It’s no secret we live in a divided world, especially in the U.S. But disagreeing over issues and how best to solve the crucibles we face in our world and communities does not mean those who think differently than us are the enemy or evil. BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax explains the danger in demonizing “the other side” from the comfort of our own echo chambers, and the breakthroughs that can occur if we refuse to judge and commit to listen to and understand the views of those with whom we disagree. Seeking unity, he explains, creates opportunities and growth in our pursuit of lives of significance.
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. Don’t assume you know other people’s motives and what’s in their heart. It’s one thing to say, “I disagree with a policy.” Like, you might say, “I think that elementary schools in my state should be opened sooner than the government or other people saying they’re open.” They can meet legitimate policy disagreement, legitimate healthcare disagreement. But don’t assume the other side’s evil or wrong, that’s just dangerous when we get into these sorts of policy disagreements.
Gary S:
Evil is far too big a word, far too big a word to be used with such little discretion. It’s a very big word and it does, as you pointed out, it applies to certain things for sure, but most of the time when we have disagreements with someone over the kinds of issues that you’ve talked about, and we’ll continue to talk about here, it’s not evil that we’re talking about it’s disagreement. We’ve become, in some cases, so either entrenched or so kind of stickumed to our viewpoints that when someone comes along with a different viewpoint, it’s easy to characterize them, it’s too easy sometimes to characterize them as evil and that has real world ramifications.
Gary S:
Indeed, it does. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co host of the show, the communications director for Crucible Leadership, and the owner of the voice that just ended that snippet you just heard. That clip comes from a conversation Warwick and I have on this week’s episode about the dangers of divisiveness, when it extends beyond disagreements over ideology and veers into losing sight of another person’s humanity. Warwick shares several tips about what we can all do to prevent that from happening, from making an intentional effort to push past the comfort zones of our media and relational echo chambers, to seeking first to understand not change the mind of someone with whom we disagree. The benefits of taking these tips to heart and putting them into practice can help you avoid crucibles, get through crucibles that have already occurred, and maybe just maybe find unlikely companions to join you as you pursue your life of significance.
Warwick F:
We live in a divided world where it seems like we can group ourselves into camps and there’s a tendency to view the other camp, whatever that might be as the enemy, not just that we disagree with them. But they’re the enemy, they’re bad people, they’re misguided and it creates a sense of hostility. I mean, certainly in the US this last year couldn’t have been more divided, politically, there was divisions of race that dates back hundreds of years, systemic racial issues. It’s really was the capstone in a sense was the assault on the Capitol building, I feel like it’s days ago, it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.
Warwick F:
We live in Annapolis, Maryland, which is about 30 miles from the Capitol building, it’s not that far away, which was obviously a tragedy lives were lost and that’s taken division to a level that it should never get to. So there are those issues and even with things like health care, with COVID, everybody’s concerned, everybody wants to get the vaccine but there are divisions. There are some people who are very careful and don’t leave their homes and taking it very seriously. I have to say we probably are more on the careful end of the spectrum, and some of those people say, “Just listen to Dr. Fauci. It’s about the science.” Others say, “Look, you guys are being too cautious, we got to live our life.”
Warwick F:
Some people would go out and party which obviously some of us think is not the smartest thing in the world. But then you have divisions over more complex issues like the opening of schools. If you have elementary school kids, it’s been tough just to keep them locked down over the last year. So then you lose a year of education. So some people think kids aren’t as likely to get the COVID-19. So what do you do about school closings? What about restaurant and businesses that may go under because of strict lockdown?
Warwick F:
So even there, it’s easy to say just follow the science and it’s hard to disagree with that. But there are disagreements over science to a degree, there are disagreements over how that’s applied. So even with something like COVID-19 where you think, well, why would people disagree over that? It’s like, be sensible, be safe, wait for the vaccine. Well, it’s not that simple. From school closing to businesses to restaurants, that’s just one small example but it’s, I feel like in some sense you could say that certainly in this country and maybe beyond, people are as divided as they’ve been in decades, maybe since the Vietnam War, I don’t know but there is massive division.
Gary S:
With that division, I mean, it’s nothing new, right? Division over anything is nothing new and you know this if you have a family, or if you have a community, or if you have a business, I mean, we know that there’s division that occurs. But one of the things that you really wanted to address is this idea that you can disagree, I mean, I’ve heard it expressed as you can disagree without being disagreeable, but it’s the level of animosity that is ginned up by these disagreements. The working title for the blog that you’ve written on this subject is, Don’t Assume the Other Side is Evil. I think that’s where it’s yes, there’s tension, yes, there’s disunity but it goes to the point that the other person is not just wrong in our minds, sometimes the other person is evil and that really degrades relationship and community.
Warwick F:
That’s very true, and I want to just be clear here, I’m not saying that evil doesn’t exist in the world, I prefer not to try to call people evil because that means examining somebody’s soul and claiming what’s in their heart. I think from my faith based perspective, only God knows what’s in our hearts. But I think we can objectively look at actions and say those actions are evil acts. So whether it’s somebody like Stalin or Adolf Hitler in World War Two and three million Jews being killed, those are clearly evil acts. So it is possible to say that certain acts are reprehensible. Assaulting the Capitol, people dying, yes, can be correct to say that’s reprehensible.
Warwick F:
So while there is evil in the world, there are evil acts, I think it’s dangerous to accuse people who disagree with you as being “evil.” So labels get hurled around in our dialogue, people are called Nazis, fascists, socialists. I mean, those are dangerous terms. I mean, Nazis probably maybe one of those dangerous terms you can use that should not be used lightly and can be seen to minimize what happened in World War Two. So I mean, there is evil, but don’t always assume the other side’s evil be wary of using motives. We will get to this more in terms of some thoughts and pointers, but just don’t assume you know other people’s motives and what’s in their heart.
Warwick F:
It’s one thing to say I disagree with a policy. Like you might say, “I think that elementary schools in my state should be open sooner than the government or other people saying they’re open.” They can be legitimate policy disagreement, legitimate health care disagreement. But don’t assume the other side’s evil or wrong. That’s just dangerous when we get into these sorts of policy disagreements.
Gary S:
Evil is far too big a word far too big a word to be used with such little discretion. It’s a very big word, and it does, as you pointed out, it applies to certain things for sure, but most of the time when we have disagreements with someone over the kinds of issues that you’ve talked about, and we’ll continue to talk about here, it’s not evil that we’re talking about it’s disagreement. We’ve become, in some cases, so either entrenched or so kind of stickomed to our viewpoints that when someone comes along with a different viewpoint, it’s easy to characterize them, it’s too easy sometimes to characterize them as evil, and that has real world ramifications.
Gary S:
One of the things that you tried to unpack, and you do an excellent job of unpacking in the blog, which will be out if not by the time this airs, will be out soon thereafter and you can find that blog at crucibleleadership.com. One of the things you tried to do is not only explain how this comes about, what the challenges before us, but how to sort of how to meet that challenge and rise above that denigrating language, that disparaging language, that dangerous if you will, language of thinking of disagreements with yourself as evil.
Warwick F:
Absolutely true. I think one of the images that came in my mind of that you can have a forest like in California or in Australia, kind of earlier in the year. It’s funny, pre COVID there were bushfires down the east coast of Australia that were as bad as they’ve ever been, and that seemed to be the cataclysm of 2020. Well, who knew that a short while later that it wasn’t the cataclysm, we were entering COVID. But there’s a number of accelerants, if you will, that are causing these fires to be worse. Certainly in our political system, there are political action committees on the left and right and they have a vested interest in saying the other side is evil. Saying if the other side wins control of Senate, Presidency, Congress, whatever the issue is, the world’s going to end. They raise money, because you don’t raise money by saying, “Well, I think the other side has good points.” So our proposition is to find some harmony in the middle. Well, that just doesn’t do it for people, people often motivated out of anger and rage.
Gary S:
And fear.
Warwick F:
And fear. Absolutely. I mean, what do the political consultants say? The best ads are ones that are negative ads and appeal to people’s fear, because studies show it works.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Therefore, positive ads may be uplifting, but don’t tend to work as much. Very sad to say, and then the other accelerant, if you will, is social media. Now, in the Vietnam War era, and gosh, I think probably it was only more in the early 2000s that social media began to take off from Facebook, Twitter, all these different mediums and social media. There are things you say on social media that you would never say to somebody to their face, or about somebody you don’t know. So the combination of money in politics, fueling division, profiting over division and social media, it makes the underlying tendency for people to stay in their people groups and only associate with people they know. It’s an accelerant, it makes it so much worse, those factors of money and politics and social media.
Gary S:
As we begin to segue into talking about actions we can take, things we can do to drop the rhetoric down and to avoid even the thought, the impulse of thinking that someone’s evil because they disagree with us. It’s important to sort of frame this up in the context of crucible leadership, in the context of crucibles. One of the things that can be an accelerant that is just circumstantial is a crucible moment, what we’re talking about, about the pandemic and the views of the pandemic that people have.
Gary S:
That’s a crucible, I’ve heard it described as a collective crucible that we go through, when we’re going through hard times, when we’re going through setbacks and failures and those kinds of things we are raw, and we can on social media, in relationships, lash out and think, not just the worst of someone who disagrees with us but we can think, the really absolute worst, they’re evil, there’s something innately not good about who they are. It’s not just a difference of opinion, it’s almost a difference in humanity, we dismiss them as not having humanity or not having the right to have their humanity acknowledged. I think in crucible moments, those situations become even more potentially incendiary.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think that’s so true. I mean, if you’ve been fired by a boss or your company, sometimes you’ll think, well, maybe I had a role in that, often, you’ll be thinking, well, my boss is terrible, and awful. There’s a tendency to think when bad things happen to you that you’re sort of pure as driven snow, if you will, and the other side’s evil. Because accepting responsibility or that there could be issues that both of you have, I mean, that is human nature and probably the other side of it. Beyond that is, we all tend to be in different people groups. It could be where you grew up, it could be ethnic, it could be country, it could be cultural, urban versus rural.
Warwick F:
It’s easy to take on the views and philosophy of what other people group you are from, which is understandable. But then what’s not so good is assuming that people who are different than you whether it’s political viewpoint race or what have you is somehow wrong or somehow bad, there is this natural tendency, human tendency to congregate in people groups, and listen to those people groups and assuming the other people groups is somehow wrong or even worse than wrong.
Gary S:
Right. Self interest is not always in the public interest, if it’s taken to an extreme self interest. We are a pluralistic society, we are people with lots of different opinions and that is as good of a place to sort of segue, Warwick into the points that you’ve developed on just how to build unity in the midst of these diverse viewpoints and diverse people groups that we all live among, and that we haven’t as a collective been doing a very good job of in the last six months, 10 months, 12 months. We’ve got some work to do in this area for sure.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, and really the first point is what we’ve been talking about is, don’t assume the other side is wrong. When I say the other side, what does that mean? Well think of your own life. What people group do you think that you’re in? It could be racial, ethnic, it could be, “Well, I think of myself as an engineer and I’m not one of these creative folks who continually want to re-engineer everything and make my life miserable at work.” I mean, whatever people group is relevant to you and really, the question is in my mind, in which group that you’re in? Often you could be in a nationality group, an ethnic group, a profession group, a sporting group.
Warwick F:
There’s all sorts of groups, multiple groups that we self identify with. Which one of those do you have the most angst in? Some groups, it’s not really a big deal. Some people get really hot and bothered about sports, others like sports but the world’s not going to end if their team loses.
Gary S:
Well, I don’t know, I feel sometimes like my world’s going to end if my Cubs or Packers lose, but that’s a different podcast.
Warwick F:
Well, I’m with you. As Australian, I’m a huge cricket fan. Australians care about cricket the way Canadians care about hockey. So it’s easy to get too emotionally involved in sports, which would be another podcast.
Gary S:
Indeed.
Warwick F:
So I’m with you. But whatever that is, whatever the other side means for you, which depends on which people group you feel that you’re in that you have the most angst about, don’t assume that they’re wrong or evil or wrong headed. So that really is the launching point of really the first key point is, try to understand the other side. First step is don’t assume they’re wrong and evil. Okay, so having made that leap of faith, innocent until proven guilty, then kind of the next step is well, try to understand them. Where this is hard is that we live in a not only divided society, but a divided media society.
Warwick F:
So people increasingly tend to watch their news channel or read their online news of choice that agrees with their opinion. It could be political, it could be social, and that just increases your internal rage. The other side is awful, well, I read it online. I watch my news channel. They agree with me. Well, how about watching another news channel even if you disagree with it, or read another online source, another media outlet and just get perspectives from the other side. Even if you don’t agree with it. It’s like, “Well, I disagree with 70% of it, but 30% of what they said they actually have a point which I hadn’t considered.” So that’s one thing is trying to understand the other side and one initial way is just by viewing media and getting input from different sources, different books. I mean, we have a lot of information in our fingertips, utilize that opportunity.
Gary S:
Absolutely. Echo chambers are dangerous places to live. They’re not just to hear reinforcements of what you believe all the time, it doesn’t challenge you and it goes against the grain of what we talk about at crucible leadership all the time. What do we say in crucible leadership? You’ve been through a crucible, the key to moving beyond your crucible’s to learn the lessons of your crucible. Slow down stop, what was my fault? What is trying to be taught me in this experience? How can I learn from this experience?
Gary S:
Similar thing can play out when you hear things that you don’t agree with, if you’re only consuming that which you agree with, you’re not being challenged to overcome your feelings about the other side, I wrote Warwick an op-ed a little over a year ago for a publication, and this is one of the things I said. I just want to read this because it goes in great line with what you’ve just said in the last couple of points. I wrote this. It’s only in seeing the “other guy” as just as deserving as we are of respect and an opinion and the right to advocate for his or her position that we can ever hope to find our way to civility in public discourse. The immediate and ongoing demonization of those who think differently than we do, whose values don’t align with our own may make for boffo ratings but it does nothing to help us persuade others to the course of action we believe to be right. Worse, it degrades the greatest and freest country in the world.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s so true. It’s funny, I was just thinking about this this morning. I can think of a figure from history, Winston Churchill, that nobody could accuse him of not having strong opinions. He had very strong opinions.
Gary S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And was one of the most eloquent advocates of his opinions in the English speaking world. His speeches are as good as any. I mean, Lincoln was up there, but you think of Lincoln, Churchill, their ability to express themselves in a way that was compelling was almost unprecedented. But yet, he obviously in the 1930s is railing against pacifism and saying, “We need to wake up to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and we need to rearm.” Everybody thought he was silly old Winston and warmonger and just ignoring him. But yet, he never took disagreements personally.
Warwick F:
So later when he was prime minister, there was I can think of three different people that he was very magnanimous, with. Stanley Baldwin, a former prime minister in the ’30s of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who famously said, “I’ve met Mr. Hitler and we will have peace in our time.” Which, one of the colossally terrible statements.
Gary S:
He’s waving his piece of paper, I can still see him in the newsreels, right? Waving his peace of paper.
Warwick F:
Exactly needed a good PR guy or somebody to say, “Don’t say that. Are you really sur?” But you know, he would try to help them where he could, meet with them. He didn’t hold it personally and later in the supreme ignominy if you will, when he lost the 45 election against Clement Attlee from the Labour Party who was advocating national health care, prosperity, people are tired of war, and I get why people would have voted for him. People said, “Oh, Attlee, what a terrible person he is to Churchill.” He said, “Look, I may disagree with his policies, but he’s our prime minister, how you dare you speak to him that way.”
Warwick F:
So here was a classic case of a man with unbelievably strong opinions but he didn’t hold it personally, he didn’t talk about his adversaries at least politically as evil and was magnanimous and charitable to them personally, that’s really rare. So that’s really, I think, a model of don’t impugn other people’s motives.
Gary S:
Right, and the idea, so the first two points that we’ve kind of talked about here about how do you not treat those who disagree with you as evil, the first is kind of widening, right? It’s opening up the spectrum of our inputs. Don’t assume they’re evil and then, as you take in information, don’t live in an echo chamber, we’re all on social media or in news media, you’re only consuming those people who affirm your beliefs, have people who will challenge those beliefs. The third point that you talk about, Warwick is so important in interpersonal relationships in particular, and that is the need to listen, which is a critical part, I note of, in fact, it’s a chapter in your book, Crucible Leadership coming out in the fall from Morgan James Publishing.
Warwick F:
Indeed.
Gary S:
There’s a chapter on listening, it’s a key part of overcoming a crucible and it’s a key part of overcoming this impulse that we have sometimes to think of people who disagree with us as evil.
Warwick F:
It’s very true. I mean, it obviously it starts with not impugning other people’s motives, it helps if you can read stuff online or on TV, view things on TV from people with different perspectives than you. But I think it’s inevitable in our day and age, we’re going to come across actually real live humans that disagree with us, because we live in a diverse world of diverse opinion, diverse people groups. So that’s where I think it’s very helpful to actually listen, to really listen to people, try to understand their life experience, their heritage, their background.
Warwick F:
We all have different viewpoints for a reason. I can think of the whole, I think I briefly mentioned it earlier. The whole urban, rural kind of background. If you grow up in the US in a more rural area, you might be a proponent of you have friends and neighbors that will help you but ultimately, you’re responsible for your own life, your own job, your own livelihood, the so called kind of rugged individualism because it’s all about everybody pulling themselves up from the bootstraps, we don’t need government. The whole philosophy goes with that.
Warwick F:
Or there can be more of an urban city viewpoint in which there’s often been systemic racial issues and challenges. I mean, obviously that exists in all areas. But there can be a viewpoint where government’s not necessarily bad or evil, and there there to try to promote equality, and inclusion and fairness and people who are impoverished need to be helped. So those are fundamentally different viewpoints. But objectively, maybe there’s some elements of truth in both. So rather than just say, “Oh, people who have this other viewpoint than me are wrong and evil.” How about listening to them? If you’re from more of a rural area and you meet somebody more from an urban area, so we vote politically very differently help me understand your perspective. Why do you vote the way you do? Why do you have a perspective on the role of government? Which may be fundamentally different than me, help me understand. And that’s just almost never happens.
Warwick F:
If you approach a dialogue with respect and humility, it’s funny, some of the other things I’ve been thinking about is there are some underlying characteristics in the sense of character qualities that are important. If you approach this dialogue with somebody who looks different, thinks different, acts different, believes different from a standpoint of humility, a standpoint of empathy, vulnerability. Help me understand if you say, well, help me understand because I know you’re an idiot, it’s not going to be very effective. If you say, help me understand and they really believe you do and keep trying they might say, “You’re so different than me, there’s no way you want to understand my perspective or my history.” Which there might be issues that go back hundreds of years or more.
Warwick F:
If you approach it with humility and empathy real dialogue can happen but it requires a certain soul care, soul examination to be able to approach things with humility rather than with anger and self vindication or vindictiveness. So there’s heart work that has to go first.
Gary S:
Because the end goal of that conversation needs to be, what can I understand? Not how can I hammer the other person with my beliefs. It’s, we’ve lost I think in some great sense what argument is truly all about and that is to try to persuade another person. When we’re talking to someone, a true argument like a rhetorical argument, like a forensics debate is you’re trying to convince people, and we’ve lost that sense, I think, where we want to make clear what we believe but not listen to what someone else believes. I think one of the key things to do in these conversations, and you summed it up well, we need to lay our ideology down long enough to get to know the other person’s humanity. Because from that, we can learn some things and learning some things is again, from a crucible leadership perspective, learning, listening are not just good things, they’re essential things to move beyond those moments that can be the most trying of our lives.
Warwick F:
I mean, I can think of an example in my own life that I talk about in the book, as you mentioned coming out this fall, where listening, that whole chapter really was birthed in that life experience in which as listeners know, I grew up in this very large hundred and fifty year old family media business with papers the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TV, radio stations, I was the fifth generation. Turmoil and division in my family going back generations. So in 1976, when I was 15, some of the other family members threw my dad out as chairman of the company.
Warwick F:
Well, I felt that was wrong, unconscionable, It was very clear to me who was right, who was wrong. My dad was I loved very much, was a righteous person who was persecuted unfairly. So that was my position and not consciously but subconsciously what led up to the $2.25 billion takeover 11 years later in ’87 wasn’t conscious, was look what these people did to my father, we need to bring back the company in the ideals of the founder and management’s not good. I had this whole perspective and I never really dialogued with other members of my family, obviously at 15 that’s a bit, a lot to expect.
Warwick F:
When I was 26, coming back from Harvard Business School, I mean, still young but I was so convinced by my parents’ perspective and their version of history, that I knew who was the good guys and the bad guys, who was right, who was wrong and there was never any dialogue with other family members to say, “Look, this is what I’ve heard my perspective, I’d love to hear what your perspective of why you removed my dad as chairman and what your views of the company and the future.” I never did that. Now I’m thinking, I still don’t think it was right that they threw my dad out as chairman, maybe there was another way of doing it. But I never really took the time to understand the other perspective. So yeah, I mean, I’ve thought a lot about that, of not making assumptions about somebody else’s viewpoint.
Gary S:
Yeah, that leads to the next two points, I think, to discuss on steps we can take to create a more civil community in both our small C community and large C community that you talk about, and you hit on both of them with that example. One is don’t impugn other people’s motives, and you just acknowledge that you kind of did that with the people who dismissed your dad as chairman, and then seeking to understand maybe at 15 you’re not emotionally developed enough to try to understand why it was maybe the decision to have your dad removed as chairman, but those two things kind of go hand in hand. There’s impugning of other people’s motives, that’s a slippery slope that you can start sliding down that can lead you to say, “The person who did those things is evil.” Seeking first to understand if you don’t do that, you’re kind of hitting a brick wall and that’s easy to go, “That person’s evil.”
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah, not impugning other people’s motives, seeking first to understand. Seeking first to understand is a very radical concept. I mean, it’s pretty revolutionary and it really comes from St. Francis of Assisi, who said, in his Prayer of St. Francis, “That we should seek more to understand then be understood.” Now, in some cases, you could say, “Look, that’s crazy. There’s been some cases systemic persecution for hundreds of years. Are you kidding me?” So, I would say, this is a general philosophy, and how you apply it individually one could debate.
Warwick F:
But the basic concept is, we tend to go into a discussion, if we ever get there, which we typically don’t, because we stay in our echo chamber and read our own media. So we don’t even get into a middle ground where we can have a dialogue, if we do where they’re haranguing other people for how they’re wrong and evil and we’re right, we’re yelling at each other. So if we get to human contact with others it’s often yelling and trying to prove we’re right.
Warwick F:
So let’s say you happen to get in some ground with other people who are different than you or think differently, just rather than to say, which is easy to say, “Look, the first thing we need to do is you need to understand me, I need to be understood, because unless I’m understood I refuse to listen to you.” You often hear that in our society, and in some cases maybe there’s fair reason for that. But as a general rule, the bigger man, the bigger woman, the person who has maybe more courage, if you will, more humility takes a very radical approach in saying, “Look, I’m pretty angry about a bunch of things but I am going to park that at the door and I’m going to start with, so look, I know we have different viewpoints, I’d love first to understand why you have that viewpoint? Where does it come from?” Talk about your background, is it parents, society, friends and neighbors, help me understand not just your perspective, but why you have that perspective and why that’s maybe part of your heart, identity. You don’t have to use all those words, but start with trying to understand the other person first. That is radical, and they might be kind of blown away.
Warwick F:
It’s like, excuse me, you don’t want yell at me, you don’t want to give me your three best points of why your argument is true. Who are my favorite commentators, really starting with that one. You’re starting with, help me understand, and you got to do it with humility. It can’t be some manipulative game because people will pick that up. That is almost unprecedented and unheard of, it’s radical and revolutionary to do what St. Francis advocates.
Gary S:
I don’t know if this will embarrass you or what it will do. But one of the things I’ve heard you say more than pretty much anything else is when you describe yourself that you interact with people with questions. You have said on more than one occasion, you’ve said Warwick that someone will say to you after a meeting, “Well, those are really insightful points that you made Warwick.” And then you’ll think what?
Warwick F:
I’ll say, I don’t know what you’re talking about I was just asking questions.
Gary S:
Right. I mean, the idea of asking questions that is rarer. I mean, go to social media, we don’t ask any questions on social media, social media is a one way street. I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, and then if we deviate off to a side road, or an off ramp, it’s, and you’re wrong if you don’t think this. Whereas what you’re saying is think in questions, look to understand the other person, find out why they believe that way and I would argue, if you believe the other person, whoever that is, “the other side” the other person is evil that’s one of the reasons why we don’t want to find out what they think because we don’t think it’s worth understanding. Back off of thinking that they’re evil, that opens you up to wanting to understand what they have to say because they have the same humanity that you have.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, it helps to be curious. I like to think I’m a curious person that loves to learn, and I have strong opinions about a whole bunch of things. I typically prefer not to harangue people with my opinions, and maybe in my own home where we’re chatting about things over the dinner table. That’s different. But everybody does that. That’s fair game. Anybody can feel free to express their opinions. But I mean, I’m naturally curious and I think to develop as a human being, it helps to understand perspectives of people who are different than us and think differently, because it makes us richer, richer people, we learn more.
Warwick F:
So I think, and that’s a high value of me is, I think I’ve heard somebody talk about in one of the podcasts we had on talked about intentional curiosity. I love that phrase, because I think we do need to be intentionally curious the world would be a better place if we were more intentionally curious.
Gary S:
That is a great on ramp to the final part of our conversation, and that is, what are the benefits? Okay, we’ve talked about, here’s the situation we’re in, it is rife with division. We’ve talked about ways that we individually can help move beyond that division, we can take that crucible that we all find ourselves in with a division in our communities in our country, how we can apply some lessons, how we can apply some tactics, do some things to help tamp down the division. Now comes what’s the benefit of that? Why try to do that? What is the upshot? How does that make us a better place?
Warwick F:
I really think that unity creates opportunity, and you have to have immense courage in our day and age, want to go for unity. Certainly in the political world that we live in is a very good example of the cost of unity. The cost of compromise is massive and very rarely happens. In this country and in others certainly here. If you talk to somebody on the other side of the aisle politically, and try to form a compromise, you will be seen as a sell out by your party. You’ve got a very high probability of being primaried, and depending on how safe a seat is for your side, that primary probably has a really fair chance of winning. So you try and compromise your political career has a good chance of being threatened if not over and you will be assailed in the negative advertising by the purists on your side.
Warwick F:
So the cost of trying to be unity is quite likely to be your job, well, that’s that takes a lot of courage. Now sometimes maybe the better angels in your district might say, look I disagree with my congressman or woman, but you know what? I respect the fact that they stick to their principles. It can work, but I don’t pretend it’s an easy sell. So that’s sort of one example. But there’s so many things in life that if we try to just understand the other side, like I think of one example, I think in the northwest area of the US, Oregon, Washington State there’s a big logging industry and you often have groups, environmental groups that want to protect the climate, which is a noble cause and protect the beautiful forests that are there. Then you have companies and folks that work in the logging industry that say, “That’s great, but my livelihood depends on being able to cut trees down. So you’re putting me out of work, I don’t have food to put on my family’s table, to pay the rent.”
Warwick F:
Well, it’s also important to try to not put people out because people matter too. So the question is, can you come up with a middle ground in which you both protect people’s jobs, but somehow protect the environment too? Those sides are not necessarily evil or wrong, both sides have reasonable opinions. So it’s too easy to get into this us or them. That’s one good example where you just trying, so okay, the other side is not evil, respect their opinion. It’s not easy to square circles I realize that, but people of goodwill can sometimes find compromises that may not be perfect, each side will have to give. But really, without some degree of unity, you get in this endless shouting match, which typically, nothing gets done and nobody gets helped and that’s typically what happens in politics in many countries, is all these things that everybody knows needs to be fixed but because we’re too entrenched in our camps, stuff doesn’t get done, whether it’s healthcare, the economy, what have you.
Warwick F:
So, there can be growth, there can be opportunity if you try to seek honorable compromise. Honorable compromise doesn’t mean selling out, it means understanding the other side’s perspective and maybe one and one can equal three. It can be in politics, it could be in business. You can have people that say, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it in this company.” The younger entrepreneurial folks are like, “No, but we want to make this great change.” Well, maybe you can preserve the identity, the ethos of the company, while still using new technology and maybe there’s a middle ground. I mean, this sense of division isn’t just politics, it’s in business, it’s in society, it’s in a neighborhood, it’s everywhere. Try to understand the other perspective.
Gary S:
One of the goals I say all the time when you have disagreements on even substantive issues and approaches to those issues, is there a patch of grass that we both can stand on where we’re able to work toward a common good solution? The example that comes to my mind when I think of that, is there a patch of grass that we can stand on is the first President Bush, George H. W. Bush, and President Clinton. Now, when President Clinton beat President Bush, there was no love lost, there was no love lost between them.
Gary S:
President Bush was not happy to be a one term president, but years later, when President Bush’s son George W. Bush was president, there was a situation that came up where he brought together his father and President Clinton and they worked on some missions together for the good of the country and in doing so they didn’t just accomplish things that were good for the country, they became friends to the point that people would suggest President Bush, the elder, would suggest that he might have been in many ways the father that President Clinton lacked growing up, and President Clinton never corrected him on that. That is an amazing example of finding a patch of grass to stand on, that first leads to good policy decisions, first leads to good things for the community and the country, and then leads to friendship.
Warwick F:
Yeah, Gary, that is an absolutely excellent example. It really, both men are respected, both former presidents are respected for that. I mean, just to help listeners remember in ’92 when the first president George H. W. Bush lost, that was sort of amazing because he, by most historians account handled the first Gulf War well, he united NATO and a bunch of countries against what Saddam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. Well, at one point, he had like 80%, 90% approval. I mean, it was off the charts, but then maybe some economic issues, his approval rating fell, and then he had a third party candidate and Ross Perot that siphoned off about 15%.
Warwick F:
So if it hadn’t been for Ross Perot, there’s a pretty good chance Bush would have won. So Bush could have felt maybe justifiably, this isn’t fair, I did a good job and I am one term president, which as we know, nobody wants to be one term president and here’s this Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, I mean, okay, Rhodes scholar, Oxford smart guy, but he could have felt very miffed and could have taken it very personally. As you say, when George W. Bush, President H. W. Bush’s son called them to do some relief work, I think it was after the tsunami in Indonesia.
Gary S:
Right. Right.
Warwick F:
They became friends almost like, I think Bill Clinton would joke, yeah, I’m sort of a son by another mother or black sheep of the family.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
He joked he was invited to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine and they became friends, which is remarkable that that would happen given that President George H. W. Bush, he minded greatly losing, it wasn’t a small thing and this is the guy that beat him. It’s an incredible example of just don’t take it personally and they found ways to work together for things they both thought were important.
Gary S:
They could not have done that, let’s be clear in the context of what we’ve been discussing, they could not have done that. President Bush, H. W. Bush, Republican, President Clinton, Democrat, very different ideologies, they could not have done that if their ideologies led them to believe that the other was evil.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I can think of another example of that nature in my own family. My dad was chairman of Fairfax Media, John Fairfax Limited as then was, I don’t know, maybe 40, 45 years, a long period of time and he was also intellectually curious. He would like to meet with people of different faith perspectives, different political perspectives. So a friend of his was a former prime minister, Bob Hawke, he was a member of the Labor Party. In fact, when they became friends, he was head of the trade unions and Bob Hawke was a brilliant man, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, but certainly in his trade union days was seen as pretty left wing.
Warwick F:
My dad would probably be conservative, I wouldn’t say rabidly so but more on that end of the spectrum. So their political viewpoints couldn’t be more different, but yet they became good friends. Yet, politically, there’s a lot they didn’t agree with but yet, obviously, they both respected each other’s intellect. So that to me was remarkable that they could become good friends despite the fact that had very different worldviews.
Gary S:
Yeah, and I have a similar story in my own professional career. I worked for a nonprofit that had an ideological footprint, which it is doesn’t matter and in sort of stepping on with that ideological footprint, I as a PR guy for that that organization got in lots of debates in media with someone who represented another group which had a different ideological viewpoint. You could find me and this individual in stories a lot, arguing with one another across the notebook of the reporter in question. It turns out that the individual for whom I worked was getting an award and an honor and there was going to be a ceremony and the guy with whom I would argue in the press was protesting the honor, and he announced he was protesting the honor.
Gary S:
Well, I was sick of arguing across the notebook with him. So I called him up and I said, “Hey, we’re going to be in the same city, do you want to have dinner?” And we had dinner, and we sat down. One of the things that we discovered is that despite our ideology being different, our backgrounds were quite the same. We were both in public relations, we had far more in common to the point that you make in the blog, we had far more in common than we didn’t. The only thing that we really didn’t have in common was our ideology, and that wasn’t the whole sum and substance of who we were.
Gary S:
So fast forward through that experience, we became friends. He lived in New York, when I would go to New York, I’d stopped by I’d say hi, we would have conversations to the point, Warwick that when I published my book, on sort of my manifesto on what makes good public relations, this individual endorsed it. He endorsed the book, and said very nice things about me. He’s a PR guy I’m a PR guy. He wrote, “I’ve had the misfortune of being in PR battles with Gary Schneeberger and let me tell you, it’s no fun because he’s the best there is.” That is the kind of thing that you get when you lay your ideology down and you look at the humanity of someone.
Warwick F:
I mean, can that can you think of an endorsement that’s better than that? I mean, that’s the other side saying, I don’t like doing battle with this guy, because he’s too good. Doesn’t feel fair. I mean, you couldn’t have written a better endorsement than that. Right?
Gary S:
Right, and neither one of us to this day have changed our views on the issues that we would have disagreements about in the press, and we had disagreements after we became friends in the press. The point was, he didn’t think I was evil, I didn’t think he was evil and one of the reasons why that was able to happen is we sat down across a dinner table from one another and just talked as two human beings. Finding the humanity is key.
Warwick F:
That’s remarkable. I think it’s worth listeners pondering the story that Gary shared. What would have happened if Gary in New York from time to time, if he’d never reached out to this guy and said, “Let’s have dinner.” What would Gary and this other guy have missed out? A lot. They never would have known that they had more in common than they thought that endorsement wouldn’t have happened, obviously, there’s no way he would have endorsed you without that dinner and without that dialogue, you would have been seen as the enemy. So think of what would have been lost to you and this other person without you taking the remarkable step of saying, “Let’s have dinner.” Right?
Gary S:
Even in that context, I remember coming back to work after I did that, had that first dinner, and one of my colleagues came up to me and asked me if I at dinner said, “Did you talk to him about the chilling effects of these policy proposals that he’s doing?” I still remember what I said, Warwick, I said, “I haven’t thought about it since then.” I still remember what I said to my colleague, I said, “No, I did not take the time to whack him with my worldview mallet while I was trying to understand his humanity.”
Gary S:
Sometimes, many times, there’s a time to argue passionately for what you believe and there’s also a time to lay that worldview mallet down and have a discussion, a dialogue that helps you get to the humanity of someone.
Warwick F:
I think those are words to live by. So listeners, little role reversal. Just listen to what Gary just said, don’t whack people with your worldview mallet while you’re trying to create a relationship with them and understand them. Think of those words, words to live by. So true.
Gary S:
Well, I don’t know what to do now because that’s normally what I say then we wrap up. That’s a good place to kind of put the plane down on the tarmac. If you summed up Warwick this discussion from top to bottom, what do you want listeners to kind of walk away with overall? As we’ve talked about, here’s the situation we face in the country, in our communities right now, here’s some steps we can take to lessen that, to not think of people as evil. Here are the benefits of not thinking of the other side as evil. What’s the summary that you want to leave people with?
Warwick F:
I think people who just stay in their people groups, their ideology group, read own media read, watch their own TV stations, social media, listen to their own people all the time, you’re missing out a lot. Your viewpoints could grow, evolve, more than that your understanding of people who are different than you, think different than you could grow immensely. Well, think about this country, if people tried, had the courage to fight the underlying interests that make money over division, think what would happen with our country, if you had people willing to listen, and work with other people?
Warwick F:
If enough people do it and people can see, boy, some good things are happening, then people will begin to not listen to the negative echo chambers that are out there. It just takes a few people standing together for principled compromise, principled, what’s that center ground which is good for the country? It’s not just about the country think about businesses. Very often we surround ourselves with people that look like us to believe that what we do, how about having diversity of background of race, and political viewpoint? Economic, social, every other viewpoint. Respect other people’s viewpoints you might disagree passionately, but diversity means diversity in every possible conception of that word. Very few people do that.
Warwick F:
People, certainly when it comes to ideology, they like mixing even in the workplace. Workplaces are not that diversified, certainly in many ways they’re not diversified enough racially, or background. But they’re certainly also not very diversified in some cases when it comes to political viewpoint. There’s tremendous opportunity for growth. I mean, growth often happens when you have diverse viewpoints, coming together, brainstorming and coming up with ideas and solutions that never could have happened if you’re just talking to people with your own viewpoint.
Gary S:
Now that’s good, because now the roles are back. You’ve just had the last word and I get to wrap. So that’s great. Thank you for that, and thank you listener for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m going to add a little bit to what Warwick just said and I think Warwick will agree with me when I do this, to give you an extension of the homework that he gave you. Don’t whack the other guy with your worldview mallet and in fact, go out, find someone, maybe it’s on social media, find someone in your business, find someone with whom you have deep disagreements, and make it a point to reach out and have a conversation and to truly try to understand them. Ask more questions than you make statements and that can help deflate a crucible that you might be on the edge of creating or maybe you’ve already created in terms of relationship. Also it can help knock down, tamp down this divisiveness that we talked about at the top of the show.
Gary S:
So until the next time that we are together, please one, go to crucibleleadership.com to check out Warwick’s blog on this. Please hit subscribe to the podcast on the app on which you’re listening to it right now. We’d also love it if you’d go and you’d leave a rating. If you enjoy what you hear on Beyond the Crucible, leave a rating what you think about it. Heck, if you don’t enjoy it, you can leave a rating too. But we’d prefer if you did enjoy it, you left a rating but anybody can leave a rating, we’re not saying what kind of rating you have to leave. But if you find these dialogues to be interesting, go leave a rating at a podcast app and let us know how we’re doing. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we want to know. We want to know how we’re doing so that we can make this an experience that you enjoy.
Gary S:
Remember, until the next time we are together that your crucible experiences are difficult. They’re trying and they’re challenging. They do indeed change the trajectory of your life, but they’re not the end of your story. They are in every case, they can be the beginning of your story, and they can be the beginning of the best part of your story. Because where they lead when you learn the lessons of them is to a greater destination than you could have imagined before the crucible and that is to a life of significance.
We live in a very divided world. In fact some would say that our times are as divided as they have been in years, even decades. Here in the U.S. we have recently had a divisive election that led those unhappy with the result to storm the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Not only are we divided by politics, we are divided about many if not most of the policy issues and even some health care choices. With COVID 19, some feel that we should wear masks at all times, minimizing contact outside our household. Others, including people who may be younger or believe they are in good health, may not feel they need to be as careful. Each side of the COVID 19 health debate, much like each side of the political divide, can tend to feel like the other side is misguided — even a bit, or a lot, crazy.
And it can get worse. We can tend to believe the other side is not only misguided and crazy, but evil. You read about “the other side,” depending on your point of view, being “Nazis” or “Socialists” or “Fascists.” Those are very strong words. In reality, is there evil in the world? Throughout history, there have certainly been people doing deeds which are wrong even evil. Even in our day, it is possible to conclude that reprehensible actions by misguided even morally questionable people have occurred.
But while this may true, it is dangerous, to conclude that just because someone or some group of people may disagree with you that they are “evil.” Not everyone who holds positions different to yours is evil. In fact, it’s likely true that most aren’t. The question is how does it serve you to assume that people who disagree with you or who have different beliefs than you, or look differently to you are evil? Unity and tolerance for people who believe differently and look differently than you will lead to a morally better and more productive society.
Here are some thoughts for trying to build unity amidst diverse viewpoints and diverse people groups:
1. Don’t assume the “other side” or the “other people” are evil —even when you believe they are wrong.
There are times in history and even today where that may be true, but it will not always be true; and it will tend to be true less than we think it is true.
2. Try to understand the other side.
That means talking to them, reading about what that side thinks. Not from commentators who you agree with, but from either neutral commentators or even commentators from their side.
3. Listen, really listen.
When you talk to people from the other side, really try to understand why they think the way they do. Our life experience, our heritage, where we grew up and the people we grew up with significantly shape our perspectives on life. Just to take one example, a rural perspective might stress self-reliance. Yes, you have friends and neighbors and family who may help. But ultimately, in this mindset, each person’s destiny is determined by themselves. Contrast this with more of an urban perspective. Here the challenges and belief systems can be quite different. It is not uncommon in urban areas to have a greater reliance and belief in the role of government to protect the most vulnerable and ensure equity and fairness in society.
4. Don’t impugn other people’s motives – and always listen to make sure you attempt to understand those motives.
Try to give the other side the benefit of the doubt. I am sure all of us would like others to treat us like that, innocent until proven guilty. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Not everyone you disagree with is evil.
5. Seek first to understand.
St. Francis of Assisi in his famous Prayer of St. Francis said that we should seek more to understand than be understood. That seems like quite a radical statement. We often focus our dialogue with others who are different than us by stressing that others need to understand us. That is not wrong, but real dialogue often happens best when we lead with trying to understand the other side, before pivoting to helping others understand us. What you start with matters. Real leaders start with trying to understand the perspectives of those who are different from them first.
6. Unity creates opportunity.
By dialoguing with people who believe differently than you, and look differently than you there is real opportunity. There is power where there is unity amidst diversity.
Unity amidst diversity can lead to tremendous growth. Where you have an organization, a neighborhood or even a country comprised of diverse peoples with diverse perspectives, in harmony and unity, real growth and progress can happen. Take one example. Is it possible to preserve the environment for future generations while at the same time being aware of the impact of environmental regulations on employment, people’s jobs? Perhaps there is a common sense middle ground where the environment is preserved while people’s jobs are preserved too. Unity amidst diverse perspectives and diverse agendas is not easy, but the alternative is eternal combat where both sides tend to lose.
It is all too easy to demonize the “other side” as evil; to keep in our corners with our own people group. Talk only to “our people,” live only near “our people” and consume news and information only from news outlets and commentators we agree with. But when we do this, society becomes increasingly divided and growth and progress is stunted. We may not be able to change the world, at least not today. But how about in our workplace, in our community and neighborhood and even in our family? We need to try to listen to those who think differently and look differently than us. We should practice the words of St. Francis, seek first to understand.
Reflection
What group do you self identify with such that you feel some significant level of disagreement with the “other side?”
What steps will you take this week to learn about how the “other side” thinks from their perspective?
How will you seek to bridge the gap and see what can be done to find a middle ground between your group’s perspective and the perspective of the “other side?”
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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Ruza Markovic had dreamt of and studied for a career in journalism — when war intervened to change the trajectory of her life. While her family had emigrated to the U.S. from their native Yugoslavia when she was just 4, Markovic didn’t think twice when she was asked to return to her homeland in the early ’90s as a communications liaison to the teetering government while political unrest and then war-ravaged the Balkans. What she saw and experienced, she says, laid barren her faith in country, politics, the media, and herself. Those trials and traumas, though, did not sap her spirit. They steeled her resolve to live her life in service to others — in part as an advocate for the liberating power of education.
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
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Ruza M:
We were bugged and followed, and we often had conversations in the middle of the street in traffic because we knew. It wasn’t even pointless to even try to find it. And there was a moment where there was this big discussion about the American woman that came to work for the government. The reality is, I didn’t have a US passport. I had a green card. I believe I was the picture on the… I hadn’t even updated the green card, right? This was so loose. And I’m a kid out of college going, “I’m going. Nothing’s going to stop me.” And they’re having a discussion about the American woman, and I was literally barred from going into the office for at least two weeks.
Gary S:
That sounds like a pretty harrowing crucible, doesn’t it? And would you believe this terrifying trial didn’t just happen to today’s guest, Ruza Markovic? She actually stepped into a crucible that already existed in the early 90s when her home nation of Yugoslavia was torn apart by political unrest that led to a war of unfathomable tragedy. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
In today’s episode, Ruza describes not only the dangerous experiences she endured as a young woman committed to helping her homeland, but also how she leveraged those profoundly difficult moments then and in the years since to build a life of significance as a communications executive and an advocate for the liberating power of education. She has seen more horrors and heartache than many, you’ll hear. But they have not sapped her spirit. In fact, they have steeled her resolve to live her life in service to others.
Warwick F:
Thank you so much for being here. And boy, you’ve had such an incredible life and amazing experiences, obviously some of them centered around the former Yugoslavia. But I’d like to start with your background and how you grew up, which I believe was in what was then Yugoslavia. So just talk about your parents, grandparents, just what life was like for you as a small child growing up in Yugoslavia.
Ruza M:
So we actually immigrated when I was four and a half. We came to the U.S…
Warwick F:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Ruza M:
However, my grandfather was a POW of World War II and a Nazi concentration camp survivor. So the Germans had a policy towards the Serbs that was unique because we fought back with everything we had. And so when his camp was liberated by the British, they gave him options of going back home, going to the US, or going to Australia. And they were sponsored by a church group in Racine, Wisconsin, hence the connection, and the entire group of POWs ended up in Racine, Wisconsin. So today, some of my closest friends are grandchildren of those same POW survivors. They became each other’s godparents to each other’s children. And that has lasted well over 40 years.
Warwick F:
Wow. So you had really a whole extended family and friends growing up in Racine. So even though you were a bit young to remember a lot of where you came from, where you came from came with you, in a sense.
Ruza M:
It completely came with me. And the backstory, really, is that my father saw his father go off to war when he was four years old. He didn’t see him visit again until he was 27. So we came to US because I as a little girl, and my mom having lost her mom at the age of seven, I spent a summer with my cousin’s grandmother back in what was then Yugoslavia. I’m named after my father’s grandmother, so I spent six months scribbling postcards and driving my parents absolutely bananas over, “When do I get to meet her? When do I get to meet her? It’s around the corner.” So when my grandfather came here, he obviously… I mean, it took probably 12 to 15 years, brought my grandmother here.
Ruza M:
And then my father, who was the only one to graduate from college of his brothers and sisters, was the only one that stayed behind. And he literally was the one that the embassy knew, because every relative that decided to go, he was the one that ushered them in. And even when it was our turn to come, we came on a tourist visa. My father was working as an engineer. My mother was working for the biggest record production company in the country. We were living upper middle class, Eastern European life. They traveled to Italy and Greece every summer, winter kind of thing. They had this life.
Ruza M:
And then I tugged at their heartstrings. We came for a visit, and my father at the time… Two things. He missed his father, obviously. And this was, I think the greatest tug. But the other, because his father was in the US, and because Yugoslavia was a communist country, but a quasi, sitting next to the iron curtain, we look like a picnic. We could travel. You felt as free as a bird on the street.
Ruza M:
As long as you climbed up the ladder from a business perspective, you saw a ceiling. And if you had a parent that was living in the US, your ceiling was shorter than everybody else’s. And so when he came to the US, and he saw a system that actually gave you back tax dollars, that thought just kind of blew his mind. And he went back, and we went back home. He made plans. And then we immigrated September 18th, 1973.
Warwick F:
Wow. And you were four years old.
Ruza M:
I was four years old. Sadly, my grandfather died six months later. So my father had those six months, but that’s all he had. And immigrant life is never easy, but particularly when you studied in school Russian or German… And he’s an engineer. And so he started first at a gas station, then at American Motors, which Gary probably remembers well.
Gary S:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Ruza M:
And in fact, he worked the graveyard shift. And for the first several years, I only saw my parents kind of in passing. And I was the classic latchkey kid, who basically walked to school every morning and back. And sometimes my dad would try to come pick me up and wouldn’t see me from snowbanks, and so we would kind of do this. Make a long story short, he gets laid off at one point. Now, in this entire time, my mom and I are besides ourselves. I want to go home. I don’t know why I’m here. None of this makes any sense to me. My mom has had, at the time, four sisters who had kids. We were all very, very close. And that bond for me left a lasting, to this day, really…
Warwick F:
And they were back in Yugoslavia while you were here in Racine, Wisconsin.
Ruza M:
… and I wanted to go home. My dad was so adamant. He was like, “We’re going to go home after I work as an engineer for one day in this country. Period, end of discussion.”
Warwick F:
Okay.
Ruza M:
And literally gets laid off. He takes his diploma. And he was interviewed at Modine Manufacturing, which is a big company in Racine, and hired on the spot. But here’s where the story… It’s very much the seed of the way I see my life having evolved from that point. He gets a job working for the man whose manuscript he was translating because it was published in a big technical journal, who happened to be in the same concentration camp with my grandfather.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Ruza M:
So it was one of those moments where you knew you were supposed to be where you were. See, it still gives me goosebumps. And from that point on, he really didn’t look back. We made it through five years, five years before we went back home for a visit. And my dad knew if we had gone any sooner, we probably would have changed our minds. Because while this country offers you all sorts of promise, going having to not having, and doing it willingly, is tough.
Ruza M:
So you went from having the standard life of an apartment, a car, travel, you had this life, to pumping gas, third shift, I don’t see my parents, we’re scrambling to save enough to buy a first home. When the war started in the Balkans, most of our family friends thought my father was prophetic. Because at that time in the 70s, nobody left. This wasn’t this mass exodus period in time.
Warwick F:
Right, because life was good. Just to cycle back for the audience that may not know, I think a guy by the name of Tito wasn’t it, he was sort of the guy in control of Yugoslavia. And while it was communist, it’s not like East Germany or Hungary or Bulgaria or some other parts in Eastern Europe that were pretty locked down, and if you breathed against the government you’d probably be in some prison. I’m sure it wasn’t perfect, but relative to other, if you were in East Germany, for instance, you’d be maybe a little envious of some of the folks in Yugoslavia, especially ones in middle class, upper middle class like your family. So at the time, it seemed like, why would you leave Yugoslavia? It has so much promise, and-
Ruza M:
And my father-
Warwick F:
… things look so good.
Ruza M:
… he tells stories to this day of running into Gandhi on the streets of Belgrade, because as part of the non-aligned movement, you had all of this excitement happening within the capital city. And again, people thought he was crazy, flat out. So he literally retired from Modine Manufacturing. He spent 25 great years. And I would say the highlight of his career is he got to work on the first cooling engine for the Dodge Viper and the Porsche. He lived what I call his childhood dream out every day. And we were very, very blessed.
Ruza M:
In the middle of that, in order to go up the corporate ladder, he had to take a position somewhere else, anywhere else. And we moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, where we had Greek neighbors, and that made our street the most international in a 700-mile radius. And it was the best thing that could have happened to us, because what comfort zone after that? When you live in an immigrant corridor that is Milwaukee to Chicago to Indiana, you’re in a bubble. Your home could be figuratively anywhere, right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
Because everything within the home still feels like you’re back home. And there’s pressure to be that way within an immigrant community. God forbid we all forget anything, right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
So you cut yourself off in many ways, certainly back then. It’s to a lesser degree today, because the world today, to a lesser degree, has all sorts of opportunities to communicate and travel.
Warwick F:
It’s so much more integrated and global. Yeah, I mean, there are advantages to being with those that you know and the people group and the background. On the other hand, you don’t expose yourself to part of what’s new and different people groups. I get it. So-
Ruza M:
And part of that experience in Missouri… First of all, I got to see a different face of America, if that makes any sense, right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
The moment the moving van pulled into the driveway, people coming out with cookies and pies and like a little Mayberry. It was crazy. But the other thing that happened, because truly, we were different. You know how different you are when I’m in the store with my mom and they’re like, “Is that Chinese or Mexican?” Right? And not even close. So you knew you were dropped in the middle of nowhere. But my parents worried I would forget. And so then became the, during summers, I was practicing Cyrillic. And they would send me back, so I would spend summers with cousins in Yugoslavia-
Warwick F:
So just-
Ruza M:
… from the age of 13 on.
Warwick F:
So did you grow up in the Serbian part of Yugoslavia?
Ruza M:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Or I guess your family?
Ruza M:
Yes. Belgrade
Warwick F:
Okay. So I should know… When I think of Cyrillic, I think of the Russian alphabet, but in Serbian, they also use Cyrillic?
Ruza M:
They also use Cyrillic. They use both. Not interchangeably, obviously.
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
But one thing that happened when the communists put the country together is that they kind of made this magic happen of, it could be this, or it could be that. So there was easier communication across the whole of the country. But they sent me back every summer, so needless to say, on top of the fact that my language skills are such that you can’t tell that I grew up here, in my native language. I also had a sense for politics, economics.
Ruza M:
How could you not? Because I spent two months, really, every summer for summer after summer. And my greatest compliment was when kids were surprised that I had shoes that said, “Made in the US.” Because they had put it together, right? And that was my pride and joy, because I would spend the first two weeks kind of being quiet so that I wouldn’t give myself up to being kind of rusty. So when the opportunity came to be over there, it was kind of a natural progression.
Warwick F:
So did part of these experiences fuel your desire to be a journalist and go to Northwestern Medill school? Was there a link there between… How did all that happen?
Ruza M:
As a kid, the one thing that we never missed were the evening news, and World News Tonight was like the be all, end all. And the reason is because at the time, if a phone rang, we knew somebody died or someone was born. Right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
Your ability to communicate with family was so limited that that was the window to the rest of the world, and we’d all be listening for something in Europe, just something so that you felt connected. And so those were my heroes. So I literally wrote to Walter Cronkite in kindergarten for career day, and they wrote back.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
And that still sits in Wadewitz Elementary School, is a letter from Walter Cronkite’s people, I’m sure. But that was my goal. And the ridiculous part is, I was a math wiz. I mean, I took advanced calculus in college as a joke. So I mean, in retrospect, somebody should have said, “Is this really the path you want to go down? You’re an immigrant. English is your second language.” And I can’t spell to save my life. This is the path? It was the path.
Gary S:
I’ve never known another journalist who was any good at math. In fact, I used to say in newsrooms I worked in that there should be a big alarm that would go off whenever a journalist tried to do math, so that everybody knew… Woo, woo, woo, journalist doing math, back away. So bravo to you.
Warwick F:
I know one of the key points in your story is going to Yugoslavia in I think the early 90s. And I guess by then, life was different than when you, in your early, formative years, and-
Ruza M:
But not that different. Here’s the thing that haunts me to today. I watched, especially in those late 80s, early 90s years, where, because the moment people died, suddenly the debt is due. Right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
Suddenly the head of the mob family, which is really how you look at a dictator and how he lives. Suddenly the debt was due. Suddenly they were under the kind of austerity measures that you talk about today, Europe having implemented during this last economic crisis. They were rationing toothpaste. There was this moment in time of, how did we go from that to this? And also, when people died, you’re suddenly looking into the constitution, which is meaningless when you have a dictator… “Okay, we’re going to have a presidency, and every state, if you will, of this union will have a president that will serve for a year.”
Ruza M:
So think about how difficult it is to do things within a four year period. Within a year, it’s impossible. It became a zoo, and it became this… There was a lot done, and people did a lot, that actually, Saddam Hussein learned from. In fact, the same lunatic that built Tito’s bunkers built Hussein’s bunkers.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
And the same kind of seasoning the stew of, as long as there’s friction, people will look to me for peace. And so you’re in a communist country, and they’re starting to give more favor religiously to certain groups.
Warwick F:
Right, because you had… I mean, you know way more than me, but Serbians, Bosnians, people of maybe Christian Orthodox background, Muslims. I mean, its background… So it seems like Tito seemed to be able to hold what was maybe festering challenges that had gone on for hundreds of years. It wasn’t like this came from nowhere, all of these frictions.
Ruza M:
No, no, no. This was thousands of years in the making. However, World War I and World War II were brutal in the Balkans, and what the communists did is basically rewrite history to suit themselves. Well, once he died, this became this simmering stew, is the best way to explain it, and the lid going… Especially from an economic perspective. This was what I call ’84 to ’88, ’89. Then comes a president that goes, “This is crazy. Let’s change our economic policy, and let’s privatize.”
Ruza M:
So I’m in Serbia in 1990, watching people take literally a four by four piece of land in front of their home, and open a little shop and start selling whatever. Privatization started, and I remember how hopeful I was that they had a chance to actually become this vibrant European country. By March of ’91, that was over, just like this. And it was over because the politics had outpaced the economics, and it happened that quickly.
Warwick F:
That’s an important lesson. So from what I understand, there was a US Congresswoman that asked, “Can you go and be a communications liaison with,” some US person who was going to be Prime Minister?
Ruza M:
Correct.
Warwick F:
And from what I understand, there was going to be 10 people, and turns out you were the only one on the plane. So just talk about that whole… That must have been an amazing experience, because here, you weren’t going to see family. You were going there professionally-
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
… to help the country of your birth.
Ruza M:
The war began, and I remember even friends from school, now university friends, being like, “How can you live with yourself as,” whatever ethnicity they were associating with what’s happening in the media. And I think for me, the heartbreak was, I had family in trouble. I had an aunt and cousins in Sarajevo. I had an aunt, cousins in Bosnia. And out of my mom’s four sisters, of the five of them, four had a daughter each. We were incredibly close. Their kids are like my kids.
Ruza M:
And so this is happening. I wrote to Walter Cronkite in kindergarten, so I’m watching Nightline, and I’m watching Serbs bomb churches. The only problem is, the only churches that I see falling are Serbian. And my head’s going, if you can’t get it right, Houston, we’re in trouble. And so I reached out to a couple of… Jim Moody, I believe, a Congressman from Wisconsin who had actually spent some time in the Balkans as a young man after, I think serving in the military, something to that effect, and had run into Helen Delich Bentley. She was married Bentley, but she was a Serb.
Warwick F:
Oh, wow. Because I think she was a Congresswoman from Maryland.
Ruza M:
Yes. For many, many years.
Warwick F:
I live in Maryland, so that name-
Ruza M:
For many, many years. And she kind of put me on her radar, and calls me up one morning at 3:30. Literally, the woman never slept. And was like, “We need your help. We have this team of young journalists I’m assembling.” Milan Panic, who was, at the time, CEO of ICN Pharmaceuticals. He had zero reason, zero reason to actually go do this. But a personal friend, and a lifelong friend, had at the time been politically involved in the country, and so as a personal favor, he said yes. And so he gets the state department to approve the fact that he has a US… not to lose his US citizen. He serves as Prime Minister.
Ruza M:
And they were outnumbered, really, from a press perspective. There was so much Western media that they couldn’t handle it. And every time we’d see a report on the news, my angst was, just get it right. This isn’t about whose side I am. This isn’t a sporting event. This is, the moment you get it wrong, you have now proven to dictator A, B, C, or D, because mind you, they just woke up from communism five seconds ago. They have no other sense. You have just proven that jerk right, that the world is manipulating the situation politically. And when they don’t get it right on major television news… Or, look, Chicago Trib.
Ruza M:
Right before I went overseas, I was in a meeting with a then editor, who happened to be Greek, which made me crazy because he should know better, in the sense of, there is a big picture on the front page saying, “Croatian soldier holds cross of bombed church.” Well, here’s the problem. It’s a Serbian cross. So is he happy? The context of the photo was so off that my head is exploding, going, these are basics. I wouldn’t expect a US journalist to necessarily understand the inner politicking within Serbia, within Croatia, because we are known for five levels of chess, nothing simple. And everything is some sort of game.
Warwick F:
But while you can’t expect, you can assume that they’re going to be professional, and if they don’t understand, they will ask questions, I’m sure they had interpreters with them, and try to get it right. Because this is sort of a cauldron of nationalities and people groups, and making mistakes, in this case-
Ruza M:
If I had a-
Warwick F:
… I don’t know if it can cost lives, but it can cause a lot of damage.
Ruza M:
If I had a penny for every time CNN showed you one city and talked about another. You don’t know the difference, but I know the difference. And so to me, not only are they putting my chosen profession into big question, right? Neon signs going, is this as good as it gets? Is this as much as they care? Once I’m there, and I’ll never forget arriving, and I’ll never forget the day that we went to Kosovo, which is still a mess, with Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen.
Warwick F:
And Cyrus, was he Secretary of State-
Ruza M:
Yes.
Warwick F:
… under Clinton? Okay.
Ruza M:
And a US diplomat of what I call enormous stature. I’ve only been in his presence once, and that was it. So the level of complexity to the situation was heartbreaking. There were no easy answers. But at one point, the Italian Foreign Minister raged at the press corps, going, “When you publish that there is fighting where there is not, tomorrow there will be, and who bears responsibility for that?” Because the biggest issue in these kinds of conflicts is not hatred, it’s fear. I’m living next to my neighbor, and I don’t know what he stockpiled in his basement.
Ruza M:
So the first incidences of what they later named ethnic cleansing were people in cities, cut off. There’s no internet. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m hearing things through radio that isn’t accurate. And we’re probably next. So they took the minority of people in that city and bussed them out for their own safety. This happened over and over again. The problem is, the big light bulb of, what are they doing, turned on, and all sides stopped taking prisoners. So the level to which it went from bad to slaughter overnight…
Gary S:
I want to rewind just a little-
Ruza M:
But I know we’re getting kind of off tangent, so…
Warwick F:
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s all good.
Gary S:
No, no, no, no.
Ruza M:
I could talk about politics forever.
Gary S:
I just want to rewind a bit, Ruza, because you said something about fear being the driving force behind this. And Warwick mentioned that there were initially going to be 10 young student journalists who were going to go over there and who were going to help sort of sort through this, help the acting Prime Minister deal with this. You were the only one who showed up. You were the only one who wasn’t afraid to go there.
Gary S:
I kind of know the answer to this question because I knew the young woman you were before you went there, because we worked together at the paper in Racine when you were an intern in 1989. I knew the steel in your spine. I knew who you were then. But for our listeners, who did not know you then, what was it that kept you from being too afraid to get on the plane and get off the plane? Nine people dropped out. You didn’t. Why?
Ruza M:
The morning that Helen Bentley called me, I had the same experience my father had when he was hired by a man who was in the same concentration camp with him. I had a moment of clarity of, I’m meant to do this. So it was this, you see the road turning, and in very many ways, I had my father screaming in my ear, going, “You also have an economics degree. Go get a job. Stop working with…” I was working with a small media agency in Chicago, and so the road very dramatically turned, and this was very much all I hoped for, was to use my language skills, to see my family.
Ruza M:
So a combination of hopes and dreams, and every door opened. I could have been at Reuters or AP after all of that happened, but I saw the underbelly of the… It saved me 20 years of sitting in a news organization thinking that the power of the pen is the power of the pen. You can’t take the person out of the story. In these circumstances, people…
Warwick F:
And unlike some other journalists, you knew the whole history.
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
You understand the whole complex contextual situation. So you could have been at Reuters and worked your way up the ladder being successful, but it sounds like you felt like, “Well, nothing wrong with success, but I have some unique abilities and background to hopefully let me help a little bit.”
Ruza M:
Well, no. Let me restate that. Let me restate that. Every door when I came into the Balkans opened, and I could have stayed at Reuters in the Balkans and covered the war.
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
Right?
Warwick F:
Okay.
Ruza M:
But I saw the underbelly of, I saw my heroes sitting at the press club bar sending kids to the front lines as stringers, completely detached from the reality, because it wasn’t affecting them. It wasn’t their family.
Warwick F:
Isn’t that what they call in journalism, phoning it in-
Ruza M:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
… kind of thing? Rather than being out there on the front lines, they just kind of… I mean, I don’t know, that’s a sad image. But-
Ruza M:
But from a family perspective, the other thing that got me on the plane is immigrant communities, when the phone rings, you answer it. And back in the 70s and 80s, when your flat tire went out, you had to call somebody. Right?
Warwick F:
Right.
Ruza M:
So I grew up with a sense of duty. And so the moment that I was tapped and I was going, people came out of the woodwork to carry medicine for family, money for family. I mean, I walked in with let’s just say a whole lot of money that was not mine basically hidden on me.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
Just because of the situation, it’s not going to stop people from helping their family.
Warwick F:
They want to help. So I understand there was a couple of challenges you faced. I think you were maybe mistaken for somebody else, and potentially on some arrest list, and then I think there was another time when they thought maybe you were potentially part of some prisoner exchange. I mean, this wasn’t like going to the French Riviera on some holiday.
Ruza M:
No. No. No, not at all.
Warwick F:
You had some challenges.
Ruza M:
We were bugged and followed, and we often had conversations in the middle of the street in traffic, because we knew. It wasn’t even pointless to even try to find it. And there was a moment where there was this big discussion about the American woman that came to work for the government. The reality is, I didn’t have a US passport. I had a green card. I believe I was the picture on the… I hadn’t even updated the green card, right? This was so loose. And I’m a kid out of college going, “I’m going. Nothing’s going to stop me.” And they’re having a discussion about the American woman, and I was literally barred from going into the office for at least two weeks, and I was holed up in Panic’s private office, which used to be Tito’s office. So that was just a jolly good time, because I-
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
… got to comb through all sorts of stuff. But the first time that it came out, there was a headline, and so my first reaction is, my mother’s going to kill me. And it had zero to do with the severity of the situation. It had to do with, my aunts are going to flip out, and my mother’s going to kill me.
Warwick F:
Right. What’s happened to Ruza in America? Have they just sort of corrupted her?
Ruza M:
Yeah, exactly.
Warwick F:
What’s she done?
Ruza M:
Exactly. Exactly.
Warwick F:
And then there was a whole prisoner exchange episode, and that was pretty dicey too, right? It was sort of on the border between different places?
Ruza M:
So I leave the Balkans. We were threatened with house arrest when Panic ran against Milosevic. And we absolutely found evidence that he had stolen the election.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
We had 24 hours to flee. But that wasn’t good enough for me. To put it this way, when you go through something like that that’s so much bigger than yourself, you can’t just come back here and get a job. I mean, your entire perspective… First of all, it rocked who I wanted to be when I grow up, my question of country, but both. Right? The US government wasn’t exactly forthcoming, if you will. There was a lot of… Just because they let Panic take the role with zero support.
Ruza M:
So my questioning of who’s on first, and what the hell is happening, just opened this Pandora’s box of, who am I? Why am I here? What’s the point? And to the point that, so now I’m home, and now I’m back in Racine, and I know every journalist on the planet covering the story. I have their phone numbers. And I’m watching their bylines being printed, going, “This is garbage.” So I started faxing them to them, and they literally took the journalistic pyramid and flipped it. So the lead was buried. This randomness came to the top, and there was all of this angst around, why is this happening? Where is it happening?
Ruza M:
And at a certain point, the media agency that I was working with in Chicago was indeed supported by Helen Bentley. But when I came home, that was a whole other affair. They had made strange bedfellows with Milosevic’s crew, and so I had to part ways in a very kind of strategic way, not to get myself… I was more afraid in the US, to be quite honest, in the community that I was back in Serbia, because people didn’t know what was going on back there. So it was this, you want to believe one thing, you don’t… It was crazy, to put it mildly.
Warwick F:
How did you adjust back to normal life? I mean, I understand you got into corporate communications for a company, and now have your own firm. How did you make that adjustment? Because it sounds like that was-
Ruza M:
There was a moment in time-
Warwick F:
… a searing experience, that whole time.
Ruza M:
There was a moment in time… Well, first of all, I got to a document that I couldn’t believe I saw at this media center when I was indeed going to say hello and goodbye to them, that as they were in a meeting, I literally faxed to a journalist who screamed at me on the phone for half an hour, going, “It will be obvious where this came from, so go hide. Go bury your head somewhere. Come back here.”
Warwick F:
Wow.
Ruza M:
He was so worried, and the story was so big, that it would come back to me, that he handed it to The Washington Post. And I’m still pissed that it appeared on page three and not on page one.
Gary S:
I love that. I would be, too.
Ruza M:
So then I go to Arizona. I come to Arizona. He wanted me to bury my head in the sand, so I’m going to go visit family in Arizona. And I go back to Wisconsin just to visit my folks, and the phone rings. And now it’s one of the people I worked with with Panic, asking me to go back and monitor the first Bosnian elections. Again, I have this moment of, wild horses couldn’t stop me. Let’s go. When do we leave? That’s when we entered Sarajevo 10 days before the last peace accord held.
Ruza M:
And I am a female exec from one of Panic’s companies in the Balkans, took the long car ride from Belgrade to Sarajevo, which I have taken many times to visit my aunt. But you can’t go into the city because your license plate, back in the day, gives you up to what city you’re from. You’re in the middle of a war zone. That’s not happening. So they drop us off at a bridge. You’ve got kids armed to the hilt. The kids. I mean, I at the time-
Ruza M:
… was maybe 26. They were maybe 18, 19. And a guy came up to us and asked us whether we were part of the prisoner exchange. And I’m looking down. It is literally a bridge, and there’s nothing stopping anyone from shooting you, and no one would care, not even for five seconds. So you start cracking jokes with the people who are armed so that they start easing off. And by the time we were picked up, everyone was having a jolly good time, because there’s no other way to cut through the tension.
Ruza M:
But there was no point in time that I was afraid, because I knew the people who had called me to do this were going to come from Sarajevo, because they had gone before us to set everything up to pick us up, and indeed they did. And there was a moment in time in that city as I looked to see how most of the city was intact, how the fighting had happened from one mountainside to the hospital, which was one of the tallest buildings in town, and the Holiday Inn. And I just sat there and bawled. It was one of those first moments in all of this nonsense that I truly, truly just lost it and said, “Enough. Enough.” If I can’t help-
Warwick F:
And-
Ruza M:
… God, don’t keep driving me into this if I can’t effect the change that-
Warwick F:
I’m sure it was devastating. For US listeners, Sarajevo was the site of the winter Olympics. I’m trying to remember… When was that? Was it in the 80s?
Ruza M:
’84. 1984.
Warwick F:
’84, just before all this happened. I think I saw some documentary after it where the ice skating was and ski runs, it was just nothing. It was devastating. So I’m sure all those images are probably in your mind of what it once was.
Ruza M:
But once you realize… Because I went to go see Sniper Alley. It’s funny. Sitting at the hotel at the Holiday Inn as we were getting our assignments of where we were going to go as monitors, all of the busboys and the folks in the kitchen would start talking to me because I was the youngest among all of these people. And so they would tell me more than I possibly could hear on the news of what actually was happening. And so one of them willingly took me to see where this was.
Ruza M:
And when he explained to me that the only time anyone had to cross was when the authorities in the city turned off the water on a slow news day, I was sick, because the media made a really bad, ugly history, and a situation that is thousands of years in the making, 10 times worse.
Warwick F:
So you come back to the US. You decide, “Okay, this guy wants me to go here, and I’m done with this.” How in the world do you move on with your life in Phoenix and corporate communications? How do you do that from the searing experience?
Ruza M:
So I had one foot here, and I still had one foot there. You still have to survive. You still have to make money. So I had what I call my in in communications jobs, still kind of open to the opportunity, especially when Milosevic was ousted and in came the first democratically elected president of Serbia. And then came the phone calls about wanting to help work for him. Of course I was in. I was all in. Three days before I was scheduled to leave, he was assassinated, and that really was the end.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Ruza M:
That was the end. That was the moment. I had this moment of… And even through the bombing of Belgrade, which I don’t wish any human to actually understand what it’s like to watch on CNN the building that you know you have family living in being shelled. It ripped us all apart. But my hope was that that was a new day and a new leaf and a turning of the page, and that’s the moment when I went, “I can’t do this anymore.” And that was the same moment that I’ll say the phone rang, and I was interviewed by several education companies.
Ruza M:
And especially those that were dealing with international students appealed to my heart, because I knew instinctively that what happened in the Balkans, you had an economic fallout that led to a brain drain. Who was left behind with those that had no options? And if you peel the onion back and you look at where the lines were drawn and where the biggest fighting was, you’ll see that they were the lowest levels of education. Those two things are inevitably tied.
Warwick F:
It sounds like what I’m hearing, Ruza, is you had this, I don’t know, maybe a dream or mission form as you were growing up, and then spent some time in what was then Yugoslavia, maybe I can’t resurrect the whole country and undo thousands of years of conflict, but maybe I can do something.
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
I can have a little bit that can maybe move it on a good path, but then at a certain point, that dream, that mission died, if you will, that, gee, I can’t do this. It’s not my mission. It sounds like your mission shifted.
Ruza M:
It did.
Warwick F:
And out of that, the whole passion for education and the importance of, I think you said education being the bedrock of democracy. Sounds like, though, from that mission, that it changed for you is something else.
Ruza M:
There was a moment in time when I was like, “Look. As bad as it is that this situation existed and all of these amazing people with great potential are leaving the country…” There was this moment of time of, yes, but one day, that same person that is left behind who rules, pick a city, will one day pick up the phone and call an intel, and want an intel to come to their city and open up offices and jobs. And guess who they’re going to have to talk to? Someone from the Balkans. Right? There came a moment where the opportunity for globalization and being in a position to influence bigger or greater change kind of woke up in me to go, “Come on. Get on with it.”
Warwick F:
So how would you describe your mission now? Because I know you have corporate communications, but it sounds like there’s a mission that you’re passionate about that really animates and drives you. How would you describe that mission for you today?
Ruza M:
There’s been a lot that’s influenced how I got here, but for me, it still goes back to telling a really good, authentic story that can affect how a person feels and can affect change. We recently did… And I am really proud of the fact that COVID and cancer, they hit at the same time… And I have to chuckle, because when you asked me to do a write up, I had to literally go back and add the cancer.
Warwick F:
And that’s amazing. Just for listeners, in the midst of COVID, you got a cancer diagnosis.
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
Which, you’ve had so much on your plate, it’s like you must have thought, “Really?”
Ruza M:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
I mean, come on. Is it going to be like plagues of locusts? What next kind of thing.
Ruza M:
No question. Right?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Ruza M:
I also have this sense that I have this guardian angel, and her name is Maud, and she drinks. And she takes me out to a ledge, and by the time she kind of figures out where I am, she always saves me. But there’s this moment of dangling off a ledge. So to me, it was more, I truly believe God tests those that He loves, and that there are people who can go through stuff and still not get it. So to me, it was one more speed bump. It’s not an obstacle. It’s another walk through fire to get to the other side.
Warwick F:
I almost-
Ruza M:
Because what I want is right there, and this is the one more thing I’ve got to get through.
Warwick F:
I mean, I know this is a little metaphysical, but I wonder if God’s saying, “Well, I know Ruza is made of very strong stuff, so I’m going to test her, but I know she can handle it.” I don’t know whether that’s biblical or not, but do you ever feel like that He feels like, “Not everybody can handle it, but Ruza can.”
Ruza M:
But I also feel like-
Warwick F:
“She can learn.”
Ruza M:
… life is not really a make your own mystery book. Right? I feel like that if people stepped back and looked at the serendipity that inevitably leads us all… I will never forget the first interview Oprah did with Deepak Chopra. And he explained how modern medicine has gotten us to a point that you can open up a brain and understand where things happen and why they’re happening, but we can’t figure out where thoughts come from. So to me, these forks in the road are those whispers of, “Here comes the next path. Here’s the next chapter.”
Ruza M:
But I also really feel like you’ve got two choices in life. You can win, or you can be right. And being right is a lonely mountain, but the places that have been my crucible moments have inevitably been where… Because my nature is win-win. My nature is, let’s figure it out. And for those of us from the Balkans, we’re really good at figuring it out, making it work and finding a middle ground. When that’s not possible, that’s been when I’ve hit a wall. That’s been the moment. There was no win-win for me in sitting in a newsroom watching inaccuracies being printed.
Ruza M:
There was no moment for me when I’m in a corporate setting, and inevitably there was a comment made that I remember like lightning striking, going, “Okay. Here comes the next chapter.” Because I had no choice at that moment. Everything I tried to make it a win-win became a, I had to take a stand. It transgressed that moment of win-win.
Warwick F:
People that are listening to this, there might be young people listening, and some might have gone through hard times and may be disillusioned about everything, from the world to politics to business people and all of the stuff that happens in the workplace that is often not appropriate. There’s probably a bunch of young people that are disillusioned. What message of hope do you have for those who maybe they were idealistic and had a dream, and maybe it’s been dented a bit or shattered a bit by the hardships of life and by the actions of others? What message of hope do you have for young people that maybe their dream and vision has got tarnished? What message of hope do you have for people like that?
Ruza M:
You can’t let the outside world really stop you from pursuing your dreams. It’s planted. It’s the whisper in your ear. It’s the thought that modern medicine can’t figure out where it’s coming from. There’s a reason God gave you that dream. And even if you have to put it on the back shelf because you have a family, you’re doing this, doing that, doing the other, the fact that it’s there, one way or another, it will come back around. Inevitably, it will come back around. There will be an opportunity if you open yourself up to it.
Ruza M:
So if you don’t talk to the person you’re sitting next to on a plane, you have no idea why God put that person next to you. If you don’t open yourself up to the fact that the people in your life are meant to be there at this particular time, good, bad, and ugly, you have the power, and I have many times literally made a list of, especially because I’m a saver, right? I want to save everyone. And I’ve made a list of… In fact, I’ve told people, I’ve told my own family that I’ve seen killing themselves to try to help a community or family members, to go, “How many people would you have helped if you had turned this way and not… There’s a point in time where you’re not helping anyone because you’re drowning in a negativity that you can’t change.”
Ruza M:
So I have parted ways. I’ve never burned a bridge, but I have definitely turned a page, where just because we’re friends, I won’t get dragged into that drama. There’s a certain level of focus and energy that you need to get through a day and to get where you’re going, and everything is literally one day at a time. The world can change this quickly. And if you don’t leave yourself open to the possibility that good can happen, it won’t. And I think that’s the other lessons for me, really, has been, because I am from the Balkans, and we’re all kind of moody, broody. I like a good rainy day.
Ruza M:
Phoenix, right? The irony of that is incredible. So pulling myself out of contemplative… We like to wallow. We like to tell war stories. We like to go, “But there’s no hope in that. There’s no effecting change in that.”
Warwick F:
But it sounds like you’ve chosen a different path. You’ve been through some very tough experiences, seen some terrible things that people do to each other for reasons that go back thousands of years, that probably nobody can even remember where it started and why. But yet you could be cynical, you could be disillusioned. I think you’re obviously wiser. As the years go by, hopefully wisdom happens. But yet you’re not cynical. I think you still have a sense of hope and optimism. And that, to me, is a great gift, because a lot of people, having seen what you’ve seen, say, “there’s no hope in humanity. Wars will go on forever. The Balkans will always…”
Warwick F:
I mean, it was the Balkans that started World War I. And speaking of Sarajevo, it’s been in the center of a lot of things. It’s like, what reason is there for hope? War will break out. You can be negative, but yet I sense you have a sense of not naïve optimism, but informed optimism, if you will. But you choose to hope rather than choose to wallow through your whole life.
Ruza M:
And I do think, though, when you open yourself up to having a conversation like this, you do have to talk about the things that you’ve gone through, and not in a way that it gives them oxygen, but that gives you perspective. And one of the reasons that the videos that you have seen, outside of now running a company and publicity and stuff, the reason that I really started talking… For many, many years, I didn’t talk about any of this, especially the stuff in the Balkans.
Ruza M:
And part of the thing that has driven me is I see a lot of parallels in the world today. I know what it’s like to go into one family’s home and they’re listening to this news station, and go to that family’s home and they’re listening to another news station, how families, through politics break up. And I’ve seen this movie before, and it doesn’t end well. And so one thing that’s galvanized me is, there’s no one I know from the Balkans that isn’t having some sort of the same kind of deja vu of, it changes that fast. And the thought of, well, we’re not them.
Warwick F:
But them could be anybody. You could look at Northern Ireland.
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland, Catholic, Protestant. It’s like, “Well, why are you attacking them?” “Well, they attacked one of us.” It’s gone and there certainly for hundreds of years. There’s conflict anywhere that, oh, those people don’t get it. They’re the enemy. I mean, it’s-
Ruza M:
There are-
Warwick F:
It’s everywhere.
Ruza M:
… three beautiful families in Phoenix who all came from the outskirts of Sarajevo. One is Serbian, one is Croatian, and one is Muslim. They were godparents to each other’s kids and were neighbors. And they left at the same time together because they knew they’d be ripped apart if they hadn’t. So God works in mysterious ways.
Warwick F:
When you see things like that, you think miracles can happen-
Ruza M:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
… because rationally, those three should not-
Ruza M:
No.
Warwick F:
… be friends. It makes no sense.
Ruza M:
But for many, many years, they were. And this is the lesson from what politics can do, what economics can do, when people, when fear, really, of, I don’t know what will happen next, starts to take hold. I feel like the last four years in this country, there needs to be some sort of a cathartic… Four. Last 10. Some sort of a cathartic discussion around, “We may see things differently, but there’s far more that unites us than divides us.” And I think-
Warwick F:
That’s a very important message.
Ruza M:
… everyone is too afraid to even start that conversation, that that’s what worries me.
Gary S:
That is a perfect note to say… I think I heard the captain turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, and we’re getting to the point where it’s time to begin thinking about landing the plane. Before we do that, though, Ruza, I would be remiss if I did not give listeners the opportunity to find out more about Pro One Media, so tell them how they can find you and your services online.
Ruza M:
ProOneMedia.com. We have done 35 years of media and video production. And I’m very, very blessed equally I found them serendipitously. I was in another big, publicly traded corporate company, and my father actually had an accident with my… I was worried that he was with my son, and I remember having this moment of, can I leave? It’s like I’m… The whole corporate setting, once you walk in that door, there’s this sense that certain rules apply. In any event, I ran out the door, right? My father had been in an accident.
Ruza M:
And I stopped at one point and said… There’s a big part of my story about my son. I went through many, many miscarriages, and a divorce, and again, had no interest in leaving Apollo. And a friend of mine called me to serve as a reference, because he was looking for a job. And as I was talking to this person, he was like, “Would you mind meeting with our CEO?” So I decided to have breakfast with the lovely lady. By dinner, I had a job offer, and I ended up in Florida.
Ruza M:
What I didn’t know is that, outside of being a very powerful businesswoman, she had four kids, six grandkids, and she and her husband, who’s an attorney, would prank call their grandkids as Disney characters during lunch. I knew I was in trouble. And she’d pick at me when we’d be on a bumpy plane ride to the middle of nowhere, and my fatalistic tendency is, being from the Balkans, of it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. She was like, “Do you want to be a mother? Do you want to be a mother?” So I didn’t tell anybody when I started fertility treatments, found specialists. And of course it worked because it’s crazy.
Ruza M:
And I have an eight-year-old son. So when my father had this accident and I’m sitting in my corporate role, I’m driving to the scene, going, “This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy.” And I went, “I have to jump off this corporate ladder. This child is more important to me than necessarily this stature and career.” And by complete happenstance, I ran into this company that was… The couple that owned it previously were retiring. And the entire client base are corporate companies that are publicly traded, which is the world I came from. So again, it was very, very serendipitous. And I’m very blessed…
Warwick F:
Having your own company, you get to at least have a little bit more say about your hours and flexibility and being with your son. So yeah, it sounds like you’ve continued to follow your own path and listen to the still small voice, however we think of those little turning points in our life-
Ruza M:
For sure.
Warwick F:
… and you’ve-
Ruza M:
And it’s given me the opportunity to help a lot of nonprofits, so it’s given me… Because now I’m the person who says, “Yes, you can.”
Gary S:
Right. And that sounds a lot like what we talk about at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible as a life of significance. You are definitely well-ensconced, well along the road to an entirely different kind of life of significance than maybe than you lived earlier. And that’s-
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Because we talk about a life of significance being a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, and clearly that’s what you do, and have sought to do, I don’t know, pretty much, sounds like, your whole life.
Ruza M:
Right.
Warwick F:
So it’s the definition, I think, of a life of significance, which is, to me, what we think life’s all about.
Gary S:
That last sound was the wheels touching down on the runway, so the captain has indeed landed the plane. Gather your peanut bags, get your luggage. As we go, though, there are three, and there are plenty more than three. I pulled three, I think. And actually, Ruza, I stole one from you from the sheet that you filled out before we did this. So I pulled two, and then I stole one from you, so I’ll give you full credit when I read it. But takeaways from this episode that I think listeners can apply to their own lives and their own crucibles.
Gary S:
The first one is, and this was all over your story as a young woman, Ruza, is, don’t let fear cancel your vision. Don’t let it override your passion. Sometimes it will lead you to not just experience a crucible, but in your case, it led you to jump into a crucible, which is a different kind of experience than we’ve had on the show before. Your skills and passions, listener, may be exactly the things needed to help others endure a crucible that they’re going through. Your life of significance could actually begin by choosing to enter a crucible. That’s number one.
Gary S:
Number two, as we say in every show… It’s interesting. At the end of every show, and I’m going to say it in a few minutes, we say that your crucibles don’t have to be the end of your story. They’re not the end of your story. They can be the beginning of a new and more rewarding story if you learn the lessons of them. And one of the things that we heard from Ruza today is that she recognized, in the midst of the crucible she’d been through, a commonality that education was a dividing line in some of the things she saw in the strife in countries that she experienced.
Gary S:
There’s a line of education. That was the line of demarcation between people who got through it okay and people who didn’t. And she’s dedicated herself since moving into this new chapter in her life. She’s dedicated herself for more than a decade of raising education levels. As she puts it in her bio, or as someone put it in a story on her, she has that education is the bedrock of democracy and economic sustainability, and that Ruza has worked to bring education to the forefront of corporate activism and giving. And that all started because she learned a lesson from her crucibles.
Gary S:
And then the last point, which I am stealing shamelessly… Well, it’s not really shamelessly because I’m saying that it was Ruza who created it. She wrote this in the sheet that we ask people to tell us about themselves before we do the show. Ruza said this about some advice she would give to listeners. This was her fourth point. I love this. I am going to shamelessly steal this in my personal life as I talk to people, just so you know. But she said this, the fourth point she made, “One way to get through your crucibles, call on the good old-fashioned sense of spite,” quote, unquote.
Gary S:
Not what you would think it means, right, being spiteful toward people. This is what Ruza means by that. In spite of him or her or that or this situation or that situation, in spite of these things, you’re going to move on. You’re going to keep at it. You’re going to keep pursuing your life of significance. She adds at the end, “Nothing is more gratifying than being underestimated.” It is my suspicion that that has happened fewer and fewer times in your life as life has gone on. You are a hard woman to underestimate.
Gary S:
Listener, thank you for spending time with us today on Beyond the Crucible. As always, Warwick and I would ask, if you like what you’ve heard here, if you’ve found hope, you’ve found wisdom, you’ve found some action steps you can take to get through your own crucibles from this, please click subscribe to the podcast so that you can not miss any other episode and help Warwick and I get the show out to more people. Until the next time we are together, remember what has shone through in this conversation with Ruza Markovic, and that is this.
Gary S:
Your crucible experiences are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning, as they have been for Ruza, to a new chapter in your story that can become the most rewarding chapter in your story. Why can it become the most rewarding chapter in your story? Because when you learn the lessons of those crucibles, you can apply them to what you do next, to the chapter you write next, and that chapter is the most fulfilling that you’ll experience because in the end, it leads to a life of significance.
Leadership is not, in Daniel Harkavy’s eyes, a complex equation. Its essential elements are the decisions you make and the influence you cultivate. But putting that into practice, especially after a crucible, can certainly be challenging. In his new book, THE 7 PERSPECTIVES OF EFFECTIVE LEADERS, the president of Building Champions unpacks the mindset shifts that remove the either/or restrictions many leaders feel while simultaneously pursuing success and significance. From understanding current reality to crafting a vision rooted in your passions and putting together a team to bring that vision to reality, Harkavy offers a blueprint for pursuing your personal and professional goals with purpose and excellence.
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
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Daniel H:
If you actually will take the time to write out a vision for your business, that’s got two things going for it. It’s clear and it’s compelling and it will cause you to risk and to stretch, and to just lay it out on the line, you have a burden or a passion, then you’re going to have a vision that’s going to affect both belief and behavior and you’ll sacrifice for it. And great leaders always have a vision that causes them to sacrifice because they are so passionate about what could be and what they see. So for me, Building Champions was about helping really successful people to win in business and in life. I didn’t like that it was either, or.
Gary S:
Did you hear that? Success in business and significance in life does not need to be an either, or proposition. In fact, according to our guest today, it never should be. You must pursue your bottom line and your vision with equal passion and purpose. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the communications director for Crucible Leadership and the cohost of Beyond the Crucible. Our guest today is Daniel Harkavy, President of Building Champions, where he coaches business leaders in that very reality, you can have it all, as they say, when it comes to making a profit and making a difference. He explains how in a far ranging conversation with Warwick that unpacks the lessons from his new book, The Seven Perspectives of Effective Leaders. The first perspective, understanding current reality. That’s critical in any business context, particularly so you’ll hear when you’re seeking to bounce back from a crucible.
Warwick F:
Well, Daniel, thanks so much for being here. It’s a pleasure to have you, loved reading your new book, The Seven Perspectives of Effective Leaders, which I’d love to spend some time on, but just tell us a bit about Daniel Harkavy. And one of the things I noticed that you love surfing, which coming from Sydney, Australia, surfing is a huge part of our culture. So yeah, just tell us a bit about your background, family and who you are.
Daniel H:
I would love to, I have to first off just confess that when somebody reads my full bio, I’m not used to that. And it’s really long, and it’s actually a little nauseating to hear all of that. I’m just sitting there going, “Okay, get to the end, get to the end.”
Warwick F:
I tried to punch it up a little bit as I was going.
Daniel H:
You read beautifully buddy, but you have a content marketing team and it all on the website. Daniel, who am I? 56 years old, grew up in Southern California, oldest of three, come from a Jewish background. My youngest of days will always be Jewish. Who I am, first and foremost, I’m a man of faith and I’ve been married 32 years, just became a granddad and I’m going to be a grandfather twice in February. So I became a grandfather in April which was my COVID gift. And then on Father’s Day, my son and his wife. So first off was my daughter and her husband. They made us grandparents with little Eleanor Jean, and then just a couple of months later, Dylan, my son and his wife, Krista for Father’s Day, let me know that we were going to do that again in February.
Daniel H:
Then I have Wesley. And so I have Allie, Dylan Wesley and Emily, and then we’ve had nine other kids that have lived with us over the years, plus the spouses that have all been apart. So we’ve got a crazy story. We started moving kids in back in ’96 when our kids were five, three and one. And our kids, our extended family, seven of the nine have come to us with some challenges and they’ve all left us much better humans. So we praise God for that. And they’re part of our bigger family.
Daniel H:
You read that I like to surf and Warwick you mentioned that, and I love it. I’m addicted. I’ve been addicted since I was a kid. I’m going to Mexico and I’m counting down nine days with my son-in-law and my sons and some of the other kids that have been around. We’re just going to surf warm water right after Thanksgiving. And then my wife and I and my daughters, I have my 17 year old, and then the 17 year old that lives with us now, last year and a half, we’ll leave January 2nd. We’ll be over in Hawaii for all the good stuff that happens in Hawaii for the month. And all the while I get to run this really fun company called Building Champions, executive coaching company where we get to work with switched on leaders who want to make a difference at home and at work.
Daniel H:
And I’m launching a new organization, we just set it up and it’s called Set Path. And one of the books that I wrote, Living Forward is all around life planning, because I believe that most people drift their way through life and business professionals, leaders get completely consumed with their careers and they might accumulate extreme net worth and wealth professionally, and then maybe financially, but many of them wake up in their 50s, 60s, and 70s and they’re bankrupt in areas of their life that bring them true joy.
Daniel H:
So I always walk our leaders through life planning and that’s what Living Forward is about. And we’re starting a movement called Set Path. It’s a not-for-profit community benefit where we’re going to, in these crazy times of 2020, we’re going to create an army of mentors who can find goodness and belief in America’s young folks, these 18 to 28 year olds, we’re going to use a gamified more relevant form of life planning with them. And we’re going to go help a whole bunch of these young folks who are finding the world to be a little bit more difficult than I think it was when I was 22. So I’m busy, I’ve got a couple llamas, a couple of cats, a couple of dogs.
Warwick F:
A couple of llamas. Not everybody has a couple of llamas.
Daniel H:
Well, and if they do their names aren’t Gary and Bruce. So that lets you know that we’re a little weird. I mean, Gary and Bruce are cool, they’re cool.
Gary S:
I can attest that Gary’s a cool name, just for the record.
Warwick F:
We haven’t heard of a llama called Gary.
Daniel H:
My Gary has much bigger eyes than yours and he’s got these ears and he stinks, Gary. So I hope you have a little bit better hygiene than my Gary.
Gary S:
Well, indeed, indeed.
Warwick F:
Bruce’s sort of an Australian name. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen any Monty Python over the years. So from an English perspective, everybody in Australia is named Bruce. That’s the whole Monty Python shtick, if you will. But yeah, there’s a classic Monty Python skit of the University of Woolloomooloo, the philosophy department. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that one, look it up on YouTube. If you like Monty Python and you’ve got a bunch of these people with Australian hats with the corks on it, and they’ve all got the Aussie accents and they’re saying, “So Bruce, what do you think we should focus on this semester? Should we do Aristotle or Kierkegaard or Socrates? I don’t know Bruce.” And it goes on, it’s just so funny. A lot of Bruce’s in Australia. So I digress.
Warwick F:
I want to get a little bit in the crucible background, but yeah, just looking a bit at Living Forward, I liked the tagline that you have of, don’t just drift through your days, design a life you love. And it is easy to be on autopilot and just drift along with the tide, and drifting is not a plan, drifting doesn’t lead to a legacy. Drifting just leads to aimlessness and if you end up at a good destination, it’s luck. As they have that old adage is, luck is not a plan or what have you. That’s a wonderful concept. So before we kind of get into your new book, I often find there’s always a reason why we do things. And I think you’ve done some number of different things, were you in the world of finance before you got into Building Champions or?
Daniel H:
Yeah, from age 20 to 30, I was in banking.
Warwick F:
So what led you to found Building Champions and weave in if it makes sense, just any crucibles that you’ve gone through. Because I know for me, what I do grew directly out of a crucible. So have your crucibles informed what you do now and what led you to found Building Champions?
Daniel H:
Absolutely. I want to respect your guys’ style and how we go back and forth and I can be a storyteller. And I want you guys to just interject if I take too much time on that because it’s a really big question, Warwick it’s big. The front end is the short end, and that was in banking. I was in home loan, in mortgage banking and I did really well at it getting into it at age 20. 23, I was given the opportunity to lead a branch and a team. It was me and really two others, which then became one other. And from that foundation, I was fortunate to attract and coach and develop the best of the best.
Daniel H:
So out of an organization that had 202 of these folks, six of the top 10 came from my office. I could find talent. I could see goodness in them and I would actually begin coaching them while they worked for the competition before I ever offered them a job. And then what would happen is at some point, they would have a moment of dissatisfaction with their leader or their organization and they would actually ask me if they could come join me and it worked. And next thing you know, I ran the entire thing. I had offices throughout the Western United States. I was 27 28 years old making gobs and gobs of money for a young kid, no college degree, surfer, drummer from Southern California, but you know who I was, right.
Daniel H:
At age 22, I had a pretty big crisis of faith. I went to a Promise Keeper event. And the Promise Keeper events, they played different roles in my life. So I’m in banking this whole time, at age 30, I went to another one. And I was at this Promise Keeper event in California. And it was there where I really felt like I heard I was chasing the wrong things. And I had come to faith at 22 and at 30, it was time for me to shift my focus from banking and money and all of it. And I was coaching really great people. I loved them. I didn’t know why I was supposed to quit. I just knew I was putting too much of my energy on my professional side and on my monetary side. I had three young, beautiful kids, beautiful wife, and I was traveling just about every day.
Daniel H:
So I took a one year sabbatical moved to Oregon, which is a whole another story in itself. And I put together three different business ideas that would enable me to really share love and goodness, and to stir up love and good works in the lives of people. And one was a surf shop, one was a bagel shop and the other one was this coaching thing. And back in ’95, ’96, this coaching thing, people were like, “What do you mean coaching thing? That makes no sense.”
Warwick F:
Right.
Daniel H:
But it was the coaching thing. I had a unique passport. And I’ve been involved in a restaurant. I helped launch a restaurant later on, and that’s amazing. And I tried to open a surf shop with my kids a while ago and that didn’t work. But the coaching thing worked and really what I did was I built a company that enabled me to do the best part of my banking job, which was to see people, to see the goodness in them, to be a truth teller or an encourager, and then to help them to figure out where they wanted to go and then help them to identify the right steps to move from where they were to where they wanted to be.
Daniel H:
And I built models and frameworks, and again, attracted really great people. So now we’re an organization of about 40 people. We’ve been in business for 25 years. And as Gary read a list, we’ve had the unique privilege of working with some pretty cool companies here in the U.S. as well as international.
Warwick F:
You know what I love about your story Daniel is as I read what Living Forward is about, you did just what you wrote about, you didn’t just drift through life. But you could have drifted through success, which nothing wrong with success, as we say in Crucible Leadership; success is okay, but it has to be success and significance, which we define as living on purpose, serving others. And I have a feeling you probably have a similar philosophy, but you could have just drifted through a life of continual upward success and financial remuneration all good, but you decided, you know what, I’m not going to do that. I want to design a life around what I value and what I think is important. We all love when people actually walk the talk.
Warwick F:
And even before you wrote that book, you designed a life around what you really cared about. And that’s unusual. I mean, how did you do that? Because there’s a hundred people in your path that were really successful or probably thousands, but you chose the road less traveled, so to speak. How did you make that shift? Because this is before you wrote the book, I’m guessing that you made the shift.
Daniel H:
Yeah. At the time I was 30 years old and again, making really good money. The company had just gone public two years prior, and the founding CEO had identified me as his successor and I was on a five-year grooming track to replace him. So I was on the career track. And these guys that I worked with, the founder is still just such an influential man in my life. He spoke so much goodness into me and offering me the job when I was really in my teens. And that’s a whole another story. But it was at the Promise Keeper event where I really just felt like I’m going to take this huge step of faith and Warwick to your point. When I put those business plans together, each and every one of them would allow me to be where I wanted, who I wanted, when I wanted to be there. So every one of them.
Daniel H:
And when I started Building Champions, it was a company started out of a home office. And it wasn’t a company that was intended to make me rich. It was a company that was intended to allow me to live out my calling and to make a difference in the lives of other people, but paying me well enough so I wouldn’t have money worries, but not make me rich. And I knew it would grow. I put together a vision where all right, we’re going to be in these five different verticals, and next thing you know, we’ll be the premier coaching company around the world. But I was 30th year at the time, and I’m like, “But that’ll be when I’m in my 50s.” I just want to be a present dad. And I want to surf. And I want to explore Oregon and uprooting my family from California and moved up to this crazy place.
Daniel H:
And if you want to talk about crucibles, starting this company, I almost failed significantly. My wife went into postpartum depression and it got bad and I’m launching Building Champions, and I’m now involved with the Promise Keepers up here and helping them to recruit volunteers and no job. And I’m doing this Building Champions thing, but I really can’t leave my home because the two shall become one. We were struggling. And I was very close to just moving the van, packing the van back up and heading down I-5 back to Southern California where it was safe, get the company job, make the money again. And I had people offering me money to do it, but I just knew there was something in this.
Warwick F:
How did you prevent yourself from doing that? How did you not choose the I-5 head back to California route?
Daniel H:
I think what happens is… This is an interesting question. I think all of us, and I have no idea where our listeners are today from a faith perspective. So please listen to not judge, but maybe just to learn and understand my story. And my hope is that as an executive coach as Gary and Warwick and I continue in our conversation, we’re going to be talking business and I’m going to be giving you some things around leadership that I’ve learned. But a question like that Warwick, it takes me back to the very core of who I am and the challenge that I think we have as men and women of faith and every human who has faith is there a God? Who is he? Who is she? How did they create us all? Everybody has faith, or we’re random accidents, that’s faith.
Daniel H:
My faith is that God speaks to you. As a Christian, I believe God speaks to you. And don’t be hearing Twilight Zone music people. You get that nudge, there’s something in you, and I knew I was supposed to do this, and I knew I was supposed to sacrifice. And I play a game with myself and that’s what’s the worst case. And I try to imagine the worst case. And if I can deal with the worst case, then I can move forward with confidence, which leads me to a business principle, which is the second perspective in my most recent book. And that’s vision.
Daniel H:
If you actually will take the time to write out a vision for your business, that’s got two things going for it, it’s clear and it’s compelling, and it will cause you to risk and to stretch, and to just lay it out on the line, you have a burden or a passion, then you’re going to have a vision that’s going to affect both belief and behavior and you’ll sacrifice for it. And great leaders always have a vision that causes them to sacrifice because they are so passionate about what could be and what they see. So for me, Building Champions was about helping really successful people to win in business and in life. I didn’t like that it was either, or.
Warwick F:
I love what you’re saying about win in both because I think of that song, obviously we’re all familiar with the Cat Stevens, Cat’s in the Cradle song. And you don’t want to be that dad in our case where you’re so busy that you don’t know your kids. I’m blessed. I went to Oxford like some other relatives, worked on Wall Street and then went to Harvard Business School. And there’s plenty of Harvard MBAs from my generation who became CEOs and very successful. But I have three kids in their 20s. Because of COVID, they’re all with us. And I got to be with them at their soccer games and their recitals.
Warwick F:
And just for those listening, just to reinforce what Daniel was saying, we’ve got a couple of writers in our family that come from a journalistic background, as listeners would know an Australian media business. So we write cards a lot, and at birthdays, we go around the table saying, what do we most admire about whoever’s birthday it is. And unfortunately or fortunately, some of them were pretty articulate, which is fun until it’s your birthday because then they go into great detail and specificity, not just, “I love you dad.”
Warwick F:
But anyway, the point is my boys who happen to be more athletic, they got my wife, Gale’s genes, not mine. It’s amazing how every card, every year and they’re now in their 20s, it’s like, “Dad, you were there with me in my soccer game or my tennis game.” Every card, every year for years. So just being there, there’s no substitute. By all means, be successful, but if you’re going to have kids, find a way to be there, maybe not every practice every game, but it can’t be none. And again, that’s my own personal perspective. Everybody has to have their own value system, but you don’t want to live a Cat’s in the Cradle song. If that’s your life story, you will regret it on your death bed, if not before. So anyway, little off track but that makes sense.
Daniel H:
It’s actually not off track. When you think about, all right, we show up and we’re doing a podcast and we’re having a conversation, and in it, you always trust that what you’re talking about is going to be the right message for the right people, at the right time. And here we are recording this a few days prior to Thanksgiving. That’s when this is happening. And when we look at what we’ve been through this year. And we look at the relational hits that have taken place because of fear, because of loss, because of broken rhythms and broken routines, because of broken community and the fact that we don’t get the same energy inputs that we used to get when we are free. Talking about what matters most and what will bring business leaders the most fulfillment when they get to our age.
Daniel H:
There are people listening and they need to hear that. They need to hear that no matter what happens you play a very unique role in a few people’s lives and you can’t be replaced. And yet in your career you can be replaced and sometimes the replacement is actually better than you. So just get over it. But there are a few roles that you play and you can’t be replaced and I always like people to just imagine, it’s part of my living forward life planning process. But I say imagine that today you had the weird experience of parachuting in and watching your own funeral and it’s happening today. You know who’s sitting in the first few rows. Those first few rows are people that you play a very unique irreplaceable role in their lives. Those first few rows, you play a very unique role in their life.
Daniel H:
They’re going to be given an opportunity to stand up and speak at your memorial. What are they going to say? And what I do and I’ve done this with thousands and thousands of leaders. We all go through this exercise and then we create a life plan. But what I tell them is, it’s fascinating how so many of us put all of our energy into rows, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, to where our relationship is so easily replaceable. And those people will get up and say really good things like, “That guy was one of the sharpest business leaders I’ve ever met. He taught me more about strategy than anyone and you know what? He cared about me. He really cared about me.” And then what do we do at the end of the day, at the end of the week? What do we give to rows one and two? And people always give me the same answer, leftovers. I’m like, there’s something wrong with that. There’s just something wrong with that.
Daniel H:
So I agree with you Warwick completely being there and then continually for those who are married, who have a partner, that relationship it’s longstanding and enduring and it requires constant attention and fertilizing and nurturing and in today’s times, a lot of marriages are taking hits. I’m walking side by side with some guys that are incredibly successful business leaders. I had one fly in two weeks ago and we are talking about their living situation because they’re a part of the four guys right now that I’m walking through. And they’re apartment dwellers with big old estates they don’t live in anymore. So it’s worth talking about right here right now because this is one of the most realities.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah. I think last thing I’ll say on this. I think everything you said is so profound as people invest in their business to have business success but you’ve got to have the right people, the right resources, the right suppliers, all of that kind of thing. But the same is true in marriage, you’ve got to invest in it, be as serious about your marriage as you are about your business and it can be successful. It’s not rocket science. There’s a lot of books out there if you do listen to each other, forgive, do the things that your partner or spouse wants, not just what you want. There’s a lot of books that say similar things, just follow the plan. It’s not rocket science but just invest, treat it like you would a business, be serious.
Warwick F:
But so I want to shift here to Seven Perspectives and really a way to bridge this. I love what you said. I think really it’s a core philosophy. I think of Building Champions perhaps it’s… You talk about self-leadership precedes team leadership and we’ve actually talked quite a lot about self. So talk about that bridge of why that is such a key underpinning of your philosophy of self-leadership preceding team leadership.
Daniel H:
Yeah. So I’m going to carry that even a little bit further forward. Self-leadership always precedes team effectiveness. Team effectiveness always precedes organizational impact. Self-leadership, team effectiveness, organizational impact. You don’t master one and leave it. Self-leadership, team leadership, organizational leadership, you swim in all three lanes every day. And what you need to understand is that for the most part, when leaders flame out it’s not because the root of their error, the root of their failure. Very rarely is it because they weren’t as effective as they could have been with team or organization. It has to do with how they lead themselves in those environments.
Daniel H:
So what you think, what you believe about yourself, about the future, about the team, about the business, about opportunity. What you believe and what you think impacts how you feel and how you feel alone impacts how you feel to others. So the book that I wrote, The Seven Perspectives of Effective Leaders, I’ve been in six years of conversations with leaders that range… and the books build with these guys and girls that all contributed. The chairman of Delta Air Lines. He was the former CEO of Home Depot. The chairman of the Daimler which is Mercedes-Benz, they’re truck business. That’s a three pronged business Mercedes-Benz and Daimler has been a client for years. Very good friend. Chick-fil-A leaders. I’ve been in conversations.
Daniel H:
What I do is, when I was putting this idea and testing it together and I started to then work with organizations around the framework, I would say, “Challenge me, please tell me I’m wrong.” A leader’s effectiveness is determined by just two things. Listen to me, two things, the decisions they make and the influence they have, that’s all. And I sat across the breakfast table with some and Zoom with the others and sitting in a conference room with others and they would think about it. And I had one leader who did challenge me a bit. And he said, “You know what it is integrity?” And that was Horst Schulze. One of the founders of Ritz Carlton hotels. And of course integrity is required in order for us to be leaders.
Warwick F:
Right.
Daniel H:
But if you want to be effective, you’ve got to make great decisions and have great influence and Horst just adds some great gems to the book but let’s boil this complex thing of leadership effectiveness. How do I flourish as a leader? Let’s just boil it down to two things, make really good decisions and influence the right people the right ways.
Warwick F:
And i love the examples you’ve given the book of some like a woman who made fantastic decisions, very decisive but she didn’t really listen to anybody and had no influence. Somebody else had a lot of vision and a lot of influence but wasn’t quite so effective at implementation. So you make a very good case that you need to do both, make good decisions but you also got to bring your team on and along in the process and so profoundly true.
Warwick F:
And what you’re also saying about self-leadership, you look at a lot of the business failures or frankly there’s failures in the non-profit and church world, it’s often the internal. Why don’t you listen to other people? Well, because maybe you’re arrogant, lacking in humility. Maybe you think you are so amazing and everybody else is the little people. They are not as brilliant as you are because they’re not as successful. They don’t make as much money, they don’t have a CEO title so because of your own vanity and ego, of course you’re not going to listen to people.
Warwick F:
You could be, no offense to your group or me or anybody, you could be coached by the greatest people but if you’re locked into your ego, no book no webinar will solve that. You could say, I agree or disagree but you got to let go of that once it’s often self-mastery, maybe precedes external mastery. You’ve got to deal with the ego, this notion that you’re always right. You can be as Jim Collins talks about a lot, you can be humble, but yet driven so that, I don’t know, that’s not an easy thing to coach. I’m guessing. So hopefully you probably pick people who at least have some clay you can work with as opposed to granite that it’s like, “No, I am the smartest guy in the room everybody else is dumb. Okay. That’s just truth.”
Daniel H:
I’ve worked with a few of those guys. I’m usually not all that effective. And if I am there’s always tears in it. So it’s an identity issue. And really what it comes down to is who do you believe you are? And why are you here?
Warwick F:
Right.
Daniel H:
Those who have that really solid, grounded identity they can then demonstrate something that I talk about in the book which is intentional curiosity; knowing that anybody and everybody has something good to contribute. And they just believe that and that humility breeds this intentional curiosity to where the best leaders walk into the room. And it’s almost like their presence says it. Their presence says, “Hey I am passionate about the mission. I’m all in. I’ve surrounded myself with the smartest people which is why I don’t need to have all the answers because I don’t so now let’s talk about the business at hand and let’s figure out what we need to be doing.”
Warwick F:
I love that phrase, intentional curiosity. And it’s hard to be intentionally curious unless you’re humble and realize you might know stuff, you may know a lot about certain areas we can’t know everything about every area. So smart people I think are intentionally curious. So I love that. So talk about some of these perspectives. Obviously I love the fact that you talk about it’s got to be grounded in reality. That sounds obvious but a lot of businesses say, “Well, let’s do this and let’s do that. I think there’s a market opportunity. It might have nothing to do with who we are and our culture but I’ve analyzed it and there’s an opportunity so let’s go but let’s ignore who we are in current realities.” Talk about, maybe this is obvious but so often the things that are obvious are not dumb so it’s not obvious.
Daniel H:
And that’s where I live.
Warwick F:
It’s not obvious to 90% of the people but talk about why it all begins with taking stock of current reality.
Gary S:
Right before you do that Daniel, I’ll add in that last phrase that you had work about current reality, that is so key to the context in which we’re having this discussion for the listeners, and that is crucible experiences, difficult moments, those kinds of situations, being able to assess the current situation you’re in and how you move forward that goes beyond, or perhaps pulls in from general leadership to leadership principles in a crisis, or a situation where you’ve got to muster the ability to bounce back. So how does that apply what Warwick asked you in those crucible moments that we face?
Warwick F:
Yeah. Good point.
Daniel H:
Yeah. Great even fine tuning Gary for your audience. So current reality being the foundation for all business leaders, and there’s a term that everyone’s heard and that’s the ivory tower leader. Well, the ivory tower leader, all it means is they lost grip with current reality. They sit in an ivory tower, they have no clue as to what’s happening in the business therefore they make decisions that actually hurt the business hurt the team hurt the customers and their influence drops. So super simple, don’t become an ivory tower leader.
Daniel H:
So what that means is that you deploy intentional curiosity to really understand the business and what got the business to this point, you understand leading and lagging indicators. You really understand the landscape, the competitive landscape, the economic landscape, these days, the health landscape, the legislative landscape, both nationally as well as locally; you have to understand all of that. You need to be one of the most knowledgeable people about what makes the business, the business.
Daniel H:
And to your question, Gary, with regards to the crucible, when leaders fail, and they’re the ones that bring the organization into the crucible, nine times out of 10, it’s because they’re disconnected from current reality. They don’t understand their own capacity. They don’t understand their own resources. And then this connects to the other perspectives. They create shiny things that are exciting, that are not in alignment with perspective two, vision. So they’re off vision. And then they make the mistake of getting the input from perspective four of their team. And they don’t create these perspective two strategic bets to best serve perspective five, the customer. Now, if you’re not thoroughly confused, you’re really brilliant.
Daniel H:
But each of those first five perspectives, intentional curiosity and discipline will enable you to avoid the crucible most of the time. You will avoid the self-induced business failures. They’re still going to be things that are happening. I sat with some friends on Saturday night that own a fantastic restaurant in Portland, closing the doors after several years, is a great success, this one’s beyond their control. Now they’re going to have to re-imagine from a vision perspective, what their future looks like.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I love how you talk about this because obviously strategic bets is part of putting the vision into action, but it has to be anchored in reality and tie the vision as I think you talk about it being the link. One of the things that I love… I think you talk about Alan Mulally I believe, Ford and just how in some of the early meetings, so how are things going and I guess he had this red, yellow, green, whole paradigm, and people don’t tend to tell the CEO the truth. It’s not like they lie, but, “How are things going?” “They’re fine.” Which means, “They will be fine once I fix some things, I hope because otherwise, if I tell you the truth, I might be fired or demoted or what have you.” And so, I read another book by Harvard Business School professor that talked that leaders should never accept yes for an answer. Mine for conflict kind of thing.
Daniel H:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
So talk about that a bit-
Daniel H:
Just real quick something just happened that all the listeners needed to hear because it doesn’t happen often. And what Warwick just did was he quoted my book with a book done by another Harvard professor. And remember I’m a surfer drama kid with no college degree from Southern California. So Warwick and Gary you were looking for those profound little soundbites. Building Champions? I’m going to use that one over and over. Thank you, I’ve taken you off-course.
Warwick F:
I’m trying to remember the author. Is it Ricardo? I can’t remember. I have it on my bookshelf, but that is something that a lot of leaders, they don’t do that. They, “Here’s what we should do. What do you think?” “Yeah. Okay.” It’s like you can’t get accurate information just from spreadsheets and reports, which is what you write about. You’ve got to manage by walking around that old adage. You’ve really got to… it’s not easy to get good information from your people. I mean, maybe over a few years, once you built trust, but initially they’re not going to tell you the straight scoop, I mean, that’s just not the way it works.
Daniel H:
Well in the book, Frank Blake tells a story when he was the CEO of Home Depot and he just tells a story of how the people on the team, he says, they try to hide current reality from you because they don’t want to deliver bad news. And they think they can fix it on their self, but very rarely do they. So you need to breed this open culture where Mulally worked in. And it was truly his claim to fame was getting people to acknowledge where they were failing so that they could then resource, think and come together to create success. And that changed the organization. But you have to know the business. So you have to be grounded in current reality. And I’m a GPS guy because I get lost unfortunately, quite often.
Gary S:
Amen Brother. Amen.
Daniel H:
Oh, it’s terrible. So embarrassing. It’s so embarrassing. And as I get older, it’s getting worse. But anyways, I’m a GPS guy and I use the analogy of GPS in Living Forward. I use the GPS here in The Seven Perspectives because just imagine current reality is your starting point. This is where we are today, November 2020. This is where we are. Now, nobody follows a leader whose vision is, “Let’s just stay the same or let’s strive for mediocrity,” or even better yet, “Let’s trade in the majority of our waking hours for the next three years so that we can kill an organization and go down in flames.” No one’s following that leader.
Daniel H:
So leaders need to always breed this hope into their teammates, their key constituents, their clients, their customers, which is perspective two vision. That’s the destination point. And that creates what I call the opportunity gap. That opportunity gap then gets filled with strategic bets. They’re grounded, they’re anchored, the team speaks into them, they’re all around how to better serve the customer or to make the business better. That’s why we make strategic bets, but they move us from current reality. They’re those steps that direction to move us to that vision.
Daniel H:
Now let me bring that back to a question Gary asked with regards to current reality in the crucible. I assume you’re both familiar with the Stockdale paradox, correct?
Gary S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Yes. But just explain to our listeners why that’s so important and how that ties to current reality.
Daniel H:
Yeah. Let me do that. And then if we have time, let’s also talk about Luca in 2020 for leaders and 2021. Let’s talk about that. Admiral Stockdale was the highest ranking military officer to be a prisoner of war in Vietnam. And you mentioned Jim Collins. Collins talks about him in, I think Good to Great I believe he talks about the Stockdale paradox in that book and it’s so profound. But Admiral Stockdale is famous for not just he himself, being the highest ranking officer that endured the torture as a result of being a POW, there are many soldiers that say that he saved their lives when they were prisoners of war with him. And it was because he realized that… this goes back to Victor Frankl work as well, but it’s because he realized that what’s needed in order for us to survive is we need to acknowledge, and this is a leadership principle, we need to acknowledge that today sucks and we’re going to get our butts handed to us.
Daniel H:
We’re going to be beaten and tortured, but we’re going to endure. Current reality today is going to suck. And the situation we’re leading our businesses in right now for many immense headwinds, it’s difficult. It’s no bueno, but you have to acknowledge that you can’t like it’s all peaches and cream. The best leaders will say, “No, this is really bad. And we’re going to have to make some tough decisions, because…” the other part of the paradox, “We’re leading to a better tomorrow. And this is what I see for us.” Now, leaders, don’t be talking about your vision to conquer the world between now and 2030, you’re going to be disconnected, but do be talking about how we’re going to be better in Q1 or Q2 or Q3.
Warwick F:
But I love how you say he was grounded in reality, because he said, “The optimists didn’t survive.” You know, the pipe dream is, “Yeah. It’s going to be okay. And just ignore the reality of the pain that was coming in the torture.” That’s an amazing thing to say, because what’s bad with optimism? Well, optimism is not grounded in reality, it doesn’t lead to survival. So that’s pretty profound stuff that he said.
Daniel H:
And it’s very relevant for today. When the whole pandemic hit back in March, I was actually over in Germany that night the borders were closed and talk about a nightmare night. That’s another conversation. But I listened to a podcast done by a Navy SEAL trainer. And I remember listening to him. He was sitting out in some log cabin in Montana and he was talking about COVID and he was telling his family, “Hey folks, we’re going to be in a shutdown world for two years.” And this was like March 16th. And I’m thinking, “Two years? You’re a nut” I’m thinking two weeks, right? I’m the idiot.
Daniel H:
But the reason he did that was because he knew we were in for a long roller-coaster. So this is the Stockdale paradox; the optimists would say, we’re going to be out by Christmas, right? Six years later, Christmas is coming in and they’re not out. So what happens is they die from the loss of hope. Your heart dies. You just can’t do it anymore because of the emotional rollercoaster. Now I’m talking to you about this pandemic that we’re living in and leading. Our people are dealing with overwhelm, with fear, with frustration, with apathy, with sadness, some with gratitude, some with hopefulness. But every week, I’m with thousands of people in webinars where my team and I have coaches will lead these webinars and businesses.
Daniel H:
And I’ll always ask people to put in chat, “What’s the dominant emotion you’re feeling for the last two weeks?” I did it yesterday with these practitioners that serve autism clinics around the world. It’s the same. And it’s been the same all year and we’re suffering, us humans are suffering. So what we can’t do is we can’t say, “Don’t worry, they’re going to have a vaccine out by such and such date and that’s going to make everything better. And then we’re going to return back to normal.” Actually, nobody knows. Now we do know we’re going to persevere. And we do know that we’re going to figure out how to move forward. We don’t know by when.
Warwick F:
And that gets back to what you were talking about earlier. Just this whole VUCA world which for those who might have heard it, a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Well, we are volatile, uncertain. It is complex. And it is ambiguous. It’s about as VUCA a time in the history of the planet as that we’ve had. So you’ve got to lead in a way where there’s so many uncontrollable unknowns and that’s just the world, but I’d like to shift to just some of these other ones, just one last thought on vision, somewhere in there, I think one of the leaders you quote, I think this is correct, said, I may have misread it, “Don’t seek profit, but seek…” I don’t know whether it was meaning or passion. Was it something in there like that or?
Warwick F:
We’re just not against profitability, but profitability as in what is our vision. Well, our vision is to increase earnings by 20% over the next five years. And that’s our vision. Okay. Is everybody excited? It’s like, “No” That’s not going to stir anybody’s passion. And to just talk about why… because that was an… was it in there? Because I didn’t read it that long ago.
Daniel H:
It’s in there.
Warwick F:
Good.
Daniel H:
Yeah. I was with a leader where, he’s part of an executive team and it’s a very well-known company that I guarantee if you live in the U.S. you know who it is, I guarantee it. And there’s a good chance that you are a fan of the product. So a member of the executive team was telling me about the vision of the business and what the executive team had been working on. And it had to do with earnings in the form of billions in the years ahead. And I just flat out asked him, I said, so tell me, How excited are you about that?” He’s like, “I’m not excited about that at all.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Well, that’s never been what excites me.” And I said, “Okay, leader, if it doesn’t excite you, how the heck is that going to engage the heads and the hearts of all these brilliant, wonderful people you lead?”
Daniel H:
Leaders, we need to understand profits are a requirement. We lead for-profit businesses. If you lead a not-for-profit well, you need to have enough on the balance sheet to pay the bills and operate and serve your mission next year, profits are a requirement. Revenue is needed. It’s oxygen for business, but it cannot be the bulls-eye. Every time I’ve spent time with a leader who makes profit the bulls-eye, I will tell you, they will never engage the heads and the hearts of the best people. And they very rarely ever reached that profit. In the dotcom world, maybe. Maybe then you had that chance but…
Daniel H:
I was walking with a financial planner this morning, he’s one of my colleagues, he’s a great great guy. And we were walking and we were talking about the difference between flipping houses and buying homes for a long-term investment and keeping them as rentals. It’s a night and day different strategy, and it gets you night and day different results. Well, so does being a leader who is passionate about a mission and a vision that is going to create a better product, a better service, that’s going to be good for humanity in some way, shape or form.
Daniel H:
When you lead with that or being the best team or having the best brand in the business, when that’s the driver and you then create the right strategic bets and you surround yourself with the right people in the right seats, and you just work really hard. Spend time in those first five perspectives. Over time, the profits will come. But in a 10 year period of time, some years will be better than others.
Warwick F:
There is this compelling vision that motivates people. You could look at any successful business, whether it’s Walt Disney, Southwest Airlines, Chick-fil-A, they all have that in common. Whether it’s Southwest Airlines, we just want to make travel affordable to families to connect. Walt Disney, obviously entertaining families for generations, Chick-fil-A; they all have this compelling vision that their team members are excited about. Just in the last bit of time we have, we’ve covered really the first few, these last several… The team, the customer, your role, the outsider. I love certainly your role and the outsider, that really hit home. Especially those last two, perhaps just talk about some of those last few of the seven.
Daniel H:
Yeah. So in summary, you’ve got the first five perspectives where you deploy intentional curiosity, that’s current reality vision, strategic bets, the team, and the customer. You spend your days in those lanes with intentional curiosity part of your time, every day, trying to understand them so that your decision making and influence increases, then you find that seventh perspective, which is that outsider. It’s that somebody who cares so much about you and your success and you being the best you can be.
Daniel H:
It’s a mentor, it’s a coach, it’s a board member who is just non-biased. They want to see you succeed. They’re the ones that help you to make sense of the confusion in the first five. Then that informs that sixth perspective, which is your role, because you need to do what you used to do as well as you need to make the adjustments and the changes so that you can do what you’re going to need to do in the months and years ahead to be the leader the vision’s going to require you to.
Warwick F:
That’s absolutely true. And just the interplay between your role and the outsider. I mean, part of the role of the outsider is to help you do the things that only you can do. I remember somebody once told me, I don’t know if it was a former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, but they said something like, “Do the things that you’re great at, not the things you’re merely good at.” And that seemed like an arrogant statement, but I think we all have areas where we can be great at. And so, “Okay, you’re good at that. Well, that’s great. Well, how about delegating that?” “What? I’m delegating things that I’m good at?” “Uh-huh.”
Warwick F:
Because obviously this is something that you advocate in your book, I’m sure your folks that you coach, by just helping them understand there’s a bunch of things you can do that others can do it as well, if not better, but what are the things that only you can do, and it sounds so simple, but yet you get caught up in the tyranny of the urgent and it’s… People hate to delegate, right? Because if you delegate it, it probably won’t get done the way you would. It will definitely won’t, and people hate that. “But that’s not the way I do things.” “Okay, but does it work?” “Yeah, but it’s not the way.” “But why does that matter?” I mean, obviously you have these coaching conversations probably every day, multiple times a day.
Daniel H:
Every day.
Warwick F:
I see that.
Daniel H:
Yeah. You’ll hear me say over and over, “Say no to the good, so you can say yes to the great.”
Warwick F:
And I love that. I love that phrase and really, the outsider. I mean, it’s funny, similar path, maybe on a different scale, but I’m also a certified executive coach. I’m on two non-profit boards and I love both those roles. For me it’s a good fit, because I love asking questions, but just the role and they’re both within your definition of the outsider as I see it, both the coach, board member, mentor. And they’re just so, so important. You don’t want a bunch of country club buddies of yours on your board. That’s normal in our society, but it’s stupid.
Warwick F:
One of the stories I share a bit elsewhere on the podcast and book to come out next year, Crucible Leadership that I’ve written. Early on in my newspaper days, as listeners would know, I grew up in this very large family business, newspapers, TV, radio stations. It was a massive company. Come back from Harvard Business School, sit in on a board meeting. I was 26 at the time. And a bunch of very smart people on the board from successful folks, at least some of them were, from outside. And they’re had just been a takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch,of one of the other big media companies. And we came in a bit too late because we weren’t quite as nimble as he was.
Warwick F:
And so we picked up some TV stations, but then because there was some deal where a TV station and newspaper, you can’t have it in the same market. We bought something knowing that regulations would force us to sell it, which didn’t seem to me such a smart move. There’s always VUCA, but sometimes there’s certainty. So you don’t want to do something when it’s certain that it’s a bad decision and there’s no ambiguity. And so we as a media company, we’re going to be selling TV stations, which seem to be idiotic at the time because we’re talking about the eighties back when things are going gangbusters in newspapers and TV.
Warwick F:
The point of the story is not one person asked a tough question. One of those people was a CEO of a company that had earnings increases at 15, 20% per year, for years. So clearly the guy must have had some degree of business savvy. And I’m 26. So what was I going to say? I wasn’t a board member. I was just invited to sit in there because my dad had died and I was representing his shareholding and that was a searing experience. I said to myself, “That’s never going to be me,” but that’s normal. So without going on one of the two non-profit boards I’m on, I’m good friends with the lead pastor of our church and a private school my kids went to, but I’m very polite, but I ask tough questions. I don’t care who likes or doesn’t like it. Anyway, you get the idea.
Daniel H:
Yeah, that’s a gift.
Warwick F:
Often that comes out of searing experiences, which it did for me. So I mean, you and I agree on that, but do you feel like that’s rarer than it needs to be, whether it’s a board member or coach, that’s willing to say, “Okay, I may get removed from the board.” You probably have conversations with your clients saying, “I’m probably going to get fired by this major client. We’ve got 12 coaches coaching all throughout the organization. And if I make this point, about an 80% chance, I’m going to get fired.” You probably are in that spot. So talk about what it’s like to be in that spot as an advisor and maybe about a CEO who is willing to hire somebody like you that’s going to tell them stuff that they absolutely don’t want to hear. So talk about that whole world of the outsider.
Daniel H:
So the best leaders, like we talked about earlier are humble, and they know they can be biased. And what they’re looking for is they’re looking for somebody with the courage to challenge their thinking. And the way the seventh perspective came to be, you guys need to know, the book used to be, the model was the five perspectives. Then it went to the six perspectives and then I wasn’t ready to write it until it became the seventh, the perfect number and the way the seventh came to be was I was reflecting on the last couple of days of work. And I just thought, “Man, these different executives have come in. They just want to think with me.”
Daniel H:
And what happens is, I’m the guy and I remind myself all the time; mission first, people always. You don’t get those two confused. So my mission, their mission has to come first. My mission is to help them to be the best they can be. Now I might upset them and I’m going to do my best to do it in a way that doesn’t, because I don’t want their executive functions to go into overload. And then all of a sudden their limbic system goes crazy and I’m no longer valuable to them. But I do need to truth tell, and I need to ask questions. There’s a saying, and I love it. And that is, you can tell a man is brilliant, not by the answers he gives, but by the questions he asks… Amazing, right?
Daniel H:
I need to ask the right questions to get them to really reflect. And then when I hear that they’re out of alignment when they don’t have integrity with what they’re talking about versus what they wanted to do a month, a year earlier, I need to be the mirror. That one that says, “Hey, listen, you may not like this. So please just understand I’m doing this because I really care about you and the organization, but the decision you’re making, I’m going to ask you, are you compromising here or there? Because what you said, it’s not jiving for me. So just help me to understand.” And it has to do with how I do it. There’s empathy. There’s respect.
Daniel H:
I go in with a bit of timidity and like, “Hey, this isn’t comfortable. I know you may not like it, but please know I’m for you. Breathe, breathe. Okay, here we go.” And when I was young, it really scared me. And it’s still scary, I don’t want to get fired, but I would much rather get fired for telling the truth than get fired.
Warwick F:
If you got fired in service of the client, you’d be okay with that?
Daniel H:
That’s right. I mean, you’d sleep well at night.
Warwick F:
And that’s so true. I agree with you, asking the right questions and I live in the world of questions. So that’s my natural language.
Daniel H:
Yeah, me too.
Warwick F:
It’s better than hammering them with a sledgehammer. It’s not that I don’t think those things inside my head, but it’s often not effective. And yeah, I’m blessed at Oxford, Harvard business School. The reason those places are so effective is all about the questions. At Oxford there are lectures, but nobody really goes to them. At least not in the humanities that I did. And it’s about some of the smartest professors on the planet asking you mind-bendingly tough questions or Harvard business school.
Warwick F:
You’ve got these great professors like Michael Porter, competitive strategist. He was one of my professors a lot of years ago and Competitive Strategy was one of the top selling books in the corporate world. Well, he is a smart guy, but he sits there asking questions. Okay. What’s the problem with this case? What are the issues? Question after question after question, he precious few observations. The power of questions is so huge. So you meld all these to getting one of the things you talk about with these seven perspectives, as we summarize, you talk about it being an ecosystem. So it’s not just a paint by numbers. Yes, there’s an order, but talk about why this whole thing is really an ecosystem.
Daniel H:
I’ve worked with plenty of leaders over the years where they’re really good at three or four of the perspectives, because those are the ones where they’ve got the training. They have the unique skill, they’ve got the passion, they find them to be interesting, but then they delegate or just ignore the others. And if they do they’ll get into trouble and they may not nosedive the business. But what they may be doing is preventing the business from being all it could be. They may be preventing themselves from being the most effective, most respected, most brilliant leader that they could be. So I was asked yesterday, “Is one perspective more important than the other?” I’ll tell you, if you don’t have current reality, it’s difficult to build on. That one you have to have.
Warwick F:
You are building on quicksand, if you don’t have current reality.
Daniel H:
Yeah. But once you’ve got that, then I’m going to say, all of them are pretty darn important and you don’t get to neglect any of them. So you need to have intentional curiosity and rigor and discipline with the next four. You need to be connected to the team and listening to them and asking them, what do they need and what do they think? You’re not telling them what to do when you’re trying to make the best decisions and influence. You’re trying to understand it from their perspective that informs you. Now you know.
Daniel H:
Then you can ask them questions and help them to see things differently. The same with your customers, not just where they’re at today, but where they’re going and what they need from you. What’s good with your product or service, what can improve. So I say, they’re all important. You need to spend time on each and every one of them. And it’s a daily dance and you’re going to be adjusting.
Warwick F:
They talk about a three legged stool, this is a seven legged stool. You need all seven legs. Leaving physics aside, in the world of business and life, if you don’t have one of those legs standing, failure is a distinct possibility. So you got to do all of them.
Daniel H:
So true.
Gary S:
Speaking of understanding the current situation and his role, the captain has turned on the fasten seat-belt sign so that we can begin the process of landing our conversational plane. Before we do that though, Daniel, I would be remiss if I did not give you the chance to let our listeners know how they can learn more about you and Building Champions. So where can they find out more about you and the work you do?
Daniel H:
Thanks Gary. And thanks for helping us to land the plane. I think the energy between the two of us or the three of us, excuse me, I think we would have just kept going and I’d get myself in trouble. So, buildingchampions.com, Daniel Harkavy on LinkedIn, on Facebook, the book, thesevenperspectives.com, that website will give you an assessment. A free assessment, you’ll have access to different tools and you can buy the book there at a greatly discounted rate from Baker books, our publisher, at the bottom, you can order it from everybody, Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, et cetera. But right now, while you’re listening to this, Baker’s probably still offering the best price. That’s how you get ahold of me. You guys, it’s been awesome to be with the two of you. I really appreciate it.
Gary S:
Well, as we do every episode, when we conclude, I try to give, and this was a robust conversation, I usually try to give three takeaways for listeners. It’s not the perfect number, but it’s the perfect number to get us to get the plane on the ground as it were. So I think there are three really good tips that came out of this episode about how to apply Daniel’s perspectives to come out of crucible. Number one, you have to lead yourself before you can lead your team. If you can’t lead your team, you will not get results. So ask yourself, what do you believe about yourself? How does that impact your thoughts about others? How does it affect the decisions you make, develop intentional curiosity. We talked a lot about that in this episode, embrace humility, both Daniel and Warwick talked about. If you pour into yourself, then impact can pour from you and that’s critical in moving beyond your crucible, which is the title of this podcast after all.
Gary S:
Number two, understand current reality, know what makes your business the business, cast a vision for moving forward in the midst of that reality, especially after enduring a crucible and as you move forward, take the steps necessary to begin the bounce-back from your crucible, make strategic bets on that vision that can be executed in the current reality. And the third point you heard some mention of the Stockdale paradox.
Gary S:
The third point I believe is hang on to the Stockdale paradox and I’m well aware listener. That sounds like a paradox in and of itself. How do you hang onto a paradox? Well, here’s the paradox as spoken to help you understand how to do that. It was discussed here, but we never really laid all the words out. Here’s what the Stockdale paradox sums up. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be. Grasp onto that. Walk in that as you’re looking to bounce back and move beyond your crucible.
Gary S:
Until the next time that we’re together listeners, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you if you would, if you’ve enjoyed this robust conversation with Daniel, please click subscribe on the podcast app that you’re listening to us on now, share that with some friends of yours if you think they can get something out of this and until the next time we’re together, remember this, we talked about it here. We talk about it every week.
Gary S:
Your crucible experience is real. It is your current reality. If you’re in a crucible, there is perhaps a no more pressing current reality than your crucible. If you’re in the midst of one, but it’s not as painful as it is. It’s not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new story, a better story, a new chapter in your life and why it’s a beginning and why it’s better is that it leads you to what we talked about here today. Something more important than just your bottom line. It leads you to a life of significance.
In this special 50th episode of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE, host Warwick Fairfax and co-host Gary Schneeberger take a look back at some of the most powerful guests who have shared the trials and triumphs of not just surviving their crucible experiences, but moving beyond them to lead lives of significance. You’ll meet inspiring men and women from all walks of life who have overcome physical, emotional and professional setbacks, failures and tragedies to live lives on purpose, rooted in their passions and talents. From the Hollywood actor/writer/director whose first film flopped so badly it was almost his last to the young woman selling her gourmet cookies out of her driveway, from the motivational speaker who grabbed the brass ring only to realize it was lead to the former NFL quarterback who couldn’t live up to the MVP career of his father but has carved out a post-football calling that helps marriages and families, you’ll find hope and healing in these conversations filled with wisdom and vulnerability.
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
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
Well, welcome indeed listener to this monumental, dare I say, episode of Beyond the Crucible. That was, and will soon be again, Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show. I am Gary Schneeberger, the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership and the co-host of the show. And I say monumental because this, Warwick, is our 50th episode. Can you believe it?
Warwick F:
No, I can’t. I mean, it’s hard to believe that we started this a little over a year ago in November. 50 episodes. I mean, who knew? That’s just staggering, hard to believe.
Gary S:
And what we wanted to do, right? Because in Hollywood, when a TV show has a hundred episodes, they have a party and they have a cake. And unfortunately we can’t share cake together right now. But we wanted to mark the occasion with a special 50th episode. And the idea behind the 50th episode that we’re going to go on as we go through is talk about some of the most insightful guests, the guests that we remember perhaps the best over the time that we’ve been doing the show, as you said, for just over a year. And one of the things, Warwick, that I found when I was doing some research, even though I’m not a numbers guy, how many hours of content do you think over the 49 episodes, now 50th, but how many hours of content do you think we’ve had?
Warwick F:
I don’t know. Like 30, 40?
Gary S:
Bravo, bravo. By the time this episode is finished, we will have about 40 hours of content since starting Beyond the Crucible. And think about that for a minute. That consumes the traditional work week. Right? The traditional American work week is 40 hours. We have an American work week’s worth of shows of this podcast, and that’s a pretty good reason to celebrate, I think.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah, it’s a huge milestone. And obviously we’ll talk about just the diversity of guests and backgrounds and experiences. I mean, I’ve learned a lot as I’ve listened to the folks who we’ve been interviewing and the dialogues we’ve had. And yeah, it’s just been a tremendous learning experience for me and I’ve loved being part of it.
Gary S:
Yeah. To your point about diversity, we’ve had business leaders, community leaders, non-profit leaders, thought leaders, adventurers and academics who have shared the microphones with us. We’ve had a Hollywood actor, producer, writer, director on one side. We’ve had a young woman who sells cookies out of her driveway. There’s such diversity. But the one thing that they all have in common, a couple of things they all have in common, they’ve either been through a crucible or crucibles, sometimes very traumatic trials and tragedies and failures and setbacks, or they’ve been through maybe a couple of crucibles that maybe weren’t as intense, but they have a perspective on how listeners can bounce back from crucibles. And that’s really been, as you look at the portfolio of guests we’ve had, that it all boils down to, right, the vision that was hatched when the show was started of helping people get beyond their crucibles, offering hope and insight on how to do that.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And it’s just remarkable to me. I mean, you mentioned diverse. We’ve had men, women. We’ve had people of all different backgrounds, races, all different countries, have a huge variety of crucibles from abuse to abandoned orphan to Navy Seal being paralyzed in a training accident, former NFL quarterback, business challenges. A huge variety of diversity in every form of that word. But you’re right, there’s a couple of things that we’ll talk about that is similar in every guest we’ve had. They’ve not let the crucible, as you say at the end of every podcast, not let the crucible be the end of their story, but an exciting new chapter. They have not given up. They have not let a tragedy define them. They have hope. They’ve not let grudges or anger sometimes. Obviously in the case of abuse, there’s a lot of grounds for anger. They’ve not let any of that hold them back.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
That the traits of what it takes to overcome a crucible are very similar despite the radically different experiences and the diversity of the guests. That was what is probably one of the single most amazing things to me, single most learning points from myself personally.
Gary S:
For sure. And one of the things I thought of right before we got on here, and we haven’t really talked about this in a year. I mean, we haven’t talked about this since we just started. But do you remember back when we first started the show and there was concern on our parts that, oh my goodness. So what makes the podcast interesting is that people don’t talk about failure much. So, we’re going to have content that other people don’t have. But wait a minute, if people don’t talk about failure much, how are we going to find guests? And I remember early on there was a concern on our parts that we were going to … how are we going to find guests? And that has not proven to be a problem. I mean, we are 32 guests into the show so far, and as you said, great diversity in their experiences. And then that common denominator of not giving up, of persevering through the crucible.
Warwick F:
And what we really appreciated about our guests is they’ve been willing to be vulnerable, to go there. I mean, that’s the core of Beyond the Crucible, the core of the book which since the book Crucible Leadership which will be released next year, birthed Beyond the Crucible. But that’s the core idea. I’ve being very open about my own experiences growing up in a large family media business. And after my failed $2.25 billion takeover, the trauma that … maybe trauma’s too strong a word, but certainly the challenges it posed in my life. And I’ve tried to be open and vulnerable about what I went through and what I’ve learned, but I guess I’ve also been very open.
Warwick F:
And one of the things it’s important to me is I don’t want to just hear what happened. I want to hear how they felt in the tragedy, not just to dwell on the pain. So, when they talk about the hope they have now, the listener understands there’s a sort of a yin and yang, two different sides of the same coin of the pain and the tragedy, but then the hope and the joy that’s come later. So, hearing the emotion behind the story is really important to us. And I’d say every guest has gone there. Every guest has been open and vulnerable about what they felt and their emotions.
Gary S:
Absolutely. And in fact, and we’ll hear some of them as we talk through the guests that we’re highlighting here, we’ll hear some of them express that for the first time, in some cases, in having the conversation with us, they’ve realized certain points about their journey back from the crucible.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah, there’s one thing I wanted to add. And obviously we’ve been thinking about Beyond the Crucible. It’s interesting to look back on how did we get here. How did we get to Beyond the Crucible? And it’s really, as I was reflecting last night, I said a thought quite a bit about vision and how visions can grow.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
And I remember, as listeners will know in 2008 when at my church in Annapolis, Maryland, where we live from Australia, but we lived here for, gosh, maybe 30 years, a long time. And I was giving a message about my story and like a 10-minute message to illustrate some sermon point. And I figure who could relate to my story? Failed media mogul, nobody knows anything about Australia in the U.S., certainly not about Fairfax Media. And somehow my story resonated and I was open and vulnerable in what I went through, what I learned.
Warwick F:
Then I start writing Crucible Leadership about anchored by my story and stories of my family and some inspirational historical leaders. And then that grew into, well, to sell a book or to get it published, you’ve got to have a brand. So, then I have a great branding and marketing team at Signal that helped with the website and blogs and social media. You came on board with ROAR and helped me with public relations and now just with the book and so many things, with the podcast. Keri came on board to help selling the book and marketing strategy for the book. All of this grew. And then, as you say, about a year ago, we had this conversation, well, how about a podcast? I’d been on some other people’s podcasts.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
I’m somewhat of a reserved person. So, okay, well, let’s see how this works, and it works. So, the point of the story is, one of the things I’ve learned is visions grow. You started off with I want to get a book published. I guess I need a brand. Well, I guess I need a blog. Okay. Social media. I’m not somebody that posts a lot on social media just in terms of my generation, something I really have an excessive need to do, but I realize it’s important to get your message out, and I want to get my message out, so okay. Podcast. Okay, that’s another good way of talking about your message. So, this wasn’t some big grand plan other than publish the book. So, I think for listeners, when you have a vision, realize it can grow and that’s okay. And your comfort zone can move. And just step by step, bit by bit, visions can grow, and that’s good.
Gary S:
Yeah. And from the perspective that we had starting out that I mentioned that, geez, okay, people don’t like to talk about failure. How are we going to find people to talk about failure? We did. And not only did we find people to talk about their crucibles in honesty and transparency in detail. But one of the things that we have done to help guide us, a roadmap to get us through this episode, is that we discovered what I’ve called a three by three approach to what we’ve accomplished at Beyond the Crucible and how we’re going to go through this episode, and that is we found basically three kinds of shows. We produce three kinds of shows, one each week, here at Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
One kind of show is about people’s crucibles. And that’s the vast majority of the shows that we do are people who have had crucible experiences telling their story of how they have bounced back, moved beyond those crucible experiences, and are now pursuing and living lives of significance. That’s the one kind of show. Second kind of show are we added this a little bit later on in the process earlier this year. Actually, since this is January 5th when you’re hearing this, that was later last year. Perspective guests, guests who maybe don’t have the most searing crucibles, to keep up with the metaphor of fiery furnace that melts metal, but they have a great perspective to help people who are coming back from their crucibles understand how to do that. So, we’ve got crucible guests and prospective guests.
Gary S:
And then from the outset, we’ve had these shows, Warwick, that it’s just the two of us having a conversation. And the reason behind that, the reason that we wanted to go there from the start, is based on what you talked about just a little bit ago, is your journey in coming to start the podcast was your own crucible and your own experience in unpacking what you learned as you came back from your crucible. So, having those three kinds of shows has made, I think, for a diverse set of circumstances and conversations, don’t you think?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I’ve really enjoyed just the diversity of the guests and talking about that. But then we’ve had thought leaders, and we’ll talk about some of them later, like Professor Joseph Badaracco of Harvard Business School. And he’s written a couple books that we’ll chat about, Leading Quietly and Step Back. And sometimes as we talk to either guests who have crucibles or perspective guests, they’ll say something, and we’ll chat about this later. But Professor Badaracco talked about quiet leadership versus heroic leadership. And it occurred to me, I grew up with a heroic leadership model.
Warwick F:
So, we ended up doing a perspective, I’m sorry, a conversation between the two of us unpacking more about heroic leadership. And we’ve done ones on vulnerability and significance and a whole bunch of them. So, sometimes there are things that we really want to talk about. Sometimes an idea has come out of a conversation that we’ve had with a guest, and we think we want to explore this more. So, it’s really a great place where we can just go deeper on some issues between the two of us that are just either come from a guest or just come from a thought we’ve had.
Gary S:
Right. And those three kinds of shows, if we back up to the first kind of show, that’s why I call it a three by three, right? There’s three kinds of shows. And in the first kind of show, we’ve identified, generally speaking, that there are three kinds of crucibles. In those crucible shows, we generally big picture, big tent. There are folks who have had physical crucibles. They’ve had injuries, they’ve had illnesses, they’ve had something that has limited them, challenged them physically. That’s the first of the three kinds of crucibles.
Gary S:
There are folks who’ve had emotional crucibles, and a lot of our guests have been there, who’ve struggled with something that happened to them, something that maybe they caused to happen, but it’s more emotional than it is physical. And then there’s professional crucibles, those things that are failures and setbacks in the workplace. And many times, and we’ll discover that as we go through and we start to begin to unpack here in a little bit, some of the guests that have really stood out to us, many times there’s overlap, right? These aren’t rigid, everybody’s in an iron box. Right? There’s a lot of overlap between the physical crucibles, the emotional crucibles and the professional crucibles.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, that’s so true. Because very often I’d say almost always folks that have had physical crucibles, and we’ll discuss this in a minute, they can’t always change the physical side, but the emotional side is also devastating. Coming to grips with, as one of our guests or a number of them talk about, a new normal is how do you emotionally recover. That’s as big a part for those with physicals. So, physical, emotional, even those with professional. Very often professional crucibles have to do with identity. Who am I? Do I have my identity just in my career? So, there is overlap between these three. I mean, there’s the primary crucible, which is how we’ve chosen to separate it, which makes sense. But there is overlap between the three categories, there is no question.
Gary S:
Absolutely. And speaking of that, listener, thank you for listening to our wind up here, for paying attention as we’ve, in the baseball metaphor sense, we’ve wound up for the pitch, because now we’re about to really pivot into talking about some of those shows, some of those guests, and some of those conversations that have really stood out. And that’s been the fun part about planning for this 50th episode is going back and reviewing the content that we’ve created. And we’re going to start talking about physical crucibles, those things that, in many cases, can be the most dramatic, right, because you’re talking about a life that is restricted, is changed. As we say a lot, the trajectory has changed because of a physical illness, ailment, injury, something along those lines.
Gary S:
And the first person, the first guest that we’re going to talk about in that physical crucible perspective, is a young woman named Michelle Kuei. And Michelle’s story, just a brief setup, is that she was in a tragic car accident when she was 11 in Taiwan where she grew up. And what happened to her is that it left her with physical and emotional scars that she’s dealt with that plagued her for 30 years. But her body stopped growing after the crash, and that made her really get consumed by this idea that she was not normal. She was in her thirties, still the height she was, still the body size and type she was when she was 11. And that caused a whole bunch of pain and fear and retreating from life a little bit.
Gary S:
And it was only when she took up hiking that she ended up beginning to burst through that, a 30-year journey. But she took up hiking, and that ended with her, you’ll remember this well, Warwick, she ascended Machu Picchu, and that was when she learned that she wasn’t just normal, which was her goal all her life. She just wanted to be normal. She realized, nope, I’m not just normal, but that she had extraordinary in her. That episode, to me, stands out as one of the most revealing and inspiring that we’ve had.
Warwick F:
Yeah, there’s no question. She is probably one of the most inspirational guests that we’ve had. Because there’s the contrast with the pain, physical and emotional, and her countenance now which is so full of joy. And she’s all about empowering people. And she has her own coaching, Elevate Life Coaching, where she tries to help people discover their strength and inner beauty and overcome the fear of judgment and internal negative self-talk. But what is amazing is this has been decades in the making where she is. A really important lesson for listeners is don’t expect to bounce back overnight, or even in a year or two years, necessarily. It can be painful.
Warwick F:
Now the physical, I don’t know that that changed that much after her accident. She is four foot something. She has crutches. When she go to the grocery store, she can’t reach things on the top shelves. She has to use a crutch to knock it off or have a hopefully good Samaritan help her out, which is just tedious. I mean, that’s not something you don’t do that often. It’s just frustrating.
Warwick F:
But you’re right. That whole Machu Picchu episode, I think we have it. I don’t know if it’s seven, eight minutes on YouTube. It’s really well worth listeners having a look at just that scene. And it’s this Inca town at the top of this mountain in Peru, and the trail is very steep. And there she is and her crutches, and the last part of that journey is like 50 steps, really steep, and she’s climbing up. She can’t use her crutches because it … She’s has to crawl on her hands and knees. And she’s got a whole team with her, people that she didn’t know before, but they’re just cheering her. “Michelle, Michelle.” Kind of like team Michelle, right? Well, actually, that’s what they called it afterwards.
Gary S:
Yep.
Warwick F:
So yeah, just her whole countenance now. And she’s written a book, Perfectly Normal. And so, there was a time in which she felt bad about herself, that she felt like she wasn’t pretty like the other young girls when she was growing up and dating and all of that. I mean, friendships. So much felt like it just wasn’t easy anymore. But now she just has this incredible countenance of joy and wanting to empower people. And yeah, she is really inspirational. The physical was hard, but the emotional, that’s been a lifelong journey to try to combat.
Gary S:
Correct. And I’ve been blessed since that episode. It was our 19th episode. So, I’m not going to do the math cause I’m bad at math. But I’ve been blessed since then to become friends with her, and we’ll talk semi-frequently in email and text. She sent me a great Thanksgiving card that was just so sweet and so kind. And one of the things that she said in that episode that continues to stick in my mind, she said this, “Each and every one of us is a gift to this world.”
Gary S:
And when she came and she realized that, that was really when it all started to fall together after those 30 years of what was kind of an emotional physical wilderness for her. And what she was able to do the moment where she realized that is that she realized that this is how I am and this is who I am. She realized, this is how she was going to look for the rest of her life. She can accept this is how she’s going to look and she can embrace every part of herself, because there’s something else other than what we see on the outside.
Michelle Kuei:
In order to overcome your emotional challenge, many times you have to be able to recognize it. You have to allow it. You have to accept it. And my condition, my physical challenge, was something I needed to accept. This is how I am, and this is who I am. This is how I’m going to look for the rest of my life. I can sit here and not accept it and keep having resistance, keep having that fighting emotion, and keep wanting to understand why has it done to me and keep wanting, exploring in that victim thinking mentality or mindset, or I can accept that this had happened. It’s very unfortunate, but it happened. I can except this is how I look, and I can embrace every part of me because there’s something else other than, greater than, what we see on the outside. It’s not just the physical appearance. It’s not just what we see externally. It’s what’s going on in the inside. There’s a light that’s inside each one of us. That’s what we need to accept.
Gary S:
How beautiful is that?
Warwick F:
It is. I mean, speaking of beauty, really, she has this incredible inner beauty. Her soul is just radiant, is just remarkable. And people know the challenges that she has been through physically. And because she has so much joy, it gives other people hope. It’s like, “How does she do this? How can she be so joyful? How can she accept who she is and what she’s been through?” But she has in so many ways. I mean, she has this inner light that really shines brightly and elevates and uplifts everybody she comes in contact with. She is a true inspiration.
Gary S:
Yeah. Her energy, her optimism, her … I’m friends with her on Facebook and her energy and optimism that she does with her community and just her friends is so infectious. You can be in a bad mood, hop on Facebook, see something that Michelle Kuei’s posted. and you’re like, “Okay, I’m not in such a bad mood anymore,” because she’s just got so much positive energy and so much hope. She offers so much hope.
Gary S:
And that is also the story of another physical crucible guest that we’ve had on offering hope. And that’s really what we try to do with all of our guests who’ve had crucibles, how did they find hope? And Ryan Campbell is another young person, a man in his twenties, who went through a horrific physical crucible and as emerged on the other side encouraging people, offering hope inspiration to them. And he is, you mentioned it early on, Warwick. You mentioned that we had people from lots of different nationality backgrounds. I think Australians number one among the backgrounds we’ve had, and Ryan is a young man from Australia. So, I don’t know if that’s coincidence or you’re…
Warwick F:
Yeah, I wonder how that happened. Who knew?
Gary S:
But Ryan’s story, is so fascinating and so inspiring. He became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world. But then two years later, he’s living his vision. He wanted to be a pilot since he was a little boy. He’s living his vision. And then two years later, he was in a plane crash, a horrific plane crash, that threatened more than the dream that he started at age six. He was left a paraplegic after that accident. But he fought back physically and emotionally to walk and to hope again, and most importantly, from a life of significance perspective, to help others hope again.
Ryan Campbell:
We started the airplane. You actually have to grab the propeller and spin the propeller with your hands and start it by hand, so it’s a very old technology. And we taxi to the end of the runway. We lined up on this short grass airstrip. Nice and early in the morning to take off and go and look at the beach. And I pushed the power forward, the airplane performed beautifully, and we lifted off the ground, the runway. And the fence at the end of the runway disappeared beneath the nose. And straightaway at about 150 feet over the top of trees the engine failed. And we had a partial engine failure. And within three seconds, despite everything that I could do, we just … I don’t know what I ever could have done different. We had nowhere to go and we ended up in what was a horrific plane crash. And it’s just not explainable how bad it was. And I was cut from the wreckage, placed into a helicopter and flown to hospital, but I was the only survivor.
Gary S:
That story also was one truly inspiring from the start to the finish.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, his was almost like a double crucible, but he has two huge stories. Here he is at 19 growing up in Australia and just has this dream of flying. He’s wanted to do that since he was a kid and had this idea that he could fly around the world and wanted to be the youngest, which he did. And just that whole journey, getting funding. I remember he wrote a letter to Dick Smith who’s this sort of maverick entrepreneur, owns the equivalent of Best Buy in Australia, and has supported whole bunch of different adventurers, including somebody who we recently had on the podcast, which was so recent was didn’t make the 50 conversation. Lisa Blair who sailed around the Antarctic, which is a whole nother incredible adventure which is absolutely worthy of listening to.
Gary S:
And she also is from where?
Warwick F:
Australia. Exactly. Of course. Australians are so adventurous, I guess. But yeah, so here’s Ryan. He accomplishes an amazing feat, really put himself out there. And then he just had this idea that he loved flying vintage airplanes, so the biplane. You have twenties, thirties, kind of 1920s, thirties planes. And he had somebody with him helping them give joy rides. People want to go up in planes like this. And it was just this incredible bad luck, really, that he’s a very accomplished pilot, he’s in this old plane, and somehow the engine cut out.
Warwick F:
And as he puts it, if the engine and cut out 20 seconds early or 20 seconds later, he would have been fine. He could have either not taken off or he could have glided down, but he was over trees and there’s nothing he could do, and it wasn’t his fault. But the passenger that was in that plane died. So not only did he have physical challenges, he had to accept the fact that the person that was within his plane died. Objectively, he knew that it wasn’t his fault. There’s nothing he could do. It’s an old plane, things happen. But he had to the physical. I mean, he can walk now, but as he puts it somewhat humorously, he kind of walks like he’s had a bottle of Jack Daniels I think is how he expresses it.
Gary S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
So, it looks like it’s had a few too many. And so, he’s still not a hundred percent, so to speak. But he is functional, and he just talks about having a mindset toolbox to overcome crucibles. And his whole way back of feeling sorry for himself in hospital and looking out at somebody else in the rehab clinic who is just trying to move one little finger just like a little bit.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
And he’s thinking, “I’m feeling bad about myself. I can do more than move a finger. And this guy is looking at me, like looking through my soul, saying,” as we say in Australia, “Hey mate, what are you complaining about?” Now he didn’t say that, but the look said everything. And Ryan, you want that look meant. It’s like, “Okay, good point. It’s not great, but I’m not where this other guy is.” So, his ability to bounce back from that somewhat physically, but especially emotionally. And he still enjoys flying. He tried to fly a helicopter which one road a bit too far, but at least he can fly. His whole attitude of hope, similar in one sense to Michelle Kuei. He has this hope, the sense of optimism, despite what he went through.
Gary S:
Yeah. And what you just said, Warwick, about him comparing himself to that other gentlemen in the hospital with him reminded me of another physical crucible guest that we had. It was actually two guests. It was a father and son, both of whom were former Navy Seals. And I remember that it was Mike and David Charbonnet are the guests. There were our fifth show very early on. And quick rundown of their story. David Charbonnet was the son who followed in his dad Mike’s footsteps, joined the Seals, and then he was hurt in a parachuting accident and he was paralyzed. And while he was telling that story, Warwick, I don’t know if you remember, but while he was telling that story, you were telling your story. And I was trying to make a point about how no matter where, your crucibles can be similar. Even if the circumstances are different, the emotions are often the same.
Gary S:
And you made an offhand comment that your crucible certainly wasn’t as devastating or I forget the words you used as David Charbonnet’s might have been. And Mike, his dad, stopped you and said, “We should never compare our crucibles, never compare our pain, because what’s the most painful for you is the most painful for you.” So, the idea that the flip side to what Ryan did was to say, “Geez, I don’t have it as bad as that guy.” The idea of saying still knowing that your crucible, your pain, is your pain and not to just dismiss it, to live through it, to accept it, like Michelle did, to take it, to realize it’s there, to accept it, and then move on, I think is an important bit of what we’ve been able to draw out of guests as we’ve talked to them.
Warwick F:
No, that’s so true. I mean, it was inspirational what Mike Charbonnet shared, that your pain, your crucible, you can’t compare it. It’s every bit as painful. That was a remarkable episode because you had both father and son Navy SEALs. Mike thought about his son, that his son was subjectively maybe could be one of the best SEALs ever. As a Navy SEAL, you don’t make those comments idly. And so, that was Mike’s perspective. To see his son just paralyzed and his career dream gone was tough, and it was obviously tough for the son. But physically, there was only limited ability to overcome that, but he’s now heading up a vet rehabilitation clinic in San Diego and sort of latest technology to help vets have the best movement they can. And so again, using his pain for a purpose, and that’s also inspirational. David Charbonnet could have given up on life and felt very angry and bitter, but he didn’t. He’s using his pain to help others and help other vets. Yeah, I applaud him for his life and how he approaches it.
Gary S:
He is living a life of significance. Another guest that I think of when we talk about this subject of physical crucibles is a man named Tim Hague. Tim is one of the few people, it’s very rare, who was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. Tim was a nurse, so he kind of knew it was coming even before. He felt the tremors and he felt some things, and he knew that’s what it was and the diagnosis was confirmed. He was 46. He was active and he was vibrant, and suddenly this disease began to attack his body and slow him down and make it hard for him to do things that he had taken for granted.
Gary S:
One of the things he said at the end of that show that I think was so inspirational was he had to believe there was something good in it for him as he processed early onset Parkinson’s. He said he had to believe there was something good in it for him. Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense. What he was saying was, “The lessons of this crucible, I have to learn them and apply them because that will be good for me, and then by extension, good for others, helping others.”
Warwick F:
Tim Hague was also incredibly inspirational. He’s a person of faith, Canadian. Because he’s been a nurse for a very long time, as soon as he started feeling that tremor in his left toe, he knew, as you say, he knew immediately what that was, Parkinson’s. Didn’t need to go to the doctor. Obviously he did, got the whole tests, and started a simple process of figuring that out. But obviously, you’ve got to be angry, frustrated. It’s like, “Really? 46?” I mean, that hardly ever happens to somebody so young, but he did not let it destroy him. He knows all the data. He knows the actor Michael J. Fox has helped raise millions, if not billions, of research into Parkinson’s that so far has not really found a cure. I mean, in his perspective, all the best will in the world hasn’t accomplished that much objectively. Not that there hasn’t been a huge amount of effort, but there’s not been much forward progress in significantly finding a cure. But yet, he has turned his challenge and he’s not let it get him down. He won the Amazing Race Canada, which him and his son did.
Gary S:
Awesome.
Warwick F:
How is that possible with Parkinson’s and that kind of disability to win? I mean, that was a miracle. It’s a whole nother story worth listening to podcast for more details, but he now helps other people with Parkinson’s disease. While there is no cure, with the proper diet, exercise and mindset, you can be more functional. You can have significant difference in your functionalities which I didn’t realize. And so, he is really helping a lot of folks with Parkinson’s have the best quality of life that they can. So again, a real inspirational figure. I don’t sense he’s not happy that he has Parkinson’s, but it’s not destroying him. He’s not in a well of bitterness that’s eating away like acid at his soul every day. That’s not him. Really an inspiration.
Gary S:
He’s a young man, Tim Hague, a young man with an older person’s ailment, disease. This leads me to segue into our next area, which is emotional crucibles. Because among all of the emotional crucibles we talked about, when I think of young man and doing something that you tend to only think happens to folks who have a little bit more tread off the tires, I think of Adom Appiah. Adom is a 16 year old young man, one of the most remarkable people we’ve talked to because his perspective on things, his maturity in dealing with his crucibles and his perspective on how to come back from that is so far beyond his years. I’ve never heard you in an interview, Warwick, say wow or just be blown away by what a guest says more than I heard you in that interview with Adom.
Gary S:
It all started for him when he grew up in eighth grade. He finally, after dreaming for years, he wanted to be in the national spelling bee, but he got knocked out of the national spelling bee early. This thing that he’s dreamt of for maybe half his life or a third of his life, because he’s only in eighth grade at the time, he’s dreamt about it, he studied for it, he’s done all of these things, but he got knocked out early. Now, how many people who in eighth grade, how many young people… I’ll raise my hand and say, when I was in eighth grade, if I got knocked off of something I wanted really badly, I wasn’t going to do what Adom Appiah did.
Gary S:
Adom didn’t feel sorry for himself. He didn’t have a fit. He didn’t sulk. He didn’t blow up. He turned his attention into consoling the other kids who’d also fallen short. He reached out and helped those who also had their dreams, their young dreams crushed by that experience. And that just started a series of events in his life that has led him now at age 16, he’s the author of two books and the founder of a very successful fundraising nonprofit called Ball4Good. He’s already, at age 16, living a life of significance that is focused on building a legacy of service to others. And that is impressive at any age, superlatively impressive at 16.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. I mean, Adom is one of the most inspirational guests we’ve had because the amount of wisdom he has for his age, I’d say the amount of wisdom he has for any age was just mind blowing. It’s a combination of wisdom and maturity. I mean, it’s just here he is at a young age, eighth grade. This whole spelling bee thing, it wasn’t just a whim. He’d been dreaming of this for a couple of years or so. I mean, this was something. It was a goal, a dream. He was passionate about it. He worked hard. All you have to do on that spelling bee is miss one word and that’s it. Yeah, he was frustrated. It wasn’t like he didn’t feel those emotions, but it didn’t take long, as you say, for him to shift his thinking to console the other kids. I mean, what kid does that? I think he was still in middle school at that time. I guess eighth grade, he would have been. I mean, it’s just stunning.
Warwick F:
As you say, he writes two books Bouncing Back from Failure and then Kids Can Change The World. I mean, how many people do you know who have written two books before they’d even finished high school. It’s just absolutely staggering. As you say, he started this whole nonprofit Ball4Good. He’s got a lot of very wise people on the board. He’s done everything the right way to get the smartest people, but he is so mature. When you ask him, somehow the word legacy came up and I was almost embarrassed to ask him about it.
Gary S:
Right. What happened was he was talking about how his dad always had told him the importance of just doing you, it’s the way that he put it, and that what you need to do to make your legacy one you can be proud of. This is what he said about his legacy, “I just want to be able to help definitely more people than I’ve helped now.”
Adom Appiah:
My dad always tells me the importance of just doing you and doing what you need to do, what your legacy should be. And so, he’s taught me how I should listen to others, how I should take into account what everybody has to say, and then pick what I believe to be important and ingrain that in my life.
Warwick F:
Another amazing word. I don’t think I’ve heard pretty much any 16 year olds mentioned is legacy. What do you want your legacy to be? That’s something people think about on their death bed. It’s typically, “Man, I made lots of money,” or whatever happened and oops, “I neglected my family. I was so driven.” Whether it’s in any field of endeavor, business, sports, the arts, but you’re thinking about legacy right now. I mean, do you have any inklings of what you want your legacy to be? It’s probably a massive question, but since you brought up the word.
Gary S:
I bet you do. I bet you do.
Adom Appiah:
I have some broad aspirations as to… I just want to be able to help definitely more people than I’ve helped now. I want to be able to get to a point where I can consider myself a true philanthropist and be able to allow people to benefit, be able to help with the issues of the world and whatever way I can, whether that’s in leadership or in financial contributions. I just want to be able to say at the end of my life that I was able to make a difference. I was able to help.
Gary S:
For any young man who’s 16 to already have helped people at the extent Adom has helped people by getting through Ball4Good a professional basketball player, Zion Williamson, to be part of the celebrity basketball team. He wants to be able to get to a point where I can consider myself a true philanthropist. I mean, that’s amazing.
Warwick F:
It really is. I mean, not everybody thinks about legacy, but very few folks in high school think about legacy. It’s just too soon. You’re thinking about getting through high school, perhaps college.
Gary S:
Girls, boys.
Warwick F:
Yeah, a job. But I guess legacy ultimately, I guess, is defined when you’re on your deathbed, what do you want your legacy to be? He thought about that. As you say, he wants to be thought of as a philanthropist. He said that at the end of his life, he wants to be able to say that he was able to make a difference. I mean, he knows what it is. He’s not defined by how big that is. I think in not so many words you realize it’s just changing one life is enough. He just has such mature perspective. He already has a handle on what legacy means and what he wants his to be. I can’t think of anybody else his age who was that mature and that thoughtful and is even thinking about legacy, let alone have a very well thought out perspective on it. I mean, that’s why it was so amazing. His maturity and his wisdom was off the charts. It was mind blowing. It was just hard to believe.
Gary S:
For him to be able to deal with that emotional crucible of, and we discovered this with a number of guests, sometimes the most emotional, the hardest crucibles, the trials and tragedies of their lives happened very early. We have had other guests who didn’t get on the basketball team when they were growing up, and that was in eighth grade and it still haunts them. It still was an issue that they had, a sticking point that they had to get over. For that crucible that Adom went through at that age to lead him not five years down the road to realize, “Aha, I need to help people,” he realized within minutes. Rather than going back to his room at the hotel for the spelling bee and sulking, he must started helping other kids and he’s continuing to do that.
Gary S:
That is inspirational. That is a pointer to everybody who goes through a crucible of any type, particularly an emotional crucible, that you can move beyond your emotional crucible. One of the first things you can do is help others, right? What’s the best way to stop thinking about your own problems? Go focus your attention on helping somebody with their problems.
Gary S:
Another guest who as a young man, as a young boy who we had, who dealt with an extraordinarily difficult emotional crucible was Jim Daly. Jim Daly is the president of the nonprofit ministry Focus on the Family. Full disclosure, I used to work for Jim and I’m a friend of Jim’s. I used to say about the kind of man Jim Daly is, about the kind of man that Jim Daly, the kind of leader Jim Daly is. I would tell people that I would follow Jim Daly into a burning building simply because he told me to, he asked me to. I wouldn’t need to know why we were going into the burning building. I would know because I know his character, because I know his dedication to helping families. I would follow him into that building because I knew I would know that his reason for going in was a good, selfless one focused on helping others.
Gary S:
But what Jim unpacked for us when we talked to him, his emotional crucible, incredible that he leads this global nonprofit organization that helps keep families together, helps families thrive, given what his own background was like, abandoned by his alcoholic father at five, he lost his mother to cancer four years later and had no one to turn to but his four older siblings. He spent time in foster care, where he dealt with what he called unreal, a family named the Real family. Jim names them, they are the Real family, and he said they’re actually the unreal family. He went through so much loneliness and so much pain and so much dejection, and yet he pushed through it. Perhaps not in minutes like Adom did, but it took a period of time, he also found himself in a position where he wanted to help other people. And that’s what he’s doing today as the head of Focus on the Family.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, a number of people have heard of Jim Daly, the CEO of Focus on the Family that has a worldwide ministry, a faith-based that does a lot of good for families, but they don’t always know the backstory, which obviously working with him you knew, but I didn’t, and just being abandoned had an alcoholic father, mother dies of cancer. On the day of his mother’s funeral, his stepfather just walks out on him and his siblings and he was the youngest. I mean, he’s just abandoned. And then you think maybe there’s hope in foster care, and it wasn’t very good. So he had a really tough life, but somehow he didn’t let that destroy him.
Warwick F:
I think first maybe positive influence, I think was a football coach of his in high school. And that to have a positive role model in a male figure was something he hadn’t experienced. Somehow there was a turn in his life and ended up going to college and working his way up in the corporate world before the opportunity came to come to Focus on the Family, but he had about as tough an upbringing as anybody I know. It was really, really grim.
Gary S:
In our conversation, he offered, I think a great piece of advice to people who have children about if they’re going through difficult times, what do you do?
Jim Daly:
So, one piece of advice I have for people is if you’re going through difficulty as a parent, let your kids in on it in an age appropriate way. For me, I had to go from having a normal, dysfunctional family to all of a sudden learning one Saturday morning that my mom had died the night before. It wasn’t expected. I wasn’t anticipating it. I couldn’t read the signs and put it all together. So it was a jolt to me to learn that the person who was the most loving, kind person in my life, all of a sudden was gone. I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye to her.
Gary S:
I mean, that is really good advice, isn’t it?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, he didn’t have a really positive role model of people doing that to him, his stepdad saying, “Hey, your mom has died. Let’s talk about this.” Not only did they not have a conversation, he just left. So it was as bad as it could be. So obviously, with his own kids, he’s being more open. There is an age appropriate way to talk about challenges you’re going through, but just not talking about challenges with your kids, it is just not helpful. I think psychologists would tell us kids want to be told something. You can’t tell them nothing. But he’s remarkable to me. One of the most remarkable things about his story is he’s not a bitter, vindictive or angry man.
Warwick F:
He could have been angry at his alcoholic dad, at his stepfather, at his foster family, but he’s not. I mean, it doesn’t mean that he condones. We talk about that quite a bit on Beyond the Crucible. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you condone poor or abhorrent behavior, but he keeps moving forward. I asked him about that and I can’t remember his exact words, but it was something that you just move forward. You don’t let that get you down. He’s somebody that I’m sure reflective, but he doesn’t reflect about all the pain. He keeps moving forward and trying to help others. He’s forward-focused, focused on helping others.
Gary S:
That was episode 13, listeners, so you can go back and you can hear it because one of the things I did, I remember now, as we talk about it, one of the things I did in that show is I drew everyone’s attention to the fact that even as he was talking about these really traumatic things, there was a joy to him about the other side of those traumatic things. In other words, he wasn’t overjoyed that his mother had passed away. He wasn’t overjoyed that he was abandoned or that he had trouble in foster care, but the lessons he learned from that and then how he applied those lessons in his life as the head of Focus on the Family, there was joy in his voice. He laughed. I mean, there are a few people I’ve met in my life, let alone worked for, who laugh as much as Jim Daly and as robustly as Jim Daly. And that’s an important thing, that authenticity of who he is, that finding the joy in the difficult moments of your life is-
Warwick F:
It is.
Gary S:
… extraordinarily important.
Warwick F:
I think for him, and we talk about this also quite a lot in Beyond the Crucible is in order to bounce back, you’ve got to have some core of beliefs, values, something inner core. For him, he’s a very strong man of faith, faith in Christ. That’s probably one of the cornerstones of him. But wherever you get it from, you’ve got to have some internal core of convictions and belief that can help fuel your path back, that can, from his perspective, help him forgive. So he’s got this joy, but there’s an anchor in his soul that fuels his joy, I guess is the point. So find your anchor, whatever that may be-
Gary S:
Right. There you go.
Warwick F:
… everybody has to find their own, but you got to have one.
Gary S:
Right. One of the big principles of crucible leadership, for sure. A couple of other guests, Warwick, that we’ve had on, again, who really struck me, who have gone through emotional crucibles, one of them was Sarah Nannen. The title that we put on Sarah’s episode was simply Lean Into Your Pain. Her story was that her husband, she was not just a military wife, but an officer and her husband was a military pilot and he died in a training accident. She went through some difficult crucibles. But again, as she talked about how she came out of those, there was joy in her voice, but it was not easy. It was kind of double crucibles for her as well, wasn’t it?
Warwick F:
It was. I mean, she had four children under six, the youngest just a few months old. When you see in the movies, you see those two military folks coming up your driveway. And as soon as she saw them, just like in the movie, she knew exactly what it was about. They were going to tell her that she is a naval officer and they were going to tell her that her husband, a fighter pilot, was killed in a training accident. Obviously, she goes through incredible grief. I mean, she loses her husband. She’s got young kids. How is she going to survive this? But she is one tough person in the best sense of that word. She is a survivor. Part of obviously, how do you move on from something like that? I mean, it takes years. But the other crucible was, as she puts it, people put her in a widow box.
Warwick F:
They expected her to be this grieving widow for the rest of her life because if she really wanted to honor her military hero pilot, she should put her life on hold and permanently grieve, permanently weep, not move on, not find another relationship. Nobody would probably ever say that to her. It was a look in their eyes. It was almost the expectations. People mean well, but she was not going to be in that widow box. So she has moved on in her life and relationships. She really has a mission to help other widows, whether it be through military widows or widows from other causes, not just be put in that box and move on. It’s not just possible that she puts it to overcome that kind of crucible. It’s possible to thrive. For some you use the T word thrive, it feels like if you’re thriving, you must not have loved your husband. May won’t say that, but people think some very bad things, unfortunately, and she refuses to accept that. She doesn’t apologize for thriving. It’s not dishonoring her husband. So she also is a true inspiration.
Gary S:
Yeah. Also inspirational, and I tend to know all of our examples here in the emotional crucible category, another friend of mine, Esther Fleece Allen. She was our first guest, the first person who we ever interviewed on Beyond the Crucible. Esther’s story, which I knew well, but still learned some things in our conversation, Esther’s story was that she had a traumatic childhood of abuse and abandonment, but she rose above that as she moved beyond the crucible. She carved out a successful career as a speaker and writer, and we actually worked together for a spell.
Gary S:
But then, the father that she feared who had abandoned her when she was young resurfaced in her life and stalked her. She realized that the successful life she’d built was a bit of a defense mechanism to avoid processing her pain. She has focused herself now to lament on those crucible experiences, to feel them completely, to, as the title of the Sarah Nannen’s episode says, lean into your pain. Esther Fleece Allen learned to lean into her pain. From that, she’s been set free of some of the pain that she experienced that led her to kind of, as she put it in her first book, to fake fine.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, Esther Fleece Allen, kind of like Sarah Nannen, she’s a fighter, she’s a survivor. I mean, truly, truly impressive. As you mentioned, abandoned by her parents. Later on, father stalked her. I mean, in high school, what’s amazing is she was raised by parents of friends at high school. She’d go from place to place, and I think she was getting straight A’s, active in high school. I mean, how is that possible? I asked her about that and says, well, I mean, she, wasn’t going to let this define her, destroy her. She’s one of these people that just, I guess they talk about fight or flight, she was absolutely on the fight side. “I’m not going to let this get me down. I’m just going for it.” But as she was doing all of that, that really led as you know better than I, her first book, No More Faking Fine.
Warwick F:
On the outside, she was seen to be this high achieving young woman. She’s going for it, getting it done. But on the inside, there’s still the pain that maybe she was pushing down. And so, she realized she needed to deal with it. I love her new book, Your New Name, which is really obviously a faith perspective, Your New Name, from her perspective faith, Your New Name, and Jesus, so to speak, but it’s almost like you’re not defined by your narrative that you grew up with. You’re not defined by the story of abandonment. You can chart your own course. You can have your own new name. So her ability to jump, to survive, but like Sarah Nannen, to thrive and deal with the pain, the emotional pain, and just have this light and this joy is also truly remarkable.
Gary S:
Hopefully, listeners, what you hear when you hear these stories of the way in which these individuals have bounced, not back from, through their crucibles. It maybe doesn’t take just a couple of minutes like it did for Adom Appiah. Sometimes it can take 30 years like it did for Michelle Kuei, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is significance at the end of the pain. And that’s what we’ve discovered through our first 49 episodes of Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
Another guest, Warwick, as we switch now into professional crucibles, those things that happened to us in our working life, another guest who offers that example and perspective of light at the end of the tunnel, that perspective of moving beyond things that held you down for a long period of time is Cathleen Merkel. Cathleen Merkel grew up in communist East Germany, and she was taught that her value came from doing what others expected of her, working hard, not upsetting the established order of things, but then the Berlin Wall fell and freedom came and she tentatively stepped into that in ways that weren’t always great for her.
Gary S:
She pursued professional goals and personal goals with a passion, but they didn’t satisfy her in the way that she thought they would satisfy her. She had some issues with her staffs and her bosses told her some things that we don’t like to hear from our bosses. It sent her reeling a little bit in her early professional career, and that professional setback, that professional disruption led to some challenges for her.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I found Cathleen Merkel just a remarkable woman. She’s somebody that is very driven. I mean, she grew up, as you mentioned, in communist East Germany and you think sort of German work ethic, go at it, very driven. So she was in her 20s, 30s, just working her way up the corporate ladder doing amazingly well, but it was kind of like, “I’m going to get this done no matter what.” And she was kind of walking over people. She was almost, from her perspective, being too German. She’s giving people feedback very directly, very bluntly. “This isn’t working. I need you to do this.” She had a boss say to her, “You need to tone it down a bit. People don’t like you.”
Warwick F:
Now, interestingly enough for her, her boss was a woman. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, some male boss saying to some woman, ‘Oh you need to be more nice.’ ” It was a woman telling her. Yeah. So that, she couldn’t really dismiss that. It’s just somebody that just doesn’t get it. And so she really took that to heart and there was a couple of crucibles there. One is just how she hated feeling like people were scared of her. Maybe I don’t know about didn’t like or somebody scared of her. Nobody wants people to be scared of them who works for you. That’s not good. But she realized she didn’t have a life. I think she went on a trip with some folks to Indonesia. I think it might have been Bali, I believe. And she realized she had no life. It was all work. She had no social life, no vacation. Everything was work. She came to a point in that trip when she realized she didn’t know who she was. She was just this driven workaholic, if you will.
Gary S:
Right. There was a moment in that interview, Warwick, there was a moment in that interview that it still impresses me so much about the way that you drew out of her what she was going through. It impressed her too, because she actually, at some point, I think in the interview stopped and said, “I’m going to write that down,” because some of the insights that we were discussing, she was like, “Oh, that’s good.” But she talks about the importance of having friends around her. It wasn’t just about work. So she packed herself up with friends and she let her emotions out with them and it led to an extraordinary turning point, where she said she started nourishing her body and her soul again.
Cathleen Merkel:
I started nourishing my body and my soul again. I had life coaching sessions. I had nutrition sessions, Ayurvedic, that sounded very German, Ayurvedic food and massages and all of these things, and I had a lot of meditation sessions in yoga. But the most important thing was I was surrounded by kindness, unconditional kindness, which I haven’t really received a lot or I didn’t quite know what that was. I started simply being myself. I remember when I left after three and a half weeks there, one of the guests said to me, “My goodness, it’s beautiful to see the real you.” I was literally standing there in tears because I could feel those walls we’re gone. I was just feeling so amazing about myself.
Warwick F:
So did you feel like in that moment, that for the first time you met Cathleen Merkel, that you didn’t really know who she was, so this is who I am. Who knew? Maybe I can smile. Maybe I can forgive myself if I make a mistake. It’s like, that must’ve been a strange experience to meet yourself in a sense, the real you for the first time.
Cathleen Merkel:
It was strange and beautiful. I actually got goosebumps listening to you describing me. It was just absolutely stunning. And I was crying because I was just so full of gratitude and joy about it. Suddenly it felt like a rock fell off my shoulders and it felt light and easy. And life started feeling just super easy.
Gary S:
That for me is one of the most meaningful moving exchanges we’ve had on the show.
Warwick F:
It really was because I think a lot of people are there. They work hard. They’re driven, especially in 20s, 30s, 40s, you’re working your way up. You want to get the brass ring. You want to kind of be CEO, vice president, have a good life, none of which is wrong, but she was very driven and she realized, what is this all for? It’s easy to get caught up in the kind of conditional love. Oh, maybe people will like me or love me if I’m successful and that kind of mindset. And as she was in Bali with some friends, they didn’t know the corporate Cathleen Merkel. She found, I think, as she put it, the real Cathy, and she didn’t know who that person was, she was meeting herself. And it’s like, this person can laugh. Can have friends, can have fun. And she was enjoying herself. And she realized it was okay to be Cathleen Merkel. She didn’t have to be Cathleen Merkel, the corporate success, watch out she’s coming because she might snap your head off or something.
Warwick F:
And so that really changed her whole life. And so now she coaches and trains women leaders in particular to not just be successful, but have balance. And it’s not just about, you can be successful and work your way up the corporate ladder, but you can have balance and have joy. And that’s really her mission, especially to get women leaders, not just success, but joy and balance. And so that’s a very important message. And her whole countless now it’s full of joy. She’s a very joyful person. Yeah. She works hard. She is driven, but she’s joyful. And that’s an important message I think for all of us.
Gary S:
And it’s also the story, interestingly enough, of another guest who had a much different kind of professional crucible, and that’s of the things I love about Beyond the Crucible in general, and about us taking time here for a 50th episode, to revisit some of the themes and some of the guests and some of the insights that they have, because there is no matter how different someone’s crucibles are in detail, in execution the way they’ve affected you, how you react to them and then how you overcome them. There’s so much similarity across those lines.
Gary S:
And the guest I’m speaking of in this case is Whitney Singletary-White, episode 42 listener, if you want to check that one out. Whitney’s story just fascinated me. I found Whitney, I did a Google search, I think, for a professional setback or something like that, her name popped up in a story that was in the newspaper in Berkeley, California. And Whitney at age three, she baked her first batch of cookies and she laughed as she told the story on the podcast, she uses as one of her secret ingredients, mud. And her grandfather was so encouraging, he ate it and said, “Yeah, that was pretty good. It’d be even better if there wasn’t any mud in it, but good for you.”
Gary S:
And that led her down the road to want to have a bakery. And she worked hard to make that happen to the point that she developed her own kind of cookies. Her business is called Nuttin’ Butter Cookies. And that’s because there’s nuts. They’re all nut-based cookies. And she talks in the show about all these different exotic kind of nuts. And neither one of us ever heard of. And it was great, but her professional crucible came when first, she got assaulted while she was baking from her home in her apartment, then that got resolved and she got a storefront and she was finally stepping out. She was doing it, but it was early 2020, the spring of 2020. And we all know what happened. Then COVID-19 hit and she had to shut down, and that led her to begin selling her cookies out of her driveway. And the pluck that she demonstrated there was just amazing to me and the spirit, boy, she’s a formidable person for sure. Isn’t she?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, Whitney Singletary-White is also an inspiration. I mean, she grew up in Bakersfield, California, I guess it’s pretty hot. And she pretty much said there’s not a whole lot to see you there. And she now lives in Berkeley and that story with her grandpa, that was just so amazing. I mean, it’s interesting as she’s part of a life with a mom with two small kids, a single mom, and she just had this dream of cookies and of just every kind of nut cookie you can imagine. And she said many of the nuts we’d never heard of. I think obviously, pecan, sesame haven’t really had sesame cookies before, but she just had this dream and she wasn’t going to give up. She also was very resilient. She finally gets a store in Berkeley and then COVID hits.
Warwick F:
And not only do they have to close, I think the landlord didn’t want to let her out of the lease, which is… And then he says, what can I do for you? Well, how about letting me out of my lease?
Gary S:
How about being a human being, and let me out of my lease-
Warwick F:
Yeah. Which I’m not quite sure that ever got worked out. So then she’s got to go back try to sell cookies in her apartment building. And as you mentioned, she ends up getting beaten up from, I think, the people across the road and aided by some of the folks in her apartment building, badly beaten up. And then if things aren’t any worse at some point during all of this, she gets a flu injection that was not done well. And her arm was out of action for a long time. You can’t bake without two arms. So she’s had a lot of stuff, but yet, like some of our guests, she just has this grit. She does not give up. She has this ability to overcome.
Gary S:
Right. And she said of all of the succinct expressions of what it takes to move beyond a crucible, of all the people who’ve said some things that are great takeaways for listeners to grab onto and hope through in their own crucibles. She said something that toward the end of that show Warwick that was just so on-point, and so honest and transparent and real when she said that, “Help can come from the most unexpected place.”
Whitney Singletary-White:
Help comes in the most unexpected places when you least expect it, at that moment when you feel that you really can’t go on, there is always going to be that one person that you wouldn’t expect to do it we’ll reach out and help you. And I find that you can’t really fail if you don’t keep trying, because once you give up, you failed, you’re done that’s over. But if your you’re like, “I still got it, I could still make it.” You could still get that little bit in there. You can still push through just enough. It’s hard. It hurts. But once you get past that moment, you can sit back and go, I made it. I overcome that. I’m no longer feeling that pain anymore. I’m finally where I need to be. You could get yourself out of it. We got to pull ourselves out of the mud sometimes and dust off the mud, we’ll walk through was drying on and cracked up in those pants and flake it off and get going, was just sometimes you just have to do it.
Warwick F:
It is remarkable when you’re really going for it, and you’re not letting things get you down is amazing. In the era of COVID, there was limitations on how much you can get from the store. Well she bakes cookies. So she needs a whole bunch of flour, eggs, butter, the whole deal when they were rationed. But she had a bunch of friends saying, “Look, I can get some extra, I can afford to get you a little bit of extra, and I’ll just drop it off.” And all these people came out of the woodwork trying to help her.
Gary S:
Right. It’s like at the end of it, It’s a Wonderful Life, when everybody shows up and gives George Bailey…
Warwick F:
Yeah, exactly. But her attitude is really remarkable. She has this phrase in which she says, “You can’t really fail if you just keep trying, if you don’t give up.” So she never gives up. And that’s how she defines not failing is just keep trying. And there were times when it was bad, when she was really hurt, and injured, from being beaten up and her two little kids said, “It’s okay, Mommy, don’t give up.” And I guess, she must have told the kids that a fair amount. And her ability in some very difficult circumstances just to keep going is just remarkable. She’s even won over the local fire department and-
Gary S:
And the police department.
Warwick F:
Police department. I mean, they love her cookies so much as she puts it, she has free security. Just come by and says, “Hey, Whitney. Everything okay. Do you need anything?” It’s like-
Gary S:
The police department has traded donuts for her cookies. Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Oh, yeah. Nobody’s going to mess with her. They kind of know that she has friends in the right places. So truly remarkable woman.
Gary S:
And as we round out having discussions about the crucible guests that we’ve had on, a couple other folks that we’ve talked to over the last year plus, who experienced professional crucibles come to mind for me, one of them, Tommy Breedlove. Tommy Breedlove is a really, talk about a go-getter, here’s another go-getter. He had some crucible moments, physical and emotional violence when he was young. But he moved beyond that and he was killing it in corporate America. He was the guy with the gold cufflinks, I think he says, or platinum or whatever, precious metal they were made out of. And he wasn’t just on the fast track. He was ahead of other people on the fast track. And yet, while his career was skyrocketing, his personal life wasn’t doing as well. And he found himself one night, didn’t know how he got there, but he was lying in a ditch in his native Atlanta. And he was trying to figure out how he got there both physically and circumstantially. How did he end up there? And the way that he came back was through what he calls, learning how to live a legendary life.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Tommy Breedlove is also a remarkable person. I mean, he grew up in a blue collar neighborhood in Atlanta. It was not the easiest neighborhood. Now, looks at himself that he was a bully when he was a young age, which that’s a hard thing to live with. Nobody wants to be a bully, at least not when they’ve had some more perspective. He ends up getting in prison. And somehow he bounces back from that. It was one individual, I think an African-American older man in prison, that just kind of helped inspire him. And so he works at this financial services firm and you’re right. As you say, he was killing it. He was doing really well.
Warwick F:
But he got to a point where it’s like, is this all there is? And he told his boss, “Look, I’m going to resign.” And he said, “You’re nuts. You’re going to make a staggering amount of money an enormous amount of money. Do you know how much you’re giving up?” And he did. And he basically said, “My soul is not for sale.” And he realized that there’s more to life than just success. He believes in success. That from his perspective, a legendary life is more about living a life on purpose, thinking of others, balance, self love as he puts it, which is really taking care of yourself. And that’s been a challenge for Tommy just because of how he grew up with, you can get into the scenario where many are, oh, if I’m successful, then maybe not only will other people love me. Maybe I can love myself. And somehow they feel like being successful, which it never really solves. Never really helps that.
Warwick F:
But he has a more balanced life, he genuinely loves himself. And the healthy sense of that word, he speaks. He’s written a book, Legendary. He has true friends. He has an inner counsel, if you will, to help him stay on the right track. And he has a good life, a life on purpose, a legendary life. But yeah, he is an inspiration for those who were just going flat out in the corporate world, you can be successful, but you can be more than successful as we say, you can be having a life on purpose, a life of significance.
Gary S:
Yeah. And it’s interesting that so many people that we’ve had on the show have asked various forms of that question that you pointed out to Tommy asked, and that is, is this all there is? So many people have achieved some goal, dream, whatever it was, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as they maybe thought it was. I remember one guest, I forget who it was now. It might’ve been Cathleen Merkel where I said, “You reach for the brass ring and you realize it’s lead.” And we’ve had folks who have experienced that in a variety of different ways. And that’s, I think, a resonant point that a lot of us can identify with. Is that what we think we want once we get it, or isn’t exactly what we want. And sometimes the crucible can be “Success itself.”
Warwick F:
There’s the parable, if you will, of the anthill, where all these ants are kind of crawling up all over themselves and the anthill to reach the top. And one ant says to the other ant, “What’s up there?” I don’t know, but everybody else has going for it. So it must be good. And it’s only once you reach the top, it’s like, is this all there is, but on the way up, you just crawling all over yourself and all over others. Success is fine, but success in it of itself, which is a big theme of Beyond the Crucible and Crucible Leadership doesn’t satisfy. So certainly he is a testament to that.
Gary S:
And the last professional crucible that we’ll go over here is Robert Krantz. Bob Krantz is a Hollywood filmmaker, actor, producer, writer. He is sort of like Alan Alda, if you remember when you watched the old mash episodes, Alan Alda did everything. He acted, he wrote, produced, directed. Bob Krantz does that. And he just a year ago produced a film called Faith, Hope & Love. It’s a dancing movie with a woman whose name I can’t pronounce. I believe her first name is Peta. I believe isn’t she Australian as well.
Warwick F:
She is, of course. We try to get Australians into every episode if we can.
Gary S:
I think that’s fabulous. I did not realize that. We need to do it. Episode 51, will be about all of the Australians we’ve had on the show. But Bob Krantz did this movie Faith, Hope & Love. And I remember I was so impressed by it that I reached out to him to be on the show because his character in the movie and its semi-autobiographical, the movie, his character in the movie goes through some crucibles. And I figured out, Bob Krantz must have some crucibles and indeed he did. But what I remember about that Warwick is I sent you a copy of the film, where I arranged for him to send you a link to the film. And you told the story. I mean, tell folks how your entire family, which is hard to do for an entire family, but they all loved it. Right?
Warwick F:
They did. And yeah, I mean, I have two boys and a girl in their 20s and it’s hard to find… The boys like action movies, my daughter more comedy, romantic comedies, my tastes are pretty broad. Don’t like horror, but anything else I’m pretty much good for, my wife has pretty broad tastes, but there was a message of faith. There was dancing. It made you laugh. There was a story of redemption. I mean, it had everything in there. You laughed, you cried. It had everything in there. It was very inspirational. It was a terrific movie. And Netflix picked it up. I don’t know, it was something at one point it was on the trending movies on Netflix or most popular. And it’s really a terrific movie.
Gary S:
And his story, his professional crucible was early in his career as a hyphenate, as a Hollywood hyphenate, writer, director, actor, producer. He wrote a film, again, it was a semi-autobiographical film and it was to his mind and to the people that he showed it to in his circle, it was a fabulous movie. He had the backing of some names in Hollywood and he’s all set up for a screening with some studio executives, which is the motherlode in Hollywood. I worked in Hollywood. It’s the motherlode of Hollywood to get studio execs, to come to your screening and to see your movie. And while he’s doing that, something happens that’s extremely crucible-esque, what happened?
Warwick F:
The project stopped. I think the bulb blew-
Gary S:
The bulb.
Warwick F:
I think he might have even asked the folks, okay, so you got spare bulb. He might’ve even done that in advance. So yeah, we’re covered. We know we’re doing, and of course, they didn’t have a spare. It was horrendous.
Gary S:
Yeah. And what happened when that crucible hit, his movie did not get picked up for distribution. And that led him that, and a personal crucible involving a dangerous pregnancy that his wife who had triplets a very touch and go pregnancy that his wife had, the combination of those two things. His wife did indeed have the triplets. And Bob decided the professional crucible made it somewhat easier to make that decision to stay and make sure he was present because he almost lost those three children. He wanted to be present with them and he didn’t make a movie for about a decade. So his professional crucible, which began when the bulb burned out, undone by a bulb, then some personal crucibles hit. He didn’t make a movie. Faith, Hope & Love was his first movie in 10 years. That again, is a story of sticking with it, having perseverance and pursuing your vision in spite of what life might throw at you in between.
Warwick F:
And it’s also another story of just kind of anchoring your vision in your values. He also is a person of faith. And for him, I think I remember him almost having this proverbial conversation with God is like, if my kids survive, I’m going to be present. It was almost like a conscious decision.
Gary S:
That’s right.
Warwick F:
And he did, now, he’s a driven guy. And as you know better than I, in Hollywood, if you’re going to make a movie, it’s pedal to the metal, there’s not a whole lot of spare time, you’re at it. And so he probably would not have been present. So for somebody in Hollywood that loves making movies to take 10 years off from making movies to sacrifice them for his kids is remarkable. I think they’re either in college maybe out of college by now, but he has a great relationship with them because he was present.
Warwick F:
Another message is you can’t sacrifice your soul. It’s sort of like that song I often think of by Cat Stevens, Cats in the Cradle. You don’t want to be that person when it’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ll be there soon, son.” I mean, you don’t get those years back. And so he made a choice and if you have a belief in the almighty, I feel like somebody up there, honored that, because Faith, Hope & Love is a great movie. And I think he’s doing pretty well considering what he’s been through, but that was a conscious choice. I’m not going to sacrifice my family. And it was a miracle that he had those three kids, the doctors multiple times said to his wife, “You’ve got to terminate this because your life’s in danger,” countless times she said, “I’m not doing that.” That was her choice. I’m not doing that. And so he was going to honor his wife and honor his family, and he was not going to sacrifice them for some career goal.
Gary S:
Right. And his life of significance has become those three boys. And now producing quality values, laden entertainment, that is not just for the choir. It’s not just for the Christian choir. As you pointed out, not only was that movie Faith, Hope & Love on Netflix and did well, but he signed a two-year deal with Netflix to produce more content. So that is how overcoming moving beyond his crucible, he’s led him to a life of significance.
Gary S:
I love what we’re going to talk about next Warwick. And I haven’t told you why I love it, because I just realized why I love it. Why I love it. We’re going to move now listeners into the perspective guests that we’ve had on the show in our first 49 episodes, as we continue our discussion in our 50th episode of some of the highlights of Beyond the Crucible. The two folks who we’re really going to spotlight here actually represent, I think, the things that you and I sort of love the most or really like the most in pursuits. We have one guest, right? Jeff Kemp, who’s a former NFL quarterback and I’m an enormous football fan. And we have another guest, Nancy Koehn, who’s a professor at Harvard Business School, which not only you graduated from, but she’s a historian who writes about leadership and you love history and leadership.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
So this should be a really fun one for us to go through. Jeff Kemp, interesting guy in that, Jeff Kemp is a second generation NFL quarterback. He was a second generation NFL quarterback. His dad was Jack Kemp. Jack Kemp was a superstar in the old AFL, the American Football League. He was a MVP of that league for the Buffalo Bills. He won an AFL championship. He was All-Pro, the AFL’s version of whatever All-Pro, all-star team was at the time. He was distinguished as an NFL quarterback. His son, Jeff goes to Dartmouth, gets out, does not have the same story about his NFL career. Jeff Kemp does have an NFL career, but it does not match the distinguished career that his dad had on the field. Adding to what could have been pressure on Jeff Kemp is that his dad Jack, listeners may remember of a certain vintage, listeners may remember that his dad, Jack Kemp, was a congressman from New York for a long time, was the first President Bush’s, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, I believe.
Gary S:
And then after that, Bob Dole’s running mate for the presidency and the race against Bill Clinton and they lost, but he was a presidential candidate who debated Al Gore back in the early ’90s. So your father is someone who’s accomplished all this on the football field. You go into football. And then when he gets out of football, he accomplishes all of this other stuff. Jeff Kemp ended up as an NFL quarterback to be more of what some would call a journeyman. And then he played for a number of different teams. He was never… In his 20 years from his early days of playing as a young man to when he left the NFL, of those 20 years, he was only a starter at the start of the season one time, he says in our episodes.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, Jeff Kemp is an interesting guy. It’s funny, I grew up in Australia, obviously didn’t play American football, but I could relate to him in the sense that as listeners know, I grew up in a prominent family. My dad was knighted in fact, my father, grandfather, great-grandfather, all were knighted in their own right. My dad has the same name as me. He was Sir Warwick, the company was a great mess. He had generations of very prominent people that accomplished a lot and who admire, not just… Yeah, they were wealthy, but they were admired for who they were and what they did.
Warwick F:
So I could relate in a sense. And as you point out, football star that his dad was. Congressman from, you mentioned Buffalo, New York, housing and urban development secretary under George H. W. Bush. Running mate with Dole, ran for president in ’88, the guy was driven. And just to make matters, almost worse for poor Jeff, everybody liked Jack Kemp. He was a good guy. He was driven people on both sides of the aisle. They liked him, they admired him. The guy had a heart, he cared. He was a good and great man in the best sense of that word. And he never purposely tried to push his kids, we talked about being a Kemp, and that had some sort of iconic meaning. And he was almost overzealous in his support. And just a message for parents, don’t overdo the cheerleading because he’d be like, “Hey Jeff, you did great.” But Dad, I sat on the bench of that NFL game, I did nothing, but you did it well. Okay. What’s that mean? Sitting on the bench.
Gary S:
And you look great in warmups.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean really? So he kept cheering him. And so he didn’t intentionally try to pressure his son, but obviously, his son doesn’t have nearly the football career that his dad did and eventually, his run ends and that was sort of depressing that he was let go. And that was a tough thing to come back from. And he’s written this book, Facing the Blitz, which similar to, in one sense, facing crucibles. And he talks about how blitzes they don’t have to kind of define you. And it’s very a interesting how his whole concept there.
Gary S:
Yeah. And one of the things about Jeff Kemp that was interesting is that all of the things that we talked about not “Measuring up in the eyes of some people to his dad,” those could be really crucible experiences for people, but he didn’t really take those as deep crucibles. His dad never put pressure on himself. He puts some pressure on himself, he said, but he got through that. And he learned this idea of combating the blitz, which in football is when the entire defense runs after the quarterback and tries to bury him. That’s what crucibles feel like. And it was fascinating to hear you both talk about that. But we brought Jeff on because his perspective that he expresses in that book, Facing the Blitz, is really something that all listeners can get some great insight and inspiration from.
Jeff Kemp:
Every person out there has been blitzed. They’ve been cut. They’ve been rejected. They went to junior high. They know what it’s like to be on the losing end of that conditional performance-based value system, making fun of your pimples or your size or your voice, or whatever. Everyone goes through crucibles. I want to remind people. You want to remind people. Gary wants to remind people. You are not alone. Others have been in it before. And the worst thing you can do is hide your emotions from other people, hide your pain, drowned it, and self-medicate it, or pretend it didn’t happen. The worst thing you can do is say, “I’m a victim. It’s all about other people.” Because you’ll never grow, if you don’t look at what your part in it was, which it wasn’t, I’m the worst guy in the world. I deserved to be benched or I deserve to have cartoons against me.
Jeff Kemp:
No, but you know what? There’s lessons that I learned. And you have to accept your own personal responsibility. Maybe it was a divorce you went through, even thinking it was 90% her, your math is probably off, okay. Maybe you were cut or sacked or benched, or fired by some company. And you think that was the worst manager or worst CEO ever. Maybe they weren’t that perfect, but there might be something you can learn-
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Jeff Kemp:
So what I’m saying is embrace the crucible, embrace the blitz, get honest with God and honest with other people about it and learn everything you can about yourself, and what life is truly about, because your life is not about your win-loss record, your statistics, your bank accounts, the applause of the world, how many Twitter followers you have, that is pretty much a bunch of BS. And it’ll take you down a wrong road. You’ll lose your identity, living for image and living to gain and earn your identity is a very losing equation.
Warwick F:
Yeah, it’s really remarkable. I mean, you don’t think of embrace the blitz or embrace your crucible. I mean, who thinks that way, but I mean, in football terms, which I have lived here long enough to understand something about it, but you would know more, but you might have a play in your mind. And then you see all these people lined up and you can see the blitz is coming while that play clearly, probably won’t work. So you need to change the play and be adaptive. And so he uses that as a metaphor for life that you might get blitzed. And maybe his dream was to be an NFL star quarterback, Joe Montana or somebody like that who he actually played on the 49ers at one point, and quarterback when Joe was injured. Well, he’s not going to be in the Hall of Fame like Joe Montana, but he changed, his vision is now different.
Warwick F:
Obviously, it’s an author speaker. He spends a lot of time as a person of faith, and working with families and parents and men, just in terms of how you face blitzes, how you overcome them, how you be good parents. So he has a passion for what he does now. And so his vision has really changed from just being an NFL quarterback. He has his own vision, and he’s also somebody with tremendous joy. And you don’t feel like those expectations are on him anymore, you feel like he’s at peace with who he is, what he achieved and what he didn’t achieve.
Warwick F:
I mean, it is somewhat in the same vein, I’ve had to come to peace with, I didn’t have a successful stint in my career in media. I wasn’t the all-star media person. That’s not my legacy. My Wikipedia entry is not particularly good. Young man could have had it all blew it. It’s almost like the journeyman quarterback thing, maybe worse, I don’t know. But certainly, it’s not like the all-star, but you have to come to peace with that. That’s okay. I have a good life. I love what I do now with Crucible Leadership. So that’s a huge lesson for folks is maybe that initial dream didn’t work out, but that’s okay. There can be another vision that may even fit better. And so he is inspirational in his own way.
Gary S:
Absolutely. Our next discussion guest, the next person we’re going to talk about, from a perspective perspective… That’s fun to say: a perspective perspective, is Nancy Koehn , and this one, Warwick, I’m not going to put you on the spot. I’ll just put it out rhetorically. If I had to sort of say, who is the guest that Warwick was most excited to interview, I would tell people if people asked me that, that professor Nancy Koehn would have been that person and we actually… That conversation was so good. It was so engrossing, so riveting, so detailed that it actually took… It was a two-part episode, but Warwick, you know this far better than I do. She’s a Harvard Business School Professor. You’re a Harvard Business School graduate, so tell folks a little bit about Nancy and why we had her on.
Warwick F:
Nancy Koehn, as you mentioned, she’s a Harvard Business School Professor, but she’s a historian. And what she does is talk about historical leaders in a way that’s relevant to MBA students today. So if you will, what lessons do current leaders in a corporate or nonprofit world, what can they learn from historical leaders? And so, she wrote this incredible book, Forged in Crisis, in which she talks about a number of leaders, Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. President, Frederick Douglas, also lived around the time of Lincoln, the great African-American abolitionist. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a German Lutheran pastor that opposed Hitler and was executed for his opposition. Rachel Carson, who founded the modern environmental movement and fought against DDT and those sorts of very harmful chemical sprays, but what’s interesting is Shackleton, he’s somebody that was this polar explorer in the first couple decades of the 1900s. It was like the space race. Everybody wanted to be the first to get to the North Pole, South Pole, do it for king and country, a number of different countries, Norway, U.S., and England.
Warwick F:
So here’s Ernest Shackleton and he wanted to lead the first expedition to go across Antarctica. So he leaves at around about 1915 or thereabouts, and he’s all for king and country, and he’s somewhere in Southern Argentina, nearest place to go to the Antarctica and all the weather reports say icebergs, ice floes are as bad as you’ve ever seen, like forever. Going now would be suicide, but because he’s so driven, so anxious for glory, frankly, he goes, when all the advice says, this is madness. And of course, what happens, his ship gets trapped in ice and they’re there for months and months, and there’s no radio. This is like 1915. So he has to combat the thought that my crew is probably going to die and it’s my fault because I was so impetuous in glory hunting that I left when everybody told me not to. And his story is so remarkable because he’s able to really push that behind him and move ahead. So that’s a pretty tough crucible when your team may die because you were stupid and impetuous in glory hunting. That’s a tough thing to deal with.
Gary S:
Nancy Koehn does a remarkable job in Forged In Crisis in talking about the crucible itself and then the lessons of what came out of the crucible. It’s a two-part episode. At the end of the second part of that episode, you summed it up with her and asked her a question to say, What are the two or three things that Shackleton did? Because not all of the people who listen, and I would say not many of the people who listen to our show are going to circumnavigate Antarctica. So, what are the takeaways for people who go through crucibles that Shackleton’s life reveals?
Warwick F:
What are the two or three things, why Shackleton holds so many lessons for CEOs, leaders of nonprofits, leaders in the COVID-19 crisis that we’re all going through, corporate leaders, governmental leaders, when everything is so uncertain, what are the key nuggets, would you say, that we need to learn about Shackleton?
Nancy Koehn:
Well, just to present them in uncharacteristically succinct form, you have to step into the fear. You take this step. Courage is not the absence of fear, as Mandela said, it’s the willingness to walk into the fear. Square your shoulders and tighten your core and realize you are still standing and can take the next step. And then other people behind you can take the first step. So step into the fear, feed and water yourself, and your people carefully, both emotionally and physically and mentally. Keep your fingers tightly on the pulse of the morale of the people around you. Learn forward, face forward and learn. Let go of what was and what didn’t work in the past, learn from it, and then move forward, especially in crucibles and crises. There’s just too much at stake to spend a lot of time rehashing the past.
Nancy Koehn:
I said on a Charlie Rose interview I did several years ago when my book came in, I said, “I learned and Shackleton learned that why is never the question. Why me? Why this? Why the suffering? Why the calamity? Why the failures? It’s never why, it’s what can I make in this wreckage, and how can I redeem, reclaim, and just as a crucible, it’s about high flames, literally, and its ability to reshape things. How can I be forged into something better and stronger and more committed to service?”
Warwick F:
Yeah, well said. Really, the first thing was okay, we’re here. I blew it. I was an idiot. I have some experience with that thought of, I blew it, I was an idiot, with the take over. Fortunately, I didn’t almost kill people, but he moved on because he realized his mission changed. His mission was then, I’m going to bring my crew back alive. I’m not going to lose anybody. Now, the chances of him bringing his crew back alive was like one in a million or one in a billion. It was a really, really tough goal, but he was determined. He made sure he rationed food. He kept morale up. He gave everybody jobs. He was very focused on their emotional wellbeing. He laughed with them. He was very thoughtful and resolute. But as you said, he stepped, as Nancy said very well, he stepped into the fear. He didn’t avoid it. He was courageous. He thought through things and he didn’t dwell in the past. He didn’t dwell on why did we get, he moved forward. The mission has changed. I’m not going to cross Antarctica. That mission is dead and that was a huge mission for him. That was a vision, a dream he was passionate about. Okay, that’s gone. That’s over. My new mission is to keep my team alive and I will do everything I can to make that happen, and because of his resoluteness and perseverance, he got all his crew back.
Warwick F:
What is remarkable about his story? This is all happening in the middle of World War I, somewhere around 1919, 1920, when the war was over, some sadly were lost in World War I because weeks after they got back to England, one of them joined up and was killed. These are patriotic folks, but a bunch of them, when he said, “I’m going to get back to Antarctica.” They said, as they called him boss, “I’m signing up, boss.” What kind of leader, when he almost kills people, they survive, say I’m going back with you to the scene of the crime. That’s almost insanity, but it shows how much they almost worshiped him and what a leader he was, a truly remarkable man.
Gary S:
And a couple of other guests we’ve had in the perspective area of shows and as long as we’re at Harvard, let’s stay there.
Warwick F:
Indeed. Indeed.
Gary S:
There’s a couple more Harvard folks. One of them that we talked to for a perspective episode was Joseph Badaracco, who wrote a couple of books that really speak to some important ways to deal with, move beyond crucibles. Talk a little bit about why Joseph Badaracco was an interesting guest for us.
Warwick F:
He has a recent book, Step Back, which really talks about how important it is to reflect, which in the busy life that we live, so many leaders and their all connected to phones, emails, constant messaging, there’s so much going on that people don’t take time to reflect. And if you’re just like some Energizer Bunny that’s always acting and not reflecting, you probably won’t make good decisions. Action is important, so is reflection. It’s almost like the lost art of reflection, but the book that really intrigued me was his earlier book from almost 20 years ago called, Leading Quietly. And I remember reading an article about it and then I read the book, and what was amazing is, a lot of us, including me, we grew up with the heroic leadership model. Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln or superheroes and movies, and great men, great women doing incredible things.
Warwick F:
He’s written a book about a whole bunch of folks in let’s say, middle management, that we never would have heard of, just taking those quiet day-to-day steps to make a difference, even though you’ll never read about them in Businessweek. And that was haunting for me because I grew up wanting to be… Maybe not wanting to be, but thinking, okay, I can be the savior of the family business, bring it back to the ideals of the founder, have it be well-run, be like this crusader or Charge Of The Light Brigade thing and Crimean War in the 1850s, a whole other story, but sort of this hero type, and I realized that heroic model of leadership is often dangerous, treacherous, and is often not helpful. So his model of leadership is different and I found that very compelling, convicting, haunting even.
Gary S:
Yeah, and the idea of the importance of reflection, one of the things that struck me before we talked to him is you really can’t… We’ve talked a lot here and on the podcast, we talk a lot about the importance of learning the lessons of your crucible. What’s in there that you can learn and apply to moving forward beyond the crucible? And there’s really no way to learn the lessons of your crucible if you don’t reflect on them.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, and one of the things he talks about is the difference between ruminating and reflecting. And I’d never heard about this. I never thought about it. Ruminating is, oh my gosh, I’m an idiot. Why did I do that? I’ve spent some time ruminating. I fully understand the concept of rumination, but reflecting is like, okay, I was an idiot or maybe that wasn’t fair or that was awful, but what can I learn from it? What lessons can I learn? How do we move forward? And in general, as we’re trying to build our vision and make it reality, where am I do I have the right team? What lessons do I need to learn? What’s the next step? You got to reflect and act. It’s a cycle. And what he talks about is you can take, maybe it’s on the way to work, maybe it’s while you’re working out. We all have times, if we really think about, where we can consciously say, “Okay, I’m going to use this time to reflect” So yeah, very profound stuff from him.
Gary S:
We’ll move from Harvard Business School Professor Joseph Badaracco to Harvard Negotiation Project Lecturer and Harvard Law School Lecturer, Sheila Heen, another prospective guest who talked about another thing that it seems to me is not possible to move beyond your crucible, unless you do this, unless you’re willing to do this. And that is have difficult conversations. You really can’t, as a leader in particular, as a leader who is facing a crucible experience and trying to move past it, move beyond it, you’re going to have to engage in some difficult conversations, aren’t you?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. She has two interesting books. There was the one that she co-wrote, Difficult Conversations, and then she has another one, which is, Thanks for the Feedback. Thanks for the Feedback is intriguing because so often, we’re taught by HR and other folks, okay, how do you give feedback well, but she was talking about how do you receive feedback well? Even if it’s not particularly well given. That was a fascinating discussion, but really this whole notion of difficult conversations, many folks avoid it, whether it’s your boss or people at work, and if they do it, it will often be done really poorly, like yelling and screaming is not a good way to have a difficult conversation. You will almost certainly won’t be heard. I don’t know if it’ll make you feel good or not, but it will accomplish pretty much nothing with almost a hundred percent certainty, guaranteed.
Warwick F:
She talks about really, three paradigms, what happened, the feelings conversation, the identity conversation. We can always argue about, well, it was your fault. That was my fault. And you can debate about what happened. You can get into this whole intellectual debate. You’re almost having a court case. You can go there, but really what she focuses on, focus on the feelings, make sure the other person feels heard. I hear what you’re saying. Obviously that was devastating to you. It doesn’t mean to say that you agree with what they’re saying, but you acknowledge the feelings and realize, well, maybe part of it, they have a sense of identity that’s wrapped up in their position, so her whole notion of how to have a difficult conversation well, it is so good. Well worth listening to the episode and reading her book, Difficult Conversations. Great stuff.
Gary S:
Well, that brings us and I’ve been waiting all show to say this. That brings us to the moment where I can see the fasten seatbelt lights come on. The gather up your peanut bags, we’re getting to the point it’s almost time to land the plane, but we’ve got one more section before the plane touches down. We’ve got one more section to go through, and it really is, I see it as the bookends to our conversation. And that is episodes that we’ve had in our first 49, this being our 50th, it’s conversations between me and you. It’s conversations about some of the key principles of crucible leadership, and what I like about what we chose is the two we’re going to focus on, as they really are the bookends, from my perspective, on what crucible leadership’s all about.
Gary S:
The first one we’ll talk about was an episode on perseverance fatigue and the idea there, Warwick, is that if you’re going to get through a crucible, you got to have perseverance. What we’ll talk about after that, after we talk about perseverance fatigue is, we’ll talk about one of our first episodes, episode four, which was about significance over success. And I end every episode talking about how crucibles aren’t the end of your story, they’re the start of a story. It can be a most rewarding story because it leads at the end, if you learn the lessons of your crucible, to a life of significance. So this is truly a great place to land the plane, but let’s talk first about this idea of perseverance fatigue. You say something in that episode that even when it feels overwhelming and there’s no-
Warwick F:
Even when life can feel overwhelming and there’s no hope, just take that one small step. It could be apply for that next position, even when you think it’s hopeless. Have that one more networking call. In J. K. Rowling’s case, send out one more manuscript to one more publisher. Whatever the positive step is, no matter how small each day, try to take one small step. That could be journaling about the kind of position you would like to get, but it’s the importance of taking one small step at a time each day, each week. That is probably the foundation of getting out of a bottomless pit, even when that small step can seem like, well, even if it happens, so what?
Gary S:
Why is taking one small step so important to getting beyond your crucible?
Warwick F:
Yeah. There are times in which you’ve been through a crucible and maybe you’re in the middle of it and you can feel like you’re in the bottom of the pit. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. If there is, it’s another train gonna hit you. Things seem grim. There seems no hope. And so, it can seem like, well, what’s the point of taking one small step? I need to take a gigantic leap, but one small step, so what? I’ll still be at the bottom of the pit, but really one small step can lead to another small step. It could be, maybe you were fired. It could be, okay, well, what other jobs can I take just thinking about that? Maybe you’re dealing with a family illness, maybe going to have a walk with a friend just to get your mind off things, and just recharge the batteries a bit.
Warwick F:
Those are all really important. So the power of one small step is, it doesn’t seem much, but one small step can lead to another, and pretty soon there’s a flywheel, whether it’s bringing a vision to reality, getting through a crucible. The power of one small step cannot be underestimated to just help you move in a positive direction. Sitting and ruminating and saying, “Oh, woe is me.” That’s not really going to get you anywhere. Taking one small positive step, no matter how small, that is a step to getting out of the bottom of the pit, and that is a step towards having hope.
Gary S:
Yeah, and I think if we went back and we went through all of our guests, let alone all the guests we’ve talked about today, and we looked at their stories of bouncing back from their crucibles, moving beyond their crucibles, we would find a one small step that they took. We would find, I think that’s probably true of everyone.
Warwick F:
Oh, I’m sure it is. Maybe with Ernest Shackleton, it’s like, okay, here we are, we’re stuck in the ice. Well, let’s get the crew off and let’s get them in tents. I think one time, he had some strange game, animal, vegetable, mineral, some weird game to make people laugh, a little like charades or whatever. Well, that doesn’t seem like a big step. Let’s have a game. How’s that going to get his crew rescued? It’s not, but it’s going to take their minds off things for maybe half an hour or an hour. It’s a small step, but it’s an important small step.
Gary S:
And what ends up with small steps, you put them together like a puzzle. You put one foot in front of the other as the Christmas special so resoundingly says. If you put one foot in front of the other, soon you’ll be walking out the door and soon you’ll be getting through your crucible. Soon you’ll be on the other side.
Warwick F:
Soon you’ll be helping to have your vision become reality. One small step.
Gary S:
And what that is, the other side of the door, when you get through the door, your vision becoming a reality. The goal that we talk about, the goal that you talk about and have talked about at Crucible Leadership since the outset, even before this podcast existed, the goal that we’re after is a life of significance.
Warwick F:
The first step is to leading a life of significance is understand what your fundamental beliefs and values are.
Gary S:
And that is a critical point for listeners to understand because you said it just now. A life of significance is individual. Your life of significance is rooted in who you are. It’s not what society deems necessary to do. It’s what you, what your vision and what your values and beliefs inform you to want to accomplish.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, that’s really the key first step is just, well, it’s a couple of things in leading a life of significance. You’ve got to understand your fundamental beliefs and values, and that’s what we often talk about in crucible leadership. You want to understand how you’re wired, how you’re designed. We’re all wired a different way. And again, we’ve talked extensively on this, but basically to lead a life of significance, you want to feel like you’re using the skills and abilities that I would say you’d been divinely given for a purpose that you feel off the charts passionate about that’s in line with your fundamental beliefs and values, and you feel is accomplishing something significant. Those things will all line up, by definition. If it’s something tied to your values and beliefs, well, then you will feel it’s important and it’s hard for that not to be significant if the vision is coming directly out of those values and beliefs, and in some fashion helps other people. It will line up if you follow that path.
Gary S:
Why is a life of significance the true North, that which we’re aiming at as we look to emerge from a crucible?
Warwick F:
It’s funny. One of the things we don’t do here is say, Crucible Leadership, a life of success. And there’s nothing wrong with success, but success in of itself, doesn’t satisfy, doesn’t bring you joy. There’s not one person that we’ve had on this podcast that can say, success alone, in and of itself, made me joyful and fulfilled. Not one person. We’ve had about as diverse group of guests in experience, life, nationality, background, experiences you could possibly imagine, and I’m not against success. Success is fine. Being able to have a nice vacation, a nice house or a nice life for your family, nothing wrong with that. That’s good, but it doesn’t bring happiness in itself. Significance, we talk about significance as really… A life of significance is based on your fundamental beliefs and values. It’s something that you’re passionate about. It’s really a life significance, is a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.
Warwick F:
That’s really what a life of significance is, and it’s when you bring joy to others, that’s when you have joy in your own eyes. Whether it’s David Charbonnet seeing a vet getting a little bit more movement than he or she could the previous day. Okay, that’s positive. When it’s seeing Cathleen Merkel, working with women leaders saying, “Boy, I can be successful and have a life, a balanced life and have joy,” that brings Cathleen Merkel joy. When Michelle Kuei inspires people with hope that you don’t have to be defined by your narrative. You can be perfectly normal, even in your differences and in your hardships. That sense of when you see the light in somebody’s eye, when you see hope in somebody’s eye, it brings you joy. It gives your life meaning. And when you think of the legacy concept and you’re on your death bed, okay, I’ve helped people. I brought joy to other people. Hopefully I’ve brought joy to my family. A life well lived. I’m at peace. We all want to be at peace at that point in our lives. We all want to feel, okay, this is a life well lived. And that’s what a life of significance is all about.
Gary S:
So as we wrap up episode 50 of Beyond the Crucible on a discussion of living a life of significance, how has it felt for you in the 49 episodes that we’ve finished before this one? With the feedback you’ve gotten from people, who’ve heard it, with being able to talk to people, having people say that they never really thought about their story like that until you asked them that question, how has the experience of this podcast and the first 49 episodes fueled your own life of significance?
Warwick F:
In a couple of ways, I’ve loved getting to know a whole lot of people, pretty much none of whom I knew before, and just hearing about their life of significance, hearing about what they went through, their experiences, just learning from them, learning from all of the things they’ve been through. So just, I feel like it’s almost one massive PhD course in terms of the human spirit, of how you combat adversity, how you combat terrible things that happen in your life. All of them bounce back from so many different kinds of crucibles and they have joy. All of them are leading lives of significance. All of them are focused on helping others. So, just seeing the triumph of the human spirit and using different ways maybe, but they all have hope, that was inspiring. I love, as you say, going for the heart. What were you feeling?
Warwick F:
When we were chatting to, someone we haven’t talked about as much, Lisa Blair, everybody wants to know about how she survived sailing single handedly around Antarctica. Very few people ask her about what was it like to be a young girl growing up in Australia being bullied and overcoming dyslexia, reinventing yourself, having more confidence. People don’t really go there, but I wanted to know, well, who is Lisa Blair? Not just the person you all read about, at least in Australian publications. So with every guest we want to know, who was the real Sarah Nannen? Who was the real Cathleen Merkel? Who was the real Ernest Shackleton? Who was the real Robert Krantz. We want to know who they really were, what they thought and felt. And so, if that hopefully brings some insight and hope to other people, one of the things we say here is, we’re dealers in hope. We like to offer hope, and if that offers people hope, then this is a worthwhile mission. So, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from their stories of love, being able to share those stories with others, and it’s given me hope personally, more hope. Not that I didn’t have some before, but it’s fueled that even more. So, it’s been an honor and a privilege to be able to hear the people’s stories and to share them with others.
Gary S:
Well that, Captain Fairfax, is a perfect landing of the plane. Listener, thank you so much for spending, what we know is a little bit longer time than you normally get to spend with us, but this was a celebration. We were having a party here talking about truly a milestone, 50 episodes of Beyond the Crucible, and what we hope came out of this discussion, what we hope you take away from this discussion is, what we say at the end of the 49 episodes that came before it, and that is this:
Gary S:
We know. We understand because we’ve been through them ourselves. We know your crucible is painful. We know that those traumas, tragedies, setbacks, failures change the trajectory of your life, but we also know from our personal experience and from what guests have shared on the show, that those crucibles aren’t the end of our stories and that pain is not the last thing that we’ll feel, that if we learn the lessons of our crucibles, and if we take one small step at a time moving forward, armed with those lessons, to pursue a life on purpose, to pursue life beyond the crucible, we know that the next chapter of our lives is going to be more rewarding, that our crucibles are not the end of our story. They are in many ways, the beginning of our story, and it’s a great new story because it leads where the GPS takes us to. The end of the line is a life of significance.
