"What are you waiting for? We’re all in the departure lounge." — Dr. Mark Rittenberg

How do we lead in a world that feels broken? In this pilot episode of The Ballet of Empathy, Dr. Mark Rittenberg invites us to step out of our "comfort zone" and into the "stretch zone" to reclaim what it means to be a human being in leadership.

What unfolds is a reflection on the beauty and rupture of human connection, where love becomes both the foundation and the test of leadership. Through moments of vulnerability, conflict, forgiveness, and truth telling, a deeper invitation emerges to repair what is breaking, to speak when silence feels safer, and to lead through presence, dialogue, and the courage to remain in relationship.

Recorded live at the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, this conversation launches a 12-month series exploring the heart of Mark’s life’s work and his upcoming book, Leadership is Love. Mark challenges the "culture of silence" and the "ridiculous" disconnect of our modern era, offering instead a "healing salve" for the workplace.

Facilitated by Amy Lynn Durham, Executive Producer of Magic Thread Media, this episode is a roadmap for those ready to commit the radical act of love in service of something larger than themselves.

The Choreography Of A Connection:

1. Uncover The Origin Of Leadership As Love – A defining moment reveals how a simple phrase became a lifelong philosophy rooted in human connection.
2. Explore The Duality Of Connection And Heartbreak – The conversation examines how the same relationships that uplift can also fracture through silence and avoidance.
3. Reveal The Cost Of Avoiding Difficult Dialogue – A growing pattern of ghosting and disengagement exposes a deeper cultural fear of confrontation.
4. Examine Courage Within The Danger Zone – Moments of truth-telling illuminate the emotional risk required to move beyond comfort into real transformation.
5. Illuminate The Healing Power Of Forgiveness And Apology – Leadership is reframed through acts of repair, where dialogue restores what disconnection erodes.

About the Host: 

Dr. Mark Rittenberg is a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business, specializing in leadership communication and interpersonal dynamics. He is known for helping individuals and organizations develop authentic leadership presence through human connection and dialogue.

With over three decades of global experience, he has worked with Fortune 100 companies, government institutions, and international organizations. He is also the founder of the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute, where he trains leaders and executive coaches from around the world.

At the heart of his work is a simple but powerful belief: leadership is rooted in love, expressed through presence, dialogue, and the courage to remain in human connection.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-rittenberg-bb90214/

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Dr. Mark Rittenberg: We're holding these workshops on the Vaal River, and we're at the river and about 60 people per time. And we get there and there's this Afrikaans gentleman who says to me, Look, Mark, I'm really I know you don't understand our country, but I just can't be in a classroom with a black teacher. I said, why? He said, because it doesn't work. It's like against my religion. I said, Okay, that's what's going on. And I think that, I think you should really, really think about the idea that you could actually stretch yourself. And the teacher was mosabi jaleli. Those of you who know wasabi, famous actress in South Africa, stage, screen, beautiful, singer, smile, the whole thing. So he said, Well, I need to do something. I may have to leave the workshop. I said, Fine, that's your choice. And he writes to his wife, and a fax comes in. We still remember fax machines. They came in, and she said, if this is who you are, don't bother coming home. He said, Let me tell them the kids are sick. And she I won't do that. The kids are not sick. You're sick, and if this is who you are, don't bother coming home. And that began. He was in class with motsavi gileni, and on the third day in the debrief, he said, Can I have two minutes on stage, motsavi come up here? And the two of them came up here, and he said, I am here to apologize publicly to the community. I have just been with the greatest teacher of my life. I have just been in the grace of an angel, and I, in my racist self, was fighting her every inch of the way, and because she has such a big heart, she let it go, and we embraced each other. And I am here to apologize publicly. And this will never happen again. And the crowd went completely crazy. Completely crazy. So it was that amazing moment of the heartbreak moving to the heartwarming power of human connection.

I'm Dr Mark Rittenberg, welcome to the Ballet of Empathy. A Leadership is Love podcast. Here, we explore the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection and the responsibility we carry to repair, to forgive and to lead in service of something larger than ourselves. If you're willing to step out of your comfort zone, into the stretch zone and possibly into the danger zone, and practice the power of dialog, this space is built for you.

Amy Lynn Durham: Hi. I'm Amy Lynn Durham, executive producer for magic thread media on behalf of the production team for the ballet of empathy, I am so honored to share this pilot episode with you recorded live from the Berkeley executive coaching Institute's annual coaches conference on the UC Berkeley campus. This conversation gives you a peek into the heart of this podcast and a taste of what's to come as we explore Dr Mark rittenberg's upcoming book and his life's work, leadership is love. Together, we'll navigate the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, and the courage required to lead with what Mark calls the medley of love. Let's go inside the room.

Welcome everybody. We are here at the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute on the Berkeley campus with Dr Mark Rittenberg. So for everybody tuning in to this recording, we want to send well wishes to them as well, because this conversation is going to ripple out far past this room, but I'm so honored that we're here today because, as my mentor coach Riva has said multiple times, there is magic in these walls, and I'm just really grateful to be here and to have this conversation. So today we're going to talk about leadership is love, which is Mark's thought leadership, and we're going to kind of take everybody through the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, and perhaps some Healing Salves for and some ways to amplify some of those things. So Mark, thanks for doing this with me.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Thank you so much. You're my favorite, favorite interviewer, because you can drag things out of me that nobody else can. We'll see lovely.

Amy Lynn Durham: So why don't we start off with sharing with everybody what. Where this concept of leadership is Love came from, because a lot of us here in the room have worked in the corporate space and in the workplace, and even with my corporate background, like hearing somebody talk about love when I was doing my quarterly business review and trying to hit my numbers, it was kind of like, Is there even a place for love at work, and what does that look like? And what inspired you to have this

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: thought in memory to my predecessor, who I have great regard and respect for, Bill would always end his classes with, don't forget the lessons we've learned in leadership, but go out and commit an act of love. Leadership is love. Leadership is love. So on your way home tonight, do something wonderful. Make that phone call see somebody do something wonderful, because leadership is love. That's all it is. So I took the first sentence and I just added what I do the power of human connection, and so that's what we're writing about. And it's all a book of stories, stories in a very interesting form. As you all know, I have a lot of stories. You've heard them all, but the fact is, is that it's a story, and then it's lessons learned. And then I've taken an idea from a one of the holy books, which has to do with a tiny homework assignment. So a very one liner homework assignment. So if we're working on the power of human connection, and we're working on integrity, I might say something about perhaps you want to find a way to express your integrity this next week. Think of somebody who really would love to see that. And that's all there is in it. And so there's that. That was the whole book, beautiful stories of the power of human connection. And then covid happened. Covid happened, and I began to observe other stories, not only things that happened to me, but to friends. And I said, My God, this is opposite. This is the heartbreak of human connection, very much the heartbreak of human connection, and so I decided that needed to be there too as a balance. We have the capacity to be wonderful and positive and loving, and we have the capacity to break trust and to betray one another, and most of all, embrace the culture of silence, where something's changed and you just decide not to tell anybody about it. You just decide not to communicate or we have a conflict, and rather than work it through, I'll just ghost you and just stop talking to you for the

next five years. That's not okay. That's absolutely destroying the world. The lack of dialog, the lack of dialog people not returning phone calls, is actually part of the heartbreak of human connection. I called you. Is it too much to call me back? I mean, isn't the phone still being used? So I'm saying those kinds of things. So that's actually very much where the leadership is love about that all of us that are actually in the world, it doesn't matter if it's profit non profit. Doesn't even matter if you have a job. Can you commit the act of love towards other people and let that happen as a way of improving whatever is currently going on.

Amy Lynn Durham: I think we've all, at some point felt the light and the shadow in the workplace like I know when I think of my corporate experience, I've never had a more positive environment where people are encouraging you. You meet people that have that impact your life in a whole new way. And then there's that shadow where, where some people feel like they've have career trauma, or they've been what you're saying, ghosted. Or, you know, we hear about people that apply for jobs, they go through 10 interviews, and then they hear nothing, and they're like, what happened? And so there is some element in your piece about the heartbreak of human connection, where there's some sort of energy that I'm sensing that definitely feels to me. Just to make it spicy, it definitely feels insidious where we are allowing ourselves to cut, cut each other off and feel like that's okay, and then what, what I'm seeing with my clients is they are so afraid of confrontation, and I'm not. And I'm using the word confrontation in a positive way. I'm going to talk to you about something and maybe have a conflict resolution about it, and the heartbreak that I see that you're speaking to is nobody's talking, nobody's having the difficult conversation anymore. Some of my clients are so afraid to make a mistake, it's insane. They're afraid that somebody is going to say something to them. They made it. I'm like, go make a mistake and learn how to fix it. Go, have go insult somebody on accident when you didn't mean to and then learn how to apologize. So thoughts on that

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: you're so good. Is there any story that you'd you'd like to share?

Amy Lynn Durham: Any anything in the piece of your heartbreak, of human connection? I love the story in South Africa with the gentleman. I mean, we can share that and see what comes up for everybody.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Many of you have met the South African team, and I'm very, very honored. We did a project there. I'll just give you the very, very quick story. I'd gone on a safari with a very, very close friend of mine, and we really ate and drank. I mean, you should have seen us at the end of it. So we went to a health farm to try to lose a bit of weight and to dry out. Well, that was it. It's called the high rastenberg Hydra. There were 85 women and three men. But somehow, the men stuck together, I don't know. And we would go to the eucalyptus sauna every day for two hours and sweat our and so it was my best friend and this other guy who looked like a rugby player. And so he just sort of started talking in this very South African accent, and said, So, Professor, tell me what you do. I said, Well, I'm kind of hot right now. I mean, could we, like, talk about this later? And so he said, Well, just give me a sentence. I said, Okay, show up and choose to be present. Anybody ever heard that one before? Choose to be present. That's the essence of my work. She said, Oh, wow, great. I said, Good, let's talk later. Next morning, we're back in the sauna. And he said, I didn't sleep all night. I said, I know you were hungry. I said, I was starving, and you've passing me, drove into town to buy a hamburger. I know you did to know that thing. You said, So what'd I say? Show up and choose to be present. I said, Oh yeah, that's the essence. He said, Well, I'd like to invite you now to be my partner. I said, for what? He said, Well, what you don't know is that I'm the CEO of Avis South Africa, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and I've been looking for a culture change project, and everyone's failed because they keep talking this HR double talk to me. And what you just said really did it. So I'd like to invite you to be my partner, and we're going to get 2900 people in South Africa through training and development, great communication, loving kindness. My values are empathy,

honesty, humanity, and we can do it, and it'll great. I said, That's very nice, Mr. Wilson, but I don't live here. He said, I know, but I'm going to make it very comfortable for you to come here. And I said, That's very nice of you, but I don't have a team here. And he said, Well, why don't we train a South African team? And I said, That's a lovely idea. That will cost a lot of money. He says, But I have a lot of money, okay, from train the South African team. We trained a South African team in a crazy place called Heller Fontaine, which is a kind of ghost house in janisburg. And it was wonderful because it was post Mandela, and for 10 days we holed up in this place. It was quite extraordinary. We began the training on a Friday, it ended on a Sunday, and their first workshops were on a Monday. Shoot them right out of the cannon. Oh my God, what's going to happen? And we're holding these workshops on the vowel River, and we're at the river and about 60 people per time, and we get there, and there's this Afrikaans gentleman who says to me, Look, Mark, I'm really I know you don't understand our country, but I just can't be in a classroom with a black teacher. I said, why it's like against my religion? I said, Okay, that's what's going on. And I think you should really, really think about the idea that you could actually stretch yourself. And the teacher was mosabi jaleli. Those of you who know wasabi, famous actress in South Africa, stage, string, beautiful singer, smile, the whole thing. So he said, Well, I need to do something. I may have to leave the workshop. I said, Fine, that's your choice. And. He writes to his wife, and a fax comes in. We still remember fax machines. They came in and she said, if this is who you are, don't bother coming home. He said, Let me tell them the kids are sick. And she's I won't do that. The kids are not sick. You're sick, and if this is who you are, don't bother coming home. And that began. He was in class with motsavi

gileni, and on the third day in the debrief, he said, Can I have two minutes on stage mo Sabi come up here? And the two of them came up here, and he said, I am here to apologize publicly to the community. I have just been with the greatest teacher of my life. I have just been in the grace of an angel, and I, in my racist self, was fighting her every inch of the way, and because she has such a big heart, she let it go, and we embraced each other. And I am here to apologize publicly, and this will never happen again. And the crowd went completely crazy. So it was that amazing moment of the heartbreak moving to the heartwarming power of human connection. So that was great. And that brand ambassador program, those of you who are interested in transformation that transformed a company from number three to number one. It was Avis and it was budget and it was hertz, and they became number one at the end of that five year project, to the point that the people who measured these things said, we don't have the tools to measure this, because the communication skills are off the charts. We don't have numbers. There is such employee connection, there is such levels of customer service, of people calling mothers on the road with their kids, buying the kids ice cream on the way to the Avis kiosk, all kinds of things out of their own money. We've never seen this. We don't have the tools called Marcin or to evaluate this project. And it all had to do, in my view, with positive energy and love. Had come into the room, into a car company, and on the walls of Johannesburg airport, it was called Brand Ambassador. It says, Avis is brand ambassadors, welcome you to the beloved country. So the whole thing was a beautiful success, but there were lots of stories of heartache and heartbreak during that time.

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, that was a very powerful story. And every time I hear it, I get tears in my eyes the moment there is what i i hear, you like to call the danger zone in that moment with that individual that said, I don't want to be here. And I think in those moments for us as the bridge builders and the change makers, we have a choice, and I don't think there's a wrong choice either way. You know, do we, as you would say, maybe cancel that person, or do we face confrontation? So playing with that in what you call the danger zone. Can you elaborate for us on because we were talking about how moving into 2026 the call for all of us as coaches to maybe go into the danger zone, and what does that look like? Yeah, we talk about

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: the comfort zone, which we meet people in their comfort zone. Then we talk about the stretch zone, which you take them into a little bit of dangerous waters. Let's try something else, maybe public speaking, whatever it's going to try to be. But then there's the danger zone, where I'm going to truth tell. And Don Borges is an expert of this, where somebody will say, in a workshop, you know, I really, really want to be authentic. And he'll say, and what does that mean? What does that mean? What does it mean to be authentic? What's its language? Do you really mean it? What's in back of it. So I do believe that this is a time for courage. And if people really want to get somewhere again, you have to think of who you're saying it to. And Angie was so brilliant with her sandwich effect, where she said in that beautiful voice, always think about timing, content, context, the sandwich effect. The middle the sandwich is the content. The first piece of bread is the timing, and the other piece of bread is the context. And if those three align, it's probably fine to say it. And if one of those is all. Off. What she says is that time out, I don't trust what's going to come out of my mouth right now, you can't afford to do that if one of those is off, but if they're all aligned, it's time to call for the question, because these people are actually people who want to make a difference. I find most people want to make a difference. And if we sort of kind of tip toe around the tulips and play into our own fear of conflict and our all fear of Well, that wasn't, you know, the nicest thing to say, hang out with people like Reba and so forth, who found the way to say some of these things? And she's paid the price. Sometimes you will pay the price as a change agent. You will pay the price for truth telling. But sometimes that is the way to go, and I'm advocating 2026, as a year of truth telling, because what we talked yesterday, tikkun olam, the world is

broken. We need to repair the world. And there's no more time to wait, because each day I wake up, there's something else wrong. How much more negativity, how much more inhumanity, how much more wreckage Are we willing to put up with? And it's not okay, and that's all about people, and it's all about people's lives and their right to be, and we are the people who are the stewards and guardians of people's right to be. So that's very much what I'm thinking.

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, so what's coming up for me is the courage to be disliked. Oh, I love that in the moment, yeah, and to face telling the truth without blame or judgment. What is it in that moment, from some of your kind of a wise elder of coaching, what is that feeling or what is that moment that bubbles up? Where can you kind of describe that to us? So if we're in a session with somebody, we can sort of feel that through with your explanation of the sandwich with Angeles Arian,

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: yeah, basically you're, you know, working and the session is is very mechanical, and it's not really happening anyway. And so I might do something such as, I'm not sure this is working for either of us. What do you think? And they'll say, Well, why are you blaming me? I said I'm not blaming you. I'm actually just naming what's going on. There doesn't seem to be any any work that's going on, any fluidity. Well, I've already had a horrible day, and now you really ruined it. Wasn't my intention to ruin it. My intention is to help us get to the next level. Well, I don't want to talk anymore. It's absolutely fine, I said. And if when you're ready, just know that my door is wide open and I'm willing to do this, and I have to sit with that person doesn't like me right now, and I'm not the most popular person in town. What is it that's actually going on, and I feel that a lot of this comes from the fear of conflict. I, like some of you, have paid the price. I've paid the price for the comment which is not popular, where suddenly I'll say, let's talk about what's not working for you and me, and I will often get I don't want to go there, and I'll say, but we have to go there, because how can we resolve it? And people are more frightened than ever. You maybe know more than me. You probably do. You're younger, better looking the whole deal. But I'm saying, what happened during covid That suddenly made us gun shy? What happened that we're scared to just meet and have a loving dialog? A lot of us have different points of view. Berkeley is known for the different points of view. Let's sit down and talk about it. All points of view for me are welcome, but don't ghost me, and don't stay away from me and don't stop talking to me. I had one person who I had a wonderful relationship with. I thought he looked worried about his next job. I said, if you need to talk, I'm here. It doesn't sound too controversial to me, ghost it. Ghost it, till he finally

wrote me a note to say, look, you've done nothing wrong. I don't hate you. I just never want to see you again. I never want to see you again. Tell me I did something wrong. And I can handle it. I can apologize one of my great clients who sold her company for millions, and we were in a hill and high impact leadership is our flagship class here in the executive wing. Jenny teaches, and I said to her, Geeta, just tell the group. What's your secret? You said you knew nothing about business, and you made about $190 million and with a gorgeous smile, she said, my friend, it's the power of forgiveness. The power of forgiveness, I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, and let's all own that, that we are not perfect, and the power of apology, and I'm going to make mistakes, and I didn't mean it, and you didn't mean it, and let's draw a line in the sand and find a way to go on. That, to me, is such a sign of a beautiful coaching culture that we don't take our blame and judgment. I don't hold on to it. We talk, we talk, and if we can talk live, so much to better. Why are you zooming with me when you live in the next block? Why aren't you in my living room having coffee? You live around the corner for me? Why are you zooming? That was because we wouldn't, didn't want to catch covid from each other, I thought, but it carried on with this ridiculous idea in executive Ed, thank god Berkeley doesn't do it. Berkeley is does not do that, but other places live virtual presentation. Where did you find that language that's basically, I don't feel like going to school, I don't feel like getting dressed, and I will do a three day workshop from my bedroom with my slippers on and my pajamas because I don't feel like driving to work as I found a way to get out of it. And to me, that's not okay. That's not okay. These are students who are dying to learn, and they want to come. It's different if you're from 40 different countries. I mean, everybody can't fly in. I understand

that, but if we're all here, let's work together. Yeah.

Lori, you use the word mistake. And I've been waiting to ask you this question. I'll say it, but it's true. I learned the most from the times where I made a misstep, mistake. Yes, yeah. What are the misforts or mistakes or failures? Are there a couple stories or examples you could give that you've learned the most from?

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Oh, wow, aren't you brilliant? Well, I will tell one. Anyway. We were talking about it earlier, so I don't know if any of you have ever had an artistic dream, or a academic dream or a corporate dream, but I when I was a actor and director, my dream was to be an artist in residence at a famous university. And it happened when I directed a play in Jerusalem in 1984 I don't know. I mean, nothing happened, trust me, nothing happened. But the wife of the American ambassador really liked me, and really liked me and nothing happened. But she's a lovely, lovely person, and she said this play belongs at Harvard. I said, thank you very much, but you have to understand, talk to Ariella and other actors. Yeah, we're going to nominate you for the Academy Award, and just hold your breath. You'll be in LA by the night. Not going to happen. I go back to my apartment in Jerusalem, the phone's ringing off the hook. Person, person, call Harvard University, Mr. Mark Rittenberg, and suddenly I find out that we are now on our way to Harvard University, visiting artist, and you have been appointed to direct your play that you did in Jerusalem, that you won Best Play for the Israel festival. And so I'm there with my ex wife, and Adam. He's three. My little guy and I go to the head of the you know, they all live in houses there, Winthrop house, Adam's House. So I'm there at Adam's House. And the gentleman, let's just call him Sam. He's really nice. Oh, wow. It's so great to have you and your family here, to have a family inside the house. That gives us such a great feeling. He said, Will you go out and get your rehearsal time and come back and you know what? Let's have a sharing for good times going forward, and then we'll have lunch. Wow, this is great. What a great welcome. So I go out and get rehearsal space at the American Repertory Theater and at the Arts house. And I may have been a little aggressive in that I'd been living in Israel for a long time,

where you have to fight for everything you know, in other words, but I don't think it was any big, big deal. So I noticed that I come back and he closes the door with his foot, and. And I said, everything. Sammy, okay. He said, Okay, no, it's not okay. I've had four calls about you so far. Mark Rittenberg needs rehearsal space, the American Repertory Theater. Mark Rittenberg needs rehearsal space here. Who the hell do you think you are? Who do you think you are? You know what this place is, most famous place on Earth, and you think that you have a right to rehearsal space? I said, I'm just trying to do my play. I want to hear you. I don't want to hear you. I'm just giving you a warning. Now, one more phone call. You can take you and your lovely family and get the hell out of here and leave, because I don't want you here. So I go walking along the Charles River and wondering, Gee, I wonder how deep it is. Oh, no, I really thought about maybe this is the time to end it. My dream has just gone up in smoke in two hours, and he's going to make my life a misery. And in fact, there will be another phone call, and that'll be the end, and I have no money, and we're in the US, and God knows what. So I go for a drink with my friend Jackie at the bow and arrow pub. It's right there, near Harvard Square. He says, You're white as a ghost. I said, Yeah, and how you don't know what happened to me that you know, Sam King said, Get the hell out of my house and one more phone call, and you're a finished boy. And there won't be a play in May, and that will be the end of it. And he looked at me, this lovely guy, bright blue eyes, he says, So what said? So what? I'm being kicked out of Harvard University? He said, Oh God, he don't get it to you. I said, Get what? He said, that happens here all the time. He fights. I said, Well, I don't like it. He says, Well, you may not like it, my man, but it's happened. It will happen again, but I want to make a prediction. And he takes

out his checkbook and he writes $1,000 check, and he dates it for May 5, 1985 he said, Sam will have his arm around you at opening night with the New York Times and The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald taking pictures of this new, amazing play about this artist who painted her life in paintings. And He will say to you, embedding you $1,000 I don't have $1,000 well, I'm betting you, I will give you $1,000 he'll say, Hey, old man, you remember that time we had the fight. No hard feelings, right? No hard feelings. And that's exactly what happened the pictures, the flash, but it, it doesn't just go away. I want to be really clear about that. To this day, I'm still carrying some of that pain. You were so cruel to me. You could have spoken to me. We could have had a coffee to really make our peace, but you were just so flip with me and treated me like such a lower class citizen. And to this day i i see think about it. I think about it before I request face that, am I going too far, that I'm only trying to protect the project, not doing it for me. But I still think about it, and it broke my heart, because I wanted to do this play, and the play was a great success, and we did it a third time with Ariella as a star, and we'll do it a fourth time at some point. It was the second time I did it, and it was a bittersweet experience for me, because of what he said to me, and completely took my self respect to zero.

Amy Lynn Durham: Thank you, Mark. I want to bring this into what you're talking about, which is like the third piece of leadership is love, which is the unconditional positive regard and the power of forgiveness. And I feel like that thread is running in your story, with the play and with that person that slammed the door and got upset with you. So I want to kind of like recap for everybody here, kind of those themes that we were going through, which is the first is the power of human connection, and how we can take that away and keep that in mind as we move through this year, when we leave this room. And the other thing is remembering the heartbreak of human connection, and what is, how does that sit with us when it does feel easier to sit at home in our pajamas? I call it the business mullet, like the pajama bottoms, but then, like the blazer on top on Zoom, yeah. Um, no ironing. And where does that, and where does that lack of energy like? How do we, you know, I just want us to think about these things and just hold that energy and think of what it would feel like if we did put that effort in, to meet in person or to reply to that person that has been sitting in our inbox, or, you know, different things like that, right when we think about that second theme of Mark's leadership is love, which is the heartbreak of human connection, and then taking away the power of forgiveness, the courage to be disliked, the courage to make a mistake, the courage to engage in conflict resolution like those are all the themes that I pull from Mark's stories and one of Angeles Arians Healing Salves is Storytelling. That's what makes us human. And I think your thought leadership around leadership is love with the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, the unconditional positive regard. That's what we can take away, because we have access to intelligence every day. But this is the wisdom of being human. And so if we can sink into that, that gives me

hope as I look to the future of what could be. But what I want to ask you is, what can you sense but not yet see for the future of work, or we can take it even bigger and say, humanity at this point Wonderful.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: So Part Three, the medley of love, the medley of love, we've touched on it already. It is several powers. First of all, the power of forgiveness, to quote my great friend, Geeta, can you find it in yourself when the power of apology is present. Can you forgive? Can you forgive? Can you move on? Can you realize it was a mistake? I said something stupid. I'm really sorry, and I'm going to try that never happens again. Can you be big enough in yourself to forgive what happened in that way, the power of apology, when somebody has the courage to apologize, that's part of the medley of love, because it's a loving act to apology, to apologize, And then the power of dialog, where has dialog gone? Let's sit down and get this straightened out. We can talk. We're good people. We're not horrible people. We're people who want to see the light at the end. We want everyone to have a better life. We want everyone to have a place in the sun. So it's very much, very much, the power of dialog. Let's sit and work it through. It may not be comfortable, but we can find a way to work it through and be the best of friends at the end of that and let that go, and you let it go, and then unconditional positive regard, the positive about being so old or an elder, whatever you want to call it. But the positive is that we saw people and had teachers on this illustrious campus, and I was lucky enough to study with the great sociologist Carl Rogers, who had coined unconditional positive regard. You can read about that. And basically his assignment, which we thought was crazy because we barely had money to pay the rent, but he said, Would you all do me a favor and drive across the Golden Gate Bridge next week, and I want you to pay for yourself and the three cars in back of you. Are you crazy? I mean, pay for these three cars. They don't even he said, pay for the three cars and open the right window and watch what happens. Okay, here we go. I've just paid God knows

what money I don't have. And we open it up, and I look to the right of me, and the horns are hooting, and the people are waving, and there's a high five in the air, people would say, High God, thank you. The act of unconditional positive regard, committing an act of goodness, love, greatness, for somebody who needs it right in the moment and doesn't even know that they need it. And this can take the form of many, many things. A phone call you've been meaning to make, make the phone call. What are you waiting for? We're all in the departure lounge. What are you waiting for? Well, I'm leaving friends every day my. Great mentor, Tina packer, head of Shakespeare and Company, we're going to send you all her wonderful YouTube, which is about women claiming their voice. And Tina was amazing about that, that women have the right to claim their voices, and the world will not be normal until that happens, which I just love that she had the guts and the courage. She paid prices like you wouldn't believe, but she said, I am not going to back down. I am not going to back down. Women have a right to be and we have the right to be absolutely equal with men. So it's very, very much those powers of apology, power of forgiveness, power of dialog, that will take us to the next level and again, whenever we can actually meet for the art of conversation and not keep putting it into an electronic form, but actually sit and have a cup of coffee. It's not about your bank account. It's not about anything other than Who are you, what makes you tick? I'm so happy to be in your presence. It's so wonderful to meet each other, that kind of thing, and we need to reclaim some of that, because I'm seeing over and over that when people connect in the power of human connection, something better happens. I have 100 stories where people connected and life got better. Life became better for everybody because they're in connection.

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's the that's the thread and the message that we all need to hear with this rise of all of this technology around us. And one other thing we're actually at time, but are we already make it so easy? Amy, I wasn't doing much.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: You're terrific. You're my lady, you're so great.

Amy Lynn Durham: One thing I wanted to add that I love hearing that you say is like coming from the place that everybody is operating from, the best place they can in that moment when we walk away, but from that so as we move into this era, into the workplace, I think leaning into wisdom, leaning into our humanity, is my takeaway from this conversation. Keeping the stories alive alone is leaning into our humanity more. So thank you for sharing everything and creating this compilation that you're going to have for all of us to be able to reference. So anyways, thank you all for your presence and for kind of so much for coming this in and and Mark, thank you for sharing your stories and keeping them alive for all of us. Thank you.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: And I want to just thank you for being you, because this is the power. Hi. You know me. You've all known me for years. I ramble. I see connections between things that have nothing to do with each other, but this lady keeps me straight, and I'm really able to deliver messages that can really help people. And it's our human connections I want to thank you for our human connection. Ah.