Leading After Failure with Michal Bardavid: Self-Worth, Humility, and Rising Stronger as a Leader

Michal Bardavid is a psychological counselor and dance movement therapist with a master’s degree in industrial psychology. For more than fifteen years, she has taught the principles of movement, self-expression, and emotional resilience at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, helping students reconnect with their bodies and their sense of worth.

She is also the founder of the #IamChild Project, which brought creative workshops to Syrian refugee children in Turkey and earned international recognition for its impact.

Beyond her work in psychology, Michal spent over a decade as a journalist reporting across Turkey, Central Asia, Europe, and the Middle East — covering politics, economics, major global events, and producing human-interest documentaries from Kazakhstan to Myanmar and Cambodia.

Her debut book, Becoming a Peacock, blends her personal journey with professional insight, creating a warm, bold, and often cheeky guide to rebuilding self-worth and resilience.

Leadership is not tested when everything goes according to plan.
It is tested when something breaks.

In this episode of The Black Belt in Leadership, Aslak de Silva speaks with Michal Bardavid, a psychological counselor, dance movement therapist, former journalist, and author of Becoming a Peacock, about what leaders face after failure, rejection, and difficult decisions.

Michal shares her personal story of building a dance studio she deeply believed in, investing her savings and identity into it, and watching it fail. Instead of letting that experience define her, she made a powerful realization. She would never consider another person a failure for trying. That shift opened the door to a new chapter, including bringing her Dance Therapy concept to television and eventually writing her debut book.

Together, Aslak and Michal connect this journey to real leadership challenges, including:

- being fired or laid off
- having to lay off people
- making decisions that affect others’ lives
- carrying guilt, responsibility, and pressure
- rebuilding confidence after a mistake

This conversation goes beyond surface-level self-help and into self-leadership under pressure, exploring:

- how leaders rebuild self-worth after setbacks
- why humility and accountability strengthen leadership
- how to regulate emotions in high-stress moments
- how leaders reflect without becoming self-critical
- why failure is part of the leadership journey and not the end of it

If you are a leader navigating stress, uncertainty, or a professional setback, this episode offers a grounded and human perspective on how to rise stronger as a leader and as a person.

Michal Bardavid

Book: Becoming a Peacock: Strut Your Way into Self-Love
website: https://michalbardavid.com/