Reacting vs. Responding: Leadership Lessons from Martine Wright MBE

Hi and welcome back to 3 Lessons from Breakthrough Leaders with me, Zannah Ryabchuk, CEO at Breakthrough Global.

And today I’m joined again by Dr Bart Sayle.

Hello everyone.

And this podcast is all about giving you insider tips, tricks, and know how from the world’s foremost leaders and creative talents, distilling their knowledge and experience into three lessons, which we guarantee will help you and your companies to unleash your potential.

And today, we’ve got a special episode where we’re filming in studio. So make sure that you watch this episode on YouTube or on Spotify.

She went on to represent Team GB at the London 2012 Paralympic Games as captain of the British Paralympic sitting volleyball team. She became mother, a pilot and a widely recognised television personality covering major sporting events for the BBC and for Channel 4. Appointed MBE in 2016, Martine is also the best selling author of Unbroken and is known for her refreshingly honest approach and powerful lessons in resilience, leadership and purpose.

Martine, it’s a pleasure to have you with us.

Thank you for inviting me in today.

Zannah Ryabchuk

And I invited you because I’ve got a little back story on this.

So it’s 2005, I’m on holiday in Rome having a lovely time, and then we get some terrible news on the television that the bombings had happened.

Fast forward probably a couple of years and I saw this amazing lady on TV talking about her experience. And I thought, wow, what an incredible lady.

And then fast forward a few more years and it’s the 2012 Olympics. And I was like, hold on a minute, that’s that amazing lady.

And now she’s doing volleyball and she’s a Paralympian. Oh my goodness, incredible.

And then you, fast forward again a few more years and it’s kind of the anniversary.

And there was a documentary that came out on Netflix last year, and I found myself watching that documentary and thinking, Oh my goodness, there’s that amazing lady again. Until in November last year, I happened to be at an inspirational speakers event looking at various different speakers and with some colleagues. And you happened to be speaking there.

And I thought, Oh my God, OK, this is it. Now I’ve got to go and actually talk to you.

So I came over and chatted to you and said we’d just love to have you on the podcast because you’ve actually got a business background as well, which was something I didn’t know about you before.

Martine Wright

International marketing manager.  Many years for my sins, but yeah.

Yeah.

So you are my number one stalker then?

Zannah Ryabchuk

Basically, yeah, yeah. Watch out. So tell us a little bit about your story.

Yeah. So I can’t quite believe it’s 20 years. Actually in 2005 it was. So it will be 21 this year and yeah, in 2005 I was an international marketing manager so I was 33 years old girl about town really liked going on holiday a lot and you know, going out with friends and things like that might like normal 33 year old people would would want to do. And that morning on the 7th of July 2005, change changed my life forever.

So everyone might remember the day before, and that was the 6th of July 2005. And that was the day that it was announced that we had won the Olympic and Paralympic bid. So I was kind of excited about the prospects of of this huge sporting event coming to London.

So I went out with my work colleagues and had many, many celebratory drinks as a result of that.

I got up late that morning. I pressed my snooze button, not realising the impact that that 10 minutes was going to have and a normal morning where I was rushing, I thought I was going to be late.

And then I remember, I remember getting on the tube on the Circle Line in London, and I remember seeing the tube pulling into the station.

And I remember a sense of relief, a sense of relief that I didn’t have to wait for that tube, A sense of relief that I wasn’t going to be late for work.

And then I got on that tube, opened my paper, and you couldn’t turn the page of that paper without reading something on the Olympics and Paralympics.

And then I’ll remember thinking in my head as I’m reading this paper, I’ve got to get tickets to this. This is going to be massive in 2012. Got to get tickets.

And then the explosion happened in the tunnel and you know, I felt like many, many victims that they said they heard a big, big bang.

I didn’t. I just felt like I was being thrown from side to side, had big white flash in front of my eyes. And then nano second later finding myself in a carriage that did not look like a cheap carriage. It was it was obviously a bomb scene.

I was the last person to be rescued because the fireman had to cut me out. And the fireman had to cut me out because what had happened was my legs had got caught in the end of the tube.

So where I was sitting in the corner of the tube, the bomb had gone off on the right hand side. The bomber was only three foot away from me on the right 3 foot.

Ridiculous. And the explosion hit the end of the tube and rebounded into me. So it hit me twice and as a result, my legs got caught up in the end of the tube.

The end of the tube just literally was the walls of the tube were going into my legs. Didn’t realise that at the time. I just couldn’t work out why I couldn’t move and they suddenly there was this woman coming towards me through the carriage next to me.

Now, this is where you might think, you know, that maybe it was a bomb, but when she came through that carriage, it made me look at the next carriage.

And that carriage was absolutely normal. There was nothing wrong with it. And I was down there losing 80% of my blood. But I couldn’t work out if it was a crash, why I was sitting where I was sitting. And then. But yeah, this was Liz, Liz Kenworthy, and she’s one of my guardian angels that day.

There’s many, many guardian angels that day. Those people that you know, run towards danger when, when everyone’s running away from it and she gave me a 2 tourniquets to put around my legs. All I can say is that I felt like I was out of the film. I used to sit down with my dad. My dad now, he’s 89 years old, quite a traditional man, but we used to sit down and watch westerns on a, on a Sunday afternoon. And literally I felt like I was out of like John Wayne out of out of the Western where I just got shot.

And someone would give me a handkerchief to put rammer and she said, pull them as tight as you can. I didn’t know that I was losing 80% of my blood at that point. But there was quite a poignant moment when the when the smoke cleared and as I said, I was in the corner of the tube and I looked up and the smoke cleared and I said, what’s that on top of the top of the shards of metal I can see. And these shards of metal were going into me as well.

And it was a trainer. And it was my trainer that I had put on that morning, new white trainers I put on brand new that morning. And I looked up and I saw this trainer and my foot wasn’t in it, but it was just blood all over this trainer.  And it was about 8 foot up in the air on top of this metal.

Now, I can only assume that, you know, that wasn’t attached to my body. And then, yeah, then I was down there for an hour and a quarter.

But what is, again, the most amazing lessons you learn from things like this? And that’s the positive side of a negative. And obviously I’m very lucky that I’m here because there were 52 people that day that didn’t and I will always, always remember them.

So I definitely, definitely am a, I’m a lucky one from it. But yeah. And that happened and then ended up in the Royal London Hospital, fantastic hospital, in an induced coma. And unbeknown to me, my family was searching for me for two days and then I woke up 9 days later a terrorist victim and a double amputee above the knee. And I’ve heard you speak before about the experience of waking up and, and, and how close you are with your family and how they help to support you.

Can you tell us a little bit? About that so yeah, I was, I was in this coma for for 9 days and then I woke up and as I said I I could sort of I could see half a body you imagine a bed and you’ve got half a body. I had no legs, but my legs have gone and I remember thinking obviously I don’t want to be here I just I just don’t want to be here. And it’s hard to describe how you, you, you go from there and then realise that actually maybe I am lucky. Yeah, maybe I’m lucky because I know that 52 people have died. Maybe I’m lucky because I’ve seen their mum and dad in the corridor of the hospital crying because they’ve just lost their daughter.

And, you know, I woke up and as I said, I did not, I did not, you know, want to want to be there.

But there was a very poignant moment in, in, in the hospital. And it was on the day when I was strong enough out and about two months after it happened.

And I’m strong enough to get out of that bed and go down to the physio gym at the hospital.

And this was the day that I met a very good friend of mine who is, is, is a great friend now, Jeanette. She’d lost both her legs but also both our arms. 3 meningitis, nothing to do with the bombings. Then I met other, other victims of the bombings who might not have been as physically injured as me, but they were completely traumatised. And this was the day that I found out how many people had died that day, 52 people.

So this was the day that I believe I turned around to myself and said, Martine, pull yourself together. Yeah. What are you going to do?

You got 2 choices. You know, you sit there and you stop asking that question. Do you know what that question was? Why, Why me?

I mean, I think I’m actually quite a nice person. Why me? Why me? You know, and, and you’ve got to stop. You’ve got to stop asking and and you’ve got to look forward. And what did amazingly work for me is is, you know, getting strength from other people as well, because it just doesn’t come from inside. You can’t do it on your own. I mean, there are some people that do, but it’s very, really difficult. And yeah, this is where my my family or my team, me like I like to call them, they were obviously there by my by my bedside.

And I remember, you know, at one point saying to my mum, I don’t want, I don’t want to carry on Mama, that I don’t want to be here. And I remember her grabbing hard on my face. And she said, but Martine, you are still here and you are Martine and you’ve not had a knock on the head or you are still Martine and you’re going to get new legs. Or whether it was my brother who’s, you know, I’m a baby in the family. Even at 52, I’m still the baby. And you know, I have an older sister and and it’s 10 years older than me and a brother that’s that’s seven years older than me. And I remember Grant, my brother, being by my bed size when I came out of my coma. And I laugh and say lots of people were crying obviously at that point, but he was really crying.

And I said Grant was wrong. And he said, I can’t tell you. I feel too guilty. I’ve had a thought knowing what’s that thought?

Hey, you went, I think out of three of us, out of you, me and Tracy, I think you’ve been chosen because I don’t think me and Tracy are strong enough to deal with it.

You’re the only one out of three of us that’s strong enough.

Now. I don’t know. We talk about resilience, we talk about strength. Just those words and that belief in someone gives you that, that resilience gives you that, that, that motivation to take that next step, to not walk back, but literally walk forward, you know? And yeah, it was, it was, it was then that got me through.

And I, I spent 366 days in hospital. All I was doing was going to work that morning, you know, like many, many people. And yeah. And then I, I came out of hospital and I think that’s the hardest time out of it all because I was back to my old life. I was all the normal life international marketing manager, no being able to live in my flat in London, you know, in my Victorian conversion, no having to move in with my mum. And again, you know, I don’t think people might think that the the hardest thing I had to deal with was this was the physical injuries. It is not obviously, it is the mental and emotional injuries. And I remember at my mum’s I had to move in with my mum but I couldn’t even get out of the house. And I remember this one day when when I couldn’t stop crying at my mum’s and all I kept saying was I just want to go home. I just want to walk out this house and go home.

But I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk out the house and I couldn’t go.

And I think what that illustrates is, well, what I found is the hardest thing to deal with was not learning to walk again, was not having to put on, you know, 2 prosthetic legs that weigh a stone each.

You know, it wasn’t that it was up here. It was the memories of who I once was. And that’s the hardest thing. And, you know, I know people that went back and did exactly the same job that they did before. I couldn’t do that. I don’t think I was strong enough to do that. And so I had to look for something else. I had to look at making my life different. You know, I had to find that way of reacting positively to it.

It teaches you so much. And yeah, as I said, it’s the psychological side. And, and you know, for me, I think this is where sometimes my, which I’m sure we’re going to be talking about later, my power 7 comes into it. Because obviously when it all happened, I thought I had to answer to myself, who was my team right now, which definitely was an international markets manager, You know, who was she other than a terrorist victim and, and a double amputee?

But I realised that wasn’t the question I had to ask, the question I had to ask what was, what was Martine Wright going to do about it?

And that was that, that, that was it. And, and, and what I found useful when dealing with that change and dealing with those tough times is to do something extraordinary, to do something that I would never have had the opportunity before.

You know, and whether that was flying planes or jumping out planes, which wasn’t popular with my mum and dad after spending 366 days.

Exactly. What are you doing, Martine? What are you doing? Well, I’m getting up 12,000 foot and jumping out of a plane. Are you right?

But it’s about, you know, it’s about, again, it’s easy to say, but it’s about looking forward and not looking back and realising that all these experiences in life, you know, you can’t stop them. You can’t stop them. They’re going to happen and they’re going to be good and they’re going to be bad.

Yeah, they’re going to be a mixture of both. And you just got to find a way to accept those changes. But I’m telling you, I’m telling you that you will become stronger from it.

You’ll get things from it. You know, again, people miss out on change, I think brings us together and people miss out on that one. So remember that one.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. I know you’ve shared it a lot, but in a room like this directly with you and, and going back to some of the things I’ve read that you know, your your mission, your purpose is to give away your gift to other people and you just gave some of that gift to me. So thank you.

Thank. You.

Thank you. I just think that’s a lovely quote and and people are just so lovely still. And this is why I do my job now, as I think everyone probably knows now, but I quite like talking. But I am a speaker, yes. So I go out and and meet all different people that share some of the most deepest thoughts and I’m honoured, absolutely honoured to be able to do that.

And I do. I do think this is my gift and and my experience is my gift.

Well, that might be quite a good segue actually to sharing it’s sort of your philosophy, your principles almost that you live by. And many of our clients, our listeners, friends, people who are existing in the world right now, everyone is going through some turbulent and and uncertain times. And I think almost the word uncertain is becoming like tedious now because we hear the word uncertain so much. But I love your philosophy around how you can deal with pretty much anything in life. So do you want to share that with us, Martine?

Yeah, so probably not 20 years ago necessarily, but because you know, it didn’t suddenly wake up 8 days later and and be the person I am today.

You know, it it, it takes time. It takes time.

And this is why I say to people, sometimes it’s OK to fill up and down. That is normal. You know, everyone feels like that. Don’t, don’t give yourself a hard time.

You know, I discovered that I needed something extra in, in hospital. Well, people coming up to me going, oh, you know, how have you got through this?

And, and I started sitting there thinking, well, how, how have I got through it? You know, to actually maybe put pen to paper and say how actually I’ve got through it and it’s just not me. It is just not me. But I think it did start off with me. So.

So my power of 7. We do all live in a turbulent world. We live in a much turbulent world, I believe than nine years ago or 10 years ago. And I think we all need something extra. Yeah, I think we all need something extra in our back pocket.

So you might want to look at the power of 7 as coping mechanisms to deal with this world.

A little tool kit to get out on those days where you think, you know, I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough, or I believe that we’ve all got a unique recipe for resilience as we’re all lovely humans and we’re all unique ourselves. We should all have our own recipe.

So every time, you know, I meet someone and they’re going through something, I’ll say to them what? What do you need?

What do you need on a daily basis in order to be the best version of yourself to tackle those really big changes, small changes, good changes, bad changes, You know, what do you need? And that’s what the power of 7 is.

And as I said, we’ve all got a unique power of 7. So yeah, my power of 7.

And, and, and it’s all based around the we may never know our journey, right? We may never know our journey or our path until it hits US. Okay, and it’s not the path or the journey that’s important people. It’s what we do with the path of the journey that’s important. And I suppose this is where my power of 7 is is come from is, is that it’s not just about me, it’s about other people as well.

So and oh, sorry. And you might say to me, why number 7 Martine?  And obviously I’ll tell him and I’ll go, oh, it’s my lucky number. And it might take you a couple of couple of seconds to go, “but you got blown up on 7/7.” Yes, I know.

But again, it’s about facing our demons. It’s about not being trying. It’s okay to be scared, as I said, but it’s about using that in a positive way and, and, and getting over it.

So that’s why I decided #7 is my lucky number. But I do actually wear #7 on my shirt because I will never, ever forget the people that died that day and anyone, anyone that has been touched by terrorism because it’s such a shocking, shocking thing. But yeah, what was my number one? And that was all about me. That was choices.

Number one of my power 7 is choices. Something happens in our life. We all have a choice and I’ll describe to you that that choice where I realised that 52 people had died and that I was one of the lucky ones. And this is when I realised that I had a choice. I wanted someone to tell me what what that choice was, but no one could. But I knew that I was lucky to have that choice. That’s all I knew. So that’s my number one. Number two was about what I did next and, and, and that’s about opportunities. That’s about not being scared of of grabbing those opportunities.

But really, this this came out of me finding it hard to deal with the memories of who Martine was. So this was all about me asking what was Martine going to do about it? Yeah. Because, you know, I could have sat there and gone, who is Martine right now? But as I said, the most important question, what was Martine right, going to do about it?

And again, you know, we know that bad things happen in life, and we know that sometimes we don’t have control over certain things. But this is all about that belief. And this is all about believing that whatever darkest times you may go through, there will be positives from it. There will be good things that come from it. You’ve got to look for them. But I’m promising you that if you have that belief that amazing things can come from it, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it with the stuff that I’ve done. I can’t believe some. I mean, you know, if you said to me 20 years ago, number one, I was going to be a Paralympian, I would have completely thought, yeah, Paul 999. But you know, it’s it’s or I could fly a plane.

You know, I would have thought, no, you’re off your rocker. What are you talking about?

But yeah, so my number 2 is, is about not being scared of, of having that belief and grabbing those, those opportunities.

Then we’ve got #3 and that’s change, positive change. Which, again, very easy to say, hard to do. And we know that change challenges us. Yeah, of course it does. It strengthens us. It gives us those opportunities. But I believe change brings us together. And this is what we need to start concentrating on. And I think change brings us together.

We can see this through COVID, good old COVID. Yeah, I didn’t know my neighbours before COVID. Can’t get away from my neighbours now. The amount of WhatsApp groups and messages that go around, it’s ridiculous.

But I believe as a result of us communicating on online platforms and stuff like that, I think there’s a real empathy. It’s a deeper empathy for each other now because we have experienced together one of the worst things. You know, we thought it was film first of all, didn’t we? It was like what’s going on, you know? And I think we need to capitalise on that understanding now. We need to capitalise on that journey that we’ve all shared and we’ve all done it together.

We’ve all, we’ve all nearly eliminated it by doing it together. We haven’t done it singularly. And that’s a lesson learned that, that, you know, so that’s about positive change.

And, and again, the most positive thing I did was being lucky enough to find sport again. I think the irony is that I found it when I was a double amputee above the knee and I had disability. So people might have looked at me and thought, well, you’re not going to be, you know, you’re limited now in your, in your, you know, life or whatever.

No, the irony is that I became captain at the Paralympics. At the Paralympics where I thought I was going to have to buy a ticket. This is where it’s all weird. Yeah, because it didn’t have to. All I kept thinking was reading that paper when the bombings went off and going, I’ve got to get a ticket. Got to get a ticket exploded seven years later. Yeah, my lucky number.

Seven people. I took part as an athlete. I did not need a ticket.

That’s. Amazing.

And I think that’s a fate. I think I think that’s a fate for me that I was always meant to do this journey. But as I said, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what we think, whether we think we’ve got a fate or whether we think things just happen because they happen. Because as I said, we may never know what’s going to happen. And it’s not what happens to you that makes the difference. It’s what you do with what happens to you that makes the difference.

That’s what it’s about. There’s no, there’s no shortcut. Yeah, there’s no cheaters way of getting that strength or, or, or that resilience, you know, but I think people need to realise is, you know, that strength and resilience actually comes from other people as well. And this is why number #4 of my power of 7 is teamwork.

There’s no way that we can all, all survive throughout teamwork. And one of my most important Power of 7 is something more specific called Team Me. Right now we have a team me, right?

And we all have a Team Me but as important, we have a responsibility to other people’s teammates because we’re in their teammates as well. Don’t just work one way. Doesn’t doesn’t just work one way. And you know, it’s it there.

There is no way that I would be sitting here now without my Team Me. Yeah, and Team Me is made up of different people, family, friends and and all those NHS professionals, Liz, my guardian Angel, all those people. But I knew that when I was at that first game at London 2012, I knew that I would never have made that journey if it wasn’t for my Team Me.

And again, this concept is I something I’ve completely made-up, but I think it’s a good one. But I think it’s more important in the 21st century and I think people need to realise that it’s not just about your Team Me, it’s about the responsibility you have to other people’s teammates as well.

And that’s the way that this world, I believe will come a better place is I realised that it’s so important to look after this, your mental well-being. And again, I think a huge positive of us dealing with that pandemic is that we’re more aware of other people’s mental well-being. That’s huge. As I said before, you know, I thought the hardest thing, I was going to have to deal with the physical changes, but it wasn’t, it was the mental changes. And you know, life is like that.

And if it wasn’t like that, we wouldn’t get this strength from anywhere. Yeah, we wouldn’t have that strength.

We wouldn’t have that resilience. But I think people need to realise, and maybe, you know, certain companies need to realise or leadership needs to realise that it’s about having that safe environment as well. It’s about the resilience you get from other people and the honesty that you need with other people in order to have that resilience.

I mean, there was nothing better, there was nothing better than me than finding a bunch of women basically who were quite good at volleyball that I spent a lot of time, a lot of time with. And there is nothing more empowering, nothing more like a big warm cuddle when you sit down with someone and Share your story and then go, do you know, I felt like that, I felt like that. I remember when I felt like that. And I think these lessons learned that we can, we can learn within the, the corporate environment is that, you know, we’ve already taken the steps. We’ve already taken the steps because of the Pandemic and things like that, but we just need to capitalise on, on what we’ve done.

So, and my last one, so yeah, number 6 is, is Team Me and number 7 I bang on about all the time belief having the belief because you know, I know I laugh and I joke because obviously that is what makes me tick. And I think it’s a great, great healer and there’s amazing things that I’ve got from it, but my family have, have got that as well.

And that’s because we’ve fought this, this journey together, You know, and I, I, I do laugh and say that, you know, my sister found that, you know, she pursued her dream of running her own florist business as a result of, of what we all went through. And, you know, we, we discovered a deep strength and understanding old family and friends that we would never have discovered if it weren’t for going through that awful time. But I do joke and go, my nephew can believe his luck when I took him to Euro Disney and he realised he didn’t have to queue up for any of the rights because I’m in the wilderness.

That’s positive. That is positive. Favourite auntie material. You can laugh at that.

It’s okay again. For a three, three to six year old, 3 to 703 to 10 year old, I’d say you give them a toy and you give them a wheelchair. The first thing they’ll play is in the wheelchair, In the wheelchair.

But yeah, it’s about that belief. And I know it sounds simple sometimes that I talk about belief and say that it, it makes huge, huge differences to you and also people around you because when I was in hospital, my mum and dad had no control of anything. Anything. Yeah. They thought they’d lost me. And then they found me in the state that I was at that point.

And it’s that belief. They were looking in my eyes. They, they were looking for me to smile. Yeah. And this is what I say now to people that I mentor that have recently lost limbs. You know, your family just want you to smile.

That’s all it is. Yeah. And in order for you to smile, you need that belief. And by you smiling, you give other people that belief, that gift maybe. And so as soon as I started smiling, they were like, all right, we can we can handle this.

We can handle this, you know? And that’s, that’s, that’s what it’s about, really. Belief is so important and it’s something that.

We, we talk about it all the time. We’ve just written a chapter in a book that we’ve got coming out this year on belief, a Programme I was on with a client last week. The theme was almost all about belief because when they’ve had a tough run, that’s what starts to get knocked. People think, well, we’ve tried that and we’ve done this and we’ve done that.

And I don’t know, I don’t know if this is going to work. And the second that they start to rethink and, and, and inhabit that space of I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t think we can do it. Nothing. Nothing will work and nothing will do it.

No.

Zannah Ryabchuk

All they need is to just have that door of possibility open to thinking maybe we can do this and then suddenly it’s like a flywheel and it grows and grows. But I’m interested to know, you know, when you are mentoring people or even just friends or other people, how do you help them to open that door to the possibility of believing again from a place of lack of belief.

Yeah, I mean, I think, like, we all know that you need different people on a team, first of all.

Yeah. So you can’t do it just with the same person. You know, 10 of me, you won’t want 10 of me anyway. But really, you know what I found useful when I saw, you know, I’m a double amputee above the knee. You know, the chances of a woman being double amputee above the knee in this country, in the UK is that it’s no point. No, no, no one.

You know, it’s I have more chance to win the lottery. Yeah, than than having the, the injuries that, that, that I’ve got.

But what really helped me to not get angry or or to subside the, the, the anger and why me? Why me was opening my eyes, was lifting my head up to look around me.

And what I mean by that is that I’ve, you know, I was in hospital with Jeanette, who is now one of my best friends and three meningitis, she’d lost both her legs about the knee. Yeah, exactly the same as me, but she both lost both her arms as well. And I was lucky that me and her spent a year in hospital together because you wouldn’t usually have two double amputee women together.

So it’s really, I believe, not being blinkered. You’ve got to open yourself up. You’ve got to say, actually, it might not be that bad, and you’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to talk about it to other people. Because I guarantee that if you start talking about it to other people, someone’s going to go again, actually, do I feel brave enough to put on my hand and say, actually I feel like that as well, you know?

So it’s really, yeah, taking in the world around you and it’s trying to flip it. It’s trying to, which again, is the magic, the magic word, How do you flip it? How do you flip it? But for me, you know, it’s doing something different, doing something different a lot of the time. And that sounds very simple, but it’s quite hard sometimes because if you’re in that mindset that you’ve done something for many, many years, or it’d be like me walking or running for that bus, that’s who you are, isn’t it? Yeah. Or running for that bus. So I used to get quite obsessed when, when I was not walking at that point in a wheelchair in the hospital. And I, I used to look at people running for buses because that’s what I used to do. I’d be obsessed with looking at people on their phones, just walking down the down the street because that’s something I would never, ever be able to do. Yeah, I’m not saying my chair, but walking. I mean, it’s quite up in the chair, obviously, but walking and being seamless and, and, you know, not being aware of anything around.

You don’t need to do that. But with your two prosthetic legs, it’s like 2 stilts. You know, it’s like the Himalayas out there.

You know, when, when you’ve got a camera on a, on a, on a.  So I, I used to get obsessed, but not obsessed. But I thought about that image a lot. And again, I was like, I can’t get this image out of my head. I’ve got to get it out of my head.

How am I going to do it?

Well, I’ve got to do something different. I’ve got to do something different. And this is why, you know, I found it hard to go back to work and I knew I had to do something different because otherwise to me, it would have all been a complete waste of time.

So I think it’s about looking around and seeing what else is going on, not just in your world, #2 really having that belief, you know, and, and, you know, realizing that, you know, I think we could achieve so much more if we do it together, you know, and, and, and sort of realising that it’s not so bad, but.

It’s something that we kind of say to say to say to each other and say to our clients a lot, say to our families, a lot to our own teammates. But there is always somebody worse off than you. And I think for so many people that we work with, you can get almost myopic into thinking that it’s the biggest problem in the world. You know how we’re going to sell more, making it up, lipsticks next year. And you do have to, I say you’ve got to look up.

So I use the exact same phone. You’ve got to look up and put it in. No one’s died. No, we’re not, we’re not, you know, delivering babies or saving lives.

It’s going to be OK. Now, that doesn’t mean to diminish that. Actually, as long as they do well, then it means people can support their families well and their shareholders and so on. But also it’s about having that sense of perspective.

And I think it can be so valuable when you are in uncertainty or, or things have gone wrong or even in a crisis to just go take a breath. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened. Like, let’s, let’s tackle it. Let’s be practical and let’s tackle it.

But I think the the the irony as well was that you need all those experiences in order to get stronger from them.

So you can’t how you grow.  Oh no, you can’t avoid them.

And and listening to you, there’s so many powerful things in there. One thing that came for me was that even though you do have a team helping you, there’s a lot of work you have to do yourself as well. And one thing that you did, I believe, is you. You accepted something and you let go of other things. And there’s sort of two sides to the same coin that you’ve got to accept the situation and then you’ve got to let go of some things because a lot of people.

Who get into, you know, even small things.

Yours was a major transformation and a major event in your life. But everybody gets into events where some people say this shouldn’t happen. This shouldn’t be happening to me. It’s like the why me? But then what they do, they live in that.

And if you’d have lived in that, you’d have become maybe a, a terrorist victim and, and that would be the future. And you didn’t do that.

You are a terrorist victim.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, but you’re not living in that and you’re not coming from there every day. But you could envisage some people doing that, and probably do. I’ve met people, I’ve met people that have been. There so so your acceptance that this has happened and then letting go of interpretations like that and letting go of that possible victim role, which would be very easy to do.

I mean, I don’t know whether I would do it, but you know, it’s, it’s.

Yeah, and I’m not saying that I wasn’t. I wasn’t there. You know, it’s like not this superwoman, you know, in the beginning I was there and I was thinking why, you know, why is this happening?

I think everybody would be.

I think everybody would be.

Martine Wright

But obviously that’s a natural thing you need to. You can’t skip that. Yeah, you can’t skip that step, can you?

So you’ve got to, but then you accept it and you accept, well, this is it. This is my, this is where I am now. So what do I do?

And in your words, what do I do now that will get the best out of who I am? And actually I have to look now at who I am, because who I was is not now who I am. And that’s the letting go part. You said that some of that was difficult with the memories and so on.

Yeah, I haven’t even told you my Birkenstock story. I had, I had Birkenstocks in every single colour and my high heels and Oh no. And also because obviously I wasn’t supposed to be in hospital on the 16th of July. I went in hospital obviously on the 7th of July because I was supposed to be chief bridesmaid to my best friend who Alex, who was who, who got married on the 16th. And I remember these beautiful high heeled shoes we got to wear for the day and that and the Birkenstocks I couldn’t look at for three years.

I got that.

I couldn’t look at them for three years. So it doesn’t happen overnight. You know the the acceptance doesn’t happen overnight.

And that’s the work you were putting in. Yeah, the value of the team is absolutely true, but you have to do that work.

That’s. Hard work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then it gets easier. It does get easier.

And and again, just don’t give yourself hard time if you’re not ready to look for me at that bag, that big laundry bag with all of it in that was in my Victorian, you know, flat in in crab tent. You know, I couldn’t go there.

I could not well, I couldn’t even get out there access wise, but I mean, I can now. But you know, I couldn’t go there.

I couldn’t look in that bag.

Tried not to give myself a hard time because I said it’s, it’s just not, it’s not right.

It’s not right time at the moment. It’s not the right time. Do you know what is the right time? It’s the right time to jump out of plane. It’s the right time to go South Africa. Six weeks to do about 50 hours of flying, you know, so it’s just slowly it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s talking about it and not giving yourself a hard time because that is not going to achieve anything at all.

And that’s easy, very easy for me to say. Don’t give yourself a hard time because I’ve been there.

But it’s about how can I, you know, how can I get something amazing from this? You know, and I know that I must maybe sound like people shut up. God, no positive, you know this not, but I’m a true believer, absolute true believer.

I know that good stuff comes from bad stuff.

Oh, I can feel it from you, yeah, so.

It radiates from you so.

You, you had this event in your life, a life event that everybody would see as tragic and terrible, a bad event.

But what you’ve done over the time, and I think you did it quite quickly, is you said to yourself, this isn’t the only interpretation of what happened, That actually there’s other interpretations. Even though it happened, the thing that I can bring to it is a different interpretation for me of what this what this means.

Zannah Ryabchuk

To create meaning that is meaningful instead of meaningless.

Create meaning through our interpretations, not through the events.

No, no, it’s not what happens to us, is it? It’s, it’s, it’s what we what we do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, it was, it was like that. I mean, it was, it was acceptance on, on.

Yeah, what was what had happened.

Bour interpretation led you to look at it as something that was full of opportunity.

It could have been that your interpretation would be I’m a victim, so I’ve got to survive now.

Yes, yeah.

And as you say, you went through that.

Yeah.

But then and also then you flipped, as you say.

Yeah, And some of that flipping was realising that I couldn’t go back and be do the same thing.

Say I has, you know, the 7/7 Club, called the 7/7 Club is a club that you would never, ever choose to belong to in the beginning. But it is an amazing club because obviously all us victims have, you know, get in a room this size.

We’re all crying, we’re all giving each other cuddles, understanding, not even having to say anything, you know, just looking at people’s eyes and all this.

And it’s about, you know, appreciating who you are within that and, and, and what you can bring to it.

And I think this is what really sometimes got me through the hard times as well, is that when I realised, you know, I feel really angry when I, when I went into that gym physio 2 months after it had all happened and I looked around the room.

Yeah, and I, I tell the story that obviously, yes, I felt, I realized that 52 people had died and I was lucky.

But there was a minute before that when I went into that room, I’ll look around all these people.

And I’m like, well, you’ve got one leg missing.

You’ve got one arm missing.

Oh, you’ve lost both your legs below the knee.

Oh, you’ve got one finger missing.

Why, why have I got both my legs above the knee?

Knees are a massive thing in, in prosthetics and walking, funny enough. But why, why, why have I been chosen for that?

And then I started talking to people and then I realised that all the victims, a lot of them were struggling a lot more than me. You know, we had, we had Philip, who was a PHDD, you know, a doctor, lecturer and Greek Cypriot, very traditional man, you know. And yeah, he lost one leg and he didn’t know.

I turned to it and I spent many a night, he was in the next bed to me in hospital, holding his hand and looking him into the eyes and saying, you’re going to be right. We’re going to be alright, Philip.

I know it’s awful, but we’re going to be OK. We’re going to be OK.

And I felt like I had a role and it gave me that investment to accept what had happened because I thought actually, I’ve got a job, I’ve got AI, got a job that I’m quite positive and that these other people haven’t got.

And so that allowed me I’ve, I think, to accept and maybe look at what I could do in the future.

I mean, again, you know, to say to me that you’d be a speaker now and have an MBE. And I would have thought you’re mad, but maybe that was what helped me flip it first of all, because I thought that was and I didn’t think that at the time.

Obviously this is retrospective of, of, of I think that was such an important role that I played for other people, for them in their Team Me, but just by the way they were and maybe their struggles not made me feel better, but gave me a purpose to help them with it.

That’s it. It’s so purposeful and that’s that’s an amazing thing to suddenly, again, it’s about that creating meaning, isn’t it?

That suddenly you just have that purpose. We all need that purpose, don’t we?

Their struggles are here. They’re not. They’re not, of course, missing.

No. They’re here, yeah. And that’s what you’ve got, yeah, you’ve got the resilient here to overcome some of the struggles they’re not overcoming.

Yeah.

Talk to us about the Olympics. What was it like?

Oh rubbish, oh God, the Paralympics was mad.

I mean, just again, if you’d ever, ever said that you’re going to be a professional athlete in your, in your life, I would have thought you were mad. You know, the hardest journey I’ve had to do, you know, two years, three years of intensive training before the Paralympics.

We, we, we’re actually the, we actually broke a record because we are the Guinness Book records. We, we were back then in 2012, the only team sport that’s ever gone from a program being set up just two years to them performing at the highest performing sports environment. Yeah, I’m sure that that has been broken now the the record.

But it was London. Right? I’m a Londoner.

I’m a Londoner and I think the start of the journey was that day before the 7th of July, the 6th of July, when we all found out that London had won the Paralympic bit. That was the start of my journey and maybe a circle that I was always meant to make right. So that happened on my Team Me, my family.

We didn’t want to be in London anymore.

We didn’t, you know, let’s get out of it, let’s get out of it, even though, you know, for generations my family has been in London. We are Cockney and  very proud of it. So a lot of us, I moved out, you know, my mum moved out and you know, we, we, we were on this journey dealing with me being being limbless and a terrorist victim.

I mean, and then I suddenly was on this journey.

Well, I was, I went to a Paralympic potential day and, and, and tried out and tried sitting, sitting volleyball.

And again, one of the amazing memories from the Paralympics and one of my most amazing, memorable photos, right.

And these photos are massive in my house. And people say to me, what’s your favourite photo that you were in?

Oh, no, what’s your favourite photo from the Paralympics? And I go, oh, that one or this one on my phone, you know, and they go, well, you’re not in it. No, no, no, no, no. It’s my Team Me. And, and, and it literally is when I came out at the first game and came out and the noise. I mean, this was in front of 5000 people for the XO Arena, biggest crowd we’d ever played at that point, about 400.

So huge mix of emotions, you know, could hear people chant out, you see my name on banners. And I came out and looked left and I saw my family bawling their eyes out. But my son, who was only three years old, Oscar, he was on Nick’s head.

And he had this really rubbish plastic Union Jack flag and this, this banner saying go, mommy, go. And and I just knew all the blood, sweat and tears had been worth that. But yeah, it was an opportunity for me to applaud my my Team Me and say, look what we’ve done together. We’ve come back, yeah. We left in 2005 and now we’ve come back and we’ve only come back because we’ve done it together. Yeah. And you’re crying up there because the memories are still hurtful. Like my mum and dad can’t talk about it still because I start crying. Anything to do with that day. But to say thank you and to say actually, life isn’t bad. Life is not bad. It was maybe, yeah, a few years ago, but it isn’t bad. And look, we’ve done this together and I feel fantastic. You know, I’m living a life now that I would never, ever go back, never go back, you know?

And again, it’s about that belief.

It’s about that smile that my mum and dad wanted to see.

It’s about, yeah. It’s about. She’s smiling. Yeah, she believes so I believe now, you know, so it was, it was, it was pretty amazing.

What’s great about that, you said, because you talked about a circle and so July the 6th you were a very keen Olympic game spectator. And then you became, after that event, an Olympic Games champion.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

That’s a transformation, yeah, regardless of anything else.

Yeah, it, you know, it just, and there’s lots of coincidences, you know, it just.

There’s so many coincidences in your story

And again, we were talking about this earlier, it’s about you finding meaning, right, to it.

So why has this happened to me?

Why has this happened to me?

Why has this happened to me?

Well, maybe this has happened because I was always meant to but, you know, you can take connections.

You can take, you have two choices. You can even look for those connections or you don’t. And for me, it it, you know, said that I was always meant to make this journey.

So, yeah, I mean, there’s huge connection, which is the last thing I was reading on the tube. That was me thinking I’ve got to get tickets to this. Got to get tickets. And then seven years later I took part as an athlete. I didn’t need a ticket, right?

For two years I trained. I trained facing my hospital, Queen Mary’s Hospital, where I learnt to walk in Roehampton.

I joined volleyball. Nothing through my my hospital, but I spent two years training in a gym at Roehampton University where I looked out of the window and I could see my hospital bed window, my hospital bed window that I spent about nine months in the first, my son. My son was due 3 three years later after the bombings. Guess what date he was due?

The 7th of July.

You’re joking.

Can’t make that one up, can you?

You cannot make that up. I’d say that to my daughter. When am I due?

And that’s when they had a little spinny, spinny wheel thing and she went, I’m not even going to tell you what, and she went, it’s the 7th of July and you are joking. But anyway, he was late. So he came on the 16th.

He was 10 lbs as well, so he was definitely late. But yeah, there are too many coincidences, connections between what happens. So for me, I believe I’ve actually been lucky because I have had those pointers.

Maybe it’s me looking for them. Yeah, because you’ve got to look for them. You’ve got to look for them. And yeah, you’ve got to look outside yourself. You’ve got to look at that for those differences, you know, But yeah.

And I’m interested to hear a bit more about Liz.

Oh, Liz, my guardian Angel. Amazing lady. She looks like a librarian. She don’t allow a policewoman. She’s such a gentle soul. It’s unbelievable. And yeah, and, and I have this image of her when I’m in this black devastation place that didn’t look like a tube. She was walking up. And she had long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes. And as I said, she gave me these tourniquets to put around my legs. And she said, you know, 1 was a belt and one was a cardigan, apparently. And she said, you know, she could see my blood, you know, coming, coming out. And she said, you know, pull them as tight as possible.

And she stayed with me for an hour. And 1/4, she stayed with me. Everyone else was evacuated, she stayed with me. She had no idea that there were any other devices going to go off. And I kept saying to her, the irony is that I wasn’t right because I was dying.

But but I would keep saying to her, my name is Martine Wright, please tell my mum and dad I’m OK. My name is Martine Wright. Please tell my mum and dad I’m OK. And obviously once we got to the surface after I was rescued, she went straight to the police and said I’m a policeman. That’s Martine Wright. That is her name, blah, blah, blah.

Because you don’t remember your bag when you’re when you’re when you’re rescued, you don’t remember your bag.

So I had no ID, but that piece of information did not get through. And, and I, you know, again, she’s that special part of the 77 club, but I don’t necessarily speak to her on a, on a, you know, every couple of months, probably, you know, maybe once a year, once every six months. But I know our husbands, I know our kids, our two daughters, and one of them’s got into occupational therapy because of what had happened and what her mum was involved in and what differences that she’d make. But again, it’s about, you know, that day on the 7th of July is about the scale of humanity, right?

So at one end, you’ve got the most selfish act in the world. Yeah, someone who’s going to come on a tube and set a bomb off and kill innocent people. But it’s a special end. You’ve got the other end of the human scale, and that is the selfless people. That is all those people that risked their lives that day by running towards danger. And we’re not just talking about emergency services, we’re talking about passengers on that, on that, on that train. And you know, I just think you have to remember about almost sad days. You have to remember that there are people out there that would do anything for anyone and that would, you know, face danger in order to help someone else. And if we can get anything from that to live in this world, you know, But there’s no way. There is no way in the world that I would be here today if it wasn’t for Liz, I would have died on that tube like the other eight people behind me on the carriage. I would not be telling you this story today if it wasn’t for Liz.

So yeah, she’s a very, very special lady and she will always, always be part of my life.

Yeah, too much.

And bringing humanity back into business and bringing humanity back into the workplace, particularly in times like this where people say everything’s going to be replaced by AI, you know, and, and like you said, the, the, the pandemic, you know, some people dismissed that, that now as a hoax or, you know, something else, but there was a lot of humanity there.

Of course.

And we don’t want to lose that.

No, it’s not, we’ve got to build on it.

Now listeners who are, they’re both young and young wannabe leaders, they’re leaders, they’re people who are growing as leaders and they’re also growing as humans, you know, and maybe that is the best leadership growth, actually grow as a human.

Well, we’re not robots, are we?

You mentioned, you know, we’re not, we’re not robots.

But we’re sometimes shaped to be.

And the context you’re in and you talked about a safe environment and the environment can sometimes shape us into certainly robotic thoughts and actions and behaviour. So I love the fact that humanity is coming out in everything you say and everything you are so.

You know, we’ve just got to really realise and be realistic that this world is hard to live in. It’s, you know, we’ve got to be realistic. It is hard. And who’s to say it’s not going to get any harder because, you know, it sometimes will in certain, certain, certain areas. And people do. Yeah. You’ve, you’ve mentioned AI, you know, people, people mentioned AI a lot. We’re in the 21st century. I mean, if we don’t come together now and stay together, we could risk losing it.

Oh yeah? That detachment from each other as a result of technology, as a result of how fast-paced this world is.

So I think that all of us, all of us have to be determined and that belief that we can help each other and that maybe we go back to the, yeah, I don’t know what, 1940s, nineteen, fifties, 1930s, look at the world, but just the community, the community feel from it. I think that’s really, really important. I think, yeah, the belief that all of us can make this world a better place and the belief that if you have that belief in life, anything, anything is possible.

So 7 years time, I’d still really like a job. Hopefully people won’t be bored of me by then of of talking. Might have written my second book by then about different coincidences in the world. But my friends have said I need to call it the back of the chair, the book, the back of the chair, because everything ends up in the back of my chair.

We lose something, you know, it’s like, Martine, is it in the back of the chair? No, it’s not. Oh, yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah.

But yeah. Just want everyone to think whether you’re in the corporate world or the business world or your personal world, is, is, is that, you know #1 don’t give yourself a hard time.

I’ve said this the whole time, you know, it’s ups and downs, ups and downs, and that’s how you build that strength, that’s how you build those relationships and that’s how you build that resilience. So if there are leaders out there and, and, and you know, just make sure you have to have an environment for it, which sounds like I’m talking rubbish or, or floaty, floaty blue skyness.

But it’s about having that safe environment. And it’s about having that opportunity to talk to your colleague or talk to whoever to say, be brave enough, be brave enough to share it. And then that other person will be brave enough to say, actually, I felt like that. There’s nothing, nothing better than that.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

You mentioned brave. You’re you incredible model of courage.

Yeah, it is. It’s courage.

And courage comes from the heart.

Yeah.

Well, thank you. Thank you.

And you also have the best way of saying because, can you say because for me again?

Why? Because.

I’ll tell you what. No, you say. No, you say, at the old East. My family’s from the East End.

Oh, I see.

I might say because it’s not water. It’s because.

It’s because.

It’s because.

It’s not because, it’s because and I love.

It’s what?

Because.

Zannah Ryabchuk

I feel like I’m listening to my my great art of voice.

Yeah, incorrect. Yeah. Yeah, now you can’t say that.

You can’t say that, but I’m like something.

Yeah, most honestly, it does make us think of all my lovely.

Oh, bless you. Bless you. Yeah, well, thank you.

Yeah.

So, Martine, thank you so much for joining us for this very special episode and thank you to everybody for listening and watching this episode. So do subscribe and join us again for our next conversation.

So if you have any questions or comments at all, you can always e-mail us at bartsayle@breakthroughglobal.com.

And you can of course, connect with us on LinkedIn at Breakthrough Global.

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So again, a massive thank you to Martine for taking part in this very special episode and thank you for listening.

So if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe and join us again for our next conversation.

If you’ve got any questions or comments, you can always e-mail us at bartsayle@breakthroughglobal.com.

And we’d love you to connect with us on LinkedIn at Breakthrough Global.