Unprofessionalism

This week's professional risk - inspired by Mariam Halfhide
Telling someone honestly how their behaviour affected you, instead of hiding behind professionalism, blame or silence.
This episode invites you to reflect on:
Why do we suppress a difficult emotion although we know that it makes it even stronger?
Why feedback falls flat when we can't name what a behaviour actually did to us.
Why the leaders people trust most build the conditions for others to grow, rather than solving every problem for them.
Most of us were trained how to behave professionally. Almost none of us were trained in how to handle frustration, disappointment, or hurt. So we hold it in, stay composed, and let it surface later as a clipped reply, a quiet withdrawal, or blame aimed at someone who never heard from us the true impact of their behaviour. The more "professional" we try to look, the harder an honest conversation becomes.
Mariam Halfhide does the opposite, on purpose. When something gets to her, she doesn't swallow it, and she doesn't fire back — she steps away, settles herself, then goes to the person and tells them plainly how their behaviour landed on her, without assuming they meant harm. She's found that these conversations end with more trust than they started. Across feedback, leadership, altered states and emotional regulation, she keeps returning to one question: how do you become more honest without becoming less trustworthy?
Would you dare?
The next time someone's behaviour unsettles you, could you tell them how it landed on you — as a person, not a process — instead of letting it leak out as a rant or complaint?
About the guest
Mariam Halfhide works at the intersection of AI strategy and human connection. Having lived and worked across many cultures, she brings a sharp perspective on adaptation, belonging, and the courage it takes to choose a workplace where more of yourself is welcome.
Links to learn more about Mariam Halfhide:
LinkedIn
Watch on YouTube: The Projection Exercise
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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/

Jamell Crouthers has held a full-time job the entire time he's been writing. Sixty books in eight years, a podcast, blog posts, all of it built in the hours around his day work. He writes fiction about social issues — race, workaholism, homelessness, addiction — the kind of conversations most workplaces won't touch directly.
When he worked at a medical office, he used to sit in the break room before his shift with his laptop and coworkers walking past started asking what he was writing. Some began buying his books. His supervisor became a regular listener of his podcast.
At his current job in banking, almost nobody knows. The difference, Jamell says, has less to do with courage of opening up or wanting to remain professional but more about whether the environment makes curiosity possible at all and how fast a numbers-driven, fully remote workplace can make that kind of connection feel like effort.
We talked about what happens when work becomes only about hitting targets, and what it takes to bring the parts of yourself that don't fit the job description into the room anyway.
Links to learn more about Jamell Crouthers:
eBook
Paperback
Audiobook
Blog
Podcast
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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/

Donatella Caggiano was living in a Best Western while her flooded apartment got fixed when she watched a SWAT team raid a neighbouring house to catch a fugitive. She caught herself rooting for the person running and then realised she was the person running. Donatella accepted the hint her body and the universe were giving then drove to her office that morning and quit.
The job she walked away from was a corporate role she had stayed in through a merger and acquisition that kept her and her team in the dark, and left everyone working in an unfinished office surrounded by moving boxes for months. The message was clear long before the layoffs: stop investing. Stop expecting. Just wait.
The hotel window was Donatella's accidental third space — the room outside both home and work where she could finally see herself. She now designs that room intentionally, for teams. She helps organisations have conversations the office wasn't built for, to rebuild belonging in places where gratitude is demanded and silence is rewarded.
We talked about why grief gets skipped when organisations change, what happens to a team when a leader hands back agency instead of holding the line, and what four haircuts taught her about leading through change.
Links to learn more about Donatella Caggiano:
Website
LinkedIn
Newsletter
Substack
Podcast
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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/

Gustavo Razzetti once sat next to a woman at a corporate conference, judging the regional VP presenting on stage until she revealed that was her husband. Instead of backpedaling he apologised, then stood by every word. That instinct of owning the mess without pretending he didn’t mean it is the backbone of his work.
He has spent decades inside corporate and agency life watching great ideas die because of terrible culture. He now works with teams on what he calls conversational debt: the gap between what people nod through in meetings and what they actually act on. His research found that when people are asked why others don't speak up, the answer is fear, but when asked why they themselves don't, the answer becomes pointlessness: a learned belief that nothing will change anyway.
Gustavo refuses to live that way. He fires clients before the work even starts if the fit is wrong. His rule is that he'd rather lose his job over one conversation than avoid a hundred — and he did.
We talked about the power dynamics that shape what is considered professionalism, the most dangerous type of silence in organisations and why we should all drop the invisible contract nobody handed us and stop waiting for permission to speak.
Links to learn more about Gustavo Razzetti:
Forward Talk (Gustavo’s new book)
Website
Substack
Workshops
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/

Rori DuBoff once took an unused office at Accenture, tore it down, and built a virtual reality studio from scratch with no formal approval and that's how she got the firm into the metaverse. She didn't wait for the green light. She brought in a few people who were equally excited, and delivered.
She's spent decades in digital innovation and marketing, watching organisations say they wanted disruption and then treat the people delivering it as the problem.
That’s made her conclude that 80% of innovation is change management. Rori explains how most of us obsess over the idea while it is actually the smallest part of the problem. The larger part is whether the people around you feel safe enough to hear it.
She acted before consensus throughout her whole career, took the heat for it, and now she is sharing the blueprint.
Links to learn more about Rori Duboff:
LinkedIn
Website
All Things Trust
Substack
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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/