Edy Greenblatt
Resilience Pioneer and The #1 Global Resilience Coach
Resilience Help for Leaders
Episode Summary
I have covered the topic of Resilience before on the Keep Leading!® podcast, but I’ve never covered it with the woman who is the actual pioneer in the field. Dr. Edy Greenblatt is a resilience pioneer and work/life balance expert. Edy has a Master’s in Psychology & Joint Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Harvard Business School and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. She has been recognized as the #1 Global Resilience Coach by the Thinkers 50 and is also a member of the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.
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Bio
Dr. Edy Greenblatt is a resilience pioneer and work/life balance expert, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, executive coach, coach supervisor and CEO of Execu-Care Coaching & Consulting. Edy has a Master’s in Psychology & Joint PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Harvard Business School and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Based in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, her breakthrough work on Personal Resource Management and award-winning book Restore Yourself: The Antidote for Professional Exhaustion have provided an effective framework and tools to become more resilient under difficult circumstances for millions worldwide. In part because of her contribution to workplace resilience and employee effectiveness to more than 1000 companies worldwide, plus her innovative educational contributions on the faculties of UCLA, University of S. California, and University of Toronto, Dr. Edy has been recognized as the #1 Global Resilience Coach by the Thinkers 50 . She is also the co-founder of Restoration Vacation, a dance ethnologist and in her free time, flies on the flying trapezes. Previously, Edy worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, ran an Arts & Education business and sold Peanuts at the circus. Dr. Edy is also a member of the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.
Website
http://edygreenblatt.com/
Other Website
https://www.restorationvacation.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dredygreenblatt/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/AskDrEdy
Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/DrEdyCoach/
Leadership Quote
The most important leadership lesson I ever learned was from the ballet mistress at UCLA. In short, each one of us needs to learn to dance in her/his own body!
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Transcript
The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more.
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Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the
Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact through the power of executive and leadership coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.
I’ve covered the topic of resilience before here on the Keep Leading!® Podcast but I’ve never covered it with the woman who is the actual pioneer in the field. And given where we are in the stream of events across the globe, I believe a fresh perspective of resilience is something we all can use. My guest today is Dr. Edy Greenblatt. Dr. Edy Greenblatt is a resilience pioneer and a work-life balance expert. Dr. Greenblatt has a Master’s in Psychology and a joint PhD in Organizational Behavior from the Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She’s based in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. Her breakthrough work on personal resource management, and award-winning book Restore Yourself: The Antidote for Professional Exhaustion has provided an effective framework and tools to become more resilient under difficult circumstances for millions worldwide. Dr. Edy, as she’s known, has been recognized as the number one global resilience coach by Thinkers 50 and she is also a member of the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.
So, for that reason and many more, I am excited to welcome Dr. Edy to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Thank you, Eddie. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today.
Eddie Turner:
Well, I’m super, super happy to have you and you and I know each other because of our affiliation as members of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches. And before the first ever annual meeting, you invited me to experience the amazing service that you offer to people. and I took advantage of it and I’ve got to say I was impressed and I was truly restored.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Delighted to hear that. The program you attended was one of our Restoration Vacation and Leadership Training Off Sites, which is actually a relatively new offering. I’ve been in this business since before it was fashionable. And so, in the last two years, we’ve actually started focusing on resilience around what happens when people are not at home and at work. So, resilience in a third dimension, which is when we are away, and the Restoration Vacation and Leadership Off Site that you attended was one of those events and we were delighted to have you and actually to have you present as well as attend and benefit from what we hoped was going to help you restore yourself then and long term.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, I forgot about that. I was looking forward to just put my feet up and you lessoned me into service.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
You’re welcome.
Eddie Turner:
And therein I learned lesson number one – Dr. Edy is quite precisive and basically nobody says no to you.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Thank you for the perception and the compliment. I have a four-month-old puppy. He’s quite qualified to say no.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, they have a mind of their own. And the other thing you did to me while we were there, which I’m still not sure I’ve gotten over, is you got me to dance. And everybody who knows me knows that’s not something I do.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Right. So, one of the things that we offered. So, many of our participants presented a lot of extraordinary leaders and coaches came and helped contribute to the intellectual power of the event. And we offered a program that I’ve been doing also for decades that’s based on my previous career. So, you spoke about my more recent training in Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Sociology but my earlier training was as a Dance Anthropologist. So, I have a Bachelor’s in World Arts and Cultures and a Master’s in Dance Anthropology and I was on the faculty in the World Arts and Cultures Program in the Dance Department at UCLA. And one of the things that I sort of put together after I finished my PhD and learned about organizational behavior was a program that integrates and uses world dance to help embody and teach leadership concepts that are otherwise difficult to deal with. So, we did the world class teams through world dance or world class leadership through world dance with the group. And, yes, contrary to your popular belief, you actually can dance, pretty much everybody can and we hope that that program helps people not only see different concepts in leadership by using cultural models of leadership from dance but also see things in themselves that they may not have seen otherwise. So, glad you enjoyed it. we had a great time.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. And so, you tied that to not just the restoration component but, as you just said, there was a leadership lesson in that and how that all unfolded. So, folks have to definitely take advantage of your program so they can experience it for themselves.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Thank you so much.
Eddie Turner:
And out of that, people start to learn something. And so, there’s a lot of talk about work-life balance. And in your programs, you really tackle this. Is it really possible to experience work-life balance?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
That’s a great question. So, typically, people can think of work-life balance as sort of work is depleting, makes us tired, it exhausts our resources and non-work is restorative. And that’s sort of the model – “Thank God, it’s Friday. I’d rather be fishing Wednesdays over the hump day.” This idea that work is depleting and then work is restorative. And if that’s the case, if that’s true, then how do we get energy, how do we get restored? What’s the obvious answer? “Sleep, don’t work, stay home.” And so, if it wasn’t obvious before two weeks ago or three weeks ago, it’s probably become more obvious to most that that is sort of a false dichotomy that work is depleting and non-work is restorative. And we’ve been saying that to our clients and our coachees for 20 years now. And that’s because the real model, and you know this, you know aspects of your work are super restorative, a great conversation and a wonderful client and things that happen where you had impact and there are lots of things in our lives in our work lives that are restorative. Equally, take your experience working from home or being with your family for the last few weeks. And I bet you can generate a couple of instances that were depleting.
Eddie Turner:
I’m sure that is the case.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
So, the reality is that work and non-work are on one continuum, right? So, if you reach out your left hand and say “Work is on this continuum” and you reach out your right hand and you “Well, home life is on” on the other hand, the answer is that restoration and depletion are not on that same continuum. If you stick your hand above your head, restoration is apparent. And if you put your hand toward your feet, depletion is down there. So, it’s actually restoration and depletion are on one continuum and work and non-work on another. So, what we should be trying to optimize is not time at home because it’s restorative but any behavior and condition that restores your energy. So, we’re not trying to manage this work-life thing. We are trying to manage aspects of managing now especially boundaries between work and collaboration and integration. There are issues between work and home or family that we have to address but the idea of having the energy we need is really about managing our personal resources, our personal energies – physical, cognitive, social, emotional, psychological energy.
Eddie Turner:
All right, thank you. Why is this really a problem today?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Well, that model of work and non-work is exhausting and non-work is restorative is an old model. There was a time when there were actually really clear lines between work and non-work. And, typically, the things that people associated with work was sort of manual labor, physically challenging things like that, but basically, what’s restorative for you are the behaviors and conditions under which you operate and what’s depleting for you are particular behaviors and conditions. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re working or not working. It doesn’t matter if you call it work or you call it home. There are two tenets of what I call personal resource management which is my approach. The two tenets are we have to get really good at knowing what restores and depletes our personal energies and then manage that. And whether that occurs when you’re working or whether that occurs when you’re in your car or at your house or in the office, it doesn’t matter where you are located. So, the idea of trying to balance work and life doesn’t really help us. The idea is that our lines between home and work are very blurred. If we’re starting working from home and if we’re managing children, we have to manage personal boundaries and that’s especially important for being able to figure out what we need to have the energy we need.
Eddie Turner:
So, number one, you said what restores and what depletes our energy, we must come to recognize the difference between the two very clearly.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Correct. So, for example, if you have a situation that depletes you, one that’s used frequently is expensing, doing expense reports, some people hate doing expense reports, so they’ll say “Well, expense reports are depleting.” So, we can’t just stop doing that because I tried that once and I lost 15,000 dollars that was due to me by a major consulting firm. So, just skipping it doesn’t work. So, the question is how do we create behaviors and conditions around doing that activity that make it easier for us? So, let’s go one source of energy at a time. So, physically, when I’m doing my expenses, what are the behaviors and conditions under which I’m doing it? So, in my case, I’m sitting in a chair, I’m indoors, I’m not moving around, there’s no bright sunlight because the place I used to do my expensing wasn’t near a window, I’m a little bit hot, I’m a little bit uncomfortable. Now, can I change the physical conditions under which I do that? If I can, I can make the act of expensing less depleting. Can I add something that makes it restorative? So, if I know listening to a particular French folk singer is restorative for me, am I able to do the expensing while I listen to the music? That’s changing the physical behaviors and conditions under which I do the activity.
Let’s skip to psychological and emotional because that’s always rich ground. What am I telling myself while I’m doing this, right? What’s the narrative in my head, right? Usually the narrative in my head is “If I had stayed on top of this, I wouldn’t be spending time indoors when I should be doing this. I’m a loser. Other people are able to get their expenses done on time and I’m not.” So, what’s the story I’m telling myself while I do this and can I change the narrative? What can I do to change the behaviors and conditions around this? I can change the narrative. I can change the narrative to “Though I’m disappointed I didn’t get this done sooner, I chose to do other more pressing things in real time. And the money will be the same money when I push the button in an hour, right? The same 75 dollars will be the same, right? The interest rate is not 27%. I’m not losing anything significant that I made choices.” So, I can change the narrative that’s changing my relationship to the narrative I have.
Can I change the social conditions and the spiritual conditions under which I do it? So, normally, I would sit alone and do that. And when I sit alone, it’s easier for the narratives to disturb me but if I sit in a Starbucks, or if I sit in a co-workspace where there are other people, emotional contagion helps me and the calm of other people or at least the presence of a different narrative makes my life better, okay? And I could do the same thing with cognitive load, right? If intellectually I’m a little bit bored because I have to keep entering the same 7 dollars 15 times, what can I do to help me be less bored, okay? I can put on music that’s more complicated. I can put on a book on tape that I’ve already heard that I don’t really have to listen to but it fills up the cognitive space, the cognitive gap, so that I’m not losing my focus because I have to write 7 dollars so many times. So, that’s the goal is you take the situation and you analyze it to see “How can I change the behaviors and conditions to either increase what’s restoring me or decrease what’s depleting me?”
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. Thank you for that added clarification because I’m sure as individuals listening, they’re probably trying to do that calculation in their mind and “Well, it makes sense but how do I do it?” So, excellent clarification on that.
Well, I’m enjoying talking to Dr. Edy Greenblatt. She is a resilience pioneer and she is the number one resilience coach in the world. We’ll have more of Dr. Greenblatt right after this.
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This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
This is Dr. Steven Stein, psychologist and founder of MHS Assessments and you’re listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back, ladies and gentlemen. I’m talking to Dr. Edy Greenblatt. She’s a resilience pioneer and the number one global resilience coach in the world, as recognized by Thinkers 50, and she’s one of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches.
Now, we received some really nice tips from you before we went to break but I’d love to learn a little bit more about your resilience research because you’re a pioneer in this area. Can you talk about that a little bit for us?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Sure. So, I told you I came from dance anthropology. I was a dance teacher. I was a professor also but I had to earn a living. So, I taught hundreds of students a week in social dance settings, mostly Israeli dancing, international folk dancing, surviving social dance, anything that people did socially and sometimes that included alcohol, globally. So, what I noticed when I was a dance person as an ethnographer was I noticed that people were coming to dance events and what I thought I was doing which was just providing education and teaching dances was actually providing them restorative events and creating conditions that help people restore. And people would tell me their stories about how coming to the dance event changed them physically, emotionally, psychologically, how coming to the dance event got them through the cancer treatment of their daughters or how it was the only time somebody’s husband got dressed all weekend. And there was one man who used to show up and he was just grumpy and I thought “He’ll never come back to my class” and he came every week and his wife later told me that it was the only time he actually got up and moved and was happy and engaged with the family for about a six-month period because the dancing helped him. So, I decided I wanted to stop helping people on a smaller level and try to understand how could I create these conditions to make work less depleting because most of the people who came to me used to come to restore from the damage done by work. Work was exhausting them or their lives were exhausting them and they didn’t realize that and they would come to restore. So, I decided I wanted to figure out how to make work less depleting because we work because it’s supposed to increase the quality of our lives and not harm us. So, I got to Harvard and they were actually interested in me, don’t know why, probably thought it’d be fun to have parties, but they weren’t just in my being an ethnographer. And I started doing this research and I wanted to go somewhere where we could actually study what happens when people have the opportunity to restore themselves. So, it turned out that Club Med workers, people who live in work in the same place, live in resort villages were working at the time six and a half days on half a day off for six months at a time. They were the most creative innovative group of people I ever met. They were working with very fewer resources. They were effective in teams. They were working hard in a 24/7 environment. And so, Club Med vacation village was actually the perfect laboratory to try to determine what is it that helps people restore themselves. And it turned down Club Med workers were turning over at 90% a year, which is a huge turnover. And even though it’s a short-term gig sometimes, there were tricks and secrets and things to learn from them. So, I went and I studied them and I actually went, did participant observation and worked as a, they’re called, GOs, sort of the facilitator camp counselors. You live and your work. You live with the people and you work with the guests and you spend all day and evening with them. And we used that as a laboratory to actually determine how people live in 24/7 work environments with every opportunity to restore and still burn out. And who doesn’t. And it turns out we were sort of ahead of the curve before 24/7 was actually a thing? They were already living in a total institution.
Eddie Turner:
Well, thank you for sharing that. That is insightful and good to know and boy, to see the way your work has unfolded. Now, leaders may want to know how they can prioritize their own knowledge around this area and build a resilience practice. What recommendations do you have?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
So, for individuals and organizations, the most important thing to solve a problem is to have the right questions. And so, if you have a model that helps you form the right questions, then you can get the solutions you need. So, in the book that I wrote, a book based on the research and the best practice from working with hundreds of organizations at the time and now it’s more than 100, so we kind of looked at what are the best practices and what are the things that people need to do to restore themselves. One is to have a model that’s useful. So, using a personal resource model, understanding that we’re trying to optimize resilience and energy and we’re not trying to reduce work or optimize home. So, one is understanding what restores and depletes you and then manage it. And the second is understanding there are three musketeers of resilience, some things that you need to know, to sort of make sure you get this diagnosis for yourself right. And we could talk about them another time and they’re in the book but, basically, you need to remember that we’re all different. What restores one person can deplete someone else. The next thing we need to know is that they change over time. So, it used to be that email was restorative and emails become depleting and you need to make sure that you are careful that you don’t conflate things that used to work that don’t work now. And the third thing, we talked about it, is make sure you’re diagnosing behaviors and conditions and don’t get lost in social tags. A commute is not by definition restorative or depleting. And in cases when suddenly your commute dries up like all a lot of us have been homebound for the COVID problem, it could be that one of the reasons it’s hard for you when you’re working at home is that your commute is actually restorative. And so, because you’re not commuting, you’re actually missing the time you listen to your favorite podcast, Eddie’s, or you’re missing the time where your body is going 50 miles an hour and you’re getting the kind of visual stimulation and proprioception stimulation that you normally don’t get. So, you want to not get stuck in the social tag. Don’t think that a run is a run. Running with your running group in the evening outside is not the same as running on the treadmill with your headset on. So, we want to not get stuck in the social tags and we want to stay focused on behaviors and conditions. So, for leaders and for organizations, we have a Restore Yourself Workshop that we do now virtually and in person to help people get the tools to be able to see what these techniques are, learn what are reliably restorative, there are very few reliable restorers because we’re all different, learn what sneaks up on you, what are your sneaky depleters, what sneaks up on you like emotional labor, managing your emotions is exhausting and we don’t think of it as being exhausting.
Eddie Turner:
That’s an interesting phrase. I’ve never heard that – ‘emotional labor’.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
So, emotional labor was a term coined by Arlie Hochschild when she was studying flight attendants. So, when a flight attendant is always being pleasant when what they want to do is wrap the seat belt around your neck, that’s emotional labor. It’s doing work, emotional work, to not express your emotions. And every minute we spend with other people, we have to regulate that. We don’t live in a society that permits emotional outbursts that are “inappropriate”. So, there are sneaky depleters we need to be aware of. And there are some things strategies for how you strategically insert little restorative breaks in your day and in your week to make sure you don’t actually accidentally cross below a threshold in which you become burnt out.
Eddie Turner:
Can you give us just one strategy?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Okay, let’s do strategic sequencing. If you’re someone who likes to push to do all the hard stuff and then take a break, that’s the same as driving your car. If you fill your gas tank and your gas tank will get you 150 miles, that’s the same as saying “You know what, I really want to go 155 miles and then I’ll fill the tank.” Well, once you get to 120 miles or 140 miles, you’re starting to burn the gas that has all the gunkiness, all the impurities and the gas. So, you’re kind of running on fumes. Even if you do all the right things with your car, you’re sort of junking up the mechanism. And if you go below the burnout line, normal things don’t work. If you run out of gas, you mess up your catalytic converter and putting gas in the car isn’t enough. And that’s what happens when you push too far. So, make sure you restore yourself intermittently. Don’t keep pushing till you’re on fumes. Keep refilling your tank when you’re at half or when you’re at one quarter but don’t let yourself go too far below that in terms of physical energy, emotional energy, psychological energy, cognitive support.
Does that make sense?
Eddie Turner:
I knew that you were a brilliant heavyweight, academically. I had no idea you were going to break down the mechanisms of an automobile. And even if I, the perhaps least mechanically inclined person you’ll run into, understood exactly what you just said.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
And I don’t know if running out of gas ruins catalytic converters now but it used to.
Eddie Turner:
And because I’m the least mechanically inclined individual, I’m just going to say “Yeah, you’re right, Dr. Edy. I’ll buy it.” Some of my listeners may probably disagree but, hey, it’s okay with me.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Please write to me and tell me catalytic converters still get ruined burning a lot of gas.
Eddie Turner:
I love it. That’s priceless. Thank you. And so, the book is called?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
The book is called Restore Yourself: The Antidote for Professional Exhaustion, Edy Greenblatt with Erin Lehmann and Michael Allan Kirk.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. We mentioned it in the opening but just wanted to have you say that again now that you explained it and what it will do for us. I’m excited to hear how my listeners respond to this. Tell my listeners where they can get your book.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
The book’s available on Amazon. And if they say they’re out of books, or they don’t have enough for you, just write to me and we’ll get you some because sometimes they can’t get a hold of large numbers of them or they run out. So, you can reach out to me. All the information to reach me will be in the podcast notes but if you’re actually sitting down writing things, which is probably unusual, you can email me at Edy@AskDrEdy.com. You can look for me. You can follow me on LinkedIn. If you reach out to me, we actually are offering some complimentary group resilience coaching these days. I don’t know when you’ll be listening to this but please reach out to me for listeners of this podcast. We’re happy to try to offer that. So, reach out to me if you’re interested in some group resilience coaching. We mostly provide workshops coaching and then these restoration vacations which we plan to start offering quarterly because people are going to need to find ways to restore themselves in strategic ways. So, we do an assessment and there’s an assessment in the book. So, to be able to know what restores and depletes, you need to do a little assessment. So, there’s an assessment in the book. And we have an assessment we can give you and there’s assessments for your vacation needs. It’s all about, what I call, Integrated Resilience which is our upcoming book that should come out in a year or so and watch for some articles,
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. I want to get you back when that book comes out as well. So, she means it, everyone. Dr. Edy is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. And when she says reach out to her via LinkedIn or email her with the email address she just used or that we’ll put in the show notes, she means it. So, definitely reach out. Take advantage of what she offers. You will end up refreshed and more resilient. I can speak from firsthand experience.
Dr. Edy, how would you summarize our conversation today?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
There’s a message I’d like you to have and that’s that in order to use any of this stuff, you have to accept that taking care of yourself as a priority because it’s always easy to not go to sleep. Number one reliable restorer – eight and a half hours of sleep opportunity or more every night. Yes, I’m not kidding. Yes, there’s research to support it. Yes, even you. So, the most important thing you can do for yourself and for those around you is to take care of yourself because it is much, much, much more efficient for you to get enough sleep, to eat properly, to manage the narratives in your head, to manage to take your rest restoration breaks to strategically sequence what you need. It is much, much more efficient for you to do that than to let those around you have to guess and clean it up and fix you when you’re broken or help you manage when you’re running on fumes. So, managing your own resilience is not being fussy or precious. This is an act of personal responsibility and it is a leadership requirement. And the model is put your mask on first. I’m even going to push on that. No mask is going to drop from the overhead compartment to signal that you need to take care of yourself. The mask is not going to drop. This is something that you have to proactively take care of so that nobody else has to do it. So, this is what adults have to do. So, please, if you care about yourself, do this, great, but for most of us, who don’t have the self-development to say “I’m worth it,” you need to do this so other people are going to be okay because it’s much easier for you to manage your resilience, for you to take care of what you have to do so that you can help everybody so they don’t have to help you any more than is necessary.
Eddie Turner:
All right. Well said, Dr. Edy. And, finally, I always love to get a quote to help our leaders keep leading. What’s a quote that you can share with our leaders?
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
So, we talked about this before we spoke. So, I’ve gone to school a lot. I did a multi-disciplinary undergraduate degree. I was pre-med, world arts and cultures, dance concentration. I took a class in almost every building at UCLA, which is quite a thing and then two degrees and joint degrees at Harvard, three degrees or whatever, two and a half, half an MBA. The most important thing I learned from the ballet mistress at UCLA, that’s Margaret Hills, and I wanted to take ballet as a graduate student and it was my sixth dance form. So, the only ballet class was offered for freshmen dance majors. So, I was 26 years old and didn’t have a ballet body and was actually teaching as a grad student but Margaret let me take the class. And so, the second week of class, Margaret lined up 20 perfect, perfect, beautiful ballet dancers, perfect freshmen dance majors at UCLA and she looked at the first one and she said “You know, you have a very rounded ribcage. It looks like you took singing lessons, especially kind of singing lessons between the ages of 9 and 12. Because of that, the shape of your chest is not perfect for ballet. So, when you look down stage, you have to lift your arm and turn 30 degrees to the right to make sure you look okay.” And then she goes to the next perfect woman and she says “Here the ratio of your thighs to your calves is one-third too long. And because of that, you’re likely to develop knee problems, medial knee problems. And in that case, you’re going to have to make this adjustment when you dance and you have to make this adjustment when you train.” And she went through and she identified a flaw, I’d call it, or a challenge that each one of those perfect women needed to do to be able to dance ballet. And that, to me, is the most important lesson I’ve learned in my life. None of us has the perfect body. Each of us needs to learn to dance in our own bodies. And that goes for work and life and everything. And that’s the most important leadership lesson that I have is we have to learn to lead and live in our own bodies and manage that on every level.
Eddie Turner:
I like that. Thank you for sharing that powerful leadership lesson with us. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, Dr. Edy. Thank you for being a guest on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Eddie, thank you very, very much. You do a great service and we’re very lucky to have you helping share information and love listening to you too. So, maybe one day you’ll be a guest on your own podcast. It was great hearing you present at our Restoration Vacation Off Site Leadership Training. So, you keep doing this. Thank you for having me.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you. I had a wonderful time there.
Dr. Edy Greenblatt:
Me too.
Eddie Turner:
That concludes this episode, everyone. So, I want to thank you for listening to the conversation between Dr. Greenblatt and myself. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.
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The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.
