly, keep the personal out of it. Nobody handed us this rulebook, and nobody quite agrees on what's in it — yet we only discover its contents the moment someone tells us we've broken a rule. And that label, arriving uninvited, does something to us. Suddenly we're managing the fear of doing it wrong rather than doing the work.Thomas Landthaler has been on the receiving end of that label since his very first job interview, where a panel told him to get comfortable and then critiqued the way he sat. Since then, he has led teams in crisis zones where his idea of good leadership counted as unprofessional, sworn at workshop groups, asked 150 keynote guests to give up their seats — and once logged on to teach 300 people on the day of his mother's funeral, having decided to push through as the professional. What he said in that first minute is where this conversation begins. This is an episode about the professional risk of choosing to break the rules before the rules break you.This episode invites you to reflect on:Which of your ideas about "professional behaviour" are universal — and which you simply learned somewhere along the way.What the worry about doing something "wrong" does to your intuition and your ability to connect.The difference between breaking a rule on purpose and being caught breaking one you never knew existed.Over to you!Which professional rule do you follow mainly because it keeps your own nerves quiet?About the guestThomas Lahnthaler is the author of “Facilitating Reflections” and “Navigating Beyond Crisis”. He is a facilitator, consultant and educator whose work has taken him across very different professional and cultural contexts, including international development and crisis environments. Those experiences have repeatedly challenged his own assumptions about what professionalism is supposed to look like. Today, he brings that curiosity into his work with groups, deliberately experimenting with expectations, roles and conventions to create the moment he describes as people finally being able to “lower their shoulders” and connect as humans.Links to learn more about Thomas Lahnthaler:WebsiteLinkedIn

This week's professional risk - inspired by Esther: Choosing your team over the expectations of the organisation.DescriptionMany managers start their careers believing leadership means delivering results at any cost. Saying yes, working harder, and asking the same of their teams often feels like the safest path to success. Pushing back on unrealistic expectations can feel professionally risky, especially when your own reputation is on the line.Looking back on more than seventeen years in the corporate world, Esther realised that her best leadership began when she no longer felt the need to prove herself. An unexpected career pause gave her the distance to see how ambition had shaped her leadership, and why advocating for her team ultimately earned more trust than simply protecting the organisation. This is an episode about becoming the kind of manager your team knows will go to bat for them.This episode invites you to reflect on:What you pass on to your team when the pressure lands on you.Which parts of yourself you've muted in order to appear more professional.Whose definition of success your career is currently built around.Over to you!What did you last agree to on behalf of your team that you could have negotiated?About the guestAfter spending more than seventeen years building consumer brands and leading an $850 million portfolio at Canada’s largest general merchandise retailer, Esther Ifrah found herself questioning many of the unwritten rules that had shaped her career. Today, she is the creator of Work Persona, a weekly newsletter helping experienced professionals stay relevant, visible and ready for what’s next, while exploring what it means to build a career that reflects who you are, not just what you’ve achieved.Links to learn more about Esther:Work Persona Newsletter

This week's professional risk - inspired by Rob: Walking into the room without pretending you already know the answer.DescriptionMost of us learnt early that being taken seriously means being serious. So we bring gravitas into the room and leave the warmth outside, because humour feels like a gamble: it might land, or it might cost us the contract, the promotion, the credibility we've spent years building. Safer to perform the professional and save the human for after hours.In 1996, Rob Evans walked into an interview with twenty German engineers at Lufthansa, convinced he had no chance of winning the contract. So he stopped performing and started having fun. What happened in that room — and what the engineers admitted afterwards — changed how he worked for the next three decades. This is an episode about the professional risk of being warm.This episode invites you to reflect on:Whether your own humour at work is exposure or armour — warmth makes you vulnerable, while sarcasm keeps you safely hidden behind a target.What playing it safe actually protects: the outcome, or your excuse when it fails.What your body has been trying to tell you while you were busy enduring.Over to you!How much fun did you have at work yesterday — and whose game are you playing if the answer is none?About the guestRob Evans has spent decades designing and facilitating large-scale strategy and transformation processes for organisations around the world. His work combines systems thinking, dialogue, large group facilitation and deep human curiosity. Rather than positioning himself as the expert with answers, Rob has dedicated his career to helping groups discover answers that none of them could have found alone.Links to learn more about Rob Evans:LinkedIn

This week's professional risk - inspired by KristineSaying out loud, in front of the person who could remove you, what a colleague only dared say to you in private.DescriptionMost of us have sat in a meeting and watched a decision take shape that we didn't agree with, and said nothing. We tell ourselves it's not our place, or that speaking up won't change anything, or that the cost of disagreeing with the room is higher than the cost of staying quiet. We rarely ask what that silence is costing the business, or us.Kristine Frost, a Chief Human Resources Officer with more than 25 years in the C-suite, names what everyone else in the room already knows and won't say. She calls colleagues out by name in executive meetings, walks factory floors instead of reading reports about them, and takes a seat at the table when nobody offers her one. This is an episode about the risk of being the one who breaks the silence.This episode invites you to reflect on:How often you mistake staying quiet in a meeting for staying safe.What you might be missing about your own decisions by keeping your distance from the people they affect.Whether you're waiting for permission somewhere you could simply take the seat.Over to you!Where am I waiting for permission when I could simply pull up a seat?About the guestKristine Frost spent more than 25 years in corporate leadership, often as the only woman, and often the only HR voice, at the table, before founding Shattered Glass Advisory. Trained as an attorney and now a board director, she built her authority in the C-suite by learning the business well enough to challenge it: walking assembly lines, sitting with engineers on the shop floor, asking questions nobody assumed were hers to ask. Her career is a case study in what it costs, and what it earns, to close the gap between the plant floor and the boardroom.Links to learn more about Kristine:WebsiteLinkedIn