
Sir Warwick Fairfax: A Man of Noble Character
Warwick Fairfax
December 10, 2024
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
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Have a question or comment? Drop us a line at info@beyondthecrucible.com
Transcript
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.
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