Dr. Edmund J. Freedberg
Ed Freedberg, psychologist, received his Honors B.A. from the University of Toronto, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Psychology from York University. Soon after receiving his doctorate, he became Director of Ontario's Addiction Research Foundation's Developmental Treatment and Research Centre for Employed Problem Drinkers. Here he developed an intensive and comprehensive treatment program dealing with many critical life areas, including alcohol addiction, social and work performance issues, and published a number of scientific papers relating to the structure and efficacy of the program.
It was when he began working in sports, his first assignment being with the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL, that he became strongly interested in performance and specifically in the frequent disconnect between what people are capable of and what they actually produce. He watched individual athletes fall into a slump in spite of their obvious talent, watched players and teams not performing to their potential for a period, a game, sometimes for weeks, and even for months.
Ed was also working with industry, specifically looking at producers in financial sales who had demonstrated dramatic past success, but whose productivity had virtually vanished. Their potential had somehow become frozen – an occupational slump, not reflecting an absence of ability, but a deficiency in being able to tap into that ability. Others, while surviving, were not coming close to experiencing their desired degree of success, in spite of the talent and knowledge to do so.
Both his experience working with athletes and with industry highlighted what Ed felt was performance's missing link – a systematic way of strengthening people's ability to free their potential, to better turn what it is they know and want and can do into the performance they actually accomplish. He developed "Activation: A Personal Performance Management System," a process designed to fill the vacuum, and has applied these ideas both to the sports world and industry.
In sports, clients include the Hartford Whalers, Philadelphia Flyers, and Florida Panthers of the NHL and the Canadian Men's National Basketball Team, as well as individual athletes. Ed was also consulted with regard to including performance support characteristics into the design of the Blue Jays players' area at Toronto's Skydome.
In the industrial world, occupational clients include:
- BMO Nesbitt Burns
- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
- Clarica Life Insurance Company
- DuPont Research & Development Business Canada
- Eastman Kodak
- Merck Frosst
- Northwestern Mutual
- Ohio National Financial Services
- Pan American Life
- Royal Bank of Canada
- Scotiabank
Ed has written a book entitled "Activation: The Core Competency", published by HarperCollins Business. Additional professional activities include speaking about the Activation of Potential to associations and organizations in the occupational world, as well as consulting with CEOs, executives, and Executive Leadership Teams with regard to enhancing the performance of their organizations.
