The Power of Humbler Leadership: Josh Wymore

Josh Wymore:
As I reflected on it later, I realized it was really Brad’s humility that enabled him to speak so candidly and directly with me because I could tell that Brad was in front of me, not just because I was being a pain in his butt, but because he actually loved me and wanted what was best for me. And that conversation was really about me, about me becoming more of who I was made to be. And because I could tell he cared about me, I invited him into my life and let him speak truth to me in ways that I would not allow other people to.

Gary Schneeberger:
That’s our guest this week, Josh Wymore, discussing how he learned a valuable leadership lesson that helped him overcome a crucible when his attempt to coach a woman’s softball team failed because he thought, as a leader, he had to have and provide all the answers. What Brad, a more senior coach taught him, set him on the path of embracing, researching and writing about humbler leadership, the title of his book we talk about this week. The lessons he lays out can not only unlock humility in your leadership, they can help you avoid and overcome crucibles.

Warwick Fairfax:
Josh, it’s wonderful to have you here. We actually met at the Taylor University event, which from what you mentioned, you did a grad degree there, and I know your father-in-law, Kent Yost, and he introduced us at that Taylor event. Gosh, was it a couple of months ago or was not too long ago. And you mentioned that you do a lot of work with humility, which is one of my highest values. And then we chatted and read your book, Humbler Leadership, which I loved.
So just to tell folks a little bit about you, Josh Wymore has a PhD and he’s really an expert in helping high-performing leaders become more focused and productive, healthy and balanced, decisive and skilled, all very important things. He delves into things such as inspiration, application, transformation. He’s a speaker, works with Fortune 500 leaders around the world, consults, coaches, also an international coach, federation coach, which I am too. So we share that in common. Very qualified on the subject of humility, which as we’ll get into, I certainly have a lot of passion about.

Josh Wymore:
Could you tell my father-in-law all the things you just mentioned here? That would be helpful.

Warwick Fairfax:
There you go. Josh is worthy of response.

Josh Wymore:
That’s for you. Kent Yoast. Just kidding. That’s good.

Warwick Fairfax:
There you go. Indeed. Where I want to start really is, before we get into the book, and some of this you actually have in the book, but you’ve got a couple of crucible stories. And one fascinating one is the one about softball. I like too, in the book, how you, in a very humble manner, say that from your own perspective, you don’t view yourself as a naturally humble person. I don’t know if anybody comes out of the gate… When kids are small babies and toddlers, they’re not typically humble, like, oh, please take as long as you want mom or dad to feed me. I’m good, right? Take your time. I feel like I need to be changed, but look, you’ve had such a hard day, just whenever.
So I don’t know if anybody’s naturally humble. So talk about just that whole softball incident because it’s really, it’s sort of a vignette about maybe some of the beginnings of learning the value of humble leadership. So just for folks who are listening and watching, talk about that whole softball incident.

Josh Wymore:
It was an interesting situation. I was a college sophomore and hired to be our university’s assistant softball coach with the wild qualifications of having two half seasons of high school baseball under my belt. So it’s terribly under qualified, but as is the case at a lot of small nonprofits, if you are a warm body and you’re willing to do the work of a paid professional for a fraction of the price, then you can get hired. So that’s what I did.
But going into that first season, I was trying to think through, why in the world would these women who’ve been playing this sport since they’re four or five years old, why would they listen to some 18, 19-year-old kid? And as I thought about my paradigm of leadership, my conclusion was people don’t follow leaders who aren’t confident. If it seems like though I really know what I’m doing and I really believe in myself, then they’ll believe me too and they’ll follow me.
And so that’s what I decided to do, it was just I’m going to be really confident. And to my shock, that actually did not work very well at all. These women had a very strong BS detector. And so whenever I would try and convince them to run a drill one way, and they’d have some ideas about how to do it differently, they would come over to offer some suggestions, maybe graciously, maybe not graciously, but either way, in my mind, the leader is the person who has all the answers. And so I can’t afford to be wrong, otherwise why would they be following me? And so every time they had a suggestion, I had to mansplain why my way was better than their way. And shocker, it did not go over very well.

Gary Schneeberger:
Really? That is indeed shock.

Josh Wymore:
I don’t know if you know any women, Gary, but they tend to not care for the condescending explanation.

Gary Schneeberger:
Yes, indeed.

Josh Wymore:
So we just had an emotionally exhausting season. We were terrible. I think we were like 14 and 27 or something that year. There’s so much drama on the team. I’m in the middle of it and every day I’m fighting for my life. And I almost didn’t come back the next year because it was so emotionally exhausting, but I didn’t know any other way to lead. And that’s when my life changed is,, we hired a new coach, coach Brad that second year, and he led with humility. He was open to being wrong, he was open to other people’s ideas, and I kept waiting for that to crash and burn. But to my shock, it actually worked out really, really well. And I talk in the book about the instance where I interacted with him and my perspective changed.
I know I’ve been talking for a while now, so I’ll slow down. But that was that catalyst moment for me of taking humility seriously.

Warwick Fairfax:
So talk about what this new coach Brad taught you and how that just transformed your whole perspective on leadership really, and why humility actually could work?

Josh Wymore:
He asked me to stay after practice one day to talk. And so I sat down in this dusty first base dug out, and he started asking me some questions about this player that I’ve been butting heads with. And as soon as he started in, as soon as he said her name, I knew, oh, this is a confrontation. And so my defensive walls are kind of activated, ready to come up, and yet as he talks, as he asks questions, as he challenges me, those walls just stay down. And I’m observing myself in this befuddled state like, what’s going on here? He’s basically telling me that I’m being a jerk. I need to grow up and take responsibility, and I’m not only listening to him, I’m going to hug the guy at the end of this conversation. What is this Jedi mind trick that he’s pulling on me? I’ve got to figure out how to do this.
And as I reflected on it later, I realized it was really Brad’s humility that enabled him to speak so candidly and directly with me. I could tell that Brad was confronting me, not just because I was being a pain in his butt, but because he actually loved me and wanted what was best for me. And that conversation was really about me, about me becoming more of who I was made to be. And because I could tell he cared about me, I invited him into my life and let him speak truth to me in ways that I would not allow other people to.
And so what I realized in that moment is he’s got some tools in his leadership tool belt I don’t have, and I need that because I know how my softball day-to-day is going, it is not going well. And so I began to experiment with that approach with my softball ladies on a day-to-day basis. And it totally changed the direction of our season.

Warwick Fairfax:
And it actually worked. I think you write in the book, they were kind of almost dumbstruck when you tried this humility approach. And it’s like, so do you have any suggestions? You’ve probably been playing softball since you were four or five years old. Maybe you might know something. You didn’t say it that way, but that was in your head then?

Josh Wymore:
Right. Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
They actually had some ideas and you said, well, next practice, why don’t we try that? They were like, say, what? Is this, Josh?

Josh Wymore:
Yeah. They probably thought invasion of the body snatchers or something had happened because I’d never given them a whiff that they could possibly be right about anything, right? Because again, I have to be right. It was really that, driven by insecurity that I was operating that way. So it was delightful and so much less stressful, and we got so much better. Things went so much better because we had access to everybody’s wisdom, not just my very limited insight.

Warwick Fairfax:
So there’s another incident that I think was really formative in your really learning more about humility and leadership. And I think you were out in the work world and somebody I think got promoted, not you. And so just talk about that whole incident. How you had your boss’s boss, really, there was an incident. Let’s do the lead up before then. But that whole episode, it was also transformational in terms of your thinking about leadership and humility, and yourself.

Josh Wymore:
This is probably ten years ago now. I was working on a team, me and two other colleagues that were all at the same level, working really well together as this team of three, tapping into each other’s strengths and getting things done together. And I left on a vacation, and when I came back, one of the other two people had been promoted to be my boss, which I did not see coming at all. And so I was a little wounded by that, that I’ve just basically demoted relative to the people I’ve been reporting to, but tried to make the best of it, tried to still work together and instantly got shut out of the decision making process, which was very different than it had been before. And that was humiliating and just adding insult to injury, this particular person was a great visionary person, incredible ideas, but really struggled with execution.
And as I was isolated, stuff just started to fall by the wayside or poor decisions were made and they’re impacting my team, and so I’m going to bat for them. I’m also carrying this righteous sword of like, no, we’re going to keep our word. We’re going to follow through on what we said we’re going to do. And I’m trying to hold him accountable to everything he’s saying and calling him out in meetings. So then co-workers and my boss are coming after me because I’m being adversarial. And it got to this spot where I felt like, okay, I’m either going to have a mental breakdown or I’m going to quit, or I’ve got to change direction. Something’s got to give.
And that this moment came where I was sitting down with my boss’s boss’s boss, I think at this time, who had been a mentor for a long time, and he was confronting me about a time where I’d been given a directive and I hadn’t done what I was supposed to do. And I said, yeah… His name is Doug. “Yeah, Doug, I probably shouldn’t have done that.” And he slammed his fist on the table, he’s a Christian Guy. He’s like, “No,” pardon my French. “Damn it, Josh. You definitely shouldn’t have done that. You have a submission problem.”
And he said that and I just sat back in my chair and I thought about it for a second. I realized, yeah, you’re right. I do have a problem with this. I need to figure this out. And so I spent probably a month or six weeks just reading everything the Bible had to say about submission. And I realized, yeah, I do have a submission problem. I think I submit, but really I just do the things that I agree with that the bosses I respect tell me to do. That’s not actually submission.

Warwick Fairfax:
Right.

Josh Wymore:
And so reading what the Bible had to say, it was not pretty. It’s not popular in today’s world at all. But what I realized was, my job was to, if I’m in a meeting with my leaders and they announce a direction, it’s my job to say, “Hey, listen, I have some concerns about that. Here’s what I think could go wrong. At the end of the day though, you’re the boss. If you tell me to do this, I’m going to do my best to make you look good. And when we walk out of this room, no one’s going to know that I thought this was a bad idea. I’ve got your back.”
And so I started doing that and I noticed two things right away. The first was that my stress just disappeared because I wasn’t trying to control something that I was not responsible for anymore. It’s my boss’s job to supervise my boss or my boss’s boss’s job. If my boss makes a terrible decision, those are his consequences he has to deal with, and that’s not on me, and I can let this stuff go. And so mental health instantly improved.
And the other thing I noticed in about six months is that that guy was out the door because I stopped running interference for his bad decisions and people around him started to realize, oh wow, this stuff is actually not working very well. Nothing’s getting done. We’re not thinking this stuff through. And about a year later, I ended up actually accepting that position, and it went so much better than it would have had I been given it a year before when I hadn’t learned submission. And so being pushed to the brink of like, I’m either going to go crazy or I’m going to change, that was such a gift for me at that age to learn just the need to be less of a maverick and more submissive as a leader.

Gary Schneeberger:
And I want to jump in here because what you just talked about is something that I’ve first learned as someone who worked for other people, and then I applied it to my leadership. And that is, you have to get comfortable. You have to be comfortable with the difference between being heard and being heeded. I had to learn that myself. I would say something and people would go, yup, and then the boss would make his own decision. And I’d be like, “Well, wait a minute. Why? Wasn’t my advice any good?” Well, no, it was that I was heard, but they had other inputs. They have opinions, they have background. They’re going to go in a different direction. I was heard, but I wasn’t heeded.
And that’s what I tried to do in my own leadership, humbly to say, yes, I’ll always hear what you have to say, but not all the time are you going to be heeded. And it sounds like what you learned in that moment was the difference between those two things that you could say something in the end of the day. To quote President George W. Bush, you weren’t the decider, somebody else was the decider. You were the advisor and you got comfortable with that. I think that was one of the things that propelled your change, right?

Josh Wymore:
Yeah. And it’s hard, right? Because again, being heard but not heeded is, it’s reminding you of your place, right? You are not the master of this universe. And that was a hard lesson for me to learn, but it was very valuable.

Warwick Fairfax:
I want to shift to some of the themes in your book, but just as we’re doing that, it would seem just overall, if you have a humble nature, look at yourself in humility and we’ll get into self-awareness. A lot of the things you have in your book. That all things being equal, things actually might work out better. Instead of newsflash people like working for a humble leader, not a know-it-all arrogant leader. It’s actually more effective. Who knew, right?

Josh Wymore:
Yeah. Almost like God’s principles for life work out in the end. It’s this crazy idea.

Warwick Fairfax:
Let’s talk a bit about your book. And I love just the whole concept of humble leadership. It was just amazing. So you talk, really in the introduction about Nelson Mandela and just the great story of how he had just a humble approach to leadership rather than as somebody that was in the infamous Robben Island prison for decades. He could have been like, it’s payback time now that the white Africanas are out of power. So talk about how… There’s a reason you put that in the introduction. Why is Mandela just somebody that we should learn something from in terms of how he led from a humble leadership perspective?

Josh Wymore:
I think it stuck with me just thinking about our political climate in the US today. I don’t know what it’s like in Australia now, but it feels like we bounce back and forth between our two dominant parties. And once you get in office, it’s like, all right, now it’s my time to undo everything that people before me did and to stick it to them. It’s not a approach that really warms the heart or wins the affection of your opponents. And that’s just normal politics.
Mandela was unjustly imprisoned for two and a half decades. So if anybody could have gotten a pass for that, it would’ve been him. And frankly, if his goal was just to justify himself, that would’ve been the right call. But he had this bigger goal of healing a country. And if you’re going to heal a country, you can’t do things by the typical playbook. He had to have these truth and reconciliation healings. He had to forgive his oppressors. And for him to achieve his goal, it took an incredible amount of humility. And I think it is just inspiring for me as someone that… Everybody has some of that retaliatory, I’ll stick it to you, I’ll show you. But for him to lay that down and put his country first, there’s a reason that South Africa has healed as much as it has and is thriving as much as it is today.

Warwick Fairfax:
So well said. You write a lot in this book, just as we begin, about how embracing humility leads to greater purpose and performance and how it’s the foundation of great leadership, which I couldn’t agree with more. So there are so many good things in here. You’ve got some great comments by other leaders, humble leaders that admit mistakes. Probably a good place to start because there’s so many good things is, you have this definition of leadership. I’ve never quite seen that way, but it makes so much sense. You talk about really the four cornerstones, if you will, the four elements of leadership, of humble leadership, I should say. Accurate self-perception, appreciating others’ strengths and contributions, a growth mindset and greater purpose.
Now, as you’re an expert on humility. As an amateur student, perhaps myself, they make abundant sense to me. So just talk about why those four elements are so key. It’s really one of the foundational cornerstones of your book. Those four elements, just talk about them and why they’re so important.

Josh Wymore:
Coming to this topic from a Christian perspective, I had our definition of, well, humility is being like Jesus. It’s putting others first, that kind of stuff. But the audience for this book really are people who do not have any kind of faith, because as I left Christian higher ed where I’d worked for about 10 years and I’m coming to the marketplace, I realized that a lot of the leaders I’m coaching or training, they don’t have this common assumption that humility is the right approach. And so I could think of plenty of Christian books, faith-driven books on humility, but nothing from just a pure research perspective. And so I thought, if I’m going to win these folks over, it’s going to be from research and data because that’s the Bible in the marketplace is what are the data set.
And so I started by going to research just to see in the two decades since Jim Collins wrote Good to Great, there’s been this explosion on the research on humility. What do the research say on this topic? And pretty consistently, they sort of coalesce around those four elements.
And so the first is an accurate self-perception, and I think this is in contrast to how we typically see humility. I think we often think of humility as a low view of ourselves. Oh no, not me. I don’t have anything to offer, but that’s just not true. The root of the word humility is humus, which is the same word we have for earth or ground. And so when you say that guy’s really down to earth, or he’s really grounded, or he’s got really both feet planted firmly on the ground, what we’re saying is he’s living in reality. And that’s what humble leaders do. They acknowledge their weaknesses for sure, but they also recognize their strengths and they’re not timid to step up and exercise those. And I’ll get to this in the greater purpose part. They’re not exercising it to draw attention to themselves or to stoke their ego. They’re doing it to contribute to a greater purpose.
So that’s the first one, that accurate self-perception. And that naturally dovetails into the second, which is appreciating other’s strengths and contributions. And because when I recognize how limited I am, I recognize how much I need you and your unique contributions to the team. I recognize that I’m a part of a larger body and my hand doesn’t root against the foot and need to gain attention. We all need each other to be thriving. And so as one of my friends, Davin Savonio says, “These humble leaders, instead of needing to be in the spotlight all the time, they like to be the spotlight for others and highlight the good things other people are doing.”
The third one kind of folds out of those two, that growth mindset. Recognizing I’m limited, but I can grow. I’m not focused on just performing all the time and proving myself, but rather improving myself. Constantly looking to get better and to take feedback and recognizing we’re all in this journey at different stages of the journey, but we’re all in this journey towards maturation.
And then the last piece is a greater purpose. As Rick Warren says, “Humility is not thinking less of myself, but thinking about myself less.” And so when I show up with my strengths, for instance, it’s not because again, I need the attention or because I’m insecure because you just did something great, so I’ve got to one up you. It’s stepping back and thinking, what does the team need from me and how can I add value? Would be silly of me if I have this gift of public speaking to not step up and speak on behalf of the team, so I’m going to do that, or whatever it might be.
That greater purpose is really the catalyst that takes people from just being merely modest to being humble leaders, because the greater purpose is the reason that I would challenge you if you said something that was out of line, not because it makes me feel good to demean you, or because I have something against you, but man, I don’t want to call you out on this, but if I don’t, you’re going to struggle. Our team’s going to struggle, our culture’s going to struggle. So shoot, I got to have an awkward conversation.
That’s what Brad did for me in that coaching conversation in the dugout. He took time out of his day to sit down with me because his greater purpose was connecting with me, investing in me, seeing our team thrive. And for all those reasons, he needed to have a very intentional conversation with me.

Warwick Fairfax:
What you’re saying is so profound is that we can think of people who are humble. Oh, they must be think bad about themselves. Oh, I’m hopeless. And not to get into this, but John Dixon, as we talked previously in his book, Humilitas, talks about, in the Greek and Roman world at the time, the only word was like humiliation. Humility, at least in their culture, didn’t exist. And so we can often think of, oh, people who are humble, it’s kind of like, people who are humiliated. It’s kind of the same thing, which obviously it’s not. But this idea that you can be humble yet ambitious in a sense, not so much about yourself, but have a higher purpose that you want everybody to achieve. So as you say, challenge people in the best sense of that word.
And you talk later about asking questions. In my own way, actually, I try to do some of this. So when I’m not writing and podcasting and all, an elder at my non-dominational evangelical church, and I was on the board for a lot of years in my kid’s school, which is a Christian school, and my typical language is asking questions. It’s kind of how I’m wired. So if I think something needs to be said, I’ll say, well, hang on, I have a question on that. So how does this relate to the mission of the church and the school? Maybe the links are there. I’m not quite seeing it. Rather than saying this is stupid, which I’m a diplomat by nature, I will ask a question.
Or on the other side, which really had not a whole lot to do with humility, if somebody does something incredible, typically at a board level, they’ll sit there and think, this staff member is doing great, but they’ll say nothing. And I’ll be the one to say, man, that is so good. And I’ll be very specific about, it’s almost like, in some of these venues, if I don’t say anything, it’s like, well, we figured you’d say something because you are the one who’s meant to say something encouraging, and that probably has nothing to do with humility, but anyway. But to your point is, I think it’s just so important is a humble person can challenge, but in a humble way, right?

Josh Wymore:
That’s right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And asking, it doesn’t have to be asking question, but one of the things I think of, and I’m not perfect at it is, state your point, but let go of the outcome. People may not listen to it. I’ve had times when I’ve been off the charts passionate about something and either of those two boards, if you will. And it’s like, I hear what you’re saying all right but not really. And I’ve had to just let it go.
With somebody that’s underneath the surface, I’m a very passionate person with a lot of convictions. I was like, okay, let go, let God, as they say. But that’s humble leadership, right? You’re not always going to be seen as right?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yep. You’ve been heard and not heeded.

Warwick Fairfax:
Exactly. Not easy, not easy… But such great points. So a lot of interesting things in here. So one of the things you talk about was individuals who scored higher on a humility assessment and you got a bunch of stats, they experienced 57 percent fewer depressive symptoms, 64 percent less anxiety, 73 percent more happiness, 56 percent greater life satisfaction.
Why wouldn’t you want to be humble? It’s like, do you want to be less depressed, less anxious, more happy, greater life satisfaction? Actually, no, I’m good.

Josh Wymore:
Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:
So just talk a bit, because I mean, did that surprise you when you saw that research? So what did you think of all that when you saw all that?

Josh Wymore:
I was surprised at how broad it was and how significant those results were. That was a survey by Neil Kraus from the University of Michigan, and digging into that, what are the mechanics there of why you would be more peaceful. Specifically, he looked at people who just had adverse life events, so they found out they got cancer or a spouse passed away or something like that. And those were the situations in which they had more levity, more peace, more perspective.
And as I’ve come to understand humility, it makes sense that if I’m not trying to control things I can’t control, if I don’t think I always have to have it all together, if I’m serving a purpose beyond myself and beyond my self-preservation, then it makes sense that I would be willing to take some of these things as learning opportunities. To not be stressed trying to manipulate things that I have no influence over. Because I see myself accurately in the universe, I’m able to let go of the things that most of us spend our times trying to control that we have no control over. So there’s probably a lot of dynamics going on there.
But to your point, why would you not want to do that? It seems like humility is this life and leadership secret that’s not a secret. That’s just hiding right here in plain sight.

Gary Schneeberger:
And it’s also, as you just said, it’s a secret for how you come back from crucibles, which is the purpose of why we’re talking-

Josh Wymore:
That’s right.

Gary Schneeberger:
Is the purpose of the podcast. What you just said, they had significant life setbacks and all of those positive outcomes come from humility. Humility, not an inoculation against crucibles, but it certainly is something that helps you get through them, right?

Josh Wymore:
That’s right.

Gary Schneeberger:
I’ve got to believe that’s absolutely true.

Josh Wymore:
That’s true. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s actually a good point, very good point, Gary, because when you have a crucible, it can be your fault or maybe it was somebody else’s fault or maybe an injury or a natural disaster. There are all sorts of things, but certainly in the category, when it’s your fault, and we talk about, just in our own models, just self-reflection and having an accurate appraisal. What went wrong? What was my part in it? What can I learn? How can I be better and not make the same mistakes? How can I have people around me? Maybe they have skills and abilities that I don’t have, so maybe I’ll stop trying to do it all.
But coming back from a crucible, if you don’t have humility, there’s that phrase, history tends to repeat itself. People don’t have humility to learn. Most national leaders, historical leaders tend not to be humble. There are a few that are, and one of the things that my book, Crucible Leadership, it’s not really a book on humility, but it talks a lot about leadership. I think of Abraham Lincoln, who when U.S historians survey amongst themselves, who was the greatest president, they always name Lincoln as number one. They do this survey every three or four years or so. And at least from my perspective, one of the reasons he was so great was the greatness of his character. And a key part of that was clearly he had a very high purpose to unite the nation and rid the nation of slavery, but he was so humble that he was like bulletproof.
I think there was one incident that I remember, it was in a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, which is phenomenal book actually on leadership and also humility, funnily enough. And there was one incident where somebody said, well, I spoke to the Secretary of War, as you used to call the defense secretary back then. And he said that you’re an idiot, Mr. Lincoln. He’s saying directly to Lincoln’s face. Back in the day, it was a little easier to talk to your leaders. And he said, well, you may well be right. Just tell me specifically where, because I’d like to understand, rather than saying, how dare you call me an idiot? And it’s time to fire that secretary of war for saying. So you could tell him anything, and he was bulletproof. You may agree or disagree.

Josh Wymore:
My favorite quip was someone said something like, I’m going to paraphrase this, like Mr. Lincoln, you are two-faced. And he said, sir, if I had two faces, do you think I would choose to wear this one? Man, what a great zinger, right?
But to your point, when you’re not wasting energy, protecting your image, protecting your ego, having to prove that you’re right all the time, how much more energy can you devote to learning from mistakes, bouncing back from setbacks, building teams? Because we’re all finite people. If we’re spending that time building those barriers, that’s time and energy we’re not spending doing other things.

Warwick Fairfax:
That’s so true. So you mentioned before that wisdom, this concept of wisdom around humility has been around a long time, and obviously we’re familiar with the Christian faith of, in a sense, Jesus humbling himself to the cross, and he was exceptionally humble, a carpenter. But you mentioned, just from different religions, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam, Stoicism, different spiritual ways of thought. So just talk about how this concept of humility, it really is what the business books these days call, the ancient wisdom. It’s been there for thousands of years. And talk about how maybe we’ve forgotten it, but it’s not a new concept, what you’re really promoting and championing.

Josh Wymore:
I think every generation has a way of rediscovering truth in their own context and in their own language. And so if this is true, we would expect to not just see it in any one religion. We would expect to see that it would actually work in practice as research shows that it does. And so, one of the questions I’ve had a lot of discussion with other Christians is, is it possible to be humble if you’re not a Christian? Basically, do Christians have exclusive access to humility? And it’s like, well, obviously being a Christian doesn’t make you humble because I know plenty of arrogant Christians, and fortunately by the grace of God, there are lots of other folks who can be humble, I believe. Even if they have different religion or no religion at all. Just think about how miserable world it would be if no one else was humble. So I think that’s a gift that different faith traditions have stumbled upon this universal truth, and hopefully we can all practice it better.

Warwick Fairfax:
So talk a bit about the do-become flywheel, and I think it’s in that section, the whole cathexis, and I won’t describe because I’ll let you do that. But just talk about do-become, because there’s a lot of folks, maybe everybody, that’s… Let me ask you a question. Do you think anybody’s actually born humble or is it nature, nurture? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Josh Wymore:
I think there is a nature nurture aspect to it because Brad, I asked Brad point-blank, just probably a couple of years ago, what are you doing, Brad, to become humble? And he is just like, I mean, I’m not really thinking about it that much. And he’s a very humble guy, and I think some of that’s his disposition. Some of it is other things he’s doing that are indirectly creating that humility. The time he spends praying, and with his family and that kind of stuff. So I do think some people, because of their hard-wiring, because of their upbringing are more disposed to humility than others, but for all of us, regardless of where you are on that continuum, my book’s called Humbler Leadership because I believe all of us can become humbler. All of us can take a step towards that perfect humility that we’ll never achieve.
And the way of doing that is not by crossing your fingers and hoping that you get it. It’s not by praying for it, although that’s not going to hurt. It’s not even just by reading a book on humility, no matter how good that book is. It’s doing the things that humble leaders do. As you do those things, the things we do, do something to us. And so if I spend seven hours a day shopping online, I’m going to become more materialistic. If I spend 10 hours a week reading Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan, I’m going to become more image oriented. It’s just going to happen.
In the same way, if I spend half of a meeting asking questions of my team, I’m going to accidentally learn some stuff. Even if I’m just going through the motions, I’m going to realize, oh wow, I didn’t think about that. Maybe these people aren’t idiots like I thought they were, right? And so I start to reinforce this. I see the benefits of it. I get better at the skill, it becomes more natural for me, and within a few months or a few years, I’m asking questions because that has become my nature. And so that’s one of the messages of the book is that for you to become humble or humbler, you don’t have to get zapped by a bolt of lightning. You don’t have to get different parents. Just trust me. Do the things that research has shown for a long time to actually produce humility. And over time you will become humbler.

Warwick Fairfax:
And I like what you said about catexis, which is consistency and intensity. You could be consistent in doing not a whole lot… Something like, to pick tennis, you could practice the wrong stroke the wrong way every day, it’ll get nowhere. You could practice the right stroke one day a year, you’ll get no, you need consistency and intensity. That just seemed a profound point in terms of this whole do-become, and through research you can understand that.
One of the other really interesting things in here is, you talk about, I think a study, I think in the ’80s by McCall, Lombardo, Harrison, and just the whole notion of formal learning, social learning, experiential. In most cases, in school, you’ve got here the stats. 70 percent of our time is typically invested in formal learning like exams and tests, 20 percent social learning, learning from the boss, 10 percent experiential, volunteering, internships. But the stats were so different in the study in terms of successful executives. So talk about how those stats were reversed and executives were really successful because this was mind-blowing to me.

Josh Wymore:
The basic idea is we don’t arrive on earth as blank slates, but we obviously don’t know a ton. And so, so much of our time is just spent downloading information into our brain, understanding how to do basic mathematics, understanding how to conjugate a verb and all that kind of stuff. But once you have that base level formal knowledge, at some point more formal knowledge doesn’t really accelerate you in the same way. You see that the growth curve for most sports, if you play pickleball tomorrow, you’ve never played pickleball, you’re going to be terrible the first time you play, but by the end of the first 90 minutes, you will have gotten a lot better. And then it starts to taper off slowly. That same way for most learning curves.
So most of your early life has been in that formal learning of just being told what to do, given frameworks for things. But then once you achieve that baseline understanding, it flips over where you start to really learn most from experience and from other people. And so this is why maybe the biggest predictor of your job success is who your boss is, how they invest in you or don’t, how they lead you or don’t.
The other big thing is the breadth of experience and depth of experience you can get. Are you cranking a nut on the assembly line every single day or are you involved in diverse projects with different stakeholders? That’s how you really accelerate your learning once you get into the workforce. It’s not that formal learning goes away, but it’s less important than the actual on-the-job experience, the things you learn from your peers, the things you learn through reflection, all that sort of thing.

Gary Schneeberger:
And I think this point, especially the 70 percent experiential learning is so critical to what we do at Beyond the Crucible because we say all the time, one of our taglines, we said it hundreds if not more than a thousand times, your crucible didn’t happen to you, it happened for you. And the idea behind that is that what you’ve gone through, trials, tragedies, setbacks, failures, those things can teach you lessons. And this research bears that out. Learning from good things that happen to you, great. Learning from things that are in the middle that happened to you, but learning from difficult things that happen to you, that’s learning too. And that’s that 70 percent of how we learn is experiential. I would think that is something that our listeners and viewers should grasp onto and say, hallelujah, I’m going to learn something from this. I’m not just going to endure it. I can learn to make my life better from what I’ve been through.

Josh Wymore:
That’s right. And specifically within that, I would say, we don’t learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. And so, hey, it’s great you experienced this thing and you could say, well, it’s a learning moment, but it’s only a learning moment if you make it a learning moment. If you stop and think, gosh, what can I have done differently here? Okay, how can I include this step in my process next time? So it’s great that you experienced it. Now do the extra work of slowing down to journal about it, to process it, to write about it. That’s the part that I see a lot of leaders skipping over because it feels like you’re not making any progress, but it’s that reflection where you really metabolize the experience, extract the nutrients from it, and it becomes part of you. Otherwise, it can just pass straight through you, to stick with that metaphor, and it just causes a big sink and doesn’t really make you any better in the process.

Warwick Fairfax:
It’s such a great point, Josh. It’s interesting, as I reflect, I’m a naturally self-reflective person. That’s how I came out of the gate. So that’s a lot of things I’m bad at, but I like that a lot. But when I think about, well, why is humility… I mean, humility and integrity are two of my highest values. Why is humility such a higher value for me? And I’d say it was probably the experiential learning, crucible learning, if you will.
And we might’ve talked about this when we chatted at Taylor University, but as listeners know, I grew up in this very wealthy background in Australia and this 150-year-old family media business. And one of the things I say in my book, I grew up in the world of the authentic, I could have also said, I grew up in the world of the arrogant. And so we had cocktail parties, dinner parties with ambassadors, prime ministers, the odd visiting Hollywood people, business executives, and they were really telling each other about how brilliant they were and how incredible. And I was in Europe and I met Count so-and-so, or Princess, whoever, and I just hated it.
I just almost had this allergic reaction. And one of the other funny things is, Australia’s a very egalitarian society, which is good in a lot of ways. And I went to a very good boys school. It was, I’m sure expensive. And so the other boys there, they were not sons of poverty-stricken people… Bankers, lawyers, stockbrokers. But because of this egalitarian thing in Australia, they would say, well, Warwick, you think you’re better than us? Back then, I was a very shy, I still am to a degree, very shy person, would never have said anything to anybody about the money and the cars my dad had ever. So I gave no indication whatsoever that that was my thinking. I just wanted to hide, if you will.
And so it’s like, that is just not me. So the combination of people, of how the kids, as kids say, you think you’re better than us? Well, how many cars does your dad have? Or I probably stupidly answered the question because he loved cars. How much money and what did I know? But especially the arrogance of the people in those cocktail parties, it’s like, I do not want to be like that. I don’t want to think of myself as more highly than anybody else. I’m not better or worse than it. So if that experience, like a crucible forge infused, almost like in blowtorch level, this value of humility.
Doesn’t mean I’m perfect, doesn’t mean I don’t have moments where I fall off the wagon, if you will. But the reason humility is such a strong value of mine is I grew up in a very non-humble background with arrogance. And it’s just still to this day, I don’t really enjoy being around people that are arrogant. People might feel like it’s annoying. For me it’s almost like an allergic reaction, just this visceral. I need to get out of here kind of reaction. So anyway, that’s a bit about my story.
So you’ve got a lot of other fascinating things in here. The humility paradox. They’re humble, but they know who they are. I think elsewhere you talk about the importance of being humble, but yet understanding your gift and strengths, which is just so… You can be humble, but you still realize there are areas that you’re very good at. It’s a bit of a growth opportunity for me.
Open-ended questions, active listening, invite others in. To me, one of the profound things about being a humble leader is knowing your strengths, but knowing the areas where you’re not good at. I know for me, I hate selling. I have some idea about sales strategy, but I just can’t do it. I just have a block. So Gary and others are a whole lot better at selling and promoting, and that’s okay. Humble leaders know there are areas that they’re not good at. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. They include people that are best. So talk a bit about just some of the things you talk about, the paradox and just inviting others in because that’s what humble leaders do. It’s probably why they’re so successful.

Josh Wymore:
That’s right. Again, if I’m not wasting my energy, protecting my ego and looking like I have it all together, then I can go hire people to fill those spots who are best in class at what I need them to do, and they can shine. I don’t have to diminish their success, so I feel better by comparison. I can just be excited for their success. And so, go figure that we would work together better and that those people would want to stay around because they don’t feel like their boss is threatened by them being successful. And so there’s tons of research on how humble leaders build stronger teams because they’re quick to admit mistakes and they have a growth mindset, and it’s not about them and all those sorts of things.

Warwick Fairfax:
Really, towards the end of the book, you talk about purpose, which we talk a lot about here at Beyond The Crucible, and you can be humble, but yet you have a purpose that you’re driving towards and you really say three things because often people say, well, I know what my purpose is. And you say there are three things, passions what you love, strengths, what you’re good at, and the third, flourishing, what fosters peace. So talk about those three elements of finding purpose. A lot of people out there that they want their life to count, especially a lot of young people today, they want to make a difference. So talk about why purpose is important and how you find it.

Josh Wymore:
I think it’s easy to maybe diagnose that if you only have one of the three. So if I’m really good at playing Call of Duty and I want that to be my purpose in life, well, okay. It’s hard to imagine how that helps people or makes a difference in the world. Maybe that’s just a hobby or a passion. I may really enjoy playing bass guitar, but I’m not great at it. Well, probably not where I should spend my life, or there may be things in the world that I care a lot about, but I just don’t feel equipped to solve them. It’s going to be hard to get traction there. And so if I could find the intersection of those three things, a place where… For me, for instance, I’m really passionate about connecting deeply with people and helping them become more of who they’re made to be.
I think God’s gifted me with some strengths in communication and connecting with them. And I know because I’ve seen it when people are listened to well, they can achieve some clarity, they go on to not just become better leaders, but better husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. Their kids do better in school because they have a different home environment. It just creates these ripple effects out into the world. And so the fact that I get to live and lead in a purposeful way every day is such a gift. Pinch myself all the time, waiting for it to disappear because it feels too good to be true, but that’s the same joy that I hope everybody could have, figuring out how they make a difference that they’re good at and that they enjoy every day.

Warwick Fairfax:
Just in the last couple of minutes we have, I understand that you’re working on a new book?

Josh Wymore:
That’s right.

Warwick Fairfax:
And maybe if you wouldn’t, I know it’s not out yet, but maybe a little bit of a teaser for people that this was going to be, I think a really interesting one because from what I understand, you wanted to answer the question of how come most people in the world stay basically the same over the course of their life? And there’s a few that transform and the keys is having at a fundamental level, a sense of unconditional love and acceptance. So talk about just some of the themes in this book and why unconditional love and acceptance are key to just growing and evolving and transforming rather than just staying the same because this should be a really good book. So talk a bit about some of those things and why you wanted to write it.

Josh Wymore:
I wanted to understand why a couple of my clients were stuck and not making the same progress as others. What did I need to learn to help them be successful? And so I’ve spent about a year and a half now interviewing people who have gone through radical life transformations. People who attempted suicide to drug addiction, alcohol addiction, eating disorders, obesity, any kind of life change. And I’ve been looking for these common levers or common processes in their stories. And one of the most surprising findings has been that every one of these people who have really achieved a great state of transformation, they all had this experience of unconditional love and acceptance at the beginning of that process from a friend, a parent, even just a divine encounter with God. And as I’m digging into that, it seems like the reason that’s so powerful is, it communicates the sense of value that you are worthy of fighting for, you are worthy of living, you are worth the effort of saving and changing.
And it creates a sense of stability as well that they feel for the first time, maybe, okay, I’m safe and secure in this relationship. Maybe this eating disorder’s not working for me. Maybe I have a drinking problem. Because they feel that this person looking at them loves them and there’s nothing they could say that would make them love them any less. And so they start to open up their hands and let go of the things that have been killing them over the years. So there’s a lot more edit than just that. But my big takeaway is the greatest gift we can give other people is to be the embodiment of love to the people around us. If we can do that, people will naturally flourish and change and transform.

Warwick Fairfax:
Such a profound point, Josh. The world would be such a different place if everybody was unconditionally loved and accepted. It would be a radically different place.

Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word’s been spoken on a subject. And between Warwick and Josh, we’ve just spoken that last word. I’d be remiss, Josh, if I didn’t give you the chance really quickly here to let folks know how they can find out more about you and your work.

Josh Wymore:
Thanks, Gary. My website, joshwymore.com, W-Y-M-O-R-E. LinkedIn, YouTube, those are the best places to find me.

Gary Schneeberger:
Warwick,. We just finished a great episode with Josh Wymore, the author of the book, Humbler Leadership. A whole bunch of stuff in there to unpack. I always feel bad at this point of our wrap-ups because I asked you to do something that’s almost impossible, and that is what’s one takeaway that you would like folks who have watched and listened to take from our interview with Josh?

Warwick Fairfax:
I don’t know if I can cut it down to one, but what I love about what Josh did in his book, Humbly Leadership, is he talks about why humility works, why it makes sense, and how really some of it is, he found a lot of research, including Jim Collins’ Good to Great. In Collins’ book, he talks about great leaders, those who have been very successful in terms of the long-term profitability of their companies. Yes, they have this iron will, this clear purpose, but they have great humility. So they have humility plus just a clear plan, just strong desire to transform their companies. And really humble leadership, it works.
He has data in there about people who are humble, leaders there, less stressed, less anxious, happier. It’s like, who wouldn’t want those things? And I loved the definition that Josh Wymore comes up with about humble leadership, and he says it includes these four elements, accurate self-perception, appreciating other’s strengths and contributions, a growth mindset and greater purpose.
That makes so much sense to me. We talk about humility a lot on Beyond the Crucible. It’s one of my highest values, as I mentioned in the podcast, growing up in this very large 150-year-old family media business in Australia where there’s not a whole lot of humility around often very successful executives. And at the parties that in the house I grew up in, we had prime ministers, ambassadors, business leaders and so forth. So I’m very well aware of that. And so humility has always been one of my highest values.
So really, we talked about on the podcast, you raised the issue of when you come back from a crucible, you’ve got to have the humility to be self-aware, especially when let’s say, the crucible was your fault. You made some mistakes.

Gary Schneeberger:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
You’ve got to learn from those mistakes. You can say, oh, there’s a lot of learning lessons, but if you don’t learn them, what use is it going to be?
And so you’re starting with having an accurate self-perception of yourself. It doesn’t mean you have this sense of, oh, I’m hopeless. Nobody should love me. I need to hide under the covers. Don’t look at me. It means, yes, there are areas where I’m not good at, but maybe there are areas where I’m great at. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t be humble but still realize you have certain gifts and talents that you’re good at. That’s okay. And by having an accurate self-perception, it helps you appreciate other’s strengths and contributions that you don’t have. And because you’re humble, you don’t have to win all the time. You don’t have to be the center of attention. As Josh said, great leaders put the spotlight on others, not themselves. That is so true. You hear about great leaders talking about their own, maybe failures and faults, and talking about the successes of others, a growth mindset. Humble leaders, they always want to grow. How can I get better? How can I improve in my craft, find greater purpose? It can’t just be about me.
In our language, we talk about a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. That’s having a greater purpose. So really what Josh Wymore says, it makes so much sense. It works. The data shows. He has so much data that shows how effective humble leaders are. It doesn’t mean thinking of yourself as hopeless or some humiliated, awful person, it’s just realizing you don’t have all the answers and being willing to learn from others, being willing to shine a light on your team members, having an accurate self-perception, and just we talk about having a team of fellow travelers to help you.
So being a humble leader just makes sense. How many arrogant leaders succeed long term? I would say few to none. Eventually, who wants to work for an arrogant know-it all leader? Eventually, the good people, the people you most want, they’ll leave. So you want to be successful from a long-term perspective. If you want to have a legacy that people admire, you want to have family members that actually like you and admire you, try humble leadership. You’ll be more successful in the broad sense of that word, at home with your friends, at work, everywhere. It just makes sense. So you want to have joy and fulfillment in your life, try being a humble leader. What Josh Wymore talks about makes so much sense.

Gary Schneeberger:
And folks that will put the end on another episode of Beyond The Crucible. Please know this, before we’re together the next time, that we understand, and you’ve heard us talk about it, your crucible experiences are difficult. Warwick’s been through them, Josh has been through them. I’ve been through them. We know that you’re going through them now if you’re listening to this show, perhaps. But we also know this if we learn the lessons from them, if we take that experiential learning and if we don’t just experience something, but we learn from it. If we press in and learn the lessons that our crucibles have taught us, that they can lead us to a path that can be the most significant path of our lives, the best path of our lives, the most rewarding path of our lives, and that is a life of significance.
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