“The significance of your life will be determined by what you do for others.” - Dr. Mark Rittenberg

Something breaks long before the job is gone. For many facing mass layoffs or sudden job loss, the belief that identity and worth are held inside a title is shattered. When that role disappears, we are left with a deep question: how do we reclaim our humanity?

In this conversation, Dr. Mark Rittenberg reflects on the emotional and relational impact of sudden loss—what he calls “when the movie changes.” He views these disruptions as moments that reveal how far leadership and systems have drifted from humanity. Through stories of disruption, compassion, and unexpected renewal, this dialogue invites a return to something more essential: self-love, forgiveness, and the courage to remain human in moments that tempt disconnection.

What emerges is possibility—the chance to rebuild identity not from a title, but from presence, relationship, and care. A new beginning.

The Choreography Of A Connection:

1. Identity After Collapse: Examine what remains when professional identity dissolves and how to navigate a career transition with self-awareness.
2. The Erosion of Humanity in Systems: A look at how efficiency-driven mass layoffs risk replacing human dignity with transactions.
3. Courage as Connection: Discover how Relational Intelligence (RQ) becomes the defining act in moments of personal fracture.
4. Leadership in the Face of Loss: Exploring Conscious Leadership and how difficult decisions reveal a leader’s true moral compass.
5. Reinvention Through Relationship: How Spiritual Intelligence (SQ) helps new beginnings emerge through human care rather than just strategy.

Closing Thought: "We are such stuff that dreams are made of..." — Join us for a reflection on how to remain the "stuff of dreams" even when the corporate movie changes.

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/

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: There are so many different ways to create the future, and what isn't helpful is when people say, Well, I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't have those skills to, in fact, do a startup. I don't have these skills to do a partnership. I need to have a regular job. Well, okay, but what if there isn't one right now? Are you going to survive? And have you chosen a life as Angie, also called it a life affirming action. You chosen a life affirming action, such as compassion, empathy, dreaming in the world of possibility? Have you chosen a life affirming action counting your blessings that will enable you to get into some clear space and to reinvent yourself all over.

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 everyone. Amy Lynn Durham here with Dr Mark Rittenberg, who has created this beautiful podcast, the ballet of empathy, and Mark and I are here today to talk to all of you that's really about something that's been weighing on Mark's heart, I think, these past couple of weeks, and that's finding possibility in difficult times. Mark, thank you for creating the ballet of empathy, and thank you for being here to talk about this with all of us. Well, thank you

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: for having me. Amy, it's always a pleasure.

Amy Lynn Durham: Well, I love that you created this space, the ballet of empathy, to focus on sharing with everybody around the world. Your thought leadership, around leadership is love, the power of human connection, the heartbreak of human connection, and your medley of love and something to note, since we launched the ballet of empathy, your beautiful show with the most beautiful cover I love, you're already being listened to in over 30 countries around the world. So thank you to all the ears out there that are tuning in to hear Mark and his amazing thought leadership being captured in an audio recording for a podcast for everybody. Any thoughts on that mark? You want to say anything to everybody that has tuned in so far?

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: No, just would like to thank you for creating, uh, creating magic at work. It's a unique podcast. There are a million podcasts out there, and every time I listen to one of your guests, I find myself sort of back in the mode of students, always, of learning so much about my own practice and my own thoughts and that it's so complimentary to what I'm doing. So I can't thank you enough for doing this wonderful work. This is the kind of work that we would say in Hebrew, we would say kikun A Olam. And that is work that is repairing the world. It's repairing the world. So you are repairing the world. Amy therm, in in doing these programs,

Amy Lynn Durham: thank you. Yeah, our network, magic thread, media, that's the goal is for all of these conscious voices to lift each other up and to find a light, l, I, G, H, T, a light, if you're feeling dark, or if you feel like some people I know say right now they feel like they're in dark times. And so we want to be that golden thread that they can hold on to. To hear these conversations, and your show the ballet of empathy is absolutely one of them. And today, we want to talk to everybody about what happens when who you thought you were is no longer and this is coming off of the news story that mark you and I were talking about that just came out. And there's a lot of these that come out, right? There's a lot of these stories that we hear. Unfortunately. Confidently, more frequently lately, surrounding people waking up in the morning getting ready to go to work, they log into their email, and they have an email that says you don't have a job anymore. You've been locked out of everything. Have a good life, and then it's like, oh my gosh, what do I do now? Who am I? I don't work here anymore. I thought I was this corporate executive for the next few years or for the rest of my life. I know you experience a lot of this mark with live clients and the pain that comes from something like this, and also the transformation with the person after they realize their identity is more than their title. So can you share just a little bit of insights around that with everyone? I'll be happy to

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: we're really facing a world that is so difficult at the moment, complex, and I just loved reviewing one of my favorite books, which is m Scott picks the road less traveled. And the first line in the first chapter is, life is difficult. Life is difficult. I remember in my very early career, I think it was in my 30s, I did a amazing workshop on the East Coast, and we're in a large room. I'll just call them ABC Company. I think that's easier. And a woman came up to me, it was April of 1986 and she was dressed like the Easter Bunny, and she said, Could I have 10 minutes at the end of your lecture? And I said, Absolutely, surely, not a problem. And so I concluded everybody was happy. We'd done team building, we'd done human connection, we'd done storytelling, all the wonderful things. And she came up with an Easter basket and said, Look, I have some bad news. I need several of you to go back to your desk. It's 420 and by 430 you need to clean out your desk. I mean, the feeling in the room, it feels like yesterday was a long time ago. And here's a shoe box for each of you to put your most precious belongings in and you'll be escorted out of the building by security. You will check the box to make sure nothing's been taken. I also want to wish everybody Happy Easter, happy Passover. It was like being in a Fellini movie. We're all sitting there about 40 people, and I just saw one by one, they burst into tears. I turned to this woman next to me, Jackie, and I said, Jackie, my God, I'm so sorry. She said, I'm sorry. I'm the sole support of my parents at this stage. I need to take care of them. And I gave her a Kleenex. She couldn't stop crying. And then I took out my business card, and I said, You call me if you need to talk. He said, I wouldn't want to bother you. I said, You're not bothering me. I see that you are a woman of high moral compass, taking care of mom and dad the best you can, and that together. Let's talk, let's network and

find you a job so you'll be able to survive this in the best possible way. She did call that night, and through the power of dialog and finding that we knew a lot of people in the same field. The next week, she had a job. I was so grateful, because she's such a beautiful person, such a good human being, devoting her life to taking care of two very. Very ill parents. So today, when 20,000 people, 30,000 people, lose their job, I don't think that we're thinking the way that we did some time ago, which is, I'll have a job for life. We're in California. There's more than enough jobs to go around. Well, the world is changing. There aren't more than enough jobs to go around. And what about the kids who need to go to college? What about looking after elderly parents? What about looking after family members who haven't been as fortunate as we are,

and this is the moment where we really separate the strong from the weak, the courageous from the frightened. Meaning the act of courage is to reach out, reach out to those who, in fact, are suffering, many people their entire life is about their work. That's the way it went, no blame, no judgment. That's what it's about. And I was speaking the other day to a couple of people who had lost jobs and were fighting for a new life livelihood, maybe moving into another part of the country, from the West Coast, one woman who's very prominent on my team, and she must have had about 30 job interviews and didn't get any of the jobs, I'm guessing, because she was so honest in her response. Wants to be a CFO, but she's not a miracle worker. Some companies are just not solvent. They don't have a future. They haven't thought about the next wave. And I said to her, what would have made a difference in going through all these interviews, all this preparation the night before, getting up the next morning, making sure you look great. She said, Mark, what would have made a difference is when I didn't get the job, a thank you note, a kind word left on my voicemail. We so appreciate you coming in. I felt like I was in suddenly an activity that no longer involved human beings. Where's the Thank you, where's the acknowledgement where's our humanity gone? Have we really become the robots that we're inventing? So I think this is actually the crux of it. Yes, you've lost your livelihood, in some cases, lost your identity. Those are things we can work on. We can find a new identity, find a new course of study, find things that will make us feel good again, but we cannot replace are the words, thank you for coming in. I appreciate you. I appreciate the time you put into this. Who brought you up, what's happened to our ethics, what's happened to our manners, what's happened to the way that we're actually living? I'll stop there that you come in with your Amy, the

questions,

Amy Lynn Durham: well, what's striking me with everything that you're saying is the transactional energy that we continue to endorse, whether it's from somebody side that is working at a company, and then they just quit without notice or just ghost, or whether it's the organization side where they're interviewing 30 people, and then they just Don't get back to anybody that went through that process, and that person feels like that was inhumane. And then the same thing, it just feels very transactional, like it feels like we're becoming the robots. It's like this weird thing, right? Like you wake up in the morning and there's an email to 30,000 people saying, you don't work here anymore. Or the same thing in the in your story in the 80s, where it was, here's your shoe box. But then there's this whole contradiction that people live with inside the organization, until that day they get the shoe box, or until that day they get the email where it's like. Oh, leadership is love, like we're all family here, right? And then all of a sudden, some people feel like they've bought into that, and then they wake up one day and have the email or then they show up to to this meeting like you were describing, and they're given the shoe box and escorted out by security. So it's like, how do we take the inhumane to the humane. How do we stop it's so interesting because it's almost like we're mimicking robots in that way, where we're trying to put the feeling and the empathy away and make it transactional. And then there's all of these hurt people. So thoughts on that?

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Well, yes, and I think that we've, we've had the warning signs that it's coming. I think in one of our earlier talks, we talked about social media, and spoke about ghosting, cancel culture, gas lighting, all that kind of came to a head during the covid period. And the thing is, is that 1986 Easter bunny. I call it the Easter Bunny episode where she passed out chocolate eggs, but also big slips. Yeah, take this to your desk, and I'll escort you out. And I don't even trust you enough that you won't take something that belongs to the company. Suddenly there's no more trust. That was an early form of ghosting. I didn't realize it. It didn't seem prevalent at that time, but out of the corner of my eye. And this happened, by the way, in a very famous company, everyone knows this company. This was not a kind of, you know, lease that was sort of often a small store in a strip mall. Major, major company had hired hundreds of 1000s of people. In fact, my my parents even worked for this company at one stage, and out of the corner of my left eye, I saw chiseled in marble at the back of the hall, the values that had been chiseled in marble because they were forever. They were timeless. It was who we were, and the one that shot out at me was respect for individuals, respect for individuals, respect for individuals. And of course, the Easter Bunny episode. Here's your shoe box. Violated all that. Violated all that I don't respect you. You're not that important. And time to get a life, it has to do, in my view, with leaders who manage to get to the top without any kind of moral compass whatsoever. Because if you take a look at the four intelligences of any human being, the IQ, how smart you are, the EQ, the people skills, the SQ, which fascinates me, spiritual intelligence. And spiritual intelligence is very much. What are your values? What do you believe in? Do you believe in compassion? Do you believe in the ballet of empathy? Do you believe

in honesty? What do you believe in? And that's SQ What's your spiritual intelligence? What's your moral compass? What are you all about, really, at the end of the day, and then we have the RQ, relational intelligence. What are your relationships like? Can I count on you? Will you be there for me in sickness and in health? Will you be there for me in tough times. And if you look at the four, and if you are a person that's actually worked hard to gain the trust of your friends and colleagues around IQ, EQ, sq, RQ, the chances of you being able to help a person through some of these dark times? It's really a matter of drawing a line in the sand to say, well, that Job's gone. What do I want? To do with the rest of my life. I just had a phone call this morning. Phone call this morning from very good friends in Beirut, my first client ever. I worked with them for 40 years, and I was so moved by the phone call because family owned company, one of the five largest companies in Lebanon, and the one of the daughters of my clients, my clients have passed away,

called me up and said, You're an honorary member of our family, and we just want you to know that we've come to a family decision to sell the company. And I said, Wow, this is huge. They said we didn't want you to find out on LinkedIn in some way, but it was the best thing at this moment. There's a war on. We're not getting younger, and there are many of us that depend on this company for our livelihood. But what was so reassuring was she said, we managed in our negotiation to take care of our employees, and that everyone who has worked at the company for at least a year will be well taken care of. I found it deeply moving that part of their negotiation for selling this mammoth import export company was looking after other people. In my view, the reason that I'm such an advocate for coaching, and particularly peer coaching, because I say that every single institution. Everyone should have a coaching culture, profit, nonprofit, large, small, UC, Berkeley, Iowa State, the Boy Scouts. It doesn't matter who you are, if there's one person, and we call that peer coaching, one person I can rely on to open myself up to and turn to when I can't find the answer within myself, and they'll put me through a coaching Session, and vice versa. I'll be their coach as well. Coaching, to me, is not only the act of service, but it's an act of healing. When the movie changes, when the movie changes, pure coaching is an act of healing.

Amy Lynn Durham: Mm, hmm. Let me ask you this, if you talk about the zone of the human spirit, if you were sitting in the boardroom with the CEO and all of the rest of the advisors, and they were making this decision, let's just use our story as an example to, you know, Lay off 20 to 30,000 people, and everyone's discussing how it's going to go in a confidential way, And the they're getting advice for security, for financial security, all of these things that ends up trickling into the inhumane action of somebody just waking up to an email, what would you say in that room? What would you say to keep the human spirit alive when everyone is getting this advice in that C suite room to deploy the email for security reasons or for protection reasons, how does somebody stay in the zone of the human spirit with that

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: so you're saying that they've discussed the layoffs

Amy Lynn Durham: like, this is the best way this for security. This is the best way to protect the company. We just have to deploy this email and lock everybody out of everything and just do it all in one quick swoop. And I'm just curious what your thoughts would be in in a recommendation or in a coaching to keep the spirit alive with that,

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: to me, it's very straightforward. I would pose the question, even if I was escorted out of the room at that moment, what's happened to our humanity? What's happened to our humanity? I work with a lot of group. As you know, from MBA students to C suite to doctors and nurses, and I often hear from the doctors that when they come to work with us, they feel, quote, they've reclaimed their old humanity. And so what I would do is I would pose the question, what will allow us to, in fact, somehow reclaim our humanity in this act of downsizing, and what can we do to actually help people find a new future and to take that as part of our corporate responsibility? What does it mean to take as part of our corporate responsibility people's future, their well being, think of their families, eliminate some of the stress that they're feeling. And I don't even answer right now, because I don't have faction figures in front of me, but I honestly feel with all my heart and soul, that there is a way it's to do with the way things are done, the way we find out news, the services that are provided, for support, for healing, for short term survival. Just talking to a mutual friend of ours the other day, and he was telling me about going to a homeless shelter and cooking a meal for the men in this shelter. And he met two or three young men. They all had bachelor's degrees, they'd been to school. They weren't from poverty, but they lost their job, and they said to this wonderful man, and I mean, I don't have to hide who he is, Don Borges. They said to Don Borges, you're the first person who seems interested in my future. You're the first person who wants to help me work out what's going to happen in the future. Why do you care so much? And Don's response being who don is that I care so much because I am 83 years of age, and I am in service to humanity and whoever I can help. That is the best day of my life. I can help someone find a new

direction, then this is the best day of my life. So I think that we underestimate sometimes what happens to us when we actually enter into the realm of what the noted sociologist Carl Rogers talked about, unconditional positive regard. Unconditional positive regard, the act of doing something gracious, an act of grace for another human being, without any expectation of payback or reciprocity, the act of goodness. And this is what Nelson Mandela talked about all the time. And of course, my favorite quote is very, very much to do with the significance of our lives is determined by the acts of kindness and goodness for other people. And that's very, very much what he was teaching, that what is it that we can do for others that will bring peace, calm, compassion to others.

And he spent so much of his life, both in prison and out of prison, around the acts of kindness, the acts of humanity. And to really look at that, the significance of your life will be determined by what you do for others.

Amy Lynn Durham: I have so many questions from. Sharing that first. Thank you for sharing that because I think that is the quantum leader. The the questions that you would pose in that boardroom is, how is this going to ripple out and impact ultimately, what you were saying, in my mind, is, how is this going to affect not only the employee, but their family, their community, the planet and humanity as a whole? How is this decision that we are making today going to ripple out? What way is it going to ripple out? That's the quantum leader, right? Like the quantum leader makes business decisions that ripple out, not only for themselves and their shareholders, and maybe they're in their employees, but like for their families, for the community, for the planet, for humanity as a whole, they take that big picture view. And so I think that if people listening could hit rewind and just listen to that one or two questions you pose that might be asked when these decisions are being made, the impact could be so much greater with the grace and with the kindness that can ripple out. We're talking about identity. And okay, we find a new identity. Now, if we lose our job, I thought I was the director forever. I thought I was the, I don't know, the Vice President forever. That was who I am, and I was taking care of my family, or, you know, whatever that is. And with this, something that we've seen this massive, like the numbers are massive, right? Like 30,000 wake up, right? So that could contribute to some in this time feeling like they're 100% unemployable. How do we find hope or inspiration in embracing a new identity, if we feel like we're 100% unemployable.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: God is such a great question. Amy, I think you know what my great teacher, Angela Arian, spoke about, woman of such great wisdom, passed away in 2014 I can't believe Angie's been gone for 12 years, because I always feel her presence by my side in moments like this. But what she talked about when things fall apart and suddenly, loss of identity, loss of life purpose, very often connected to the job. What she spoke about was a term, shape shifting the situation. What would it mean to shift the shape of what was going on that my job, my job, my job. Well, right now there's not a job. What else is there that actually makes life worth living? Maybe by the grace of God, do you have good health? Maybe the kids are doing well in school, there are so many different ways to create the future, and what isn't helpful is when people say, Well, I'm not an entrepreneur. I don't have those skills to, in fact, do a startup. I don't have these skills to do a partnership. I need to have a regular job. Well, okay, but what if there isn't one? Right now, are you going to survive? And have you chosen a life as Angie, also called it, a life affirming action. You chosen a life affirming action, such as compassion, empathy, dreaming in the world of possibility. Have you chosen a life affirming action, counting your blessings that will enable you to get into some clear space and to reinvent yourself all over, I think I shared with you at one point, I had three amazing mentors, beginning when I was 16, with the artist Helen Burke, and then the great rhythm master in my late 20s, Victoria Santa Cruz from Lima Peru. And then, of course. Angeles. Arian came into my life in my 40s and remained my coach for decades. But Helen was the first one to believe in me, and she saw that I was not cut from a cloth that could ever do a nine to five, it didn't matter what I thought I should be doing. She knew somewhere like herself, there needed to be an invention of self. So she called

me up on my 16th birthday. Huge laugh, singing me happy birthday. 16. She was 56 and she said, I have wonderful news for you. And I said, what is that? She said, Well, I've just taken a employment qualification aptitude test in the San Francisco Chronicle for you and for me, and we got exactly the same score. What was that score? I said, who got a higher score? She said, we got the same score. And I just called to tell you that both you and I are 100% unemployable. And I mean, she found it so joyous, and I was so scared because I was 16, what am I going to do for the next 50 years? 60 years, I'm unemployable. And I said, Helen, what do I do? What do I do? I mean, I want to earn a loving probably want to get married. I want to have kids, grandchildren. What do I do if I'm unemployable? She was silent for a long time, and she said, make mud pies. Make mud pies. I said, I don't know what a mud pie is. And she said, You will, you'll come to your own understanding

of what a mud pie is, and you'll make it, and it will change the next time, and next time you'll make it a little bit differently, but as long as you're willing, my friend, to make mud pies. Your survival is guaranteed. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. And of course, Angeles, great story from the Navajo reservation is very, very present with me at this time is one night she wasn't feeling well, and she went to the medicine woman, and what is it? I ate something. My stomach is hurting. My head hurts. Just feeling sick to my stomach. Are you able to give me something to make the pain go away? And the medicine woman said, My child, I'll give you whatever you need, but first I have four questions. And Angie said, I'm happy to answer any question. She said, Good, because the first question is, when in your life did you stop singing? When in your life did you stop singing? The second question, when in your life did you stop dancing? When in your life did you stop dancing? The third one, when in your life did you stop telling stories? When in your life did you stop telling stories? And finally, when in your life did you stop blessing the sweet territory of silence? When in your life did you stop blessing the sweet territory of silence? And as Angeles reported it to me later that evening, she said, I literally felt the pain leave my stomach. I suddenly felt that oxygen had been put into all my cells. I felt a rebirth. I said, Yes, Angie, but said, strange questions. What did it mean? She said, Oh, that I understood. When in your life did you stop singing? When in your life have you stopped living, living fully, living fully in the way that you could so, when my houseboat lived in a houseboat burned down. I thought my life was over, only to find out that I could find a beautiful studio in a seaside community in Marin County called Sausalito. It was more beautiful than my houseboat. I. When in your life did you stop singing? When in your

life did you stop living? When in your life did you stop dancing? When did you stop moving forward you were just too tired to go out to the concert or the art exhibit. When did you become so tired? When in your life did you stop telling stories? When in your life did you stop communicating, having people over, going over to their place, having a cup of coffee, talking about our dreams, talking about our dreams and possibilities. And when in your life did you stop blessing the sweet territory of silence? When did you stop respecting yourself? When did you stop respecting yourself? This, to me, is a form of spiritual intelligence, living life fully, moving forward, communicating and self love. So when I think about those four things that actually in working with a peer coach or somebody to mirror back what you're feeling and thinking could in and of itself, be a new beginning, because what we're talking about here around the loss of livelihood, the loss of a job, it's a new beginning. It's a new beginning. And some of us need some support, a lot of support in forging that new beginning. It's hard to do it alone. It's very hard to do it alone.

And indigenous societies. Nobody is ever alone. Somebody's always coming over, two people walking down the road. I remember when I did my Fulbright in South Africa, in the township of Soweto, which was before Mandela came to power. It was still apartheid ridden South Africa. Remember asking my colleagues, what do you do for babysitting? They said, it's not it's a non issue. Our friends look after our kids. We look after their kids. I've never spent one penny on babysitting. It's the work of the community. It's what the community provides. It's what the community provides. When people are out of work, there's always food to eat, there's always some place to go. There's that beautiful support system like I described at Haas. But this is in the township, there are a million different support systems, but the key is to do it, not talk about it, to actually create the support system and let that be the action, particularly for people who are feeling a bit lost right now, yeah, could

Amy Lynn Durham: you tell us maybe one or two times the mud pies that you made and what they looked like in your life?

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Oh, my God, all right. Well, there are so many

Amy Lynn Durham: couple maybe that you think would help those struggling.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: I will drink my own medicine, deep and brief. One mud pie was in 1974 I finished Berkeley. I was completely lost and my roommate said that there's a possibility to go to live in Jerusalem, and they'll pay your air ticket and pay your rent for a year and free health insurance, and it's all people your age, starting off in the desert, studying Hebrew and Arabic, studying Biblical Studies. And then they find you a job, and you move up to one of the cities, like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. And so it was a leap of faith, because I think my net worth was something like $2,000 at that time, you know. And so here I am going to a foreign country, wondering, would it work out I don't speak the language? Gosh, and it forced me to use every resource that I had. The only thing I knew how to do was to teach acting in English. And I still remember the date I finished, the initial program. I'm living in Jerusalem, in the Old City. Wonderful kind Palestinian people to me, wonderful. And so I make signs and put them up in those days, that's what we did all over the city, acting class in English. And it rains that night, so all the signs come down. So I said, Oh my god, now I'm down another 100 or so. How much longer can I do this? And I put up signs again, and I'll never forget the date, November 6, 1976 My God, what is that? 50 years ago? And I hoped, prayed, that 10 people would show up that wanted a drama class, and 185 people showed up. 185 and my friend who was letting me use his club for two hours on a Tuesday night, from six to eight, spoke to all them in Hebrew Arabic and said, Come back tomorrow night. We'll give you your section. I said, What are you talking about? Stephen's section? He said, Don't you understand what's happened? We have a whole enterprise on our hands. This is now not a drama class. We now have a drama school. And I said, but that's not what I was looking for. He says, It doesn't matter. He said, I'll run the school, and you

hire the staff, and we're going to have a wonderful time, particularly with this spirit of the possibility of Palestinian Israeli positive relations, and that's what happened. And we created the Jerusalem drama workshop, and I met incredible people movement, people mock people, other acting teachers. So that was a mud pie. I had no money. I wanted to teach acting in a language that was not particularly spoken well in that city, and off we went. Unbelievable. Other mud pie was when I came home from Jerusalem to do a master's degree at San Francisco State, and I had an appointment at the University of San Francisco. At corner of stanion and Fulton streets, there was a large Foreign Language Center called the World English Center, and I managed to get myself an appointment to speak to the director, wonderful Jesuit priest named Father John teal.

It was very warm, greeting me, and we went into his office, and I couldn't tell if he was interested or bored, because he seemed to kind of be a bit sleepy during the meeting. I said, I have a methodology that will allow students from Japan and China and Saudi Arabia to create excellent oral language skills, and I think it will be a wonderful enhancement to what you're already doing. And his assistant director came in and said, Father, we have another meeting in five minutes. And so I didn't have very much to lose, but I just turned to him and I said, Oh, Father, it's been wonderful to meet you. Do you have any questions? And he turned to me, and he said, Yes. When the hell do we start? Since you're hiring me? He says, why not? Can you imagine using acting skills, how great their language skills should be. So when would you like me to start? He said, How about Friday? It was Tuesday. And his assistant director came in again and said, Father, I don't know that we. Of the budget to do what you want to do. And he said, Well, fine, take the travel budget. She said, We won't be going to conferences. She said, Yeah, I don't think we need to go to the conferences. Besides, we all drink too much. So take that budget and let's put it into our students English language education. That was a mud pie. Yeah, that was an absolute month. I'll give you one more, really quick one. When I moved back to been living in Cambridge mass because I was visiting artists at Harvard in the mid 80s, recreating a play that I directed actually in Jerusalem, we got an offer to come out to California, to bring the work that I do into the corporate world. And our main client was California's telephone company called Pacific Bell, and it's very good. But we wanted to grow the business. And they wanted me to meet a woman from AT and T African American woman named Tilly O'Neill. And they said, when the two of you meet, it will be like a meeting of the gods. And so took a while, but we

finally met, and it was love at first sight, and she was amazing. And she came to my workshop on her 42nd birthday. I mean, she's now 82 but she came and she said, I believe that this work, deeply religious, is somehow God's work, and I want to bring this into AT and T and so she calls me up, and she says, What are you doing next Thursday? And I said, why? She said, Can you come to Hawaii? I said, I guess I could. What's going on? She said, there's a workshop. You have to pay your own airfare, pay your own accommodation, pay all your own expenses. But trust me, trust me. Good things will happen. So went and we did the workshop, came home two weeks later. It's close again. What are you doing Friday? I'm not sure. Well, we're going to Hawaii again, and you're going to pay your own airfare, your own accommodation, and your taxis. Said, wow, would the company ever pick this up? She said, I don't know. Trust me. Go with the flow. That happened about five times, your own airfare, pay your own accommodation, pay for everything, and ultimately, AT and T

became our first corporate client to spend over a million dollars on training called high impact leadership, active, communicating, telling the compelling story, all the work that I'm doing now by taking that leap of faith, making mud pies with Tilly, She had no guarantee. They could have hated the work through radical a drama based approach, an acting based approach. I trusted her. She trusted me. Our friendship is over 40 years old, and that was maybe the biggest mud pie that I've ever made.

Amy Lynn Durham: You always say the movie has changed. Who are you in this new movie? If we take everything we talked about making mud pies, because the movie has changed, open to possibility, who am I in this new movie, what are two or three things out of the leadership is love roadmap that they could take as they're trying to figure out who they are in this new movie.

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: Beautiful question. Thank you so much for that. Amy. What it is is that it begins with the power of love, self. Love. Do you love yourself? And if you don't, you need to find, find a way to change that movie. Because if there's self love, very powerful, you can become anything you want. The second one is the power of forgiveness. Forgive yourself for maybe that wasn't the best decision, or maybe you didn't follow your heart, and you followed whatever you thought professionally would be the right move, and now suddenly one finds themselves outside of the corporate structure. Don't make a big deal of it. Forgive yourself, power of forgiveness, and forgive everybody around you. At this stage, I'm happy to say I can't think of one person I'm angry with. I really can't Wow, I've had my moments, and, you know, feel exasperated about this and that, but there's nobody at this moment that I have not forgiven. And then the third one is a wonderful student this last weekend, wonderful guy named Kyle and I did a small section leaders coach in the three day MBA program called Flex. They all are online, except for my class. They all fly in from different corners of the world. And Kyle was in from Boston. And I said, Kyle, what is it that you need to look at when you are looking at senior leaders and wanting to make a difference and feeling that maybe they're not going to hear you, or bit nervous, start to communicate as a first level with the C suite, he said, what I do actually, is I open up a folder called my kindness folder. I look inside, I have little pieces of paper, sayings, I have beautiful pictures, and I work with myself to build up my confidence, to build up what I feel the result needs to be when I bring goodness and kindness into their world, which, by the way, Amy, I'm hearing the word kindness over and over and over of what people are looking for. They're looking for a moment of kindness. Be kind to me. I'm vulnerable. I'll be

kind to you. That's the world we want.

Amy Lynn Durham: What's one sentence you want to leave everyone with today?

Dr. Mark Rittenberg: I think I'm going to quote the Tempest. Take the sentence is the very end after the storm, and they survived and Prospero the magician, and Miranda, his daughter. And they say these words, which I hope people will take in and believe. And it says, We are such stuff that dreams are made of. We are such stuff that dreams are made of, and our little lives are rounded by a sleep. We are such stuff that dreams are made of, and our little lives are rounded by sleep.