Moses: Lessons in Humility

Gary Schneeberger:

So how do we craft a vision that can lead to a life of significance? Harnessing humility is the first step we discuss this week, and we do so by examining the life of Moses, one of the most important figures in the Bible. It’s all part of this latest episode of our Series within the Show, More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and pays special attention to our discussion of the humility of Moses. Welcome, friends, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. You have dropped in on another of what we call the Series within the Show. And what that is this year in 2026 is we are taking a look, it’s called More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. Why is it called More Stories? Because we did this last year. We did Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership, and now we’re doing More Stories from the Book. And here’s the fun part about that, some of these stories actually made it into Warwick’s Wall Street Journal bestseller from 2022, some of them were on the cutting room floor. Last week, we talked about William Wallace and the lessons we can learn from him. He was cut from the book, he was the cutting room floor. This week, we’re going to talk about someone who actually made it into the book, and that is Moses, and we’re going to talk about specifically Moses and his humility. But just to let you know, again, what this is, once a month, throughout the year, except for in the summertime when we do our summer series and we’ll skip that, we’ll feature one story from the book that Warwick wrote, spotlighting one key learning that helped the subject of the story overcome a crucible, and help you do the same when you apply the principles that we’re going to discuss. And this week, as I said, we’re discussing something that was in the book. Indeed, it’s Moses on the subject of humility. It’s a very small topic, right, Warwick, Moses on humility? I mean, come on, that’s the bestselling book ever, and one of the biggest characters in that book. So let’s get started, Warwick. Tell us a little bit, because not everybody’s going to know, not everybody’s seen the Ten Commandments, not everyone’s going to know who Moses is, so talk a little bit about Moses’ backstory, as we like to do when we have guests on the show. What is the backstory that will inform what we’re going to discuss today?

Warwick Fairfax:

It’s funny you mentioned that, Gary. I was just thinking about that with Charlton Heston and the Ten Commandments. Gosh, I don’t know if it was in the late ’50s, early ’60s. It was a long time ago.

Gary Schneeberger:

1956. 1956.

Warwick Fairfax:

1956, well done. So some people might have grown up seeing it, or maybe they’re familiar with Moses from the Bible and Bible stories. But just to level set us, Moses was born in Egypt to Jewish parents. Moses’ mother set him afloat on a basket in the Nile River to save him from an edict from the Pharaoh, who made this edict that all newborn Jewish males would be killed. Now, it so happened that that basket was found by Pharaoh’s daughter and he was raised in the Egyptian courts. So Moses’ life changed radically, from growing up in just a pretty normal Jewish family, I don’t think they really had any money to speak of, not that we know of, and so now he is somebody that’s raised in the Egyptian court, amidst luxury, power, influence, just a radically different upbringing. But I think it’s clear from the story that he still knew his heritage. And so, at one point, he saw this Egyptian taskmaster really just being brutal towards Jewish people, and he had this righteous indignation, if you will, and he ended up killing the brutal Egyptian taskmaster. Now, once that happened, he then fled from Egypt to Midian, someplace in the desert outside of Egypt, and he was there for years, for many years. And so then, the next bit of the story is, and I’m sure listeners will probably be familiar with this, the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush, and he commissions Moses to go down to Egypt and bring the Israelites out of bondage. And he must have probably been thinking, “Who, me? I tried to escape from all that. You want me to do what?” It’s just a pretty amazing thing that the Lord asked him. And so, at first, Moses was unwilling to take this on, and eventually, Moses did lead his people from captivity in Egypt into the wilderness, where eventually they would reach the Promised Land. Again, it took many, many years, and the Promised Land would be the future home of the Israelites. So that, in brief, is a bit of the backstory of Moses.

Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And what we’re talking about is what appeared in your book, Crucible Leadership, and it begs the question, why did you pull Moses into a book on leadership and crucibles and how to bounce back from crucibles? What is it that led you to think Moses was a good subject to bring up in your book?

Warwick Fairfax:

I talk about Moses in a chapter from my book, Crucible Leadership, and this particular chapter is called Faith in God’s Leadership. In the book, and certainly on the podcast, we talk a lot about the fact that to come back from a crucible, you need an anchor for your soul, and we call this anchor faith. Now, by that, it could be a religious faith, it could be a spiritual, a philosophical perspective, and how we live out our faith make up the aspects of our character. So in this particular chapter, I talk about a number of key principles of character, and I would say indeed leadership, humility, integrity, servant leadership, soft sacrifice. So we’re going to focus here, when we talk about Moses, on humility. So when we think about humility, nobody wants to be around somebody that think that they’re better than others and they know everything. Arrogance divides while humility unites. And there are a number of passages in the Bible that talk about humility. Here’s a couple. Philippians 2:3, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves.” James 3:13, “Who is wise in understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deed done in the humility that comes from wisdom.” So the basic premise is that wise people are humble, and that kind of makes sense. Arrogance, as we’ll see, doesn’t lead to anything good. The wise way is to be a person of humility. And what’s interesting, the Bible, in Numbers 12: 3, says this about Moses, it says, “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the Earth.” So if we’re going to talk about humility and what’s a good example of humility, it’s not a bad place to start with the person the Bible calls the most humble person on the face of the Earth. You could almost say, if you wanted to be contradictory, that Moses maybe was the GOAT of humility. Is it possible to be the greatest of all time about humility? Certainly not if you’re saying it, right?

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah, for sure.

Warwick Fairfax:

By definition, you’re disqualified. But anyway, so according to the Bible, Moses is an extremely humble person. So what’s interesting about Moses’ story is, as we’ve seen, he was raised amidst luxury and power by Pharaoh’s daughter. Now, he could have lived in luxury and just said, “Look, okay, yes, I’m Jewish, but why should I bother about my people? They’re basically in slavery to the Egyptians, but not my problem. I’m living this wonderful life, this good life,” so to speak, at least from a wealth and a power point of view. But yet, it’s clear that he never really forgot where he came from. There’s that old adage, you leave the neighborhood, and it’s like, yep, he or she has forgotten his heritage and the people he grew up with and reinvents their whole background, but not Moses. And so, Moses chose to defend his people, initially against that Egyptian taskmaster that was being brutal towards the Jewish people and ended up killing him, he ended up having to flee for his life. And it’s clear that Moses was not looking for greatness. Here he is leading this quiet life in the desert in Midian, he’s not really seeking to accomplish anything great, be it God has a different plan for him. He wants Moses to lead his people out of captivity. And I’m sure he probably wonders, “Who, me?” And in fact, pretty much exactly what Moses says in Exodus 3:11, Moses said, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt again? Who me? You’ve got to be kidding.” And really, another example of Moses’ humility is that he was not looking to be the key spokesperson for the Israelites. So God, in fact, allowed Aaron, Moses’ brother, to be that spokesperson, really quite remarkable.

Gary Schneeberger:

Right. And I have to raise my hand and butt in here, because I am a public relations executive by training. And I wrote a book a few years ago, Bite The Dog: Build a PR Strategy To Make News That Matters. And one of the things that I introduce into evidence in my book is the idea… Well, I’ll read from it and you’ll see what the idea is. I’m picking up on page 11. “Moses, for all the leadership qualities that got him chosen by God to lead the Israelites to the Promised Land, knew there was one thing he could not do by himself. He didn’t trust his ability to speak to the people. He was called to lead in a way that would marshal them to action. By the biblical account, Moses is commissioned by the Almighty in Exodus chapter four. He immediately begins to muse aloud about whether he’s up for the task, prompting God to show him a couple of miracles sure to get the people’s attention, turning his shepherd’s staff into a snake and then back again, and giving him leprosy of the hand that he cures by having Moses slip it under his cloak and pull it back out. God even promises a third miracle if the first two don’t cut it with the masses. If Moses pours water from the Nile on the ground before them, it will turn into blood. But Moses still waffles. ‘All the signs and wonders in the world,’ he sheepishly tells God will not help him overcome his ineloquence, a condition he describes in verse 10 as being ‘slow of speech and tongue.’ He goes so far as to try to beg off the assignment altogether. He asks God to select someone else for what was, at that time, at least equal to Noah’s building of the arc as literally the most important task in history. That’s how certain Moses was that the communication skills, his communication skills, weren’t up to snuff, and that communication skills were going to be a major part of the uprooting and transplantation of more than a million men, women and children out of Egypt and into Canaan.” Here’s the point of all of that and why I said I’m a public relations guy by training. “It’s at this precise moment that the creator of the universe became the creator of public relations.” This is God. “‘What about your brother, Aaron? I know he can speak well,’ God says in 4:14. ‘You shall speak to him and put words into his mouth,'” which is what we PR people do. People speak to us and we put those things into the press’ mouth. Talk a little bit about what all that brings up for you.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I think it’s easy, in one sense, to say, “Well, if God said that he could do it, maybe he would’ve supernaturally done something.” But Moses is like, “Despite all these miracles, no. As you said, I’m slow, speech is not me.” And so, God says, “Okay, fine. I guess we need to bring in the PR guy, because this guy knows how to speak well.” So what would’ve happened, obviously God’s in control, but looking at it a little bit more broadly, if Moses hadn’t been able to speak eloquently, would the Israelites have followed him? How would Pharaoh have reacted? We don’t know. But I think you could say that it was certainly an important piece of the puzzle of freeing the Israelites from Egypt, to have a good, eloquent spokesperson that they did in Aaron. So without public relations, maybe the Israelites would’ve been stuck in Egypt. We will never know. But Aaron was critical in communicating the message well to the people, so there you go.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. And that’s going to be… Well, it is on my website for my PR business, that’s one of the things that I say on there. I interrupted you as we were going through this, you were going to talk next about… Actually, what I interrupted to say indicates that Moses was being humble, and you make the point, Moses tried humbly to serve God his whole life. Talk about that a little bit more.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, yeah. So Moses’ leadership had an incredible impact on the Jewish nation and history, and it’s interesting that Moses, while he’s remembered for his great leadership ability, the Bible chooses to focus on humility. It’s fascinating. The Bible focuses on character. I think very often, we’ll look at people in history, in current leadership, in the arts, and we’ll look at how well they performed in their craft, we’ll look at their leadership. But the Bible seeks to focus on character, what was their character like? And I’ve talked about this a bit before, about my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, who founded the 150-year-old family media business I grew up in in Australia. And yes, I could focus on him coming out to Australia with almost nothing in the late 1830s and founding what was to be a huge media dynasty. But as I read more about his story, what I focus more on is his character. He was a wonderful husband, a wonderful father. When he died, his employees said, “We’ve lost a kind and valued friend.” He was an elder at his church. It was the strength of his character that made him such a great person, his humility, his focus on others. So I don’t think about his bank account or the huge media empire, that’s not my focus. And I think that’s really what we should be focusing on, is the character of people, not so much how many zeros are in their bank account or whether they’re the GOAT of their sport or their industry.

Gary Schneeberger:

Isn’t it true, and I’ll use your great-great-grandfather as an example, when you’ve amassed success and you’ve amassed money, it’s even harder to display the character traits that really matter, because you can lean into that, “Look at all I’m doing over here.” You can start to believe your own press a little bit, to use the PR perspective there. So it’s even harder when it’s someone like your great-great-grandfather, it’s even harder when you’re someone like Moses who’s been given this great calling, to start to feel less and act less than humble, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:

It is. The more power, fame and money you have, you tend to believe your own press, and to be humble is not easy. You’re flattered by hangers-on that want something from you, “You’re amazing, you’re wonderful,” and you just start to believe that. So it’s why I think, certainly from a faith perspective, just grounding yourself for me in my Christian faith and humility, that it’s all God, it’s not me, whatever that equivalent philosophy is for you, you want to ground yourself in humility every day so that you don’t get warped by success or by failure. If today’s the greatest day, doesn’t mean that you’re any better than yesterday. If today is your worst day, it doesn’t mean that you’re worse than yesterday either. I think in the poem by Rudyard Kipling, If, I think it talks about “treat those two impostors just the same” or something like that. So what’s interesting is despite Moses’ humility, he had a huge impact, not just on his world, but on the Bible. Tradition holds that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. That’s amazing. This person that fled Egypt and was in a sense hiding out in the desert of Midian wasn’t looking to have a big impact in history, let alone biblical history, but yet he did. So maybe there’s hope for all of us in that God or whoever’s up there can use the humble, and who’s to say who he will use, or whoever you think is up there. And the fact that God used Moses so powerfully, both in history and in the Bible, is staggering, since he was not looking to lead anything. He was trying to live a quiet life. It took quite a lot of miracles to get him off the dime to do anything, and even then, he wouldn’t speak, but just to actually lead a thing. He was not an easy sell to say, “Oh, you want me to lead something? Oh, great. I’m your man.” It was like, “No, can I just run? Can I avoid all this? Because I really don’t want to do this” So yeah, certainly there wasn’t a lot of arrogance there, that’s for sure.

Gary Schneeberger:

No, and to your point earlier, he grew up in the home of Pharaoh. He was, as an animated version of the Ten Commandments, is called the Prince of Egypt. He was a prince of Egypt. And if anybody can be arrogant, you can be arrogant coming from that kind of environment, and he didn’t do that. In fact, when he was in Midian… This always has struck me. When he was in Midian, he didn’t even have his own flock to shepherd, it was his father-in-law’s flock. He didn’t even have his own animals, he had to shepherd his father-in-law’s flock. That is not a guy who’s living high off the hog. That’s not a guy who’s still a prince of Egypt. And yet, he leaned into that humility, and that made all the difference in the world in the way that he led the Israelites. And that can make all the difference for us if we don’t believe our own press and don’t act arrogantly, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. I think when you’re humble, it enables you to listen to your soul or to God, depending on your perspective. When you’re arrogant, it’s just like bright lights that erase anything else. All you can see is the bright light of your own arrogance and self, and you can’t really think about anybody else. Moses wasn’t perfect, he certainly maybe didn’t handle the situation with the Egyptian taskmaster as well as he could have, but it showed his heart, saying, “Persecuting Jewish people is wrong.” He had sort of a moral code. So he wasn’t just thinking, “I’m just going to ignore this, because it’s not my problem. I’m fortunate that I’m living in the lap of luxury. Why upset the apple cart? Keep my head down and enjoy this, and hopefully they’ll leave me alone and I’ll do well.” But that wasn’t really Moses. And even though he was reluctant to take up the mantle from God, he took that up. And again, as people may know, it wasn’t easy. And when he went back to Egypt, it was not an easy sell to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. There were all these plagues that God brought to bear, from locusts to blood in the water, there was a lot. And Moses could have said, “Hey, this is too much. This Pharaoh character is not budging. Can I leave now? Because this feels like mission impossible” So I think in a sense, the humility that Moses had led him eventually to obey the Lord throughout each part of his life, through all the plagues, to when God told him that he would part the Red Sea so that the Israelites could cross the water to the other side from Egypt. And Moses was like, “Okay,” he just humbly obeyed the Lord throughout. So yeah, I think you just see his obedience and his humility growing as time went on. He constantly tried to do what was right, obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom. So in one sense, you could say Moses is the least likely person to be this humble leader. Think of him as a leader? No, you just think of him as somebody that wants to hide in the deserts of Midian, not to lead anything. But he had the humility and obedience, not easily, but to obey the Lord and lead his people to freedom.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. When you were describing what you were just describing about Moses’ life and the plagues and all that, it reminds me of, since I turned 50 years old, every year on my birthday, I publish a note on social media that says, “Here are the number of my birthdays, here’s some things that God’s taught me about life.” And one of the things I put in there for, gosh, since the beginning, I guess, is that I’m more than my mistakes and I’m less than my accomplishments. Somewhere in the middle, somewhere between those ping pong paddles is where I live. And I think that’s a little bit about what you were describing about Moses. Yeah, he made some missteps, as you said, but he was more than that, he realized he was more than that. But he was also less than all these great things that happened to him that were successful. He lived in the middle, in the margins there, and I think that helped him be the leader that we all remember, right?

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I think there are two pitfalls that you eloquently described. One is, “I can’t believe those mistakes I made. I’m an idiot. I’m an awful person.” That tends to be more me, as listeners and viewers would know. Growing up in this 150-year-old family media business, fresh out of Harvard Business School, I launched this $2.25 billion takeover in 1987. Other family members sold out. The October ’87 stock market crash hit our asset sales program, and three years later, Australia went into big recession. So it’s easy for me to say, “It was all my fault. I’m an idiot. How could I have made some of the terrible assumptions that I did having a Harvard NBA?” And I certainly made my mistakes, quite a few of them. But a humbler approach would be, “Okay, I made mistakes, but it was a very difficult situation, with my father having died earlier in 1987, there was friction with different elements of the family.” So a humble attitude is, “Okay, my life isn’t summed up by all of my mistakes, nor was it all my fault objectively. I’ve certainly made my share.” That’s a humble attitude. On the other hand, you can say, “Well, I’m the greatest person that’s ever lived and I didn’t make any mistakes, and I should be defined by my bank account and my fame.” You’ve got to have a humble attitude, both to failure or to success, and realize you’re not summed up by your worst day or by your best day, and you’re not really summed up by achievements or failures anyway, it’s something deeper, which really we’ve been talking about a bit here, is in character, that’s more the issue. Just like Moses, you could look at his life and say, “Okay, sure, he was humble, but he was disobedient to God on multiple occasions during that burning bush when he just wouldn’t… It took him a while to say yes.” But eventually, he did. Was it the right thing to kill that Egyptian taskmaster? I’m not sure that that was the best way to handle that situation. And it wasn’t done with a calm sense of, “This is what I need to do,” it was done in rage and anger. When you do things in rage and anger, rarely is it the right thing to do. So he was not perfect at all, certainly like all of us we’re imperfect. But yet, he had this humility to put the greater cause of the freedom of the Israelites above his own agenda, which was to hide in anonymity in the deserts of Midian, as you rightly point out, without his own flock or land to his name. So yeah, being a person of humility means you’re also a person who is willing to obey either those above you or a higher power, and you know it’s not about you, it’s about a higher purpose. And certainly Moses, his life was all about a higher purpose and a higher cause. He, as we know, went up to Mount Sinai and brought down the Ten Commandments, a foundational biblical principle, and in some sense, foundational principles in Western civilization. So God tells him, “Go up to the mountain,” he does and he brings back these 10 Commandments. So the amount of things that God did through him is really quite remarkable, this least likely to succeed, this humble man. If God can use Moses, if some higher power can use Moses, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

Gary Schneeberger:

Yeah. Well, let’s pick Moses up, put him back in the Old Testament now, and let’s apply what we’ve been talking about from the lessons from his life to those folks who are our listeners and viewers, and let me ask you this question. How is humility, as applied to all of us, the rest of us, those of us who are living today, how is that so critical? How is humility so critical to both overcoming a crucible and living out a vision toward a life of significance?

Warwick Fairfax:

We talk a lot about bouncing back from your worst day, our crucible, and when you’re trying to bounce back from your worst day, from your crucible, it’s critical to have humility. We often say the first step when you’re in the pit of despair is to have a bit of self-reflection. In fact, have a lot of self-reflection. And you cannot self-reflect without doing it with humility. So let’s say that your crucible was largely your fault, and so that will require a lot of humility to look back at what happened and to look at our mistakes in the areas where we could have done better. Because what will tend to happen is we’ll say the actual reverse. “Was it my fault? I did nothing. Everybody does it. I just didn’t get away with it.” And you can’t learn anything unless you have the ability and the willingness to choose to have humble self-reflection. And on the other hand, even if the crucible was not your fault, we still have to look at what happened with a calm sense of humility rather than anger. Now, maybe you were persecuted incredibly unfairly and you might understandably have anger, but anger will make it almost impossible for us to look at what happened with any sense of calm dispassion. And we can learn a lot from what happened with having a calm sense of humility. You might say, “Well, this is what happened. I want to learn these things.” Because very often, people who have suffered sometimes carry that on. Statistically, those who’ve been abused often abuse their own family and kids. It’s hard to understand that, but that is what the research says. And so, how is that? Well, what happens, I think, is you get so angry about what happened that anger leaks, and who do you take your anger out on? Typically, those who are closest to us. So you have to have a sense of humility to look at what happened and say, “Okay, this is what happened. Let me make sure that I don’t follow in those same footsteps.” And that’s important. So whether the crucible was your fault or not your fault, to be able to move forward out of the pit of despair to lead a purpose-filled life, which we call a life of significance, it’s critical to have a sense of humility. And as we’re moving beyond that crucible, a vision forms, often that vision will come out of the ashes of that crucible. You might say, “I never want anybody to go through what I went through,” so that vision might come out of that, it’s often the case, many of the guests we’ve had on this podcast. And as you move towards a life of significance, humility is critical. If we have this sense that this vision has got to be all ours, we don’t want to share the credit, the chances of that vision being a good one and coming to fruition are greatly diminished. If we have this attitude, and I talk about this in the book, I want to talk about vision, if we have this attitude that our vision is a bit like the Michelangelo statue of David that’s in Florence, in Italy, we might say, “This vision is so perfect, I’m not going to share the credit.” But what you have to do, even with nervous hands, is to give the hammer and chisel to those team members around you and say, “Okay, I want your input. Go ahead and hammer away and have a little bit of a chisel into this statue.” You’ve got to be willing to give others input. And not only do you have to give others input into the vision, but you’ve got to be willing to have others help you bring that vision to fruition. We call those other people that can help you fellow travelers. And rather than saying, “I’ve got it, I don’t need help,” which so many people say, nobody has all the gifts. From my perspective, God doesn’t make it that way, because he wants us to be humble and he wants us to trust him. And so, part of that means you need a team. So in the case of Moses, maybe he knew how to lead in some sense, but he was not articulate. Certainly he felt that way, and he needed Aaron to be by his side to help articulate the vision. Now, could Aaron have been the leader that Moses was? We’ll never know, but let’s assume maybe he didn’t have all the gifts either, maybe that wasn’t his gift either. To have a vision come to fruition, to get beyond your crucible, humility is absolutely critical. And as you have more success, which you might, as the vision becomes reality, there’ll be people will say all sorts of nice things to carry favor with you, and you might want them on your team. A humble person says, “You know what? I don’t need the hangers-on, the people that say things to flatter me. I see through that, I see through them. They don’t care about the vision, it’s all about their own personal success.” You’ll have the humility and wisdom to say, “Yeah, thanks, but no, thanks. I want people that really believe in this vision and aren’t just trying to flatter me.” But you can’t make that decision and have that discernment unless you have the humility that I think also gives you wisdom to know who you want on your team, who you don’t want on your team, and as I’ve said, just the humility to have people help you craft the vision. So humility is critical to getting beyond your crucible and critical to having that vision be the best it can be and to come to fruition.

Gary Schneeberger:

C. S. Lewis said, “Humility is not thinking the less of yourself, it’s thinking about yourself less.” What do you think? That is a pretty spot on moving statement, isn’t it?

Warwick Fairfax:

It’s so well said. A humble person isn’t really focused on themselves, humility is not really focused on the self, whether it’s on your feeling that you’re the worst person or the best person. It’s really focused on others and it’s focused on the mission. How can we get this mission accomplished? I went through this terrible crucible and here’s a vision that will really help people, so how do we get this to happen? How do we get the best vision? How do we get the best team? How do we get the best partners? Maybe you can help fund this vision if it’s a nonprofit, or even if it’s a for-profit business, you still might want investors. How do we do this? Humility focuses on others and the mission, not yourself. And so, humility can be almost like this secret weapon. I think of Abraham Lincoln, who is often thought of by historians as the greatest president in US history. Whenever they vote, they always vote for Lincoln. Nothing against Washington or some of the other great presidents, Franklin Roosevelt being some good ones. Well, why Lincoln? And I think, and I write about this in the book, and obviously there’s been a lot of books written on Lincoln, is that he had this incredible sense of humility. His whole objective was to preserve the union in the Civil War and free the slaves so that all people would be free in the United States, and he was willing to admit his mistakes. It took quite a long time for him to find the right commander of the Union Army in Ulysses S. Grant. First few picks didn’t fare as well. And there was a time in which somebody came up to him and said, “Mr. Lincoln, your Secretary of War said that you’re not a very smart man or you have some deficiency.” And rather than saying, “Well, this is his last day in office,” Lincoln’s response was very wise and humble, “Well, tell me what he said and tell me in which particular area that my leadership is deficient.” Now, that’s a humble and a wise response, rather than saying, “He’s an idiot,” or, “He’s right.” “We’ll tell me where.” And so, his humility was sort of bulletproof. So he was surrounded by a cabinet… Again, a lot of this is from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s great book, Team of Rivals. His cabinet was composed of people who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in the election of 1860, and they all thought the wrong guy won. Here’s this country bumpkin from the wads of Illinois, which then was considered out West, but it didn’t worry him. He felt like these people, this team, have characteristics and abilities that he needed. The fact that they thought he was an idiot and didn’t respect him, it didn’t worry him, because he wasn’t focused on himself, back to the C. S. Lewis quote. He was focused on the mission of saving the union. So why was he such a great president? It was because of his character, in particular, his humility. That’s a relatively more recent example of just the power of humility. Without humility, who knows what would happen in US history? With humility, Lincoln was able to accomplish what he accomplished.

Gary Schneeberger:

So all this talk about humility, and there’s been a lot, we’ve gone from Moses to Lincoln to your great-great-grandfather, we’ve talked about a lot of different things, of those myriad things that we’ve discussed about this important topic, what’s one takeaway or two takeaways or three takeaways, as many takeaways as you want, what are the takeaways that you see that our listeners and viewers can apply to their own lives as they try to… I don’t know if master humility is the right phrase. Lean into humility, I guess, is the right phrase. What’s some takeaways that people can get from our discussion today?

Warwick Fairfax:

So Moses was not looking to lead a movement. He was not looking to be this incredible force in the history of Israel as the greatest figure in the history of that country. He was, as you know, he was raised in a fairly poor background. But after, he ended up being raised by Pharaoh’s daughter. He could have led a life of luxury, power, influence, but he didn’t. He just couldn’t stand the fact that his people, the Jewish people, were being persecuted. Now, maybe he didn’t handle it in the exact right way, out of anger, killing that Egyptian taskmaster that was persecuting the Jewish people, but it shows his heart, he believed in righteousness. And while his growth as a person happened over time, which it does for all of us, and yes, he fled to Midian, to the desert, but eventually he did end up obeying God’s call to lead his people from bondage into freedom. That was no easy thing to say yes to. It’s like, “Who, me? Why me?” Which he said. But he was obedient to God. Another example of his humility was he knew that he was not a good spokesperson, he was not eloquent, and yes, he might’ve had some anxiety. But yet, I think you could also look at it on the other side, that having somebody like Aaron, his brother, speak up was wise, it was a good move. And I think more broadly, when leading a vision, you don’t want it to be all about you. If it’s all about you, how can it lead to a life of significance? A life of significance by definition is meant to be about others. If the vision is all about you, I don’t see how it can lead to a life of significance. It cannot. You have self-determined that it won’t. And we’ve said the only way to join fulfillment in life is to lead a life of significance, because humans are wired, from my perspective, by God, to be [inaudible 00:42:19] focus, to want to help people. And the way that joining fulfillment comes is not through power and money, it’s by accomplishing some higher purpose that helps others in some way. For Moses, it was not about him, it was about leading his people to freedom. So we just need to have the humility to think that this vision is not about me, it’s about others, and we also need to have the humility to know that we need help. There are so many entrepreneurs that start a business, and where many, if not most, fall aground is they won’t release control, they won’t bring in good managers. Typically, entrepreneurs have that entrepreneurial vision, but they’re not always good managers. They typically are not. And so, they don’t know how to take the business to the next level. And so, the humble leaders, the humble managers, whether you’re a leader of a nonprofit or of a business, however big or small, they realize, “Look, I have this vision. I want to share this vision with my team, maybe they have ideas that I don’t have.” But they will also realize,” I need people who are better than me in certain areas, and I won’t be insecure about that. If they’re better than me in speech or in managing or engineering or sales, getting donations, whatever it is, I’ll be okay about it, because after all, it’s not about me, it’s about helping others. So if somebody else can come in and help me help more people, why would that be wrong? Now, that’s all very logical, but logic goes out the window if you don’t have humility. So I’d say not only is humility an absolutely critical part of character, it’s critical to get beyond your crucible, to have accurate self-reflection about what you did wrong, what you didn’t do wrong, what was done to you, what’s a humble way of looking at that, what can you learn from that. It’s also critical to bringing your vision to fruition, both in crafting the vision and in getting the right people on board. So you want to get out of the pit of despair, you want to have a vision that makes a difference in the world, humility is indispensable.

Gary Schneeberger:

That sounds like the plane is on the ground, Warwick. That sounds like you’ve brought this in for a perfect landing. Folks, that is the end of this second Series within the Show episode on More Stories from the Book: Crucible Leadership. We will turn the page again next month to another story to help you turn the page and move beyond your crucible to a life of significance, and we’ll see you then. Welcome to a journey of transformation with the Beyond the Crucible assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won’t just find a label like the helper or the individualist. Instead, you’ll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially, the steps to get there. It’s more than an assessment, it’s a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com. Take the free assessment, and start charting your course to a life of significance today.