Most leaders don’t talk about their failures. But Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax has discovered learning, and sharing, the lessons of how he lost the family media dynasty can help others move past life’s most shattering setbacks. The toughest part of his crucible moment, he explains, was not the number of zeroes in the price tag of the loss. It was the emotional devastation of feeling he had let down his parents, his ancestors, and even God. Discover how he has moved past the pain to lead a life of significance … and how you can, too.
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Transcript
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You may have been through a crucible experience, a gut-wrenching, even humiliating experience. It may be a business or professional failure, or it may be a health or family challenge. Whatever it is, the course of your life has forever been changed. You have faced the fork in the road: whether to wallow in the pain of your crucible experience or to try to move beyond it. You have chosen to move ahead.
But how do you keep moving on after your crucible experience — growing, progressing even healing? It starts with reflecting on your crucible moment. Whether it was your fault or not, examine what happened. What are the lessons you can learn from it? Were you in the wrong position? Did you trust the wrong people? A crucible experience can also reveal something about your inherent wiring.
Coming out of a crucible experience, you need to understand your design. What are you good at? What are you not good at? Often our friends and family who know us well can give us helpful input. Once you understand your design, think about a vision, a calling that you are off-the-charts passionate about. It could come out of your crucible experience, perhaps something you don’t want anyone else to go through. Or it could be something you feel would be amazing if it existed. It is a vision anchored in your fundamental beliefs that you will do whatever it takes to make succeed. You even have a team around you of fellow travelers who are just as passionate about the vision as you are.
This type of vision, coming out of your crucible experience, that is in line with your design, anchored in your fundamental beliefs, which you and your team are passionate about, will have a much greater chance of succeeding. This vision, if it is a great vision, will help you and your team lead a life of significance, a life that is on purpose that helps others and, in some sense, makes the world a better place. Such a vision of significance will leave a legacy that your family and team will be proud of, and can often lead to some sense of healing — bringing purpose to the pain of your crucible experience.
This all sounds good. But is it as simple as it looks? In a word, no. As you get refined, get clearer on the lessons of your crucible experience, understand more how you are wired, and get clarity on your vision, you will find it is not a one-and-done event. It is a refining cycle that will likely take years. As you go through each refining cycle, which may be different jobs or career paths, you have the opportunity to learn more about yourself. You can learn more about the lessons from your crucible experience. You can learn more about your design. And your vision can be refined or even evolve — as can the exact form your life of significance will take.
So how does this refining cycle work in practice? Let me share the refining cycle I have been on.
Warwick’s Refining Cycle
In late August 1987, I launched an AUS $2.25B takeover of the 150-year-old Australian family business I grew up in. I had prepared my whole life to take a leading position within the family company, with an undergraduate degree from Oxford, working on Wall Street, and having my MBA from Harvard Business School. I had wanted to change management, see that the company was run along the ideals of the founder, and make our family business safe from corporate raiders. Despite bringing in new management that increased operating profits by 80 percent, the debt we needed to complete the takeover was so large that when Australia suffered a recession in late 1990, the company went bankrupt. This was my crucible experience. I felt like I had let my parents and family down. It was devastating emotionally and spiritually, as well as financially.
The first step in the refining cycle was to examine what happened and try to learn from the experience. I realized that I am a reflective adviser, not a take charge Rupert Murdoch-style leader. Running a large media company was a terrible fit for someone wired like me. The vision of restoring the company to the ideals of the founder and seeing that it was well run may have been a good vision, but it was not my vision. It was more my parents’ vision.
The first step professionally was to take a job at an aviation services company in Annapolis Md., where we live. I did financial and business analysis, and while I was not getting paid what my peers who had been at Harvard Business School were getting paid, I was happy for the work. I realized that I had an analytical ability that enabled me to perform the work well.
The next cycle began in 2003, when I began going down the track to become an executive coach. I felt that I had been playing small and not using all the gifts God had given me. I went to a woman who did mid-career assessments and was herself an executive coach. She said I had a good profile to become an executive coach. I found I loved asking questions and helping leaders bring their visions to reality. It was a good fit. I learned something else about how I was wired and what I loved doing.
Through coaching, often through the questions I asked, I found I had a leadership voice and a leadership perspective. I had not thought of myself as a leader after the disastrous takeover of the family business. Then in 2008, I gave a seven-minute talk at the non-denominational church we go to in Annapolis. The theme was about what I had gone through during the takeover, the mistakes I had made and what I learned. What amazed me was that in the weeks and months afterwards, people came up to me and said my talk had helped them. Yet I was the only one in the congregation who had been a former media mogul. How could they relate to my story? Somehow, they could.
This led me to realize that I could write a book about my story and the lessons I had learned from my mistakes that could help other leaders and other people. My confidence in the idea that I did have a perspective on leadership that could help leaders and people in general was growing. The 2008 talk in church and the resulting period when I started to write a book on my experiences and leadership perspective were key moments in my refining cycle. My vision had evolved and expanded to helping leaders become better leaders and learn from their mistakes.
As I was trying to get my book published, I came to realize that in order to do this, I needed a branding and marketing plan. This led me to a great branding and marketing team in Denver — SIGNAL.csk — and great public relations and communications advice through ROAR. The resulting brand and message is Crucible Leadership.
The vision has again evolved and grown to helping leaders at all levels get beyond their crucible experiences to enable them to lead lives of significance.
This is the latest refining cycle I am on. I now have a clear brand and message in Crucible Leadership, I write regular blogs, post on social media, have a video, and am in the process of launching a podcast, Beyond the Crucible.
A critical component to my vision evolving and growing, and even to understanding how I am wired, is the support that I have received along the way. This journey has been grounded in my faith that God loves me unconditionally as he does all of us, and the support of fellow people of faith. The support of my family, especially my wife, has been critical. Each step of the way professionally I have sought out help. When I was coaching, I had a mentor coach who helped guide me. With Crucible Leadership I have an amazing branding, marketing, public relations, and communications team with . They have helped me crystalize the vision of Crucible Leadership and have been with me each step of the way as we have made the vision become reality.
A vision does not come to reality without help, ideally from a team that is as passionate about the vision as I am. I am blessed to have such a team.
Each of the refining cycles I have been through, from the aftermath of losing the family business, to working for an aviation services company, to executive coaching, to writing a book after speaking in church, and now Crucible Leadership, have enabled me to learn more about myself and have clarified, crystalized, and even expanded the vision.
The key point is that the refining cycle is not a one-and-done process. We all wish we could do all this learning about ourselves and figure out a vision that we are passionate about in one long weekend. Well, that is not reality. It takes work and pain. It can take years. It takes being honest with yourself and allowing people to help you. It takes time, patience, and perseverance. But it is possible. As hard as it is, it is definitely mission possible.
Reflection
Where in the refining cycle are you?
What is the next step in your refining cycle of learning from your crucible experience?
Do you have the team you need to further refine and hone your vision and to help bring it to reality
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel and be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
A crucible is a cauldron where metals are thrown together and heated to very high temperatures. The metals combine to form an alloy, something that is different than it was before. A crucible experience is one that is life-altering. Who you are after your crucible experience is different than you were before. You are never the same.
A crucible experience can come in many forms:
Business Failure
Financial Failure
Health Challenge
Family Challenge
Abuse
Addiction
A crucible experience may or may not be your fault. Either way, there may be loss of self-esteem, loss of self-respect, and possibly even feelings of humiliation. You may feel marginalized and may even feel that no one could like or love you. You can feel incredibly angry at others, yourself, or even God. You often feel alone.
But you are not alone. In fact, Crucible Leadership recently surveyed more than 400 professionals, from CEOs to independent contractors, and found that nearly half had experienced something so traumatic or painful that it fundamentally changed their lives.
The commonality is that a crucible experience tends to be excruciating and devastating. The pain can last years, even a lifetime.
Three women who have overcome very different crucible experiences come to mind. These are women from different backgrounds with different personalities. But what they share is courage and a determination to not be defined by their crucible experiences.
Mary Kay Ash – The Cosmetics Trailblazer
Mary Kay Ash founded Mary Kay Inc. in the early 1960s to sell cosmetics through direct selling. As of 2018, Mary Kay Inc. generates $3.25B in revenue in more than 35 markets worldwide and is the sixth-largest network marketing company. The mission of Mary Kay Inc. is “enriching the lives of women and their families around the world.”
But Mary Kay’s company grew from a crucible experience. Mary Kay Ash had been in the direct selling business for 25 years. She was very good at making sales of in-home products. By 1963, she got tired of seeing yet another man that she trained get promoted above her and earn a much higher salary. Mary Kay sat at her kitchen table and drew up two lists. One was of the good things she had seen in companies. The other was of the things that she thought could be improved. When she looked over the lists, Mary Kay knew she had created a marketing plan for her dream company. So, in 1963, with $5,000 of savings at age 45, she launched Mary Kay Inc. with her first store in Dallas.
One of the keys to Mary Kay Inc.’s success is the strong vision of the founder. Mary Kay Ash launched Mary Kay Inc. to help women achieve their potential and bring their dreams to life. She founded the company based on the Golden Rule, treating others as you would want to be treated. Mary Kay’s principles were placing faith first, family second, career third. Mary Kay Inc. was a company “with heart,” as she would say. Mary Kay said, “Individuals sometimes feel insignificant and doubt they can really make a difference in the world. Well, believe me, one person can.” Mary Kay established the Mary Kay Charitable Foundation, which supports cancer research and efforts to end domestic violence.
Bethany Hamilton – The Inspirational Surfer
Bethany Hamilton is a champion surfer. She has had two movies made about her life, Soul Surfer in 2011 and a documentary Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable in 2018. From the youngest age growing up in Hawaii, Bethany surfed and dreamed of being a champion. At 13, her life changed. The morning of Halloween in 2003, Bethany went to surf with family and friends on Tunnels Beach in Kauai, the Hawaiian Island where her family lived. She was attacked by a 14-foot tiger shark, which severed her left arm just below the shoulder.
Bethany had been a rising surf star and she was determined to not let her crucible experience stop her. One month after the attack, she returned to surfing and, within two years, she had won her first national surfing title. The key to Bethany overcoming such a horrific life-altering event was her faith and her indomitable courage. “I know life can be hard, but I’ve learned that we can rise above even the biggest challenges and fears,” she has said. No matter what you’ve come from or what you’re facing, you are loved by God, and you can overcome.”
Remarkably, Bethany sees the shark attack as a blessing. She says, “I definitely would allow the shark attack to happen. The thing for me is I know that God allowed it to happen because of all the good stuff that has come from this terrible experience. I’m still surfing, loving life, and being able to reach people a lot more than I would have probably with two arms.”
Bethany continues to give back through her movies and the Friends of Bethany Foundation. The Foundation says, “We believe there is a longing within every individual to overcome the trials, pains, and difficulties of life.” The Foundation’s most renowned program is called Beautifully Flawed, a retreat for young amputee women ages 14-26.
J.K. Rowling – The Best Selling Author
J.K. Rowling is the best-selling, world-famous author of the Harry Potter books and movies. J.K. Rowling, whose first name is Joanne, has sold more than 450 million copies of her seven-book series. In 2004, Forbes named Rowling as the first person to become a US dollar billionaire by writing books. Rowling has a charitable trust, The Volant Charitable Trust, which supports Scottish charities (where she now lives) to help alleviate social deprivation, as well as women, children, and young people at risk.
But Joanne Rowling’s life has not been easy and took a turn for the worse beginning in 1992, two years after she conceived the idea for Harry Potter. Joanne’s mother died after battling multiple sclerosis since Joanne was a teenager. She had a difficult divorce from her first husband, and was living in poverty on welfare in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her relationship with her father was strained, she had a young daughter to support and had been diagnosed with depression, being on the verge of suicide.
Joanne has said that she was “as poor at it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless… I think it is fair to say that by any conventional measure… I had failed on an epic scale… The fears that my parents had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.”
But Joanne Rowling refused to give up or give in. She wrote her first iconic novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in cafes in Edinburgh while walking her young daughter in hopes her daughter would go to sleep and Joanne could write. Joanne submitted the manuscript for her Harry Potter book to twelve publishing houses who all rejected it. The thirteenth publisher, Bloomsbury in London said yes, and the rest is history.
Joanne Rowling has said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” In a 2008 Harvard Commencement Address, titled “Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination” she said that, “Failure was stripping away of the inessential.” She said that she stopped pretending to be anything other than what she was and began to direct all her energy to finishing the Harry Potter book. She said that, “Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.”
When asked how she pushed through the book rejections and all that she had endured, Joanne Rowling said, “I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try.” She has said, “Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way.”
These three remarkable women give us clues to how to come back from a devastating crucible experience. No matter how painful or life-altering, or in some cases humiliating, those experiences were, these women refused to give up. They used their pain as motivation to rise up. The seeds of their purpose — their mission in life — were found in the excruciating life-altering pain of their crucible experiences.
Reflection
Amidst the pain of your crucible experience, what is this revealing about the essential core of who you are?
What mission coming out of the devastation of your crucible experience may be taking shape that will chart your purpose in life?
Why does the world need to hear about and benefit from your mission?
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel and be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
‘Beyond the Crucible’ host Warwick Fairfax shares the lessons he learned from losing a $2.25 billion bid to take over the 150-year-old family media dynasty he had be groomed to run since birth. From that “crucible moment,” he discovered a new vision for his life, one rooted in helping others overcome painful setbacks in their lives. Sharing the stories of men and women who have bounced back from devastating hardship and failure to live a life of significance is a key focus of ‘Beyond the Crucible.” Other episodes will explore key facets of the Crucible Leadership model, including understanding how you’re wired, crafting a vision out of your gifts and passions and how to bring that vision to reality. Be sure to click ‘Subscribe’ on your podcast app!
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel and be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
