Understanding what science has to say about learning the lessons of a crucible experience — from reframing what happened to embracing forgiveness — can be an overlooked key to moving past the pain and toward healing and significance.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome, everyone to Beyond The Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the communication’s director for Crucible Leadership and the cohost of this podcast. And you have clicked play on, we hope you’ve clicked subscribe too, a podcast that deals in a subject that’s extremely important. And that is crucible experiences. Those moments in life that are painful, those moments in life that can be traumatic, failures and setbacks, traumas and tragedies. Those things that can knock you off the trajectory your life was on.
Gary S:
And the reason that we talk about those things, the reason that we interview guests, who either have had those experiences, or can give us a perspective on how to bounce back from those experiences, is so that we can point toward what Crucible Leadership calls a life of significance. That’s the end goal here, of moving beyond your crucible to finding, pursuing a life of significance. And with me, as always, if he wasn’t here, it wouldn’t be called Beyond The Crucible, is Warwick Fairfax. The host of the program and the founder of Crucible Leadership. Warwick, welcome.
Warwick F:
Great to be here, Gary.
Gary S:
So today we have, what’s going to be a really exciting interview. For listeners who’ve been with us for a while, you know that a lot of the things that we talk about, a lot of the crucible experiences and the tips for bouncing back from them, are experientially based. But we’ve got a guest today, who has a more scientific approach to how we get through that. And that guest is Dr. Suzy Green, a clinical and coaching psychologist and founder and CEO of The Positivity Institute. A positively deviant organization, dedicated to the research and application of positive psychology for life, school, and work.
Gary S:
Suzy lectured on applied positive psychology as a senior adjunct lecturer in the coaching psychology unit at the University of Sydney, that’s in Australia, for 10 years. And is honorary vice president of the International Society For Coaching Psychology. Suzy also currently holds, this is a long list and an impressive list, honorary academic positions at The Positive Psychology Center, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, The Wellbeing Institute, Cambridge University, and I got to hear more about this one, The Black Dog Institute. Suzy is also an ambassador for the Starlight Children’s Foundation. And she is one of two people with really great accents on this show, the other one is Warwick. Take it away Warwick.
Warwick F:
Well, Suzy, it is wonderful to have you and just love the whole concept of Positivity Institute and post-traumatic growth, which we’ll get into. When I looked at your website and saw that your company’s based in Double Bay, Australia. For those who aren’t from Australia or from Sydney, Double Bay is a suburb of Sydney and it’s the same suburb where I grew up. So it was a kind of wild we were chatting off air about one of your sons went to the same high school I did, so incredibly small world. But again, Suzy, wonderful to have you. So before we get into just the Positivity Institute and post-traumatic growth, tell us a bit about who you are and your story and what led you to get into psychology, in particular, the positive psychology aspect of that.
Suzy G:
Yeah, well firstly, thank you so much, Warwick and Gary for having me as a guest on the show today. It’s been a long journey as I guess most people’s journeys and stories are. But to make it a little bit shorter, I guess, I left school when I was 16 and no one in my family had gone to university, there was no expectations. It was get married and have children. And I actually married my childhood sweetheart from school and he had done quite well, had studied medicine and had decided to study psychiatry. And so at the time I was working in administration, secretarial work in my early 20s and he used to come home and tell me these incredible stories about patients. And I just became completely intrigued and I never thought that I would go to university.
Suzy G:
But it was thankfully, and you’ll often hear, and I’m sure you do in these stories, it’s somebody that sees some strengths in you and encourages you to go forward. So we’re divorced now, but I have a lot to thank him for. And he encouraged me to apply to attend university, which I did. I think it took me about 14 years and two children. And I ended up with a doctorate in clinical psychology. But one little, it wasn’t quite a crucible experience, but perhaps one of more of those aha moments, I remember sitting in the lecture theater at the University of Wollongong. My very first lecture, absolutely petrified thinking, “What am I doing here? Everyone’s so much smarter than I am.”
Suzy G:
And the lecturer started by saying, “There’s about 100 of you here today. There’ll only be 12 of you, possibly that make it through to the very end with doctorates.” And I had no reason to believe that it was going to be me, but something went click and I just knew. I just knew it was going to be me. And look, I studied other subjects. I did history and literature and I did okay, but I just excelled in psychology. I think I had the opportunity to talk to my husband when I came home in the evenings at night.
Suzy G:
And then I started working at a psychiatric clinic, again, through connections through my husband or ex husband as it turned out to be. And then I’ve been on this incredible journey over the last 20 years and I’ve sort of grown up with this field of positive psychology. So it’s also been a matter for me, of being in the right place at the right time. And I actually do believe that this is what I’m meant to be doing. And there’s some wonderful research in positive psychology around callings. I do feel like this is my calling and what I’m meant to be doing. And mini crucible experiences I’ve had, I wouldn’t say I’ve had big ones, like some of your guests, but the mini ones have certainly informed who I am, and what I’m doing, and where I’m going.
Warwick F:
It’s sort of interesting when we look back at how we’ve got to where we’ve got. It’s often as you look back, again, I’m a person of faith. So you think, “Gosh, there was sort of a line of breadcrumbs or somehow that was laid, that if certain events hadn’t happened, who knows?” And we never know the what ifs because it’s unknowable. But like with your first husband and maybe in the long term, it didn’t work out. But the fact that he was in medicine and was exposing you to certain areas. If you had married, I don’t know, an accountant or somebody different, I mean, who knows, right? I mean, it’s like you can’t get excited about something that you’ve never heard of or haven’t experienced. I mean-
Suzy G:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
But somehow that happened. And what was it about psychology that really intrigued you, that sort of called out to you? It’s almost like you hear a tune and it’s like, “This is my tune.” What about it just led you down that road?
Suzy G:
And you know, I didn’t really understand that for a long time. But I think more recently, as I’ve become familiar with character strengths and virtues, and I have my strengths up behind me on the wall here, and there’s a whole body of research around that. One of my top strengths, two of my top strengths, so we often talk about our top five character strengths. These are morally valued strengths. One is curiosity. Sometimes my partner will tell me I overplay that and I ask too many questions that might become nosiness. So curiosity and I have love of learning. And so those two strengths combined, once I guess I found a passion as well. And I mean, most people find psychology interesting. Whether you go on to become a psychologist or not. And in fact, I saw some research showing it’s, I think, one of the top subjects that’s studied as an undergrad, regardless of what professional career you go into.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think maybe there’s this natural curiosity of how are people wired? How do they think? What makes them tick? And then obviously, in your case, how can I make a positive contribution in the field? Not just intellectually, but in a way that helps people. So there’s something about that, that really drew you and just one point I also want to clarify for listeners in the US. In the US, an enormous, well, a significant proportion of people go to college. It’s not that way in Australia. At least not when we were growing up. I mean, obviously I come from a family where the expectation of going to university was pretty clear, everybody did. And it wasn’t just go to university. It was good to Oxford. So that’s where I went, my dad went, my grandfather went, so there was clear-
Suzy G:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
But for most Australians, that didn’t grow up the way I did, that was a big thing. It wasn’t like, of course you should go to college. It’s like, well, why? You got to be practical. So that was a big decision, a big choice for you. And also at a time where, I don’t know if women weren’t as encouraged as much to do that as boys, so again, I’m a reflective person. So I’m always curious about how you got to where you got to. So I know psychology is a big field and you know much more about it than I do. But positive psychology, I had not really heard of that. I mean, is that a fairly new field, at least? I mean, how long has psychology been around, at least as an intellectual discipline? Would you say, is it like-
Suzy G:
Yes, around 1900. William James, the founding father of modern day psychology. Actually, I visited Harvard, not last year, the year before. So, that was sort of where it was born. And I went to the original building, I wasn’t there very long. But it was such a, it was wonderful to go and visit. So William James, 1900. And if you look back, actually, anytime I go and do some research on a different area of psychology that I haven’t looked at for a while, I’ll generally find, it leads me back to William James. So he was such a thought leader. He had something to say on every topic that we’re talking about now.
Suzy G:
And then into, jumping ahead a little bit, into the ’50s and ’60s, there was the movement, humanistic psychology was born. And it was looking at, I guess, human potential. And there were people like Abraham Maslow, who many of us now are familiar with the term self-actualization. Carl Rogers, another incredible psychologist. And there were a group of these people, mainly in the US, I would say. And then what happened was, cognitive psychology came in the ’60s and ’70s. People like Beck, Aaron Beck and humanistic psychology was sort of forgotten about for a little while because there wasn’t enough rigorous science to really understand what does it make for us to be fully functioning individuals.
Suzy G:
We couldn’t really fully scientifically investigate that. And then what happened, moving on from, I guess, the cognitive movement, cognitive behavioral movement, was Professor Martin Seligman, who was very well known in the US, from University of Pennsylvania. Doing wonderful work on pessimism. He published that wonderful book, Learned Optimism, which many people will be familiar with. And he, I guess, I don’t really know the full story, but there is some story that his daughter commented that he was always in a grumpy mood.
Suzy G:
And he had a bit of an epiphany. He then founded this field of positive psychology, which the term itself had actually been coined by Abraham Maslow in the ’50s. But Marty Seligman brought it to life when he became the president of the American Psychological Association in 1998. I was doing my honors year in psychology at that time. And he, in his presidential speech said, “The time has come for psychology to focus on what’s right with people and what’s right with the world, rather than what’s wrong with them.”
Suzy G:
Because since the second world war in particular, there’d been a lot of investment, which was required for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression from the second world war. And so Marty Seligman really started to flip psychology on its head again, in his presidential year and founded this field, which is now 20 years old. But to be honest, it’s still not mainstream. I mean, clinical psychology, which is my background, still probably has the foothold in psychology. And it’s needed when we look at the statistics of people suffering with mental illness.
Suzy G:
But positive psychology has brought a breath of fresh air to psychology for people like me, that when I was doing my clinical training, I remember getting in trouble from my supervisor saying, “There’s too much laughter coming from the clinical room, Suzy.” And look, so I realized fairly quickly that when I worked in a psychiatric clinic for a number of years, it wasn’t for me. We do need people to do that sort of work, but it’s very hard work. And again, I think through a series of fortunate events, I’ve been blessed to be able to do this. I would describe it as much more proactive work. So the space we work in is helping people proactively learn the skills of wellbeing, resilience, optimal human functioning, so they can live their best lives.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I almost think of just like traditional medicine. Is it valuable to know how to cure cancer and heart attacks? Yes. I mean, if you have cancer or heart attacks, you want that to be the best medicine, the best technology. But on the other hand, are there things that we can proactively do with diet, exercise, mental, spiritual disciplines that are shown to have positive health benefits? Well, yes. So why wouldn’t you want some prevention, right? Because if you’re fit and healthy doesn’t mean you won’t get sick. But maybe if you eat the right diet, the chances of getting diabetes is not eliminated, but it’s significantly lower.
Warwick F:
And so it’s like why wouldn’t, on a psychological basis, yes, it’s important to understand depression and schizophrenia and all sorts of mental disorders and mental challenges. But why wouldn’t you want to understand what are the things that can help keep us psychologically healthy? And I wouldn’t say prevention, but somewhat ameliorating factors. I mean, it seems logical. Like you wouldn’t hear people in medicine saying, “Well, why are you talking about health and helping people be healthy, and fitter, and losing weight? Well, that’s stupid. We should just focus on cancer and heart attacks.” You wouldn’t have that discussion, right?
Suzy G:
No, absolutely not.
Warwick F:
But so it seems like in the world of psychology, there’s still a little bit of that discussion. Is that kind of what you find still?
Suzy G:
Yeah, it’s starting to change. And I’ve been really fortunate to have been involved with the field of positive education, which actually emerged in Australia when Geelong Grammar brought Marty Seligman and his team of academics from UPenn out. And trained all of the staff, nine days of positive psychology. This was in 2008. I worked at the second school, which was Knox Grammar at the time. And now for the last 10 years, I’ve worked with numerous schools across Australia. And our approach is, we work primarily with the teachers directly. But it’s about supporting the teachers to teach the children the skills of resilience and wellbeing, as a preventative approach for mental illness. But also to improve wellbeing and improve their academic performance as well, because there’s some great and growing research showing, which we all intuitively know, that when you’re well, you do well.
Warwick F:
Well, right and when you’re getting poor grades, there’s usually some reason whether it’s a family or poor self image. And yeah, exactly. So one of the things that really intrigued me about this whole discussion of positive psychology is with Crucible Leadership, it’s not grounded in science. It’s really grounded in stories, anecdotes, if you will. In part my own story of, the Australian listeners will know and past podcasts listeners will know, of just growing up in a 150 year old family media business, which amongst other things, had The Sydney Morning Herald in Sydney and radio, TV, a bunch of things. And it kind of went under on my watch. And so that was obviously a lot for me to grapple with and get over.
Warwick F:
And so obviously, in my own life I have some thoughts, about at least what worked for me, which mightn’t work for everybody else. But certain things. And then just chatting to other folks who have been through all sorts of different crucibles. I’m always fascinated by people who’ve gone through a crucible experience, which to me, is a transformational experience in which who you are afterward is significantly different than who you were before. And it’s typically it could be abuse, it could be losing a business, it could be getting fired, a death of a loved one, all sorts of things that we talk about crucible experiences. And I’m fascinated by the people that find a way to bounce back. Yes, they are always scars, but how do you bounce back?
Warwick F:
And there are phrases like pain for a purpose or all sorts of different ways that people have of coping with it. But I’m fascinated by, you’re actually talking about a similar thing, but you’re talking about it from a scientific basis. That’s what’s really exciting to me. So you’ve got a number of phrases you’ve mentioned, like post-traumatic growth, which is a fascinating discussion. I think on your own website, Positivity Institute, it’s creating a flourishing world, something like that, which I love that phrase. I mean, wow. So talk about, what are some of the elements that irrespective of the crucible or the trauma, that lead some people to growth in a way that maybe wouldn’t have been possible without it? What are some of those elements that you’ve discovered?
Suzy G:
Yeah, I mean, it’s really interesting and I’m very thankful that I had the opportunity to work clinically in my early career and particularly down in the area that I worked, which was in Wollongong in southern side of Sydney, because I know when I moved to Sydney and started work in the CBD, I didn’t see anywhere, I guess, the range or the severity of psychiatric and psychological disorders that I saw.
Warwick F:
That was, that was central business district for-
Suzy G:
Yeah, sorry, sorry.
Warwick F:
For the listeners-
Gary S:
Yes, for people like me, that was… thank you.
Warwick F:
Basically, downtown Sydney basically.
Suzy G:
Downtown Sydney, yeah. So I guess, yeah and I was really thrown in the deep end. I worked in a psychiatric clinic. I pretty much heard every horrendous, traumatic story that I’ve ever heard in my whole life. There’s nothing, I usually say now, that I haven’t really heard. And I’m really thankful for that experience because firstly, it made me realize what a blessed and privileged life I really did lead. I had two loving parents, who pretty much have given me everything my whole life to enable me to do what I can. And they didn’t have a lot, to be honest, but they gave me everything. So hearing those stories, helping people make sense out of often very senseless things, which I’m sure you’ve heard, things that you could never have imagined would happen in your life. And often we talk about this when we’re running resilience type training, which I might add is very popular right now as well, is that-
Warwick F:
I can imagine.
Suzy G:
Exactly, is that sometimes you can see, whether you call them the curve ball, you can see the adversity coming. So I have two elderly parents, 93 at the moment, and I’m really grateful for every moment that I have with them now. I know that we’re talking about people living to a hundred, but I know that I’ve got limited time left with them. I can see that regardless of how skilled I am as a psychologist, that I’m going to be challenged by the loss of my parents, who I’ve had a very close relationship with. I am already psychologically preparing myself for that. But there are situations that come out of left field, which again, I have only had some minor ones compared to some of the ones that I’m sure your guests have had, that have absolutely shock you or break you to the core in a sense.
Suzy G:
And so I’ve had the privilege of working with people like that. And I guess for me, it firmed up two things. One is that you can recover and you can bounce back. And in fact, when it comes to this growing area of post-traumatic growth, they talk more about bouncing forward. So you’re not just getting back to where you were, you’re actually stronger, faster than you were before. And I guess also, the other thing that occurred for me at the time was, my children were in primary school at the time. And I thought, why aren’t my children learning these skills at school?
Suzy G:
These are life skills, they’re skills I’m learning as I’m training to be a psychologist, they’re skills I’m teaching people after the curve balls hit them. But why on earth aren’t we teaching these skills at school? And that’s what’s starting to happen now. Not in all schools I might add, but it is starting to happen because I believe that we can, and we should be teaching these skills proactively. They may not prevent every episode of mental illness, but they certainly might equip us to perhaps even proactively take on challenges rather than waiting for the crucible experiences to occur. And now I believe that I think part of personal growth and self-actualization, there’s a good chance, it does require those crucible experiences.
Suzy G:
But I think we could possibly complement that with proactively seeking out growth opportunities for ourselves, which most people like to stay in their comfort zones. They don’t tend to like to sit with the discomfort that accompanies moving out of our comfort zones. So I think for me, I’ve been really interested in this and I would love to hear your thoughts on this too, with having the need for these crucible, character building experiences versus how do we also proactively teach our children to stretch themselves and put themselves in perhaps not traumatic experiences, but growth experiences?
Warwick F:
Right, I mean, where it’s some risk.
Suzy G:
Yes.
Warwick F:
You enter into a school prize or you go for an athletic event or there’s a ballet recital, or you want to be in a play, whatever it is, there’s the risk of rejection. There’s a risk of somebody saying, “You’re really actually pretty awful. And I can’t believe you actually tried out for this part.” I mean, really-
Suzy G:
That’s right, which doesn’t tend to happen these days very often at school, unfortunately.
Warwick F:
No, but yeah, I mean, I’m somebody that loves history and you’d be hard pressed to think of a great leader that didn’t become who they were because of trauma. I mean, I think of one example in America, of Franklin Roosevelt. He was this happy go lucky, rich kid basically, which I wasn’t happy go lucky, but I could identify with the rich kid part. When he was growing up, man about town, good looking guy, candidate for vice president in I think 1922 election. And then kind of lo and behold in the ’20s, he suffered polio, which as an adult, was very rare. But it really at the time was a death sentence, at least politically he was considered, his mom said, “You should just stay home,” because it was almost like somehow you were blamed for it.
Warwick F:
But somehow between his wife and one of his close advisors, they got him back on his feet. So the person he became as president during the midst of the depression and encouraging people, the only thing to fear is fear itself. If some like rich kid in the middle of the depression, who could relate to that. But somebody, even though he didn’t talk about it, you could see him trying to get up to the podium to speak, with his boys is helping him. And he’s in great pain, as he’s actually trying to shuffle along in these hideous metal braces on his legs. The person he became would not have been possible without that crucible experience. So I mean, nobody would wish to have polio, but he became the person he was.
Warwick F:
I think of one other story that I personally can’t understand from a psychological perspective, because it makes no sense. There’s a woman by the name of Joni Eareckson Tada, who’s somebody in the faith realm, she had a radio show that’s listened to by, I don’t know, maybe millions. I mean, it’s very big. And she suffered a accident while diving, when she was a teenager. She’s athletic, very good on horses and she became a quadriplegic and that was probably maybe 40, 50 years ago, a very long time ago. And she’s had a huge impact on people with disabilities and wheelchairs. And she says this thing that I think is, it’s almost hideous. But she calls her wheelchair a passport to joy.
Suzy G:
Wow.
Warwick F:
Now, I don’t know what that means. I’m not saying I agree with that in any way, shape, or form. To me, that’s like wrong. But somehow she says, you’d have to understand the full context of that because that sounds repugnant. But I think what she’s getting at is the person she became through that horrendous, life altering accident was different than who she was before. I think that’s what maybe an inartful way or a way that’s at least grating-
Suzy G:
Exactly, it’s a major-
Warwick F:
Is that what you’ve seen? I know these are-
Suzy G:
Absolutely. I mean, for some people it might initially be a coping mechanism to reframe. And in fact, part of the psychological treatment is in part a reframe. We call it cognitive reframing, cognitive restructuring. So looking at a situation differently and I mean, that’s an amazing reframe to view it that way. And in fact, that’s what Seligman’s work around learned optimism draws on heavily. He has a very simple tool actually, that people might be interested in, called the ABCDE technique. So A is the adversity. So what is it that’s happened to you? B is the belief. Now that’s the belief that you hold, your perspective on that situation, which then leads to C, which is the consequence.
Suzy G:
So due to your beliefs on the situation, you can lead to a variety of emotional and behavioral consequences and Warwick, in 2008, I was working in Sydney through the GFC 2008, 2009. And I had a clinical practice and I had a executive coaching practice. I was just transitioning at the time and so I saw this in real life. I had people that were coming to me for exactly the same adversity, loss of job out of the blue. And these were people, I had one man say to me, “If you told me I’d be sitting in this chair a year ago, I would’ve laughed at you.” Very high performer in his role, loss of job. And so some people came for clinical treatment because they had beliefs of, “This is it, I’ll never get another job. I can’t put my kids through school.”
Suzy G:
A whole range of these types of beliefs, which then led to depressed mood, behavioral consequences in terms of not looking for another job even, “They don’t employ old people.” I heard that said so many times versus people that came to the exec coaching, which had the same situation, but had a belief, “Okay, I didn’t really expect this, but it might be just the opportunity to explore other areas of interests that I have. It might be an opportunity to change careers. So I could see it in real time, same situation, different perspective. And which they had, in a sense, had done by themselves before they’d even come to see me. But yeah, that reframe, the way that you look at a situation, has been found to have a significant impact on how you feel and how you do.
Gary S:
And this brings up an interesting point in an article that you sent us, Suzy, from the Journal of Loss and Trauma. And we talked at the outset about the scientific underpinnings of what Suzy does as compared to the experiential things that Warwick does, through Crucible Leadership. And the summary of this study on post-traumatic growth really gets to the point that you’re talking about, about reframing what happened and seeing it as an opportunity to move ahead. I’m just going to read a couple of lines from it.
Gary S:
“It would behoove humanitarian interventions to abandon erroneous assumptions and consider the other side of the coin in order to guard against undue bias toward making drama out of the trauma, however ‘justified’ it might be. It is the duty of applied anthropologists, psychologists, and others to venture beyond the fence of their own disciplines and acquire new skills to enable them to engage in interdisciplinary inquiry into the human spirit, which often rises above the trauma of war and other disasters. Understanding resilience, recovery, and post-traumatic growth, and transformation will help illuminate rather than eclipse paths leading to light at the end of the tunnel for disaster stricken individuals and their communities.” That right there is science unpacking what Warwick has talked about since founding Crucible Leadership and what you just talked about a few minutes ago.
Suzy G:
Exactly, and look, it is an emerging field and we do need more research on it. But all of us know people that have suffered adversity. And in fact, the early studies on resilience looked at children that were in adverse situations, that maybe twin studies, where one actually develop a psychiatric disorder and the other one’s flourished. And trying to understand what is it about those children or those qualities that allow them to do that. But yeah, the area is very, very interesting and it also talks about a shattering of our fundamental beliefs or schemas.
Suzy G:
And that’s often, it’s like what we call it in Australia, a what the moment, like what just happened? And then it does. And look, in many cases, particularly with trauma, as you would know, it does require professional assistance to work with a professional, to work through that process. Part of a post-traumatic stress disorder is because brain is like a filing system. It likes to be able to neatly file things, when life happens, it’s like, “Well, that fits here and that fits here.”
Suzy G:
And when something that comes out of left field, that doesn’t fit anywhere, the brain keeps bringing it up. It keeps re-emerging, which is why you have nightmares and dreams about it because the brain’s trying to file it. And so part of the healing process is often with, whether it’s a psychiatrist or a psychologist, trying to create a narrative around what happened and some meaning making through it. And then I guess a creation of a new, transformed self and what you’re going to do with that experience going forward.
Warwick F:
I mean, I think that’s so important. I think it’s changing a bit, but there used to be a case where unless you got to be locked up somewhere, you should never see a psychologist or a psychiatrist. There was the stigma about it. But it’s like with anything else, if you had some health issue, cancer of some description, you’d go to a doctor to seek help. Well, same with psychologists or psychiatrists. I think it’s very important, because for me at least, understanding kind of what I went through and why I was feeling what I was feeling, was very helpful. And maybe some of the things I was exposed to growing up, some of which were positive and some of which, like all of us, weren’t such positive influences. We all have our scars.
Warwick F:
So yeah, I mean, it’s hard to understand how some people bounce back and others don’t. I mean, obviously that’s what you study. I mean, it’s that whole thing with kids, nature or nurture. Anybody that’s had kids know they come out of the box a certain way. They’re influenced by us, and by life, and community, but some come out of the box, they’re athletes, or they’re scientists, or they’re artists. And I have no idea whether that’s true psychologically in terms of a tendency towards optimism, whether that’s learned, choice, nature, or all of the above. I mean, it’s probably a… Do you have any feeling on that? What mix is it? Is it a mix?
Suzy G:
Yeah, it is, definitely. And the area that I’ve been looking at, I guess more intensely over the last probably eight years, is called mental toughness. And it is actually a scientific construct. So it’s just a construct, a topic that’s been studied rigorously in science, primarily in the UK. And it’s being looked at in education as well. It comes off the back of some earlier research on cognitive hardiness and there was some great research done by Kobasa and Maddi and I think looking in the military as well.
Suzy G:
And so they have found that there is a genetic component and that some people are just born a bit tougher, if you like, than others. And some of the great insights that we have when we’re running this program, in leadership programs, is that for those that are scoring higher and you can actually take an assessment as well. For those that are scoring higher on the mental toughness assessment, they often don’t have patience or tolerance for others that aren’t like them.
Warwick F:
Interesting.
Suzy G:
So yeah, I have a partner who’s ex military, and I know in the early stages, we spoke a lot about, that not everybody’s like that. In fact, you’re possibly an outlier when it comes to this. And so, it often does bring great insight to people when they realize that no, not everyone is like that. Not everyone can just move on and build a bridge and get over things. In fact, the research says the majority of people aren’t like that. But the good news is, that we can learn some skills to cope a lot better with the dramas and the traumas that come along.
Warwick F:
That is the wonderful, maybe gift of crucible experience, it does teach you a bit of humility. I mean, certainly for me, humility has always been one of my highest values, even before the whole takeover thing. But yeah, I mean, when you lose a 2 billion plus business and if you Google me, that Wikipedia entry is still not favorable and probably never will. I often say you don’t want your self worth defined by Google or Wikipedia, at least not-
Suzy G:
No way.
Warwick F:
But one of the things I’d be curious is, I mean, one of the things I’ve viewed from my world at Crucible Leadership is, to a certain degree, you go through trauma, you can’t always control what happened. And yes, it could take years to get over and there’s counseling. And sometimes you could say, I’m going to get over it tomorrow when it could take 10, 20, it took me a decade or more to really begin to get beyond. But the word comes to mind is sort of choice. Am I going to try and deal with it and move forward? And that could be seeking counseling, and that could be saying, “Okay, what are the positive things I can learn from it?” Like in my case, not all of it was my fault.
Warwick F:
A lot of it was my fault. Okay, how do I accept ownership of that and blame, if you will, and then move on and forgive myself? A lot of thoughts going through my head. One is choice and the other word is forgiveness. Forgiving yourself, forgiving others. Like you think of abuse victims, is the classic case of how can you forgive the unforgivable? And from my perspective, not having gone through that, it’s like well, if you don’t, it holds you back again. Again, I’m not a psychologist, but it’s like you’re worth forgiving, even if they’re not. I guess I asked about three different questions in one. But basically, really the core one is choice and do you feel like there’s some degree of choice about how you deal with it, and one is positive, the other one leads to a not so positive path?
Suzy G:
Yeah and I think one of the major components of developing mental toughness or resilience is around our mindset. But the thing is, Warwick, it sounds really simple. Like I’ll just think differently, just change your thinking. But it’s actually really difficult to do. And nobody has got the silver bullet around how to change those neural pathways a lot quicker, because they’re well-worn pathways, which have often been there from our early childhood, adolescence. And the longer they go on, the stronger they are.
Suzy G:
So I mean, sometimes it is through these crucible experiences, that there has to be a rewiring and we have to start or we start seeing ourselves in situations differently. But yeah, so a large part of it is through our mindset. Now for some people, that’s relatively easy to do. And in fact, a lot of the work we do in the corporate sector, we find some people do it and they don’t even realize that it’s a skill. And then you have other people in the same team, where it’s like an aha moment, that they realize that they don’t have to be a victim to their thinking.
Suzy G:
That thoughts are not necessarily facts and that you can learn to be an observer and you can choose to think differently. But again, I think it depends on your environment. There’s a lot around who’s in your family, the messages you’ve been given as well. And so some people, a lot of people still, I guess, would think that they can’t change their thinking, which is why I’m going to use this opportunity to encourage people, why we need to learn it at school, because we may not be learning it at home as well. So I think yes, absolutely choice. But sometimes I think, sometimes we can judge people so harshly that they haven’t chosen to think differently or chosen to move on as well.
Warwick F:
Yep, that’s so true. I mean, you can never judge somebody, especially if those are shoes you’ve never walked in, circumstances you’ve never been through. But yeah. I mean, I think you mentioned a number of things there and in your writings about community mentorship. I know in my case, I’m blessed to have a amazing wife, I have three kids in their 20s. And yeah, I had some mixed messages growing up about my value or not value. But certainly from my own family, there’s always been one message, it’s unconditional love, which again, I’m not a psychologist. But you give somebody unconditional love, just like a flower, they will grow and thrive.
Suzy G:
Absolutely and I mean, so much research on that. Absolutely, and again, not everyone has that experience-
Warwick F:
And if you don’t have it, if you have continual and perpetual abuse psychologically and physically your whole life, from everybody you know, then recovering from that would seem to be difficult, if not close to impossible. I mean, if you did that, that’d be miracle. If you get-
Suzy G:
Yeah, and I guess that’s where like, yeah, where you said it might be a mentor comes along or it might be a school teacher that plays that role. So those roles are really important in our community,
Warwick F:
Right, because you don’t always have it from your family because you can’t choose where you’re born into. But you can choose your friends and that kind of thing. So please go ahead.
Suzy G:
I was just going to say, because you mentioned forgiveness and I think that’s a really important topic. The character strengths assessment that I mentioned before, forgiveness is one of the character strengths and having used it, it launched in 2004 and I’ve used it extensively over the years. And I haven’t actually seen any studies on it, but my experience has been, it’s quite rare that it occurs in someone’s top five character strengths. You often see it more so in their bottom five.
Suzy G:
I usually suggest to people, take this as an opportunity to reflect because there’s actually been probably over 30 forgiveness interventions that have been conducted now, to show that letting go of those strong negative emotions that we hold, that stony unforgiveness, is really bad for both your psychological and your physical wellbeing. Now having worked clinically again, forgiveness, I know, particularly if there’s been horrendous transgressions made, it is a quite a process to go through. But there’s also some great research around just letting go of grudges that people hold onto. So firstly, if you do the assessment, have a look at where it sits.
Suzy G:
If you do have some insights that you’re not a very forgiving person, I would absolutely encourage you to work on that. But what I have found is, for people where it’s in the top five and it may very well be in your top five Warwick too, is that when I’ve inquired about, “Why do you think that is?” I’ve had a couple of different responses. The first is, that I grew up in a family where it was a topic. Maybe something had happened to the family and it had been a family discussion or it had been a value, a value that the family had placed value on. Or they had been through an experience where they’d had to actively work on forgiving someone else or forgiving themselves. And that’s why it turns up in the top five.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I know for me it was like both. I had to forgive myself, if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have been very functional. But again, maybe forgive some other people in my own family for sort of certain negative role models or impact on my life. But for me, growing up in a powerful family media business, I used to joke, you know how some kids in, I don’t know, middle school, primary school, they have like, somebody sticks a note on their back that says, “Kick me,” it’s fun. I always felt like I have one that says, “Betray me.” I mean, it’s like I had a lot of experience in different financial things and what have you.
Warwick F:
So to me, it was like a survival, it’s like, okay, in an ideal world, when somebody wrongs you, they apologize. They say, “I’m so sorry, please forgive me.” In the real world, that rarely happens, unfortunately, even when you try and have that conversation. It’s like, “Oh, not my problem,” or there’s the dreaded sorry of, “I’m sorry if that hurt you.” Which means nothing. It’s almost demeaning I find, when people say that. But for me, from my paradigm is, I come from a faith based paradigm, so that helps to a degree, in that from a Christian perspective, you forgive because we’re forgiven, which obviously is not going to help everybody. But it does to a degree, in the faith community. But it’s almost more practically, I feel like forgiveness is important because we’re worth it, because-
Suzy G:
Yeah, it’s a gift to yourself, actually.
Warwick F:
Even if what they did to you was horrendous and wrong and ‘unforgivable’, by holding that grudge, it holds you back. So it’s not so much they’re worth forgiving because objectively they might not be. But you are, by letting go, it helps you move on. And by not forgiving, you’re in a cage and why let them win? You win by letting go. So again, I think if so many great leaders, they don’t hold grudges. I think Winston Churchill was a great role model for that. Time and time again, he made a lot of his own mistakes, but he never held grudges.
Warwick F:
And there was the classic 1945 election where Clement Attlee, the Labor politician won. Here is Churchill thinking, “Look, I just saved Britain, maybe the world, from Hitler and Nazism and this is the thanks I get. Voted out of office. They want national healthcare and other things. I get that, but really?” So somebody made fun of Clement Attlee, then the Labor Prime Minister and he said, “Don’t you dare do that. He’s our Prime Minister, I may disagree with his politics. But you don’t make fun of him. He’s our Prime Minister. We don’t go there.” But he was somebody that really, he made a lot of mistakes, but he had a tremendous capacity, maybe forgive isn’t the right word in this case, but not hold grudges.
Suzy G:
Yes, absolutely.
Warwick F:
So, that required a huge resilience in his mind.
Suzy G:
I think that would be a huge part of this. And depending on what happened to you, whether it was someone or something that happened. That, that process of, I mean, acceptance is the other, the word I guess, that comes to mind. And often you’ll get people pushing back on that. Why should I have to accept that? Again, it is quite a process of accepting what is and what you can’t change. But what can you change or what can you influence going forward as well?
Warwick F:
The other fact I’d be curious to get your thoughts on is, we talk about it a bit, pain for a purpose. And it’s obviously impossible to know fully, in terms of some higher power and why things happen or why things are allowed to happen. That’s a whole vigorous debate and theological or spiritual circles, which would be a whole ‘nother discussion. But I often find that the people that bounce back, they’re able to find some meaning, whether it’s a breast cancer survivor, just helping other people who’ve gone through that.
Warwick F:
They’re using their pain to help others. It doesn’t mean it’s right or fair, but somehow, by finding some purpose in what you’re going through to help others, that anecdotally seems to be very, there’s a healing balm. There’s a healing component when you’re focused on using your pain to help others. I mean, even if your value system doesn’t say you should do that. From a psychological helping, if helping other people is going to help you, why not be self centered and help other people? At the risk of being facetious. But have you found out in your research that helping others can be healing to a degree?
Suzy G:
Yeah, there’s a huge amount of research that even sits separately around altruism and the psychological benefits. I mean, obviously the people are benefiting that are on the receiving end, but we get a boost to our own psychological wellbeing through the giving and the altruism. But as I said before, I mean, part of I guess, the recovery or the treatment for trauma is often that sort of meaning making process, which can be difficult to do and can take quite a bit of time, as you said.
Suzy G:
But I mean, I’m really interested in that sort of intersection with the spiritual aspect of it as well. And in fact, that is an area that hasn’t received a lot of attention in the field of positive psychology, up until recently. And there’s a recent group that’s just formed with the International Pos-Psych Association. I’ve been asked to be part of that group, to have some discussions around spirituality and religion and the role that they play in our wellbeing.
Warwick F:
It is an interesting discussion because even if you look at it from more of a humanistic perspective, I think the whole spiritual thing, irrespective of religion, that it’s all, I remember what Karl Marx said, that religion is the opiate of the masses. That was his perspective. But even if it’s not real, if it works and it helps, then maybe there’s some delusions and obviously I don’t think if it is an illusion, but even if it is, if it’s helpful, a sense of purpose, there’s a better place that you’re going to.
Warwick F:
God loves you no matter what, just like even if you don’t have unconditional love from any human. The fact that there’s a spiritual entity that loves you unconditionally, even if it doesn’t exist, that sheer notion if helpful. The fact that there’s meaning and there’s certainly components of that, that can help. But to me, sort of the message what I’m hearing you say, Suzy, is that I love your caution in the sense that it’s not a choice where, okay, today I’m a broken person. Tomorrow, I’ll be functional and healed.
Warwick F:
I mean, I didn’t go through massive abuse or that kind of thing, but even in my world, the family business thing, it took a decade or more to begin to claw my way back in terms of positive self esteem. And it was baby step, by baby step. I mean, if there’s one word from the uneducated person in this field, it would be baby steps. What’s a baby step I could take and yeah, take a job. And it was low paid thing in the financial services. But okay, I can do something well without screwing up. Okay, great, and then little by little, then you get approval from what you’re doing and self esteem comes back. But it’s not overnight, but it is a journey, it is sort of mission possible, if you will, to recover from… What does recover mean? I don’t know exactly, but to at least be in a better place than you were.
Suzy G:
Yes, I had a wonderful mentor when I first started off as a psychologist. She was a psychologist and she’d heard I was working in a psychiatric clinic and actually rang me. She didn’t know who I was and said, “Will you come and work for me?” She said, “You can sit in with me for two weeks and watch what I do.” And she only passed away last year, she was 93 as well. And oh, what an incredible experience that was. Again, it was down in the Illawarra, so we had really diverse clients coming in. People that had lost children, people with cancer, just everything that you can imagine.
Suzy G:
And I always recall, I’ve actually kept some notes from those sessions, I call them Patsy’s Pearls because I learned some amazing pearls from the stories and the way that she worked with people. But I remember how she said to many people, “Right now this is awful, this is painful. But in time to come,” and she said, “And that time will come, you’ll be able to look back at that situation and you’ll be able to understand perhaps why or you’ll come to terms with it a lot better than you are now.” But she said, “There’s no science to this, but you’ll find that you come across somebody or people that are going through a similar experience and you’re going to be able to help them.” And now in my life, that has absolutely been the experience.
Warwick F:
And that is very comforting, to think that I can help other people. So that’s why I find this whole post-traumatic growth, it’s so encouraging, I love the fact that you’re thinking of and now, are trying help kids because giving, as kids, they can go through horrific experiences, very sadly. But oftentimes, there’s more to come and so giving them some tools to be proactive. I mean, that does help. I think that’s really well worth it. So I love this whole concept of post-traumatic growth. So hopefully, it’s gaining traction, it will gain more traction and people will realize, this is worthy of studying. If it’s going to help people, why shouldn’t psychologists study it?
Suzy G:
Absolutely, and there’s also another emerging field, called post-ecstatic growth, Warwick, which is looking at people that have I guess, really uplifting moments of awe or elevation in their lives. And they seem to have similar outcomes in terms of a recognition of a spiritual life for example, or an increased focus on really working out what is a meaningful relationship? And changing their priorities in their life. So that’s again, fairly new out of the University of Pennsylvania again. But yes, some wonderful areas of research that do fall under this umbrella term of positive psychology.
Gary S:
That is an excellent point for us to begin the process, I like to call landing the plane. So we’re not quite on the ground yet. But I can hear the gear going down and the guys with their little flashlights on the runway. One of the things I want to stress for listener, as you’ve listened into this conversation between Warwick and Suzy, is that you’ve heard some of the same language used from Warwick, who built Crucible Leadership as a brand, rooted in story, rooted in anecdote. And from Suzy, who is talking about things from a scientific, psychological perspective. And one of the things Suzy, frankly, that led us to reach out to you to be a guest, is the acronym for the Positivity Institute that you’ve created.
Gary S:
Actually, I’m looking at an acronym for CIVIL and one of the things that shows up as I’m looking at it, I could be reading the Crucible Leadership website because I see words like character. I see words like integrity, I see words like authenticity, I see legacy. I see this commitment to making a difference in the world, mentoring and developing young people, doing meaningful work for causes that matter. That could be right off of the Crucible Leadership website that Warwick has created. So in our last couple of minutes here, for listeners who’ve heard this and are intrigued, want to know more. How can they find out more about the Positivity Institute and about you?
Suzy G:
Oh, thank you, thanks so much. Well go to the website, the positivityinstitute.com.au. We’ve got a number of resources in there. We do offer services for individuals, we do virtual coaching. We do, as I mentioned, some wonderful work in schools. And most of our work is actually in the corporate sector, in the workplace as well. So yeah, absolutely, first stop there. You can contact us if you’ve heard anything on here today that you want to learn more about. The email address is on the website, but it’s just info@thepositivityinstitute.com.au. Happy to share for those that really want the academic, rigorous papers. Happy to send those through.
Suzy G:
Also, point you in the right direction. We also have, I put together a document for further recommended courses, in both positive psychology and coaching psychology, which range from certificates right through to PhDs. And I’ll also give a plug, there are a couple, possibly even three now, MOOCs. So a MOOC is a massive open online course, that you can do for free through the University of Pennsylvania. They have one on positive psychology. Yale has, apparently the most popular course at Yale, on positive psychology. And you can do these courses for free, if you don’t want certification. So if you want to learn more, that would be also a great place to go to.
Gary S:
Fabulous, I’m going to wrap up here in just a second, Warwick with some key takeaways from this discussion. But I want to give you one last chance to ask Suzy any question. I know you well enough to know that there’s one in there somewhere, so.
Warwick F:
Well, maybe just an observation, is just I think it’s so encouraging, Suzy, what you’re doing with positive psychology and helping people find meaning in what happened and acceptance and mentors, relationships. It’s not easy, but even if you hadn’t been born with certain characteristics or skills, you can learn. And psychology should indeed focus on some of the clinical traumas, but it should also focus on the positive side, how to come back from a crucible experience. So as Gary said, just the whole CIVIL acronym connectivity, ingenuity, vitality, integrity, legacy.
Warwick F:
I mean, wow. It’s just like I mean, I agree with everything that’s there, it’s so positive. So yeah, I think it’s encouraging, more people need to hear about what you’re doing. That it is possible to bounce back from crucible experiences and from trauma. And it is possible to have a positive attitude to life and it’s not easy, it’s not going to happen overnight. But even if people knew, okay, it won’t happen overnight, maybe it will take 10, 20, 30 years, maybe a lifetime. But there are baby steps of growth each day, that gives you a reason to get up in the morning. Even if it’s going to be a long journey, right? If it’s like, okay, I made a positive step today, hooray, right?
Suzy G:
Yup.
Warwick F:
It may not seem big to others, to me, it seemed like leaping a chasm, that’s what it takes.
Suzy G:
Yeah, and it builds a sense of confidence, those baby steps. You stop and think, “Right, I can do it, I can do it.” And then you’re building those positive, hopeful. Again, lots of research around hope theory and in psychology as well. So we’re building hopeful narratives for the future. But we do need more people talking about this. So thank you also, for the work that you do because I can assure you it’s underpinned by science, based on what you’ve been referring to today as well. So yeah, thank you, thanks for the opportunity, for speaking with you today.
Gary S:
This is when I know that we’ve had a great show, is that I always at the end do, here’s three key takeaways. And Warwick just stole every one of them, in what he just said-
Warwick F:
Sorry.
Gary S:
No, it’s beautiful. His observation of his conversation with you, Suzy and listener, just summarized everything I was going to say. So I don’t need to say what I was going to say for those key takeaways because Warwick summed them up beautifully. And what I want to leave you with, listener, is a couple of things. One, hear the similarities in what Warwick has talked about, experientially, in his own story and the stories of other guests that we’ve had on the show. And what Suzy’s talked about, scientifically. She said it, right at the end, just a few minutes, like two minutes ago. That what Warwick speaks about, what Crucible Leadership leads you to, is underpinned by the science.
Gary S:
That is, if you take nothing else away, know that, that is both experientially true and scientifically true. And that’s a powerful recipe for moving beyond your crucible. From our perspective at Crucible Leadership, to learn more about what Warwick does, you can visit our website at crucibleleadership.com. You also can subscribe to the podcast, if you’re just listening to it because a friend passed it along, find the subscribe button on the app that you’re listening to and subscribe to it. Because if you do that, you will not miss any episodes. You’ll get every new episode when it comes out.
Gary S:
And we have a new one almost every week, three times to four times a month. You’ll get a new episode every time and it will help us, if you subscribe, to reach more people. So share it with your friends. If this conversation enlightened you, if this conversation encouraged you, share that with your friends, so that, that enlightenment and encouragement can get passed along. So until the next time that we’re together, thank you for spending time with us at Beyond The Crucible.
Gary S:
And remember this clarion truth, as we have discussed here, both experientially from Warwick and scientifically from Suzy, that crucible experiences are difficult. They’re painful things that can knock the wind out of your sails and knock you off the course that your boat was going. But they’re not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons of those crucible experiences, if you manifest resilience, you can write a new story. And the first chapter of that story will lead you down a path toward the ultimate goal, a life of significance.
I have always been drawn to heroic leadership. Great leaders faced with impossible odds doing great deeds. But in an upcoming episode of the Beyond the Crucible podcast with Professor Joseph Badaracco of the Harvard Business School, we touched on another approach to leadership: quiet leadership which he discussed in his book Leading Quietly. We went on to focus for much of the podcast on Professor Badaracco’s latest book Step Back, which explores how leaders can reflect during their busy lives.
In an article in the Harvard Business Review (“We Don’t Need Another Hero” – Sept. 2001), which came out around the time Leading Quietly did, there is this quote talking about how quiet leadership is practical, effective and sustainable. “Quiet leaders prefer to pick their battles and fight them carefully rather than go down in a blaze of glory for a single, dramatic effort.” In the book, Professor Badaracco talks about how quiet leaders nudge, test and escalate gradually, and seek compromise. They view strong measures and heroism as the last resort, not the first choice or standard model.
As I listened to Professor Badaracco and read these words, about how leading quietly was a better model than the more celebrated view of heroic leadership, they haunted me. Not only was I raised on the heroic leadership model, but I used it when I launched the A $2.25B takeover of my family’s media company in Australia in 1987. The takeover, after three years, ultimately failed, causing me and other family members much pain.
I was raised on the philosophy of great leaders, often great men, doing great deeds. My father and I often talked about history, which was a particular passion we shared. My father particularly loved English history. So I was raised on stories of Admiral Lord Nelson defeating the French and Spanish fleets in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, as well as the Duke of Wellington defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. There was, of course, Prime Minister Winston Churchill standing up to the might of Nazi Germany during World War II, during the dark days of the Battle of Britain in 1940. Later on, I came to be fascinated with American history with its heroes, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. These were leaders who did not shrink from the challenge, and against impossible odds they prevailed.
My father also read to me, when I was quite young, Charles Kingsley’s book, The Heroes, written in the late 1880s. It spoke of the mythical exploits of Greek heroes: Perseus, Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus.
I had quite the diet of heroes. Growing up in a family newspaper business, after my father was removed as Chairman of John Fairfax Ltd. in 1976 by other relatives, my parents saw me as the heir apparent. They hoped that one day I would ascend to a leading position within the company and from their perspective bring it back to the ideals of the founder (my great-great grandfather), and ensure that the company was well-managed.
After I launched the takeover, things went wrong from the start. Other family members sold out, our asset sale program was affected by the October 1987 stock market crash, and when Australia faced a significant economic recession in 1990, the company had to file for bankruptcy. One hundred fifty years of family control ended on my watch.
Because I believed the company was not being well run and not being run in line with the ideals of John Fairfax, I went in all guns blazing, so to speak, to save the day. It all went terribly wrong, causing not only financial impact to the company and of course myself, but difficult feelings among family members.
Might there have been a better way? This is where leading quietly calls more for patience, humility and knowing when it is time to do something and when it is time not to. It is impossible to know for certain whether quiet leadership might have worked better. It could hardly have made things any worse than my actions did.
So here are some key attributes from my perspective of leading quietly:
1. Be Humble.
Don’t assume that you are the one to save the day. Something may need to be done, but you may or you may not be the one to do it.
2. Be Patient.
Something may need to be done, by you or someone else, but perhaps not now. Sometimes waiting is the most prudent thing to do. Shortly after the company went bankrupt, a book was written about me and the takeover called The Man Who Couldn’t Wait. Its thesis was that one day I would have had enough shares to be in a leading position within the family company, if I had only waited. While I may feel like this may be a bit simplistic, it still causes me to pause.
3. Build Alliances.
Often while waiting, the best thing we can do is ask others about the challenge that your organization or your endeavor is facing. See what they think. Over time, you might coalesce a group of people around a common purpose or vision.
4. Learn.
Don’t assume you know everything before you take decisive action. I had graduated from Harvard Business School, shortly before I returned to Australia. How much did I gather information and learn first-hand the situation at the company, rather than getting information second-hand and though my parents? Not enough.
5. Know your Design.
I felt that since something had to be done, and if not me then who, that I was going to launch the takeover to make what I felt were needed changes. These changes may have been ones my parents felt were needed, but was I the one to do them? I am at heart a reflective adviser. I don’t seek the limelight, and I don’t typically enjoy being the up-front leader. Leading a large media company, with newspapers, TV stations, radio stations and magazines, constantly in the limelight, was the last thing I wanted to do. I was not a take no-prisoners-leader. It was a terrible fit for my design, for my basic wiring.
What’s interesting is that when we think of heroic leaders such as George Washington, they actually used more of the attributes of quiet leadership than we might imagine. In late 1775 and early 1776, the Continental Army of the American colonies was laying siege to Boston. The British forces were well-entrenched. Month after month, Washington would consult his generals, most of whom had more strategic military experience than he did. He wanted to assault the British forces, but month after month his generals said not yet. This made Washington very frustrated and impatient. Yet he realized they were probably right. So he listened to the wise counsel of his generals and waited. Finally, in February 1776, Washington’s generals said yes. Colonel Knox had brought cannon from Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain to the Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston. At this point, the British felt they had to withdraw with a hardly a shot being fired. Quiet leadership had won the day.
So perhaps my view of heroic leadership lacked some context. History is full of great leaders accomplishing great deeds against the odds, but some of them also were humble and patient, built alliances, learned and knew their design (what they were good at and what they were not good at). In short, perhaps truly great heroic leaders can also be quiet leaders.
Reflection
How much do you gravitate towards the typical heroic leadership model?
What attributes of quiet leadership could make your leadership more effective?
Which aspect of quiet leadership do you most need to work on first?
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/
Heroic leaders like Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln get movies made about them — just like superheroes such as Batman and Captain America. But the rousing triumphs that echo through history, or comic books, aren’t the whole story — or even sometimes the best story. Quietness, patience and humility are key qualities of success and significance even for great leaders.
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/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the podcast and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And we’re thrilled to have you with us here on a podcast that is about facing those crucible moments in our lives. And we define crucible moments here at Crucible Leadership, we define those as experiences that are failures, setbacks, tragedies, traumas. Maybe they’re things that you caused, maybe they’re things that happen to you, but all of them have in common this thing that you probably know all too well, and that is they’re painful.
Gary S:
They can feel like they knock the wind out of your sails. They can feel like they have changed the trajectory of your life. And the reason that we talk about them here is so that we can learn lessons from them, and so that we can apply those lessons as we move on and move, as the title of the show says, beyond our crucibles. Many times when we have these conversations, we do this with a guest. So there’s three of us; there’s me, there’s a guest and there is the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show, Warwick Fairfax.
Gary S:
This time though, we’re on one of those episodes where it’s just Warwick and I, and really me picking Warwick’s brain to talk about certain principles about Crucible Leadership. About overcoming your crucibles, that you can apply to your lives as you move forward. And today’s episode is going to be particularly interesting, I think, because we’re going to dive deeply again into Warwick’s personal story. So as we do that, let me welcome you in Warwick. And this is going to be a good conversation for me for sure but then again, I don’t have to relive some of the pain that you have to relive as you go through it.
Warwick F:
Yeah, well said, Gary. No, I’m definitely looking forward to it. It’s a fascinating topic we’re going to be talking about today.
Gary S:
And the topic is an organizing construct, listener. The topic is Leading Quietly: Humility as a Pillar of Success. And what we talk about here in Crucible Leadership, significance. And by leading quietly, we mean not necessarily just as an organizing way of looking at this, we don’t mean not leading arrogantly. It’s not humility opposite arrogance, so much as humility, as opposed to leading “heroically.” We’re going to talk a little bit about this idea of heroic leadership. And there are times, many times, that humble leadership, quiet leadership that isn’t heroic leadership is the way to go. And Warwick, as listeners will know, you’ve experienced that in your life. That heroic leadership, isn’t always the best way to go.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And really where the idea for this particular podcast came about is in the upcoming weeks we’re going to have a conversation with Professor Joseph Badaracco, really on reflection. And he’s written a book on that, but a book that he’s known for really came out quite a few years ago, almost 20 years ago. 2001 thereabouts, Leading Quietly. And we just spend a few minutes on the podcast on that, but that concept of quiet leadership and how that’s different than heroic leadership, it made me think a lot because I grew up with the heroic leadership model. That’s something that I tried to live by much to my cost.
Warwick F:
So we only touched on it with Professor Badaracco, but I think both Gary and I thought let’s talk a bit more about what quiet leadership is, at least from my perspective, from Crucible Leadership’s perspective and how that’s different than heroic leadership. So that’s where it came and why it’s fascinating. At least to me, a fascinating subject to talk about.
Gary S:
And when you say, Warwick, that you grew up in heroic leadership circumstances, one of the things I think that’s fascinating about your story is that you grew up in that situation on two fronts. There’s the front of the legacy that was there in the family, the founding of Fairfax Media by your great-great-grandfather. And then how you grew up and the family’s perceptions, the family’s vision for you and your life. Can you unpack that for listeners? How the idea of “heroic leadership,” permeated your life for most of your life, prior to your crucible experience?
Warwick F:
Yeah, I just grew up with that mindset. My dad just loved history and he would read a lot of books about history. And so since he was an Anglophile, really loved England, even though we’d lived in Australia for generations. Just the whole Winston Churchill, Lord Horatio Nelson, Admiral Nelson of battle of Trafalgar fame in the early 1800s, Duke of Wellington, again, similar period Napoleonic wars. It was this idea and back then, it’s a lot of years ago, is typically great men doing great deeds. There was this concept of heroic leadership.
Warwick F:
In fact, I remember when I was very small, I was six, he read to me a book, I think written in the 1800s by Charles Kingsley called The Heroes. And it was all about these classic Greek mythical heroes, Jason and the Argonauts, Perseus, Theseus, people doing incredible heroic feats. And so, as I was growing up, there was the narrative from my parents that I was to be the white knight, the hero, the crusader that would come in and save the day. The backstory, which I’ve talked a little bit about on other podcasts, is there was friction in the family going back decades as there often is in large family media businesses.
Warwick F:
As listeners will know, I grew up in this 150 year old large family media business that had the equivalent in Australia of New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. Had TV, radio stations, magazines, a massive company, but for a variety of reasons, there was friction going back decades with my dad and some other relatives. And in 1976, some of those relatives actually had enough shares to throw my father out as chairman. One could debate whether that was the right or wrong move. Obviously I was 15 at the time I was his son, and naturally didn’t think it was such a good idea, but maybe there’s another side.
Warwick F:
So once he was thrown out in 1976, my parents saw me as the next generation, the person that could bring the company back to the ideals of the founder. I don’t know that it was consciously seeking revenge, I wasn’t consciously thinking about that, but it amped up the whole heroic leadership mantra, myth perhaps. So then, as listeners will know, did my undergrad degree at Oxford, worked on Wall Street, then went to Harvard Business School, come back and in 1987, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover in Australia. And it was the heroic leadership model and things went wrong right from the beginning.
Warwick F:
There was too much debt, stock market crashed hurt our asset sales, within three years the company went under, and I’m reminded of something that Professor Badaracco said in an article that was written about the same time as his book in early 2000s. It’s called, We Don’t Need Another Hero. It’s Harvard Business Review article, and there’s a quote he says in there, here’s the quote, and he talks about quiet leadership and he says, “Quiet leadership is practical, effective, and sustainable.”
Warwick F:
And then he says this, “Quiet leaders prefer to pick their battles and fight them carefully rather than go down in a blaze of glory for a single dramatic effort.” Well, I did exactly what Professor Badaracco is saying you shouldn’t do. I went down literally in a single dramatic blaze of glory.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
It felt heroic, like The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean war in the 1850s. A famous poem, I think it’s Tennyson and you know, “Guns to the left of them, guns to the right of them. Onward rode the five hundred” For movie folks, there’s a famous movie from the thirties with Errol Flynn in which he stars as the gallant captain riding to his death. Certain death, but what a gallant cavalry charge it was, doomed to failure, suicide. That was my, “I may go down all guns blazing, but my gosh, I’m going to try.”
Warwick F:
It was stupid in hindsight, but so, when professor Badaracco was talking about heroic leadership and why that’s not really the way to go in many cases, well, that struck a chord because that’s the approach I took and it didn’t work out so well. So yes, I’m a living testimony to heroic leadership is overrated.
Gary S:
And we’ll talk more about quiet leadership, alternative ways to that unleashing hell as they say in the movie Gladiator, “on my command, unleash hell,” right? We’ll talk more about other ways to approach leadership as we continue talking. But one of the things that that’s fascinating to me is that one of the reasons why heroic leadership is so attractive, so popular is because it tends to be the heroic leaders who get movies made about them. I think of Abraham Lincoln, I think of Winston Churchill, I think of Steve jobs in more recent times, I think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I think of those heroic leaders who get the heroic attention.
Gary S:
And then beyond that, there’s the whole superhero genre of filmmaking and the popularity of comic books and those kinds of things. And Batman’s the hero and Batman’s saving Gotham city, but one thing that those movies don’t do, and I’m a huge superhero fan, a huge Batman fan. I’ve seen every movie and TV show and I own all of them. One thing they never show in there is that he had to build the bat cave. If you don’t have a bat cave, you don’t have Batman. So yes, there’s that heroic nature of what Churchill did, what Batman does, but that’s not the whole story. So it can be attractive, it can be exciting to be part of that. But as you pointed out, that’s not always the best course of action.
Warwick F:
It’s not. And it’s funny, as I’ve been pondering the whole heroic versus quiet leadership, I think one of the things that can be a misnomer is we focus on the defining event. We don’t focus on the lead up. As you pointed out with Batman, I haven’t seen any movies talk about the construction of the Bat cave. Yes, we hear about the earlier days when Bruce Wayne’s parents that are killed in an alley by, I guess, a young Joker in this defining moment that takes him into a different direction. But we don’t hear too much about those intervening decades, at least not in most Batman movies. So, what’s the backstory that led him to be who he was and what was the process?
Warwick F:
So I think of some of the folks we’re talking about, Washington and Lincoln, one good example is you think of the early years of the American Revolution in 1776 and there was a great victory in which the Continental Army of the American colonies forced the British out from Boston Harbor and they all had to flee. And what we often don’t remember is the months that took to get there in the months leading up to this battle, Washington wanted to go in there, all guns blazing and his generals who were frankly, more experienced military commanders than he was, as he readily admitted, said, “Well, sorry, General Washington. We just don’t think in a very entrenched position in Boston, we just don’t think it would make sense.”
Warwick F:
Month after month, he would have a council of war, month after month they would say, “Sorry, not yet.” And it would just frustrate him, no end. He was just like, “Seriously, are you kidding me?” He was just so impatient, but yet he had the wisdom. It’s like, “I may be the head guy here, but my team is really smart and a lot more experienced at military campaigning than I.” And so he kept waiting and waiting eventually Colonel Knox brought some cannon from Fort Ticonderoga on the Hudson river over, they snuck him up one night onto the Dorchester Heights. And the cannons had such a great position that the British fleet left without hardly firing a shot at that point.
Warwick F:
And so, you think of the heroic moment of Washington having the British leave Boston. But we don’t remember is that quiet leadership, the patience of getting everything together. And so that was the genius of Washington is he was patient, he overcame his natural impulses, or you think of Lincoln and the great Emancipation Proclamation I think it came out in 1863, well, in the months leading up to it, it’s like, “I’m not going to announce this until, we, as the North actually have a victory.” And apparently it happened at Antietam that it was enough of a victory that he could say, “Okay, now we’ve got to announce it,” but he was waiting and waiting for the right time because announcing at the wrong time, maybe it would have not gone as well.
Warwick F:
So the bottom line is even heroic leaders, as prominent as Washington and Lincoln, they showed some level of patience and self control to wait. Traits that obviously I didn’t have. That I didn’t wait, which maybe things could have gone differently. So, we have this image of heroic leaders, but you peel back the layers, you go underneath and they’re heroic, but there’s some wisdom, there’s some quiet leadership attributes if you will, behind the heroism, which we don’t often realize.
Gary S:
To put that into a superhero context, as I like to do all the time, you’ve got to do the legwork before you do the cape work. As we’ve said, there is no Batman without a bat cave, you’ve got to have strategy. You’ve got to have planning. You’ve got to wait for the right moment. One of the things that Joseph Badaracco talks about when he talks about quiet leaders is that three things that characterize them is that in their leadership and in solving problems and for the sake of our conversation and moving beyond their crucibles, they buy time, they bend the rules a little bit. They look for ways to do things that are different than what might normally be planned. And they compromise, not necessarily their values, but they compromise those things that aren’t intractable values for them. By quieter I think we mean more intentional, more careful, more reasoned, more cautious. Is that fair?
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely is. I think the word comes to mind as they’re more thoughtful. There’s a phrase that somebody told me once, “Does something need to be done?” But then the next question is, “Am I the right person to do it?” As another aspect of leadership. So it’s knowing, “Okay, something may need to be done. Am I the right person?” And you might be. Or maybe there’s a better person who’s more equipped, more experienced, maybe frankly, more leveraged in terms of the people that need to be persuaded. So it’s more about, “Okay, does something need to be done?” And then, “Who is the best one to do it?” And that’s not abdicating responsibility. You can still have conversations and maybe do some things to make things happen. But a big part of it is patience, just waiting for the right time, building alliances to your perspective about what needs to be done.
Warwick F:
Lincoln spent years trying to build alliances to get the abolition of slavery through. It took a lot of intents of patience, building alliances, and one of the biggest ones is just humility, is stop looking to be the knight in shining armor that saves the day, to be Batman or Superman, to have your name in lights, as the great hero. If you really believe in the cause, whether it’s, like Lincoln, which almost feels like the ultimate cause, the abolition of slavery, it’s about getting the job done. It’s not about who gets the credit. It’s not about having your name in lights as Superman, that kind of thing. It’s really learning what you need to learn. It’s just, there’s a sense of humility of knowing what needs to be done when and patience, and you mentioned buying time.
Warwick F:
Sometimes it’s, now’s not the right time, but you find ways to buy time, whether it’s do more research and Joseph Badaracco, his book talks about getting legal’s opinion, HR, there’s some practical tools you can use that are justifiable to buy time. So, really the heroic leader, it’s it tends to be all about them going down in a blaze of glory rather than the quiet leader is more, “Let’s get it done, let’s not worry about who gets the credit and let’s be patient. And if it doesn’t happen this year, then maybe it’s next year.” It’s a different, frankly more practical and also in the long run, probably a more successful model of leadership.
Gary S:
Yeah, and again, listener, to be clear when we talk about humility, we don’t mean necessarily humility in opposition to arrogance in the sense that “heroic leaders,” truly are trying to solve problems, are trying to create better outcomes. That’s certainly what you were trying to do, Warwick. I don’t think you were motivated in your takeover of Fairfax Media. I don’t think you were trying to do it to get a bunch of accolades for yourself. I think you were trying to do it because, as you’ve said, you wanted to return the company to the vision of the founder, your great-great-grandfather.
Gary S:
There was some urging and also wanting to live up to the vision that was cast for you by your parents. But to the extent that you can do this, let’s rewind the clock to the takeover. And had you had access to Dr. Badaracco’s book and the things that he said in it when you were about to launch the takeover, had you processed some of those ideas of buying time, compromising, bending the rules, not needing to be the hero on the white steed, but taking your time, seeking counsel from others, all of those things. Can you even say, how might you have acted differently in that process?
Warwick F:
It’s a great question. Obviously what happened, it’s hard to conceive that it could have gone worse, so surely trying something else might’ve been helpful. But yeah, you raise some good points. I wasn’t consciously trying to do something to hurt people, even though maybe my subconscious, I was thinking of ’76 and other family members throwing my dad out as chairman. It wasn’t a conscious thought it was more management needs to be changed because they’re making some decisions that I thought wasn’t so good. Sale of the television network, which is a whole nother saga that I talk more about in the upcoming book, which will hopefully come out next year, Crucible Leadership and get into that story a bit more.
Warwick F:
The details don’t matter for the topic of our conversation, but it was really twin goals. It’s bring the company back to the ideals of the founder, which in my perception had drifted a bit, and see that the company was being well managed. So I felt like if I didn’t do something soon, more what I thought was dumb decisions like the sale of the Seven TV network would happen. A media company selling TV station didn’t make sense to me. So, let’s assume all of my assumptions were accurate, and they may not have been, but by launching this takeover, it caused a lot of ill feelings with family members. They sold out at fairly high prices and all, but all that being said, there was a lot of ill will, “Why did you do this Warwick?”
Warwick F:
Yes, there was speculation that after my dad died, that people were going to takeover the company, but, with close to 50%, that would have been very tough if we hung together. And so rather than talking to them and over time, over a number of years, trying to get some respect, within other family members involved in the company respect in the terms of me earning their respect for working in the company, building alliances.
Warwick F:
Maybe I was wrong about management. I don’t think so, but building some alliances for potential change in management, maybe trying to influence management. I’m a little skeptical that would have happened, but just showing some patience rather than going in all guns blazing, at least if I had tried, then maybe that would have been a better, less, frankly violent and hostile circumstances. Ultimately, staying in that company if people didn’t want good management, didn’t want to bring it back to the ideals of the founder, which obviously they would have probably disagreed with that premise, it’s a complex story. Would I have sold out, it would have been difficult.
Warwick F:
But yeah, certainly what I did didn’t make sense, but the value for me is I got out of a very difficult, complex situation, so it’s hard to look at. It probably would have been better for the company if I didn’t do that, the takeover. Would it have been better for me personally? I don’t know, but logically it would have been better to try some of those quiet leadership attributes, I still would have been locked into a company doing something that I potentially didn’t really enjoy. So it’s a different story than quiet leadership, but that’s why the whole do over thing gets really complicated. But yeah, certainly what I did wasn’t particularly helpful, and there might’ve been other avenues that, they may not have worked, but I think it would have been sensible to at least try them versus what I did.
Gary S:
And another point to make about the heroic leadership aspects of what you did with the takeover that I think is important, that we can’t emphasize enough is that you really weren’t. Heroic leadership does not have to be about ego and it certainly wasn’t about your ego in the sense that you wanted to establish Warwick Fairfax as the name of… you were still very shy. You were very retiring in the midst of all that, you didn’t do a lot of interviews. It was not about self aggrandizement for you, for sure.
Warwick F:
Well, absolutely. And it’s funny. Yeah, I was 26 at the time, a young, naive straight back from Harvard business school, which I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t listening enough to the professors, but it just gets very emotional when it’s your dad and family, and it’s hard to think straight. But I remember saying to other family members like, “I want control to be able to change management and keep the company safe, but I’m going to work in the marketing department.” Because I figured marketing strategy was something I could do and I didn’t want to be chairman or CEO, everybody can keep their titles. And I just want to quietly work my way up.
Warwick F:
And so it wasn’t about ego. Obviously no other family member’s going to want to be in a accompany controlled by a 26 year old. So it was naive to the extreme, but at the time I didn’t want the titles, the accolades. I just wanted it to be well run. So I thought my motives were reasonably good. It was just, my judgment was obviously questionable, but I wasn’t consciously trying to be this heroic leader with my name in lights. But yeah, it’s a complex story.
Gary S:
For sure. The other part that Badaracco talks about in quiet leadership is really important to the idea of coming back from crucibles. So if we go back into your story, the takeover has happened, it has failed. Then there comes a time where you did indeed, Warwick, over the course of over a couple of decades, exhibit quiet leadership. Here’s some of the things that Badarocco writes in that same article that you were quoting from earlier. He talks about how quiet leaders move patiently, carefully and incrementally.
Gary S:
That’s the story of Warwick Fairfax post takeover. It also says this, “And since many big problems, crucibles, can only be resolved by a long series of small efforts, quiet leadership, despite its seemingly slow pace often turns out to be the quickest way to make the corporation and the world a better place.” That seems to me to be a pretty good encapsulation of your road back beyond your crucible.
Warwick F:
Yeah, it’s an interesting point because I think I’m still, by nature, pretty impatient, but I also have, fortunately, a fair degree of self control. So I’ve tried to temper my natural impatience to want to get something done, even though I’m reflective, which is a curious conundrum. I’m reflective, but I also like getting things done. But yeah, I’ve learned patience, both at Crucible Leadership, I’m on two nonprofit boards. It’s interesting with those, my church board and then the K-12 school that my kids went to. There were times in which I felt like something needed to be done and not everybody was on the same page. And maybe a few were, and I just waited and, “Okay. If people aren’t on board, that’s okay.” My thoughts were heard and I felt respected on both boards and over time, change would happen.
Warwick F:
And so you’re not always going to be right, but just talking to people, just being a bit more patient as you wait for things to change, making your points, but it’s easier for people to hear you if they know at the end of the day you will go along with the collective. It’s never an issue of people advocating something that was immoral, unjust. Obviously I wouldn’t get along with that, but it’s really wisdom calls about do you spend money on, direction A, direction B, it’s typically those sorts of things. So yeah, I think I learned more patience. And then with Crucible Leadership, I started as listeners will know, probably around about 2008 after I gave a talk in church about my story that supposedly illustrated the sermon that the pastor was giving.
Warwick F:
And people came up to me afterwards and said, “Boy, this is really helpful.” And I didn’t know how my story could be helpful to normal people as opposed to media moguls, but somehow it did. So I started writing this book, Crucible Leadership, which again, I have a publishing deal with Morgan James, as I mentioned on an earlier podcast, which will hopefully come out next year. But it took me a number of years is to write. And then I chatted to some Australian publishers quite a number of years ago now. And there was some interest, but some wanted more of a tell all book, which I didn’t want to do.
Warwick F:
And so then somebody said, “Well, you need a brand. And that led me to the folks at SIGNAL in Denver and then yourself, Gary, and ROAR and just different elements came together. But it’s brick by brick coming out with blogs and social media, then starting a podcast last year, all to really help people engage with the message of Crucible Leadership and its different avenues and it’s hopefully as deeply as possible.
Warwick F:
I mean, Crucible Leadership in a sense started in 2008 with the beginning of the book. It’s taken years to get to this point, but often things that are worth doing, it’s worth having patience. And the key point is just taking one small step at a time. What’s one small win I can make this week? You start a new initiative. Like a podcast. Well that took a few months to get off the ground because, what’s it going to be like? What are the themes? How are we going to do this? What works in terms of my gifting and that endeavor alone took many meetings and many steps, but you just, to use that over worn analogy, just keep pushing the ball down the field one step, you know what you’re trying to get to, but you got to show patience.
Warwick F:
Another lesson I’ve learned is I’m a huge believer in communication. So with the team I have, which is an incredible team at Crucible Leadership, we’ll talk about things and I want to make sure if we’re going to go in a new direction, everybody’s on board, I mean to the degree possible, because if your team isn’t committed, it’s not going anywhere. Well, that takes time. It takes dialogue, together, one-on-one, it just takes time. So I’ve learned to force myself to have patience, even when I’m not feeling patient, I’ve learned the value of creating alliances, of listening to people, listening to good advice.
Warwick F:
I didn’t do that. One of the things that is somewhat haunting to me, to go back a moment, back in the era of the takeover in early ’87, I engaged some very well respected merchant bankers, basically investment bankers, to use US terminology. And they analyzed the situation and they said, “Warwick, we do not recommend you doing a take of a right now. We don’t think it would be wise. We don’t think it would work. And we think you should wait.” Well, I didn’t want to hear, “Wait.” Because I felt like this disaster is going to happen if we wait, given what happened with the TV network sale and what I thought was incompetent management.
Warwick F:
So I turned down wise counsel, however I ended up listening to is counsel that wasn’t so wise. So I ignored the wise people and listened to the advice of people who weren’t so good. It was just a classic case of what not to do. Now, I do listen to wise counsel. I don’t ignore it, even if it’s not what I want to hear. So it’s a painful lesson, but I’ve tried to never ignore good counsel, even if it’s exactly what you don’t want to hear.
Gary S:
Right. It’s so interesting to hear you talk about the way that you approached bouncing back from your crucible after it happened, after the takeover failed. And what popped into my head as you were talking is one of the folks I mentioned about those heroic leaders who get movies made about him. Steve jobs, Steve jobs got fired from Apple computer and he went off immediately and started another computer company. I can’t even remember what it was called because it was so unsuccessful. He jumped right back into the forge. He jumped right back in, new computer and it was a terrible failure and then over course of time, he comes back to Apple and then just look what he did from there. You didn’t do that. You didn’t come off of that experience of the takeover failing and try to launch something immediately quickly. You did what you talked about.
Gary S:
Step-by-step, one foot in front of the other, talk to people, get some confidence back, figure out what your… What we talked about at Crucible Leadership, what’s your passion? What are you passionate about? What’s your vision? What are those things that you want to do to make the world a better place? You took the time, you bought time, you bent the rules that said, “Must go out, get job, must be…” You didn’t do all of that stuff. You came back a step at a time. And now it’s developed into this thing of Crucible Leadership, which is so rewarding to you and is offering you a life of significance in helping others. And I think for anybody who’s listening to this right now, who has found themselves in a crucible, I would think your advice to them would be, follow the path coming out of your crucible, of the quiet leader, not the hero leader.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And I’m in such a better place, at least personally and professionally because before, even if I’d followed quiet leadership attributes, there was another conundrum, which is really a different paradigm that we’ve about before, in that I didn’t necessarily want to be this take charge leader of a huge organization. I’m a quiet, reflective person. I don’t like the limelight. It was a terrible fit. But back then it’s like, “Well, I don’t want to let my dad down.” Who, I mentioned, died in early ’87, don’t want to let my family, John Fairfax, my great-great-grandfather founder, so one of the lessons coming out of my crucible was, I just wasn’t living my divine design, if you will. I was living somebody else’s vision, somebody else’s life.
Warwick F:
And so that was always going to be a tough square to circle. It probably was going to be impossible, even if I’d done all the right quiet leadership things. It just wasn’t my passion, my vision. So again, that’s a whole nother thing that we’ve talked about before, but now, I’m living my own vision and I’m doing it in a way that works for me given my personality. So it’s a vision I’m excited about. It’s something that I’m wired… As a reflective advisor, I love asking questions. So podcasts work really well. I love writing, blogs work well. So a lot of the things that I do in Crucible Leadership, are really in line with my gifts and I’m able to have people around me that compliment gifts that I don’t have. I’m not Mr. Network Salesman Type. And I enjoy that kind of thing. Well, I have other people that help me and you can’t be everything.
Warwick F:
So yeah, I’m in a much better place doing what I enjoy with a team that had complementary skills and doing it step by step and realizing you can’t accomplish everything you want to accomplish overnight. It’s a process, be patient. You’ll get there. If it’s in alignment with how you’re wired, if it’s a vision that you’re off the charts passionate about, if it’s something that involves a higher purpose, living a life of significance, that gives you staying power. Because if you think it’s important enough, you’ll hang in there. So, so many things are better in line. And I do force myself to be patient because it’s just the more successful route than going in all guns blazing as I did with the Fairfax takeover
Gary S:
We’ve come to the moment in the podcast where, in this particular podcast, it’s time to land the bat plane. We’re getting to the point where we’ve got to land the bat plane, but one of the things, Warwick, is I was doing research and I haven’t shared this with you yet because we’ve talked about how in a superhero context, they don’t often show about how Batman became Batman or how he built the bat cave and all that. I was looking at some clips in the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy, which begins with Batman Begins, there’s an excellent quote in there that first is told to young Bruce Wayne by his father, and then told later, as he’s just starting to come into being Batman by Alfred his butler, who is like his surrogate father.
Gary S:
But that quote is when Bruce falls down into the bat well on the family property and he’s scared by the bats, his father picks him up, carries him back into the house and he says to Bruce Wayne, young Bruce Wayne, ten-year-old Bruce Wayne, “Why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” And years later when Bruce is trying to be a heroic leader and do something and it falls flat and Alfred encourages him with the same thing. “Why do we fall, sir? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” And I thought that was just so perfect for this conversation because it proves the point that we’re talking about here, that you’ve got to have some background, some quiet, even for the heroic leadership, but that’s also a pretty good motto, a pretty good lesson for folks in the Crucible Leadership context. Why do we fall? Why do we fail? Why do we have crucibles? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.
Gary S:
What’s the last few words you want to share with folks who’ve been listening to this today, Warwick, as they try to wrap their minds around heroic leadership, which is not a bad thing, but not always the right thing and quiet leadership.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think really based off what you just said about that story of young Bruce Wayne, nobody likes failure, nobody likes falling and it’s very painful, but the gift of failure, the gift of mistakes is you learn from them. I’ve learned to be patient. I’ve learned to say, “Okay, I’m going to make other mistakes. But I’m not going to make that mistake again. I’m going to build alliances. I’m going to be patient, gather complimentary team members.” So, I think it’s fine to have a vision, just make sure it’s your vision. Make sure it’s in line with your gifting. And then if it is in line with your gifting and it is your vision, be patient, be humble, step at a time, listen to advice, build alliances.
Warwick F:
Probably humility and patience are probably the two most important things about quiet leadership. It’s the internal, it’s the character. That’s really the key. If you’re a patient and not wrapped up in who gets the glory and it’s in line with who you are and it’s a vision you’re off the charts passionate about, then you’ll get there, step by step, small win by small win. If you have enough small wins, pretty soon that adds up into a fairly big win.
Gary S:
It adds up to what someone might call a heroic win.
Warwick F:
Indeed.
Gary S:
Those little, quiet wins that build up to it. Well, that is the sound of the wheels on the runway, listeners. So, thank you. We’ve landed the bat plane. Thank you for spending time with us at Beyond the Crucible. Until we get together next time, please drop by CrucibleLeadership.com, where you can find all of our podcasts that we’ve had thus far. You can listen to all of them. We urge you to subscribe to those podcasts, share them with friends. If you’ve gotten anything from this conversation and from previous conversations that is beneficial to you as you navigate your way back from your crucible, please share that with folks.
Gary S:
You can also sign up to receive regular emails from Warwick on some of the topics, the very kinds of topics that we talk about on this podcast. Certainly what we’re talking about here, about quiet leadership and leading with humility, not arrogance kind of humility, but humility to not have to be the white knight all the time, to be patient, as Warwick has so well explained. So, until the next time that you’re with us here on Beyond the Crucible, thank you again for joining us. And remember this, that you may be going through a very painful crucible right now, but that crucible, as Warwick’s story proves, as the story of so many guests we’ve had on the show proves, that’s not the end of your story. It can in fact be the beginning of your story. And that beginning can be the best part of your story because that new beginning can lead to something that we all crave and something that’s within all of our grasps. And that is a life of significance.
His big-deal career and its big-money perks left him unsatisfied. So he stopped seeing success as outperforming others and started serving others. Today he’s the best-selling author of The Millennial Whisperer and making a lasting impact on the leaders of tomorrow.
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/
Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the podcast, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And, you have clicked play. We really hope you’ve clicked subscribe and then maybe you’ve shared with folks on a podcast that deals in what we call crucible experiences, those moments in life most of us if we’re honest with ourselves know all too well. They’re painful, they can come out of nowhere sometimes, they are failures, they’re setbacks. They are those things that knock us off balance, can knock us off the trajectory of the life that we’re on.
Gary S:
But we talk about them here not to sort of wallow in the pain of them. We examine the pain of them, but we talk about them here as the title suggests, to help you move beyond them. And, the reason for doing that is that we believe that beyond those crucibles can be some of your best living, where you can truly find a life of significance. And with me as always, is the architect of Crucible Leadership without whom we would not have a Beyond the Crucible podcast, the host of the show, Warwick Fairfax.
Warwick F:
Thanks, Gary, very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
And our guest today Warwick, is Chris Tuff, which is a fabulous last name. I’m very jealous Chris, about your last name. Tuff is an awesome last name. Chris Tuff, is the author of the USA today bestseller The Millennial Whisperer. In his book, Chris offers research based time tested strategies for bridging communication gaps between millennials and the rest of the workforce. Millennials are on track to make up three quarters of the workforce by 2030.
Gary S:
With that being true, it’s crucial for employers to harness the strengths of this generation and help develop strong leaders for future generations. In his book, Chris, debunks myths about millennials while providing an in depth look at generational stereotypes that do tend to be true. He shares practical real world tested solutions to better understand millennials and effectively recruit, retain, and motivate this passionate generation. Welcome Chris, and Warwick, take it away.
Warwick F:
Well, Chris, thanks so much for being here. I love what you do with millennials helping organizations understand that generation, I think it’s 20s maybe 30 somethings which is a crucial generation, and as you’ve mentioned, just is poised to be huge proportion of the workforce. I love the titles of your books, Millennial Whisper and your new one which we’ll talk about here in a bit, Save Your Asks, all about kind of networking and listening.
Gary S:
Very good work by the way, we get it right, Save Your Asks, with a KS on the end.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
I was trying to pronounce it correctly.
Gary S:
Bravo. Well done.
Warwick F:
Wouldn’t want people to have a different understanding of what the book is about. Obviously, saving your behind is probably not a bad idea either but that would be a different book.
Chris T:
Yeah, it would.
Warwick F:
But anyway, so Chris, tell us a bit about yourself, how you grew up, and how that led to kind of your crucible which really shifted the direction in your life.
Chris T:
Sure.
Warwick F:
But tell us a bit about who is Chris Tuff?
Chris T:
Absolutely. And, thanks so much for having me. It’s a privilege to be here. One of the big things for me is I grew up in an overachieving family, the youngest of six kids, my dad was a turnaround specialist, CEO, kind of turnaround guy. And, I say to everyone that one of the best things that my dad ever did for me was he never set me up with a job interview. And, I graduated from Vanderbilt University top of my class 2003, and it took me 64 failed interviews until I found lucky 65th which was at a digital advertising firm, right as we’re coming back from the .com bust.
Chris T:
But it was through that experience that I was able to be put into kind of this Plinko game of jobs in life that was somewhere close to my own passion and purpose. And it took a couple of lateral jobs, moves, until I became one of the first kind of early people working directly with Mark Zuckerberg and the social media, emerging media, social media kind of arena if you will. And I use that as my first… I like to call it currency, right?
Chris T:
We all have our own currencies that we put off into the world, and that was my first currency that was pretty close to my own passions and my own purpose, but that’s what brought me to my firm where I’m a partner. I’ve been there for almost 12 years now. And what happened three years ago was, on the outside I was killing it, right? Sheryl Sandberg, would have lunch with me when she was coming in town, and I was flying all over the world and hobnobbing with the who’s who, But inside I was suffering.
Chris T:
And there are two things what ended up kind of becoming my rock bottom catalyst moment. Going back to my favorite professor in college, Bryan Griffith, who actually helped me with the Millennial Whisperer, something’s always stuck with me and crisis catalyzes change. And, when I had a little bit of time to look at my life I was feeling incredibly unfulfilled. And a couple things changed in the month off that I took from work, and one of those things was my metric of success. And, my metric of success was beating my older overachieving brothers in the game of life.
Chris T:
And, I changed that to success being judged on a daily basis. When my head hits the pillow at night, “Did I have the impact that I intended?” And I can happily say three and whatever years later, that I’ve had a successful day every single day since changing that. But the other thing that I really started to shift was really having impact through people. And, it was through kind of that leadership and being that servant leader that we’re hearing more and more about, that I was not only feeling more fulfilled, but I look around me and I was like, “These millennials are awesome.”
Chris T:
I got a team of 30 of them. They’re some of the best out there. And it was actually on an executive retreat with Tommy Breedlove, he was leading the retreat, and we didn’t know each other at the time. And I introduced myself and I was like, “I don’t really know what I do anymore but we’re 390 employees, mostly millennials but I’ve kind of become the millennial whisperer.” And I shared my story, I talked about my rock bottom moment. I was very vulnerable and I sat down and Tommy looks at me with his big blue eyes and his Southern drawl, “You better write that book.” And I was like, “What book?” He goes, “The Millennial Whisperer.”
Chris T:
And it was in that moment that The Millennial Whisperer was born, and I did a pretty quick sprint to write and publish it over an eight month period. And we’re 14 months on the other side of it, and it’s brought me to stages like Nike. I’ve been on the main stage at Nike and working with some of the world’s largest and most prestigious corporations, but also small businesses. I’ve worked with some dental clinics locally as well as some restaurants, and what’s so amazing is my favorite quote from this book is, “Millennials aren’t the problem they just expose all the problems.” And, there’s a lot of things that we talk about out there but that’s kind of the journey of what took me into being a published author.
Warwick F:
Gosh, what a great story. It’s not everybody who grows up with a dad is an entrepreneur turnaround manager. Those guys tend to be very driven, very focused, take no prisoners coming through because don’t have time to wait, don’t have time to other than action, action now, was your dad kind of like that image you have of a turnaround guy.
Chris T:
And wait. So, also British. So, he… Yeah, and an old Etonian. He went to Eton. And here I am, right? I come out. I’m the youngest of six kids. I’m an identical twin. Right?
Warwick F:
Wow.
Chris T:
So, kind of struggling for my own identity, and the most emotionally in tune sensitive kid. It’s like, “Where did this kid come from?” So the juxtaposition of that, and my dad was always really interesting, and I think one of my big things out there, and I see it actually even with my bosses is there’s this constant yearning for that validation. Right?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Chris T:
And, I think it’s actually indicative of why I wrote this book because you’re finding that from a generational standpoint. There’s a lot of similarities there and it’s important to look at that relationship of parent and child for especially the expectations of younger millennials and Gen Z-ers, because what they’re craving more than anything else is real connection with their bosses. You can’t just be the bossy boss.
Chris T:
You’ve got to also be a mentor and coach to them, and you’ve got to take that. We’ve always been brought up that you can’t be friends with your boss, right? And that line goes out the window, not always out the window but everyone on your team wants to feel like you have a vested interest in their life. So go ahead and follow them on social media, connect with them on a Monday, say, “Meg, I saw on Instagram that cat you adopted. That’s adorable. Tell me more about it.” Right?
Chris T:
That creates a real connection. And, I use my relationship with my dad is one of the examples of it is a reason why you have such a shift in the expectations of these younger workers, and we can talk more about that.
Warwick F:
Gosh, some of my listeners know I grew up in Australia and sort of almost an English Australian background, went to Oxford like my dad and a few relatives, so I’m not English but I understand the mentality and Eton, one the top private schools in England. So did he come across as, I guess, I think in England of sort of the SAS which is sort of the British equivalent of Special Forces, this kind of tough no nonsense. English people don’t do a lot of drama. They’re just quiet, resolute, here we go. Was he kind of a bit like that?
Chris T:
So, it was interesting. When he came over to the US, he found that it was incredibly more efficient than England in all their ways, and it was a lot more egalitarian, right? And, there was nothing less egalitarian than Eton where he came from.
Warwick F:
Well, yeah. That’s the top of the social spectrum. When I was in college in the late 70s, early 80s, class system was still pretty apparent. So yeah, it would have been culturally radically different here.
Chris T:
And so it was actually… It had the opposite effect to a certain extent where I hear stories when I talk to people now that he’s retired, but I’ll talk to people, they’ll be like, “Wait was your dad Tim Tuff?” And I’ll be like, “Yeah, he actually was. A lot of people don’t put it together. What was like?” They’re like, “Chris, a lot of the stuff you talk about in your book he did that. Did you know he knew every single person’s first name at Harlan? Thousands of employees and he knew everyone’s first name. Did you know that at lunch he would sit with a different group every single time?” As I was about to publish the book I sent it to him and he was like, “50% of the book I really agree with and it’s something I’ve been practicing for a while which is just good leadership.”
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Chris T:
And then he was like, “The other 50% I just don’t know well enough to have commentary on.”
Warwick F:
Okay. That is so neat to have a dad like that. And, I love the story you share that he was obviously driven, connected, and he could have connected you with stuff, but it sounds like he had almost a better path that he wanted you to achieve that success and feel that sense of validation yourself. That’s sort of amazing. I actually have three kids in their 20s and they’re all… Well, the older two are definitely millennials, the younger 22 is probably on the bubble. And by the way, millennials what is it, 22, twenty?
Chris T:
24 to 38.
Warwick F:
Okay. I hear you there. And yeah, that’s something for me to think about. I tend to want to help my kids without running their lives. I really try to be almost a more like a coach than … Whatever you want to do, as long as you love it. Try to do my best but boy your dad had a really smart idea. So fast forward a bit, you mentioned the crucibles, you got into Vanderbilt. It’s one of the toughest colleges to get into in Nashville, Tennessee. Great school, you became a partner at a very young age of a great ad agency. Is it Atlanta or…
Chris T:
Yeah, 22squared in Atlanta and in Tampa.
Warwick F:
And, you’re doing so well making all these connections but somehow you felt like you’re being successful, but is there more to life than just success? I think you mentioned work-life balance. You have two daughters.
Chris T:
Yeah. Exactly.
Warwick F:
You know young kids, they’re only young for a certain time and then they’re gone. And, you don’t want to kind of ignore that and yep, “Sorry, I missed your ballet recital, your soccer game,” whatever they’re doing, “But I’ll be at the next one.”
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
Reminds me that haunting Cat Stevens song, Cats in the Cradle. You don’t want to be that person. I’ve always loved and hated that song in a way. I’ve tried not to be that person. Nobody wants to be that person. So talk about the shift as you shifted in your thinking of work-life balance, you shifted in your thinking about what success is, being through people not just to them. So, your thinking shifted. So, talk about that shift.
Chris T:
Yeah. I think there was also an element of just letting go of the game. Right? Growing up in a very well to do family as well. Yeah. My brothers all went to Harvard and Harvard Business School, and there was a lot of this status piece going around. And one of my favorite podcasters, Naval, has something I think really profound to say about status and it’s that status is a zero sum game.
Chris T:
And because when you’re gaining someone else is losing and in this kind of crucible moment of my own, I was able to really take the time to reflect on not only what was important to me, but what I’m driving for. And, I was able to let go of the game of life that was kind of playing all around me as well as it really was keeping up with the Jones’s to a certain extent, of the better car, the bigger house, the more lavish vacations, the private jets, all of that stuff, and I took it right down to the foundations.
Chris T:
And, I was even telling Tommy’s group for his executive retreat earlier that I was on today, that for a year I didn’t have any friends. I another big piece was I quit drinking which was kind of a component of if it was a big soup, it was like one of the main ingredients of this soup and that I knew it was an important piece and contributed to an anxiety that I wanted to take out.
Chris T:
So I quit drinking, I doubled down on my family, I changed my metric of success, and I started living a little bit more for the moment and less for the status piece. And I think it looks easy on a timeline but for a year I didn’t have friends. I legitimately had almost no friends. All of my old friends went away and then at the same moment, I turned to my wife and I was like, “You know what, I have no friends.” And she looked at me because I’m such an extrovert and she was just sad for me.
Chris T:
And I was like, “You know what, I’m really bored.” And it was one of my best friends. I was kind of confiding in him, who he was just… He was one of my newer friends. He goes, “Chris, you know boredom is just a synonym for serenity and peace, right?” I was like, “Oh, so that’s what this is.” I was even talking to amazing author Shelley Paxton, who wrote a book called Soulbbatical, which talks exactly about this.
Chris T:
The importance of finding a little bit of time to recollect yourself. And, that’s what came right after what was kind of manifested as many panic attacks and being distraught a few days in a row. I was like, “Things have got to change.” And, so I took that month off. And, these were the epiphanies that came out of the moment but also that kind of trickled through for the next year. And then I met Tommy, and that kind of is the stake in the ground to what was built off of and now become my next platform if you will.
Warwick F:
You made a really important shift in your thinking because I get it. I grew up in a wealthy high status family, and 150 year old, very large media organization, you could belong to all the exclusive clubs, Oxford, Harvard Business School, all the rest, and I wasn’t driven by status. It was more just wanting to live up to the expectations of my parents, but because my mother was very outgoing and could throw parties like you wouldn’t believe, people would come from Hollywood and they would tell their friends, “You got to go see lady Fairfax because the parties that she throws are not what you’re used to in Hollywood.” And, that’s saying something. They were pretty amazing.
Chris T:
That is saying something.
Warwick F:
We would see the … I don’t know Liberace, Kirk Douglas, some famous folks, top business leaders, and it’s like in general, are they really happy? These are successful people, business leaders, politicians, prime ministers, ambassadors, but are they happy? And you can be very successful and happy but if you’re measuring your sense of happiness by how far you’re climbing up the mountain, there’s always somebody better as I’ve said in other podcasts.
Warwick F:
In sports, we talk about the greatest of all time like at the moment, Roger Federer, maybe in tennis but he’s got a couple of folks, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, nipping at his heels. But few of us will be like, “Is it possible that you’re going to be the greatest advertising executive in history?” It’s possible but maybe not. So if your success was measured by that benchmark, there’s a high probability of failure even if you get to be number two of all time, which would be incredible.
Warwick F:
So, if you measure success by that, you’re almost doomed to fail with about 99.9% possibility as opposed to, “Well, I just want to do what I do, what I love, and let the chips fall where they lie. And I want to help people.” See your epiphany I think it’s vital both for your family, but also for your own sense of self. And, that shift was huge. I want to shift to Millennial Whisperer and your other book, but does that make sense? Does shifting how you define success?
Chris T:
It was the greatest thing and I must credit Mark Manson, who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. He’s got a chapter about success.
Gary S:
A flip?
Chris T:
Yeah, yeah. A flip. Exactly.
Gary S:
Not giving a flip. I was just checking.
Chris T:
Exactly. But it was actually through that and he tells the story of the Drum. It’s a pretty famous story at this point but he was the drummer for Megadeth. And, the whole story behind it was he was originally in Metallica. And I’m probably botching this a little bit, but after he was kicked out of Metallica, it was right before Metallica hit it huge and he was like, “You know what, I’m going to take them on. I’m going to create something even bigger.” And he created the most amazing heavy metal band, almost as big as Metallica.
Chris T:
And if you look at any of his interviews, there’s all of this anger in him because his metric of success was beating Metallica. And so at no point was he ever able to be fulfilled, and here he was selling out stadiums, and which is nearly impossible, but yet he harnessed all of this anger because his metric of success was absolutely off. And that was really the catalyst for me. I was like, “I got to look at my metric of success. Oh, wait. It’s beating my brothers in the game of life. That’s horrible.”
Warwick F:
And they may care or they may not have cared about that. I don’t know whether there was a competition. It’s kind of crazy.
Gary S:
And before we move off of this subject, I think it’s important for the listener to hear what we’re talking about. We’ve heard a lot of crucibles, a lot of stories, a lot of tragedies, a lot of failures, a lot of setbacks, a lot of traumas, a lot of trials on Beyond the Crucible. But this crucible that Chris has gone through and other people right now are going through, some of you probably listening.
Gary S:
Strangely enough, it’s success. The crucible is success itself. And whether or not you were the kind of success you’re pursuing, how you define success, the way you define success, if you don’t define it in the proper terms for your life and your family and the balance of those things, can be a crucible in and of itself. Is that a fair assessment of where you found yourself Chris?
Chris T:
100 percent. And one thing that’s interesting, I went and saw the number one psychiatrist in the nation. And, I’m not going to name names but he’s pretty well known. And he brought me through all these analyses because I’m like, “What is going on with me?” And he was like, “Chris.” And, at this point we got a pretty good relationship. He turns to me, he was like, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Chris T:
I was like, “Bad news always first.” He goes, “Well, I don’t have that much of it. But the bad news is that your rock bottom is most people’s mid-point. Here’s the good news. Unlike some other family history and stuff, from a chemical standpoint you’re really good. And one of the things that I have to employ and I’ve never told anyone this is that, do two things for me. Don’t do drugs or alcohol because that’s just going to take away from your enthusiasm and your joie de vivre. And two, go give back to the world because what you have is something special.
Chris T:
“And, it is your duty to take all of this enthusiasm and this optimism that you have even at your lowest point right now, to give go off and do that to the world, and obviously I was like, “All right, I can’t wait to tell my wife this result.” And I told her and she’s like, “Yeah. No, it’s absolutely right.” So I think, yes, it’s all of those things but also there are a few other elements that I think everyone’s low points are different. Right? And sometimes it doesn’t take that ultimate, that crisis, I don’t think to catalyze that change. But I think it does take sometimes a period of strife that if you’re to look on a timeline, it is a crisis in your life. So…
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think one of the things we often say in Crucible Leadership is you can’t compare crises. Somebody might have lost a loved one, or we interviewed a navy seal that kind of was paralyzed in a parachuting acccident. There’s a lot of different crucibles. And those people will say, who’ve been through much worse crucibles than I have, they’ll say, “You can’t compare crucibles. Every crucible is just as valid as every other one.” And that’s them saying it not me. And I think it’s so true.
Warwick F:
But I think one of the keys before we shift to the books you’ve written and Millennial Whisperer, is everybody wants joy and fulfillment. Everybody wants happiness. And striving for success in and of itself is not the way there and what, you’ve found, I’ve found, I think a number of our guests have found, is significance when you focus on a life on purpose helping others, that does satisfy.
Warwick F:
You do something for somebody and it changes their life even in a small way, you feel good about yourself. We’re just wired that way. So, there is one path in which we can say with a high degree of certainty, you want to feel fulfilled in life, think of others, give back. There is a path where there is hope. So…
Gary S:
And I want us to get on the on ramp to you talking about your books and talking about how you’ve experienced that Chris, by reading something from your book, The Millennial Whisperer, because I think that’ll get us there. This impressed me so much. Listen listener to how Chris, found what success really looks like for him. This is just three paragraphs from The Millennial Whisperer.
Gary S:
“With each passing day, they his team rewarded me with production and loyalty crushing goals and all the key performance indicators we could throw at them. Yes, these millennials. It was almost as if the second I relinquished any desire to be perceived as the more traditional hero style of leader, it unleashed something powerful and almost unstoppable in them. You know that guy who sweeps in and saves the day and solves all the problems in the workplace, that’s the hero leader. That’s who I tried to be for the first 13 years of my career. That’s what almost took me out.”
Gary S:
“Instead, I made my millennial employees the heroes and assumed the role of the guide and coach that caused me to shift to equipping them rather than to trying to make them all clones of me.” That really as you talk about changing your definition of success to doing things, not to people, toward people, but through people, that seems to summarize that pretty well to me.
Chris T:
Yeah. And it sounds a lot better when you say it than when I read it. Right now I think it’s absolutely true. And going down to my own purpose, my purpose, and it has been this stated for the last seven years, even before my kind of crucible moment, and it’s to inspire and connect. And everything that I’ve done has kind of followed that stake in the ground. And so, one of the key things that was important for me was, once again, shifting the metric of success and having impact through people.
Chris T:
It’s interesting as you look at the needs and wants of this next generation, you’ve got to look at what makes them the way they are. And my favorite thing when I go into some of these corporations and I talk to these, usually it’s around the 45 to 55 year old executive. And they say, “Chris, why in the hell did these kids show up on my doorstep at 24 years old and they don’t even know how to communicate?”
Chris T:
And they go on this long rant. And I said, “Well, there is a reason for it. And, the reason is because it was really your generation that parented them.” And because there’s a lot of whether it be participation trophies, snowplow parenting. I’ve had parents come in and try to negotiate their kid’s salary. I’ve got time and time again, all of these examples of how these kids have just been, snowplowed parented through a lot of their formative years. And, it’s also why I use the example to help inspire and a lot of these other parents don’t give your kids job interviews.
Chris T:
Don’t set them up because it’s just going to get them on the wrong track and 10 years later they’re going to be a lawyer, and completely unfulfilled because that’s where your connections were. So let it happen with natural selection. And so one of the other pieces is you’ve got to also look at that kind of relationship. And the two key pieces that if anyone can walk away from how they can approach either their millennial children, and Gen Z children differently, or their employees, and the two biggest things of what they’re craving is connection and context.
Chris T:
And that connection piece, they want to see that you take a vested interest in their life. And that’s why certain things like rewards and recognition are so important to them. They were rewarded and recognized all the way through when they show up at an organization, they expect a certain amount of that. You can do it too much but you got to have some component there of building them up.
Chris T:
But then it’s also if you take the four leadership characteristics of what they find most important. Number one is inspirational leadership, two is transparency, three is authenticity. And that unto itself is really where I like to kind of talk about, “Let’s focus really the things that we can do as leaders to be better leaders, and then the culture piece will be a byproduct of that.” So, I can go any which way…
Warwick F:
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s fascinating. So, talk about how… And I think you’ve talked about how millennials are misunderstood. But see, I guess you’ve mentioned some of the key components of what millennials want. Would you say that that makes them different than other generations? What’s different about millennials versus these others?
Chris T:
So, there’s two reasons of what makes them so different. One is the impact of social media and digital media on them. And it’s also what makes older millennials different than younger millennials. And then two, it was really the impact of the recession of 2008. Older millennials were in the marketplace, and then younger millennials saw their mom and dad lose their jobs and then inherited all this student debt. So, the needs of both of those are even different. And the needs of older millennials versus younger millennials, and Gen Z-ers, are also a little bit different. You always see this with a generation. But there are certain things that I like to focus in on in terms of the things that they all want, right?
Chris T:
And one of those from an organizational standpoint, work flexibility. You look at what COVID did, but one of the things they craved for so long and weren’t able to ever get and the thing that I actually came up against the most was your easiest fix when I go into these corporations that could do it physically knowing that 35% of any organization can actually work remotely, where it’s not physical labor or some of these other things, but it’s like, “This is an easy fix for you guys. Just let them work from where they want to work. And if you can’t trust them, then you’ve got a hiring issue. If you can’t trust them to work from where they want to work then you’ve got a hiring problem.”
Chris T:
And so, you look at some of these things, and you look at a lot of these needs and wants. And once again, I go back to millennials aren’t the problem, they just expose all the problems. But the other side is true with social media has impacted them profoundly, and that there’s a lot of things they can learn from the older generations, one of them being the interpersonal muscle as Tommy would say. Right?
Chris T:
At age 13 they’re given a brand new phone with a Snapchat account on it. So their first flirtation, they didn’t have to call mom and dad and get through mom and dad on the phone, and then get to the other person and then create… That creates this interpersonal muscle that no longer really exists. So it’s up to us to help teach those things to them, and to help bring some of those…
Warwick F:
And, they’re bombarded with things that can be helpful or not helpful. Just the horror stories of young teenagers they get affirmation, but then they get torn down by friends in some cases that can lead to even suicide just because of social media and just the … It seems like easy to say horrendous things on social media. Even with my own two kids, I’ve got a two sons and a daughter, the daughters in the middle.
Warwick F:
When look at my older two, Facebook is kind of one of their social media outlets of choice. My youngest son who’s 22, Facebook is so for the older people, “I use Snapchat. I never use Facebook.” And my older two don’t really do Snapchat as much. So there’s not that much difference between the 29 and the 22 year old in terms of age, they’re all in their 20s, but yet how they use social media is different.
Chris T:
Yeah. And, it impacts all of us. It’s not just them. In The Millennial Whisperer I call it the Pinterestation of a generation, and it also leads into one of my rules my 7030 rule, but a lot of us suffer from the grass is always greener complex. And my 7030 rules in place that on the first day of employment I tell them, “30% of your job is going to suck and I’m sorry. 70% should fire you up and fill you up but welcome to life.
Chris T:
And any of your friends that you’re seeing their perfect lives, play it on Instagram, they’re full of it. Right? And listen, I’ve done it too.” Right. And I tell the stories of some of the things that I’ve done. But it’s like that’s not a reality. So let’s figure out from your job description, what’s in your 30% zone of suck, and then what’s in your 70% zone of fire you up and fill you up. And by doing that, when they have three days in a row of doing Excel documents, and budgeting, or whatever that zone of suck thing is they don’t quit in order to pursue it.
Warwick F:
It’s sets their expectations. That is so smart. I want to dwell a bit on those four things. You talked about inspiration, Authenticity, transparency, and then the culture kind of being affected by the others. When you say inspiration, is part of that millennials kind of want purpose and meaning at work? I don’t want to midtread it but…
Chris T:
100%. 100% but they also part of that interpretation of the real interpretation of inspirational leadership is also that connection piece, right? So there’s elements of you got to reward and recognize your people, you got to take a vested interest in your people, and you’ve got to start opening up more of this idea to be both the boss but also a mentor and a coach to them, as well as potentially a friend.
Warwick F:
Right. They don’t want to see themselves as just a small cog in the big machine.
Chris T:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
And maybe people in the 50s said, “Well, that’s just life work isn’t meant to be fun. I’m a cog and I just go to work, punch the time clock, and I go home and try to recover on the weekend.” But that people aren’t thinking that way. It’s not the 1950s. They’re looking as you say, for some connection. They want to feel like that their boss cares, that there’s meaning, that the boss actually knows their names, the names of their kids, what they do for fun on the weekend.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
They want to feel that they care. And back to you they said authenticity and transparency, you can read all the books but I’m sure millennials they know if you’re faking it. If you’re just reading from a manual, or seminar you just went to, or a book you just read and it’s not real. As I often say that one of the worst as you would know, one of the worst things in advertising is doing great advertising for a product that’s awful because people will really, really get angry. That’s the worst possible combination, great advertising with a product that sucks. So you don’t want to be that manager, right, that just says all the right things, asks all the right questions but you know they could care less about your life.
Chris T:
Massive disdain for hypocrisy. You’re absolutely right. And, the other piece to that is if you ask anyone, and I’ve seen this in corporations, “Hey, Bob, do you consider yourself to be an inspirational leader?” When you talk to Bob, he’s like, “Hell yeah.” They laugh, they light up, it’s like, “Thanks, Bob.” And then you have two people on Bob’s team, “Hey, is Bob an inspirational leader?” Their first question is, “Is Bob going to find out if I tell you the truth?”
Chris T:
And it’s like, “No.” He’s like, “Heck no. He’s not. He doesn’t do anything to take a vested interest in me. He doesn’t get me fired up. I don’t know where we’re going, blah, blah, blah.” I created an assessment that breaks down some of those things, but gets the input from all of their employees that are oftentimes younger. But transparency I think is another interesting thing. And I talked about connection and context. A lot of people misinterpret transparency to be one of two things on that spectrum.
Chris T:
They either interpret it to be on one side financial transparency and they say, “Chris, I’m not going to tell everyone how much we’re making and what our profit margins are.” It’s like, “No, it’s not that.” Or they go to the other side of it and they say, “They interpret it as vulnerable.” And they say, “Chris, I’m not going to cry in front of my people.” And we’re not talking about Brene Brown and vulnerability.
Chris T:
What they want from you in transparency, is context. Why are you making the decisions that you’re making? So you’ve got to be giving them the data and disclosing those pieces to demonstrate that. So when you lose a new piece of business or something happens, talk to them about why and what it is that you learn from that. Don’t just sugarcoat everything, and especially X’s were brought up this way, that you have to sugarcoat and only present the good news. You got to throw that out the window and instead inform them with this context so that they can start connecting the dots themselves. That’s what I do.
Warwick F:
People want their bosses to be honest with them about, “Okay, if we’re having a downturn, what happened? And maybe it’s even, “Look, this is the direction the company’s going in. I don’t know that I completely agree but I’m doing the best I can.” Or, “We got hammered by the market or competitors and here’s what we’re trying to do. And, I think maybe went in the wrong direction but here’s what we’re going to do next.”
Warwick F:
They want some transparency in the sense of honesty about what’s happening. And you don’t have to get into every detail but give them enough that they kind of, “Okay, the guy’s being straight with me.” And I’m sure trust is got to be huge. If you don’t trust your boss, you’re not going to walk off the cliff for them. You got to trust them. You got to believe that they have your back.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Gary S:
That gentlemen, well, you may have heard was the landing gear starting to come down on landing the plane. Before we start to really land the plane, we’re just sort of have the little chimes go off in the landing gears going down. Chris, I’d be remiss if I did not give you a chance to let our listeners know how they can find out more about you, about The Millennial Whisperer, and now I’m going to try it, your upcoming book Save Your Asks.
Chris T:
There you go.
Gary S:
How can they find out more about?
Warwick F:
And if you can give just maybe a couple thoughts about the key component of Save Your Asks.
Chris T:
Yeah, yeah.
Warwick F:
What is the thrust to that book?
Chris T:
So the best place to find me if you actually … I’ve got a free offer for getting a hard cover of the book if you go to quiz.themillennialwhisperer.com, I’ll send it to you all up in the show notes. But you just take a quiz, I’ll tell you what type of millennial leader you are and then you just have to pay for the shipping. If you have any issues, I’ll send you a free PDF, I’ve no problem with it. The more people that read the book, the better.
Chris T:
It’s just about getting the book out in the world. And, the business model and ROI on it is we’ll have a longer discussion about that. But it really is impact that I’m trying to make. So go there, check it out. The best place to get in touch with me is actually on Instagram. And, I’m @T-U-F-F22, the number 22. And, I respond to almost every single thing there. And then just themillennialwhisperer.com, you can find more stuff about the book as well as the assessments and a lot of other fun, free tools for you.
Chris T:
In terms of moving to the Save Your Asks piece, and it’s I think a good next layer on top of the impact that I’m trying to make. But one problem I think I had I asked myself, “Am I having the impact on also the younger generation in helping them to learn how to better network, and use real authentic connection to drive that networking coupled with.” I want something that anyone can take and be able to pivot their career to a place where they are more fulfilled and in line with their purpose.
Chris T:
When passion, purpose, and profession all overlap, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But in order to get there takes a lot of work in some of these things. So, I wanted a tool that people could execute on that. So it’s essentially how do you better network your way to a more fulfilling life through some tactics and the book title itself is a call to action. You two are the best examples.
Chris T:
Every single day I bet people are reaching out to you saying, “They’re going and wasting their one ask out of the gates.” Right? And they’re like, “Hey, can I be on your podcast?” It’s like, wow. How about doing a little bit of research and understanding what it is that drives us, and what we’re all about, before you go in for that ask.” Right? I call them, “Askholes”. I already hooked you up this, that, and enough is enough.
Chris T:
And I think with a shift in mentality and saving that ask when you start focusing in on genuine relationships, amazing things happen. And, one of the tactics that I’m writing about is this idea of just having a longer view. The tactic itself is called shawshanking. And, this was taught to me by a guy I met in the early days of Facebook, and it was six years after we had first met at Menlo Park on Facebook, blah, blah, blah, whatever, that we’re at dinner, and we had just signed a huge deal.
Chris T:
And I turned to him and I said, “Jason, how in the heck did you keep in touch with me the most ADHD guy in the world? Here we are probably your biggest deal today. Right?” And he goes, “I shawshanked you.” And I was like, “What is that?” He said, “Every single week for the last six years, I’ve had some form of communication with you, and not once have I asked you for anything. I was just checking in, keeping up the relationship whatever.
Chris T:
I wasn’t ever asking anything. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to try that tactic.” And I tried that tactic at the agency and we ended up landing one of our largest clients 18 months later after I became best friends with the person. And one of the things that I’ve made it now known is shawshanking is a verb. And when you start focusing in on creating genuine relationships, and real connection, just like The Millennial Whisperer, amazing things happen.
Chris T:
And in order for us to actually start being freed, and living that life, we’ve got to evolve our currencies and continually do that with side hustles and passion projects. So encourage your people to pursue side hustles and passion projects to offset that 7030 rule, that 30% zone of suck. Sometimes it’s a 5050, sometimes it’s flipped where it’s 70% of their job sucks, but it’s up to us to help them pursue that. But we’ve got to pursue those things ourselves because that is how we truly evolve our currency to be that thing that is changing with our own heads and heart.
Warwick F:
Well said. That’s awesome.
Chris T:
As you could tell I get pretty excited actually.
Gary S:
Yeah. It’s fascinating to me to think that you have a twin brother. Is he the calm one or is he the excitable one?
Chris T:
My wife is an identical twin and I’m an identical twin. So we’re both identical twins. I equate some of our amazing marriage to the fact that when you grow up with someone exactly like you, not many people can have that bond. But our twins are both very different than us, and I think one of the best probably experiments or validations, to the idea that your spouse molds you whether or not you understand that we’ve had foils, we had identical foils, and then we both went off and married these very different people.
Chris T:
And now here we are 13 years later, and we look, and we’re very different. And so my twin brother is actually a private school teacher, and head of admissions for a school in Connecticut. Julie, my wife’s twin sister and her, they’re both professional soccer players. And they’re both kind of still in that domain but they’re also very different from one another. So it’s really interesting that kind of the science and psychology from a sociological experiment standpoint.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Gary S:
Well, that is fascinating information too. Yes, the tires are on the runway. We are landing the plane.
Chris T:
Let’s do it.
Gary S:
Before we go listener, let me summarize for you I think some takeaways from this episode with Chris Tuff. One, Chris, talks and you heard him say it a couple times that crisis can be a catalyst for change. It’s certainly was in his life. Crisis was a catalyst for change. One of my greatest joys in co-hosting this podcast is when the guest’s way of looking at life and leadership, and Crucible Leadership Warwick’s way of looking at life and leadership sync up.
Gary S:
And while Chris says crisis can be a catalyst for change, we talk at Crucible Leadership about how your crucible can be the launching point to a life of significance for you if you learn the lessons of that crucible. So instead of asking why in the midst of a crucible or a crisis, ask what. What can you learn from where you find yourself? That’s takeaway one. And then takeaway two from this conversation is take a long look at how you define success.
Gary S:
If it’s to beat others, Chris said his idea of success was to beat his older brothers. If it’s to beat others and to gain things, not to help others and to put people ahead of things, you may need to reassess your definition of success because redefining success can be how you find success. I’ll say that again. Redefining success can be how you find success. That’s what happened to Chris, that’s what happened to Warwick, and that’s how in Crucible Leadership we talk about finding success that is couched in being a life of significance.
Gary S:
The third thing that you can take away from this is the great example that Chris, gave in his book about if you’re a leader, don’t try to be the hero. Empower others to be the hero. You may see on my lapel pin if you’re watching, I have Captain America. Don’t try to be Captain America to those you lead. Be Nick Fury, be the head of the Avengers not the Avenger. Help them along that way, pour into them, become a mentor and a coach. Help them in their hero training. Together, you can help the world and you can change the world. And then the final piece of takeaway advice is the one that… I just want to say the words. Don’t be an askhole.
Chris T:
Yes.
Gary S:
Thank you. Thank you listener for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. We would love it if you would go to crucibleleadership.com, poke around, see some of the blogs, we have an assessment there that you can take, you can sign up. Most importantly, you can sign up for an email to get insights from Warwick, about how to live as a crucible leader, how you can become a crucible leader, how you can move beyond your crucible as the title of this podcast says. So until the next time we are together on this podcast, please remember that your crucible experience is tough, is difficult.
Gary S:
Right now you could be feeling a lot of pain. But as Warwick expresses every time we do a podcast, and as Chris has expressed here, those difficult times can in fact be some of the best times in your life. They’re far from the end of your story. They can be if you learn the lessons of them, If you use your crisis as a catalyst for change, those moments can be the start of a new story that’s the most rewarding of your life, because at the end it leads to something truly important, a life of significance.
After losing her husband to a military training accident, she fought for joy for herself and her four children by moving beyond surviving.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, your cohost and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. You have clicked play on, we hope you’ve clicked subscribe to, a podcast that deals in what our founder refers to as crucible experiences.
Gary S:
Crucible experiences are those moments in life that are painful, those moments in life that are setbacks, failures, traumas, tragedies, things that happen to us, things that sometimes we have a hand in bringing about. The common thread, though, of why we talk about crucibles on Beyond the Crucible is that very reason the show is called that.
Gary S:
How do you get beyond your crucible experiences? How do you get through that pain — not just deal with it and shove it down, but how do you get through it? How do you move on to a better place which we refer to as moving on to building a life of significance?
Gary S:
As we talk about this today with me is the architect, the Lego master, if you will, of Crucible Leadership, our founder Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, this is going to be, I think, a meaningful show.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
Our guest today is Sarah Nannen. Sarah is the founder of Beyond Surviving, a movement that teaches a proactive and renegade approach to mental health and emotional resilience while navigating grief and trauma recovery. She became a military widow and solo mother of four in 2014 when an aviation accident claimed her husband’s life.
Gary S:
Her personal journey through rock bottom now informs her work with those navigating painful life transitions who seek to live extraordinary lives. She’s devoted her career to teaching sustainable wellbeing and a new paradigm of deep systemic integration of mind/body healing to anyone seeking to move beyond surviving the ride of life, to move beyond just surviving that ride of life.
Gary S:
Sarah’s background as a Naval Officer informs her leadership perspective with a community focused model for cultivating resilience and sustainable wellbeing. She is the founder of Renkon Yoga Studio and hosts The Other Side of Rock Bottom podcast, which launches this summer.
Gary S:
Take it away, Warwick.
Warwick F:
Sarah, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Before we get into your crucible experience, which some people are like, “Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve had a crucible…” Sadly, you obviously do understand that, you know what it was, you know the date, but tell us a bit about who you are, Sarah, and how you grew up, and a little bit about your family and in the lead-up to your crucible. Just a little about Sarah Nannen.
Sarah N:
Sarah Nannen grew up in Central Illinois in the middle of America, I guess. A good old farm community U.S. of A small town. Played sports, was pretty smart. Played the violin, went off to college, did the ROTC thing, became a naval officer, married my college sweetheart. I was four babies in when I found out that he passed.
Sarah N:
I was just doing that average life. My average life looked like living in Japan at the time. We were a military family on the move. He was a fighter pilot. Once I got out of the Navy, my whole job was holding down the fort while he went off and did the fighter pilot naval aviator thing all over the world, and I had a lot of amazing experience with that. Our kids were five, four, two, and newborn that wild day that upended all of that everyday average American dream thing we were doing and changed the direction of our life forever.
Sarah N:
That’s a little bit about me.
Warwick F:
Wow. Until that point, and that was obviously the defining crucible of your life, had you had any others? Did life seem pretty normal? Wonderful family, siblings, parents, grandparents, was it like, “Life is good. I’m blessed.” Was that your experience?
Sarah N:
My mother-in-law described us as the golden couple. We were both high achievers, and everything we envisioned we managed to create. We were both very successful. I grew up with great, supportive family. Everybody was healthy. We were running marathons in our free time. And short of the hardship and the crucible of going on a deployment and being locked on a ship with 300 men for six months, I would say this is certainly the defining crucible experience of my life.
Warwick F:
What made you decide to go into the Navy?
Sarah N:
The honest answer is that I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I found myself heading off to the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana with an undecided major and a lot of potential ahead of me. I knew that I could be anything and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a passion, a purpose, a direction, but I knew that I loved to travel and I knew that I had always been a natural leader. So it made perfect sense to go off on an adventure, become a naval officer, travel the world and see if I could figure out what was important enough to me on the other side of that.
Sarah N:
I ended up majoring in Spanish and business because that seemed fun and useful enough. I got to study abroad a couple of times and then, upon graduation, off I went to meet my ship on deployment.
Warwick F:
Wow. It’s funny, as listeners would know, that it’s ironic that you had a naval career because, even though I’m from Australia, for some reason we ended up in Annapolis, Maryland, which is you would know is home of the U.S. Naval Academy. You see a lot of people in their uniforms and they all change. It’s one particular day a year when they go from whatever it is, white to blue or other way around and Navy football is big in our town. Not my background, but definitely we’re a Navy town. What kind of ships were you deployed on? What was your role in the Navy?
Sarah N:
My ships were rather small gas-turbine frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and my role, surprisingly enough, as a Spanish major, was engineering. That’s a unique thing the Navy likes to torture their young officers with. It’s offering them the role of leadership in an area that they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and the only training you get is from the people who you’re responsible for.
Gary S:
That does sound like a government job.
Warwick F:
It does.
Gary S:
For sure.
Warwick F:
Where did you meet your husband?
Sarah N:
We met the first day of ROTC on campus at the University of Illinois. We both had high school sweethearts coming into college, but we had a connection and a friendship that first semester. By New Year’s Eve, we had ended our high school relationships and started one of our own.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Sarah N:
We go way back to … 2000 was the year that we met in university.
Warwick F:
I’m assuming you were never deployed together or anything like that?
Sarah N:
I was a naval officer. He was a naval aviator, but he was a Marine and he would not hesitate to remind you that he was not in the Navy. Thank you very much. We didn’t ever deploy together. In fact, we were married several years before we lived together because I was stationed in San Diego and he was in flight school in Pensacola. Lots of traveling back and forth and getting well-versed at long distance. Even when we weren’t deployed, we weren’t often together until I got out the Navy in 2009.
Warwick F:
Once you were married, how did your service work then? Because with four young kids, how did you manage to balance Navy and kids?
Sarah N:
I actually got out of the Navy six months after our first baby was born. I was at that decision point in my career that I had served the time that I was required to, based on the agreement that we created. Having a newborn was a no-brainer. I took a lot of maternity leave and then finished out the last three months of my … I was on shore duty so that helped nicely that my work was essentially an office job.
Sarah N:
When I got out of the Navy, then I transitioned full time to stay-at-home mom, which was also a very interesting in hindsight crucible moment, going from naval officer to commander-in-chief of the house, and all of the really big life changes that came with being at home with just my amazing baby rather than fighting the ship all day long every day.
Warwick F:
That was a big decision, but obviously everybody’s in a different situation and totally understand.
Sarah N:
We were tired of living far away from each other, to be honest, Warwick, and I had made the decision to get out so that we could finally cohabitate and have the same address.
Warwick F:
I’m assuming given he’s a Marine they don’t fly off the ships. I’m assuming they fly off land or…
Sarah N:
Sometimes they do. They’re often deployed to aircraft carriers and they also will have land-based deployments.
Warwick F:
It meant that you could actually be together as a family, at least a reasonable amount of the time.
Sarah N:
Theoretically. We did have the same address, So that helped.
Warwick F:
For sure. I understand. And so how long were you married?
Sarah N:
We were married in 2005 and we were together since 2000, so 14 years all told.
Warwick F:
Wow. It was in Japan when the… And it was a training accident, was it?
Sarah N:
Yes. Oddly enough, I was in Japan and he was in the U.S. in Nevada at TOP GUN. You may have seen the movie? Similar but different in real life. He was at a high-level training command learning some really exciting things that he was tasked to essentially bring back to his squadron and train this squadron around and had an aviation accident that we never saw coming. Of course, when they go on deployment, you’re worried all the time and anxious, but as a military spouse, I think you take training for granted so often. You know there’re risks involved but you certainly, you don’t expect it.
Warwick F:
Assuming the equipment works and there’s no pilot, what have you, you would just assume that you’ll be okay.
Sarah N:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Now, you were in the Navy, you understand the Navy Marine culture. I’m assuming you see in the movies and maybe I think you’ve recounted this: two officers, they’re walking down towards your front door and I think you mentioned, you knew why they were there. You knew…
Sarah N:
It’s just like you see in the movies. Even as I describe it, I can feel my body remembering that moment. You have those crucible moments and you can’t unsee them. And it truly is. You see them coming up the steps and you just know why they’re there, which is helpful, because I don’t think they wanted to have to say the words to me and we both took a while to figure out how to talk to each other about what was actually happening.
Warwick F:
Do they say the words? You just see… “On behalf of a grateful nation,” that whole…
Sarah N:
That came more toward the funeral time. In that moment, I think they were attempting to just say, “I don’t know how to say this, but there was an accident.” At that point, I was already in my complete dissociative psychology state of crying and shaking my head “No,” while welcoming them to my home while remembering that my children were at the lunch table and trying to navigate all of the complexity of that moment with as much grace and also the overwhelmingly human emotions that naturally come out when you find out that your partner has died.
Warwick F:
The fact that you were in the Navy, did that make any difference to how you experienced it as opposed to any other spouse of somebody in the military?
Sarah N:
I love that question. I think it didn’t affect at all my grief experience and the intensity of the emotions, but it did afford me a comfortability in that environment that I felt ease in asking questions to high-ranking members of the military that I think others may not have. Even though spouses don’t worry about rank, there is this understanding of this structure of power. I had no qualms about talking to the general in very clear terms and asking questions. I think I maybe knew what questions to ask in a way that someone who doesn’t have as much exposure to that kind of thing might. I do think it did help.
Warwick F:
Yeah. You want to know what happened and how could this possibly happen because I’m sure, again, we don’t need to get the details, but I’m sure your husband was very good at what he did otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to TOPGUN. It’s not like he’s some rookie first time up in the air. Where’s the control stick? Where’s the gauges again? He knew what he was doing so I’m sure that was one whole episode. I’m assuming there’s probably a good support system. Sadly, this happens other navy spouses. You probably could talk to not just spouses, but officers too, because you were an officer as well.
Sarah N:
Yeah. I think that I had a relationship with a lot of his coworkers. That seems like a strange word. But his peers that maybe other spouses didn’t… Again, there was a mutual respect perhaps that I had earned knowing that I had also served. I did feel again that I could call up or text someone who I saw as a friend, not just someone that worked with him and say, “I need you to tell me. Tell it to me like it is. Don’t sugar coat it. I know that you’re trying to be careful with me, but I need to know the information. Whatever you can tell me is appreciated.” That really helped me make sense of it from an objective standpoint.
Sarah N:
I think a lot of people, particularly in the work that I do now, they are left grappling with what happened, how could this happen, and I think in an attempt to protect us from what happened, they also rob us of some really basic information that helps us turn this horrific event into a very scientific matter of fact thing.
Sarah N:
That was how my son, who was five at the time, engaged with it when I told him what happened. “Daddy had a crash. They’re not sure if he’s okay. They’re looking for him, but they don’t think he’s okay.” And he said, “Well Mom, there’re helicopters with lights on them so they’ll find him. Don’t worry.” He was just so matter of fact about the thing because young children don’t have all of those social stories to apply on top of the information. It’s just information.
Sarah N:
Having that access to information and I guess the privilege or the self-appointed privilege to say, “I’m going to ask these questions that other people might not feel safe asking.”
Warwick F:
You feel you at least had a closure in the sense that you knew what happened and why. You felt like you were being given the truth not some, I don’t know, whitewashed or sanitized version for spouses. That probably helped to a degree. One of the things I think I’ve read is you have four children and your youngest daughter was, was a few weeks old?
Sarah N:
Yeah, six weeks old.
Warwick F:
That’s one, obviously, of the tragedies when you have four, even your oldest at five, it’s still young, would have some memories.
Sarah N:
Very young.
Warwick F:
But your younger ones probably obviously your little daughter wouldn’t have…
Sarah N:
She never met him actually. She was born while he was already gone. He watched her birth via FaceTime.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Sarah N:
the pictures that we have of them together are screenshots of them looking at each other through technology.
Warwick F:
Not only do you have the tragedy of your husband but the sense of my youngest daughter and my younger kids are not going to know their father. I want to obviously talk about how you got beyond that, but I think it’s probably obvious, but the listeners are still going to want to know. Some have gone through your experience, some have not.
Warwick F:
What were you feeling about those two tragedies in a sense, your husband dying and especially your youngest daughter never having met their father? Your probably youngest two not really having many memories of… What was your emotions in those weeks and months afterwards?
Sarah N:
I really appreciate you making those two separate things because I think often people see the story as one giant tragedy with no way out and it really was this very juxtaposed personal loss and figuring out who am I now without him and also this overwhelming sense of pity being too young to be a widow, as everyone likes to phrase it, that I was clamoring to reclaim my autonomy and my existence without him in a way that was very projected upon me that my life was over and everybody knew it. They were there to help me suffer through the rest of my life.
Sarah N:
But then there was this other very clear desire to protect my children from unnecessary pain and also to really help them experience the pain in an honest way that was useful to their healing rather than hiding them from it. Navigating what’s the appropriate amount of disclosure and dialogue with a two-year-old or a five-year-old around what’s happening and helping them express that in ways that are age appropriate and even accessible.
Sarah N:
There was a lot of information involved because young children really don’t even understand the concept of death. I had to teach them what that even meant before I could get to telling them what had happened.
Sarah N:
Luckily, I had a really beautiful chaplain with me and he was able to help me create this lesson essentially and talk about some things are alive and some things are not alive and some things haven’t life in them and some things don’t have life in them, and sometimes the things that had life in them don’t have life in them anymore.
Sarah N:
We’ve looked at nature as an obvious teaching tool. You can see that this plant over here is alive. This tree was alive but is no longer alive. Remember that time we went hiking and we saw that big tree on the ground. And then you can see a fake plant in the house that clearly does not have any life in it, but looks like it could. Just giving them some basic understanding of life and death and what it means to be living and what happens when you’re not living was our starting point.
Sarah N:
They think as they grow and as they continue to grow, they will have new experiences with their grief. They will have new questions. They’ll have new understandings as they learn to identify as themselves. They’ll also look back and want to know more.
Sarah N:
One of the things that I’ve done to help them know him without having known him is that he’s always remained a part of our conversations. They’ll be able to describe him to you. They know what food he liked. They know what teams he liked. They know how he liked to spend his time. I’ve posthumously created this relationship to him for them that they feel as though they remember even though it’s simply information that I’ve continued to help them create this image of who he was and I think that’s really helpful that even though they don’t have a lot of memory of time together, they feel like they know who he was though.
Warwick F:
Wow. I just can picture just those first few months and years where you’re dealing with your own grief. You’re obviously highly intelligent person. You don’t get into the navy without being a leader. Intellectually, you know what needs to be done. It’s almost like it’s a terrible mission. It’s difficult but I need to overcome. Intellectually, you probably, in some sense, had an idea of what you needed to do, but then you’re a human being and-
Sarah N:
Thank you.
Warwick F:
Sadly, even though you might know the right things to do when you’re getting counseling and all the rest, you still have to deal with just we’re all human and it’s devastating. You’re trying to be strong, deal with your own emotions, but then you’re also trying to help your children and just be in this, to use your phrase, fetal ball weeping every day.
Warwick F:
That may be normal and totally fine, but that may or may not help your kids. It’s like, “Gosh, I got to be strong for my kids. Even if I don’t feel like I’m particularly strong at any given moment.” That’s got to be, “I’ve got to try and help them when I’m having enough trouble helping myself.” You’re, “I don’t think have any energy to help anybody else other than me.” That’s got to have been… Having four children, so young, that’s got to have been a huge stretch on internal resources to try to keep yourself sane and be strong and calm for your kids.
Sarah N:
It’s interesting that I actually had to reverse-engineer my grief after that initial shock, because within the week we were on an airplane back to the States with 13 suitcases and living with my folks and then seeking a house and buying a car and finding a pediatrician. There wasn’t actually space for me to be anything but strong and mission-driven, as you pointed out, that was my auto default, was to go straight to strong.
Sarah N:
It took probably a year before I was able to circle back around to, “Now that all that’s done and we have somewhere to live and they have a school to go to. Now, what do I do?” That was the point where I was capable to start interfacing with the grief and the emotions and the fears and the unknowns and all of the, “Who am I now?” And even the complexity of the social thing that continued where as much as I would work to find strength in myself or find something to inspire me, my identity always came back around to his death for the people in the world around me.
Sarah N:
It took a lot to really reclaim my sense of self and then even more to get to a point where I could stand in that and say, “Yes, and …” because so many people could only see the tragic widow no matter what I did and-
Warwick F:
It’s that, “Oh, that’s Sarah Nannen. She was the wife of that marine pilot at TOPGUN. It was so tragic. Oh my gosh. How will she get through this? It’s over.” It’s Sarah Nannen who is… The who-is never changes. It’s frozen in time. You’re perpetually that age and that grief stricken widow and there’s no end. Does it feel like a prison? Like they don’t let you out of the box. That’s who you are and it’ll never change.
Sarah N:
It did feel as though I was supposed to climb into that widow box and let everybody seal me in there and set up shop and be happy. “This is your job now. Your job is to grieve and remember your husband and help us grieve and remember your husband and for the rest of forever, this is what we will do. When Memorial Day comes around, when his birthday comes around, we’re going to come back around to you so that we can grieve together. That will be your life.” And it felt so small.
Gary S:
Yeah. This is a fascinating point. To hear you talk about that, Sarah, you began several minutes back where you said something along the lines of, People looked at you like your life was over, and Warwick, listeners who know your story, there’s a very similar emotion happened to you when the takeover bid failed. And in some ways what you just described in talking to Sarah about you’re supposed to be in this box and you’re the widow of this pilot, you in many perspectives people thought, “You’re the young man who tried to take over the family business and it didn’t work.” You were seen like that too.
Gary S:
I think a lot of listeners who’ve been through crucibles, through really heart-rending crucibles, have felt that experience, that they are frozen in time, to use your words, Warwick. They’re frozen in time as a widow. They’re frozen in time as a failure. They’re frozen in time as someone who’s been injured in some way physically and they’ve lost some physical part of who they were.
Gary S:
What’s great about this conversation is we’re about to turn a corner here in talking to you, Sarah, where you have created a new life from the ashes of what was from … even the expectations of people that you were going to stay there, you created a new life just as you created a new and rewarding life, Warwick.
Warwick F:
It’s so well said. Obviously, you don’t want to compare tragedies because it’s one thing losing 150-year old-family business, but a spouse now that feels pretty up there as about as bad, the toughest thing as you could possibly go through. But in a sense-
Sarah N:
It is a meaningful comparison though. It absolutely isn’t. I think it’s a very universal thread that when we have what you call a crucible moment on the other side of that we’re asked to identify as a cancer survivor or as a survivor of that person or he figured out how to fix that failure. It always comes back around that moment.
Warwick F:
They always see you… In my case, as listeners know, I was 26-year-old, just back from Harvard Business School, launched this two-billion plus takeover, wanting to bring back the ideals that I’ve found. It fails. It’s funny. My dad has the same name as me. He was knighted so he was Sir Warwick so I was always called young Warwick. That’s like 30 plus years ago. It’s a long time.
Warwick F:
But in the Australian media’s eyes, I am perpetually 26 years old, the idealistic, naive, foolish kid who let a 150-year-old family company go and I’ll forever be young Warwick. I’m in my fifties now. I don’t feel like young Warwick anymore, but I’ll always be young Warwick. The people put you in that box.
Warwick F:
In your case, in terms of how you moved on, I love the fact that you talked about even though you’re a very strong-driven person, you are sensible enough to say, “I actually need to experience the grief.” Some people would say, “You know what? I’m moving on. I’m not doing this grief thing because I’m not going to be a weak, little jellyfish. I’m not going to do grief. I’m going to be strong.” I think you had the wisdom to realize being strong doesn’t mean to say that you can’t move on without grieving.
Warwick F:
Talk about some of the steps in terms of how you moved on and then obviously how that gets into how you help others because I have a feeling that was maybe step one is you got to feel the grief before you can move on.
Sarah N:
It’s one of the strongest things we can do is turn toward it. What I find over and over, and I did this myself, is that we have this model of grief that the statute of limitations ends when the funeral happens and then everyone starts looking at their clock and watching how you behave. “Isn’t it about time you …” Fill in the blank. We have that sense of urgency of “Get on with it and get on with your life and figure it out. You’ll be fine.” When we choose to come toward it, something changes and that’s, I believe, the only way that healing can actually happen.
Sarah N:
What’s tough is that the model we’re given to fake it till you make it and put on a happy face creates this really ruptured reality where externally everyone sees us as incredibly strong and powerful and inspiring and doing great — and internally, day by day, we are imploding and crumbling and hurting.
Sarah N:
Something really damaging happens to the psyche of a human being when you’re asked to live in two realities at the same time and neither of those realities involve your truth. Neither of those realities involve healing. The performative external world is happening and maybe you’re succeeding at the performance of life, but you’re not reaping any of the rewards. You can’t experience any of the richness of your lived experience because internally you’re so devastated and your physiology and your psychology are in such a dissociative distressed place that you feel like your sleep walking through the world.
Sarah N:
I think there are a lot of people on the planet who have experienced a variety of crucible moments that are stuck in that place because it feels like success. It looks like you’re making it. When we have those moments of pain, we chalk it up like, “Oh, I’m having a bad day.” “Oh, it’s just a hard day today.” Or, “Maybe I’m depressed. Maybe I just need some medication. I don’t know. I just can’t stop crying.”
Sarah N:
I always invite those people who come toward my work with curiosity to just turn toward that, whatever you’re feeling, the fear, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the heartbreak, the tears, turn toward it and be curious about it. What’s coming through? What hasn’t been expressed? What hasn’t been said? What tears haven’t been cried? Because my experience isn’t that unique in that when something devastating happens that ruptures our reality, interrupts our sense of self, whatever it is, a death, a loss, a failure, a health crisis. There is always a huge amount of stuff to do to triage the moment whether it’s hiring lawyers, filling out paperwork, packing bags, moving houses, going to the hospital.
Sarah N:
There’s so much to do externally that that becomes the new dissociation. You distract yourself with the busyness of the work, and we’re wired to be capable of delving into what must be done because humans are amazing and that’s part of our evolution is that our nervous system actually has the capacity to override itself with all of these incredible, useful hormones to make the body parts do the things that must be done to keep survival happening.
Sarah N:
Very few people have said, “I just laid on my bed for a year and waited for it to get better.” No one gets the opportunity to do that.
Warwick F:
You had four young children. There was stuff to do.
Sarah N:
There’s a lot to do.
Warwick F:
Kids to school, kids to change. But I like what you’re talking about. There’s the being and the doing. Yes, you’ve got to get on with life, lawyers, probate, homes, moving halfway around the world, but yet you’ve also got to deal with who you are because you can’t be your best self to your friends and especially your children unless you deal with that. If you don’t help yourself, your kids will be affected, like it or not. You were smart enough to know that it’s for yourself, but it’s also for your family.
Warwick F:
Talk about… That sounds like the cornerstone. What are some other steps which as well as you help others lean into the pain, but that seems so profound. A lot of people will say, “I don’t want to lean into the pain.”
Sarah N:
It also seems very cruel.
Warwick F:
They are.
Sarah N:
You’re virtuous. You lean into the pain, don’t you want to do that?
Warwick F:
Just jump into the cauldron of molten lava and just feel that fire burning. Why would anybody want to do that? But obviously-
Sarah N:
A lot of people who start working with me say, “I expected this to be heart-wrenching, painful, excruciating, and I can’t believe that it wasn’t those things. What you’re asking me to get to is like, ‘How do we do this? How do we lean into the discomfort? How do we make time to feel it? And how do we get the resources to feel it in a way that doesn’t actually completely annihilate us?’ Because that’s what we expect.”
Sarah N:
I apologize in advance that what I’m going to say is going to sound really simple and it always sounds almost too simple to even be useful to the people who work with me and then they’re all, of course, amazed later on how life changing it is.
Sarah N:
But one of the things that I started with, don’t tune me out, is breathing practices and a yoga practice. The reason that that was so incredibly important to me was I was very adept at facilitating an out of body experience. I think that was part of why I could be so strong. I will just turn off this part of me and do what must be done. There was a very dissociative experience in the moment of hard times where I wasn’t really there and I wasn’t really present, but I could do the things.
Sarah N:
The breathing practice and the yoga practice helped me become more fully embodied. I realized that this was getting into yoga language, but when we learn how to stay present, physically, physiologically, psychologically, socially in this human being container that we’re walking around in, we suddenly have a whole new experience of our life and ourselves.
Sarah N:
These two practices not only helped me come back to myself fully and fully inhabit myself and be aware of myself and be capable of witnessing myself more honestly rather than just performing my experience. But they also helped me reset my physiology.
Sarah N:
I think that that’s something very important that we miss as humans on this planet in the game of mental health and winning at life is it’s always this external thing, cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ll just go to a therapist and I’ll talk it out and I’ll use my intellect and my language to just fix everything. You can go to all the therapy you want. If your physiology doesn’t know that you’re safe yet, the therapy will never really actually land.
Sarah N:
Part of the work on the other side of anything that ruptures your identity and your existence and sense of self is that you have to learn how to teach your body that it’s not in danger anymore.
Sarah N:
The breathing and the yoga was actually this very accessible modality that I could practice without being perfect at it to everyday say, “I’m going to learn how to let my nervous system come back to neutral and out of survival mode so that not only can I be here in this moment, but I also have access to my modern brain now.” Because when we’re in survival mode, we go down, down, down the evolutionary chain, way back to that place where everything is dangerous or safe, good or bad. We don’t have access to this incredible intellect that’s capable of immense and endless solutions to life’s problems.
Warwick F:
Yeah. It’s that whole fight or flight, primitive human being notion. I love what you’re saying. I guess from my perspective as a person of faith, there’s different tools to do I think what you’re talking about. When I’ve gone through some different crucibles, for me prayer, spiritual meditation. For me, maybe it might be reading scriptures. Is there a thought that for me… Some spiritual thought that some wise person perhaps up there is trying to tell me.
Warwick F:
Obviously, there are different ways of doing it. For people of faith that might be one language, but it can be others whether it’s meditation, yoga. There are different ways of trying to understand, what’s going on. What am I feeling physically? Emotionally?
Warwick F:
For me, if I feel depressed, frustrated, I have to… Why am I feeling this? I’m a reflective person by nature. That’s just like breathing to me. I always think, “Why am I frustrated? What’s the issue?” And then I’ll try, I don’t know, maybe deal with it’s the wrong way, but at least name it, recognize it.
Sarah N:
Yes. That’s a tremendous tool, is cultivating that emotional intelligence and articulation so that you understand what’s actually happening, because so often our language around crucibles is very rudimentary. “I’m sad. I’m grieving. I’m angry.” We don’t go beyond that.
Sarah N:
Another tool, and I want to come back to something you said in a minute, but another tool that I teach people is intentional language use, being very intentional about what they say and how they say it. Because when you say, “I’m aware that I’m sad right now,” it has a completely different energy and meaning experience in your physical body than “I’m sad.”
Sarah N:
There’s this permanence when we say, “I’m sad.” “I’m sad and I will be sad forever.” But, “I’m aware that I’m sad right now” helps you get curious about, “Why am I sad right now? Let me name all the reasons. And then what might I be able to do to either express that more completely or to support the sadness so that it can move through.”
Sarah N:
But the thing I wanted to come back around to is when you offered up being a man of faith, I think that spirituality has many directions and flavors and labels and options. I think that prayer and meditation are accessible to everyone. I think what’s the best way that I heard it described was that prayer is speaking and meditation is listening. I think we innately do both when we’re either in meditation or in prayer. I think naturally both happened.
Warwick F:
It’s so important to deal with these things. Everybody’s different. But for me, if I get really anxious or something weighs on me, it affects my stomach which it does for many people. And I start getting more sensitive to tomatoes or acidy foods. There’re certain foods that if your stomach is out of whack, you stay away from. But other people maybe headaches or some, I don’t know, but for me, it’s the stomach.
Warwick F:
If you don’t deal with this stuff, not only will affect you emotionally, it will affect you, as you say, physiologically. There are more and more science is understanding there’s a direct relationship between the emotions and the physiology.
Sarah N:
Yeah. There’s a very good reason.
Gary S:
I want to hop back a few seconds to what you said, Sarah, about the importance of language. I’m a word guy. I’m an old journalist. I’m a PR guy now and as I was reading through your materials, I love the fact that you called your coaching business Beyond Surviving. I love the fact that you have a quote on that website that says, “Let’s interrupt the pain and shake up the pattern so you can move beyond surviving. It’s time to enjoy the ride.”
Gary S:
I did a very quick search before we hopped on this interview because Warwick loves history and he loves historical perspective on subjects like we’re talking about. I went back farther than you usually go, Warwick, and that was Aristotle. This is something Aristotle said about this very subject about moving beyond surviving. This is what Aristotle said. “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” In your estimation and your experience, Sarah, why is survival not enough? Why should that not be where we point our compass, our GPS?
Sarah N:
Wow. First, thank you for that quote. What a beautiful contribution.
Sarah N:
I think anyone who is feeling unfulfilled, feeling alone, feeling unhappy, feeling hopeless, “depressed” is the word we’d like to use in modern America.
Sarah N:
I think any of us who describe our life that way are in survival mode. What’s so tragic to me is that we’ve been taught to settle for that and believe that that’s the best we can hope for, that life is hard, and some people get lucky, but most of us just suffer and struggle. Life is hard. So few of us understand how self-empowered we are, how many resources we have all around us, how much life is a proactive participatory experience rather than one that’s only in receiving mode.
Sarah N:
I think we are wired for survival, of course, so that is the default when stuff gets hard, but we’ve also been taught and programmed and modeled that that’s the best you can hope for.
Sarah N:
What’s really important for me and I’m so grateful for your work, Warwick, and others like us who are preaching this gospel of there is more than the thing that happened to you. Jung said, “I am not what has happened to me. I am what I wish to become or what I choose to become.”
Sarah N:
I think it’s so often that we, in America, in the modern day, are so quick to still completely identify with our hardships rather than identifying those as one moment in the time of our life.
Sarah N:
I do this exercise with my clients pretty early on. I asked them to create a timeline of their life and I remind them that when you were seven, your crucible moment was the wrecking of your bike and the bloody knee that you had and that is such a blip in your past now, but it was a defining moment that you can remember. You can totally go back to in your mind’s eye and feel in real time what that was like for you.
Sarah N:
I teach people to see that this is not the ending of your story. It’s one chapter in this broader context of what’s possible and when you have a crucible… I call it a catalyst moment, when you have a crucible experience, it wakes you up to your life and the ownership of your life and the value of your life in a way that you didn’t have consciousness around before.
Sarah N:
We take it for granted. We’d sleep walk through life. Our job is to get a retirement plan and a picket fence and a couple of kids and the right car and we should be happy and we are not taught to gauge our life by the fulfillment that we experienced or even how to get fulfillment beyond the external and the material.
Sarah N:
These crucible moments are a gift and I don’t mean to dismiss or minimize anyone’s suffering because no one deserves to suffer and yet time and again, it is those individuals who experienced some kind of hardship that activates or awakens them to the richness of life in a way that they will never take it for granted again. They deepen into their relationships. They deepen into their ownership of their life. They create something meaningful.
Sarah N:
I know that without this experience, my life would have never taken the trajectory that it did to the place where I’m incredibly enriched and fulfilled and joy filled and inspired excessively actually because of what happened to me and because I understand how much of a treasure it is.
Warwick F:
Talk about how that tragedy you went through was a catalyst just to take you on a whole, maybe mission’s the wrong word, but a whole new mission. Talk a bit about that because it sounds like it was a defining moment in an obvious way, but yet in a way that’s not so obvious. Talk about how that launched you into a new whole direction which is fulfilling and, is it wrong to say in some sense, gives you joy, what you did.
Sarah N:
No, please. I am absolutely joy filled with my life and my work and that’s where the challenge is honestly is that people still want me to be in the widow box. For me to say, “I’m joy filled and I’m in love and my life is beautiful,” is confusing because people cannot conceptualize how that could be possible.
Warwick F:
You feel some people might say, which would be very cruel to say to really honor the memory of your husband, you shouldn’t be happy. I don’t think anybody would say that but you think they’re thinking that?
Sarah N:
I don’t think they would say it out loud but I am certain people think that maybe you just didn’t love your husband that much if you could get on with the show so easily. That is something that I think we grapple with within these catalyst moments is what does it mean about me if I’m not devastated for the rest of my life by this and there’s a lot of clients who come to me who are afraid to let go of their grief because the grief is the thing that feels like love now. I can’t see them, I can’t touch them but I…
Warwick F:
The obvious thing is if it were possible to speak to your husband in some strange metaphysical sense, he wouldn’t say, “No, I want you to grieve and be sad the rest of your life.” He would say what you would have said, if heaven forbid, your role’s were reversed. You’d say, “I want you to get on with your life. Don’t forget me. But get on with your life and live a happy and joyful life.” He would say that. I’m sure, there’s no doubt. And you would have said that to him if the role… How is that dishonoring his memory? I know this is obvious, but as you say, people put you in a box.
Sarah N:
It’s the demonstration of how small I think the concept of love is within our humanity. People are like, “How could I ever love anyone again?” I say, “I have four children and I don’t only love my first son, I actually love them all quite equally, perhaps even more expansively, because there are four.”
Sarah N:
I think we’re so much more capable of fast love and deep intimacy and connection and joy than we realized because we’re sold this story of find your soul mate and live happily ever after and they’ll complete you and everything will be grand. Really tearing down the wallpaper of that belief system that the American Dream seems to be built upon and getting real with the fact that there’s no person who can complete you or make you feel loved unless you are deeply connected to and in love with yourself. You’ll never really actually experience intimacy or connection or fulfillment no matter how great you think your marriage is.
Warwick F:
I’m not in marriage ministry, so to speak, but that’s what you hear people say is if you feel like your husband or wife is the one who’s going to complete you, you’re here in trouble. You basically got to be happy with who you are, not seek fulfillment from some other person, or… Talk a bit about more what you do and just how you try and come alongside other people. I love that phrase, leaning into the pain and very countercultural. Obviously, I’m sure you’re not against counseling, but it’s counseling and, right? Talk about some of the and, so to speak, that you do to help other people go into the grief.
Sarah N:
I’m going to answer this by also answering the question I didn’t answer yet which is how did you get here. I did what I was supposed to do which was go to all the resources that were thrown at me to solve the problem that I had.
Sarah N:
I very quickly realized that many of these people didn’t actually believe in my healing either. They also saw me as a permanently wounded project that would need therapy for life and would always have this deep rift of emotional baggage dragging behind me. I found myself doing a lot of BS’ing with my therapists. “I know what to say right now because I am a type A overachiever. The right answer when you ask me that question is, ‘I’m doing just fine.” I never really got to this place of vulnerability nor did they ask me to go there. They couldn’t guide me there because I don’t think that was a part of their service.
Sarah N:
I had to go off grid and search for resources that could see me as a human and could really challenge me to become more curious about what my actual experience was rather than projecting onto me what they thought it would be and what I think what they thought I should be doing.
Sarah N:
What I found there was really useful but I had to look quite hard for it. It wasn’t packaged as the normal mainstream. “Here’s what you do when you’re grieving.” I decided that I would create it because one day I did come to a moment in my life where I looked up and around and thought, “Geez, I’m really happy.” This is the thing that nobody told me was possible, let alone real, and here I am.
Sarah N:
I guess it’s my job to let other people know this is a thing we can do just in case they’re also buying the line that the best we can hope for us is surviving.
Warwick F:
And it’s okay to be happy. You don’t have to apologize no matter what the tragedy is. It’s okay. Give yourself permission. It’s okay to be happy. Don’t feel guilty. Because I’m sure you had people saying, “I feel so bad. I’m happy.”
Sarah N:
Absolutely. I think that’s a general theme anywhere you go if someone experienced this pain and then finds themselves happy, they feel it’s confusing. It’s disconcerting. How could I be? How dare I?
Sarah N:
Essentially, what I’ve done is create this coaching program that’s built up on community and mind body resourcing and teaching people tools and language and the ability to self-reflect rather than deflect and dissociate. I started out working primarily with widows and it was really and continues to be really powerful and exciting and to watch them evolve beyond navigating their widowhood to navigating their lives in a broader context beyond that label.
Sarah N:
They can now see themselves as human beings, not widows, and it’s exciting because then we get to do the fun stuff of finding out who am I without that identity. I don’t have to leave behind what happened. I don’t have to forget to heal. I can always have that love story as a part of me and looking forward, what do I desire to create? What do I desire to experience?
Sarah N:
We don’t get there overnight. Of course, there’s a lot of terrain to cover but that is ultimately where we head is getting to the place where the pain feels like a part of the story that they’re very familiar with rather than one they’re grappling with.
Sarah N:
After a while, I noticed there were a ton of threads that were coming through because I was also working here and there with people whose father had passed or their brother had died or their friend had died. I just noticed that it wasn’t any different than working with the widows. The language was slightly different but the same fears and concerns and lack of ability to express what they were feeling and didn’t know how to. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do… It was all the same.
Sarah N:
This has evolved with time looking at the psychosomatic experience of navigating a painful life experience and what is missing in the culture that we operate in, filling that in with tools and self-resourcing and the ability to turn to ourselves with curiosity and notice what we’re experiencing so we can be honest about that and make choices and express ourselves in new ways to find our way to the truth of who we are rather than staying in that box, whatever the box might be.
Gary S:
Sorry, this is a good time for us to do a couple things. One, it’s about time to shelve the book back on the shelf, but the other thing, Sarah, I would be remiss if after you explained all of that, I did not give you the chance to let listeners know how can they find out more about what you do and get in touch with you.
Sarah N:
Thank you for that. I’m on Facebook and Instagram and also have a website. My name is Sarah Nannen. It’s lots of letters so I’m hoping you have show notes somewhere. But if you look for me on the Facebook or the Instagram or connect with me at sarahnannen.com, S-A-R-A-H-N-A-N-N-E-N dot com. Write that down for them so they don’t have to remember.
Gary S:
Yeah, I will. And you got nothing on Schneeberger for long letters in your name. But I digress. Warwick, I’ll give you the last question.
Warwick F:
Thank you so much, Sarah. I love what you do. I just have this image in my mind I think of that whole scarlet letter thing from Salem, Massachusetts. It’s almost like for some widows they feel like they have the big W on their forehead. It’s OK to can have it somewhere, it doesn’t have to be that big. It doesn’t have to… You are more than your tragedy. A tragedy doesn’t define you.
Warwick F:
I remember in the ’90s. I wasn’t, and as listeners know, I wasn’t in particularly good shape and there were some well meaning people that said, “Gosh, after that tragedy that Warwick went through and losing all that family business, and he’s pretty bad shape. He’ll probably never amount to more than that. He will always be just a pile of broken pieces.” Now, they wouldn’t say that to my face. But I felt that. I probably resented it a bit at the time, but it’s like, to me, you want to get in touch with what you’ve been through.
Warwick F:
But to me as I’ve been on a couple of church board and a school board and now with crucible leadership, there’s a healing balm, healing element as you’re focused on using your pain to help others. It doesn’t mean it totally goes away. There’s always a scar, but the combination of just understanding who you are, dealing with that, being real with that, I love that phrase, leaning into the pain, but then finding a purpose for your life and in our language a life of significance.
Warwick F:
That’s also part of not being defined by your tragedy. You’re more than just that day in Japan when those two marines, whoever it was came down that your front walkway. You’re more than that in that hour, that day, that minute, and everybody is.
Warwick F:
I love what you do and thank you so much. It’s a great mission, ministry and obviously, it gives your life meaning, purpose, and joy, and wholeness. You now can probably say you’re a whole… You’re not a disassociated person. You’re a whole person, right?
Sarah N:
I strive to be.
Warwick F:
Mind, body, spirit. That’s the goal, right? Be a whole person with a mission to help others which you have. I think you can really help a lot of other people and you have and it’s a message people really need to hear. Thank you so much.
Sarah N:
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Gary S:
This is when I know it’s been a great show when I have… And I’m going to show it to our YouTube viewers, when I take notes about here are some takeaways you can have for the show and then Warwick steals a couple of them when he summarizes his statement. I normally have three takeaways. I’m only going to have two today.
Gary S:
Warwick took number one which is don’t stay in the box. You don’t have to stay in the box. That’s number one. The way I phrased it was, we hear all the time that you’re never too old to move beyond your crucible. I think what Sarah has proven and what Warwick has proven in his own stories, it’s also true that we’re never too young to move beyond our crucible, that we are not frozen in time, even if we’re young, that’s not our destiny forever and Warwick just unpacked that a little bit and Sarah talked about it much in our conversation.
Gary S:
Another thing that Sarah really made clear in our conversation, listeners, is do not fake it until you make it. Healing is a proactive experience that requires intention and support, projecting everything’s okay while everything isn’t okay can deepen and actually worsen the pain of your crucible. Even though it may appear to those people who are onlookers that you’re winning, you really aren’t. You’re only surviving and survival isn’t healing. Do not be an actor in your own life. Be a character in your own life.
Gary S:
And then the third point, I think, that we can walk away with from this really meaningful conversation is never settle but strive. Life is hard but it’s also, as Sarah put it, a proactive, participatory experience. There’s more than the bad thing that happened to you and you can move beyond that bad thing that happened to you and you can grab a good thing that’s waiting for you. That is what we hope to point you to each week on Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
Until we are together the next time, listener. Thank you for joining us. Remember that your crucible experiences are indeed painful. They can knock you off balance. They can change as they did for Warwick and Sarah the trajectory of your life, but they are not the end of your story. In fact, if you lean into the pain, as Sarah says, if you learn from those experiences as Warwick has talked about, they can be the start of a new story, a new chapter in your life that can become the most joyous and most rewarding because it leads you to a life of significance.
