A Charlie Brown Christmas, the TV special that’s been a yuletide staple since its premiere in 1965, almost didn’t even make it to its first airing. That’s because even though the Peanuts comic strip had been popular since premiering 15 years earlier, pretty much every aspect of the television production – the first animation featuring the Peanuts gang and shepherded by its creator, Charles Schulz — was rushed.
As a result, one of the producers thought the finished product was so bad that they had “killed” Peanuts for future animation efforts, and the network that signed on to broadcast the show, CBS, thought it would be a colossal failure. Yet its premiere drew 45 percent of everyone in America watching TV that evening – reaching more than 15 million homes – and the rest has become holiday history that is still being written.
Perhaps the crucibles the special encountered on its way to the screen were to be expected, since A Charlie Brown Christmas is all about the title character’s struggle with his own major crucible. From the opening scene, Charlie Brown is caught in emotional upheaval that leaves him depressed about the holiday, which is sung about as “the most wonderful time of the year” and is experienced as just that – at least on the surface – by the other kids in his orbit.
“I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel,” he confides to his best pal, Linus. A bit later, after inspecting his mailbox to see that he still hasn’t received a Christmas card, he’s left musing, “I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?” His doldrums deepen when his little sister, Sally, asks for his help in composing a letter to Santa – and she tells St. Nick that if he wants to “make it easy” on himself, he can just send cash in lieu of the litany of toys she enumerates. She asks for the dough in “tens and twenties,” since she’s been extra good and “all I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”
All of this leaves Charlie Brown to conclude Christmas has become too commercialized. This setup sends him on a hero’s journey of sorts to discover his Christmas joy by trying to discover the true meaning of the holiday.
He does three critical things to turn his trial into triumph – lessons about moving beyond a crucible that can help all of us navigate our way back from setback and failure.
1. He leans into authenticity and is vulnerable for a purpose. Charlie Brown, despite his ever-present desire to be liked, refuses to play along with his materialistic friends and family, or even his dog, Snoopy, who has pulled out all the stops to decorate his doghouse splashily enough to win a decorating contest and its cash prize. He even parts with a nickel to get “psychiatric counsel” from Lucy to understand why he’s so glum.
It’s an important turning point for him as he wrestles with his despondency. It’s also extraordinarily brave because Lucy – the girl who always snatches the football away just as he tries to kick it – surely must have seemed to him as an unlikely source of assistance. But by being vulnerable to the one person he likely thought would take advantage of him for it, he shows great belief that maybe, just maybe, she’ll treat him squarely. It’s a risk that pays off when Lucy rewards his earnestness with an opportunity: she makes him the director of the kids’ upcoming Christmas play. Charlie Brown’s not out of the emotional woods just yet, but there’s the slightest bit of light at the end of his tunnel.
That glimmer of hope is one we should all dig in to and search for when hopelessness threatens to keep us from moving forward post-crucible. When we’re at the precipice of thinking all is lost, when the negativity of our circumstances threatens to lead us to giving up and pulling the covers over our head, we can only get ahead by not throwing in the towel. By persevering.
2. He casts a vision and sticks to it. Charlie Brown throws himself completely into the opportunity to stage the holiday play. He has no experience directing a play, but he knows how he wants this one to go. His initial efforts to get the kids to listen to his direction fall flat – rather than getting into their characters as he directs, they ignore him and dance away to the bouncy tune being played on the piano by Schroeder. He’s frustrated to “Good grief!” intensity but presses on. He changes course – rather than trying to direct the cast, he focuses on dressing the set. He heads out, with Linus, to get a Christmas tree for the show.
But not just any tree. Especially not the kind Lucy urges him to retrieve – “the biggest aluminum tree you can find.” At the tree lot, he walks past all the artificial specimens and instead gravitates toward a spare, sickly looking real tree with only a few branches. He’s taken by it immediately. “This little green one here seems to need a home,” he tells Linus. “I think it needs me.”
Charlie Brown had to have known grabbing that tree would lead to the catcalls of the gang’s favorite taunt for him: “blockhead.” But he does it anyway. So strong is his vision for a play that celebrates Christmas in a way that isn’t artificial that he’s willing to suffer the slings and arrows of his friends for sticking to his vision.
We all have to muster the same courage if we have any hope, any chance, of bringing our own visions to reality. Living a life of significance – a life on purpose dedicated to serving others – is not a popularity contest. We can’t achieve it by compromising our values; quite the contrary, we only reach that destination by doubling down on those values and the passions that undergird them. This is especially true when we encounter opposition.
3. He enlists a team of fellow travelers to help him. The tree, not surprisingly, is met with derision by the gang. Charlie Brown finds himself thrown back into depression and despair. He tells Linus, “I shouldn’t have picked this little tree. Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about.” But rather than wallow there, he asks a rhetorical question of his friend: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”
It’s the first time he has not just expressed his disillusionment about not experiencing the Christmas spirit but poses a question about how he might overcome those feelings. He wants someone to explain to him how to get in touch with the spirit of Christmas for reasons that have nothing to do with gifts and dollar signs. Linus seizes the moment to become to Charlie Brown the kind of ally we talk about a lot at Beyond the Crucible: a fellow traveler, someone with experience and even expertise we don’t have who complements us as we journey our way back from a crucible. By telling the story of Jesus’ birth and the hope His arrival gave the world, Linus gives Charlie Brown hope. An answer to the question that has plagued him throughout the special.
Even more than that, Linus becoming a fellow traveler inspires the rest of the gang to do the same. They don’t continue to team up, as they so often do in the Peanuts universe, to chide Charlie Brown. They join forces to support him. Inspired by Linus’ speech to emulate Linus’ support of their friend, they too become fellow travelers and follow Charlie Brown to his house, where he’s gone to decorate the tree he’s recommitted to. They repurpose Snoopy’s prize-winning decorations to transform the little wooden tree into a masterpiece of Christmastime beauty. It all ends joyously as they shout in unison, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” … then break into “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing.”
We all need fellow travelers to help us stay the course on our journeys back from our crucibles. The weight of facing the doubts a setback can plague us with require the help of others who can share the burdens and, perhaps more importantly, alleviate them with their wisdom and support. Bouncing forward from our worst day is a team sport.
A Charlie Brown Christmas has been making a clear case for what Christmas is all about for nearly 60 years. It’s also been showing those of us who have experienced setback and failure the key steps we must take to understand our worst day is not the end of our story – but the launching point for a life-giving new story.
Reflection
• Is authenticity, especially in the wake of a crucible, easy or hard for you? Why do you think that is? And if it’s hard, how can you work on making it easier?
• Recall a time when you stuck to your vision even when it was difficult. How did it make you feel to do so? How did it turn out in the end?
• Do you have a team of fellow travelers that can help you navigate your way beyond a crucible? If you do, who are they and why did you select them? If you don’t, who can you enlist and what qualities will you look for?
We share inspirational stories and transformational tools from leaders who have moved beyond life’s most difficult moments to create lives of significance.
It’s certainly not uncommon to hear a son talk about his father with respect, admiration and love – the way Warwick talks about his father in this week’s episode. But the noble character Sir Warwick Fairfax modeled to his son has had an impact that’s birthed the business that son founded, including this podcast you’re listening to right now.
In this last episode of the year in our series within the show, STORIES FROM THE BOOK CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP, we discuss the many ways in which Warwick’s father did the right thing no matter how hard doing the right thing was, setting an example for his boy that lives on today in the work of Beyond the Crucible.
You’ll want to listen especially closely for the surprising moment Warwick and I realize a poem his father wrote in a book he was working on before he died in 1987 planted the seeds for Warwick’s life of significance as founder of Beyond the Crucible.
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and be sure to tell your friends and family about us.
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible. I had a deep respect for my father's faith and how he lived it out, just the way he tried to do the right thing no matter what. Especially at the events around 1976, when other family members tried to, and did remove him as chairman of the company. I truly did feel that he was a great man of noble character, and to feel like you have a parent that's a great person who you deeply respect them. I mean, that is a gift. I realized not everybody can say that.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's certainly not uncommon to hear a son talk about his father with respect, admiration, and love the way Warwick just talked about his. But the noble character Sir Warwick Fairfax modeled to his son has had an impact that's birthed the business that son founded, including this podcast you're listening to right now. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this last episode of the year in our series within the show, stories from the book Crucible Leadership, we discussed the many ways in which Warwick's father did the right thing, no matter how hard doing the right thing was, setting an example for his boy that lives on today in the work of Beyond the Crucible. You'll want to listen especially closely for the surprising moment Warwick and I realize a poem his father wrote in a book he was working on before he died in 1987, planted the seeds for Warwick's life of significance as founder of Beyond the Crucible.
What we're talking about today, today is another episode in what we call the series within a show, stories from the book Crucible Leadership. And we have been doing this every month, except when we had series and some other things that happened. But this is the final one that we're going to be doing of stories that Warwick concluded in his Wall Street Journal bestseller, which was published in 2022, called Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, and we are ending. It's interesting, our first episode of this series within the show, as we call it, was on Warwick's great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. We've now reached the end of this cycle. Maybe we don't know, there's a lot of people at Warwick talks about in his book, and there could be more of these episodes in the future. But for right now, for this year, this is the last one that we're going to be doing.
And the subject of this is Warwick's father, Sir Warwick Fairfax. So Warwick, before we talk about why we chose your father for this series, and specifically the subject of this episode, which I must be nervous talking about your dad too, I haven't mentioned it until now. It's doing the right thing no matter what. That's a lesson that your father taught you. That's a lesson of his life, and that's what we're going to be talking about here. But before we get there, just talk about your father. Let listeners and viewers know who Sir Warwick Fairfax was.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, so Gary, I was a child of my father's third marriage to my mother, Lady Mary Fairfax. So my father had two children from his first marriage, Caroline and James. He had a daughter, Annalise, and a stepson, Ellen Anderson by his second marriage. And then, my parents adopted my younger brother and sister Anna and Charles. My father was born in Sydney in 1901. He actually was born in the house that I grew up in, Fairwater, on the shores of Sydney Harbor. Now, back in the day, you weren't actually born in the hospital, you were born at home, and he indeed was born at home. And in fact, when my father died in January 1987, he died in the same house he was born in. So he was born and died in the house that I grew up in. So my father was born in pre-World War I Australia, which still was the Victorian era in a sense.
People in Australia at the time still thought of England as the mother country. They would talk about going home, which meant to England. It was just, obviously we have a much more diverse society in Australia since then. My father was a fourth generation in the family media business that was started by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax in 1841. And he actually was an only child, the child of his parents, Sir James Oswald and Lady Mabel Fairfax. And in fact, as my father was growing up, his parents, Sir James and Lady Mabel Fairfax lived right next door to my dad's uncle, Jeffrey Fairfax, and Jeffrey and his wife Lena had no kids. So you had my dad's father and mother, and his uncle and aunt with one child between four of them. So he might have been a tad spoiled. I don't know.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, I was was going to say, your dad was probably doted upon a little bit?
Warwick Fairfax:
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So my father went to Oxford University like his dad, Sir James Oswald and some other relatives. And he came back from Oxford in the 1920s. Later in the 1920s, my grandfather actually died, unfortunately while he was playing golf. I think he was about to go on the 18th hole, and he was about 65, so relatively young. So from 1930 to 1976, my father was either managing director or chairman of the company. So for 45 plus years, he was the leading figure in the family, and then he became director of the company after 1976 until he died in 1987.
So my father, like me, he went in the family business. I think there was an element of duty, loyalty as there was with me, and he was actually more of a reflective philosopher than a businessman. He enjoyed reading and discussing theology, politics and history. At night after dinner, he would go into his study and he might read the Bible and the New Testament in Greek or some other theological book or history. I mean, he was just a very learned man. And in fact, when I was growing up, I loved history, but most of my knowledge from history is not from reading books, which I certainly have. It was from my dad. When I was small, I'd say, "Daddy, tell me some history."
It's just like learning from an encyclopedia. It was unbelievable. So, I have a fair degree of knowledge of history, but most of it is just listening to my dad. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters all bond over different things. For us, it was history. So my father was a good writer, and as I said, I think he went to the family business, certainly out of his sense of loyalty, although definitely his writing skills helped him on the journalistic side. But while my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, was clearly a business guy, those business genes had kind of gotten a bit watered down by the time of my father. So I love my father, but he was really a philosopher and writer.
He really wasn't a deal maker, a business guy. That really wasn't his strength. And it's quite interesting as I reflect on how I felt compelled to go to the family media business out of a sense of loyalty and duty, and love of my parents and family. There are photographs of my dad in the 1940s and '50s, and there's one in which he is at the office. He is in charge of the Sydney Morning Herald, the main paper in Sydney, and he has this dour, somber look on his face. Just, "I'm here doing my duty and loyalty," but my dad, amongst other things, also loved the land in the country.
So my dad had a property outside of Sydney, about an hour and a half, called Harrington Park, and he had a Paul Hereford stud, loved raising cattle, loved the land, and he had these more country clothes, straw hat on, and he just seems very relaxed with a broad grin on his face. I've often pondered those two photographs, and wondered. Just the photograph really, it says something. But anyway, the defining crucibles of my dad's life occurred in 1961 and 1970. So in 1961, after a difficult divorce from my father's second wife, he married my mother.
Well, my mother's first husband sued my father. He was a lawyer, my mother's first husband. And basically in the lawsuit, he accused my father of breaking up my mother's prior marriage. So, some members of my family felt like, well, this is a huge controversy. It's in the papers, in the media. And they felt like for the good of the company, he needed to step down for a time while all these lawsuits were resolved. Now, they might've had their reasons, and irrespective of whether their reasons were fair or not fair, my father felt absolutely betrayed by these other family members forcing him to step down, even though it was for a few months. And unfortunately, that sense of betrayal would only get worse. So in 1976, some 15 years later, these same family members pressured my father to resign in part because of the ownership of the shares of the company.
Basically, there were three blocks of shares in the company adding up to about 50%. The rest was publicly held. So, two out of three blocks of the shares in the family really could control the outcome of these sorts of decisions. And so, they did indeed force my father to resign. They had their reasons, maybe they felt like it was time for next generation, but at the age of 74, which he was at the time, my father had a lot of energy. He was in great health. He had plans to update the company's paper in Sydney, the Sydney Morning Herald, and to modernize the company. So, my father felt that this was completely wrong, he felt like they tried unsuccessfully to remove him as chairman 15 years earlier in 1961. And now, they've tried again and they've succeeded.
So my father was hurt, felt betrayed, felt like it was completely wrong, and my father did indeed consider fighting his removal, whether at an annual meeting of shareholders, in the media, doing some other kind of takeover, or he thought of all sorts of plans to try to resist what he felt was this wrongful dismissal. But he decided the best thing for the company, for the family, and indeed for me was to resign gracefully, because my father always saw me as the heir apparent. I think he felt like he could see a lot of himself in me. I went to Oxford the way he did. I studied hard at school, got good grades, worked on Wall Street, graduated from Harvard Business School. I took life very seriously, and as I've mentioned in other places at other podcasts, that made life worse for me, because I wasn't just some dropout kid who was on drugs and drove fast cars and drank, and that would've lowered expectations.
But because I worked hard and studied hard, the expectations rose, and so therefore he absolutely saw me as the heir apparent that could maybe enact some of the policies he wanted to. And so, he was very much focused on the next generation in me. So again, part of the reason he didn't fight this dismissal of him as chairman was for the sake of the company, for the family, but absolutely for me and my future. And I was 15 at the time, so I was aware of what was going on. So over the next year or so, as best he could, my father forgave other family members. He told me that God commands us to forgive, and to the best of his ability, that is what he did. He felt it was the right thing to resign gracefully, not give interviews about how terrible this all was. And he felt it was the right thing for me, for the family and for the family business.
Gary Schneeberger:
It's interesting, when we were preparing kind of what we were going to talk about here, you indicated in the note that we were just scratching out that he felt it was the right thing to do for the family and the family business. You didn't mention in the note for you. I'm glad you mentioned it here, because is it fair to say in some sense that that was him living a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others? His ability to forgive, he was serving you in that sense, right? Is that fair?
Warwick Fairfax:
It really is. It's a good point. I mean, I hadn't thought about it quite that way, but yeah, it was to me, a life of significance because it wasn't about his agenda. If it was about his agenda, he would've fought it. Could he have won? I don't know. He was a person who was greatly esteemed. Hard to know, but it was like, well, what's good for the family? What's good for me? And as I'll talk about, the Lady's faith was not quite the same as me, but he definitely had this faith in God that yeah, he felt like that was the right thing to do, that God would have him forgive them. Again, I don't pretend it was easy or perfect, but the fact that he would say that and attempt that, I mean that alone was remarkable. So yes, his whole life, I feel like it was never about him.
It was never about, "Oh, look at me, I'm Sir Warwick Fairfax," and knighted, and it just never felt like that. Yes, one of the things he enjoyed is cars. And we had a Rolls and a 1928 Bentley, which is an amazing car of its era, and even an Aston Martin, which was pretty much the same thing as the one that James Bond drove in Goldfinger, about a year apart in model. So yes, he liked cars, but yet it felt like his service in John Fairfax Limited, the family company. It was not about him. It was about carrying on the legacy of his father and grandfather, and his great-grandfather, John Fairfax. So yeah, it felt like his life was not about him. It was serving the family, the company, the employees, and indeed the nation.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, and I feel like a bit of an idiot for not making this connection that I'm about to make here prior to this. I've co-hosted 236 episodes of this show with you, and this is the first time that I've really thought about your dad. Your father was sort of the father of Beyond the Crucible in that sense, right? Just the way that he lived his life, what you just described, that had to plant seeds in you that when you were then in the position to create Beyond the Crucible, that had to, not just his example that we're talking about here, but just generally the way he lived his life in service to others. That had to have a spark somewhere there for creating Beyond the Crucible, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. My father lived his whole life by a code of, try to do the right thing no matter what. Having a paper that was an independent paper, I mean, he was probably moderately conservative in his views, but he had journalists of different viewpoints, and that didn't bother him. He was not one of these media moguls that said, okay, yes, there were certain editorials in his younger days that he might've stepped in a bit. But in terms of the general writing in the paper, he never said, "You need to favor politician A or politician B." It's just not something he ever did. In the 1940s, in my father's younger days, my father wrote a series of articles talking about his views of how a newspaper should be run, and how journalists should write stories. This was published in a book after the 1943 Australian election called Men, Parties and Politics.
He wrote, "A party paper like a party man is one, which once a party decision has been made, supports, explains and justifies it loyally against all opposition, and such papers have existed. But the Herald has always criticized any and every party whenever it thought them wrong." In fact, in the book's foreword, my father wrote that the paper's present policy was one of aggressive moderation, the phrase that actually recalls Sydney Morning Herald's original motto, "In moderation placing all my glory." In fact, the original master head of the paper was, "May Whigs call me Tory and Tory call me Whig," which means may liberals call me conservative and may conservatives call me liberal.
So my father just was telling the journalists of the paper, "We are not a party paper. I'm not looking for party journalists. I'm looking for independent reporting, that reports fairly on the politicians and the issues of this day." And that phrase, aggressive moderation. I mean, that's a very curious phrase. So there was just this integrity of frankly, and obviously I know Gary, you've spent many years in newspapers. There was this concept that newspapers should be independent, and reporters should report fairly on the people that they're covering. This was something he was passionate about.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, a paper run on purpose dedicated to serving others right there.
Warwick Fairfax:
Right, not dedicated to serving himself or his agenda, which is... Yeah, it's remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
So, now I will ask you the question that I was going to ask you, which I should have, and you've already talked about it. What was the impact? You've explained who your father was, you've explained his background, you talked a little bit about how he did the right thing, all the time, even when it wasn't easy to do. What was the impact your father had on you, and why specifically did you choose to spotlight him in the book for this, doing the right thing, even when it wasn't easy to do?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, my father, I think as I've mentioned in 1976 when he was removed as chairman of John Fairfax Limited, I was 15 at the time. It was a searing experience. I indeed felt that my father was a righteous man, falsely persecuted. I loved my father deeply. I admired him greatly and respected him. I indeed felt he was a great man. And this incident in 1976, my father had a history of doing the right thing no matter what. We've just talked about his book that he wrote, Men, Parties and Politics and his talks with journalists about the right way to do journalism. So there was another instance early on in my father's tenure at John Fairfax Limited that shows his integrity. So in the 1930s, my father and his first wife were very good friends with Sir Robert Menzies and his wife. And they would sometimes vacation together in a place north of Sydney called Palm Beach, different than the Palm Beach here in the US, obviously, but same name.
They were good friends. And so, at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Menzies was the Conservative prime minister of Australia. And in fact, later on, he would become Prime Minister from 1949 until 1966, in fact, becoming the longest serving Prime Minister in Australia's history. So in the lead up to the 1941 election, again Menzies is Prime Minister at that point, my father felt that Menzies, his friend, was not the right person to lead Australia during the Second World War. And in fact, the Labour opposition leader, John Curtin, my father ended up supporting when he became Prime Minister as the right man to lead Australia in the election. And here's my father, who's moderately conservative, not supporting the Conservative candidate in Menzies, and ended up supporting the Labour guy in John Curtin.
And so, Menzies lost the 1941 election, so Conservatives lost and John Curtin and Labour party came to power, and my mother's told me that Robert Menzies blamed my father and the Sydney Morning Herald for losing the 1941 election. And in fact, he never forgave my father for that loss and hardly ever spoke to him for the rest of his life. Now obviously one can say, "Well, how much do newspapers really influence elections?" I don't know. Maybe they had more influence back in the '40s. There weren't other media back then to speak up, maybe radio, but whether it's fair or unfair, Robert Menzies blamed him. Yet this was an example of, "Okay, we may be friends, but we're in the middle of the Second World War. What's the right thing for the nation?" And it felt like it wasn't Robert Menzies the Conservative, it was the Labour guy.
I mean, that's a remarkable display of integrity in doing the right thing no matter what, when it's a considerable cost. And the guy would go on to be Prime Minister for an awful long time. So, I'm sure it had lasting consequences. The thing about my father is, he wasn't just a knight. He would in a sense, I guess if you're a knight, I suppose that means you are a noble, at least in some sense. But my father had this nobility of character. The people that work for him, including his staff at our family home, Fairwater, they greatly admired him. There was just the sense that they respected the fact that they worked for Sir Warwick Fairfax. Somebody not just with a noble title, but with a noble character. It was just so evident. One example of how he just treated people equally is the 1970s, we used to take trips to the Outback. I think, as I've mentioned, my father loved the country and loved going out there, and I was small at the time, so I couldn't drive.
So on one such trip, my father had his driver from the office accompanying us in this trip in the Outback. And so in the middle of Outback Australia, I think near Burke, which is Western New South Wales, the state where Sydney's in, and there was this fork in the road, and my father and his driver got in this heated argument about which way they should go, and the driver's name is Bill Smith. And Bill said to my father, "Sir Warwick, we need to go right." And my father would say, "No, it's absolutely left." And they got this heated argument and Australians are pretty egalitarian. So Bill Smith is like, he was a truck driver in World War II, and it's like, "Okay, here he is. I'm going to state my opinion." Australians are like that.
But even though my father may have thought his driver was absolutely wrong, there was no sense of, "How dare you speak to me, your employer. I'm a knight, I'm chairman of this big company." My father may have thought that his driver, Bill Smith was absolutely wrong, but he also felt he absolutely had every right to his decision, and his opinion, I should say. And that, to me is remarkable. Very few people who were in power and have a noble title, but have that attitude. But to me, that just shows you his character, that he respected people and their right to have their opinion, even if my father thought that opinion may be wrong.
Gary Schneeberger:
I ask Warwick how his father's noble character rubbed off on him after these words from our sponsors. That had to have had great impact on you. One of the things I've told people about you, Warwick, when I talk behind your back, and it's a good talk about behind your back, I say, "Warwick is," for someone who grew up the way that you grew up with, the kind of wealth that your family had, you're the least blue blood kind of person I can imagine coming out of that. So I would think your dad's perspective on the staff who worked for him, like you just described, that had to have rubbed off on young Warwick, didn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I think it did. I mean, yes, my father obviously had some nice cars, and when we traveled to Europe, yes, we stayed in nice hotels, but when we went to the Outback, it's not like you can find back then the Four Seasons or the Ritz-Carlton Outback. I mean, it's the Outback, middle of nowhere. So we stayed in just regular motels and didn't really have hotels out there. It just never occurred to him. We would take trips up to Northern Queensland, we would stay in, I don't know, it was somewhere near Townsville and it was before. Now there's all sorts of resorts, but there weren't back then. And we stayed at this simple motel on this beautiful beach, and it was called the Moon Glow Motel, and that kind summarizes it all.
I mean, it was a fine clean place, but it was not the Ritz-Carlton, but it was a beautiful beach, and so we would stay there for a bit. My father, while he liked nice things, he just wasn't bound up with the whole thing. They were very careful in how they raised me. And so, I didn't get lots of expensive presents or that kind of thing, because they didn't want to spoil me. When I got into Oxford, and I had some money I got from an internship in advertising, they weren't like, "Oh, let's get him a BMW or Rolls or Mercedes or something." I got this small Renault five car, which back in, I don't know, I guess it would've been '79, is kind of like a Ford Escort.
It's a nice little European car, but it's not a Rolls. It's a small little boxy car, and it doesn't go very fast. But it was well-made, and I'm proud of myself that I paid for half of that car. But the point is, I think they knew I was earning some money. So they sort of encouraged that, we will buy you a car, but you can pay for half of it out of your own money. But there was never this idea of, "Oh, let's get him a Rolls or BMW." So that came out of the values of both of my parents, that they wanted to raise me in the right manner and out of some kind of rich kid.
Gary Schneeberger:
There's another aspect of your dad that you talk about in the book, the importance of faith in moving beyond your crucible. We talk about that a lot at Beyond the Crucible, and you talk about that in the book a lot, and doing the right thing as you're on that journey. That's another example from your father's life that you've teased a little bit here, but talk a little bit more about your dad's faith and how that informed what we're talking about here, doing the right thing no matter what.
Warwick Fairfax:
It's interesting. My great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, the founder of the family media business, he had a strong evangelical faith, a strong faith in Christ. As I've said before, he had about as strong of faith in Christ as any business person I've ever read about. But my father's faith was more traditional, I would say more ecumenical. My faith is more, I guess evangelical. And so it was interesting, my father being a very learned, curious person, an intellectual, he read widely on philosophy and religion, and was curious about other religions.
He read the Bhagavad Gita, which is a sacred Hindu text. He met theologians of different denominations, Anglican ministers, Catholic priests. So he was this intellectually curious person that really had this passion for understanding truth, and meaning and purpose. That was really his love. He really wasn't a business guy. I've often said he would've made a very good philosophy professor at university. So philosophy, learning, religion, history, those were his passions. So, my father wrote two books on religion. One was a book called The Triple Abyss, which was really a synthesis of some thoughts on religion and philosophy from different religions and different traditions. But just before he died, my father was working on a book called Purpose.
And in its conclusion, my father wrote a number of things that summarized his theology and character. There are words that just inspire me and amaze me, and just have such wisdom. So in the book's conclusion, my father wrote, "But I prefer an incomprehensible God to a meaningless world." And so, my father's faith may be ecumenical, but as a curious philosopher, to think of a world that's completely meaningless, that I may not fully comprehend who God is and how that all works, but I prefer a God that I may not fully understand to a world that's utterly meaningless and devoid of purpose. That's how I interpret that comment. And I think there is some wisdom in that.
Gary Schneeberger:
I know you're going to move on to a second point there, but I want to read something I found in my research, and this was in, you may have heard of this, I never have. The Australian Dictionary of Biography has a very long piece on your father, and they quoted that. I was actually going to quote that without telling you, and then you quoted it when we were preparing. So I'm like, "Oh, okay." But here's the part at the beginning of that, which when I think about Beyond the Crucible, and I think about what you talk about all the time at Beyond the Crucible, this is what your dad wrote as well, and it's quoted by the Australian Dictionary of Biography. "Existence for us is best defined as purpose." He wrote according to this dictionary, I mean, that's exactly what you believe at Beyond the Crucible, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean after all, the book that he was writing was called Purpose.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Life has to have purpose and meaning. How do we define a life for significance, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others? He believed that a life should be on purpose. So, I guess without really realizing it or comprehending it, our motto at Beyond the Crucible, that life should be about a life of significance. Part of the core of that is from something my father felt so deeply and profoundly, that life should be on purpose.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, and I can't imagine how that feels to you having that revelation. It's got me, it moved me to having been with you over the journey of Beyond the Crucible to see that connection. So sorry, I cut you off before you got to something else that he wrote in that book.
Warwick Fairfax:
So, one of the things that he ends the book with is these few lines. He says this, "How can I say what I should aim at? To live beyond my understanding, to act beyond my love, to serve beyond my life?" I mean, that, to me is a life on purpose. It's dedicated to serving others. It's altruistic, it's uplifting. It's the opposite of a life about me. To live beyond my understanding. I may not understand everything that's happening in life. I may not fully comprehend who God is. I may not always understand what's happening, but I will live beyond the level of understanding I have of life. I'm going to act beyond my love. I may not like what happened to me, I may not agree with it, but I'm going to act beyond my own capacities to love, and to serve beyond my life is not so much about me. It's about serving others. I mean, this is deeply altruistic on purpose, dedicated to serving others. I mean, those are amazing lines.
Gary Schneeberger:
And you could, Warwick, because I did, because it's not lost on me as I read this, the three times he used the word beyond in what he wrote. So I rewrote it to say, here's his lines, to live beyond my understanding, to act beyond my love, to serve beyond my life, and his son has added to it, to thrive beyond my crucible. And that is just, it's amazing to me that he would've written that and that you would've created something called Beyond the Crucible is again, he's the Father, clearly of what this podcast and this brain is all about, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
I mean, that is remarkable, Gary. I had never, ever thought that there are three beyonds in that. And Beyond the Crucible, just the idea of getting beyond our worst day, getting beyond the limitations, perhaps of our capacity to love, to give, to be who we want to be. It's feeling like there is a journey, there is a next step. And from my perspective, there's a higher power. There's a loving God up there that can help us live beyond our capabilities, love beyond our abilities, serve and have purpose beyond our abilities to do that. There is a loving God that can help us do that. That to me is the key of living beyond, and getting beyond a crucible is relying on a higher power, which to me is a loving God. But yes, that's remarkable. Three beyonds were the cornerstone of his philosophy.
Gary Schneeberger:
And his son added the fourth beyond in there. I mean, that is just so moving and touching and incredible. So again, I cut you off. You have some more details about your dad's faith, but I just had to get that in there.
Warwick Fairfax:
No, that is profound, amazing, astounding, really. So, thank you. That's amazing. So yeah, my father's faith may not have been quite the same as mine. As listeners may know, I'm an elder at an evangelical, non-denominational Christ-centered church in Annapolis, Maryland where we live. But I had a deep respect for my father's faith and how he lived it out, just the way he tried to do the right thing no matter what, especially in the events around 1976 when other family members tried to, and did remove him as chairman of the company. I truly did feel that he was a great man of noble character, and I feel like if you have a parent that's a great person who you deeply respect them, I mean, that is a gift. I realized not everybody can say that. What's interesting is that I came to faith in Christ through St. Aldate's Church, which is an evangelical Anglican church at Oxford.
I was studying at Oxford University at the time, and this happened in 1982, when faith became very real and personal to me. So I called my father to let him know what had happened. And remember, my father had more of an ecumenical faith-looking synthesis from different philosophical and religious traditions. But despite that, what was interesting is, my father was actually pleased and proud. He wasn't like, "Oh, here we go. We've got some Holy Roller. What's happened here?" Because he said that my faith in Christ was in line with that of John Fairfax, my great-great-grandfather. It's as if, well, this is family tradition. Faith has been important to my family of the generation. So, the fact that faith is so important to you is just amazing.
I find this comment both telling and revealing. And when I was working in New York and working in banking at Chase Manhattan Bank, my father would write letters to me, and he was so proud of me and my faith, and he looked forward to me coming back to Australia and he said, "My faith in God has grown, and obviously your faith in God has grown, too. And so the two people we are now, I look forward to just growing even closer and talking about this." So it just felt like somehow, the fact that I made this profession of faith in Christ, to him, it almost if it was possible, bonded us even closer.
So, it's hard to know quite what all that means because it felt like on the face of it, his faith was more ecumenical than mine. But somehow he deeply respected my evangelical faith, and in some sense, maybe more than I realized at the time, he could deeply respect and relate to it, and wanted to grow closer through mutual faith. So it's just quite remarkable. It was a bit unexpected. I don't know what I was expecting when I called him that day in 1982, "Hey, Dad, I made a profession of faith in Christ." His, just love and respect, I guess that's another testament to his character. There was no, "Well, I don't know about this. I agree with some of it." He was just proud of me and so pleased. So again, just a testament to his faith and his respect for me. Again, remarkable.
Gary Schneeberger:
And that's been kind of what this episode's been about. There's been a lot of remarkable here. Some things that I think have been first-time revelations, certainly to me. I think to you, maybe some things as well. As we wrap up here, Warwick, for listeners and viewers, what would you offer to them as the big takeaways here? Because it is a very personal story about your father, but there's also bigger takeaways there, too. So what are the takeaways here that folks can take with them about Sir Warwick Fairfax?
Warwick Fairfax:
I feel that I've been blessed to have as a father, Sir Warwick Fairfax. He may have been head of a large media company, but for me, he was just my dad, and he was a good father. He spent a lot of time with me growing up. Our trip to the Outback, and when I went to Oxford, he flew over with my mother. And just to show you what kind of love he had, I guess because my father started flying in the 1920s and '30s, when flying was more of an adventure, pressurized cabins back in biplanes in the '20s. So he was deathly afraid of flying. So when we went to England, when I was like six or seven, we took the ship, which back in the '60s, you could still take a ship to England. He flew in 1979 from Australia to England when I got into Balliol College, Oxford, and he was deathly afraid of flying.
I remember my mother telling me at the time, "He would not have done that for me, but because of his love for you, he did it for you." I mean, and I realized that was just amazing. That's love in action, doing something you're absolutely deathly afraid of. So he was a great dad, loved me, an enormous amount. We bonded over a mutual love of history. I guess my father had this, as I've mentioned, this nobility of character. He's somebody that everybody in the country respected, be they conservatives or more progressive politicians, business people. The people that worked, thousands of employees worked for John Fairfax Limited. The staff that my father had felt like they were blessed to work for Sir Warwick Fairfax, a person noble in title, but noble in character, noble in every sense of the word.
It was just so apparent. My father was somebody, as we've discussed, that would do the right thing no matter what. The pinnacle of it was how he responded in 1976, when 15 years after they first tried, other family members finally succeeded in removing him as chairman. That was certainly how my father saw it, and he was devastated. He was hurt. He was 74 years old, but he was in tremendous shape, great mental acuity. But for the sake of the company, the family, and especially my future within the company, he resigned gracefully, and to the best of his ability, he forgave other family members. That episode in the 1940s when my father put country first by supporting the Labour party leader, John Curtin and not the Conservative candidate, Sir Robert Menzies is remarkable.
It was country first, doing the right thing first, no matter what. And just the way that my father treated other people, his staff and everybody interacted with, he just felt that their opinions were worthy of respect. Never saying bad things about other people in the sense of based on the color of their skin, or their political beliefs, again, is just remarkable. I almost think of Winston Churchill in a sense, and I believe we spoke about this when we talked about Churchill. In 1945, Winston Churchill, after having won the Second World War, along with Franklin Roosevelt, he loses the election because the British people wanted peace and prosperity, and they wanted welfare programs just to help after the devastation of the war.
Clement Attlee, the Labour leader won and some of Churchill's friends came up to him and talked about silly old Attlee and how bad he was, and just bad-mouthed him. And Churchill said, "How dare you speak badly of Clement Attlee? I may not agree with his policies, but I will support him. He's our prime minister." And there are kind of echoes of that with my father of, he may not always agreed with people who were more left of center because he was more right of center, but he didn't denigrate their character.
He respected their rights to believe what they believed. He treated people as human beings. He treated them equally. He believed that everybody is worthy of respect. So to me, when I think of what makes him a great man, it was because my father wasn't just a noble in title. He was a noble in character. He did the right thing, no matter what. He did his best to forgive other family members that removed him as chairman in 1976, and he treated other people with respect. So, that's why I admire him so much. I felt like, I do feel like my father was a great man, and to have a father as a great man, you deeply admire and respect, that is an incredible gift and an amazing blessing that I'm truly grateful for.
Gary Schneeberger:
Before we land the plane, and in honor of your father, let's make it a scary 1920s non-pressurized cabin biplane. Before we land the plane, let me ask you one more question. For folks who've heard this, and they've certainly touched by the stories, impressed by the stories, not just of your father, but your love and affection for him. Is there just one tip? Maybe there's more than one tip that you can give them, because this episode is about doing the right thing no matter what. If someone is facing this situation where they're not sure they can do the right thing. They're fighting with a family member, and the family member is being very difficult and they don't know what to do. Whatever that might be, what's one tip that they can lean into doing the right thing no matter what, that will help them from that crucible becoming completely out of control?
Warwick Fairfax:
We talk a lot on Beyond the Crucible about doing the inner work, the soul work. If your identity is wrapped up in you, in your title. So my father could be thinking, "I'm Sir Warwick Fairfax and I'm head of this great newspaper company." You could feel like, "I'm chief executive at this company. I'm the most respected person in my town and I'm very successful," or what have you. When your ego and identity is wrapped up in your title, then doing the right thing, no matter what, can be difficult.
Now, my father wasn't perfect and my father liked being chairman of that company. Yeah, probably. None of us are perfect. It's typically shades of gray in terms of character, I realize. But at the end of the day, we're defined by our decisions, and ultimately you've got to decide when you're making a decision, if you are head of the company, or whatever situation you're in, maybe it's an argument with a family member. Is it about being right? Is my identity about, I never make mistakes, I'm always right, everybody else is wrong? Your identity has to be from our perspective in some higher power. We believe in, ultimately in God. But it cannot be in what you do, or being right. So if you do this inner soul work, and have your identity that's decoupled with the decision and with other people, then it makes it easier to do the right thing no matter what.
If your identity is wrapped up in who you are, that tends to make you insecure. Insecure people tend to want to denigrate other people, even people that look different than them, believe different than them. Because what that says is, "I'm insecure about who I am and what I believe, and if I pull other people down, it makes me feel better about myself." That to me, is one of the root causes of prejudice. It's ignorance and deep insecurity of yourself. If you're secure within yourself, and you have a moral core for me, ultimately in God, then I think it's a bit easier to treat people with respect. So ultimately, I think for those who want to do the right thing, no matter what, it helps if you do the inner soul work and decouple your identity from the decision.
If you say to yourself and to others, "Hey, it's not about me. It's about what's the right thing for my company, for my family, for my town, my state, my country, the world, and it's not about my agenda. What's the right thing to do?" If you've done the inner soul work, that's a whole lot easier to do. If you haven't done the inner soul work, that's almost, if not impossible to do the right thing. Because ultimately it will be, "Hey, what's the right thing? It's about me winning and people losing," and that can lean into, do the wrong thing no matter what, which we don't advocate here. It's the inner soul work that's critical to be able to do the right thing, no matter what.
Gary Schneeberger:
Look at that, folks. The plane's on the ground, the 1920s biplane on the ground safely. Good job landing, Warwick. And that'll wrap up the final episode for this year of our series within the show, stories from the book, Crucible Leadership. But like I said at the outset, it may not be the last time we do it because Warwick's book, Crucible Leadership, does indeed have many more stories to tell. So stay tuned for that. And if you liked what you heard here or saw here, we have a couple of things we'd like you to do. If you're listening on a podcast app, subscribe to the podcast right there. You'll never miss an episode. If you're watching on YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Same thing, you'll never miss an episode.
So until we're together the next time, folks, please remember, we do know how difficult crucibles can be. We've both experienced them. We know how hard it is to get beyond them. We know how hard it is. We've just discussed how hard it's to do the right thing, all the time. To do the correct thing, even when it's not easy. Warwick's dad did that. Warwick's dad taught Warwick how to do that. We hope you've learned a little bit about that here. So remember, as you walk your journey beyond your crucible, that it's not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons from what you've been through, and you apply those lessons to moving forward, where it can take you is to the best destination you could ever imagine, and that is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the Helper or the Individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit Beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment, and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
How do you handle your passion with care? How do you help ensure when you’re off-the-charts passionate about your vision, that you don’t go off the rails in pursuit of it? How do you keep that race car that is your passion on the track?
In this week’s episode, Warwick and I discuss his latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com titled Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose. We explore seven key truths to help you stay out of the danger zone of your passion becoming so white-hot that it hurts you and your team.
Among the insights we discuss to help you avoid creating more crucibles are being vulnerable, asking for help and being sure to channel your passion appropriately.
In short, Warwick says, “Your passion needs to serve your purpose. If it doesn’t, you need to get your passion under control until it does.”
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and be sure to tell your friends and family about us.
Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.
Having too much passion, it's not that passion is bad, you just recognize the danger that passion unchecked and unchanneled appropriately can really cause huge amount of destruction and can hurt people. It should come with a warning label, handle with care. If you're a racing car driver and you're driving on probably the most dangerous course in the Formula 1 circuit in Monte Carlo, you have this high performing Ferrari that you're driving and you may be a good driver. But if you push the envelope too much and don't drive it appropriately, it could harm, if not kill you, and other people. These drivers know that. They know they have to drive fast, but under control, that car has to be under control at all times, irrespective of the speed. They know that.
Gary Schneeberger:
How do you handle your passion with care? How do you help ensure when you're off the charts passionate about your vision, that you don't go off the rails in pursuit of it? How do you keep that race car that is your passion on the track?
Hi, I am Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. In this week's episode, Warwick and I discuss his latest blog at beyondthecrucible.com titled Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose. We explore seven key truths to help you stay out of the danger zone of your passion becoming so white-hot that it burns you and your team. Among the insights we discussed to help you avoid creating more crucibles with your vision to help you overcome a crucible are being vulnerable, asking for help and being sure to channel your passion appropriately. In short, Warwick says, "Your passion needs to serve your purpose. If it doesn't, you need to get your passion under control until it does."
Indeed. This is an episode based on Warwick's most recent blog at beyondthecrucible.com, which is called Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose. Okay? Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose. I'll begin this episode as I always do with episodes that are about the blog, Warwick, and by asking you what led you to write this blog on this subject of how you need to make sure that your passion serves your purpose?
Warwick Fairfax:
We often think that passion is a good thing. And when we're talking about passion, we mean the passion that's required to make your vision become reality, something that's really deeply on your heart. And in that sense, passion is helpful. It really helps the vision come to reality. Passion can give us perseverance to get through setbacks. You might be thinking, "Gosh, this vision is too important to fail. There are people depending on me. This can really help people. I'm so passionate about this vision, this calling, this mission." And in that sense, passion can be like rocket fuel. It can help us propel our vision forward. So you might be thinking, "Well, that sounds great. What could be wrong with having a whole lot of passion for your vision? And it's not so much that it's wrong, but with a lot of things in life, there can be unintended consequences of too much passion or maybe more accurately passion that's not channeled appropriately.
Yeah. I mean, we often talk about having off-the-charts passion for your vision, and that's good, but there can be so much passion that we can unintentionally hurt other people. For instance, we might be so focused on bringing a vision to reality to help other people that we might actually end up hurting people on our team. There might be people that say, "Well, this is a good vision, but I think we need to pause. I don't know that we have all of our ducks in a road. There are maybe some pieces missing, there are elements of the vision we need to iron out a bit before we go to market, before we roll out this nonprofit.
They might have very understandable reasons for pushing pause or want to tinker, maybe not with the vision, but how it's specifically rolled out and the strategic plans, the implementation, all sorts of things. But we might hear the word delay and feel like, "What do you mean delay? We can't delay. People are counting on us." And so we can get agitated, almost angry about it. And so vision is good, but sometimes when vision is too much, if you will, or not channeled appropriately off the charts, vision in some sense can actually be dangerous.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. We say the phrase off-the-charts passionate all the time, right? That's important to bring your vision to reality. But what you're talking about really is making sure that you're not off the rails passionate, you're not a little out of control, passionate about it, and there is a balance there. I love that you mentioned that passion is the fuel that can propel your vision to reality, but it's rocket fuel, you said, right?
What happens with rocket fuel sometimes? It can burn up. It can explode. I mean, it's a great thing to get you where you're going, but if misused, if used unintelligently, if used without restraint, if used wrongly, it can blow up literally. So that's really the ground we're going to cover here.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I love what you're saying, Gary, about rocket fuel. I think of Formula 1 which is very popular in Europe. You can have the latest Ferrari, McLaren, whatever those cars are, and they're high performance engines, but you've got to keep them on the racetrack. If you're going around the narrow street of Monte Carlo, for instance, there are times when you might be going, I don't know, 30, 40 miles an hour on those hairpin bends. Other times you're doing, I don't know what, 180 more. Those Formula 1 drivers who are the best in the world, they know when to speed up, when to slow down, and they have to keep their engines tuned appropriately. And they've got to keep them on track, otherwise, they could be injured, they could injure spectators. So that's, I think a good example of in many areas of life, if not all, it's important for passion to have guardrails or else high performance engines. High performance cars can do a huge amount of damage. Well, some driven high performing person without the appropriate guardrails. A high performing person with fashion without guardrails can be dangerous, very dangerous.
Gary Schneeberger:
And this is not just to you Warwick, this is not just thoughts that you've had. This is not even really only thought leadership. This is experienced leadership because you've been through some situations where your passion by your, as you'll talk about your passion maybe has gotten off the rails a little bit, has become a little too off the charts. Talk a little bit about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, I mean, I am somebody that as we'll talk about beneath my usually calm exterior, I'm a very passionate person. And certainly there's one example in my life where, yes, my passion wasn't really controlled appropriately. It didn't quite have the guardrails it needed to, and I know listeners and viewers have heard this story, but we're going to look at it from a bit of a different lens. In 1987, I launched a 2.25 billion takeover of my family's 150-year old media company in Australia. I'd just come back from several years overseas with an undergraduate degree at Oxford, a stint on Wall Street and with my MBA from Harvard Business School. My dad had died earlier that year, and I felt that the company had strayed from the vision of the founder, my great, great-grandfather, John Fairfax, and that the company wasn't being well managed.
Now, 15 years earlier in 1976, other family members had threatened my father out as chairman. I was 15 at the time. It was absolutely devastating. I felt like this was a righteous man, falsely persecuted. So all this produced a lot of passion within me. Remembering what happened to my father at 15 years earlier, I felt that the company was straying from the vision of the found, it was not being well managed. And so as I was coming back from Harvard Business School, I felt that something had to be done and something had to be done now. I was off the charts passionate, almost this righteous crusader mentality, which was never good or rarely good I should say. But anyway, in late August 1987, literally a few months, I probably graduated in May, June '87. August '87, which is two or three months later, I launched this 2.25 billion takeover. And things went wrong right from the beginning.
Now the family members sold out. They didn't want to be in a company controlled by a 26-year-old, which makes sense. Within three years, the debt in the company was so high that we had to file for bankruptcy. Australia got in a big recession and revenues and profits were down. So my actions led to friction within the family that led to instability with thousands of employees at the company. And so you might ask, okay, it seems like in theory you should have been an intelligent person, an undergrad degree from Oxford, Wall Street, a Harvard MBA. You at least knew something about business and how to structure things. I mean, I'm assuming you attended finance classes at Harvard Business School. It seems hard to fathom, hard to figure out. I mean, how could I have made so many mistakes? And I think in short, it was too much passion or I would say uncontrolled unbridled passion.
It led me to hiring the wrong advisors who told me what I wanted to hear. It led me to ignoring the good advisors that told me, "You know what? Warwick, the numbers don't add up. It's too risky to make the takeover." These were blue-chip merchant bankers, basically, Australian British-speak for investment bankers, but wasn't what I wanted to hear. We've got to make this happen, got to make this happen, got to make a change. And so I ignored those good advisors. Basically my passion clouded my judgment and caused me to make rash and ill-advised decisions. And the irony is by my nature, I don't tend to make quick decisions. I tend to think about them, ask for advice. Well, certainly now, but even back then, I never thought of myself as a quick and rash decision maker.
But all of this passion, the memory of what happened to my father. And these same, some of this is subconscious, these same family members who tossed my dad out. I felt like allowing the company to go in the wrong direction and management was making poor decisions. And so with all this emotion and passion running around within me, it led me to just be impatient and make rash decisions without thinking them through.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. I think there's two aspects of that story that are important to sort of unpack a little bit. One is the passion that you described is both positive passion. You wanted to bring the company back, so it was moored in how your great-great-grandfather did it. That was a passionate, noble passion. And then there was maybe some negative passion, right? For sure there was about what had happened to your dad. Passion that can derail your vision can be both from positive sources and negative sources. That's fair, isn't it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It is absolutely fair. The sad, unfortunate thing is if you'd asked me at the time and not in 1987. Okay, so this is just a response to your feeling that other family members proverbially stabbed your father in the back. I would've said, "No. That's not why I'm doing this. It's because the company's not being well managed." And objectively, I think, I believe that is true. As I've said in other podcasts in the first year or so when I brought in new management, they increased operating profits 80%. So objectively it was certainly underperforming. Of course there was so much debt, it didn't matter what was happening at an operating level. The point is it's not like all of my assumptions were wrong. Certainly, the one about it wasn't being as well managed. I think it's objectively true. Was it a bit too sensational? I mean, I think so.
It wasn't so much that my assumptions were wrong, but it's almost like the cure was worse than the disease. And with some of that passion, some of that righteous indignation because of what happened to my dad, probably yes, but I didn't realize that at the time. I just felt like something's got to be done. So yes, there were some issues, but my passion probably magnified those issues, maybe exaggerated them. And certainly it's one thing to say something needs to be done. It is another thing to say, "Well, is this the right way to go about it? Are there other options? Can you even do anything?" This would be a whole other discussion, but sometimes something may need to be done, but you may not be the one to do it. Or there might be no way of doing anything at the present time. So maybe you wait.
There's all sorts of other options other than doing a hostile takeover to what I objectively thought at the time. And I think to a large degree objectively think now that the company wasn't being well run and I felt like it strayed from the vision of the founder. Even if that's true, it doesn't mean that my actions made sense or there weren't other options I should have tried or done nothing at all.
So there are all sorts of, and we'll never know how that would've turned out. But the point is, my passion was so immense and my righteous indignation, if you will, about what happened to my dad that it clouded my judgment and prevented me from objectively looking at other options or objectively looking at whether it was even possible or wise to do the takeover.
Gary Schneeberger:
And I said that there were a couple of points I wanted to draw. The second one I think is also important for folks, and that is you mentioned that one of the things that contributed to the takeover's ultimate failure was that you had family members sell out and they didn't want to be locked into a company run by a 26-year-old. I think it's important to point out that while you were 26, this isn't just something that happens to "young people" to just starting out people, right? This is something that is no respecter of age and experience, right? This idea that passion can overtake reason and can certainly unseat your vision. That's not age-specific at all, is it?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's a good point because again, with the Harvard MBA, the idea that in a takeover that's going to be deemed as hostile, that family members are going to want to sit in a privatized company where they really can't sell out very easily at all, controlled by somebody else. No rational business person would think that would make sense, whether you're 26, 56, somewhere in between. And it's not like I hadn't done plenty of cases at Harvard Business School, maybe not quite this particular case, but something would've taught me some common sense in the world of business. But I felt like, "Oh, they won't sell. They have loyalty to the company" and obviously, the advisors I was using cared more about the fee than that. So as long as they get paid or got paid, then that was fine.
But I was just making assumptions that were just idiotic. That alone to be trapped in a company by 26 year old. So you're right, Gary, that yes, it's my particular circumstance. There's billions involved when I was 26, but it could be a small business, it could be a neighborhood community group, it could be a family issue, it could be all sorts of things. With too much passion, it can lead you to make assumptions that other rational people would say, "How in the world could that person make that assumption? No sane person would irrespective of the size, of the age. Too much passion, too much emotion that washes away reason can make the most intelligent person make the most idiotic and dangerous decisions.
Gary Schneeberger:
That's the bad news folks, okay? Here's the good news. Warwick's blog unpacks seven reasons how you can prevent this from happening in your own experience. And let's start running through those Warwick. The first of your seven points about how to make sure that your passion doesn't derail your vision, that your passion doesn't cancel out all the good that you want to do. The first point is recognize the danger. It all starts with recognizing what the circumstances that's going on, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely having too much passion. It's not the passion is bad, you just recognize the danger that passion, unchecked and unchanneled appropriately can really cause huge amount of destruction and can hurt people. It should come with a warning label, handle with care. Back to the racing car analogy. If you're a racing car driver and you're driving on probably the most dangerous course in the Formula 1 circuit in Monte Carlo, you have this high-performing Ferrari that you're driving and you may be a good driver, but if you push the envelope too much and don't drive it appropriately, it could harm, if not kill you, and other people. These drivers know that. They know they have to drive fast, but under control. That car has to be under control at all times, irrespective of the speed. They know that. Their life and others' lives are on the line.
All I have to say is the first step is recognize the danger. And in my case, I'm a passionate person. I think there are many others who are also passionate. If you have a vision that you are off the charts passionate about, then you can be in the danger zone. You probably are or will be. On the other hand, if you're not off the charts passionate about your vision, it's probably not going to happen. For those who want to lead a life for significance. To those that feel like, "Okay, I want my life to be a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, you'll almost certainly be passionate. If you are somebody that wants to lead a life for significance, then this message, this caution is for you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, for sure. And it's right, passion is an emotion. You begin rightly with here's the emotion you're going through. Now recognize that emotion could be dangerous. The next step, 0.2 in the blog is Knowledge is Power. You're taking here, you've got the emotion that you're considering. Now you need some knowledge to go with the emotion. Talk a little bit about how knowledge is power in this particular circumstance is helpful.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. We use this phrase, knowledge is power a lot at Beyond the Crucible. We used it as part of the assessment, a triumph to triumph assessment in which we talk about having knowledge helped you go from your worst day to triumph to lead a life of significance. Knowledge is very helpful. And so just understanding that passion can be dangerous, we begin to start thinking to ourselves. Okay. So we've had instances in the past like me when passion was dangerous and bad outcomes happened. And so it tells us as we seek to bring our vision to reality, we need to be careful. We need to begin to understand that we need some guardrails and we begin to start asking ourselves. Well, when we get really passionate, maybe too passionate in some sense, we can begin to ask ourselves, when does that typically happen? How does that manifest itself in an unhealthy way when we go to the danger zone.
Everybody's different. It's not necessarily the case of two people who are both passionate that, how it manifests itself in an unhealthy way will be the same. So yeah, recognize that too much passion can be dangerous. Begin to tell yourself that's true. And how specifically does it manifest itself within you? As you begin to self-reflect, you're beginning to enter a territory that could actually be healthy. You're beginning to think, "Well, I know I need guardrails but what do those guardrails look like?" The fact you're even thinking I might need guardrails is a huge win,
Gary Schneeberger:
I just have to say, because of the vintage I am in years, you've said danger zone twice so far in this conversation.
Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed.
Gary Schneeberger:
I am singing in my head, Kenny Loggins theme to Top Gun Highway to the Danger Zone. That's going on in my head. So I probably dropped it in your head now too. My apologies for that.
Warwick Fairfax:
No. It was already there, the 1986 movie, Top Gun. And where was I when I saw that movie? I was at Harvard Business School in Boston. That's where I saw that. I guess I didn't quite get the fact you got to be careful as you're taking off in your F-15 or whatever it is, off an aircraft carrier. Somehow I missed ... I don't know if that was the point of the movie. It may not have been, but if it was, I missed it. So there you go.
Gary Schneeberger:
We'll have to do a podcast episode about it in a series sometimes and dig into that question. But until we get there, folks, the third point in Warwick's blog following recognize the danger and knowledge is power is this, be vulnerable. Why?
Warwick Fairfax:
It's one thing to see something within you, it's another thing to say something. And so being vulnerable is really helpful. One key step of wisdom is to admit to your team and those that could be affected by your perhaps over-the-charts unbridled passion that we might have a problem. It could be with your family. It could be with your coworkers on a vision that you're trying to bring to reality. It could be with a nonprofit that you're volunteering with. Whatever endeavor that you're working on or whatever vision you're trying to bring to reality, just be honest with those folks. And just admit the fact that you believe so much in that vision that sometimes we can get a little over the top, be a little too passionate and can unintentionally cause damage that might hurt people in relationships.
In this conversation with other people, the first step is to say, using another metaphor, "Houston, I have a problem" back to Apollo 11 or the Apollo program in the '60s. You got to be able to admit that you can get overly passionate at times and maybe you're in the midst of a circumstance where you are potentially entering the danger zone. The dial in your racing car is in the red. It's never good when that's in the red, just being vulnerable, admitting that you either might or have a problem and that you're just so passionate that it's hard for you to think straight
Gary Schneeberger:
In post-production on this episode, we may have to have our producer throw in a little snippet from the song Danger Zone every time you mention it.
Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly.
Gary Schneeberger:
So we can have the listeners and viewers have the same problem we're having right now. What I love about this point, Warwick, is that you talk about it a lot. And you talk about vulnerability for a purpose, and that's really what this is. This is perhaps the gold standard of vulnerability for a purpose, isn't it? As you're going through managing your passion in the proper way.
How can vulnerability for a purpose help you achieve the purpose you're pursuing? Warwick answers my question after these words from our sponsors.
Warwick Fairfax:
We do often talk about vulnerability for a purpose. It's not like, "Let me tell you every stupid thing I've ever done that has no relevance to what you're doing." But if you're with your team, let's say in some venture that you believe the world needs, it's going to help people. It's your life of significance. It probably will also be your team's life of significance too, certainly in some way. Then that's where if you feel like this wave, this tidal wave of passion coming upon you, then you've got to say, folks, you know I'm a passionate person. Right now I just feel this passion that's almost, I use this expression sometimes almost like lava breaking through the surface.
And I know at times in the past that's been dangerous, but I sure feel like it's happening now. It's vulnerability for a purpose. The first step to be able to moving forward, at least from a team's perspective, they might see that you have passion, but they're not. Most people aren't going to say, "Hey, Warwick. Hey Gary. You seem to be really off the charts passionate about this. I think we've could have a problem." Not something people tend to do. You've got to go first and say, "Hey, I actually have a problem here." You want to enter into a conversation you first got to say you've got a problem.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right. And that leads nicely as you always do when these episodes, Warwick. You always connect them like steps that we're walking on. But the fourth point in the blog, and this speaks to something else that we talked about in a lot at Beyond the Crucible fellow travelers, but your fourth point is ask for help. You're vulnerable, right? Next step, you got to ask for help. As you said, we have to go first. So unpack why ask for help is a critical part and maybe difficult for some people sometimes.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, it's not going to be any secret to your team that you get off the charts passionate about certain things. Any leader that's, I don't know if they're a visionary leader, but a leader that's really wants their vision to become reality is going to have times in which they're really passionate. And so at this point you recognize the danger. You've admitted you have a problem, you're vulnerable, and now you've got to ask for help from your team members or those potentially affected by your passion. You can ask them, when I get like this, please tell me, or I feel like I'm being a bit too passionate. They can say, I can see that you seem really passionate about this issue and I feel like maybe I, maybe we have said something, or maybe this situation has touched a nerve because, it seemed like you were fine a moment ago or yesterday, or I just feel like it's a volcano that's come out of nowhere because it seems like your passion's at another level, so help me understand what's happening?
By just being vulnerable and asking for help, they might say, "Well, it seems like Warwick, you're getting very passionate." When I mentioned subject A, man, it's just like you said, it blew a gasket or something. I was like, "Huh, really? I didn't really think about that huh? So I blew a gasket When subject A came up? Then you can begin to think about what's going on here. But asking for help can help you identify what's going on or why you are feeling that way.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right? And it's important, isn't it? When you ask for help to ask it of people who you believe will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. You sort of indicated in your takeover experience, you had some good advisors who were telling you, who were offering you help and you weren't having any of that help. You had help that you wanted to pursue. I mean, I think it's fair to say that finding people who will speak truth to you rather than speak what you want to hear to you is really critical to this step.
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. And really that gets into another very important subject is we talk about having a team of fellow travelers, which is a team who have complimentary gifts to you, but they absolutely a hundred percent sold out into the vision, they believe in it. But you've got to pick the right people that have integrity that will tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. That should be a huge requirement when you're selecting your team members. There's this phrase, being able to speak truth to power, being able to, speak truth to somebody that you work for, so to the best, a degree that you can. You've got a filter for that in the interviews with these people. And then just see over time, are they doing it? If they always say yes to every idea that you have and say, "My gosh, Warwick. That is genius. That is brilliant. Wow. That's amazing."
And it's all they ever say, rather than, "I'm not sure about this one." That is a bad sign. Maybe you should test it out and just come up with the most harebrained, stupid idea you can and say, "Hey folks, I'm thinking about this." And they go, "That's brilliant." If everybody says, "It's brilliant-"
Gary Schneeberger:
Bravo, bravo. Right, right.
Warwick Fairfax:
... at that point, maybe you need to fire the team and get somebody, a whole new team. Yeah, absolutely Gary, you've got to have people that are willing to speak truth to power and be honest with you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, we are now more than halfway through Warwick's blog, Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose. We've talked about recognizing the danger. We've talked about knowledge is power. We've talked about being vulnerable and we've talked about ask for help. The fifth point Warwick is this, reflect on why you are so passionate at the moment. To use your words, why the lava is bubbling up toward the top of your head or wherever the lava is bubbling. Why is this step critical? Because you talk about reflection a lot. Why is reflecting at this point about this subject so critical?
Warwick Fairfax:
We often talk about the inner work preceding the outer work, the soul work for a leader or anybody that has a vision that they're off the task passionate about, they want to bring to reality that inner work is so important. And part of that inner work is when your passion goes in directions that are not helpful, that it does feel like lava is oozing out, that it feels like you're getting impatient or almost angry with your team or your family, depending on the context, you've been vulnerable, you've asked for help. Maybe your team has given you clues as to when your passion went to from zero to a hundred in a nanosecond, what triggered that? They will give you breadcrumbs of clues about what happened. At that point you've got some data and you can begin to reflect, so what's going on? Why did I seem to get over-the-top passionate about that subject at that time?
Reflect is the first inner work you can do in a sense that's so powerful is what happened there? Why did I just kind of lose it in one sense in terms of my passion and maybe snap at my team, what's going on? And sometimes it can relate to an issue with your team or it could relate to an issue decades earlier. It could be in childhood or something, somehow you were triggered with some emotion. Or maybe you've got so much of your identity wrapped up in your vision that if there's a roadblock or a delay, it feels like it's delaying you as a human being. Maybe it's pointing to some unhelpful aspects, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast. If your identity being so wrapped up in your vision that if there's a delay, you get wide, hot, passionate, bad things happen.
It's really a good opportunity. It's again, back to the race car analogy. When you see you've got all sorts of dials that the engine's about to blow up, there's an oil leak. Those dials are there for a reason. It gives you information that you can then go for a pit stop or maybe not push the engine into the red all the time. And at this point you've got some information, you've asked for help. We'll reflect on what is going on. Why are you so passionate? Is there something triggering that? Do some inner soul works, inner reflection to figure out what's going on? What triggered you to have this almost passionate emotional outburst?
Gary Schneeberger:
And this could be the hardest one of the seven points in the blog because in the same way that at 0.4 ask for help, you want to ask for help from people who are going to tell you, we said what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. And this 0.5, as you're asking yourself questions, as you indicated, you've got to ask yourself questions that you need to hear, not the ones you want to hear, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah. I mean, you've got to be able to face the music, face the internal music.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right.
Warwick Fairfax:
Just because you get over-the-charts passion at times, doesn't mean that you're a terrible person. It may mean that you care. Maybe too much. Passion isn't always fueled by some identity crisis or it's all about me. Passion could be fueled by altruistic motives to help people. So it's not always bad, but regardless, just that internal reflection is important, it's painful. So just go into it saying, okay, this doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Maybe it means I care too much, but since I care about the people I work with and having my vision become reality, I'm going to ask myself some tough questions." I'm going to try to understand is there something from my past that's triggering this? Again, it doesn't mean you're a bad person, it just means you're human, but you've got to do the inner work so that your team isn't hurt, and so frankly, that your vision becomes reality.
Gary Schneeberger:
For sure. The sixth points in your blog, Warwick, pretty simple one word, pray. Talk about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed, pray. This might seem like an interesting concept, but we took a lot on Beyond the Crucible that your beliefs, your values, they need to be anchored in something. For me, it's my faith in God. I believe it's helpful for people to have their direction, their soul anchored in some higher power, something beyond themselves. In fact, one of the ways we define faith is a belief in something beyond yourself. That might be religion, that might be a different paradigm depending on your perspective. But for me, as a person of faith, when I feel like my passion may be getting a bit out of control, I pray something like this, "Lord, I feel so passionate about this, but I don't want my passion getting in the way of the mission. And Lord, I certainly don't want to hurt people. That is not my heart. Lord, please calm my spirit." And I would say most of the time, not about all of the time, because sometimes my passion is pretty strong, but I'd say-
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah. It's pretty hot Lava sometimes, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed. But I'd say, the vast majority of the time, maybe not instantly, but over time, I feel like the Lord does calm my spirit. Maybe it happens supernaturally, but for me it really helps because this doesn't mean I don't want to have passion, but I don't want to have that passion overwhelm me or hurt others or get in the way of my vision becoming a reality. So for me, prayer which is defined as a conversation with God, at least that's how I see it, and others, it's having sort of the ultimate person, if you will, entity that can really help you is just calming my spirit because then I can begin to think rationally. But I believe prayer is one of the most helpful ways to have your passion channeled, calmed. Not extinguished. I'm not asking for prayer for that, but channeled in appropriate way. Just Lord, please calm my spirit. I found that to be incredibly effective and helpful to me.
Gary Schneeberger:
Six is a great point for that because you've gone through all the steps, the soul work, you've gone through asking others, your team of fellow travelers perhaps to weigh in, you've been vulnerable, then you sort of seal it. The sealant can be that prayer, that meditation, that looking outside yourself to some higher truth. And then it gets to 0.7 right? After you've sealed all that up, then you take 0.7. And 0.7 is channel your passion appropriately. I'll just add this before I ask you the question or ask you to react. Channel your passion appropriately, given the context of what we've been talking about, could indeed mean with all the talk about Formula 1 racing, could indeed mean to take your foot off the gas.
That could be the solution that you're looking for here in 0.7. After you've done all these six points, inner work, outer work, upward work, in prayer, it all ends here. Channel your passions appropriately. Talk about that.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, having recognized the danger, being vulnerable, asked for help, reflected on what's going on and prayed. Now, I think hopefully you're in a place where you've calmed down a bit. You can begin to think rationally. The brain is working again. It's not just over-the-top heart passion. The brain is now getting back in gear. Your education, your intelligence, your mental faculties. And you can begin to reflect on what strategies you'll use to channel your passion appropriately. You've recognized the problem, you've understood why, hopefully at this point, and you might begin to ask yourself, "Okay, so what's happening here? Maybe this is an issue that I'm triggered by from something in the past. Maybe I'm just so white-hot passionate about this issue that perhaps somebody else on the team may be better positioned to calmly advocate for this." With a donor, a customer, presentation to somebody, you can begin to think, "Okay, what's the appropriate strategy here?"
Maybe, you know what? I know there's going to be a delay and this is really bugging me so much, but we need to make sure that we iron out some problems with this new product or this new venture, this new nonprofit. We need to figure that out so that our vision can come to reality and so that we don't start hurting people or creating problems unnecessarily. So there could be a whole host of outcomes, but once you've calmed down and you know the areas where you're being triggered with your over-the-top or off-the-charts passion, you can begin to think rationally about what the next step is and begin to think to yourself, "Okay, how do I channel my passion appropriately? Know when to dial it down a bit."
You can be passionate but yet, it's possible to be at least somewhat outwardly calm and rational, even though you're really passionate about what's happening. You don't have to yell and scream all the time to prove you're passionate. People know you so once you've calmed down, it's so much easier to think clearly and rationally, "Am I the right person to do this?" Maybe I need to push pause on this particular aspect of the venture. Maybe this secondary product that I was thinking of rolling out, maybe something with this nonprofit that we wanted to do, maybe now's not the time. Maybe the vision itself a worthy vision. Maybe you need to push pause on it. Maybe it's not the right time in life. Maybe you've got young kids and it's like, "This is going to consume my life 24/7. I'm just going to have to wait a few years." Or, "I feel like I'm not in the right place to really implement this vision. I've got to do some inner work, maybe some healing from some crucible that I've been through."
It doesn't mean it's no forever, but there could be a whole host of reasons in which you feel like I need to push pause on the vision. Maybe I don't have the right team yet. There're some critical players I need. I haven't been able to find the people with the right skills who believe in the vision, but are also going to be willing to speak truth to power. There could be all sorts of reasons to push pause on your vision or have other people help you with it and channel it in a better direction. But all of those rational thoughts won't happen until you found a way to calm down and not be in into the lava danger zone mode.
Gary Schneeberger:
Right, and that does wrap up the point-by-point discussion of your blog, Why Your Passion Must Serve Your Purpose, which is available right now, folks, at beyondthecrucible.com. I wanted to end or begin to end, Warwick, on this truth. One of the great things about Beyond the Crucible, folks, is that nothing that Warwick writes about, talks about is something that he hasn't himself walked through, right?
This has all been learned, sometimes hard learned experientially, and you talked at the outset when we started this conversation, Warwick, about when you've let your, during the takeover of your family's media company, let your passion jump the boundaries, get a little out of control. But now, you've experienced since then some different ways of dealing with managing your passion. So how have you been able to channel your passion after the lessons you've learned and the experience with the takeover, specifically as you described earlier?
Warwick Fairfax:
I guess the first thing I'd say is I'm far more aware of when I'm getting passionate and that it can be dangerous. I still tend to be a very passionate person by nature. I don't know if everybody is. I certainly am and it's good and bad, but I can't really change my fundamental wiring. It just is what it is. And so, I've had a number of instances, even recently, where I can think of a nonprofit that I do a lot of work with. There was a particular issue. I was off-the-charts passionate. I had unbelievably strong convictions, and it was like lava volcano mode inside.
I mean, there's no question what was going on there, and I recognized that. And while I might've thought that my position on that issue was right, which I do, I knew that I had to find a way to calm down because it wasn't going to be helpful. Certainly, wouldn't get the mission accomplished. In fact, when I went into that meeting with this particular nonprofit on this issue, and these are people that know me very well, I said, "Look, I'm really passionate about this, so let me start even before I open my mouth, apologize. I'm going to do my best to be calm." It could be difficult, but I mean, they've known me very well for years.
And so, I did my level best to be calm. I wouldn't say I totally accomplished it, but at least I was vulnerable. I tried to be respectful and, "Look, I trust you, guys. You folks know what you're doing." Being vulnerable. That alone was a huge help. So I feel like I know myself much better than I did. Knowledge is indeed power. When I realize that I'm getting passionate, even though mostly, I'm calm on the inside, there's all these things I'm thinking and I'm just railing against something and I'm passionate about it. All this stuff is going on on the inside, then that's a big help because at that point, what I typically do, and if it's a personal issue, I'll talk to my wife Gail and say, "Gosh, I'm really passionate about this."
Sometimes I'll ask, "Well, what's going on here?" And she knows me very well and says, "Well, is it being triggered by A or B or C?" Just talking about it will help. Typically, then, I'll say, "Can we pray about this because I sure need it because I feel like it's controlling me? I don't want to hurt people and this is not helpful. So that will help." Sometimes I need to do it more than once, the prayer, because my passion could be hard to deal with at times. If it's in the context of what I do with Beyond the Crucible, I might talk to some other folks on the team saying, "Boy, I'm really passionate about this, but I don't want this to derail things. And so, we'll talk about it."
And so, at that point, we can begin to have a conversation saying, "Okay, what's the best way? Is this something we need to just not pursue or just be a little more patient about it? Maybe somebody else is the best one to talk about the issue. Maybe just drop it for now." But having been vulnerable and prayed, at that point, my spirit is a bit calmer, and I can begin to think rationally. One of the things I really try and do with this example with a nonprofit is like, "Lord, I believe this is the right course, but I'm going to leave the outcome to you and to the team who's going to make the decision," which in this case wasn't me.
And they're smart people. I have confidence in their judgment. I've presented what I thought was right. Yes, I'm passionate about it, but I'm not going to have my identity wrapped up in the outcome of this decision. And I think I pretty much didn't and haven't, but there was a lot of inner wrestling, a lot of inner soul work that precedes that. So I can't really change who I am, which by nature, I am a very not extremely passionate person. I mean, I have views about, I don't say everything, but a lot of things in life. I don't always talk about them because they're not always productive to talk about. But I really have tried over the years to channel that passion appropriately. And at times, if it comes out in unhelpful ways, I try to be ready to apologize and say, "Yeah, I was little over-the-top passionate about that one. I'm sorry." Well, if people know you, it's okay to be human. It's okay to blow it once in a while because that's going to happen. Blowing it is not failure, if you will, I suppose to mix metaphors. Failure is probably not doing anything about it and not being willing to apologize.
So I just try to be a lot better at knowing when I'm getting a bit too passionate, when it's a bit uncontrolled, if you will, realizing it, asking for help, praying about it, and letting go of the outcome. And okay, maybe this vision won't happen as quickly as I thought it would. Maybe the outcome I want to happen won't happen. I'm going to be okay with that. I'm not going to have my identity wrapped up in that decision or that outcome. It's a lot of inner soul work and a lot of asking for help and prayer. All those things have been hugely helpful to me. It doesn't mean I don't get passionate. I can't change who I am, but I can make sure that this isn't going to overwhelm me.
Gary Schneeberger:
And would you say that all those things taken together, they have allowed you to chart a course that doesn't take you to the highway, to the danger zone?
Warwick Fairfax:
Absolutely. It's led me to keep that racecar, which I like to think at times I'm driving a race car. At least, certainly, I like to think what we collectively do at Beyond the Crucible is like that. There'll be times in which you hit a hairpin bend, like it's 180-degree hairpin bend. You can't do 180 miles an hour on 180-degree turn. It's just, it'll crash and burn. Bad things would happen.
Gary Schneeberger:
Doesn't add up, yep.
Warwick Fairfax:
No. So you got to be willing to slow down at times. And the same is true at Beyond the Crucible or any vision, there are times in which you got to, as I say, you got to slow down because if you go too fast, bad things will happen. In fact, going too fast at times can make things take forever because you're going to make too many mistakes. You can't afford to be too quick. So yeah, I mean, it's definitely been helpful and it's helped me keep the race car such as it is on the rails. And maybe I'll hit the guard rails once in a while, but I like to think I'd go through the guard rails.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yes.
Warwick Fairfax:
Nudge it slightly at times, perhaps.
Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, your life is not a Fast & Furious movie. That's good.
Warwick Fairfax:
Yes, indeed.
Gary Schneeberger:
So now that we've wrapped it up, you said a lot of things that are really helpful to folks who are watching and listening. What's one takeaway you like those who are watching and listening to come away from this episode with?
Warwick Fairfax:
Having off-the-charts passion is not wrong, but your passion must serve your purpose. Let me just add, this is a brilliant phrase, and I say it's brilliant, not because I'm egotistical, which hopefully I'm not. But in one of our pre-meetings when we were talking about ideas for the blog, Gary, that's a phrase that you mentioned. You said your passion must serve your purpose. That is profound wisdom. So when I say it's profound wisdom, I can say that because it wasn't me. So there you go, it was you.
Gary Schneeberger:
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That's getting into the danger zone of my ego, but thank you.
Warwick Fairfax:
There you go. But your purpose, your vision, and your life of significance, they must be in control, not your passion. If your passion is in control, it will endanger your purpose, your vision, your life of significance. That is not what you want to have happen. You don't want to have your life of significance just go up in flames because you can't keep your passion under control. That is the opposite of what you do. Just meditate, pray about that, saying, "Lord," or however you look at it, "I care about this life of significance, this mission, this vision too much. I don't want my failings, my at times over-the-charts, over-the-top passion to get in the way of that. I really don't want to do this because people depend on me, on my team. People are going to be helped by this vision. I don't want to fail because I wasn't able to get my passion under control and channel it appropriately."
So think about how important it is for your vision to succeed and how people are counting on you, both in your team and the people you're going to help. You don't want to hurt other people, especially people on your team and off-the-charts, over-the-top passion that can do that. So that's not what you want to do. That's not what living a life of significance is. Living a life of significance is not about hurting people, it's about helping people. So you have to have your passion be under control. So I think we believe passion is important, and passion is a good thing, but that passion must be kept under control. Otherwise, you'll hurt people. You won't achieve your life of significance, and your vision won't become reality. So that inner work, that inner prayer to a higher power, it's so important seeking advice because you want your mission to succeed, and you don't want your passion to just go off the rails and torpedo any chance that it has of happening.
So if you're a little bit leery about doing the inner work, just think about, do you want to hurt people? Do you want your vision to not succeed? Do you want to not have a life of significance? Well, if you want all those things to happen, a life of significance and help people, then get your passion under control, put up the guardrails, seek help, pray to a higher power, just keep your passion under control.
Gary Schneeberger:
Great insight. That lands the plane. In this particular case, given what we've been talking about and some of the references we've made, it lands it on the aircraft carrier, right?
Warwick Fairfax:
Indeed.
Gary Schneeberger:
But before we go, folks, as we always do when we do episodes on a blog that Warwick's written, and this one is available at beyondthecrucible.com, is we ask reflection questions, questions for you to ponder in light of all this discussion that we've had, and I would exhort you before I read these to be vulnerable and honest with yourself as you reflect on these questions.
The first one is, is your passion serving your purpose? Ask yourself that question. Is your passion serving your purpose? Number two, if it's not, reflect on what's going on and share with others that you are having difficulty channeling your passion appropriately. Being vulnerable for a purpose right there. Not just vulnerable for a purpose in a conversation, but for your purpose. For a purpose and for your purpose, be vulnerable. And then the third one, pray or meditate on what is going on and ask for your spirit to be calmed so that your passion can indeed serve your purpose.
That, folks, is going to wrap us up here on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. As always, until we're together next time, remember that we know crucible experiences are difficult. We've had them. We've talked about those things. We've talked to a whole bunch of people, more than 120 guests who've gone through crucibles. We know they're hard, but we also know they're not the end of your story. They can be the beginning of a new story if you apply the lessons you learn from them and chart a course to a new destination and that destination, if you follow your vision and your passion properly channeled can be the best destination you can reach because it is a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won't just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you'll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience.
This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It's more than an assessment. It's a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.
