Think of “hinge moments,” the subject of Taylor University President Michael Lindsay’s recent book, as cousins to crucible experiences. Lindsay has discovered in interviews with some of today’s greatest leaders that how we react to those moments in life when doors either open or close – hence the hinge metaphor – determines how successful we’ll be in charting our course to a life of significance. The key, he says, is keeping our metaphorical hinges in good working order.

To learn more about Michael Lindsay, visit www.taylor.edu

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Michael L:

There are seasons of transition, like stages that you go through, kind of like stages of grief. There are low points, but then there are also become points of real redemption. I find that people who are most successful are ones who are able to sort of make sense of the tragedy or of the crucible that they went through, in large part because it's about shaping your character. You really can't control how other people react. You can't control, in many ways, the outcomes that ... Those will be largely the aggregated results of lots of different people's actions and behaviors, but you can control, you can shape your own character and the kind of person you become as result of the crucible you've gone through.

Gary S:

Focusing on what you can control and extracting from your setbacks and failures, the lessons, the truths that will help shape your character for the better as you navigate your road beyond trials and tragedies. Sound familiar? It should, if you're even an occasional listener. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week, Warwick and I talk with Michael Lindsay, President of Taylor University about what he calls hinge moments, cousins, if you will, to crucible experiences.

Gary S:

What Dr. Lindsay has discovered in interviews with some of today's greatest leaders is that how we react to those moments in life when doors either open or close, hence the hinge metaphor, determines how successful we'll be in charting our course to a life of significance. The key, you'll discover, is keeping your metaphorical hinges in good working order. How do we do that? Listen in.

Warwick F:

Well, Michael, thank you so much for being here. Really excited to have you. One of the reasons I'm so excited is obviously Michael is a expert in leadership, which is certainly our passion here, but he's also the President of Taylor. I've been blessed to have three kids graduate from Taylor, the youngest one, or the latest one last year in 2020. I've been to Taylor, actually a fair bit in the last few weeks. Michael instigated the 175th commission at Taylor and anniversary of the founding of Taylor with collection of alumni, parents of alumni, and other folks just to provide input about the next chapter in Taylor's history.

Warwick F:

I was very privileged to be at the induction ceremony with Michael as president. Gosh, this past Monday, I had the great privilege of speaking at Chapel at Taylor and then to a business class later on. Yeah, I love Taylor. It's a very Christ-centered missional place with a very strong culture. Michael, thank you so much for being here and just looking forward to our discussion and yeah, thank you for being the president of Taylor. I think everybody's just super excited and we're really excited to see what God will have for Taylor in these next years.

Michael L:

Well, we were delighted to have you at Chapel. You were wildly popular, as was your book, which were out like hot cakes after Chapel immediately. Clearly, it really struck a chord with our community and excited to see your book get greater interest and opportunity. I do think there's some resonance with some of the work that I had done on hinge moments. So, thanks for having me on.

Warwick F:

Just before we kind of get started, I was fascinated by hinge moments because there's overlap with crucible experiences, but yet, I don't know, I was thinking about this. Maybe all crucible experiences have the potential to be hinge moments, but not all hinge moments are crucible experiences. Just, for the listener that might be used to the crucible experience world, just explain the difference between the two and the basic philosophy of hinge moments as we get started.

Michael L:

Well, the idea here is that all of us experience moments of significant change, inflection points in our life. There's probably, I don't know, 12 to 24 of them that happen over the course of a life. The moment you meet your spouse, the moment you get your dream job, the moment your family has the first significant tragedy, all of these become significant inflection points in the larger trajectory of our life. In God's providence, we are prepared for and respond to those changes over months or seasons of transition.

Michael L:

Hinge moments is really talking about the process whereby we navigate change and maximize transition for both our greater good and the wider good in the communities where we find ourselves. I think you're right. Every crucible moment is a hinge moment, but not every hinge moment's crucible. So, not every change that we experience occurs in the furnace of challenge or intensity. Sometimes it's just great joy and delight, but average American has 73 million minutes that we'll experience in life. And yet, probably there's two dozen of them that have an outsized impact on the trajectory of the rest of our life.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Just reading your book and story, it's amazing how, and you talk in your former book, View From the Top, about platinum leaders, some of the best leaders for-profit and not-for-profit, how the best leaders navigate the hinge moments exceptionally well, maybe that's part of one of the hallmarks of a great leader, which is fascinating. Yeah, I mean, I want to drill down on hinge moments, but that's your perception that the ability of the platinum leaders to tackle hinge moments is sort of like off the charts, it would seem.

Michael L:

That's right. I studied 550 senior leaders. Did interview with Presidents Bush and Carter, cabinet secretaries like Condoleezza Rice, or Colin Powell, who recently passed away, CEOs of the largest companies and largest nonprofits, presidents of Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. Out of those 550 interviews, I concluded all of them experienced hinge moments and a disproportionate number of them handled their hinge moments very well, which allowed them to recover from challenges, mistakes, failures, or stumbles, but also to maximize opportunities when they came along their path.

Warwick F:

I guess, let's just go back for a second. I love hearing the origin story. I mean, you have a passion for leadership ever since you studied sociology at Rice. Where did your passion for leadership and understanding what makes leaders great? Why did you decide to pursue that? Because obviously you're an exceptionally bright person and could have pursued a number of different disciplines, but why leadership?

Michael L:

I find almost all of our academic pursuits are biographical a bit in nature. My dad was president for PG of America and the golf industry when I was growing up. My mom was head of an independent school in my hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. So, both of them were leaders in their own, right? I think sitting at their dining table, hearing the conversations they would have in person or on the telephone, sort of piqued to me an interest of both the challenges and opportunities of what it is to lead an institution. As a sociologist, I really believe in the importance of organizations and institutions and the vitality of having great leaders in those positions of responsibility.

Michael L:

When it came time for me to figure out what I was going to make the focus of my scholarly research, I think part of it was I drew upon my own journey of watching my parents and hearing their stories and having a desire to be able to shed some light that could be able to be of use to my students and to the institutions where I serve.

Warwick F:

That's so good. I mean, I know for me, I always struggle about the whole notion of being a leader because as listers would know, after the whole 2.25 billion family takeover that failed at the 150 family media company, probably in the '90s, which were pretty difficult years for me. I would feel like I couldn't lead my way out of a paperback. Me lead? I mean, come on. But I'm probably more of a reflective advisor than an upfront leader. But yet, I too, from a different standpoint, have a passion for leadership because certainly, in my own family media company, which at one point had I don't know, 4,000 plus employees, 700 plus million in revenue, the impact in leadership in people's lives is enormous. We spend so much time at work. It can make their life a joy or it can be oppressive.

Warwick F:

Good leadership makes such a difference, and from a kingdom perspective, to have godly leaders that lead well that achieve their objectives, but care for people along the way is so important. It seems like in this day and age, it seems, it's not that often that we have, as Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great, he talks about humble, but driven leaders. You talk about platinum leaders. It just seems rare unfortunately. There's too much of the egotistical, it's all about my agenda, and if I have to tread on people as I get to the top, oh well. Does that make sense? It's just, leadership is important and it's not easy to find good leaders, at least in the public eye anyway.

Michael L:

Well, I actually think that there's great opportunity. I mean, we are in a societal wide hinge moment coming out of the pandemic in the recovery mode. As a result, I think there's a real opportunity for folks who have always wanted to have a chance to sort of maybe get their voice heard or to provide greater leadership. There's a real moment of opportunity right now. We're seeing massive labor shortages in every industry, in every sector of our society. That's also creating opportunities for greater management, more opportunities for us to lead well. I also think that, while it's true that every institution has to be led by someone, you can be a leader without being in a position of institutional responsibility.

Michael L:

There's tons of leaders who have moral authority because of their circle of influence. Fundamentally, leadership is about having a group of followers. It's about a relational enterprise. Whether you're leading a little league soccer team or leading a fortune 500 company, I think there's opportunity for us to lead very effectively. And it's my hope that people of faith will provide greater leadership in our society because I think there's a real hunger for moral leadership in the wider world.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, I think that's so good. We do talk about leading at all levels, whether it's the boardroom, the living room, whether it's leading your community to maybe take back a park for kids in your neighborhood. It's so well said. I want to drill down a bit into your book, Hinge Moments. As I was reflecting on, and I want to ... There's some key hinge moments that you talk about, but listeners will be familiar with this, but as I look back, I think of a couple of key hinge moments that I went through that I didn't really think about. They weren't crucible moments, but they were hinge moments. Just for listeners, they've heard this, but not in this context, so just to maybe help make the connection between who we are and what we do here and my life and hinge moments.

Warwick F:

There was a couple for me. I know in 2003, as listeners would know, I was working at an aviation services company in Maryland doing business financial analysis and I'm pretty analytical. I was doing well, getting good performance reviews. But after about six years, in 2003, I felt like, and like Michael, I'm a person of faith, I felt like God was saying, "You're playing small. You're not using all the gifts that I've given you for my glory." It wasn't that it was beneath me because humility is one of my highest values, but I felt like I was not using all that I was for the Lord.

Warwick F:

So, I went to a woman that did mid career assessments. She says, "You have a good profile to be an executive coach," so I learned about that, got certified as an International Coach Federation Executive Coach. Then from there, I got on a couple nonprofit boards and my journey continued. That was a hinge moment in the sense that I felt like this nudge from the Lord, I was doing well, so to speak. But I was discontent because I felt like I wasn't using all that I was for the Lord. As I read about your definition, I was like, that is a hinge moment. Then another one is, again, I mentioned in Chapel at Taylor, and listeners would be familiar with, in 2008.

Warwick F:

My pastor asked me to give a 10 minute message on somehow comparing to David who was being pursued by Saul. I said, "Well, I'm not a righteous person, falsely persecuted. I brought a lot of it on myself. Anyway, public speaking is not something certainly back then I did a lot of. It's certainly not my happy place by all means. But somehow what I said resonated with folks. I was like, huh. Then I did some intense praying and scripture reading. I felt like the Lord saying, I want you to write a book, but not a tell-all, but write a book about your story in a thematic lessons learned leadership format.

Warwick F:

Both of those were hinge moments, 2003, 2008, when again, like Michael being, Christ is the center of my life, I heard that still small voice that nudge and I knew what his will was and I moved ahead. If I hadn't made those decisions, my life would be radically different. Those were key hinge moments, for me anyway. Does that kind of make sense from your framework?

Michael L:

For sure. I think that all of those are moments that you can point back to specific. Each of us in our own journey have different things. So, what might be hinge moment for you might not be for someone else, but I think when we take stock, we can see that there are clear defining moments that change the trajectory of our life.

Gary S:

One of the things I want to mention about those hinge moments that you described Warwick is that again, going back to the idea that not all hinge moments are crucible moments, but all crucible moments can be hinge moments, what happened, those two hinge moments that you described were key to you moving beyond your crucible, to quote the title of this podcast. You've talked about them in the context of the failed takeover. Those were two key moments that led you toward the life of significance that you're now leading.

Gary S:

I think that's the way to kind of mash up these two very important concepts of crucible moments and hinge moments. That's how they worked for you. Those hinge moments helped you as you move beyond your crucible and I think we can extrapolate that out to, right Michael? To anybody who goes through a crucible moment. Your hinge moment, if you identify it, that can be the thing that can help you move beyond your crucible.

Michael L:

I think that so much of what you have to do ... In the book, I talk about that there are seasons of transition, like stages that you go through, kind of like stages of grief. There are low points, but then there are also become points of real redemption. I find that people who are most successful are ones who are able to sort of make sense of the tragedy or of the crucible that they went through, in large part because it's about shaping your character. You really can't control how other people react. You really can't control, in many ways, the outcomes that ... Those will be largely the aggregated results of lots of different people's actions and behaviors, but you can control, you can shape your own character and the kind of person you become as a result of the crucible you've gone through.

Warwick F:

Yeah, that's so well said. Gary, thank you for making that connection, because you're right. As I've reflected on it, the connects between Crucible Leadership and Hinge Moments, you go through tragedy, and that's obviously an epic hinge moment. As we say, you can either hide under the covers, be angry and bitter at yourself and others, whether it's your fault, not your fault. There's a lot of room for anger and bitterness and just hide under the covers and wait for the next 30, 40, 50 years to pass and eventually it'll all end. Or you can say this was awful, I was an idiot or what happened to me was just not right. And you can make a decision to move on from that as pretty much, most of the 70 plus guests we've had on the podcast, their crucibles, they've all pretty much, without exception, used their pain in the service of others.

Warwick F:

They've found some level of healing by finding, out of the ashes of their crucible, a vision that will ... A life of significance focused on others and a higher purpose. But as I look at hinge moments, as you try to move out of the depth of your pit, those hinge moments help you achieve your life of significance quicker, better, more true to who you are and your values if you just listen to those key moments. If you're a person of faith, it's listen to the Lord. If you're, some other perspective, maybe it's your kind of inner soul. But hinge moments and managing them well are key to getting out to that pit quicker and fast and achieving your vision.

Warwick F:

I mean, it's critical to me. I want to go through each of the kind of seven chapters, but you have your own incredible hinge moments and you write about it in the book and you're obviously open about it. There's a couple, in particular you're studying at Rice or you're a Rice sociology professor. I'm not sure you're even yet 40, maybe close, and some recruiter comes to you and says, "Hey, there's a job open at Gordon."

Warwick F:

But you weren't like, "Great sign me up. Let's go." Talk about, that was a hinge moment and you handled that obviously well, but not everybody would've made the decision you did, or they might have said, "Oh, I'm young. I love where I am in Texas, in Boston." I don't know. Talk about that hinge moment, because that was certainly one of the early critical moments that changed the whole trajectory of your life.

Michael L:

I was a faculty member at Rice and I thought I'd be there my whole career. It's a great institution, lots of resources and things were going really well. A search consultant called and said that they were working on the presidential search at Gordon and wondered if I would be considering. I said, "I really appreciate it, but I have a whole pathway in front of me. I need to become a department chair and maybe a dean, and then a provost. Maybe I would do that down the road, but I think it's probably 10 to 15 years from now." And he said, "Well, would you just pray about it?" And I said, "Sure." I probably prayed a couple of times, but not very seriously about it. But a month later after that initial call, my 32-year-old cousin was killed in a car accident.

Michael L:

I was very close to him. He was like a little brother to me. The family asked me to deliver the eulogy at his funeral, which I did. After the funeral, we loaded up the kids and started driving back to Houston. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was driving along. The kids were taking a nap and it was quiet in the car. I began thinking about my cousin, his name was Trent, and he died about six weeks before Christmas. I wondered, what did he plan on getting his kids for Christmas that year? I knew that he was a planner and probably had some great ideas. I knew also that he was hoping for a big promotion at work and I wondered how close he was to getting that, how far along was that? Then I got to thinking about his life and wondering, what does he want to do 10 to 15 years from now?

Michael L:

The minute that question went across my mind, I instantly thought of that conversation I had a month earlier with a search consultant who had asked if I would be interested in pursuing the presidency, and I said maybe in 10 to 15 years. It just dawned on me in that moment, we are not promised tomorrow. We live our life as if we're in control, when in fact we're really not. That was a moment of great conviction for me because throughout my life I had said I wanted to be open to doing things, even if it wasn't always my idea. I wanted my faith to really drive who I was.

Michael L:

The next morning I called the search consultant and said, "I don't know if you're still looking, but if you are, I'd love to be able to throw my hat into the ring." Never thinking I would get it, just thinking it'd be a part of my own growth and development. But over the next three months, the process moved forward and in the end I was selected. I really think that my cousin's death, in some ways, was redeemed in a small measure by my own sense of calling. I mean, I still greatly miss him. It's a tragedy that he died so young.

Michael L:

At the same time, we have to use tragedies that happen in our life as a way of sort of signaling to us how we might grow and develop. I'm very grateful that, that became a hinge moment in my own life that put me on a trajectory of pursuing positions of institutional leadership.

Warwick F:

Then let's shift to the next, or one of the next big hinge moments. You've been at Gordon College for 10 years as we heard earlier, record fundraising, things are going great. You love the area. Listeners know I went to Harvard Business School and I had parents of my friends that had a place in Cohasset, which is on the south shore of Boston. Love the area. I could totally get why you would want to live there forever. It's a beautiful area. Winter is a bit cold, but it's a nice place. But yet, some folks came knocking on the ... Well, let me pause for a second.

Warwick F:

This is a classic hinge moment. You were doing well, but yet you were feeling some level of discontent, but yet everything was going so great, which seems like it's a classic hinge moment. Talk about, even before Taylor came knocking, talk about that hinge moment at Gordon College.

Michael L:

I was feeling a little restless. Arthur Brooks, who had been the very successful president of the American Enterprise Institute, came and spoke for an event we did. And in it, he talked about his decision to step down after 10 years on the job. I got these butterflies in my stomach and I went home that night and I said, "Why was I nervous for him? He's made his decision. It doesn't really affect me." My wife said, "Well, maybe you're realizing that your 10 years at Gordon will come to a close next year and you're wondering if name thing might be in your future." I said, oh, that's a crazy idea. I can't imagine that." Then a couple months later, I was working on the manuscript for hinge moments and I was rereading every single interview I'd done. I came upon this interview with Bruce Kennedy, the CEO of Alaska Airlines.

Michael L:

I had long forgotten, but in his interview he talked about the decision for him to step away from the CEO job after 10 years on the job. As soon as I saw those words on the page, my heart started beating fast and I got the butterflies back in my stomach. I realized, well, there is something about 10 years that maybe is standing out. Over the next six to eight months, I really, I prayed. I thought, I reflected a great deal. In the end, I concluded, many of the things that I'd set out to do, I've actually accomplished. One of them was a very significant reduction in the cost of a Gordon education.

Michael L:

It takes a long time to reduce expenses and to grow revenues, to get to a place where you can do something significant. Last fall, we were able to announce a 33% reduction in the sticker price and a reduction in the actual price for every single student. That was a big deal. I just realized that I thought, perhaps it was time for me to do something different. It was upsetting and nervous because I've never stepped away from a job without having another job.

Michael L:

But I really felt a confirmation that, that was the right move. I went to my board and they said, "Oh, you just need a break. Let's sign you up for another five years." I really appreciated that. But that actually wasn't really what I felt. So, I stepped away without really knowing what would happen. It was scary for several months. I mean, there were moments when I thought, will I ever get the job that I love again? Will I ever get a chance to do something that meaningful? But I'm also living proof that there are many roles, there are many paths that we can take.

Michael L:

I think if we're open to God's leadership and trying to be responsive when we feel those hinge moments are occurring in our life, that restlessness, that holy discontent can be a way in which the Lord prepares us to move on. By the time I had the opportunity to assume the Taylor presidency, I felt really confirmed in what I was doing. I'll just say, I'm very happy, very satisfied. I feel like it's a great fit for what I bring to the table, what the institution needs, and we are really thrilled to be in Indiana.

Warwick F:

That is just amazing. Obviously I know all of the Taylor community is super excited to have you. Taylor's obviously a great place, Christ-centered, top academic institution, but it has a history of having an extremely close knit culture. As you would know, better than I do, culture is ... It can take decades to create. It's not something you can just flash a wand, and hey, presto, we have a good culture. Obviously you got a great foundation.

Warwick F:

I want to shift to hinge moments and there's this amazing chart in here that's on every chapter. Basically, it starts, in terms of level of confidence, it starts at discernment, goes to anticipation, intersection, then goes up to landing integration, inspiration, realization. Basically intersection is where you're between the two spaces and you're feeling the most uncertain, the least confident, the most wobbly in the knees. It's a fascinating way to look at it. Let's dive into some of these things and just talk about how in that first stage you talk about it's the stage of discernment, approaching the door in your life. You've had a couple of those when you were at Rice and then at Gordon. What's kind of the key concept behind that first step of discernment.

Gary S:

Can I jump in before we do that?

Warwick F:

Please.

Gary S:

Just for the listeners' benefit, we've been talking a lot about hinge moments, and I think it would be really beneficial, Michael, if you defined what a hinge moment is before we talk about them in depth, in terms of how it plays out in your excellent paradigm. What is, how do you recognize a hinge moment, and why do you call it a hinge moment?

Michael L:

A hinge moment are those dozen or two minutes that happen in our life that have a disproportionate impact on the rest of our life because of key decisions or actions that took place in that moment. They, like the hinge of a door, open up doors of possibility or close other doors of possibility because of the impact of them. Oftentimes they have a directly personal effect on us, but they can include not just your family life, not just your love life, but your professional life as well as wider world events. For some of us, 9/11 was a hinge moment that forever changed your life. For others, it was just another minute that changed our world, but didn't directly impact us. Hinge moments oftentimes are disproportionately impactful on us as individuals and they begin to reshape who we are.

Michael L:

As Warwick says, there's seven stages of transition that we go through. And you start at a relatively high level of confidence, but then you begin to discern, either through that sense of restlessness what I described as butterflies in our stomach, sweaty palms, or maybe it's dreams we have at night or conversations that we have, or intuition that we feel, we begin to discern or anticipate that a change is on the way. Then we begin to sort of lose confidence because we begin to think, well, huh, I thought my life was going in one direction and maybe it's going in a different direction.

Michael L:

Actually, it continues to slide down until you get to sort of the low point of confidence, what I call the intersection phase, the liminal moment. Liminal is sort of a word that's taken from the Latin word, which means threshold, when you're literally between two rooms or two seasons or two chapters of your life. You're leaving one and you're starting another, but you're sort of in this betwixt and between phase. That's the hardest time. And it can last a matter of a few days to a matter of a few years when you're dealing with the death of a spouse or the loss of a child, and you are really sort of coming to grips with that.

Michael L:

But then, over time, we begin to sort of find our way into a new room, a new season, a new chapter. We become integrated into that community. We begin to feel like we have got a way of making sense of it. As we become integrated into landing in this new space, making new friends, developing our own sense of calling, and then eventually, we get this opportunity where we become a source of inspiration for other people. At some point in time, whereas you started at this level of confidence, you go through a low point, you actually rise up to a higher level of confidence on the other side when you realize all of this is about the development of your character and opportunities for you to sort of grow and develop.

Michael L:

You discover, maybe you're not going to be managing the family business that you thought you were going to do in Sydney, but instead you have a new sense of calling. In many ways, it's one that is even more meaningful because you've actually gone through some of the difficulties or challenges that make you a stronger, richer, better person. These hinge moments go through these seven phases of transition that in the end, on the other side, we're a better person because of it.

Warwick F:

Boy, that's so well summarized. Wow. I guess the discernment is sort of an interesting phase. You talk about being prepared, and we'll get to, in a later chapter, the virtues like humility, courage, and self control. That first step of you talk about silence and meditation, self examination. When a potential opportunity comes, there's that phase of both internal discernment as well as seeking counsel. These are really the best practices of, when an opportunity comes knocking, what's the best process of figuring out whether to say yes and then move into it, because there's bad ways to handle it.

Warwick F:

But this is sort of like, from my perspective, the best way. Talk about some of those, in those early stages, I love that phrase you say, "Respect your restlessness and seek counsel." Talk about why that's just so important in those early stages.

Michael L:

I think one of the things that's important is that we have to sort of go between two poles. One is immersion and another is isolation. I think that you have to do both of those things when you're really discerning things. Immersion means you're getting fully into the context. Maybe it's that you pay a visit to the place where you think you might be working or you spend a long weekend walking around the community where you think your new house might be, but you're fully immersed in that. But you also have to run what I called, get on the balcony. You have to be able to pull out in moments of isolation. That might be a quiet walk on the beach or thinking alone while you make a long run, something that gives you an opportunity to really contemplate and to get alone with yourself.

Michael L:

You have to do both of those kinds of things in the discernment, both immersion and isolation. The net result of that is that I think you begin to develop a sense of both calling and responsibility and you get greater clarity around what might be coming ahead.

Warwick F:

That's good. That really goes into the next phase of anticipation. I love the phrase that you mentioned of overcoming caution and the fact that most humans are risk averse. I mean, I certainly am. I like to think I'm a relatively fearful person, but fortunately from my mother, who is a very strong willed force of nature kind of person, I get some pretty high degree of perseverance and conviction. Once I feel like this is what the Lord wants me to do, my conviction and perseverance tends to overcome my natural caution, so that's a bit of a yin yang kind of thing that I have to go through. But most humans are risk averse, but overcoming over caution, I love that phrase.

Warwick F:

Back in the days at Rice University, you had to live that one out. You could say, I could become department head, dean, provost. I love Texas. I love where I am. Why give up the tried and true path to jump off in some other place I've never been to? Talk about why overcoming over caution is just so critical to life.

Michael L:

Well, there's a ton of neuroscience research that shows that, generally speaking, we will do everything we can to mitigate risk. While we might think of ourselves as brave and courageous, most of the time, we're not. And it requires us to sort of be goaded in one way or another to push ourselves to try something that is risky. My book is designed to try and encourage people. It's actually, generally speaking, better for you to take the risk. Certainly when you're thinking about new ventures, most of the time you're going to be much more successful in that new venture. So, don't be too cautious.

Michael L:

I mean, it's important to make assessments and to count the cost. At the same time, too often we do become paralyzed by that and we miss out on some amazing opportunities. Virtually every one of the platinum leaders that I interviewed had to get to a point where they were willing to push themselves to do that was very different. A great example, Condi Rice. Condoleezza Rice thinks she's going to be a world class concert pianist. She goes to the Van Cliburn competition as a 14 year old and realizes, "I am never going to play the piano as well as some of these other people who are younger, less experienced than I am. They're just more talented. They do this better."

Michael L:

So, she has a soul searching experience. She thought her whole life was going to be in a certain direction. She decides to enroll at the University of Denver as a 16-year-old, much earlier than most kids go off to college. While there, she doesn't major in music. She explores a variety of different fields. Takes a class on a Soviet studies, and through that develops a real passion and love for Russian literature, Russian culture. That in turn gets her interested in international relations. She graduates from the University of Denver. Decides to go straight to Notre Dame to pursue a PhD, which she does international relations.

Michael L:

Of course, she ends up having a whole career as a provost at Stanford, becomes a national security advisor and secretary of state. None of those things would've been pathways for her if she had stuck to her pathway of thinking that she was going to be a concert pianist. Maybe she would've been able to play piano at her local church, and maybe occasionally she'd have some concerts. She never would've had the platform that she ended up having in her life if she had been overly cautious. Sometimes we have to just be willing to take the risk.

Warwick F:

That's such a good example. It's funny. I think if somebody we had on our podcast, at least we recorded, just couple days ago, Jason Hardrath, and he's somebody, teaches PE at an elementary school in Washington State. He has ADHD. And the way he copes with that is he has to move. He cannot sit still. But because, as you would know, with challenges, there can become blessings, there can come gifts with challenges. He doesn't have the risk averse chip in his brain.

Warwick F:

He does things that are nuts, but then he achieves things that most of us humans couldn't achieve. Like he had an accident, which I won't get into all right now, that limited what he could do, but he decided to do a triathlon and he wanted to compete in these elite deals. Well, part of the triathlon is like a 2.6 mile swims, two point something anyway. Well, at the time he could barely swim the length of a 50 meter pool. But he signed up for this triathlon six months later saying, "I'll figure it out. I'll get there." And he did.

Warwick F:

Now, most of us wouldn't even dream of signing up for triathlon if we couldn't barely swim the length of a 50 meter pool. Maybe if we felt okay, I've satisfied myself I can can swim a mile, now I'll commit to it. But 99% of humans would never do that. I'm not suggesting everybody lives the way he does because he has a certain challenge with a gifting, but I look at that and I'm awe inspired. I mean, his lack of risk averse is ... There's a challenge with that because his lack of ability at time to control impulses, but that's super human level of courage, but that's because of the gifting side of the challenge.

Warwick F:

When I heard that I said, golly, that's just ... Talk about lack of risk averse. I mean, no wonder he achieves some of the things he does. I mean, it's not that hard to break records if you don't have that risk averse chip in your brain.

Michael L:

That's right. Absolutely.

Warwick F:

Anyway, but obviously that's a whole nother story. We move then to intersection. You've talked a bit about that. That's the hardest place between those two spaces. One of the things in here that you talk about is the importance of having a mentor. You relate it to stories and films, whether it's Bilbo having Gandalf, and as any Star Wars fan would know Luke having Obi-Wan. Clearly, I mean you've had mentors your whole life. You're a wise man. Talk about how, especially when you are in the land in-between, almost sounds a little bit like Moses between Egypt and the promised land. Of course, he was there for 40 years, which you don't typically want to be in the land in between for 40 years, heaven forbid, but talk about why having a mentor is so critical when you're between those two stools.

Michael L:

I think you have to have mentors and sponsors, people who are willing to sort of step into your life and create opportunities, but it's helpful for people to speak into our life who can remind us of our giftings and our interests and our capabilities, but also one who opens up doors of possibilities. That's why I love working with college students is because it's great to get a chance to help them make some good connections.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Then we kind of move into landing, and probably the key phrase there is, so the welcome mat and you are the guest is the importance of listening and you've got like impression, plus impression, plus impression equals reputation. That makes so much sense. It's so easy to get into a new job saying, "Okay, I don't need to listen. I'm a successful ..." You could have walked into Taylor and saying, "I'm a successful leader of a Christian college. I know what I'm doing. Taylor just needs to listen to me and let's go." But you didn't. You had a hundred 175th commission, you listened to alumni, parents of alumni, other folks.

Warwick F:

You didn't walk in day one in Taylor saying, "Okay, here's a plan. Let's go. Hey, what's your name anyway? Because I really don't know who you folks are." But you're obviously too intelligent for that. Yeah, talk about why just that sense of those early impressions of listening and just being on your best behavior, as you put, it sounds obvious, but there's a lot of leaders that get into a new job, they do the exact opposite of what you suggest.

Michael L:

Well, I think experience is the best teacher to us. I've made tons of mistakes along the way. The benefit of a second presidency is it's a chance to reset and to learn from things, and hopefully do things a little bit better. I certainly have benefit so much for being part of this community and to learn from the wisdom of other folks. I also think you get to a certain point where you don't have to prove yourself. You're pretty comfortable in your own skin. I think that becomes a sign of leadership maturity. Certainly, I think your crucible moments that you experienced had a way of, through the refining fire, helping you to become a place where you don't have to prove yourself. But instead, you become an opportunity to learn, grow, and hopefully invest in other people.

Warwick F:

Well said, well said, and then we move into integration where being trustworthy and trusting your team is obviously is so huge. I mean, that kind of makes abundant sense. Then somewhere to dwell as we, kind of in our remaining minutes, chapter six, the hinge inspiration, this is where you really unpack the concept of the hinge. You mentioned that, people might be familiar with the phrase, cardinal virtues. You talk about how the word cardinal is from the Latin word, meaning hinge, and just the importance of having a very strong hinge. Really, let's sort of dig into that one a little bit about the importance of having, as you put it, a reliable, robust hinge when hinge moments come. Talk about why that's just so critical.

Michael L:

I think all of us have a set of values that we live our lives by. It orients our priorities, how we spend our time, how we spend our resources. Not everybody takes the time to enumerate what those values are, but I think each of us have a set of them that are really guiding us. The book tries to lay out, there are four cardinal virtues that have been around for a millennia and shape who we are, whether it's justice or self-control, or a real commitment to trying to pursue wisdom that might be true in our life, a variety of different values that help shape who we become.

Michael L:

I would just say that, to all of your listeners, it's important to use the hinge moment as a chance to say, okay, what are those key principles or values that really matter to my life? And then how do I live by them? Because when you get to the end of life, people are not going to give a eulogy based upon all of your bullet points of your resume. They're going to just talk about your character. What is your character and how did you live it out?

Warwick F:

Yeah, that's so important. I mean, we talk about in crucible leadership and we have a broad audience. I'm clear about my faith in Christ, but I say, leadership needs to be anchored in fundamental beliefs and values. It could be religion, a philosophy, a set of values, and then importantly, beliefs are important, but they need to be acted upon. From our framework, that's character, which is beliefs acted upon. Like in James, it talks about faith is good, but deeds is where it fleshes itself out and it's obviously for the believers. It's still saved by grace, but if you really believe in what you say you believe, it will shape your character.

Warwick F:

Otherwise, there's a question about whether you believe in the first place, at least from a Christ centered perspective. But that is so good, is just, even before those hinge moments come, just understanding what your values are. You talk about prudence and fortitude, temperance, justice. I love how you define justice, I guess from, is it Cornel West somewhere? What love looks like in public, justice. I haven't heard that. That's a brilliant definition. Then we go to the last one, inspiration.

Gary S:

Can I back up a second?

Warwick F:

Please, please.

Gary S:

And stay on hinge for a minute.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

Because I think it's fascinating, Michael, that you use hinge as the metaphor because hinges are interesting. They're sort of hidden, right? It's the least important part. When we're go one through a door, we don't think about the hinge, but if it wasn't for the hinge, we wouldn't get through the door. Hinges also are metal usually, they're susceptible to rust, they're susceptible to the nails falling off. They need a little care. What does it look like, metaphorically, if our hinges rust in our lives? What is that like and how can we prevent it? Because I think that's critical to part of what you're saying, is to keep those hinges well-greased and well oiled.

Michael L:

I think, fundamentally, if you don't have those principles in your life, if you don't care for those values, nurture them, strengthen them, help them to become more central to who you are, then the hinges can't perform their function and so the door doesn't open or it doesn't close. The engineering marvel about a hinge is that it's the same device that is used to keep a slab of wood from staying ... It stays in place and yet it can also create a range of motion so that you can take something that is closed and open because of a hinge. You also can take something that is open and closed because of a hinge. And also, it can leave it in the current position until it needs to be adjusted. That's an engineering marvel that a little device like that can do all three of those things well.

Michael L:

But if the hinges are rusty and if they no longer function, you're going to find that either doors that need to be closed in our life, because there are certainly necessary endings that we all have to experience in life that won't occur, or doors of opportunity that need to be opened, they won't be there. Or the things that are supposed to stay open, suddenly become closed, or things that become closed, suddenly become open. It actually changes the trajectory of your life for all the wrong kind of reasons, which is why you have to really care for those hinges so that they can be sustaining over the long call.

Warwick F:

Yeah, and that's such a good point, and thanks for making that excellent point, Gary. I mean, having good, robust, rust-free, well-oiled hinges based on the fundamental values that you have in life, and we all have values. I mean, I talk about in the book, humility and integrity, probably my two highest values along with authenticity and vulnerability, probably integrity and humility are my number ones, it helps you make better decisions when those hinge moments come. You made, I think it's easy to look back in life.

Warwick F:

As you rightly say in the book, life is better understood looking backwards. Unfortunately, it's not easy to look forward, but that's why we have faith because the Lord understands the plan and we just have to say yes one step at a time when he gives us that next step. But as you look back on those two key hinge moments for you, whether it was Rice University or being at Gordon, you had a robust hinge, you knew your cardinal virtues. You had mentors you could talk to. You had all the process and systems in place to make good decisions, and you had the power of prayer. You had the right system set up to make, it's not foolproof because we're human, but to make good decisions.

Warwick F:

So, you made a decision that many wouldn't have. Many would've stayed at Rice, most maybe at that age, just objectively speaking. And many might have said, "Look let me shoo that holy discontent thing out of the way. It's Gordon. They have high confidence in me, the board of trustees. We're doing well. Record fundraising, lower tuition. I could just coast here for the next 10, 15, 20 years and life is good. Why would I want to leave a good thing? Who does that? Most wouldn't. They would stay there forever. You probably could have. But yet, you decided not to. And it was only because of how robust and rust-free your hinge was.

Warwick F:

Thank you for bringing this back to that Gary, because it's ... To make good decisions, you need good hinges. I feel like, why would you leave on the table what the Lord would have for you in life? If you're a believer, you'll still go to heaven all. If you're not a believer, you could still have a great life, but maybe there's an optimal path that you're missing out on. Why miss out on that optimal path of even greater service and joy and fulfillment? Why do that? By navigating your hinge moments well, you will be open to some of the most exciting, fulfilling experiences you could possibly have.

Warwick F:

Yeah, now's the time to oil the hinges, figure out your own cardinal virtues. I'm an executive coach at heart, so whatever that means to you, every person has the God-given right, from my perspective, to figure out their own path and their own virtues. Figure it out, have a good team, have a mentor and you'll be better set for when those next hinge moments come. So, excellent. Just as we kind of wrap up here, we've got the last one of realization. One of the things you talk about here is, which is very personal, you talk about responding to hard joys.

Warwick F:

You mentioned you've got three daughters, but your oldest, you found out when she was a few months old, that there was some genetic things going on. I mean, I've never really heard that phrase a hard joy. Why'd you put that in that last chapter in realization? What was the link there between? Because that's sort of fascinating that you talk about that there.

Michael L:

I think a lot of times we look at everybody else's life and just assume that everything is rosy, that the trajectory they've been on is like a line graph where everything is moving up and to the right in a real positive direction. When in fact, a lot of us encounter challenges and hardships along the way. Parenting a special needs daughter was not something my wife and I expected. We love Elizabeth and are grateful for all the good that has come in to our life. And there has been joy, but it has not been easy at all. Caring for Elizabeth is an all consuming part of our family's calling. So, it's been a hard joy in a number of ways. We have to just be honest and acknowledge that. And yet, there have been moments of real encouragement and inspiration and it's certainly changed who I am for the better.

Michael L:

From my own sort of character development, I would say, I'm a much better father, I'm a much better person, I'm a much better boss because I have had some of those hard joys along the way. My hunch is that each of us can probably point to things that have been ongoing sources of pain or difficulty that it's God's providence, have become real sources of great joy and inspiration as well.

Gary S:

That sound to you, our listeners, is the captain turning on the fast seatbelt sign indicating that it's about time to land the plane of this conversation, but we're not quite there yet. Before we get there for sure, Michael, I would be remiss if I did not give you the opportunity to let listeners know how they can both find out more about Taylor University and about you online. How can they learn more about your books and about your college that you're president of?

Michael L:

Well, you're very nice to say that Gary. I hope that folks would check us out at wwwd.taylor.edu. Taylor is an amazing institution, just ranked number one university in the Midwest and we're really proud of the good things that are happening here on campus. If you have a son or a daughter, or a grandson or granddaughter, or somebody who is of the high school age that's looking at universities, we hope that they'll consider Taylor. My web presence is also on taylor.edu/president, and you can learn all kinds of good things. I hope you'll consider buying a copy of Hinge Moments. It's a great book and one that we're hoping to share with a much wider audience. Thank you so much for having me on today.

Gary S:

Great. Warwick. You get the last question so bring the plane on the ground.

Warwick F:

I love one of the last things you talk about in your conclusion, is redemption through hinge moments. You talk about how God uses failure to help us grow and grow up, and just the value of failures or successes for that matter. And certainly in my case, just the pain of losing this 150-year-old 2 billion plus business, which was excruciating, and even when you recover from crucible experiences, there are always scars that are left. But that sense of redemption, certainly in 2008, when I gave that talk in church and somehow my story, it felt like could be used to help others. That was a hinge moment where I definitely felt redemption.

Warwick F:

Speaking at Taylor and just seeing the response. I'm very careful whenever those things happen as to physically or proverbially get on my knees and say, "All glory to God, All glory to God," because it's all him. But just talk in, it's our last question, I've just loved that phrase, redemption through hinge moments. That really rang true to me.

Michael L:

Well, it's certainly, I find that the best way that you sort of make sense and make meaning of these hinge moments is for us to take stock and say, okay, well, how has this shaped my character? How has this helped me to become a better person, a better family member, a better professional? I think that that does become the way in which redemption will occur. It can use the pains and difficulty, and while you're right, it does leave scars, those scars don't remain open wounds. Because of that, your skin becomes tougher, stronger, more supple, so that it can navigate additional challenges. I also find that, generally speaking, we rise to the level of the challenge, whatever it might be.

Michael L:

For those who are, in the current moment, being given great challenge, it's because you also have great character and great potential. My hope is that through the crucibles that we experience and the hinge moments that come along our way, God can use that to redeem us so that we can be even more effective in our respective callings.

Gary S:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject's been spoken. I also know when someone has just added something to his or her resume. Michael's resume is very, very, very impressive with his books and his education and his leadership of colleges. Who knew he could land a plane so well too? He landed that plane perfectly in our discussion. Listener, thank you so much for your time with us.

Gary S:

As you wait around for the next time, which comes in a week if you're listening to this episode when it comes on live, you have homework, and it makes perfect sense to have homework because we're talking to a college president. You have homework. The homework is this, make certain that your ... Take the time in the next week to make sure that your hinges are inoperable order. Oil them. Make sure that the nails are there, make sure that there's not any rust on them. Really dig into, find out, identify your hinges where they are and make sure that they're in working order.

Gary S:

Then, until the next time we're together, please remember that we do understand your crucible experiences are painful. They do change the trajectory of your life. All of us have experienced them. You have experienced them, but we know, through our own experience and through the experience of guests like Michael and other folks we've had on this show, that your crucible experience is not the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new chapter in your story, which can be the best chapter in your story. Because when you learn the lessons of your crucibles, when you embrace them as hinge moments to walk to something new and better, they can be the best chapter of your story, because where they lead at the end of the day is to a life of significance.

Most of the time, we define crucible experiences as setbacks and failures. But can success be its own crucible? Dean Niewolny  didn’t think so as he climbed the corporate ladder in his financial-services career. He was focused on not just keeping up with the Joneses, but surpassing them. He had the corner office, the multiple homes, the plane … but he also had a gnawing sense there was more. That he wasn’t living his calling. That changed when he got involved with the Halftime Institute, which helps men and women look beyond their life’s bottom line to its impact. He’s served the organization as an executive and captured the insights of his work helping others live with legacy in mind in his book TRADE UP: HOW TO MOVE FROM JUST MAKING MONEY TO MAKING A DIFFERENCE.

To learn more about Dean Niewolny, visit https://halftimeinstitute.org/team/speakers/dean-niewolny/

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Dean N:

Going from success to significance doesn't mean you have to give up success. You surely, surely can be successful and significant at the same time. I would argue that in today's day and age with the younger audience, it's, "Hey, I want to be significant now. I want to make a difference now" so the idea of going from success to significance was a fantastic tagline in the '90s for the book Halftime, but that's a little dated in my opinion at this point, but for me, personally, I just started to feel as I got more successful, that every time I got more successful, there was another hill to climb, there was always someone else in front of me, there was always ... It didn't matter what I accomplished. There was always someone else that I needed to try to jump over. I'm like, well, this is just an endless game for me because it wasn't bringing me happiness, it was bringing me a lot of stress.

Gary S:

Most of the time, we define crucible experiences as setbacks and failures but can success be its own crucible? This week's guest, Dean Niewolny says that was the case for him. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gary S:

In his conversation with me and Warwick, Niewolny describes how not just keeping up with the Joneses but surpassing them fueled his career for far too long. He had the corner office, the multiple homes, the plane but he also had a gnawing sense there was more, that he wasn't living his calling.

Gary S:

That changed when he got involved with the Half Time Institute, which helps men and women look beyond their life's bottom line to its impact. He's served the organized as an executive and captured the insights of his work helping others live with legacy in mind in his book Trade Up: How To Move From Just Making Money to Making A Difference.

Warwick F:

Well, Dean, thank you so much for being here. I love the title of your book, Trade Up: How To Move From Just Making Money to Making A Difference, and the whole notion of Half Time to help leaders of organizations, business leaders, really all leaders move from success to significance, which is sorely needed in our societies.

Warwick F:

Tell us just a bit about your family growing up in Wisconsin and the background which, obviously, you end up at Half Time but what was it like for Dean growing up and your family? Tell us a bit about the backstory.

Dean N:

Sure. Yeah. I am a Cheese Head. I'm a Wisconsinite and grew up in a little town called Wausau, Wisconsin in north central Wisconsin and grew up with a fantastic family, probably a low to middle class family I would say. We didn't have a lot but we had everything we needed. Two sisters. They're all back in Wisconsin and while I'm living in Minnesota.

Dean N:

As a young guy, we had what we needed. We were farmers and we worked hard but I always had this dream at a young age of how can I get out there and be the next Warren Buffett or the next Bill Gates? As a young man, I ended up going to a school in Wisconsin and then ended up getting hired initially by Arthur Anderson, I went out to be a consultant with Arthur Anderson, and then went into the financial services industry. A very Midwestern upbringing, family of farmers. It was great.

Warwick F:

Just in looking at your book, you tend to look over the fence or over the other side of the tracks and people were successful and, "Hey, this could be me." There was just this drive from a young age and athletics was huge for you in high school and college. Talk about ... Was that you? Was there any examples in your family? It seemed like almost from birth you just had this drive to ... You wanted to make it in life. You weren't just satisfied with the status quo. Where did that come from, this drive?

Dean N:

Yeah. Great question. I would say I had fantastic parents. My dad is my best friend. Very close to my parents. We were always comparing ourselves to others. We would see others who had bigger cars or bigger homes and nicer things, if you will. I just remember us always comparing ourselves to those folks. As a young kid, it was ingrained into me that I want to be one of those folks, I want to have those things because that's what we were looking up to. I thought if I can just achieve what they have achieved, and that success and money and material possessions, that'll bring me happiness. No disrespect to my mom and dad whatsoever but as a young man, it was ingrained in me as I started to look at others that I want to be like those folks.

Warwick F:

It's kind of interesting because, obviously, I grew up in Australia but definitely respect America and part of what makes America America is the sense of inventiveness, they're willing to try, they're willing to fail almost, the sense of you want your kids to have a better life than you had. For 150 years, 200 years, that's always been the ethos. It's not wrong to want to better yourself and do well and achieve, per se.

Warwick F:

That notion you grew up with is probably a notion that many, if not most, American families grew up with. Say, "I want my kids ... If I didn't go to college, I want my kids to go to college. I want them to have a better job than I did." That's generations of family in every state in the country has that ethos. It's not unusual in that sense and we'll get into there's nothing wrong with success but in of itself, you don't want to worship it.

Warwick F:

I mean, as you look back, that probably wasn't that unusual in that sense, your friends that you hung out with, it's probably you weren't the only family that said, "Hey, we want to better ourselves and do well", right?

Dean N:

Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. My son right now is 19 years old and he talks like I did when I was a young kid, "I want to be wealthy and I want to have all these things." What ended up happening in my life is that that became the center point of my life. That was the main focus. That work was going to bring me happiness if I just focused on that. It was an idol to me. I was obsessed with it at a young age. That becomes a challenge.

Warwick F:

Indeed. Let's talk about that. An idol is a good word. You started off in finance with Arthur Anderson. You're thinking originally accounting and you thought, "I don't think I want to do this. I want to be in sales. I want to sell finance stuff." Talk a bit about those first few jobs as you ... I think there was one, you were, as young brokers do, dialing for dollars. Like 300 calls a day and you were disciplined, you were on it, which is admirable. Talk about those early days as you were working your way up.

Dean N:

Sure. Sure. I did become a stock broker but actually it wasn't a dream of mine. It happened when I was at Arthur Anderson and the guy next to me said, "You know, Niewolny, you don't know what you're doing. What are you doing here? You should go out and get a different job" so that's when I started thinking, "Well, what should I do?"

Dean N:

I was 23 years old and decided being a stock broker sounds like something that would be really interesting. I knew nothing about stocks, nothing about financial markets and walked into the Merrill Lynch office, way back in 1987, and just said, "Hey, I would really like to become a financial advisor. Do you have a position for me?"

Dean N:

I'll never forget it, the gentleman that I was talking to was on the way to the Final Four basketball tournament. He said, "You know what? I don't have a lot of time right now. You seem like a good kid. Come back in two weeks and you have a job." That was it. That started my financial career with Merrill Lynch in Milwaukee, Wisconsin back in 1987.

Dean N:

You're right. What happened at the very beginning as a young financial advisor, my boss told me, "Dean, you need to make 250 dials every single day, 50 contacts every single day, and then hand the sheet into me at the end of the evening", which I did. He said, "If you live two years like no one else wants to, you'll live the rest of your life like no one else can."

Dean N:

Of course, this drug being money, for me, at the time, that was just music to my ears. I was just locked and loaded for the next two years. I just dialed for dollars and made the cold calls and became reasonably successful at a young age, at 23, 24 years old.

Dean N:

Yeah. That's how I started in the financial business.

Warwick F:

Over the years, you started moving up the ladder and I'm sure being a manager and being very successful, you had I think ... What? Maybe several houses at one point, the lake house, the boat. Talk about ... I mean, that rise, your dreams did come true in that sense. You were successful, you worked very hard, and I'm sure you earned your success but talk about that rise up the ladder from young stock broker to I guess the pinnacle being a manager of a $100 million portfolio at Wells Fargo. Talk a bit about that journey. Any sort of high points on the way?

Dean N:

Absolutely. Yeah. I was financial advisor out in Carmel, California and then moved back to the Midwest and I was encouraged at that time to make a transition from Merrill Lynch to a company at the time called Payne Weber, which no longer exists, but they merged with Kidder, Peabody, and, ultimately, were bought by UBS.

Dean N:

I was encouraged at that time to move to Chicago and go into management. What ended up happening is during that time, one of my crucible moments happened in 1994, right after I moved over to this new organization, I ended up going through a very difficult divorce at a young age.

Dean N:

I had to start over. Here I am, 1994, I'm 31, I'm successful, I'm making money, have all these different toys, married, and pretty soon everything unraveled and I had to start over. As I started over, I moved to Chicago, got into management, started moving up the ladder and did various jobs with UBS. I went down to Texas and then back to Chicago and then became a regional manager and a market manager.

Dean N:

At the same time, as I started to rebuild, I met this beautiful lady, who is my wife, Lisa, and had two fantastic kids. Like you said, started accumulating possessions. We had a home in Chicago and a home outside of Chicago and a lake house and actually I became a pilot at that time and had a little airplane, nothing major, single engine but a little airplane and a boat.

Dean N:

I was thinking to myself, "As I continue to make money and accumulate these things, I'm just going to have more joy in my life and more happiness." What ended up happening was the complete opposite for me. It was the opposite. I actually had a bout with hives and I was so stressed out thinking, "Well, I have to pay the insurance on that house. I have to get the airplane fixed. I've got to take care of the boat", that I was so stressed out about taking care of my stuff, that in 2006, I just had this moment where I just said, "There just has to be more to life than this."

Warwick F:

Talk about that scene. I think you write in the book, was it like the 40th floor of some massive skyscraper in Chicago and you're looking out. Just talk about that moment. It feels like that's one of the pivotal moments in your life. It's like what is life about? Take us through that moment as you're staring out that window.

Dean N:

Sure. I'm going to back up just a little bit, in 1995, I accepted Christ and started going to a church in Chicago. My first thought was, "Well, if I accept Christ, I have to leave the marketplace and go into the ministry. I'm not supposed to stay in the marketplace."

Warwick F:

Right. Right.

Dean N:

The pastor that weekend said, "Well, if everyone left the marketplace and went into the ministry, who would be a light in a dark world?" I thought, "Well, I'll stay in the marketplace."

Dean N:

In 1999, there was this gentleman that got interviewed, Bob Buford, and I was in the third row and I was thinking, "Boy, that guy is impressive, he's talking about going from success to significance." I'm thinking to myself, "Well, I'm all about this success thing. I'm not so sure about the significance piece."

Dean N:

But then we fast forward six years from there to 2006, 40th floor of the Mercantile Exchange Building, the corner office, all the homes and the airplane, the boat, beautiful wife, kids, and I just looked out the window one day ... I shut the door, looked out the window one day, and just said, "God, there has to be more to life than this. There has to be more to life than this."

Dean N:

It was up to that point Warwick I spent so much time focusing on myself, it was all about me and accumulating things and making me happy and I wasn't thinking of others. I just remember that day really, really well. I didn't hear an audible voice but I felt the lord say, "Dean, I have other plans for your life. Start to simplify your life." That was the episode on the 40th floor. It was a game-changer.

Dean N:

My boss actually reached out to me two weeks later and said, "Would you be interested in doing a book study?" I said, "Absolutely. What's the book?" He said, "It's Half Time. I'd like you to read the book Half Time." I said, "Well, I heard that guy get interviewed in 1999" and that was just perfect.

Warwick F:

What's fascinating about your story is it's not a simple kind of Paul road to Damascus moment. It seemed like it was a journey. You'd come to faith in Christ at a church in Chicago a few years before. You'd heard Bob Buford, who for listeners, I think was from Texas and had a bunch of TV stations and was very successful and, obviously, you know better than I do, but lost a son in I think a drowning accident, which turned his life and, gosh, what is life about? You lose your only son. That's about as devastating as it can possibly be.

Warwick F:

It wasn't like this road to Damascus moment, okay, I've accepted Jesus, boom, you know? Dean Niewolny's life instantly turns on a dime. I think it's more realistic because for most people, life doesn't change overnight. It's almost like being an aircraft carrier, right? It changes slowly. Just talk a bit about that journey. I think it's very realistic and it's more typical.

Dean N:

You're right. When I heard Bob speak in 1999, and he talked about this idea of going from success to significance, that really did begin a journey for me that I didn't even realize at the time, that just little by little, I started to look outward and I started to volunteer and I served at a homeless shelter and I helped the homeless put resumes together so they could go out and get gainfully employed.

Dean N:

But God was using that time in my life as building blocks to get me to this point of 2006, and everyone doesn't need to make a transition like Bob Buford did from the marketplace to the ministry, or like I did. Most people actually stay in the marketplace. But for me, it was a journey. If I look back, it's interesting, you can connect the dots in how it was a building block kind of effect up to 2006 when I had the 40th floor office experience.

Gary S:

We're going to get into what significance is and how you discovered that but for the listener who hears this in apposition, the idea of success and significance and thinks, "Success still sounds like it might be kind of interesting", it's very rare to be sitting in a virtual space with two individuals who have had after their names, $100 million, in your case, Dean, billions in your case, Warwick, and both of you have come to the same conclusion, that that success didn't bring happiness.

Gary S:

For people who hear that sometimes and think it's empty, this idea of, "Success doesn't really fulfill, that's not true, success would fulfill me. It was just you had a problem with it", talk a little bit, Dean, about what was it about success that was unfulfilling for you ultimately. There you were, you were saying that the other side of the tracks is where happiness lies. It wasn't that. Was there a moment besides your health failure? When did you start to sniff that success just wasn't what you had made it out to be when you were younger?

Dean N:

Yeah. Great question, Gary. Just to clarify too, I wasn't personally worth $100 million. I managed a $100 million business. What ended up happening is as I started to be successful and started getting promoted and making more money and accumulating more things, it actually had the opposite effect for me, like I said earlier. It started to cause me to be more stressed than I was without those things.

Dean N:

I really had to take time and think through why is that? What I want to make sure and say here is that going from success to significance doesn't mean you have to give up success. You surely, surely can be successful and significant at the same time. I would argue that in today's day and age, with the younger audience, it's, "Hey, I want to be significant now, I want to make a difference now" so the idea of going from success to significance was a fantastic tagline in the '90s for the book Half Time but that's a little dated in my opinion at this point but, for me, personally, I just started to feel as I got more successful that every time I got more successful, there was another hill to climb. There was always someone else in front of me. There was always ... It didn't matter what I accomplished. There was always someone else that I needed to try to jump over.

Dean N:

I'm like, "Well, this is just an endless game for me" because it wasn't bringing me happiness. It was bringing me a lot of stress.

Gary S:

Yeah. You were constantly crossing over the tracks, right? You were constantly trying to get to whatever was on the other side of the tracks over and over and over again. That's got to be exhausting.

Dean N:

Yeah. It was for me, personally. For many others, it may not be. Having material possessions and money and all that, there's nothing wrong with that. For me, what was wrong with it was I made those things an idol. That was my total focus, right? This idea of making money, nothing wrong with that. We need people to make money. Hey, our nonprofit needs money, so make money. You know? The reality is how do you use that money? Is the money for personal gain? What is it really for?

Warwick F:

Yeah. No. It's such a good point what you're saying. I have, as listeners would know, a very different journey. Similar experience but about as different a journey as you can imagine and listeners know this. I grew up in about as wealthy a family as you can imagine in Sydney, Australia. A 150 year old, very large media company, newspapers, TV, magazines. Not only did we have wealth but we had status and respect.

Warwick F:

For people on the marketplace, that's ... You've won the lottery at that point. We didn't just have money. We had respect in society. Money, respect, status, what more is there that you want in life? Some people have money but are not respected at all. You know? When you have all of them, you've got everything the world says that you would want, and so we had that. We had parties with people from Hollywood, ambassadors, business leaders, and it just all seemed to me so empty growing up, everybody trying to impress each other with the deals they had done and royalty they met or whatever. It just seemed so empty. I don't know. It never was attractive to me. I was almost inoculated at a young age.

Warwick F:

I'd experienced all that and it certainly wasn't making my family happy. You know? In of itself, wealthy families have typically lots of problems.

Gary S:

If I can jump in right before you turn into, and say something to our listeners that I think is fascinating by both of the stories that you've just told, because it's very rare it happens on Beyond The Crucible that this is true, in some ways, is it true for both of you that success was its own crucible? The way that you experienced success, the way that you chased it, the way that you wrapped yourself around it, did that become, at some point, for both of you, your own crucible?

Dean N:

I'll chime in here, I would say, for me, it's still a crucible, what I'm working on. Absolutely. It was a crucible for me because it was my driving focus, day in and day out. Back prior to going through the Half Time program and what I'm doing now in the nonprofit world, the idea was all about myself and focused on myself. Once I went through the program, I started thinking of others and trying to make a difference with my finances.

Dean N:

I'll tell you every day, even now when I get up, I still have to pray every morning that that doesn't become an idol for me, that I don't focus on it day in and day out. I'd love to say I'm succeeding at that but I'm not. I have to work at that every single day.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, I want to come back to that in a second because that's such an ... Thank you for being so honest about it because that is helpful. Yeah. For me, I guess the pinnacle of success, if you will, is I launched this $2.2 billion takeover in late August '87 and within a few months, it had "succeeded" and I was controlling shareholder proprietor of this big company at age 26.

Warwick F:

The world would say, "Boy, controlling a multi-billion dollar company at 26, that's pretty good. Not too many people have achieved that kind of benchmark." A media company that had the equivalent of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, but yet it was kind of miserable because it was, as listeners know, all about duty and living up to my great-great-grandfather's vision. I wasn't even fulfilling my own vision. As soon as we had succeeded, it was miserable. I just did not want to be there. There was no joy. Even though, for me, it wasn't so much about money, it was this idealistic vision, but I think what you just said about being aware of your idols and temptations, a wise man or woman does that.

Warwick F:

For me, it's not money but it's more ... My Wikipedia entry until recently was young, hot-headed kid could have had it all and blew it. Do I mind that? Yes, I do mind that. You know, would it be nice if folks in Australia and the media gave me a little ounce of respect one day? It may never happen but do I mind that? Sure.

Warwick F:

With this book that when I first got a copy of that book a number of months ago, like in April, I was literally on my knees in prayer and saying, "Lord, I don't care whether this book sells one or 10,000, my self-worth is not going to be bound up in book sales." My sense of, okay, he's back finally I'll get some respect here. I don't want that desire for respect and that desire for redemption in the world's eyes to define who I am.

Warwick F:

Yes, I'm human, so if a gossip column comes out in one of the Australian papers, as it did a few weeks ago, and it was the snarky stuff like, "Hey, Warwick has a book, which he'll sell you for a price." It's like who sells a book for nothing? It's like, "Warwick talks about failure. Well, he'd be an expert on that, wouldn't he?"

Warwick F:

It's like really? Did I mind that? Yes, I minded that. I've gotten over it, kind of, but do I mind that? Yes. Money is not my deal. It's more respect, redemption. For me, I wouldn't say idol but know your temptations and when you feel that little negative thought coming, if you're a person of faith, get on your knees, pray, and say, "Lord, help me with this temptation. Don't let me have my self-esteem wrapped up in money, redemption, respect." It's for my, and your perspective, it's only in you Lord, not ... Yeah. My temptations are different but they're still temptations, if that makes sense.

Warwick F:

Let's talk about Half Time and your book Trade Up because I think this is fascinating. There is one story in the transition that ... I don't know. Your wife, her name is ... Your wife's name is Lisa?

Dean N:

Lisa.

Warwick F:

I don't know whether she's a prophet but I guess she was at one point, which is just crazy. Talk about that prophetic moment that she had about your role in Half Time, which at the time seemed like crazy stuff, right?

Dean N:

Yeah. Yeah. It did. I think she's a prophet. Anyway, what ended up happening is in 2008, I went through the Half Time program after having this 40th floor office experience. One thing I realized at that point is I'm going to figure out what God wants to do through me one way or another. We read the book Half Time, went down to the Half Time program, which was fabulous.

Dean N:

But at that point, I was still working in the marketplace. We transitioned from Wachovia to Wells Fargo Advisors and I was working there in Chicago overseeing that business. Lisa loved southern California, still loves southern California, and Chicago. She knew those two places on the map. I said, "Why don't we go to Laguna Beach? They're having a Half Time event. You can enjoy California and I can enjoy Half Time."

Dean N:

We went together and I had an interaction with a gentleman from Bob Buford's organization there that day and he came up and said, "Hey, Dean, I really would like to get to know you better. Do you mind if I come up to Chicago and spend a little bit of time with you?" I said sure. At that time, Half Time was looking to get into the financial services a little bit and partner with some financial services organizations. I thought, "Sure. Come on up to Chicago."

Dean N:

Well, that night, we go to bed and three o'clock in the morning, and this is not like my wife, whatsoever, by the way, woke up at three o'clock in the morning. She's sitting straight up. I said, "What happened?" She goes, "I just had a dream." I said, "A dream about what?"

Dean N:

She said, "The dream was about we're moving from Chicago to Dallas, Texas and you're going to become the CEO of the Half Time Institute." I said, "Lisa, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard." I said, "They probably want me to come to talk about the financial services industry" and that connection. She said, "No. You're going to become the CEO and we're moving to Dallas, Texas."

Dean N:

Well, I knew when she said Dallas, Texas that that had to be from the Lord because it wasn't from her. That's not where we were thinking of moving. Nonetheless, he came and four months later, they offered me the position, as you mentioned earlier, of managing director of Half Time. I said, "Lisa, see, I wasn't the CEO. I was the managing director." Then a year later, they changed it and said, "Now you're the CEO." Yeah. It was a dream that she had, that's why we're here.

Warwick F:

Talk a bit about Half Time because not everybody will be familiar with Half Time and then, obviously, that leads into your book. What is the mission of Half Time? What's its vision?

Dean N:

Sure. The vision really is to help men and women around the world identify what we call their Ephesians 2:10 Calling. Ephesians said we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he has prepared beforehand. We believe that everyone has good works, that the lord has given to them, and Half Time helps men and women all over the world identify what are their strengths, what are their spiritual gifts, what are their passions, and we connect them into those things.

Dean N:

We really teach, coach, and connect individuals around the world into their 2:10 Calling, as we like to say.

Warwick F:

You know, one of the things I found fascinating in your book and I can relate to this, that a lot of churches and places, somebody, some businessman or woman comes to faith and it's like they don't know what to do. Maybe they start being an usher or setting chairs and there's nothing wrong with doing any of that but the question is from God's perspective, is that the best use of their gifts for the kingdom, setting chairs or being an usher? Again, it's not about it being beneath you but it's kind of what ...

Warwick F:

It's funny. I guess there is a story in my life that really directly relates to I think to me what's a core, from what I understand a Half Time concept is just lean in to your gifting and I would say God-given passions and calling. There was a time, as listeners would know, I was ... Back in the '90s, when I was not doing too well, just after this whole company went under and I felt like I had let God down ... The founder of the company was a strong believer. When you feel like you've let God down, that's a pretty crushing crucible for a believer.

Warwick F:

Anyway, I ended up working in an aviation services company doing financial and business analysis because I'm pretty analytical, I can do that. I remember in 2003, I felt like the Lord telling me, "You are playing small. You're not honoring me with all the gifts and abilities that I've given you." It wasn't so much that it was beneath me but yet I had more to offer, so then I got into coaching, a couple of nonprofit boards, including my church board and then from there, Crucible Leadership, which is a whole other story.

Warwick F:

That was a pivot point for me feeling like the Lord saying, "You're playing small. You're dishonoring me because you're not using all of the gifts you have for the Kingdom." That feels like ... I didn't know it at the time but it's sort of a Half Time way of thinking, wouldn't you say? In terms of Half Time's philosophy?

Dean N:

Absolutely. Yeah. You know, Warwick, I like to say volunteering is something you get to do, your calling is something you have to do. Very rarely do folks take the time to really understand what is their true calling? God gives us and provides us with strengths and spiritual gifts and abilities, and I believe he wants to use those and plug them into areas of need and, like we say, things that Jesus really cares about, the orphans, the widows, the prisoners, others.

Dean N:

When I was younger, I volunteered, like I said, for a homeless shelter, which was fantastic. I loved it. I enjoyed helping them put their resumes together. But my skillset and my ability allowed me to do more than that and make a bigger impact. It's the leverage impact. I agree with what you're saying.

Warwick F:

Talk about how Half Time does this. You know, we talk about this a bit in Crucible Leadership. Let's say a leader comes in, they're probably still on the fast track, initially, but they're curious about Half Time and about Jesus and all. How do you begin to turn that ship in terms of finding their calling? Talk a little bit, at least, at a high level, some of the elements that Half Time does to try to ... As that newbie CEO type comes in and is all about focus on success, but yet they're curious about the lord and you try to turn into what's the Ephesians 2:10 work that God would have for them. How do you do that? It sounds like not an easy thing to achieve or to accomplish.

Dean N:

Yeah. Most folks who come through the program are at that point that I was at, that smoldering discontent state trying to figure out what is my life really all about? Most successful leaders, not all, but most successful leaders that I've encountered really struggle to have close relationships, close friends, and they're lonely. If you're a CEO or a leader and you're struggling through a crucible issue, who do you go talk to? You're not going to talk to your staff or your team.

Dean N:

Most come ready to really figure out what does God want to do through me? What's the next season look like? All people want to leave a legacy and have an impact and make a difference. When they get there, we have different exercises that really allow that person to be vulnerable and open and safe and we go about it in such a way that once they get authentic and real, we start talking about the head journey, which is, of course, the head journey has to do with we decide what we think we're going to do or what we're good at but then there's a heart journey. There's the holy spirit, there's the guidance from God who guides you. It's the head and heart journey.

Dean N:

At first, you're right. When they get there, I would say most are struggling through something, they're unhappy, they're at this point where, "I want more to my life. I want to make a difference. It may be initially they're struggling in their marriage or with their kids or don't have relationships there." We help with those things to help them get free and then get clear and then get going as we like to say.

Dean N:

It's a very interesting process that if someone comes in and they have an arrogance about them and they're not ready to be coached and they're not in that season, it is difficult. You're absolutely right. But most are ready to do that.

Warwick F:

You have a couple fascinating things. I think you talk about also in your book, the whole 80th birthday party experience, what do you want your legacy to be? That's such a powerful question. Talk just a little bit about that whole concept of legacy and that 80th birthday party image, because it's a fascinating image.

Dean N:

Yeah. It brings back scary memories for me, quite honestly. I remember what ended up happening, I was working at the time still in the marketplace, and I actually did go to a funeral for a lady who was a teacher and there was 500 or 1000 people there. I was like, "Why are so many people here?" They said, "Well, it's because the impact that she had on their lives, the difference she made."

Dean N:

I was sitting in the pew thinking to myself, "Well, if today was my funeral, one, would anyone show up? But secondly, what would they say about me?" That was a very scary thought at the time. When I got to Half Time, they do an 80th birthday party exercise, I guess now we should up it to 85 or 90, but you're invited to your birthday party, your wife or good friend takes you out or spouse takes you out and 200 of your closest friends are in the room and there's a microphone up in the front of the room and, one by one, they walk up and talk about the difference you made on humanity, not on yourself. What difference have you made on humanity? What difference have you made on others? What would you like to hear?

Dean N:

I remember when we went through that exercise, I was like, "They would say, 'Dean is successful, making a lot of money, he has all these different toys" but the impact I had on others or humanity was very minimal at the time. It's an exercise, as you think forward, at the end of your life, what do you want your legacy to be? What impact have you had? That's the 80th birthday party exercise.

Warwick F:

I love that. One of the things I sometimes talk about, obviously, in the world of finance, you talk about ROI, but I often think what about EROI? The eternal return on investment. You know? I wonder if the time is like what's my EROI? What kind of impact am I having for the kingdom? Would I invest in me? At that age, that would have been an interesting conversation at that time. You know? Would I get the buy this stock or not buy this stock from a kingdom perspective?

Dean N:

Well said. I never thought about it that way but you're right.

Warwick F:

One of the other things I love about Half Time is you talk about having a personal board of directors that will ask good questions but these are people that know you, I think you mentioned your wife, your coach but within Half Time ... Talk about that whole concept. Most people do not have a personal board of directors that have the backstage pass, the freedom to say, "Hey, Dean, Warwick, there's a problem here." You know? Who sets themselves up for those conversations? Nobody. Talk about why that's so powerful.

Dean N:

Yeah. The personal board of directors is critical. I think it's right up there with coaching that we do at Half Time. The personal board of directors ... To have those cheerleaders when you need those cheerleaders, when you're down and you're struggling, you need cheerleaders around you. When we talk about the characteristics of someone who finishes well, there's five things and one is have a group of encouragers around you.

Dean N:

The personal board of directors, for me, personally, has been life-changing. I identify four personal board members, if you will, and any good company, of course, has a strong board. For my board, I actually have someone when I'm having marital issues or issues with my children, there's someone, he's a pastor that I would reach out to for that and if I'm having challenges maybe around business, there's someone that I chat regarding that.

Dean N:

I have four to five folks on my personal board of directors but they have carte blanche. They can say anything to me, and I want them to say what's on their heart. It might not be what I want to hear, but it's probably what I need to hear, right? I don't mind them sharing. It's the person at 3:30 in the morning, if I have a major issue is going to answer the phone and be there. You're right, most don't have that but it's really something that's vital to have for sure.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Just keep you on the path you want to be on. You mentioned those five things. I think it's the five characteristics of leaving a legacy, those are the five you're talking about. Just give us a little overview of those five because you mentioned I guess a second one is maybe cheerleaders, the personal board of directors, but talk about some of the other five.

Dean N:

Sure. Health is critical. The five characteristics of those who finish well really has come out of countless hours of coaching over the years. Tens of thousands of hours. The five that have come out of that, believe it or not, number one, those who succeed and win and leave a legacy have taken care of their health. It's hard to go and live out your Ephesians 2:10 Calling if you're not healthy.

Warwick F:

Indeed.

Dean N:

You need to be healthy. They're flexible. Flexible, meaning as we get older and I'm surely guilty of this, I'm getting old and stodgy, I don't want to make changes, I don't want to make adjustments. My son just had a football game that was changed 10 miles away and I was complaining about them changing the site. I was not very flexible. But those who are flexible absolutely succeed.

Dean N:

Then you have, I already mentioned it, the encouragers, those folks around you who are encouragers and, of course, your spouse and others. You want to identify those folks. The fourth would be your family. Put your family number one. This was a big learning for me. When I went to Half Time, I remember Bob Buford asking me, "Where is Lisa in all of this?" I said, "Well, I don't know where Lisa is but I know I need to get going and I've got to figure out my 2:10 Calling." He said, "Dean, whatever you do, just stop." Putting others' interests ahead of your own. Then, of course, your calling, figuring out what is your Ephesians 2:10 Calling, what's God's calling on your life, those are the five.

Gary S:

I was going to say speaking of calling, one of my callings as co-host of Beyond the Crucible is to know when the sound I hear in the distance is the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign to indicate that we're getting close to when we're going to land the plane. We're not going to land it yet but it's time to gather our peanut bags up and get ready to give them to the flight attendants to throw away.

Gary S:

Warwick, in the time we have left, I know you have some questions you want to ask, Dean, go ahead and do that. Just wanted to fulfill my calling as the co-host.

Warwick F:

All good. All good. I guess as we wrap up, there's so much in the book that we can't get to and I'd encourage all listeners to get Trade Up: How To Move From Just Making Money to Making A Difference. I love the phrase that you and Half Time use, it's not just from success to significance but success to significance to surrender. I mean, oh my gosh, that's a powerful concept.

Warwick F:

I wanted to just ... This may be a last question. I think it's the first chapter, you ask these three incredible questions like is there not a cause? Is there in you a sweet spot? What is your giant, which is kind of the smoldering discontent. Just that notion, is there not a cause? I guess that's relating to calling, right? I mean, that's like the first question you start out with the book. You use the example of David. Talk about ... I love that phase, is there not a cause? Just talk about that phrase.

Dean N:

Most folks, or a lot of folks, feel they don't have a passion around anything and what we find out is everyone's passionate about something, everyone is passionate about some cause. We do an exercise where we ask folks, why don't you read the USA Today for a week and come back to us and let us know what makes you mad, sad, or glad. What really catches you?

Dean N:

This idea of having a cause or something that you really care about, that you're passionate about, everyone has it but it takes time to uncover it. It's not a weekend seminar where all of a sudden it just kind of pops up. Now it can happen that way but usually it takes time to uncover it.

Dean N:

The second part, I think folks sometimes make it too complicated. We have a lady that went through the Half Time program and she said, "You know what I love to do? I love to rock babies." She rocks babies of drug addicted mothers in Houston at a hospital. Another gentleman went through and his passion was prayer. He wanted to see more prayer and he invited a few folks to pray and that has turned into the global day of prayer. His passion was prayer, her passion was rocking babies. Everyone has a passion.

Dean N:

I remember something that really stands out to me when we had a group in and a gentleman said, "I'm really not passionate about anything" and about 30 seconds later, he starts talking about, "I just wish everyone could go to college. I don't know why some get to go to college and some don't." Right there was his passion.

Warwick F:

Right. Right.

Dean N:

Education for everyone. The causes, they're not a cause. Everyone has a cause. Everyone has a passion.

Warwick F:

And within that cause is somebody's God-given calling. As we say in Crucible Leadership, you want to align it with your divine design because our belief is God doesn't make mistakes, so if he designed you a certain way, he wants you to use that for his purpose, so you link up your design, your God-given passions with calling, in our world often that can come out of a crucible. It doesn't have to but I don't want anybody ever to go through what I went through, whether it's abuse or could be a cancer survivor. All in there is calling.

Warwick F:

Maybe the final observation, for me, at least, is as I've found that I've used my brokenness and gifting for, I'd like to think, a Kingdom calling, there's some level of not just joy but healing. It makes it easier to go through the pain and I guess as we close here, have you found that?

Warwick F:

I've certainly made massive mistakes and it sounds like you've made some things that maybe you would look at as maybe sub-optimal choices in other words, maybe mistakes, but does it make it easier to deal with when it's like, okay, I'm living my Ephesians 2:10 Calling, and ... Do you know what I mean? Sometimes we can be our own worst critic and it's like, okay, I was young, I made mistakes but it's when you're using your gifting in service of others, maybe it's a little easier to forgive yourself a little bit, if that makes some degree of sense.

Dean N:

Yeah. Yeah. I'd even add to that that sometimes the pain in your life, ultimately, turns into your calling. It has for you, and it has for others. Who better to guide and coach than someone who has been down a path that you're struggling with? It may be divorce, who knows what it may be. Yeah. Sometimes pain turns into this opportunity to help others and, ultimately, find joy in the pain that you had before because you're serving others. For sure.

Warwick F:

Absolutely. You come across some maybe 30, 40 something person in the world of finance who is just killing it and has got the fast car and the boat and the houses and is doing great. Who better to talk to that person than Dean Niewolny? It's like I've been there. You know? I was you. You don't want to be doing that in 20 years time. You'll have no relationship with your wife or kids. Trust me, you don't want to be there.

Warwick F:

You would be the perfect person to minister to that person, right? You know?

Dean N:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

Well, thank you. Thank you for what you do and I love what you do in Half Time. Just your book Trade Up: How To Move From Just Making Money to Making A Difference. Really, I want listeners to hear we're not against success. You just don't want success, as you very well put it, to be an idol. Success is fine, if you use it for the right purposes. You just don't want to worship it. Easier said than done.

Warwick F:

Half Time is a great organization. They will help you understand in the practical ways how to move from success to significance and, ultimately, to surrender. I mean, it's all the Lord's and we're just here as managers and his servants. That's the ultimate destination spiritually and in terms of joy and fulfillment. Thank you so much.

Dean N:

Yeah. Thank you, Warwick. Gary, thank you.

Gary S:

The flight manifest would say that this is the time for the captain to actually land the plane but I have radioed the cockpit to just delay that a little bit because I want to make one thing clear to our listeners from you, Dean, and that is this, I think when people hear the name Half Time, they're like me, they may not be very good at math but they can divide things in two and they go, "Okay, Half Time, if you're supposed to change your life from success to significance, Half Time means if the average life expectancy is, let's say, 85, there I go, I give myself a number 84, you go to 42, it's at 42 that you're supposed to do this."

Gary S:

It's not exactly that specific. You've described it, it's not so much an age Half Time, as it's, what? How would you define it for people to help them understand?

Dean N:

Sure. It's a season of life. It's the season that you're in. Half Time, the sweet spot used to be the 45 to, let's say, 60 year old. What we have seen is that now 20 somethings and 80 somethings, are in that season of Half Time. It's not defined by age. It's defined by the season of life that you're in. You can have smoldering discontent when you're 27 years old. We just had a gentleman go through our program who is 27. He was trying to figure out what's next. We had someone who was 83.

Dean N:

Great question, Gary. The Half Time does sound like it's 45 years old or whatever but it's really much broader than that.

Gary S:

That sound you just heard was the captain putting the plane on the ground. Last words have been spoken on this conversation. Listener, I have a different ending than I normally do here and that's this, because we just kind of expressed this idea, maybe we're listening to this going, "Well, I'm 27. I don't have to worry about this." What Dean just said was it's for anybody. It's a season of life. It's never too early. I think everybody on this conversation would agree, it's never too early to begin thinking about how you can live your life, pursue your purpose, to help others to live your life of significance.

Gary S:

I would say that the learning, your homework assignment here regardless of whether you're 24 or 94, your homework assignment here is to go back and to listen to the section where Dean talks about those five characteristics of people who finish well. They know their calling, they're living their calling, they have cheerleaders, what Dean described as a personal board of directors who can speak truth to them, they're really focused on their family, they have taken care of their health. It's really hard to live your life with significance if you have to live your life marginally because your health has suffered. Especially in your earlier years in life, take care of your health. Then finally, the flexibility, so that when they change your son's sporting event to 10 miles away, you're like, "Okay, great. I get to spend 10 more minutes in the car to chat with my boy." That's the way to look at it.

Gary S:

Listener, thank you so much for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond The Crucible. We hope you have learned some things here that will, indeed, help you as you look to move beyond your crucible. We really encourage you to remember, as you think about what we've discussed on this show, what Warwick and Dean have discussed, hopefully, it's come through loud and clear that your crucible experiences are painful. We know that. We have two men here who have described their crucible as different crucibles, some similarities but different circumstances but the emotions are the same and they're painful, painful things.

Gary S:

Here's the good news, your crucible is not the end of your story. In fact, if you learn the lessons of that crucible, if you apply the lessons from that crucible to your life moving forward, it can be the leaping off point to a whole different and a whole better life. Far from being the last chapter in your story, your crucible can be the beginning of a new story, a new chapter in your story, and the best one of all, because where it leads, by the time you get to the final period on the final page, where it leads is to a life of significance.

With the release of my book Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance on Oct. 19, I have been speaking a fair amount these last couple of months.  I get a lot of great questions, and one I am always  asked is what is the biggest lesson of my failed $2.25B takeover of my family’s 150-year-old media business in Australia.  My answer is always the same.  The biggest lesson I learned is that you have to live in light of your design.

Growing up, I felt it was my duty to follow in the footsteps of my ancestors.  The company had been in my family for five generations and had grown into a large media company including newspapers, magazines, TV stations, radio stations and newsprint mills.  I did my undergraduate degree at Oxford, worked on Wall Street and received my MBA from Harvard Business School.  This was all about fulfilling my destiny as the heir apparent, as my parents saw me.  It was all about duty and family legacy.  It had little to do with what I wanted or with my

In my speech, there is an opening scene where in December 1987, I walk into the John Fairfax Ltd. building for the first time since the takeover had been launched a few months earlier.  I was now in control of the company.  I walk into the elevator with journalists and other staff members.   I remained silent as did they.   I was so uncomfortable.  I couldn’t wait until the elevator reached the top floor.  But it did not get any better.  I entered the wood paneled board room, with the old board, including members of my family about to hand over the reins to my new board.  Staring down at me from the walls of that board room were paintings of my ancestors going back five generations, including the founder of the family company, my great-great grandfather John Fairfax.

The pressure was intense.  In that moment, at some deep level I knew I did not want to be there.  I knew subconsciously  I was in the wrong place.  But I pushed those feelings aside, remembering that I felt it was my duty to do the takeover to restore the company to the ideals of the founder and to see it was well managed.

You probably have not launched a $2.25B takeover at age 26 as I did in 1987, but you might feel that you are living someone else’s life. That you are living a lie.  That you are not being truly you.  We may get to such a place for different reasons.  Our parents or family members may urge us to go into a family business; it could be a law firm, or a family farm, a local hardware store.  Perhaps you have friends and family urging you to be practical.  You write well, so you should be a lawyer.  Or you are mathematical, so you should be an engineer.

But maybe you hate law.  You just want to write poetry or a work of fiction.  You might be good at math, but you love music (mathematical brains often have the same wiring as those who are good at music do).  But you say “yes” to friends and family — and in the words of Henry David Thoreau, you lead a life of “quiet desperation.”  Each day going to work is drudgery, going up a steep hill, just waiting for the day to end and for a glimpse of temporary freedom, until your journey back to prison, your place of work, begins the next day.

But life does not have to be like this.  You can enjoy, even love what you do.  You can feel off-the-charts passionate about what you do.  It starts with living in light of your design.  I believe we are all divinely designed — from my perspective designed by God.  We are created for a purpose.  Ignoring your design prevents the universe from being blessed by your true self.  Ignoring your design puts your soul in prison.  It subjugates you to a life of misery.

Here are some tips to finding your design.

1. Take an Assessment.

There are some good assessments out there.  These include Myers Briggs, the DiSC, StrengthsFinder and the Enneagram.  At Crucible Leadership we have our own assessment, the Life of Significance Assessment.

2. Talk to Family and Friends.

Taking an assessment is helpful, but so is asking family and friends, who have known you your whole life, who are you.  What are you good at?  What do you enjoy?  What do you love?  Even asking them what do you hate can be helpful.  The opposite of what you hate may well indicate aspects of a job or a career that you will love.

3. Take Small Steps.

You don’t have to quit your job all at once.  Try some things on the side.  So if you are a lawyer, but are really a frustrated writer, try writing for some local smaller publications or writing some articles online.  Perhaps some small jobs will begin to start coming, and that will lead to something bigger.

4. Trust The Process.

It is almost impossible to see the grand plan of how individual steps will lead to your life calling.  That is where faith in yourself and in the process helps so much.  To people of faith, trusting that there is a divine hand guiding you along the way is also helpful.  Just focus on what one next step you feel called to take.  Trust your gut.  Trust yourself.

For me, I discovered after the family company went bankrupt and left family control on my watch, that I was not some hard-charging corporate executive.  I am a reflective adviser who prefers to write and speak about issues I care deeply about; namely how to live an authentic life that leads to a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others.

Before I dreaded going to work, as the elevator scene illustrates so well.  Now I love what I do.  I have written a book, write blogs, host a podcast (Beyond The Crucible), and am now giving speeches about my book.  Being a reserved person by nature, speaking does not come naturally.  But now I am able to do it, actually pretty well.  Yes, I have had help crafting a great speech and in how to deliver it.  But the core reason I am able to speak effectively is that I am giving speeches about something I care deeply about and utilizing my core strength of being a reflective adviser.

Living in light of your design for a purpose beyond yourself leads to pure joy and deep fulfillment.  Commit today to begin taking off the chains of bondage to a life that is not yours, and to living an authentic life in light of your design.  That is the path to freedom.

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here

Jason Hardrath has spent his fair share of time in what he calls “the pain cave.” That’s where he developed the skills and perseverance to compete as an elite triathlete – and also where he found himself when a rollover accident that ejected him from the car left his body broken, ending his dream of winning an IRONMAN title. But the crash didn’t steal Jason’s goals – it only changed them. He poured his athletic prowess and passion into mountain climbing, a sport he could pursue at a championship level even with the toll his injuries had taken on his body. And he’s wound up making history in the sport by setting a record you won’t believe in a way that’s even more unbelievable.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Jason H:

To become a decent endurance athlete, you spend a lot of hours suffering. You put yourself into the pain cave to build that strength later. You're willing to endure pain now for benefit later. That's the fundamental premise. It's like I'll endure extra effort now because I'll be able to do something amazing tomorrow. I will do today what others won't do so that I can do tomorrow what others can't do. And that had become a part of my process. I just came to understand this is how the world works. And I think that, that's really fundamental when you're navigating the hardships life throws at you, because it's really easy when you're already in pain to want to back off anything that causes more pain, that makes it worse. But oftentimes what you have to do is lean in more to the practices that, yeah, they're going to suck in the moment, maybe they're going to add more suffering, but you trust in that process that this is the way we get better in the end.

Gary S:

We've all heard the old aphorism, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. If Beyond the Crucible had a bumper sticker, in fact, that might be what we'd print on it. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. This week's guest, Jason Hardrath, has spent his fair share of time in what you just heard him describe, as the pain cave. That's where he developed the skills and perseverance to compete as an elite triathlete. And it's also where he found himself when a rollover accident left his body broken and ended his dream of winning an Ironman title. But the car crash didn't steal Jason's goals, it only changed them. He poured his athletic prowess and passion into mountain climbing, a sport he could pursue at a championship level, even with the toll his injuries had taken on his body. He's wound up making history in the sport by setting a record you won't believe in a way that's even more unbelievable.

Warwick F:

Well, Jason, thank you so much for being here. I think of my book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, that could be Jason Hardrath's story. I mean that you live what we talk about. It's just mind blowing and we'll get to the accident here in a moment. And as we mentioned, you're an elementary school teacher at Bonanza Elementary School. I love the name. I imagine most of your students have never heard of the TV series from the 60s or wherever it is.

Jason H:

No, they haven't. Well, at some point, it gets brought up. If you grow up in a place called Bonanza, you're bound to hear, oh, like the TV show?

Warwick F:

Yeah, and they go, what?

Jason H:

Yeah, no, it's a fun school to be a part of.

Warwick F:

I can imagine. So I'm sure you've loved spending time with the kids. So before we get to the defining moment in 2015, your accident, I'd love to just hear a bit about how you grew up. And obviously you grew up with a certain, I guess, condition ADHD, is that the term? And that's not always diagnosed as early as it can be. So just talking about growing up as a kid, what was your family like? What was life in school like? So give us the backstage pass, if you will, on Jason Hardrath and growing up.

Jason H:

Absolutely. So yeah. ADHD, the term gets tossed around a lot now. And a lot of people these days with modern technology, cell phones and how they're programmed to steal our attention, they struggle with directing their attention. But this was back before cell phones were, especially in kids hands common. And I was legitimately tested where in the test I ended up testing with a 37 second attention span. And that's how long it took for my mind to completely lose what it was focused on as a child. So you can imagine a kid that was tough to direct, difficult to parent, difficult to teach, because easily distractible, but also I had an impulsive side to it as well, where if my brain thought up an idea, before the prefrontal cortex could analyze it and go, "Ooh, that's a bad idea," I would act on it.

Jason H:

And so messed up relationships, got a bad rap at school, all these different things, because I would do something that to everybody else was obviously something a person shouldn't do, but to me, I would have that realization the moment after I'd already done it. So grew up with this chip on my shoulder, just struggling. And with a deep understanding that movement was really necessary if I was going to succeed at all, got very much in touch with moving my own body and the difference it made in the function of my mind. And eventually that became a path as you read in my bio, that became a path to have some success, to have some wins in life, by pursuing increasingly difficult goals in this physical realm. It was a place I could succeed, I could build. It even was a part of my identity, especially through the middle school years, something I could lean on where it's like, "Well, yeah, but I'm good at this."

Jason H:

And so yeah, I grew up in a small town. Grew up with it being normal to go in the outdoors. And I was in an egg town. So normally it was like you go outdoors to hunt, you go outdoors to ride a motorcycle. But then later on, it became a meshing of the two worlds where it's like I'd fallen in love with moving my body and pursuing these big, audacious physical goals. And I knew that the outdoors were a normal place for human beings to spend time. And so it became a natural place where it's like, "Well, let's express the two together."

Warwick F:

So how old were you when you were diagnosed with ADHD?

Jason H:

Oh goodness! Still in elementary school, probably fourth or fifth grade.

Warwick F:

So I imagine you had supportive parents that tried to help you figure stuff out and how does this all work? And if you're not something that your kids are, like if your parents weren't like that, it's probably not the easiest thing in the world to know how to help, because it's hard to understand what's not you?

Jason H:

No, absolutely. I have to shout out to my mom. If it wasn't for her truly being a dedicated mom who was all in on supporting me, during elementary school, she showed up to support me at school probably more days than she didn't, getting calls from teachers that I was struggling or misbehaving or getting distracted. She would show up to make sure I got the work done. I think back to those years, if she didn't bother to do that, all of the success that's contingent on education that I've had, I probably wouldn't have had, because I would have been too far behind. Even though I'm a fairly intelligent person, I just would have been so far behind that passing high school instead of being rather easy would have been difficult.

Jason H:

So yeah, huge shout out to her being as supportive as she was through those formative years. And yeah, no, my dad on the other hand, he definitely struggled. He grew up in an abusive household growing up with a stepfather that was super abusive. And so anytime you've grown up that way, that's locked inside you. And so he really struggled to deal with a kid that would do impulsive things and couldn't learn from mistakes very quickly and would repeat things. I can recall these times where I was scared, where he came close to being physical with me. And I can remember we had one of those bouts where I did something wrong and he got really angry and he had knocked me down and then he just stopped and turned and walked off. And then from then I noticed he would take my brother out to go do stuff, but not take me. He would leave me with mom.

Jason H:

And I totally understand he was doing it, because he didn't want to become his stepfather now. But as a kid in the moment, that's a lot to try to sort through why doesn't dad like me. And yeah, that became a fuel and a part of this athletic identity as well, because that was something he reconnected with me through as I advanced through middle school and high school. And so that catharsis embeds it even deeper, because, oh, this is something that I'm able to... My dad cares again. Yeah. I guess this sets the stage for 2015 being all the more significant in it's a crucible moment for me, because all of this is wired in.

Gary S:

Good foreshadowing.

Warwick F:

Yeah, that makes sense. And in terms of relationships, I could easily see that Jason Hardrath was a young boy, a young man who could be misunderstood. It's one thing ADHD, but then to not understand you're not a mean bad kid, just because of what you had, there was this impulse with being very difficult to stop doing what you're thinking. And so if you understand, it's easier to give grace and understanding, but if you don't understand it, which how many people do, I imagine other kids, other friends were like, "What's wrong with this guy? Doesn't he care? Why is he doing those dumb things that may be hurtful?" So I got to believe it was hard to have friends that really got who you really were and fully understood the real Jason Hardrath.

Jason H:

It was very difficult to feel seen. I would say the track that was on repeat for my entire childhood was this track of doing something and realizing how much I'd messed up in that split second before anyone even had time to react. For example, one of my earliest memories of this type of behavior is I was in kindergarten at Sunday school and the teacher was passing out scissors. And I had up until that point only really seen scissors used for haircuts, when my mom would give me a haircut. So literally the teacher sets the scissors on my desk and as they hit my desk, this isn't like wait and try to get away with it, this is the moment the scissors leave the teacher's hands. She's still standing there looking right at me. My hands grabbed the scissors, cut the hair of the girl in front of me, just boom, bang, boom.

Jason H:

And as everything goes in slow motion, and so as her hair is falling, I'm like, "This girl is going to hate me, I've messed up her hair. Her parents are going to hate me because they're going to have to pay for her to get a new haircut. My parents are going to get told. They're going to be furious because this is really embarrassment." I was smart enough to be like this has effects, but it was right after I had cut the hair. And so, of course, all of this, I'm beating myself up like why did I mess this up again? But then everyone else joins in. So it's always this moment of I'm already down on myself and now everyone else is too. And that was the track on repeat.

Warwick F:

The hard thing for people that understand is clinically, technically in a sense, it's not your fault, because it's... At least it feels like it's not your fault, because how can you stop something that you're not able to stop? It'll happen so quickly. It sounds too glib to say that it feels... That feels like close to accurate. It's certainly not as much fault as people think it is. I guess that's certainly an accurate way of putting it. So let's move on here a little bit, because you've got a lot of fascinating beats to your stories. So I think we mentioned you broke the six minute mile in middle school, you biked across the country. So just briefly talk about that from Atlantic to Pacific. So what happened there?

Gary S:

Of course, a dumb thing, right?

Jason H:

So I'd obviously fallen in love with running and the goal setting mindset. And so advanced running in high school and the goal to make varsity and then the goal to go to state and then make it onto a college team. And then as I'm in college, I decided to do a mini triathlon, an off-road triathlon, but I'm like, "Well, if I'm going to buy a mountain bike, I'll buy a road bike as well," because financially responsible decisions when you're going into debt as a student. And so I get on a road bike for the first time and literally no joke. The moment I hit 20 miles an hour on my very first road bike ride, this idea hits me like a brick out of the sky, "I should bike across the country, this is amazing." And it just sticks.

Jason H:

You laugh it off like, "Oh, what a silly thing to think on your first ride," but then it just sticks in there for the remainder of my college experience percolates. And finally, as I'm getting near graduating, I'm like, "I'm about to start the rest of my life, who knows if I'll be able to make time?" And one of my greatest fears at that moment was waking up 30 years later and wondering what the hell I'd done with my life. So I'm like, "I have to do this now, otherwise I'm going to become that guy that wakes up and doesn't know what he did with his life." And yeah, so right after I graduated, I started a bike trip with a couple of friends from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. We raised money for a child center to be built in Guatemala over the course of the ride. We raised about $7,000 for that, which was awesome.

Warwick F:

So tell us again where you started and where you finished?

Jason H:

Started in Ocean Shores, Washington, and finished right across the Hudson from New York, New York.

Warwick F:

Okay. Wow, that's amazing. One of the things I think it'd be helpful for the listeners to understand is obviously it's not fun I'm sure having ADHD, but there's a lot of us, certainly me, I think very carefully before I do anything. I double think and triple think and quadruple think. And because I have pretty high perseverance, once I decide to do something, it will happen. But just doing something new, oh my gosh, I am very unimpulsive, extremely not impulsive. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but in a sense, none of this sounds weird to use the gift word, but because you are impulsive, you do things that most of us would be too fearful or we would think through it so much we talk ourselves out of our dreams, if you will. You don't talk yourself out of your dreams, you don't talk yourself out of your bold adventure, you just go for it.

Warwick F:

And so as the years have gone on, do you look back and say, "Well, I don't know that I'd choose to exactly be like this and having the challenges I do?" But there's a good side to it, if you will, because I'm not afraid to just try anything. And sometimes that can be good, like going across the country. Do you get what I'm going with that deal?

Jason H:

Absolutely. No. And I think that is a bit of a superpower of my type of cognition is I can handle chaos very well, because mentally I live in it every day, all the time. I'm constantly like everything's chaotic inside and disordered. And my ideas bounce around and connect in weird ways. And so I'm able to step into situations where most people would be like, "Whoa, this is way too many logistics or what if this goes wrong or that goes wrong?" I've literally landed on flights to foreign countries to climb mountains and not had reservations for where I was going to spend that night. Like just flown into a country I've never been in where I don't speak the language and just been totally comfortable that it's like, "Yeah, okay, I'll figure it out." That comes fairly natural to me to be able to just be in the moment and solve problems on my feet, so to speak.

Warwick F:

That's another superpower, to be comfortable in crisis, to be comfortable in chaos and trust yourself enough to know I've been there, done that, I'll figure it out. Having a plan is fine, but there can be so much over-planning you never do anything. And then chaos will hit you whether you want to or not, whether it's COVID or whatever. There's a lot of things that are unexpected in life and you have the superpower to deal with the unexpected, which again, that's a blessing in some ways. It's crazy.

Jason H:

Absolutely.

Warwick F:

So it's quite a few superpowers here. So I'm not being facetious. It's amazing. So let's talk about 2013 on also up to 2015. You really got into triathlons and maybe the pinnacle was qualifying for Kona, which I understand is the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Probably a lot of people have seen it on TV. So how'd you get into triathlons, because obviously you started running and love the outdoors, but what shifted you to triathlons being a huge love for you?

Jason H:

The journey for me, as I reflect back on it has always been this process of finding the next highest iteration, the next big challenge, and to just constantly pursue self improvement through that process of pursuing challenge. And so naturally, I'd pursued all these things and running. I transitioned up to running marathon distance, and then I biked across the country. So I ended up having a fabulous time biking and I was quite good at it. Got strong at it quite quickly. I was like, "Well, shoot, I run and I bike and triathlons are run, bike and swim." So I signed up for a full Ironman, because that's what you do when you decide you're going to do a triathlon, you go right into full Iron distance.

Warwick F:

And just remind those of us who may not know, what's the full Ironman thing? What are the distances of each of the three legs?

Jason H:

2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and a full 26.2 mile marathon run back to back to back.

Warwick F:

For most of us mortals, that feels kind of insane, but wow.

Jason H:

It is kind of insane. But I signed up for this thing and dropped my $600 entry fee. Again, responsible decisions when you're a young student in debt. And I couldn't swim more than three lengths of a pool. So it was like, I'll figure it out. I signed up. I had six months. It's like I will teach myself to swim, I'll ask everybody I know, make friends with people at the pool and ask what drills they do and I'll teach myself how to swim. It's just going to happen. I want to do this thing. And so yeah, I signed up for a full Iron distance and really could hardly swim when I did.

Warwick F:

It's just remarkable. Most people don't do that, but just because of the way you're wired, you will take courageous decisions and accomplish things that others only dream of. So yeah, there's probably a book in there is you may not be wired the way I am, but even if you're not, there are some things you can learn from me. So that'd be an awesome book.

Gary S:

I know where the conversation is going to go here. It's going to switch in a bit to your big crucible experience. And I want the listener to be able to focus on what we've talked about so far, what Jason's gone over so far. You said something really interesting in the last bit, Jason, that your life became about finding that next challenge, finding that next thing that you could conquer. And you didn't have to have a roadmap to it or an outline for it, you just went and you did it. That is an important thing to have when you talk about your ADHD in some ways being a superpower, not a super problem. The ability to look at a crucible as a superpower in some sense as something that you can learn from.

Gary S:

All of these things seem to have been churning so that when your crucible hit, you were prepared, not necessarily for the crucible, but you were prepared to tackle the next thing you needed to tackle to get beyond it. Is that a fair thing to say that all the things that you went through, maybe didn't prepare you for the details of your crucible, but it did prepare you mentally and emotionally for it?

Jason H:

Absolutely. It makes me think about the process of becoming an athlete, especially with... Well, any kind of athlete. I should be fair across the board even handed. But to become a decent endurance athlete, you spend a lot of hours suffering. You put yourself into the pain cave to build that strength later, you're willing to endure pain now for benefit later. That's the fundamental premise. It's like I'll endure extra effort now because I'll be able to do something amazing tomorrow. I will do today what others won't do so that I can do tomorrow what others can't do. And that had become a part of my process. I just came to understand this is how the world works. And I think that, that's really fundamental when you're navigating the hardships life throws at you, because it's really easy when you're already in pain to want to back off anything that causes more pain that makes it worse.

Jason H:

But oftentimes what you have to do is lean in more to the practices that, yeah, they're going to suck in the moment, maybe they're going to add more suffering, but you trust in that process that this is the way we get better in the end. And that's something you have to do constantly as an athlete. And I think it was a huge mental and physical preparation for facing my crucible.

Gary S:

Ironically Warwick's book, its original working title was suck in the moment.

Warwick F:

Yeah, could have been. But yeah, that's pretty funny. I want to comment on what you just said before we get to 2015. What you said is just so profound is that to get better at anything, there'll be times in which preparation... It's often not easy to do something different. I've had a book that's came out a couple of weeks ago and so as part of that, you have to go on a speaking tour. Well, I'm by nature a more reserved person. I'd rather ask questions like we're doing here, then get up on a stage and speak. It's not at all in my comfort zone, but I realized if I want to get my message out, it's all about helping people, giving people hope. I got to do it.

Warwick F:

So over time with some training and people that know how to create a great speech and a great team and friends like Gary, you practice and you work on it, you try different things, you get from adequate to competent to maybe actually almost to the level you can say somewhat good. But there's pain and practice saying, "Boy, I'm awful at it." I used to say, "I'm the world's worst speaker, I suck at this." Well, I'm not the world's worst anymore. There's at least a few that are worse. Few that suck more. But if I sat back there and said, "I'm not going to do it because I'll be ridiculed," well, then you've got to lean into the pain, trust the process, follow the steps. Everybody has those examples. So it's so true.

Warwick F:

So let me get to 2015, because that was really one of the defining moments. So talk about 2015 and the car accident. And so what were you doing leading up to that? I think you're trying to get from point A to point B. I think I read an article you were pretty rushed and a little frenzied. So just talk about that day.

Jason H:

Absolutely. So yeah, I was in the throes of Ironman training. And what I'd done is I'd qualified for the 270.3. So half Ironman World Championships. And I hadn't put together a good race at the full Iron distance yet. But all through 2014 had a really strong year. Came into 2015 in a place I'd never been that early in the year, just breakthroughs with my training. And I'd taken on some responsibilities at work as a coach and then also as a representative at the district office level for my school with the superintendent. And the other coach didn't show up that day. And so I was stressed out and then practice ran long because I was trying to coach all the different athletes, track and field. So I was trying to coach all these different subsets of the sport all by myself. And so practice ran a little long and I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to be late to a meeting with the superintendent in my district." And I was still a pretty young teacher. So that was a really big deal in my head like, "Oh no."

Jason H:

So I was just super stressed out. But I think it's important also to paint this part of the picture. Literally the Sunday of that week, I went for 140 mile bike ride and got off the bike and went for, I think it was a seven or eight mile run and it felt like I hadn't done anything, just felt super strong and casual. Just that feeling of those seldom moments in life where you just almost feel invincible, like I can do so much and I'm not getting tired. And then on a Tuesday, went out my car window in a rollover accident. Was ejected from the vehicle. Should have died. One of my doctors said that if I was just a typical 40 year old male, I don't know why he chose 40, but in what he said, he said, "If you were a typical 40 year old male, you probably would have suffocated on the side of the road. So it's good you are in good shape."

Jason H:

But yeah, I ended up breaking nine ribs, collapsing a lung, broke my shoulder in two places and completely shredded the ACL and LCL of my right knee. And so yeah, went from the invincibility of being able to ride a bike 140 miles and get off and go for a run and then just feel casual and hang out the rest of the day to not being able to get my own drink of water. And that was a pretty life altering thing. And on top of that, when you think about it, if I'm training that much, putting in these 30 hour training weeks on top of my job, all of my friendships were built around people I biked with, people I swam with, people I ran with. I had no casual friends, they were all active friends. And so at the same time, I lose my primary identity, my primary coping mechanism, because when I would get angry, I would go for a run or a bike ride. My primary coping mechanism for life and access to my social network all in a snap.

Warwick F:

Wow. Obviously when you go through something like this, you're in recovery, and by definition in recovery, you're probably laid up, which is for you probably your worst nightmare, because you want to do stuff, but certainly in that moment you're physically capable of doing hardly anything. It probably felt like being in a straight jacket in a dark room, a dark dank cold, whatever the image is, it must have been almost a virtual nightmare. It's like let's design a nightmare for Jason Hardrath. That was probably pretty close to perfection. That was probably just awful being strapped there.

Jason H:

It was very close to worst case scenario for sure.

Warwick F:

And one of the challenges when you're in that situation, you can't help think. Your mind probably goes pretty fast, faster than most of us. And it's racing with all these thoughts. I think I read that you didn't have a seatbelt on, you were trying to plug in your headphones to listen to some music. And did you go through all of these recrimination thoughts from why did I not have my seatbelt on? Why was I reaching for those headphones too? If that coach had only turned up, I would have been be able to finish sooner and I wouldn't have had to drive like a crazy man to get to the superintendent thing. And oh, by the way, why did I care so much about what he thought? If I was 10 minutes late, it probably would've been better. And it did all those thoughts run through some self recrimination others, because as humans, we're human wanting to blame others like the coach? And did all those thoughts go through your head?

Jason H:

I don't think there's any way that they couldn't. I wish I could say I was perfect in how I handled it. But there were definitely a huge amount of doubts that ran through my mind like this is it, it's all over, everything I've built and worked towards and dreamed of, it could all be out the window now. And in fact, one of the first doctors I had when I brought up my passion for mooving and my passion for triathlon and running, it was like, "Oh, you'll probably just have to let that part of your life go," and then walks out of the room.

Jason H:

So I had to face a lot of these difficulties. And yeah, it's really easy to want to point blame elsewhere. But on the other hand I also had enough self awareness and as a teacher, I literally do teach, I taught students of mine like usually it's not one thing that just goes catastrophically wrong that messes us up, it's always a series of small overlooked things. Like if I'd had my seatbelt on, I would have been back at work the next day, I would have been fine. Like you mentioned, if I hadn't been reaching for the headphones, if I hadn't been rushing, if the other coach had shown up, all these different things that were factors and it was just the perfect storm.

Jason H:

And I have to acknowledge that I fell prey to one of the very things I try to teach others not to. It's really easy to just get caught staring into your own glaring ineptitudes like, oh, I suck at this, I suck at that, and never actually go do anything. And I do think that I'm a person that I've made this decision in life that once an idea reaches a place that it's like, yeah, that's possible, it's like, okay, go for it. Not, oh, well, now I better plan out all the details. It's possible, I have the necessary skills, it's unlikely that I'll die because I was an idiot, go for it. That's the equation in my head.

Warwick F:

So let's shift to mountain climbing. So you suffered all these broken bones, ACL, LCL. I think from what I've read you couldn't lock your knee, which is necessary to be able to run. But there's something about climbing mountains and uphill, it's just easier for your knee. So that sounds all very logical actually, but in terms of, okay, what's the next step? Okay, well, I can go up. Going up is not as painful, so fine. I'll just keep going up until I run out of room and mountains, eventually, unfortunately, even Everest ends. But so talk about how you shifted to mountain climbing. And that's not your identity obviously, as you alluded to, but it's your passion. Talk about that shift, because that must have been freeing. Okay. Maybe I can't do triathlons, but there's something physical I do, because I have to move. If I don't move, I won't be a happy camper. So how did that all happen shifting to mountain climbing?

Jason H:

Absolutely. So you've done your research. Yeah, I'm a physical educator. So I had to understand biomechanics as a portion of that learning to become a PE teacher. And I was aware that when you run in order to run efficiently, you have this moment where your knee locks out to basically be able to pull that stored energy and the giant rubber band that is our Achilles tendon. That's what makes us efficient runners. That's what gives all humans the ability to move with the efficiency we do. And I couldn't do that anymore. So I could hobble limp after four or five months. I could hobble limp my way down the road painfully, but it would feel like a hard effort and I would move at half the speed I used to be able to run. And that was de-motivating right, and also difficult to do and hard on the rest of my body to be in a constant limp.

Jason H:

But I realized, okay, I can walk up and down steep hills. And when we think about how we walk up or down something that's really steep, we tend to keep our knees bent. And so I didn't need to have that access to a completely straight knee. And so it was like, okay, well I'll just hike the local hill and then started going up some of the mountains around. And then that led to wanting to go up the bigger more difficult mountains in my area. And pretty soon I'm tackling peaks and series and I'm running into peaks that have technical summit pinnacles. And so I'm like, "Okay, well I'm a rock climber now."

Jason H:

And I think this comes around to something you said about taking up speaking, which is not natural to you. I'd been an endurance athlete who intentionally let my upper body atrophy to save weight, and suddenly I'm taking up rock climbing. And I'm literally the worst person in the gym. Plus I've got a bum knee. So I have limited use of one of my legs and I have weak upper body. So I'm literally the worst person in the gym. And it makes me think of this quote that I've seen float around, be brave enough to suck at something new. And I had to embrace it. And I'm lucky because I'm a PE teacher and I get to teach kindergarten kids. I think they teach me as much as I teach them. You hand a kindergarten kid a basketball, they'll miss 1,000 shots and be no less excited to take the next one.

Warwick F:

They don't have fear. At least it seems like we come out of the gate somewhat fearless. And then over time we get to be fearful. Some of my kids, I've got one extrovert, two little bit more introverted, but in elementary school they were different. It's like, what happens? Where do they learn fear? And they're not fearful, don't misunderstand me, but you get what you've seen in your kids.

Jason H:

It's our development of self awareness. So self awareness is a great tool to have to be aware of ourselves and our strengths and our weaknesses. It's powerful. It helps shape us. But the downside is hand in hand with it comes self judgment, and we get quicker and quicker at judging stuff the older and older we get, where we get finally to a point as adults where we'll try something once for five minutes and go, "No, not for me." It's like, "What?" I always think about this when people tell me they tried running and they went out and ran for two weeks, I'm physiologically, it takes two years for your body to adapt to the stresses of running if you haven't done it properly. You haven't truly tried running until you've stuck with it for a certain amount of time and your body can adapt enough. You go, "Oh, wait, I actually can do this quite well."

Jason H:

And the same is true with the rock climbing. I had to abide sucking, being the worst one, and I had to push those thoughts of self judgment away and just embrace the play. Another tool I learned from my kindergartners, just embrace the process of playing regardless of how good I am at it. And then over time, I can remember the first day someone came up to me after I climbed a route at the gym and was like, "Hey, could you teach me how to do this?" And I'm like, "Wait, I've arrived, someone actually thinks I'm good at this." And that was a cool moment, but it takes time and we have to be able to abide some tough feelings in order to reach that place where finally we're like, "Okay, I've done something with this."

Gary S:

I have to jump in for a couple of reasons. One, the name of this podcast originally was abide sucking.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

Gary S:

So you've got both the book originally and the podcast. This is the time in the show normally when I would say, the captain's turned on the fasten seatbelt signs, we have to land the plane pretty soon. But because we have a school teacher with us and because he is at school as we're talking and he has to go back to class, I'm going to do this instead.

Warwick F:

I want to get to Bulgers list, because that's one of the most recent things you've done, which is really the epitome of just leaning into mountain climbing, doing something that initially you felt like you sucked at, because not enough upper body strength. So talk about what Bulgers list is and you've completed it like a couple of months ago. So talk about that whole deal.

Jason H:

Absolutely. So yeah, I guess to make a quick transition here, over a couple of years of rehabbing and doing all the exercises and letting the knee heal, running started to come back to me. I'm still not as fast as I used to be, but I was able to start combining the two. So I was able to start, go out and climb a mountain, run on a trail to another mountain and climb a second mountain in the same day. So I was able to have these big days out just with blending two things that I loved. And then I discovered these fastest known time records, fastestknowntime.com. For people who want to check it out, you can see all sorts of awesome routes and cool things people are doing. And I was like, "Well, this is what I'm already doing, this is what I already love, I might as well run a stopwatch and see if I can break some records while I'm doing it."

Jason H:

And started taking these things off one after the other. Decided, you know what? As silly as it sounds, I should go for 100 of these records. As humans, we're drawn to these big silly, big round numbers. And so made this decision I'm going to be the first person to do 100 of these. And so I start moving toward this goal over time. And eventually people ask, "Well, what are you going to do for number one 100?" Your 100th record, what is it going to be? It's going to be something unique, something big. And I came across this Washington Bulgers list, which is a list of the 100 tallest peaks in the State of Washington. And I'm like, "Oh, 100 peaks for the 100 FKT?" Something poetic about that and also ridiculous.

Warwick F:

And FKT is fastest... What was that?

Jason H:

Fastest Known Time.

Warwick F:

Got it. Okay. Awesome.

Jason H:

So I decided, again, it was like, okay, this thing is really big, it's not like peak lists in some other states where there are trail heads and trails and everything's easy to access. Washington is a temperate rainforest. The North Cascades are some of the most brutal terrain in the 48 states. There's deep back country bushwhacking, route finding, orienteering and fifth class rock climbing and glacier travel with crevasses. So it was this full package experience being a teacher, a cumulative exam, if you will, of everything I'd pursued up till that point. And once I started doing the planning and realized it was possible, I was like, "This is what I have to do." Like I said, that equation in my head, once the pencil hit the paper and it made sense, it's like, yeah, no, I'm going for it. And managed to do it in 50 days, 23 hours and 43 minutes.

Warwick F:

And that was way quicker than whatever the last time was. What was the previous time?

Jason H:

It was 410 days.

Warwick F:

Yeah. It's like over a year. That's stunning. So as we bring it to a close, you've got some key principles. What are some of the principles that you've learned? I know from what I understand, one is celebrate each moment. So just talk about... Because you work with elementary school kids about helping them understand physical activity and mindset. So you are pouring into the next generation, future leaders, future folks in our society, and you speak at different places. Talk about some of these principles. So what do you mean by celebrate each moment?

Jason H:

So, one thing I had to do as I was in the throes, the deep beginnings, the darkness of my crucible is I had to let go of the living in the shadow of my prior self. Right. I couldn't. We already struggled comparing ourselves to others and that's something we work to overcome to be like, "No, it's not worth it to just compare myself to others. There's no joy there." And I had to do that with myself, because it would have cut my own motivation to constantly be like, "Well, I'm not able to do this like I used to, I'm not able to do that like I used to." So instead I still to this day, refer to anything I did prior to the accident as my former life. It creates this mental clean cut where it's like, okay, I can go back to focusing on the process.

Jason H:

And part of focusing on the process is whenever we start into something, we naturally celebrate each small win, each bit of progress we see. It's easy to lose that over time, because you start to expect, oh, I should be able to run 10 miles or, oh, I should be able to run a business, I should be able to write a book. And so you don't celebrate those little breakthroughs anymore. You just assume them. And so what I had to do is go back in my mind to like, oh, this is as far as I've ever bent my knee, this is as far as I've ever walked without pain, this is the most weight I've lifted, this is like noticing those things that I used to take for granted and celebrating them and being stoked at each little bit of gain, because it's always our process that takes us wherever we want to be in life. And I think that's easy to lose track of.

Warwick F:

So good. How about two and three? So two is noticing progress instead of noticing far you are from where you used to be. So talk about the whole noticing progress part. What is that principle?

Jason H:

Basically, I've wrapped it in with how I described the last one, is just seeing how you're moving toward what you want instead of seeing the gap left to get where you want.

Warwick F:

Got it. Okay. Yeah. Seeing how far you've come, not how far you've got to go. Makes so much sense. And I think you've just talked about the third one, don't compare yourself to others or who you were before. So there's so much wisdom, because sometimes we can be held back about what we could have accomplished at a younger age or before an accident. We either wallow in the past or spend too much time daydreaming about what might happen in 20 years time, which who knows? Nobody can predict their paths or life. And instead of just focusing on the moment and what's the next step. So as we wrap up here and obviously you are investing in the next generation, what's a message of hope, because we're all about how do you stop your worst day defining you? How do you find a light at the end of the tunnel? How do you find pain amidst the crucible purpose out of pain?

Warwick F:

Some people have talked about what they've gone through physical tragedies as a blessing or a gift, which I find hard to understand. I've heard more than one person say that. So what's your overall message to both young people and people in general about what you've been through and what you've learned?

Jason H:

For me, it comes down to it's that believing in the process and understanding that's all you ever own. What's the old quote? You can love your labor, but not the fruits of your labor. You're never promised anything. In the snap of fingers, like I said, it can all be gone. And so continuing to be in love with your process, be in love with the little intermediate goals, be in love with the steps you can take to move forward. And then on top of that, I always remind myself, and I tell my students this as well, you're always preparing for opportunities you can't see yet.

Jason H:

Did I know I was going to break the record and end up in mountaineering history for climbing the 100 tallest peaks in Washington? No, I didn't even know such a thing existed. When I started down this path. I had no clue that I would end up doing this. But because I followed my process and I pursued one goal after another and I continued moving forward and finding things that made me feel alive, eventually I landed in a place where that next thing was something that rocked people's world. And it was an amazing experience for me at the same time.

Gary S:

So before we let you go, Jason, I'd be remiss if I didn't give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find out more about you and your exciting adventures.

Jason H:

Absolutely. I have a website, jasonhardrath.com. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, pretty easy to find in those two places. And actually a super fun thing, a film crew followed me around for some of these records and for some of the peaks of this 100 peak Bulgers effort. And so the trailer's been released to a documentary that's going to be released in February. I'll make sure that you guys have that for the show notes. So yeah, people can connect with me all those ways and hear a bit more of my story and see some of the visuals on these things I talked about. It'll make your palm sweat.

Gary S:

Well, thank you listeners for spending this time with us at Beyond the Crucible. And until the next time, we're together. Remember that your crucible experiences, we know they're painful, we know they're traumatic, we know they can take a long time to get through, but we hope you have heard in this episode, in this conversation with Jason, that your crucible experiences don't have to be the end of the story. In fact, they can be the beginning of a brand new story, and that story can be the best story yet, because where it leads as you learn the lessons of your crucible and move forward is to a life of significance.

Being authentic is not easy; in fact it is hard. So how do you develop that kind of mature authenticity? And what are the benefits when you do? Host Warwick Fairfax and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss the key building blocks of an authentic life – from having an anchor for your soul to finding true friends, from putting yourself in the environment that fits who you are to doing what you’re good at and passionate about. And be sure to listen for an excerpt from the just-released audio version of Warwick’s book Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance about why authenticity is so hard, but also so essential, in moving beyond setbacks and failures in business and in life.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Warwick F:

People want to follow authentic leaders. Young people especially, they want real. They want vulnerable, they don't want some cartoon character with a mask and when you say that you care, they want to know you really care, not because you went to a seminar or read it in a book.

Gary S:

"It takes courage," the poet E.E. Cummings said, "To grow up and become who you really are." So how do you develop that kind of mature authenticity, and what are the benefits when you do? That's the subject of this week's episode. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Warwick and I discuss today the key building blocks of an authentic life, from having an anchor for your soul to finding true friends. From putting yourself in the environment that fits who you are to doing what you're good at and passionate about. Along the way, you'll even get to hear a section from the just released audio version of Warwick's book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, about why authenticity is so hard but also so essential.

Gary S:

I know you're looking forward to this one because it's about one of your favorite subjects, because I hear you talk about it all the time when we're recording a podcast and when we're not, and listener, that is we are talking today about authenticity. Specifically about the importance of authenticity in moving beyond your crucible, getting through your crucible, surviving your crucible. Authenticity, if you plotted a roadmap along your crucible experience, authenticity would show up as a necessary flag, a pin, in a lot of places along that journey, and Warwick, as we get going here, one of the things I thought was interesting about, and I haven't thought about this before, but authenticity is both hard when you're coming out of a crucible. It's also essential in order to come out of a crucible, and that's, when you think about it, to be said of a lot of things that we talk about here, right? About humility, about vision, all those things. Vision is hard but it's important, it's essential.

Gary S:

But landing here, this is I know a particularly important subject to you, near and dear to your heart, authenticity. Why is that? Why is authenticity maybe not your favorite aspect of moving beyond your crucible, but I know it's one that you talk about quite a bit.

Warwick F:

I think in a way the world wants us to be somebody else, to be inauthentic, and we tend to be pulled into wanting to please others, to put on a mask, to be scared of who we are and we'll talk a lot more about that. But when you're coming out of a crucible, it's especially tough because you might feel like whether it was setback, failure, maybe something terrible was done to you, the last thing you want to do is be yourself. You might feel ashamed of yourself, embarrassed about yourself, and so the whole concept of being authentic, it's almost the hardest time is when you've gone through a crucible, you want to hide. The real you is in pieces, is broken, typically in the depths of the pit of your crucible. So it's hard anyway, but in the crucible, it's really, really hard.

Gary S:

And it's interesting. Here's a trivia fact, listener, that you may not know. You probably don't know because I'm not sure we mentioned it in the 90 episodes that have come before this, but your book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, had a working title in your mind at one point. What was that working title?

Warwick F:

It was Authentic Leadership. Back in as listeners know 2008 I gave a short message in church to some sermon illustration and somehow what I shared about my story and lessons learned made folks think, "Gosh, we want to hear more about this story," and so I started writing the book. So this notion of being authentic, I mean there's another book called Authentic Leadership that's more of a scholarly business work, but yeah, that notion of authenticity really was one of the core pieces of why I wanted to write this book.

Gary S:

Which is why, as we're kind of looking to pull apart the book a little bit, now that the book is out, as we do the podcast, that's one of the reasons why we landed on authenticity as sort of the first subject that we talk about that comes from the book because it was so important to you, you almost named the book that. Even before you had kind of gotten your hands around the idea of moving beyond your crucible, you were talking about the importance of authenticity.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Gary S:

So here's the great thing about the ever-expanding roster of crucible leadership assets, and that is rather than just listening, especially listening to me as the co-host blather on listener, you get the opportunity to listen to Warwick read from his audio book. Warwick is going to ... We're going to play a section from the audio book. Rather than Warwick and I spending a lot of time unpacking why authenticity is so hard, remember I started the conversation here by saying authenticity is both hard and essential to moving beyond your crucible, there's a section in Chapter Three of Warwick's book that's called why is authenticity so hard. So to really kick off the conversation, here is Why Is Authenticity So Hard, from Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.

Warwick F:

Being authentic is one of the scariest and most difficult things you can be. It flies in the face of our culture and conventional thinking. You could even say it flies in the face of conventional business thinking. Marketing teaches us to identify the needs of the target market, and then design a product and the communication about it to meet the needs of the consumer. Give the consumers what they want and tell them why that product meets their needs. This may work in marketing products, but not in leading people. People want to know who their leaders really are. Being authentic is one of the biggest gifts you can give to yourself and to other people. Simply put, you cannot lead if you are not yourself. People do not want to follow inauthentic leaders.

Warwick F:

However, being authentic, being truly you, takes courage. It is one thing to be rejected while you're wearing a mask. In that case, people are not really rejecting you, they are rejecting your mask. Putting on a mask is safe. You can craft a mask that appeals to the broadest possible group of people. Do people want you to be outgoing? Then you can be outgoing. Do they want you to be witty and intelligent? Then you can be witty and intelligent. Whatever role is called for, you can play. All it requires is a bit of training, perhaps the right degrees, and observations of people who have the characteristics you desire, and you can be whoever you want to be. But when you are so concerned about being who your target audience wants you to be, or who they think they want you to be, you forget who you really are.

Warwick F:

Consider politics. Candidates poll-test what the hottest issues are for a given election cycle. Then they appear to know what they're talking about on those issues. This strategy sends the message that real solutions are not as important as appearing to be knowledgeable, credible, and understanding. So whether it is healthcare, energy, the economy, foreign affairs or the great social issues, candidates try to appear knowledgeable and compassionate. Above all, they want to appear to be more knowledgeable and compassionate than their rivals. But many if not most avoid authenticity. As Jack Nicholson famously says in the movie A Few Good Men, you can't handle the truth. Can you imagine a candidate telling the public what he or she thought the important issues were, even if they were not even among the top 10 issues their pollsters said people were concerned about. It is the ultimate taboo, telling the public not what you think they want to hear, but what you believe they need to hear and being yourself as you do so. Maybe your pollsters are telling you that the public wants you to be compassionate and empathetic, but you're more of a tough, no-nonsense, tell it like it is kind of person. The pollsters will tell you that if you have to deliver painful medicine, i.e. the truth, say it in a way the public wants you to say it. Don't be yourself when delivering the bad news.

Warwick F:

The point here is not that cold and gruff wins or that being compassionate and understanding is bad, nor that it is wrong to try to be compassionate. It is that you have to be yourself and do what you believe. That is the hallmark of authenticity. Simply put, it is being who you are rather than who you are not. You might be thinking, "Okay, I buy the fact that you need to advocate for what you really believe in and be yourself, not some other person. So what's next?" The problem is that being yourself and advocating for what you believe in is more difficult than you might think. Who do you know who stands up for what they believe in, no matter what anyone thinks, and they were truly themselves without a thought of putting on airs or a mask. Think of your friends, your co-workers, and your family. Think of people in the public eye, politicians, entertainers, or people in the media. Think of people in history. How many people can you think of? It's difficult for most of us to come up with more than a handful.

Warwick F:

Authenticity in leadership is rare. The higher you go in the economic and social spectrum, the harder it is to find authentic leaders. It is easy to criticize leaders for being phony. That is certainly my tendency and though I may be more sensitive to this than some others because of my background, I believe this is a common experience. The challenge is that as a person rises in leadership, the temptation emerges to put on airs and be who others want them to be or be the right kind of person to fit in or get ahead. It is like a virus that creeps up and infects a person. How many times do we read about people who have been changed by success or a rise to prominence? They ditched their old friends from the neighborhood, those people simply wouldn't fit in, they tell themselves. They wouldn't feel comfortable in these circles. They acquire the trappings of power and success. The large house, the nice cars, and of course, the right friends. People who are comfortable with the house, the cars, and the new status. Not only do they have these designer friends, but they may also have designer wives. While there may also be designer husbands, it seems to be all too common for a man to make it and then ditch his wife for the younger model, who he believes can better showcase the fine clothes and jewelry he can now afford.

Warwick F:

It is easy to look down on all of this and condemn those who rise to economic and social power, seeing how their souls corroded and how they seemed to sell out to the lifestyles and values of the rich and famous. However, try being in the situation, and withstanding the pressure that can form. I know how tough it is.

Gary S:

Why do you know how tough it is and before you answer that, let me go back to something that you said in that segment from the book, and I didn't notice it before. You said that you're sensitive, you personally are sensitive to not believing people are authentic because of your background. Talk a little bit about the way you grew up and how authenticity played or didn't play into that.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean I'm trying to remember if it's in this current version of the book because there's been a few versions going back and forth. But there was one version of authenticity chapter in which it said, "I grew up in the world of the inauthentic," and it's sort of a haunting line because when you grow up as listeners would know, a 150-year-old family media business with newspapers, TV, radio, assets, the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. We grew up in a large house in Sydney, Australia on the water. My parents had parties for visiting dignitaries, prime ministers, politicians, business leaders, visitors from Hollywood. So we had just some of the elite people in society. My mother would throw parties for 300 like it was nothing. I mean these were parties of a scale that when people from Hollywood come to Australia, they'd say, "Go look up Lady Mary Fairfax. She'll throw you a party the likes of which you're not used to in Hollywood." That's telling you something.

Gary S:

That's saying something. Yeah, because I lived and worked in Hollywood for several years, so I know exactly how big a statement that is.

Warwick F:

And it's really as much of the style and that was wonderful. I think that was tremendous. But some of the people there, they were just so concerned with impressing each other. "Oh, I did this big deal," and, "I met Prince so and so or Count whoever it was." It was this air of I've made it, I'm successful, and I know these powerful people, and I was sort of invited to those parties as a teenager because my parents for the future of the newspaper business wanted me to be at those functions, and ever since then, I just became allergic to the whole putting on of airs to inauthenticity and I've always craved the real, not the phony. Still to this day, I don't have a whole lot of time for people ... A lot of politicians irrespective of their political party by definition tend to put on a mask as that's part of being a politician. So ever since growing up in that environment, I've always been pretty allergic to lack of authenticity.

Gary S:

So the book's called Crucible Leadership. Your consultancy is called Crucible Leadership. Talk a little bit about how authenticity or lack thereof can lead to crucibles and on the other hand can sort of chip away at your leadership. I mean you said in the segment of the book that we played or you read, depending on how you're consuming this, listener, you said Warwick, "You can't lead if you're not yourself." So how does the idea of authenticity play into both aspects of crucible leadership? The crucible part and the leadership part?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean I think lack of authenticity, and you'll probably get into this more, is really fundamentally a question of identity. It's this notion that people won't accept the real you, whoever you are. Maybe you grew up in a certain background and you want to put on this polished tone. I know in the U.K., they talk about learning how to talk in the BBC accent, sort of the polished, upper crust accent, and that's real. You talk in the wrong accent, at least when I was in college in England in the late 70s, early 80s, it could be a job killer for getting into elite business. Hopefully it's not as bad, so I get it, I get it. I'm not sugarcoating this, but in general, I think ... And hopefully it's not as bad in America. There is the pressure to conform, but by not being yourself, it can sort of erode your sense of self. You don't know who you are and you're sort of striving to be somebody else. You can think, "Okay, I'm going to be happy with the cars and the wives," because typically there's more than one for guys that have made it. You just lose your whole sense of self as you're trying to be somebody else. You just wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and it's like, "I don't know who that is anymore."

Warwick F:

It's unrecognizable to me and so by lack of authenticity, there's a pretty good chance you will lose your sense of self, your soul, and whether you start drinking, substance abuse, other failures, bad stuff is probably going to happen if you try to put on some mask and be somebody that you're not. It's never good to be who you're not. The soul yearns to be authentic, and you fight your divine design, you fight your soul, that's a good way to lead to depression, anxiety, frustration, misery. It's not good. You could see a psychologist, they'll never tell you to be somebody else. It's not a good way for mental or psychological health. So bad things inevitably happen.

Warwick F:

People want to follow authentic leaders. Young people especially, they want real. They want vulnerable, they don't want some cartoon character with a mask, and when you say that you care, they want to know you really care, not because you went to a seminar or read it in a book and you ask a few questions, but it's clear that you could care less about the answers. You just ask and say how's the family, how's the this, and it's obvious you don't care. So if you want people to follow you, especially in times of crisis, you want to be real, you want to be authentic, you want to be vulnerable, so it's critical to both your sense of wholeness, your sense of being happy, fulfilled, being authentic, and it's critical in leadership. If you're not authentic, nobody's going to want to follow you. Especially in this day and age when there's so much inauthenticity in some ways, people crave the authentic. As much now as any time in history, so it's just so critical for yourself and your own sense of well-being as well as to lead anybody in anything.

Gary S:

You talk about being authentic as a leader. You also have talked many times about ... And you said it here I believe as well, that when you launched the takeover, you were trying to be a media baron. You were trying to step into the shoes that were left to you from your great-great-grandfather up to your dad. You then realized later on that that wasn't who you were, that you were more of a reflective advisor than a take no prisoners take charge media person. I've never asked you this question, have you ever wondered if the takeover would have gone differently if who you were authentically was that take charge media baron person?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean if the company had been successful, it would have been tough, because I don't know that I ever tried to be someone else. But it's funny, we're talking about masks. There was an article that came out in an Australian magazine, it was sort of the equivalent of the New York Times Sunday magazine, that kind of thing many years ago during the takeover years, and the headline was The Man Behind the Mask, and the notion was since I never gave interviews, who is Warwick? What does he think? He's inscrutable. It's like what's really going on inside, and so I was sort of paranoid about people knowing who I was. It wasn't so much I put on a mask of who I was not. I put on sort of like this opaque mask in which you couldn't tell what was going on inside. That's a different kind of mask. It's just like not giving interviews, just being neutral. Because I was just really afraid, I was in a position of not wanting to make mistakes and yeah. So I in a sense did put on a mask but it wasn't a mask with another face on it. It was like a mask, just a blank mask with nothing.

Gary S:

Well I was going to say, and readers can see that picture from that magazine cover which is included in your book. You have that photograph of the man behind the mask because that was one of the stinging examples of the way the press covered everything after that.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean I think another aspect of really what you're asking is in a sense I was trying to live somebody else's life and I've talked about this a bit in the book and obviously before. I was trying to live John Fairfax's vision, which was a wonderful vision, to have a paper that would be non-partisan, the original masthead of the paper of The Sydney Morning Herald was, "May Whigs call me Tory, Tory call me Whigs," which is basically may liberal call me conservative, conservative call me liberal. That was a wonderful vision to have a non-partisan paper that would uplift the then colony of Australia. But that really wasn't even my dad's vision. He inherited that, so I was living somebody else's vision which is hard to live an authentic life when you're living somebody else's life, so I did the whole Oxford/Wall Street/Harvard Business School as listeners would know but I wasn't living my authentic life, I was living somebody else's life, somebody else's vision, and that caused angst, frustration, and I didn't do it well because when you live somebody else's life, you won't do it well by definition. You will feel frustrated and out of place, and I felt frustrated, out of place, and yeah. Every day was like a deer in the headlights, going to work and again we've talked about this in the opening line of the speech that I give.

Warwick F:

I talk about walking in December of '87, when the takeover had finally completed, I walk into the building, walk into the elevator for the first time as proprietor. Everybody knows who I am, my face was on newspapers, magazines, TV, and I'm in that elevator with journalists and other staff of John Fairfax Limited and I'm saying nothing. I'm so uncomfortable. I just wanted to get out of that elevator. It was emblematic of that whole experience of just I wasn't living my authentic life and it was very painful when the takeover failed ultimately in December of 1990 but in other ways it was a relief. Because I didn't have to live a lie as people say, to try and be a person I fundamentally was not. So yeah, I can testify how living a life of inauthenticity in the sense that I wasn't putting on somebody else's mask, I was putting on this faceless opaque mask that really covered up who I was and what I was feeling and it was miserable.

Gary S:

That is a good time, and I hate to say it after you say that, I was miserable. That's a good time to kind of turn a little bit and explore ... Listeners, as you're hearing Warwick talk about these things, and you're thinking in the back of your head, "Am I living authentically? What are my strengths and what are my values and what are my things?" There are, in the book, you talk about this and we can do it in kind of two stages. There's a first stage of sort of assessing where you're at. Are you living authentically? Are there ways, what are the ways Warwick that listeners can start today. You talk about one small step a lot. What's one small step they can take today to sort of assess whether they're living authentically and then we'll move on after that, after we sort of assess here's your baseline, here's where you're at, then how can you go and actually move toward living more authentically, but what's the first step to kind of ... It's sort of an audit of where you're at, right?

Warwick F:

Yeah, absolutely Gary. So one step is ... There's a number of assessments that can give you a handle on your strengths and weaknesses that form a pattern some have called motivated abilities. It's not the totality of who you are, no assessment will capture everything, but you've got obviously well-known ones like Myers Briggs and DISC, 360s which are very popular in the corporate world which assess what do people above you, beside you and below you in the organization chart think of you. One I like is The Leadership Practice 360. There's the Enneagram which is another assessment that is a good way of capturing who you are, so all of those provide a good snapshot.

Warwick F:

I think it's also helpful to ask friends, family, even co-workers who you know well, about strengths and weaknesses and that's probably a weird question to ask them but it's ... So who do you think I am? If they say honestly, I have no clue, I don't know who you are, that would not be a good answer, or I used to know who you were, now I don't know. I talk a lot about successful people. I mean I grew up in a very wealthy background, so it's a little abnormal. But for those people that have "made it", they typically grow up with one group of friends, they make it, and they move on to another group of friends. That's the typical journey. So maybe go back to ask the folks you knew in middle school or high school or friends and say, "So who do you think I am?" You may like what you hear or you really may not like what you hear, so that's almost more of a character audit in terms of am I being real. So if you ask the right questions and as we often say, be careful what you ask for. Because if you ask those questions, there are people that may be dying to tell you.

Warwick F:

If one person says, "Look, you're just so fake. I don't know who you are." That's fine, but if all your family and all your friends when you grew up say, "Yep. You're just a fake. I don't know who you are anymore," they're probably not all wrong. That's one of the things about a 360. Why 360 is powerful, which is slightly different but it's all related, it's if everybody around you, your boss, your peers and those under you say, "You know what, Warwick, Gary? You are terrible at listening to people." Could they all be wrong? Maybe, but if everybody that works with you says something, my assumption is they're probably right, innocent until proven guilty. If everybody says or you're a micromanager or whatever it is, so ... All of those things can be very helpful.

Warwick F:

So you use those assessments both formally as well as informal conversations with family or friends, they can give you a lot of data that is helpful and may be painful too.

Gary S:

The thing that you're looking for there I think when you do that on the plus side and the negative side is those aha moments. We've all taken those assessments that you're talking about, the Enneagram or the DISC test, and it says ... I'll just say for me, "Gary is outgoing and persuasive." I'm like, "Oh yeah, that sounds like me." Right? I mean you'll have reactions when you hear that sounds like me will be your aha reaction or, "What? That doesn't sound like me." To your point, if the same four things show up in four different assessments that you say, "That doesn't sound like me." Or when you ask four different people, you say, "That doesn't sound like me," to your point, as my mom ... I mean it's funny to hear you say that Warwick, because my mom's best advice to me ever was if one person says you're a bad word, it's a difference of opinion. If three or four people say you're that word, chances are you may be that word.

Gary S:

So that becomes that aha moment as you get that feedback, either through an assessment or through conversations with friends and family, look for the aha moments. Are you agreeing with that? Those are things that are authentically you. If you're not agreeing with that, those are probably also things, if they show up a lot of times that are authentically you. So look for those authentically you things that are both "positive and negative" and that will help you as you move forward.

Gary S:

Another part of this Warwick is after you sort of do a baseline assessment, there are some things you write about in the book that folks can do to build, dig into, understand more about, build more authenticity. One of the things you mentioned, and this is in Chapter Four in the book, one of the first things you mention is to have an anchor in their lives, and as you talk about that, talk about it from the third person perspective, you're giving wisdom to people, and then if there's anything from your own story, bring that in as well.

Warwick F:

Yeah, it's a good question. I think really, we talk in Crucible Leadership a lot about choice. So when you've had a crucible, you have a choice. Hide under covers for the next 30, 40, 50 years until it all melts away, or, "Hey, this was awful, it was unfair, I'm going to choose to find my way back to a life of significance, a life of purpose dedicated to serving others."

Warwick F:

The same is true of authenticity. It's a choice. Am I going to choose to be who I am? Now if you've gone through a period of self-loathing, it could be because terrible things were done to you or you have a low self-image, I think you need to do some soul work. But I think you need to come to the point where I believe God made us all who we are and scripture talks about we're beautifully and wonderfully made. So who you are is a beautiful and wonderful thing. So it starts with part of having an anchor for your soul, whether it's a major religion, like for me it's my faith in Christ, it could be another religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam. It could be another philosophy, set of values. Dig deep into your fundamental values and beliefs. Who is whoever God is or the universe, who have they made me to be, and accept that, honor that, cherish that. I don't mean some sort of self-worship thing, but it starts with a choice that I'm going to choose to believe that I am wonderfully and perfectly made and I'm different than anybody else, and so it's okay to be me.

Warwick F:

If you can't get to the point where you can say it's okay to be me, then you'll never be authentic, because you won't want to be. You will run from it. No assessment will help those who are consumed with self-loathing, and sometimes there are reasons because of terrible things that have happened to you. So it starts with a choice, I guess for me, I never so much put on this mask of who I wasn't and it was just this opaque thing, and so over time, I've realized it's okay that I'm not some take no prisoners kind of executive. I'm a thoughtful advisor, I do make decisions, quicker than I used to really, I'm probably more decisive than I actually give myself credit for. I think, I'm thoughtful, I'm reflective, I'm not overly competitive per se. I try hard but unlike a lot of guys that want to pulverize the next guy at a golf game or tennis game, I'm not. So there was a period of my life in my thirties for instance where I'd be like, "Oh, how come I'm not like the next guy that likes to play golf and bet a dollar a hole or something?" That's not wrong. That is the last thing I'd want to do. I just feel so uncomfortable. So it's, "Well I'm not that good at building decks," or whatever. So what?

Warwick F:

But not everybody knows how to fix things, but on the other hand, I love talking about history or faith, I mean really a whole stack, music, a stack of different subjects. So it's coming to the point where you know, it's okay. Just because I don't have this desire to pulverize somebody else at golf or tennis doesn't mean I'm a bad person. It just means I'm different. It sounds stupid and childish. We all have those things within us that we wish we were like the next guy or the other woman. How come I'm not as pretty as that woman or whatever, how come I'm not taller or how come I'm not thinner or how come I'm not A or B. We all have our list of things.

Warwick F:

So this whole area of have an anchor, you just got to make a choice to believe that whoever made you, you are beautifully and wonderfully made, and just because you're different, different doesn't mean bad. Different, I believe means beautiful in a sense, from a soul perspective. So if you have that anchor, that foundation, you are well on your way to living an authentic life. If you don't have that, you will find it almost impossible to live an authentic life if you're filled with self-loathing and self-hatred, as vast amounts of people are unfortunately.

Gary S:

You need to accept those things and that's where again, if you go through the assessments, if you go through asking friends and family, weigh that counsel, that feedback, seriously, and apply it as it's appropriate to help you as you move forward. The second thing you talk about in the book about how to dig your way into authenticity is to find true friends. What do you mean by that?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean you can find friends who almost in quotation marks who just want to pull you down and always knew you'd fail or ... They just kind of don't encourage you to strive for anything. Or you can find for the rich and famous, the Hollywood people for instance, you can find friends who they just want to be your friends while you're successful, and as soon as you maybe have a few movies that didn't go so well or maybe you got fired from your CEO slot, they disappear in a nanosecond. It's like they walk on the other side of the street and I never knew you, don't know who you are. Gary who? Warwick who? They just don't know who you are. That's pretty soul crushing, if you thought that they were your friends, so you want to find people that are not there to be with the fake you, the inauthentic you. They like the real you, quirks and all. We all have our quirks. That makes us who we are. I would say that makes us beautiful people in the real sense of the word, not the Hollywood sense of the word.

Gary S:

The third point that you make about how you can dig into discover some ... Reset your authenticity is to find the right environment. What do you mean by that?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean really, it can be as simple as if you're somebody that kind of likes the country, rural areas, or the mountains, if you need to be in nature for your soul to sing, don't be holed up in some apartment or some cubicle in a skyscraper in Los Angeles or New York. It's not wrong, but it may not fit with who you are as a person. If you're somebody that more likes the buzz and the activity of the big city, then don't be in the middle of nowhere. It's not right or wrong. Similarly with the companies that you work with and organizations, if you're somebody that likes a slower pace of life, and you want to have time to smell the roses and chat to people, don't work in some New York investment banking firm when you got to work till 10:00 p.m. every night and most weekends. I mean it's not right or wrong, although I think for family reasons working 24 hours a day is probably not a good way to have a happy family and happy spouse, but that's a whole nother conversation.

Warwick F:

But you want the environment you're in to support who you are and from a values perspective, if your values are I don't know, honesty, integrity, kindness, and you're working in a corporate deal-making environment, that's not going to be a good fit and let's forget value judgments for a moment. You want to have an environment that supports the real you, the real authentic you. Because environments tend to want to mold you into being who they want you to be. Again I come back to Hollywood, such a classic example. It tends to want to mold you into who they think that you should be. So it's not wrong to want to do that, not at all in any way, shape or form. But find an environment, both physically, location, and in terms of culture, that supports the real you. Don't try to be a kind of fish out of water, you love the ocean and somehow you're stranded on a beach somewhere. You know what will happen to a fish, it dies if it doesn't have water. So your soul will die if you're in an environment that is toxic to what you treasure and who the real you is.

Gary S:

A while back, you described an elevator ride you had when the takeover of the family media dynasty was successful. On paper it was successful, you were in charge, you were proprietor. But you described that elevator ride as being up there you're in charge, you're surrounded by your employees, and you are uncomfortable. Safe to say that was not the right environment, being the proprietor of John Fairfax Limited?

Warwick F:

It certainly wasn't. I mean at heart, I'm a reflective advisor. I don't yearn to be in charge. I would rather listen and learn. I love learning about things that I don't know anything about, which is one of the things I love about this podcast we have, Beyond the Crucible, when we have guests, I'm continually learning about people's stories that for the most part I didn't know anything about. So I love that.

Warwick F:

So yeah. I'm a reflective advisor. Being on a board is not a bad fit, writing a book, talking on podcasts and other things we do about how your worst day doesn't have to define your life and how you bounce back to live a life of significance from your crucible. That's all a good fit, but being in charge of some massive media company, it wasn't my vision and it so wasn't who I was. I don't yearn to be in charge of some big company making 100 decisions a minute. That's just not who I am. I think and consider too much. So no, that was just an incredibly bad fit to who I was and certainly wasn't ... The person I felt needed to be in that slot wasn't me. It certainly wasn't the authentic me.

Gary S:

And that, more than anything else we've talked about I think, is a floodlight on how important authenticity is to your sense of fulfillment, your life of significance that we talk about a lot on this show. Because what you just said was being in charge of a multi-billion dollar corporation. We tend to think money is going to make us all very happy. Power is going to make us all very happy. The key to joy is to have things and to have influence and that's the other part of the family media company is you had a lot of influence in Australia. That company was an opinion shaper. All of those things weren't as important to you, weren't as fulfilling to you, as being who you are authentically. That is a powerful endorsement of just how critical authenticity is, right?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean for me and frankly, it gets into another subject, I don't think power and money make too many people happy but there is a personality maybe that could have been happy in that but yeah. I mean it was miserable and so when I moved to the U.S. in the 90s when my kids were small, just being with my young family and throwing a ball or going to ballet recitals or whatever it was, that would fill me with ... I would enjoy that, being an executive coach, helping people accomplish their dreams, writing. These are all things that I enjoy and over time and this wasn't a one and done thing, it took years, not just to come back from my crucible, but to accept that I am who I am and it's okay to be me. It was not an easy journey, we talk about the way back from the crucible. The way back to it's okay to be me, like I'm at the point where I don't worry about golf games and competitions and I tend not to sign up for those things, I don't enjoy it. It stresses me out, and so I'm okay with that. There are other things I enjoy doing.

Warwick F:

So the journey to authenticity, a bit like the journey back from a crucible, it can take a while to say it's okay to be me and take those steps. It's not self-love, but it does come back to the identity, it's okay to be you, but it just takes a while because most of us don't grow up in an environment where we think it's okay to be me. Because when you say it's okay to be me, that means by definition you are secure and self-confident in the best sense of the word, and there aren't too many secure and self-confident people in the true, soul sense of that word. It's another side of the coin to authenticity. It's a journey to really being willing to be a true authentic self.

Gary S:

Yeah, and I know what you mean when you say it's okay to be me, but really, it's better than okay to be me, right?

Warwick F:

Right.

Gary S:

It's essential to be you, it's the road to significance to be you. That's one of the first cobblestones on that road. The last of the four things that you talk about in how to kind of build authenticity, to kind of lean into it, is to do what you're good at. You tease that a little bit, you talked about it kind of, you touched on it in this last section about the right environment, but do what you're good at. Unpack that a little bit for listeners.

Warwick F:

This is a phrase and I think it was a former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, Dick Halverson, at least that's what I was told, and the phrase is something like this, "Don't do what you're merely good at. Do what you're great at." That sounds a bit arrogant, but I believe frankly from a divine perspective we're all made by God a certain way. So when you fully live in line with how you are made, your true authentic self, I believe that we're all great at some things, and for me, I feel like I'm a good writer, I think I am pretty good at asking questions, I reflect, maybe some degree of wisdom in certain areas. I'm good on boards because I listen, I reflect and ask probing questions, so there are things I like to feel like in some sense that I'm good if not great at. It's hard to say that about yourself, but I think that's true. So don't just do things that you're good at. Do what you're great at. Like I had training because I worked on Wall Street in financial analysis. So if I wanted to in the two non-profit boards I've been on, I could have been on the finance committee. But I avoid those like the plague because I'm not interested in finance.

Gary S:

Right.

Warwick F:

But just because I have knowledge doesn't mean that's truly who I am and just because I'm good at it technically, I don't enjoy it, and so I'd rather have people that actually enjoy numbers and finance. When it comes to the full board, I'm happy to ask questions because it's like I do understand this stuff. But I don't want to wallow in it if you will for hours and days. So I feel like we're all great at something. We all have certain gifts and abilities. I believe God doesn't make mistakes. So if he's given you certain gifts, abilities and passions, those are God given and the more you lead in light of that and be that person, that true authentic self with your passions and your God-given abilities, especially, and this is the other key in crucible leadership when you use the gifts and abilities and passions in service of others for a higher purpose, what we call a life of significance, that is the path to joy and fulfillment. If you try to be who you are not, the inauthentic self, the mask, that is a way to misery.

Warwick F:

So you want to be filled with joy and be fulfilled. Be your true authentic self with your gifts and abilities and your God given passions in a way that serves others. I mean it's really that simple. If you need a motivational talk for why be authentic, don't you want to be the real you? You know you do. You know you want to be you. Wouldn't it be nice if your friends said, "You know what, Gary, Warwick? I like you just because you are, quirks and all." Isn't that a wonderful thing? They like the real me? Like really? And you're somehow using the real you in service of others? That's the way to joy and fulfillment, and who doesn't want joy and fulfillment.

Gary S:

Well one of the things that is the authentic me as the co-host of the show is to point out when the sound we hear is the captain turning on the fasten seat belts sign indicating that we will be landing the plane soon but not quite yet. We have a little bit more time, listener, to explore this topic, this important topic of why authenticity is so important to both leadership and to moving beyond your crucible, and one of the examples you give in the book Warwick, in the chapter on authenticity, is ... We've talked about it before on the podcast for different reasons, but he's one the leaders that you admire I think is Abraham Lincoln. So how did Abraham Lincoln manifest authenticity and what did that allow him to do as a leader?

Warwick F:

Abraham Lincoln, as some would know is voted by historians as the most famous but I would say the most respected president in U.S. history. Lincoln was somebody that didn't put on airs. He became president I guess around about April, March, April, 1861 as the Civil War was about to begin, and he was from the then backwoods of Illinois, it was considered the West back then. He was not particularly well-educated in the sense of schooling, he was self-educated, he read a lot of books, he was a country lawyer doing the rounds in Illinois, and he would just share, even with his cabinet, these homespun stories. Instead of making a point, he would go on for probably 10 or 15 minutes with some story and his cabinet members' eyes would roll and here we go, the president's going to give one of his stories again, and off he'd go. But he was who he was. He was authentic, he was probably one of the most self-confident and secure people that's ever been in office, probably by a wide margin. If you said to him, "Mr. Lincoln, I think your policy here is wrong," he'd say, "Well you're probably right, but tell me why you think that."

Warwick F:

His presumption is, "I'm going to listen to you and you got to have evidence," but he was just very authentic and obviously he had other characteristics of just strength and certitude in a time when ... One of the darkest days in American history with the Civil War, but he was so real. He didn't put on any airs. What you saw is what you got. I mean he was one of the most authentic people in American history and you could see the goodness of his soul too, which was sort of remarkable. He didn't try to be some East Coast fancy person. He grew up in a small log cabin so to speak as folklore in a sense tells us. He was very authentic, and okay, he wasn't some fancy sophisticated East Coast person. He didn't care. He was who he was, and initially, some of those East Coast elite people looked down on him, no question. Including his own cabinet, most of them were his rivals for the Republican nomination, but over time, they began to see the real Abraham Lincoln, the authentic Abraham Lincoln was a great man, was a great person, so he won them over.

Warwick F:

But initially, they just said, "Who is this guy? Where's he from? Illinois, which is way out west." Yeah, but it takes courage to be authentic, and he had certainly plenty of courage.

Gary S:

That is an excellent way to land the plane I think. It takes courage to be authentic. I mean if you had to summarize what it is that we've talked about here, it takes courage to be authentic. It takes courage to stand up and say, "Yes, I am a guy and a guy stereotypically is supposed to know how to fix cars and I'm with you." I mean my way of fixing cars is to say how much is that and then I write a check. That's the way that I do those things. It takes courage to be authentic, and you can build that courage muscle by doing some of the things that we've talked about on the show today, right?

Warwick F:

Yeah. I think it starts with identity. If you're a person of faith, think of it this way. Or even if you're not a person of faith. God loves you for who you are, warts and all. It doesn't mean if there are things you need to make right in your life and stop hurting people, it doesn't mean you don't have to fix some of those things. That's got nothing to do with authenticity. But the fundamental person that you are, God loves you because of who you are. Hopefully you have a spouse or some friends and family that love you for who you are and they know the real you. So it really starts with saying God loves me for who I am, hopefully I have some friends and a spouse, a partner who love me for who I am. That is then a foundation to say, "I am going to make a decision that it's okay to be me, and I'm going to be the real me and I'm not going to put on a mask, and if some people don't like it, they can move on.

Warwick F:

Move on, I don't need people who don't like the real me." I'm not talking about the stuff that hurts people, I'm not talking about that. But I mean the true you, not some of those other things. But the real you, you don't need those friends that you don't like that. Surround yourself with the people that do like who you are and find a way to use who you are in service of others and a passion that you feel like will make the world a better place. That will support your authenticity, so it really as we often say in crucible leadership, it begins with a choice. Choose to be the authentic true you. Choose to be the authentic true you today. It starts with a choice.

Gary S:

The plane's on the ground. Way to land the plane, Warwick. That's an excellent exhortation for listeners to ... It's okay to be you. Remember that. I've never done this before, this is the second week in a row in which I'm going to end the show not with takeaways but I'm going to give homework to you, listener. Sorry, I hate to be ... I'm sort of authentically like your high school English teacher, because in each chapter of his book Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, Warwick has reflection questions and there are three reflection questions at the end of Chapter Four, which I think are good for you to kind of lean into as you reflect on what we just talked about on this episode of the show.

Gary S:

Question one is what are your strengths, weaknesses and personal values? So dig into that as we talked about here. Ask some other people about that. Take some assessments, some things that help you get to the bottom of that question. Second question, in what situations or scenarios might you be putting on a mask rather than being your authentic self, and then this, this is critical. Why do you think you do that? Identify the situations where you may be masking up and then ask yourself why do you think you're doing that. That requires to use one of Warwick's favorite words on the show, some real soul work to honestly answer that question. To authentically answer that question of why do you think it's more comfortable for you to wear a mask in those situations. Then the third question, how can your authentic self inspire and help others, and that really is the focus of why we do Beyond the Crucible. It's to help you find that way to inspire and help others, to lead what Warwick calls a life of significance, a life on purpose in service to others.

Gary S:

So listener, until we meet again next time, do remember this. We understand, we know, hopefully it's come through in our conversation today, that your crucibles are difficult. Those experiences can be very traumatic. But we also know this to be true. They are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the start of an entirely new story that can be the best story of your life. Your worst day of your life can turn into the best day of your life, because as you learn the lessons from that trauma and tragedy and setback and failure and apply them to your life and move forward, the destination that you reach is a life of significance.

How could viewing your crucible not as something that happened to you, but something that happened for you, change the way you chart a course for moving beyond it? This week you’ll hear from James Kelley, author of THE CRUCIBLE’S GIFT, who discusses with Warwick how setbacks and failures can be a catalyst to increase self-awareness, live with greater integrity and develop deeper compassion – for others, yes, but also for ourselves.

To learn more about James Kelley, visit https://www.qchange.com/

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

James K:

Be open to the possibility of what if there's a different narrative you could tell yourself. What if there's a different question you could be asking yourself? What if the crucible that has held you back is untethered and is actually that opportunity?

Gary S:

What if indeed? How could viewing your crucible, not as something that happened to you, but something that happened for you change the way you chart a course from leaving beyond? Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show.

Gary S:

This week, you'll hear from James Kelley, author of The Crucible's Gift, who discusses with Warwick how setbacks and failures can be a catalyst to increase self-awareness, live with greater integrity, and develop deeper compassion for others, yes, but also critically for ourselves.

Warwick F:

Well, James, it's wonderful to be with you and thanks so much for being on the podcast. We got in touch, I don't know if it was a few weeks ago. It wasn't that long. And it's just amazing. I love the title of your book, The Crucible's Gift, and mine is Crucible Leadership. It's okay. Yours was first like 2018 or something. And so it's like, "Hey, what's going on here?" And you actually spent some time in Western Australia, which we'll get to in a moment, but obviously my book is sort of anchored in my story and my crucible on the 150 year old family media business, but I love the title-

Gary S:

In Australia.

Warwick F:

Yes, indeed.

Gary S:

The 150 year old family media business in Australia-

Warwick F:

Absolutely. And so, I love the title of your book, The Crucible's Gift, and we'll get to that in a moment because I've been thinking about that. Just recently we had a harnessing resilience series on our podcast and the word gift has come up. And so, I've really been... Because Gary asked me, I don't know, a few weeks, few months ago, "Do you see what you went through as a gift?" And I was like, "Ah, not really," but I've been changing my mind just recently. Talk about continuous learning, but before we get into the themes of your book, tell us a bit about the origin story, the backstory of The Crucible's Gift and how you came to write it, a bit about you growing up. You probably had a few crucibles, but the love of this book came out of somewhere, right? The desire to write this. Talk about sort of the origin story.

James K:

I just want to first start by saying thank you to both of you guys for having me on today. And secondly, since my book came first with the word crucibles, I am requesting royalty fees on your book as you sell them, just to be clear.

Warwick F:

There you go. That's so good.

James K:

The origin story of the book is never the book itself, it's the path leading to it, right. And hence your book. And so I found for myself that I'd always wanted to be better at leading, right, but I had a bunch of baggage and I was really curious about how individuals or leaders that I interviewed, how they perceived their baggage and what they did with it and how did they unpack it and how did they refold it back in the luggage and keep moving forward? And so for me, it was really an interesting exercise of accepting what was, what is, and the possibilities of what could be.

James K:

And so, I went on this journey. I had a podcast for three years and that's where all of these interviews came from. It was a podcast. And it was always about not what you do, but really who you are in your journey. And that's where I think it comes from. At the end of the day, just to say it succinctly, the origin of the book was me trying to unpack why I felt like I was failing as a leader and how can I embrace my own crucibles as a springboard to the future?

Warwick F:

And where did that come from? That sense of, "Gosh. I'm failing as a leader." So, talk a bit about maybe some of the crucibles you had or what led you to that kind of viewpoint of yourself, if you will.

James K:

I mean, clearly, it's lack of self-esteem. We can start with that part. Yeah, I just think I didn't have the best modeling as a child, right. And so that's your framework of a house is that as your parents. And so, the framework wasn't great. I often tongue in cheek say I grew up in an Irish-Catholic household with a touch of violence, all the guilt, and no Catholicism, right. And it wasn't overtly violent. It wasn't the worst house ever, but it was cold. My mom's Scottish-Canadian, which just in itself of an old-school Catholic is innately a bit cold. My dad, he was a product of a World War II vet who was at Pearl Harbor. So, there's just a series of things that I think culminate together that left me not feeling great about myself over time. And then self-talk, obviously, is a huge part of that negative self-talk.

Warwick F:

That is interesting since you had that experience. And so, what were some of the other beats of your crucible stories that had moved on from that kind of family?

James K:

Yeah. The other thing that came up later in life is that I had a learning disability. So, I think when all you know is you're bad at something or you're not good at something, or you can't succeed at something, those seeds are planted quite young. And reflecting on my parents... And I always say this to my mom. My dad passed away when I was 20. We can talk about that. That definitely was a crucible. They did the best that they could with what they knew. So, I don't hold any resentment towards them, but I'm still a product of that environment. I mean, there's a really vivid story.

James K:

My dad, by all accounts, was a good human being with... But he's flawed, he's human. And I vividly remember this. The orange shag carpet with the wood paneling walls at our house growing up, very '70s chic, which would probably be really in style now anyways, but I remember my older brother who was 16 at the time. My mom was married previously and my dad married and adopted these two kids, which was great. Part of the adoption was that their biological father wanted nothing to do with them and my dad agreed... And the guy was wealthy, but my dad was willing to take that on because my mom and he loved the kids. So, my oldest brother, John, just has a series of problems. Still does at 53 years old. A lot of problems, but I remember him and my dad were getting into it, yelling, and I vividly remember my dad pushing my brother down. My dad was a very intimidating individual. He grew up in the farms in Colorado, baling hay the old way with the hooks. So, he had Popeye forearms like just this big strong man.

James K:

My brother, John, is in puberty. At 16, he could bench press 225 like 15, 20 times; squat 500 pounds. Really big, but 5'8", right. So big and strong. And I remember them getting in a fight and my dad pushed him into a chair. His fist was cocked back. My other brother who was 14 or 15, who is 6'2", 200 pounds, was holding him back. I'm in the corner cowering down. My mom is screaming. And so, those events didn't happen every week, but boy, they happened enough to make you afraid of male authority, to make you afraid of standing up, but I will say in that moment, the ability to say to yourself, "Boy, this is chaos. Boy, this is really, really unhealthy." I got that at 9, 10. There's some other stuff that happened in there as well, but the other story I remember vividly, and this kind of speaks to my resilience, I think, as a human being.

James K:

At 13, and I don't remember the whole instance of what happened leading up to it. I'm sure I did something by the way. I was 13, but I remember my dad backed me into the sink and he poked my chest two or three times and I said "If you ever effing touched me..." And we never swore in the house.

Warwick F:

Sure, sure.

James K:

The kids never swore, but I said, "If you effing touch me again, I'm leaving." And he slapped me and I walked out the door, and I hear my mom screaming, "Craig, go get him." And I run up the street and I run around the corner and he gets into his car and he's like, "Get in the car," and I'm yelling, "Are you going to hit me again?" And what was fascinating is that shame that I put on my dad because the neighbors heard it. He never touched me again except for one other time when I was 18, but I totally deserved it. And I knew I deserved it when he hit me. Slapped me, I guess is probably a better way to say it because I said something derogatory to my mom, and I deserved it when I said it. But I mean, it was interesting that in that moment I had the strength to stand up to a man that was hugely scary to me as a child. So, that was another crucible moment of saying, "Okay, I'm not going to take it anymore."

Warwick F:

You had some challenging circumstances in your family, brother, dad, but... We say and I'm sure you say, I know you say, when you're faced with a crucible, you have a choice. And I love the fact that one of the people on there said something about... I forget who it was. Choice to wallow or not. I mean, I swear I used that word wallow all the time. It's the weirdest thing.

Gary S:

Every week.

Warwick F:

Yeah. And hide under the covers and let the next 30, 40, 50 years go by until it's all over or to say, "Gosh, this is awful, but I'm going to go in different direction." You chose a different path. You mentioned just getting through school, college, PhD. It wasn't easy. There are some people that it's like studying is just easy. 4.0s, it's like breathing. I mean, I'm blessed. I did undergrad degree at Oxford and Harvard Business School and all. Well, I had to study.

Warwick F:

I remember there was this English guy that... Drinking age is 18 in the UK. So, drinking himself silly most of the day and he would get perfect grades and he never studied, but he was just a genius. Well, that wasn't me. Seeming it wasn't you. I find that all fascinating that your path to writing this book, your path to getting a PhD, none of it was easy, but yet how did that serve you that life wasn't easy, even in your chosen path of academia in a sense?

James K:

Yeah. There's something deep inside me and it's probably as unhealthy as it is. The PhD is a great example. I wanted to prove people wrong who thought that I wasn't smart, and I thought by getting three additional letters behind my name would prove those people wrong. Lo and behold, they didn't prove a damn thing. They didn't really care. And so, I gave weight to a bunch of people that really didn't matter. And you're laughing because I feel like maybe you can relate to that a little bit.

Warwick F:

Right. I mean, I have an Oxford degree and a Harvard MBA, but did that help me when the company went under? No, I thought I was a moron. It actually made it worse. How could a Harvard MBA make such massively stupid decisions?

James K:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

And we're talking... I graduated in, I don't know, May/June '87. I launched the takeover in late August '87. Wasn't like, "Oh, it's 20 years. Just probably forgotten his classes." Well, no. We're talking a couple months. I mean, golly. So, yes. No, I can relate it. Didn't make me feel any... It made me feel worse actually having the credentials.

James K:

Yeah. Well, I can imagine that situation. I've met enough Harvard MBAs where there's sometimes... I won't say generally speaking. I'm going to say generally speaking, not always, there's a bit of arrogance from it, right. And guys from Harvard, I know it. And then to walk out and basically make a big mistake, it has to hurt your ego a bit.

Warwick F:

It does. It gives you a bit of humility. And you spent some time in Western Australia. Did you get your PhD there or was that... I forget-

James K:

University of Western Australia.

Warwick F:

Right. And that was a remarkable experience.

Gary S:

There's something you told me, James, when we talked beforehand and I thought was really fascinating. There was a couple things. You were talking about what you went through as a young man in your teens and your 20s. And you mentioned just now about your resilience, but as Warwick said, we just finished a series on resilience. And one of the things that two of our guests said who have researched resilience scientifically is that it's not just about digging down deep inside yourself. True resilience is also, yes, you find some power, some strength within, but you also reach without. You reach for the resources around you. You told me something about in your 20s. I want to find the exact quote where you said that guys in their 20s, empathy isn't part of their skillset. So, as you were trying to find your resilience, it was hard for you, wasn't it? To find it kind of in your peer group because us guys in our 20s aren't always prepared to provide that kind of support to our friends.

James K:

Yeah. My dad died when I was 20. I was in university. He died relatively quick within six months. He had a congestive heart failure. He didn't make the cut to get a heart transplant, then he did, and then he passed away. So, it was quite sudden. My parents had moved from... I grew up in Portland. They moved to Chicago and I went to college. My dad had just taken a job, a transfer with this company down at Atlanta. So, he dies that summer. I go back to school and not many men in their 20s has dealt with their parent dying.

Gary S:

Right.

James K:

So, there was just this gap of empathy and understanding and connecting. I was a captain of the water polo team. I lived with five guys, six guys, and it just was this void of understanding, and unfortunately or fortunately, I kind of always think things happen for a reason. I really delved into drinking for about three to five years as a way to cope. One of my perceived skills... I say a skill for evil, if you will, I was really good at the college wooing, if you will. And so, I would find my self worth in getting girls to like me and then we would hook up or whatever, but my worth was tied up into getting that chase because I didn't feel valued or wanted. And that's where my value came from. And unfortunately I hurt a lot of people in that phase in my life.

James K:

And so, that lack of empathy and connection and understanding was really hard. Fast forward a few years and my mom's calling me saying, "I want to commit suicide." And I'm like, "I can't deal with this. I'm barely keeping it together myself." And my response to my mom probably wasn't the nicest, but I was like, "Hey, you're going to do it, do it or go get help, but I can't help you right now." I was like, "I'm not someone who's in a position to take care of his mom in her mid-50s. I'm trying to sort my own self out in my early 20s."

James K:

And so, the drinking really culminated in... I don't even know the year, but I was 24 or 25 when I got a DUI driving home. I remember the story really vividly. I was out on the other side of town. My mom lived in Vancouver, Washington at this time. She had moved back from Atlanta back to where we grew up. And so, she was in Vancouver and I was in downtown Portland driving back and I had gone out after work, and I was coming home and I was really close to my house, probably a quarter mile. And in my head I was Mario Andretti or in today's parlance, you probably could say like... Oh my gosh. The Formula 1 driver that wins everything.

Warwick F:

Lewis Hamilton.

James K:

Yes, Lewis Hamilton. I'm trying to modernize the story a little bit. At the time, I thought I was Mario Andretti and there was this little S-turn by my house and I was going probably 70 in a 35. And the police officer whips around. I see him. And I thought in my head, "If I can get home before he gets to me and I get in the house, he'll never know I was there."

Gary S:

Sanctuary.

James K:

Yeah. That's what I was thinking. I was like, "I can make it." And so, I get there... This is such a funny story. So, I get there, the lights come on, my mom is in a very residential. Leave it to beaver neighborhood. Lights come on, I'm in the car. My mom had just started dating this guy, and he comes out in his t-shirt and tighty-whities "What's going on here?" And I was like, "Oh my goodness." So, I ended up going to jail for the night, get out. And the police officer was super nice. He was like, "I'm really sorry to do this." I'm like, "Nope, I broke the law. It's my fault." I was really accountable to the moment.

James K:

So, the consequences to this; I am leading to the consequence of this is that I had to go to an outpatient program for two years. And so, the first six months was four nights a week, three hours a night, super intensive. Then it was six months, once a week for three hours, and then it was a therapist for the next year. And I think at the time... Kind of going to your point, Gary. I think at the time I really had a choice on how I was going to approach that. I think most 24 year olds would have been real bitter and resentful. I chose to say this is an opportunity. And this is that to and for statement, right. It happened for me, it happened to me. And I really said this was a for-me moment and really dove into that as an opportunity to really start to peel back the layers of the onions of myself and try to understand, what am I trying to do? And why am I acting this way? And what's wrong with me? And all of those things that you kind of have in your early 20s that still kind of follow you in your 40s. And now if you're in your 50s, sometimes that follows you as you go.

James K:

Gary, to answer your question in this long-winded way, I figured out at some point in my life, for whatever reason, that you have to look inside you, but you also have to accept things for what they are and what they are not. And there's a nice serenity prayer, right. You have the wisdom to know the difference is what I always hold on to of what you can and can't control. And so, there's things when I can control it and it's wrong, I'm accountable. When I can't, I have to let it go. And I think that's kind of where I sit with a lot of my life and choices and outcomes is if it's bad, it happened for me. If it is good, it's happened for me.

James K:

But I think when you move from "I'm a victim" to a victor, there's a huge change in shift mentally in your mind that happens. And I think quite often... And I'm guessing, Warwick, this was you for quite a while is you were a victim of your own circumstances and whatever. And so, it happened to me. And I just think psychologically that's really tough to manage over a long period of time.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Wow. I mean, thanks for sharing that. I mean, I started thinking if this book, Crucible's Gift, was a movie and they talk about the flashback, the origin, you've obviously had a number of crucibles, would that be like... If you had to do two minute origin flashback, would that be the scene going on these back roads near, I think, Vancouver, Washington and the DUI, would that be... If you had to pick one crucible story that said, "Okay, this is where I made a choice. I'm not going to cry and complain about this. I'm going to move in a positive direction."

James K:

That is such a hard question for me because I could go back to... My earliest crucible was being exposed to pornography at nine years old, 10 years old. That has a direct long-term impact.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

James K:

Right. I think that if I was to say the moment of where I realized I had probably more control of how I responded was with my dad at 13. I think that that was a point of saying, "Oh, my strength made a difference in his response." Okay. On some deep level, but yeah. But I mean Warwick, you would probably agree that yes, your big crucible was that event, but then you got married. That's a different type of... That's a healthy crucible, right? And then you have kids. That's a healthy crucible, but they're all chaotic and you feel out of control, but they're all in good.

Warwick F:

Yeah, yeah. No. I mean, it's so well said. And I want to turn here to your book, but just by way of illustration. Yes, you could say the biggest crucible for me was launching the takeover in 1987, but as listeners would know there was an earlier crucible in 11 years before in 1976, where some other family members threw my dad off as chairman of the family company. They had enough shares that they could get together and throw him off. I was 15 at the time. I mean, I loved my dad and I was just devastated. I mean, how could they do this to him? And we talk about it. They feel like there should be a shift, but don't just throw him off. And then it's like, "Well, since he's off." At that moment, I was in my parents' eyes, the heir apparent. It was crushing for me emotionally, loving my dad, but then it was like, "Uh-oh, it's now me." Not yet, but it will be. The reality of what I was headed to in my future crucible, though I didn't quite know what would happen, came then. So, yes. It was a foreshadowing of later crucibles.

Warwick F:

So, one of the things I'm fascinated by... I mean, everything you've done, I'm fascinated by, but you chose an interesting path to writing this book, The Crucible's Gift. You decide, "Well, let me interview a bunch of people," which... That people do do that when they write books, but you did it through a podcast Executive After Hours. And I loved the term you used because from what I understand, it's like, "Well, I don't want to just know who they are 9:00 to 5:00, but who are they really at home with their family? I mean, who is the real man or woman leader?

Warwick F:

And then I sense you had an idea for the book, but the exact nature of it changed partway through. So, talk a bit about just what made you decide to write this book at all and use this interesting mode of a podcast as a research method? How did this whole thing start? This passion for crucibles?

James K:

So, it did shift. I think I was going to try to write a traditional leadership book of some sort. That was my interest, but what I realized is as I was interviewing these leaders and the tagline of the podcast was, "I care about who you are, not what you do because who you are defines what you do." And as I was doing the podcast, I was more interested and curious at dissecting their problems than their job. I didn't really care about like, "Oh, what makes you a great leader?" That wasn't interesting to me because I think as you've noted, a person's story is way more interesting than being a CEO or being a bank clerk, whatever their choice of living is, which is totally fine. The exciting part is always their story. Like, "How did you get there?"

James K:

And my favorite part of the podcast was always listening to the story and then get to the end and do a wrap up of saying, "So, I saw when you were 12, this happened, and it seems like you're reflecting that at 37. Is this the case of what I'm hearing and seeing?" They'd be like, "Yes, I never thought of that." And that to me was kind of like my juice. I was like, "Yes, I'm listening well. I'm connecting the dots and they're getting someplace new and different." Not to take a page out of Dax Shepard, but I really felt like an Armchair Expert in psychology while I was doing this. And so for me, it was really fun. And so, the notion of writing about people's crucibles spun the idea of, "What made them be better at whatever they were doing? How do those crucibles help?" And that's where kind of that framework of the model came up was diving into literature, reading a bunch of books and kind of layering that with stories that kind of supported what I found.

Warwick F:

Did you almost feel like maybe forensic accountant isn't the right word, but maybe Sherlock Holmes, but somehow you were trying to understand, okay, these folks are great leaders in the holistic sense of the word. Not just the numbers, but as human beings, how they treat people. Self-aware, compassion. All things you have in your model. Where did that come from? And you start digging in their background and their story. And it felt like you had story after story where you found... Maybe it was an example or maybe it was reaction to what happened and said, "Look, I'm not going to do that." There was one case. I forget. Maybe a set of twins and one went and the other went the other. I mean, you had-

James K:

Yeah, yeah. Bridgette Mayer and her sisters.

Warwick F:

You hear that a lot in families, right. My brother and sister went one way, but I chose to go a different. I can't tell you how many times. I'm sure we both heard that, but that's fascinating. I mean, that must've been fascinating just as you dug into the sort of Sherlock Holmes. But where do all this come from?

James K:

Yeah, I love that framing though because that's what I felt like. And I also think you touched on something else that was really interesting. I wasn't defining leaders by numbers and by size of paycheck. I was defining them by human beings, right. So, really that framework I came up with, though it's couched in the terms of authentic leader, it's really about just being an authentic human. And for me, they blur together. The model was developed in a sense that every good leadership book should have a model. That's kind of what I was being told, but it made sense to me and really the core of that whole entire book is the growth mindset. That really is everything. Without it, you're stagnant. Without it, you don't embrace. You don't use it happened for me. You say it happened to me. Without a growth mindset and open to the possibilities of what could be, if you think about something differently and ask different questions.

James K:

And I found that those leaders that made the book, that made the cut, were really asking the questions of why did this happen? What is the learning? How can I use this? And so as I wrote the book, I had a clear sense of lens of what I think a good human being would look like based on... And it's super subjective. You can add 25 other features of this thing by all means, but from my perspective, that was kind of the path or spiral to authenticity, if you will.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I love that concept. I know you talk later... I think it's in chapter six. Learning about Carol Dweck and the whole growth mindset, which I think is partly what you're talking about. You say growth mindset is when a person basically continues to want to learn and design mastery likes feedback and a fixed mindset, performance, and they certainly don't like feedback. I mean, there is this choice that people make to learn from what they went through. I mean, one of the things we talk about is... For me, I had to go... Why did I end up this way? And I had to learn, "Gosh, I'm not a Rupert Murdoch take-no-prisoners chief executive. I'm a reflective advisor." So it was a terrible fit. I wasn't living my own vision. I wasn't even living my dad's vision. I was living a vision five generations, 150 years before John Fairfax was an entrepreneur. Those entrepreneurial genes kind of faded over the generations. It became extinct really. We were more like philosophy professors, not entrepreneurs. It died.

Warwick F:

I mean, there was so many lessons. It's just I was living somebody else's vision. I wasn't living in light of my design, but I could have said, "Oh woe is me," but I basically brought a lot of trouble on myself like, "Okay, this is awful." But eventually, "Now what I'm going to do?" I was 30 years old. I mean, what am I going to do now? So, yeah. You have to make a choice.

Warwick F:

So, let's just start with crucible because I love your definition there, and I think the guy wrote the foreword. He puts it this way. "James Kelley defines a crucible as a significant moment, positive or negative impact, which forces a leader to become introspective, assess their strengths and weaknesses, leading them to become more self-aware." So, I feel like one of the core theses or thesis, if you will, about a crucible is, there's an opportunity to become self-aware. So, talk about that because that feels like that is one of the core premises of your book, which I completely agree with.

James K:

Yeah. But this dovetails on really what I said before. To be self-aware, you've got to be open-minded. You've got to have a growth mindset. So, that's why... Not that the audience can see it, but there's three rings in my model. The middle ring is the crucible and the next ring out is really half and half of growth mindset versus self-awareness. And there are different types of self-awareness. There's a self-awareness of, "That's not my fault," which isn't really self-awareness. It's other awareness. And then there's self-awareness of "What is the learning that can happen in this?"

James K:

If I was to put my philosophy hat on, if you will, as I still have the entrepreneurial genes, but I'd love to be more of a philosopher, that the reality is of self-awareness is that it's the scariest thing because you might find something you don't like, but you also can quickly find something that you love. And I think it's knowing the difference is really important and embracing both. If your aim is perfection, you're going to be miserable your whole life because nothing's perfect. If your aim is just to be a better version of you, accepting what you're not great at, but work on being better at it, that's a much better way to live. It's much more tolerant and way kinder to yourself. When I talk about compassion in the book, I talk about self-compassion. it's probably one of the most important things. And I struggled at it. I am my own worst critic. I'm hardest on myself.

Gary S:

So is Warwick. That's why he's laughing. So is Warwick.

James K:

Yeah.

Gary S:

He is own worst critic.

Warwick F:

Amen.

James K:

Yeah. I mean, it's unhealthy, but it is what it is. And so, I think the goal in life is to be more self-compassionate as you get older, but it's not easy.

Gary S:

And Warwick, before we leave the subject of how crucible is defined in James's book, I looked up how crucible is defined by you in your book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, which came out on October 19th. And here's how it's described in your book and listen. Some of the same words is fascinating. This is what you wrote, Warwick. "Moments that bring us to a critical crossroads in our lives and provide invaluable opportunities to reflect, reassess, and redefine our purpose and vision in life and leadership." That's your definition of a crucible and it's... I mean, you guys are both onto something that is not just your opinion, but it's based on lived reality that so many people have been through.

Warwick F:

No, it's so true.

James K:

And just to add to that. One of the things... And Warwick, you're probably the poster child for this, by the way. One of the things that I think is most fascinating is that not everyone embraced their crucible in the moment. It might be 10 years, it might be 20 years.

Warwick F:

Right.

James K:

And so, it's never in the moment. In the moment, it's terror, it's freak, it's scary, it's this, it's that, but as time and distance goes from that, it's the ability to look back and ask that question that's really important and pertinent. And that's the thing I think that you've done over time that I've done over time. And that's what I found in the book. The person who wrote the forward, Joe Burton, he was a high flying executive by 40 years old, but he was broken. He was broken as a man, broken as a body. He was broken. And he had to go back and look through his childhood to figure out why he was how he was and uncover that crucible to redirect his life, but it took him 10, 15, 20 years to get to that point.

Warwick F:

Oh, it's so true. I mean, for a lot of the '90s, I wasn't so much blaming other people. I mean, yes, there was instability in the family for decades and I could point to all that, but for me it was just like, "How could I've been so dumb? How could I've been so dumb? And how could I think that doing a $2 billion takeover that the rest of my other family members would want to stay in a privatized company run by a 26 year old?" I mean, come on. Harvard MBA. I mean, Harvard MBA. I mean, how could I've been so dumb? So, that was a lot of it.

James K:

Was that ego?

Warwick F:

No, for me, it was more youthful naivety and idealism. It was feeling like the company is not being run along the ideals of the founder who was a person of great faith. I was too. So, not so much Jesus lives on the front pages, but more just in terms of how people are treated in the company and the quality of the newspaper, but it was just the sense of, as my parents' belief too. The vision has strayed from the founder. I wanted to see the company be well managed or better managed. So, it was more youthful, naivety, idealism with a bit of a crusader mentality. It wasn't about money or power or... It's like, "Yeah, I'll still work in the marketing planning department whilst you guys keep your titles."

Warwick F:

It was all very naive, but it was idealistic. The intentions, I think, were good, but it was a lot of bad things can happen with good intentions, but yeah. I mean, to your point about bouncing back just the self-awareness, I know for me and from my faith perspective, sort of anchored in my Christian faith, it's had to go from "I screwed up God's plan" because I felt like, "Oh, God had this plan to restore the company to the ideals of the founder." Poor theology. If he wanted it to happen, it would have despite my mistakes and stupidity, but really the core of me reclaiming my self-esteem and self-awareness is God loves me and I believe every human on the planet unconditionally. Not because of what we do, just because we're human. As humans, we have innate worth and beyond Christianity, I think most major religions, philosophies believe in the worth of a human being.

Gary S:

I want to jump in just for a second because Warwick says this all the time, James, and I never get this opportunity to have someone who understands this stuff as well as Warwick does. And you've interviewed all of these people. You've written this book about how people process their crucibles, how they move past them, move beyond them. And one of the things Warwick says that I'm always a little sad to hear him say, not that he's being authentic and he's acknowledging mistakes, but he often says I was stupid. And that always strikes me as perhaps not the emotional wisest place to be. It's great to be authentic and Warwick is one of the most authentic people I know, but that's self degradation, if you will. I don't know. In your experience and who you've talked to for our listeners, not just for Warwick, but for our listeners, is that helpful or are there better ways to go about that perhaps?

James K:

No, I think you should be harder on yourself, Warwick. I think you should be harder on yourself. I feel like that's a loaded question, Gary. Of course, it's not helpful, but it goes back to that idea of acceptance, right? You said something, Gary, that was really interesting. And I know you weren't trying to be flippant with the words like they move on from crucibles, whatever. To me, you don't move on, you accept them. And I know it's a small difference in language, but it really matters in this because you can never leave them behind. That's a scar on your back, right.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

James K:

And Gary, you have your scars and you shared a little bit of your story with me when we did a pre-interview. We all have scars and it's the ownership of them. That's the brilliance. That's the best part because that ownership is the experience that allows you to be a better version of yourself.

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

James K:

And so, I never want to minimize my crucibles. I mean, geez, I've lived on four continents and I've dragged my kids to two different continents in the last five years. Their crucibles are equally their scars on their back. Good or bad as it might be. And so, I think they're essential. I think, again, the point I keep going back to and I think is so relevant, and it drives the self-awareness is the ability to accept them for the goodness in them, not the badness in them. You hear of stories of women and men who've been abused or raped or whatever, and those that say, "Hey, you know what? That was a blessing because of X. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't great. I would never want it on anybody else, but it made me a better version of myself because of Y."

James K:

And those people, I love so much because they have every right to hate and detest and be negative, but they choose not to. And for me... You can see that gets me really fired up. For me, it's so important for our world to stop hanging on to what's wrong, right? We just hang on to all the crap and all the disagreements and all, and it's just not helpful for anybody. And I'm going to step down off my soap box and we can...

Warwick F:

No, no, no. No, I think what you said is just so profound. I want listeners to reflect on this because one of the things you talk about is just this growth in gratitude. And part of that obviously is acceptance. And then seeing some blessings that have come through that. I mean, we've interviewed maybe 70 plus guests of every kind of background, gender, race, from a Navy SEAL that was paralyzed in a training accident, to victims of abuse, business failure, every kind of crucible you can imagine. And the journey back is always the same and very much in line with what you write is acceptance, but somehow finding meaning in it, finding purpose. I mean, we had a woman on a few weeks ago and we have a few Australians. Funnily enough, I don't know why we have so many Australians on the podcast.

Gary S:

Yeah. There's been five Australians and one person from Wisconsin where I'm from.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

James K:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I don't know why that happens, but anyway, she was paralyzed and was diagnosed as a quadriplegic at age 13 in a diving accident in an above ground pool. Parents kept saying... Her name is Stacey Copas. "Stacey, stop doing that. Stop doing that." You know what kids when they're 13, they're not going to listen to listen to their parents. Well, this had lifelong consequences. So, obviously, she went through years of, "Oh my gosh. What did I do?" And had some substance issues, which she talks about, which understandable, but she now says that what she went through was a gift.

Warwick F:

And you've obviously heard this before, but this is stunning. How could a diagnosis of a quadriplegic be a gift? But so many of them, they see blessings in what they went through. It's only recently that I'm thinking maybe what I went through was a blessing or a gift because, I don't know, a few weeks, few months ago, I said it can be useful, but a gift, but...

Gary S:

That's exactly what you said because I put it in a press release and you're like, "I don't think it was a gift."

Warwick F:

Yeah. So, finally, I'm trying to grow and learn myself, but for me really the turning point just by way of analogy was 2008. And again, listeners would have heard this, but 2008 at my church, the pastor... It was like a 2000 plus evangelical church. The pastor was giving a message on the life of David. Saul was trying to kill him because he was doing a good job. This day and age if your boss doesn't like what you're doing because you're showing them up, they typically don't kill you, but they did back then.

James K:

I'm glad we've modernized our employment situations.

Warwick F:

It's like, "Oh, I'm fired? I can take being fired. Just don't kill me." But anyways, he's feeling bad about himself. So, he wanted a sermon illustration of a righteous person falsely persecuted. Well that's not me. I made a lot of my own mistakes, but the point of the story is I shared my story in about seven to 10 minutes of growing up in Australia in a big family media business, and nobody had ever heard of, but obviously Australia's a long way away. But weeks and months after, people came up to me and said, "Warwick, what you shared was so helpful." Well, how many former media moguls are out there in the audience? None? It's one thing to say you're a cancer survivor or abusive survivor or-

James K:

There is one. I mean, there is one in the audience.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Me.

James K:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

Sadly some crucibles so many people have gone through. Point of the whole story is if by sharing my story and writing my book, which was unbelievably painful, it took years to write because imagine writing about in exhaustive detail about your worst experiences, which you've done some of. So, you get it, but if my pain can help others, now that motivated me. I talk about. There's some healing in being able to use your pain to help others. Yeah, all that's to say is, as you can see a blessing and a gift in what you've been through, that was part of my journey back. I mean, I'm assuming that's your experience with the people that you've interviewed and just the benefit of seeing what you've been through is having...

James K:

Can I comment on something you said that was really interesting?

Warwick F:

Yeah.

James K:

This epic failure... Let's be clear. It was an epic failure.

Warwick F:

Sure.

James K:

Right. Crucible. You're talking 10... How many years later before... 2008 from that.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

James K:

Was it 20 years, 10 years-

Warwick F:

Well, it was 1990 that the company went under. So, I don't know whatever that is. 18 years later on.

James K:

So, almost 20 years, right.

Warwick F:

Yeah, yeah.

James K:

So, what that says to me though is that you never had acceptance, right?

Warwick F:

Maybe.

James K:

If it's still painful for you to talk about it eight, 20 years later and write about it, then there's that level of acceptance of it is what it is and to move on, right? So, for me, as we kind of open the show, my acceptance of my failures happened pretty quick. I may blame myself for them, but I accept it like it is what it is. And so, for me, that's a great sign that if you're now shifting from... Kind of it happened to me too. It's a gift that happened for me. It's unpacking and unraveling that package and pulling out those gifts and showing them, which is what it sounds like you were starting to do now.

Warwick F:

Yeah.

James K:

That's my point about... Time doesn't care about your crucible. It's you have to make the decision of how you're going to open that gift or not.

Warwick F:

And I feel like acceptance doesn't for most people... Certainly, for me, it didn't happen overnight. It was a growth process. Step by step. I mean, there was a time in the '90s when I got invitation to Oxford reunions and Harvard Business School reunions. I wouldn't go. I was too embarrassed. I'd feel like I'd be like a leper. Unclean, leave the town. And I eventually went to one and it was okay because there are other Harvard MBAs have actually had business failures. Who knew? But maybe not quite so epic, but...

James K:

Yeah.

Warwick F:

Yeah. So, I'm just trying to... I mean, there's so much in this. Obviously we talked a bit about crucibles, self-awareness. You talk about the public versus the private self, which I get. The public persona, but round out some of these other things you have because you've got integrity, compassion, relatableness, great word, learning, which you've talked about. What are some of the other parts of the model that really are the keys to being an authentic leader?

James K:

Yeah. So, to unpack that a little bit, the compassion to me is really important. And initially the book started with empathy as the main core idea, but I kind of said, compassion means you want to remove that person's pain. You want to really try to figure how you can help them. And in doing compassion, that's a level of selflessness. And in selflessness, there's actually joy and giving is joy. And so, I kind of wanted to make that leap to say, "If you really want to be a better version of yourself, give yourself to someone else in a way that's helpful for them."

James K:

When we speak about relatableness and integrity, I think integrity goes without saying, but I'm really narrow on integrity and this is probably a reflection on my life. The biggest thing I saw and I see in business and I see in interactions is, follow through with the request you made or the promise you have. Too often people give themselves outs. "Yeah, I'll email you later." And then they don't. And it's those little tiny micro things that actually have a huge weight on how people perceive you. I hate the phrase, "Hey, let's meet up for a drink." "Hey, let's go get coffee," but you don't really mean it. You're not going to really do it. Then why say it? And then it becomes this parlance of it's totally acceptable that you're never going to see that person again, but you're going to say these things because it's the polite thing to say. And I think there's just other ways to go about not falsifying the intent, if you will.

James K:

So, for me, integrity is really the micro things that are the most important. I think macro, yes we can agree. Killing is bad. Yes. I think that's pretty clear. So, there's the macro levels of integrity, but the relatableness one for me is really the most important one. As a PhD in consumer psychology, a lot of this was based on research that was backed up by interviews. And what I found was the value in relationships far out exceed anything else, and I use a phrase in the book called micro-moments of meaning. And for me, it's such a critical piece of who I am, and I'm not always great at it, but the premise of micro-moments of meaning is that when you engage in a conversation one-on-one, two on one, when you leave that conversation leaving the other people smiling or laughing, there's a neurological impact that happens on their brain. And the research suggests that when you leave a conversation with two people and they're smiling or laughing, they're more likely to replicate that with the next person they talk to.

James K:

And so, it becomes this spider web of positivity that you can embed in someone by creating that micro-moment of meaning. It may not mean a lot for you, but it could mean a lot for them. And that kind of goes back to the compassion side of being of service of others. That's my Jesuit background. Being of service of others. And so, the relatableness is about creating those micro-moments of meaning that have a long-term impact because that's also the last way they remember you, right? So, that smile, that's their last memory. That's their most immediate interaction with you. So, that means that that's how they're going to frame you in their mind as the funny, nice, kind, happy person. And so, that's really important as a way to leave somebody in a moment.

Gary S:

I am going to try to interject a micro-moment of meaning here by saying... And hopefully it will leave you with a smile on your face, James, when I'm done talking, but the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. It is time to begin preparing the cabin for landing, but before I do that, I would be remiss if I did not give you a chance, James, to let listeners know how they can find out more about you, the services you offer and particularly where they can find your book because, obviously, you and Warwick traffic in some of the same stuff, and there's great wisdom in both. So, how can they find out more about you?

James K:

Yeah. So, the book is on Amazon. It's got the digital... The audio book is great. I hired three actors to come in and act out the different scenes and the different stories in the book. So, that makes the book really fun and engaging because it's not just a voice. So, I really encourage the audio book out of all of them as you do it, but the book is on Amazon.

James K:

In terms of me, you can always reach out to me at jkelley, K-E-L-L-E-Y, @qchange.com. It's the letter "Q" and then "change.com". As for what I do and what we do as a company, we're really in the business of impacting people at the point of choice. And so, what does that mean? Our product or solution helps leaders be better at their job by giving them behavioral prompts, soft skill prompts immediately before a meeting. But then after the meeting, we're asking them, "Did you do this?" We ask those around them. "Did you see this?" And we allow them to grow in the flow of work, not intrusively, just twice a day. But what's great about it from an individual level is that you can get that repetitive behavior prompting that you need to be better at being a better version of yourself.

James K:

In our solution, we have a whole authentic leadership area. So, if someone is trying to be an authentic leader, they have those options to work on. Beyond DEI and communication and strategy. So, that's what we do. We're at Microsoft Teams, and that's our main platform that we sell our product in. So, yeah. It's awesome. And we've had a ton of great feedback around it. And I wouldn't tell you if we had that feedback anyway, so don't worry about it.

Warwick F:

Oh, good. Well, thank you so much, James. I mean, I was just thinking as you were talking about integrity, compassion, relatableness that I often think to me with great leaders there's something that fuels them, not just because it's a good way to be successful in the holistic sense of the word, but it comes from a value. It could be a faith perspective or maybe an example from childhood, but I know for me one of my highest values is treating everybody with dignity and respect. And so, I am not perfect. I have my bad days like we all do, and I can be cranky and obstinate, but I really try to know what's happening. And so, if that's what you're talking about with relatableness. "Gee, I'm sorry. How was the weekend? Oh, your kid was sick? Oh, wow. Really? That's awful." The next day. "How is your daughter? Is she better now? How was that sore throat? It was strep. Oh, really?"

Warwick F:

I mean, you ask. You follow up, not because you try to be successful, because it's the right thing to do out of your set of values. If it's out of your intrinsic values, you're not going to forget because you will do it because you want to do it. With integrity, I love your definition. Do plus say equals trust. Again, that comes out of values that if you say you're going to do something, then do it because it's the right thing to do. If you say you're going to call somebody, well then... I mean, it comes out of and being compassionate again. I love that sense. Empathy is fine, but compassionate is like empathy and action, if you will.

Warwick F:

So, all these things relate to us. I don't know if it's a worldview, but just a desire. A certain set of values. And maybe even... I guess my sort of last question as we sort of try and sum all this up, which is a challenge because there's so much here. With Crucible's Gift, what's the biggest lesson that you would want people to have as they read this book and reflect on it? What's the biggest lesson you would offer people in Crucible's Gift?

Gary S:

It's good you're making him think. That's good Warwick.

James K:

Yeah. Sorry. Is this silence awkward for everyone?

Warwick F:

Not at all.

Gary S:

No. The plane is just circling the runway. We're good.

James K:

Everyone's seatbelts are buckled. Yeah. I think the biggest lesson I want someone to get is be open. Be open to the possibility of what if there's a different narrative you could tell yourself. What if there's a different question you could be asking yourself? What if the crucible that has held you back is untethered and is actually that opportunity? So, just what if?

Gary S:

And that was the sound of the plane touching down. There you go. Please gather up your belongings and we'll see you the next time. Listeners, thank you for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I have some homework for you. Rather than takeaways from the episode, I have some homework for you. I love this idea that James talked about, about micro-moments of meaning. So, the homework from those of us at Beyond the Crucible is go out today and find at least three opportunities that you can leave someone with a micro-moment of meaning. Flip back to the podcast, back up, hear James describe it, so you know exactly what you're looking to do, but let's do some of that to each other. I think we can really turn around a lot of people's days if we do that and it connects to and... Talk about dating ourselves. The old shampoo commercials and they told two friends and so on and so on and so on. If everybody passes that along, it could make a great impact.

Gary S:

So, until the next time we are together, please do remember this. As we've discussed here, your crucible experiences are painful and they're not easily overcome in most cases. You've heard us talk about it in every episode of the show. And you've heard James and Warwick talk about it today, but they can be overcome. The key is your perspective on what the crucible means to you. Did it happen to you or did something happen for you? Can you learn the lessons of it, apply those lessons and move forward? Because when you do, it's not the end of your story. It's not the worst chapter of your story. It's a new chapter that can become the best chapter of your story because where it leads in the end as you follow the road on that journey is to a life of significance.

Chris Singleton’s young life changed in a horrifying instant in 2015, when his mother was shot to death along with eight others in the Mother Emmanuel Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. Singleton made headlines nationwide in the days after the tragedy when he announced he had forgiven the shooter – a white supremacist who targeted the predominantly African-American congregation in the hopes of starting a race war.

Singleton has dedicated himself since then to emphatically, dramatically denying the killer’s twisted hope – speaking coast to coast about the power of forgiveness, inclusion and getting to know, understand and love those who look and think differently than we do.

To learn more about Chris Singleton, visit www.chrissingleton.com

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.

Chris S:

Forgiveness is huge and has changed my life, but I don't believe in forgiving and forgetting, right? I don't believe you can just forgive and forget and that's it. No, I'll never forget that my mom was shot eight times while she was praying. I'll never forget that, but I can move forward in my life, right? So I've forgiven and been able to move forward, not forgetting, but now the mission that I have a simple, is to get people of all different races and religions as well, skin-colored background, everything to live in harmony. So harmony for me and unity for me doesn't mean we all sit down and listen to the same country song, right? Doesn't mean we're all sitting by the campfire listening to Chris Young or somebody. Maybe you want to listen to Chris Brown or Usher.

Chris S:

That's not what it means for me, but there's a certain level of respect that we have for human beings because we say, "You know what? Everybody has a story behind their opinion."

Gary S:

A big mission to be sure, but it takes a big mission to meet a big challenge. And this one was born of a big crucible. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show. Our guest this week is Chris Singleton, a former Major League Baseball prospect, whose young life changed in a horrifying instance in 2015 when his mother was shot to death along with eight others in the Mother Emanuel Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. Singleton made headlines nationwide in the days after the tragedy when he announced he had forgiven the shooter, a white supremacist who targeted the predominantly African American congregation in the hopes of starting a race war.

Gary S:

Singleton has dedicated himself since then to emphatically dramatically denying the killer's twisted hope, speaking coast to coast about the power of forgiveness, inclusion and getting to know, understand and love those who look and think differently than we do.

Warwick F:

Chris, thank you so much for being here. It really is an honor to have you because your message of forgiveness and reconciliation, given what you and your family have been through, it's hard to really understand and fathom how that could be your message given many would say, "How is that possible?" But before we get to, obviously, what would seem the pivotal moment, that horrendous moment in Charleston in 2015, just tell us a bit about maybe the backstory of yourself and your family, mom, dad. What was life for you growing up, hopes, dreams? What was life pre-2015 like for Chris Singleton?

Chris S:

Yeah, well, first, thank you guys so much for having me on. I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, was born there and raised there until I moved to Charleston in about middle school. And for me, I was coming up and playing sports. Both of my parents were athletes in college and so that had been passed on to me. And I was playing baseball, which I didn't realize that there weren't a ton of black kids playing baseball, so we moved to Charleston, South Carolina. But I was playing baseball, absolutely loved it and I fell in love with the sport. And my only two things that I wanted in life when I was coming up in middle school, elementary school, was number one to get drafted by a professional team, didn't have to be the Cubs, the Yankees or anybody. I just wanted to be drafted by a team.

Chris S:

And number two, I wanted to buy my mom a really nice car. My mom was an educator and she would always see these really nice cars driving by and say, "Man, she's going to buy herself one one day," and I was thinking in the back of my head, "No need to mama. I'm going to do it for you." So that's all I wanted pre-2015, I was just a baseball player, was raised in the church. So the faith was there, but ultimately, man, I just wanted to play sports, make it to the big leagues.

Warwick F:

Well, that's a great dream. I often say it helps to pick your genes. It sounds like you had some athletic parents which obviously helped. So what was life like at home? Do you have siblings? How many siblings do you have?

Chris S:

Yeah, man, so life for me, I would say we've been throwing the word around privilege I think over the last year too. And so I was pretty privileged growing up, even as a young black man, right? I was privileged because both my parents went to college and I was privileged because I didn't grow up missing meals by any means, right? And my mother was an educator. My father worked at the school as well in special ed classes where he taught. And so I didn't really miss meals. My dad was a teacher, but one thing about my father and my home life was that he was a really, really heavy drinker, really, really bad. And so he's an alcoholic growing up and it put a strain on his relationship with me a little bit, but more so with my little brother and sister.

Chris S:

My little brother, he's seven years younger than me. My little sister's four years younger than me. And so growing up, we had a pretty decent life, except for my dad really struggled with alcoholism and he was in and out of prison with multiple DUIs where he's put people's lives in danger. But that's what life was like for me growing up. I used my sport as my getaway and was fortunate enough to have my mom as my number one fan in the stands screaming at the top of her lungs.

Warwick F:

So obviously, for what I understand with alcoholism, sometimes there's uncertainty as to what dad are they going to have, like the fun dad, "He's going to play ball with me," or the dad that's not quite so fun. And so I would assume, without getting into all the details, was that some of your experience that-

Chris S:

Yes, so for a while, I didn't know the sickness of alcoholism. I didn't know anything about it. All I knew was that my dad couldn't just drink one beer, right? He'd have to drink 20. He couldn't just have one drink with his buddies. He just would keep drinking. Ultimately, I think I was in eighth or ninth grade and I remember looking at my dad, asking him, "Why are you doing this, right? You're putting a strain on your relationship with our mom. You don't have a relationship with my little brother because you're always drunk around him." And he looked at me and a grown man, he started crying and said, "Chris, I can't stop." And that's one of my perspective on alcohol changed a little bit for my dad because I felt like even if you really wanted to, he was so sick, that it was really, really tough for him to will himself to not drink anymore.

Warwick F:

Oh, my gosh, he was at almost like not quite a prison of his own making, almost with the disease, I guess, that he knew it was not good for him and his family, but he couldn't find a way out, which it must have been soul crushing to know what's happening, but not know how to get out, how to stop.

Gary S:

As we move on to get to this story that brings us here. It's interesting to hear you say that, Chris, because it's clearly, and I come from an alcoholic background my own, so I know the instability that that breeds in people and I imagine even more so your relationship with your mom, that was a source of true stability for you as you were growing up. Every boy loves his mom and loves his dad and draws strength from that, but really you hinted at it, you mentioned it. She was at all your games, but the emotional support, the strength that you drew from her had to have been great.

Chris S:

It was huge, man. You're talking about a mom who ultimately became a single mother of three after my father couldn't put the bottle down and was taking care of us, still coming to games, taking us to practices and number one fan. And we definitely grew closer for sure.

Warwick F:

So it sounds like she was the rock of your family, that life is uncertain, life as we'll get into is not fair. In the last couple of years, it's more evident than ever that life is not fair or just or equitable. But despite all of what's happening in the world, you felt like your mother was the rock you could depend on. It sounds like she had a strong faith. She was somebody that you probably admired greatly. Is that a fair assessment?

Chris S:

Definitely. She was the smartest person I knew. When she was taken away from me, she was getting her PhD. So she was very intelligent, both in the books and street smarts, right? She's from Newark, New Jersey, so she grew up in the project, so she knew everything, man. She was that kind of person for us, but she was loving, right? She had a pretty rough background coming up, but man, she still loved us like nobody else. So she was definitely a rock that you speak of.

Warwick F:

So let's talk about 2015, horrific day for the country, but a horrific day for you personally. So just talk about that day and just in case there's anybody that doesn't know, help listeners understand that day, that event.

Chris S:

We talked about it or at least you did a little bit off air, the unthinkable or overcoming something that you never could imagine what happened to you and that's what June 17, 2015 was for me. I just had a great freshman season playing baseball. I was dating my high school sweetheart for multiple years. We're married now, my high school sweetheart, so life was really good until that night when I actually got a phone call on my phone. And a lady ultimately told me, "Hey, Chris, you got to come here down to the church right now. Something bad happened." And so I got and raced down to my church and saw that there was something that wasn't just my mom didn't get just in a car wreck or something. I knew it was something huge because there was police cars, there was ambulances, there was yellow caution tape everywhere, halfway up the block.

Chris S:

But I finally got to my church and an officer told me, "Hey, you can't come inside right now, but I can show you where you need to be." And he walked me to a hotel room about two blocks away and he looked at me. He said, 'I can't tell you anything right now. We don't have things confirmed, but there was a shooting that happened at the church tonight." Later on that night, I realized where I found out that my mother and eight other people had been shot and killed at Mother Emanuel Church AME in Downtown. It wasn't until about a day later that I found out that my mom was murdered because of the color of her skin.

Chris S:

There was a young man by the name of Dylann Roof who wanted to start a race war in this country. And so in his mind, he thought by killing nine people in a historically black church, it would be the divide that we needed or that he thought we needed to start a race war in this country.

Warwick F:

It's hard to digest ... everything you just said, somebody that wanted ... Some white supremacist, a neo-Nazi, just from what I've read, obviously, had a lot of issues, one would imagine. And there's your mother, a Bible-believing good mother, good person, she's going to church to a Bible study. And you tend to think of the church as a safe place. There's a lot of places that aren't safe in this world, but the church should be a place of sanctuary, of healing, of hope. And there she is, trying to be that and that happened. There's probably a million thoughts going through your mind, but what ... And at that point, I think you mentioned it was you and your younger siblings, I think you mentioned your dad wasn't in the home at that point, and so it was you and your younger siblings. What were the thoughts that were flooding through your mind in those first few days?

Chris S:

Immediately after, there wasn't any thoughts about the first few days. It was just like, "What am I going to do now?" right? We lost our mom. She's everything. She's our provider, protector, the priest. She's everything for our family. And so like most people do, I put up this facade of being super okay, right? I was all right. I cried that night, but the next day, I remember we didn't really sleep much. But I looked at my brother and sister and said, "Man, I have to show them what strength looks like," and I realized later that that wasn't what strength looked like. That was just me faking as if I wasn't a human being, but that's what immediately happened after.

Chris S:

I didn't even give myself time to grieve for myself. I just thought, "Man, my brother's 12, my sister's 15 and here I am, 18 about to be 19, and I got to take care of them." And so my immediate thoughts were, "How do I do things my mom was doing, provide and protect them, be a priest to them?" More than anything, I was just scared.

Warwick F:

So you're probably thinking, "I don't have time to complain, be angry, grieve. I got to put food on the table, a roof over the head of my younger brother and sister. I've got to be the leader of this family," and it sounds like your mom was. Do you stuff your anger and grief down like, "I don't have time for this. I got stuff to do, people to care for"?

Chris S:

I think mainly I was just in so much shock. I didn't even think about any other emotions. It was just, "What do I do next?" I have no clue what happens next. But I actually forgave my mother's killer the day after she was murdered. And so when people ask me about how that happened, not even 48 hours after my mom was taken away, I forgave my mother's killer, I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't God because it was, right? I can't even pretend like it wasn't for that it'd be placed in my heart. Because I'm 18 years old, my mom's killed and she's everything to me and I forgave ...

Chris S:

And when the words came out of my mouth of forgiving my mother's killer, I had no clue what I was saying, the magnitude that it would be, but I know now that it was the Lord using me in that time. I used to say it's my mom speaking through me, right? Because I didn't know, right? I don't hear some people say, "God told me this," and I'm like, "I'd never heard the voice of God, but I felt like, man, that was God speaking through me." That happened and I didn't know why, but now I do.

Gary S:

What was the format in which you spoke those words? What was the milieu? How did that come out of you?

Chris S:

So after my mom was killed, there's actually a prayer vigil at my high school the very next afternoon. And so we all went to the prayer vigil and I remember I didn't sleep at all the night before. Actually, I slept next to my brother and he couldn't sleep, so I couldn't sleep. But we got to the prayer vigil and high school full of people. I remember actually there was a reporter, I think, from the BBC or somewhere. It wasn't in the US, somewhere else. And they came up to me and they said, "Chris, how do you even feel about your mother's killer?"

Chris S:

And to be honest, I didn't even know his name or anything. I didn't know anything. I just know he just had gotten picked up. And I remember the words came out of my mouth and says, "Hey, we already forgive him." And my sister is right next to me, she looks at me like, "Are you crazy? What? We forgive who, right?" I said, "We already forgive him for what he's done." After I did that, we had a prayer vigil at my baseball college. And at this time, I'm just going where I'm being told to go. I tried to stay off my phone. I didn't want to watch any TV because I knew what was on the news. I knew what the texts were coming in. I already knew what was coming in. But I remember my baseball coach in college at the time said, "Chris, we have this conference or this press conference for you at our stadium and we think it'd be good for you to go to it."

Chris S:

And so I went there and then I said, after a ton of questions, I just said, "I think that love is stronger than hate. So if we just love the way my mom would, the hate won't be anywhere close to where love is." And after I said those words, I actually was able to sleep that night. The next morning, I woke up and I think there was 16,000 more followers than I had the day before on my social medias and that clip was played all over. And that's how things escalated in the media after I forgave my mother's killer.

Warwick F:

That is truly remarkable. There aren't too many 18-year-olds within 48 hours say, "I forgive my mother's killer," and then to say, "Love is stronger than hate." That is some of the most profound words probably anybody's ever uttered. To say that at 18, that's remarkable. As you look back in that, I know you mentioned the hand of the Lord, which makes sense to me, but how did all that happen because that's not humanly to have some white supremacist kill your mother and try to cause some racial divide to say, "I forgive you," and that isn't normal? There aren't too many people that would do that and still less would they say, "Love conquers hate." They would say, "Okay, let's go." So many wars over the centuries have happened because you take one of mine, I'll take ... They just go at it for hundreds of years. So how did all that happen?

Chris S:

Yeah, man, to be honest, I try to put it into worldly terms all the time when I speak corporately, right? I try to leave God out of it. I should try to, but it's really hard. I'd be lying if I say-

Warwick F:

This is a faith-friendly place, so you say what's on your heart.

Chris S:

I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I didn't. I prayed right before I gave that press conference with a guy by the name of Pastor John Davis, who's a pastor of my college. It's a Christian university, so he's a pastor of our college. He actually has brain cancer right now, so I've been praying for him every single morning, every single night, as we speak, but we prayed, I said, "John, I don't know what I'm supposed to say," and he said, "Chris, I think the Lord's going to speak through you. Just go up there and the God is going to speak through you." And when I said those words, I didn't know until probably two years after. Man, you know what? That prayer that we prayed, that's exactly what happened."

Chris S:

And so now because of me forgiving my mother's killer, I don't constantly think about him. I don't need to or you know what else that does it? He's never said, "I'm sorry," or he's never apologized for it, but you know what forgiveness does for me, I don't need an apology. I don't. Would it be really cool to have one? Yes, because not everybody, their heart's not in the same place that is for mine, right? I wasn't the only one that was affected, but I don't need him to say I'm sorry. I realized the power of forgiveness and why God placed it on my heart. There was a student that asked me a question after I was done speaking one time. They said, "Hey, well, where's your mother's killer being held, right? We looked on the news. We saw that he got the death penalty. Where's he being held?"

Chris S:

And you know what? I said, "I had no idea." I didn't know. I couldn't even answer him. And I realized it was forgiveness that allowed me to be in a space where I've moved forward in my life, right? I miss my mom every single day, but moving forward, forgiveness allows me to not constantly think, "I need to get revenge. I need to know what he's doing every second of every single day." And so in the moment, I didn't know how powerful it was, but now I see, man. Forgiveness has freed me from so many different things and I'm grateful to God that he's done that for me.

Warwick F:

It's funny, we talk about forgiveness a fair amount on this podcast, Beyond the Crucible, and it's easy for me, not easy, but I can say this, but it's only you would be able to understand it far better than I ever could. But this phrase we talk about is that anger and bitterness puts you in a prison in a sense. When you're angry and bitter, the other person wins in some sense. When you forgive, it takes you out of that prison. And again, I know this will be obvious to you, but forgiveness doesn't mean that what was done was okay. It doesn't mean that there shouldn't be consequences, restitution, what have you. So forgiveness doesn't mean it's all okay. It's not okay. It doesn't mean that there shouldn't be consequences, which I'm sure you would agree, but forgiveness is just ...

Warwick F:

I often say forgiveness is more than anything. It's for you. It's for Chris. It's for your brother and sister. Because it's like your life matters. The last thing I imagine your mother would want is for you to spend your whole life in anger and bitterness. And I don't know, seek some other outlet, whether it's alcohol or whatever for your anger. That would be, I'm sure, the last thing she would want for you and your siblings. So I know that probably makes sense to you, but help listeners understand in your words why forgiveness doesn't mean that it's okay, but why forgiveness is so important for you and your family.

Chris S:

Yeah, you mentioned it that the quote where it says forgiveness is setting a prisoner free, only to later realize that you, yourself, are the prisoner, because a lot of times people will wrong us and they'll go living their lives as if nothing happened, whereas we're the ones holding like, "They don't even know what they did or they don't even know what it did to me and they're living their lives, right?" So forgiveness doesn't mean, "Hey, I'm letting them off the hook," which is what people think, "Hey, if I forgive him, I'm letting him off the hook." No, I'm letting myself off the hook. I don't have to constantly think about how I'm getting revenge. I don't have to constantly think about how I can get back at them, or in my case, forgiveness has allowed me to now want to put a stop to what has happened to my mom and to eight others that night, right?

Chris S:

So if I wasn't able to forgive, there's no way I'd be in a space to say, "Now I'm taking this upon myself as my mission to spread unity, whether it's in our schools, in our businesses, whether it's in our churches." If I hadn't been in a place to forgive in my heart, there's no way I'd be able to do it. But I think the biggest thing that people see with forgiveness, they think it's a sign of weakness. "Because man, if this person does something wrong to me and I don't retaliate, that just shows that I'm weak," is that is what people think, when in actuality, that's probably the hardest thing to do which is forgive somebody, but it's also the strongest thing and the most beneficial thing for you and your family because it's not just about you when you forgive somebody.

Chris S:

Like you said it, if I were to constantly think about getting back on my mother's killer, I wouldn't be the husband I am today, I wouldn't be the father that I am today. I still be constantly thinking, "How am I going to get revenge on my mother's killer?"

Gary S:

And it's a great source of strength. It's a great indication of strength to forgive. I was reading in a story where you gave an interview and you quoted Proverbs 24:24 as a favorite verse of yours and that says, "If you faint in the face of adversity, your strength is small," and apply to your story, what you've just been describing, that was hardly fainting in the face of adversity to forgive, Dylann Roof. It was strength and you showed that your strength was not small in doing that and the thing that, when I heard you, as you described it and I've heard this story before, obviously, when I heard you describe that he wanted to start a race war, the thing that gives me hope, that encourages me about your story, that impresses me about your story is that he didn't get what he wanted from you, you're being able to forgive him, right?

Gary S:

He wanted to foment this thing and you denied him that. That wasn't the reason why you did it, but in standing on your strength and following your mother's strength, I read elsewhere where you said, "If the roles were reversed, your mom would have forgiven if it was you who was in that church at that day. She would have forgiven the killer as well." You denied him that thing that he said he wanted, and to me, that is both hopeful and extraordinarily strong of you.

Chris S:

It's also the exact opposite happened, right? So I love where I live in Charleston. I still live here. We've got tons of history, both good and bad. When it comes to slavery, that was here. And I think it was 60 or 70% of all slaves came through Charleston at one point. And so there's definitely tons of bad history here, but I'll never forget, after my mom was killed, there were people of all different ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds that were locking arms together. We weren't asking, "Hey, what did they do to deserve this?" or, "What happened before this?" No, there was none of that. We locked arms. We marched together. We said, "Wrong is wrong and hate doesn't have a place here."

Chris S:

And so I absolutely love that and it's almost as if not only did he not get what he wanted by starting the race war, the opposite happened and we all came together.

Warwick F:

That is the best victory when you can oppose what he's trying to do. It's easy to get angry and bitter, but you think about what would that do to your wife. I think you mentioned you have young kids do you now or-

Chris S:

Yeah, I've got a son and I also took care of my brother and sister for-

Warwick F:

So can you imagine? What tends to happen is if you're angry and bitter against the world, anger doesn't just stop in one direction. You've experienced what anger can happen through alcoholism. I'm sure your dad didn't intend to be angry towards your mom and your younger brother and sister. I'm sure it wasn't his intention, but when you're angry, irrespective of the cause, what we typically do is we take it out on the people we most love. And so people don't realize anger and bitterness is like, "I'm just going to be angry and bitter towards white people or towards white supremacists." "Okay, let's forget what God would think of it." Even assuming you could do that, it won't stop there because anger and bitterness, you can't chain anger and bitterness, you can't corral it, you can't damn it. It flows everywhere and people don't realize that.

Warwick F:

Why would you want to hurt the people you must love? Which you inevitably would. So you chose, to me, that the bravest and the strongest path, the most godly path, but also the path that most ensured his agenda wouldn't succeed. So talk a bit about what you do with this whole forgiveness and reconciliation because I think that's so powerful. There's a lot of incidents in history of being angry at each other for hundreds of years, whether it's Protestants and Catholics in Ireland or. There's many incidents of that.

Warwick F:

Then there's a few of, as you would be very familiar with, the Nelson Mandela in South Africa and having almost, I forget what he calls it, not reconciliation but he wanted justice, but yet, he wanted to see if, which has not been easy, I do realize, but see if South Africa could come together. He did his level best despite being in prison for many decades. That's an incredible example of relatively modern day somebody that's stood for reconciliation and forgiveness. Talk about what that means to you, what your mission around reconciliation and forgiveness is.

Chris S:

Yeah, and I want to be practical for all listeners as well. You know what? Forgiveness is huge and it's changed my life, but I don't believe in forgiving and forgetting. I don't believe you can just forgive and forget and that's it. No, I'll never forget that my mom was shot eight times while she was praying. I'll never forget that, but I can move forward in my life, right? So I've forgiven and been able to move forward, not forgetting, but now the mission that I have is simple is to get people of all different races, religions as well, skin-colored background like everything to live in harmony.

Chris S:

So harmony for me and unity for me doesn't mean we all sit down and listen to the same country song, right? It doesn't mean we're all sitting by the campfire listening to Chris Young or somebody. Maybe you want to listen to Chris Brown or Usher. That's not what it means for me, but there's a certain level of respect that we have for human beings, because we say, "You know what? Everybody has a story behind their opinion." So for instance, everybody has a stance on something, right? If you don't have a stance on it, then you probably haven't experienced anything that deals with it yet or you weren't taught to have a stance on it, right?

Chris S:

And I think a lot of people, they ultimately judge people by their stance without realizing, "Hey, there's a story behind their opinion, just like there's a story behind mine." So for a young black man, for me, I share with you guys my story how my mom was shot eight times while she was praying. And so when I say my stance is that I don't like guns, you know what? There's empathy in saying, "You know what? I can see why Chris doesn't like guns because his mom was shot eight times while she was praying. It's pretty clear, clear and simple, right?" And then when I hear somebody say, "Hey, Chris, I grew up around guns my whole life." They say, "My grandmother had a gun. My grandfather had a gun, right? My preacher who's preaching on Sunday mornings had a gun in the pulpit. That's just the way that grew up, why I love guns."

Chris S:

You know what? I can understand when he went hunting his whole life and now he still goes hunting and he feels like his grandfather's still there with him, even though his grandfather's gone. So going out hunting, shooting guns is a way that he feels spiritually connected. There's empathy because I know his story behind it, but I think the problem, Warwick, is, and Gary as well, I think when people say, "I see your stance. I see that I don't agree with you, but I don't care about your story. I don't even want to hear about it," and that, unfortunately, is what happens nowadays. And now what I'm trying to reconcile and get people to live in harmony and just love one another, you don't always have to like one another.

Gary S:

Right.

Chris S:

You don't always have to like one another, but there should be a level of respect for one another. And when I say the respect, I think that's love for me.

Warwick F:

That's again so profound. I often think it's a lot harder to hate somebody that you know if you know their story.

Chris S:

That's good.

Warwick F:

You empathize with them. It's like he doesn't mean you have to, as you say, like the same kind of country music or agree on guns. I grew up in Australia which is culturally very different than the US on, for instance, guns. It is not a big divide on that issue in Australia. I get it coming to this country, it's like, "Oh, okay." It's culturally very different, but so much, whether it's racism, slavery, the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, it's all because of, "These people are different and I don't know any of these people and because they're different, they must be bad," and it goes on and on. But if you actually meet them, it's like, "Hey, they're human. They have fears and hopes and dreams just like me. Just because they don't look like me or they don't like the same things I do doesn't mean they're bad or anything."

Warwick F:

I know this sounds childishly simple, but if you can understand their hopes and dreams and fears and maybe become a friend with them, how do you hate a friend? It's pretty difficult, right? Especially as kids. You can get ingrained over the decades, but I don't know. It's, "Hate often comes because I don't know who you are. I don't know your story. I know nothing about you."

Chris S:

And even as people Warwick, I think, we laugh about the same things, right? We joke about the same things. If a guy's holds his grandson for the first time, it doesn't matter if he's in Asia or if he's in Canada or Australia, he's going to smile. He might shed a tear, right? Because he's that proud and that's a warm feeling. It doesn't matter where you're at. I think when we forget that we're all humans and we laugh about the same things and cry about the same things, when we forget those things, that's where trouble comes in. And that's something I'm just trying to remind people. At the core of who we are, we're more alike than different.

Warwick F:

Well, exactly. It's like we're both married. It's like maybe you're talking to the guys after dinner and your wife says, "Hey, what about the dishes? Sorry, I got caught up." It's like, "I cook. You clean, okay? And many things, that's the deal." "Okay, sorry about that. I got a bit distracted." Well, anybody that's a husband has been there. It's a funny thing, but we understand that experience. It's like, "Dishes aren't going to do themselves. Come on, let's get going." It sounds so simple, but yet so often in the media or in politics, maybe there's money to be made in division, I don't know, but it's like everybody's yelling at each other. Nobody's listening.

Warwick F:

You know more about this than I do, but often think, people often say, "You need to understand me, right? I don't want to understand you. How about we try and understand each other?" Do you know what I mean? It's like, "I'm right. You're wrong. You need to listen to me." Well, even if somebody objectively is "right", how do you get reconciliation if there's no communication, there's no desire to understand each other? Do you know what I mean?

Chris S:

Yeah, what we do a lot of times is we listen, right? We'll listen, but we listen just to respond. We listen to say, "Hey, I'll tell you why you're wrong. I listened to you. Okay, now let me tell you why you're wrong." Instead of saying, "You know what? I listened to gain this new perspective, because a lot of times you may be right." I give this example a lot of times like, as a young black, I keep saying I'm a black man. But you know what? I was very privileged, I think, to be in this country growing up. I think there's opportunities here that I may not have had if I was somewhere else. I also think I'm very privileged because both of my parents went to college, right? They never missed meals.

Chris S:

And so I don't know what it feels like to miss meals, right? I don't know what that feels like. And so if I'm an educator or if I'm somewhere, and let's just give this example, kids are always skipping in line getting food, every single morning, skipping the line, skipping the line. They're not in the right, they're not, but if the kid tells me, "Hey, the reason why I skip the line every day is because I don't eat dinner because my parents can't afford for me to have a hot meal." He may be still wrong for skipping the line, but there's empathy in me now realizing, "You know what? I don't have the understanding of what it feels like for my stomach to be turning because I'm hungry." Even though he's wrong, this kid shouldn't be jumping line in the morning because other people are in front of them, there's understanding because I say, "Man, he must be terribly hungry." And so I think sometimes we listen, but we're just listening to tell somebody they're wrong or pointing out all the flaws, even though they may be right about some points. We're not thinking about those. We don't want to say we agree with them on this and that, but want to change that. No. We just want to say, "Here's where you're wrong," and that's the sad part about it.

Warwick F:

Sometimes, I won't say being right is overrated, but certainly, let's say on the marriage front and I've been blessed to be married to my wife over 30 years, she's American, but I met her in Australia, but so often, it's like you convinced her you're right and sometimes you are and it's like, "Well, let me try and understand her perspective and being reconciled." And again, I'm not trying to apply this too broadly because there is righteousness and justice. I do agree, but sometimes in a marriage setting, being right can be overrated and it's like, "I'd rather be reconciled than have my point of view be right."

Chris S:

Sometimes you lose when you're right anyway, right?

Warwick F:

Right. Exactly. I guess one question I have is, you probably have some people come up to you and say, "Chris, you live in this Pollyanna world of forgiveness. You're a person of faith. You go to church," and not a whole lot of people do these days. There might be some who come from tougher backgrounds than you, right? Maybe other young black men who says, "You're privileged. You have no idea ..." There's always somebody worse sadly or a worse story. Have you had people come up to you and say, "It's easy for you to ..."? I don't know how it can be easy for you to forgive. That to me, how could you make that claim because what you went through was unthinkable? But do you have people like challenge your forgiveness and reconciliation notion and say, "You know what? That's good for you, but you're flat out wrong and the only way we'll have justice and equity is war"

Chris S:

I've heard people say, "Chris, I don't think you should have forgiven your mom's killer. I think you let him off the hook." And I say, "Well, he got the death penalty, so I don't think he's off the hook by any means there," but I do understand where people are coming from. Now, if I were sitting on the sidelines, I forgive him and I just sit back and sip some iced tea and just do nothing, then I can understand why that makes sense. But for me to be on the road 120 days a year away from my family, still talking about this message of forgiveness, of unity, of changing hearts from people that are racist, I still see that in my work now.

Chris S:

Then because I do all those things, then that argument is not credible. Also, I lost both of my parents before I was 21, right? I was 19, taking care of two teenagers. My father died a year after my mom was killed. And so here I am, foreclosed on my house, repossessed car, taking care of two teenagers while still living in college. When people understand the full story, the full spectrum of things, there's no longer, "Hey, Chris, yeah, you experienced that, but that was it." No, I've probably experienced more than most people have in a lifetime. I just don't want to stay there. That's my thing. And I think once they hear the full story, then there's no longer any people that are saying, "Well, you know what?" or there's no longer any disbelievers or people that won't believe in what I'm sharing.

Gary S:

And there's something powerful about it. I think there's something ... Once you've committed to forgiveness, once in that press conference, those two press conferences where you say, "I forgive my mother's killer," you have to then live that out. You made that public. And I've read where you say that there needs to be something on the other side of forgiveness. And for you, what was that something? You've talked about it, in example, but what do you see is what's on the other side of forgiveness for you that you are walking out and living every day?

Chris S:

On the other side of forgiveness for me is having one of my best friends in the world, Carl Moore, he's a white guy. People always want to be super politically correct. I call him a white guy. He calls me a black guy. That's just how we hang out, one of my best friends in the world. I think on the other side of forgiveness is me saying, "I don't have to hate all white people because a white man went into my church and wanted to start a race war." Now on the other side of forgiveness says, "You know what? Even though we have different skin colors, I'm not going to look at every single young white male and say they're Dylann Roof because that's not the case." On the other side of forgiveness for me, I say, "You know what? That was just one person that was misinformed and misled to hate people that look like me and made a terrible decision that took my mother's life."

Chris S:

And now I say, "Okay, because that happened," on the other side of forgiveness, "not everybody's like that." And I think sometimes, we don't know what's on the other side of forgiveness for us. And if we don't know what's on the other side, it's going to be super hard to forgive somebody or forgive yourself if there's no reward for it."

Gary S:

And I want to speak to the listener right now who is hearing Chris describe this because that's a big, big dose of forgiveness that he gave. His crucible was extraordinary. And we talk on this show a lot about people comparing crucibles, right? "Your crucible was worse than mine, so I don't really know what that's like," and in some ways, it's almost like we need to reverse it. In other words, if your crucible is small, listener, there's still opportunities to forgive. There's still something on the other side of that forgiveness. It will look different than what is on the other side of Chris' forgiveness, by definition, just like your crucible looks different.

Gary S:

But I would think you would agree, Chris, that forgiveness, when a crucible has been caused by someone who has treated you in whatever way is wrong, whether it's the ultimate way that you experienced or someone cut you off in traffic or hit your car, those smaller "forgivenesses" are important too and there's something very good and gracious that lives on the other side of those too, right?

Chris S:

I agree, man, and you said when somebody cuts you off in front of a car and I love just that thought because that's something practical that everybody can do, most people that are fortunate enough to be able to drive. So let's say somebody cuts in front of you, immediately your emotions are going to rise, you're upset, you're angry. Maybe you say something under your breath, but I think something that's practical that we can all do is say, "You know what? That's our small crucible, so how do we respond to that?" Let's respond by staying even keeled and saying, "You know what? Maybe they're in a rush because X, Y or Z happened. Maybe they're in a rush because their wives about to have a kid or their husband is about to have surgery," or whatever it may be.

Chris S:

So I give people the benefit of the doubt until they don't deserve it anymore and that's what I try to do in situations like that. And I think that's something everybody can do. All of our listeners that are listening right now can say, "Hey, the next time this happens to me, I'm going to forgive them. Let's just see what that does for me because I hear Chris talking about it. I hear how powerful this is supposed to be. Let me see what this does for me and my heart on the small scale."

Warwick F:

That's so profound. I often think of forgiveness as a bit like weeding on the home front, whether it's with your kids or marriage or coworkers. Things are going to tick us off every day. Sometimes you want to bring it up. Sometimes it's like, "It's not big enough for me to bring up, but yeah, it's a wisdom call." But whether you do or not, just say, "Okay, I'm going to move on here. I'm going to forgive them." If it's like a marital issue, you say, "Hey, honey, you said something and you probably didn't mean it, but it caught me in a wrong way," and hopefully, she or he will say, "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." Boom, you move on.

Warwick F:

But what happens if you don't say anything, it festers. It grows like weeds and what could be a simple little thing, you just magnified to this massive thing. Not everything is that easy, but it's just forgiveness and reconciliation is a lifestyle and the other sad thing that you know very well is most people, when confronted, don't apologize. We live in the world of the double down, the triple down. Nobody ever says they're sorry. It's rare, but so if it happens, hallelujah, but if it doesn't, you still got to forgive anyway. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try. This message of reconciliation, one of the things I love that you do where you speak is you have people who look differently hug each other. Talk about that because that is a powerful, powerful concept. How did you come up with that and what happened when you did that?

Chris S:

Yeah, man. This was actually preparing for one of my first corporate talks years ago and I'm just thinking, I'm feeling so noncredible at the time. I'm like, "Man, I'm 22, about to speak to this Fortune 500 company. I don't deserve this." And I remember, I was like, "What can I do that's probably never happened before? I want to tell a bunch of people that have been working in corporate America for 25 years to go hug somebody." And we did that. I made people get up and give somebody a hug that look different than them and I said, "Hey, say that you love them as well. Just say I love you." You know what, Warwick and Gary? You know what's the fascinating thing is I would ask people, I would say, "Hey, have you guys heard those three words from somebody that looks different than you before?"

Chris S:

Some people would raise your hand. Some people would say, I haven't," and then I would also say, "Well, have you hugged somebody looked differently than you before?" Some people were like, "You know what? I actually haven't." And I said, "Well, now you have." And I just think, man, there's so many different stereotypes. There's prejudices that are going on in the world, biases, both conscious and unconscious. And sometimes all it takes is for somebody to give you a hug and say, "You know what? That thing that I was thinking or the thing that I was taught growing up, I can do away with that myth right now by just having this conversation after I hug this guy right next to me at my table." And so that's where it started and now I've made people, if they say they haven't done those two things, I force the issue.

Warwick F:

I think that's such a great example. Sadly, we live in such a divided world, whether it's in school or in church and not just racially but politically. If you're a conservative, you probably don't know any people who are liberal. If you're a liberal, you don't really know anybody who's conservative. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, whatever the group is, it almost feels like it's I don't know if getting worse, but it just seems like we don't know people who look different and believe different, whether it's faith or politics. And then we say, "Oh," let's just shift it from racial for a moment, "Oh, Republicans are evil," "Democrats are evil," or whatever and they have different policies. It doesn't mean they're evil people.

Warwick F:

Even in high school, it just saddens me sometimes, it's normal, I get it, kids that look like one color is sitting at one lunch table and kids look like another. How about just getting up and saying, "I know we haven't met. Come sit at our table or can I sit at your house?" This probably would take a massive courage for a high schooler, but do you know what I mean? It's just-

Chris S:

Yeah, and-

Warwick F:

It just seems it's all very natural not to know people who are different than you, which does not help reconciliation.

Chris S:

I think there's two things. Gary's a Cubs fan, I'm obviously a Cubs fan because they're the only team that paid me.

Gary S:

And they haven't paid me yet, darn it, just being a fan.

Chris S:

But when you talk about sports, but I just think sports brings people together. I think about the example you just talked about with the high school team. My baseball team was often we had two black kids on my baseball team and everybody else were white kids, but my basketball team was all black. I think we had two white kids on our team. But we all sat together, right? It was just that I was a connecting piece for some of our baseball team, the basketball team to hang out because I was playing both of them, but I love sports because they bring us together, man. It truly happens that way.

Chris S:

But one thing I will say works is that, unfortunately, we put people in a box. I don't think there's anybody that could just say, "Hey, I'm a Republican," or, "Hey, I'm a Democrat and I believe every single thing that has to do with both of these things. Just probably a couple things." They're like, "You know what? I don't know if I agree with that one," but we have to put ourselves in boxes sometimes or at least society tells us to, and unfortunately, that's what keeps us divided. And so now I just wish that more people would say, "I want to go out of my way to make sure I have friends that maybe have a different faith in me, just because I want to learn about what their thought processes are, right?"

Chris S:

I know even if I wasn't a believer, I would want to be one like, "Man, this is a tough place." You know what I'm saying? Like, "I would want to be a believer." But I actually have friends that don't believe, as odd as that is, right? But I do. I actually want to have those friends. Now, I'm never a person that throws a brick of religion at him, right? I try to place faith on them like a blanket like my mom did with me. And so I'm obviously not shying away from my faith, but that doesn't have to mean I'm not friends with my buddy just because he doesn't believe that God is real and he hears me praying. Not at all.

Warwick F:

And just because somebody doesn't believe what you believe doesn't mean you're going to run around and say, "Well, what you believe is evil and you're wrong."

Chris S:

Exactly.

Warwick F:

Which I think is so some Christians, some people of faith do that which I appall and think it's wrong and not helpful.

Gary S:

And I love about this conversation. Let me add this. I love about the last five minutes. What I love about this is it extrapolates and adds to your message, Chris, that love is stronger than hate. Because what you've just talked about, what you both have just talked about is love is stronger than ideology, right? Love is stronger than your bank balance. Love is stronger than religious differences and love is stronger than skin color. You can find that patch of grass that you both can stand on despite the differences. So yes, love is stronger than hate. That's the strongest expression of differences, but it's also stronger than all those other things that may not go quite to hate, but they still keep us apart and that's what I think is beautiful about your message.

Warwick F:

Absolutely. And what I love about what you're talking about Chris is having people who look different than each other, hug each other. As you say, if you have empathy for another person, that's a big first step towards reconciliation. That's a big first step towards ideally having no more Dylann Roofs or at least not as many. Because those kind of ideas won't have fertile ground. It's like, "I hear what you're saying, but I met Chris, or whoever it is and he's a good guy. I don't get it." Do you know what I mean? It's like the poison, it's hard for it to spread, right? Because like, "Well, that's not right." Even as a kid in high school, that empathy can build walls to stop that kind of poison spreading, if that makes some degree of sense.

Chris S:

It makes so much sense it. Warwick, I often say like, "If Dylann Roof would have met Chris Singleton in second grade, I'm almost certain that there's no way that he would be thinking about black people in the way that he was when he took my mother's life, right?" If we had just been friends as kids ... One of the reasons why I started writing children's books is, because first of all, it's hard for me to tell my story to younger kids. I feel like taking away their innocence. I don't want to do that, especially they think their worlds are sunshine and rainbows.

Chris S:

I'm not here to tell them that it's not, but ultimately, I'm thinking, man, after they read the story that's going to bring people together, wouldn't it be cool if there's a kid that says, "You know what? Now I want Jose to have lunch with me, right?" Now I want Kwan, meet Kwan, come over here and share my fruit snacks with me." You know what I'm saying? That's just my hope for the world, especially for our country that I live in the States. But man, I don't think things would be the same if I would have met my mother's killer as a kid.

Gary S:

This is a good time. Normally, I say this is the, "Did you hear that? The captain turned on the fasten seatbelt sign," but because I have a former Cubs prospect here in our interview here, Warwick, I'm going to say the count's three and two, bottom of the ninth, bases are loaded, two outs. So the game is on the line. It's going to come to an end here pretty soon, but before those last pitches are thrown, let's go on a little bit more. Chris, I would be remiss if I did not give you this opportunity to let listeners know how they can find out more about you and the services you offer and the speaking that you do. So how can they find out more about Chris Singleton?

Chris S:

Yeah, so I do keynote talks for companies all across the country and the way that people book me is just through my website, chrissingleton.com. I have this mission of reaching 50,000 students over the next eight months really. And so people can bring me in through social medias. All my social medias are verified. If you just look up Chris Singleton or CSingleton_2, you'll find me there. But yeah, my mission in this world, it's a crazy one, but it's not and that's just to end racism. And so if you think you'd benefit from a message that's going to bring people together, I'd love for people to get in touch with me by going to my website, chrissingleton.com.

Warwick F:

Well, Chris, thank you so much. You have such a powerful message, and, boy, that is an incredible vision, ending racism. It's easy to give up hope. The bigger the goal, the more it can seem so far, but your focus on reaching 50,000 kids and your children's books, that's so right on because is it hard to change somebody who's 50, 60, 70 years old and their opinions? Yeah, frankly, it is. But somebody who's five or 15, you've got a shot. If what you said is so profound, if you could meet a second grade Dylann Roof, maybe history could have been different. So just helping people who look different and I'd say even beyond, believe different, see each other as humans and friends, whether it's through sport or the arts, that's a tremendous vision.

Warwick F:

And to me that is possible, if we did a little less screaming at each, a little less trying to convince the other person that we're right or, "I don't like your music," or, "I don't like what you wear," or whatever it is, how about trying to get to know them? So I love that vision that you have and I just think it's ... I don't know. Just in summary, we live in a world where it doesn't feel like there's a lot of hope. What message of hope would you give for what is a very broken divided world where there's often not a whole lot of justice or equity? What's a message of hope you would give folks?

Chris S:

I think mainly, we talk about life not being fair and we know that, but ultimately, I realized that it's not about what happens to us. It's all about response to it. I'm responding with the hate that had happened to me and my family by trying to spread love. If you experience something like that, we can't control those things, but we can only control how we respond to them. And every single day, I'm trying to go out and respond by loving people like you, Warwick, like you, Gary, and all of our listeners today. And hopefully, you guys will respond to your adversity, overcoming it and bringing people together just as well.

Gary S:

Now, I've been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on the subject has been spoken. I've also been a baseball fan long enough to know that that was a walk-off Grand Slam right there, what Chris just said. So, thank you, Chris, for being with us. Thank you, listener for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. Sometimes I do some takeaways from the episode and I'm going to do one here, but it's going to be in the form of an assignment, if you will, some homework, if you will. And that is to live out what Chris has described, what he does in his speeches.

Gary S:

Now, that doesn't mean run up to someone you've never met before on the street and hug them and tell them you love them because that may be misinterpreted. But in your workplace, in your church, in your social settings, in your sphere of influence, you see people, those people who know of you who you know of that maybe you haven't spent a lot of time talking to, maybe you've just had small amounts of words. Find that person who you have enough of a connection to, but you haven't really talked to. Go up to that person. And if it's appropriate, give them a hug and tell them that you love them and see what happens. See if what happens is what Chris has described happens at his speeches all across the country.

Gary S:

That could be the start of not only a friendship for you, but a start of beginning to bring the healing and the hope that we've talked about on this episode of the show. So until the next time we are together listener, thank you for spending this time with us and remember the truth that we try to bring across on Beyond the Crucible every week and that is this, your crucible experiences are indeed painful. We know that. Chris' experience was extraordinarily painful, but as he has beautifully recounted here, it wasn't the end of his story. In many ways, it was the beginning of his story and certainly the beginning of a new chapter in his story and it can be the same way for you. Your crucible experience, if you learn the lessons that are there and you apply them to your life as you move forward, what comes next can be the best chapter of your story because where it leads you is where it has led Warwick, where it has led Chris and that is to a life of significance.

It’s taken Warwick Fairfax more than 30 years to write his book, CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP: EMBRACE YOUR TRIALS TO LEAD A LIFE OF SIGNIFICANCE, and have it published. Why such a long time? He  explains this week in conversation with cohost Gary Schneeberger that losing control of his family’s 150-year-old media dynasty in a takeover bid that ultimately failed at a cost of $2.25 billion was too painful for too long to relive on paper – or a computer’s hard drive. But his perspective began to shift after he gave a speech at church about the lessons his trial taught him – and those who heard it told him for months afterward how much hope his story of moving beyond his crucible gave them. He explores circumstances and emotions he’s never discussed publicly before as he walks listeners through the process that led to the book now being available on brick-and-mortar and virtual bookshelves all across the globe.

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. I began thinking in the back of my mind, "Huh, if my story can somehow help people, I wonder what that would be. Is it a book?" And I began my thinking from there's no way at all, ever in this millennium or beyond will I ever write a book, period, with a couple of million explanation points, there's no way. It started shifting slowly, but like moving a aircraft carrier and I begin thinking, "Hmm."

Gary S:

The out of that unexpected thought, that hmm, was born the book released today, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. Hi, I'm Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Depending on when you start the clock, it has been more than a 30-year journey or a little less than half that for Warwick to write his book and have it published. Why such a long time? That's what we talk about in detail on this week's show. Warwick explains why in the immediate aftermath of his crucible, which was losing control of his family's 150-year-old media dynasty in a takeover bid that ultimately failed at a cost of $2.25 billion that it was just too painful to relive on paper or on a computer's hard drive. But his perspective began to shift after he gave a speech at church about the lessons his trial taught him, and those who heard it told him for months afterward how much hope his story of moving beyond his crucible gave them.

Gary S:

The rest might not yet be history, but it is now bound between two covers and available to all who want to live and lead with significance. So let's discover how that happened. So we're going to go through three pieces, three bits, three areas from how Warwick got from step one, I don't want to write a book after his crucible. Step two, I'm calling it, I may not want to write a book, but I'm being called to write a book. Stay tuned, you'll hear why. And then part three, How do I get people to read it? Now that it's written? That's kind of the dance that we're going to go through here.

Gary S:

So, Warwick, when you say you didn't want to write a book, when I first heard you say that was a bit shocking, because there is no shortage of books on the takeover of your family's media company that was your crucible when it fell through. There's a book, not to bring up old wounds, but there's a book called The Fall of House of Fairfax, there's a book called Fairfax: The Rise and Fall, there's a book called Stop The Press: How Greed, Incompetence (and The Internet) Wrecked Fairfax, there are other books out there. And I think where I want to start here is, your voice is in none of those books. Was there never a time where you felt like, because the impulse for a lot of people, it's not just a desire, it's like a gut reaction an impulse, "I want my side of the story out there." That's not your story. That's not what you wanted. You really didn't think, "I need to get my side of the story out there," after the takeover failed, did you?

Warwick F:

No. It might be puzzling for some, but just to go back a bit. I mean, what I went through was so painful as most listeners hopefully know, losing 150-year-old family media business. I'm a person of faith started by a strong person of faith losing a $2.25 billion takeover having a company with TV, radio and newspapers, 4,000 plus employees, 700 million in revenue, fall out of family hands, going to bankruptcy, cause ill feelings, understandably, with some other members of my family, moved to America where I've been for more than 30 years because my wife's American. The whole thing was just so painful, I just wanted to forget. I just didn't want to think about what had happened. I didn't know if it was to move on or was there somehow just forget, even going to Australia back in the nineties was painful, because I would be thrust in front of memories and the house I grew up in, a large house in Sydney on the water and just family members and mostly were gracious, but it was just so painful.

Warwick F:

And the other beat of the story is it's hard to understand maybe, but I'm not wired, maybe it's wiring or values to defend myself. I've never been one to say, "Oh, I was right," because I brought a lot of it on myself. I didn't have a desire to explain this, let posterity to decide for itself what my part it in and maybe it's my faith. Ultimately, from my faith perspective God judges all of us and we're accountable there, but just this whole kind of I was right or they were wrong or just trying to defend yourself, I've just never been one to try to defend myself. It's just not in my DNA, I just think if you are a big man, a big woman, so to speak, you don't get go when they're all defensive and just defend yourself, I don't know, for whatever reason. And I also didn't like the limelight, I just never had a feeling that I wanted to defend myself and put my side of the story out there. A, I'm not like that and, B, I just wanted to forget. I did not want to relive it.

Gary S:

It's interesting because you say a lot on this show. When you have a crucible you have to deal with it. Don't stick your head in the sand, don't not get out of bed. And I want to make it clear to listeners that that's not what you're talking about, you're not saying that's what you did. You're saying that the action that you took was, at least on the subject of a book, inaction, which is a pretty powerful action given what was being tossed at you. So, I just want to make it clear so people don't hear you say, "I didn't want to deal with it." That doesn't mean you didn't want to deal with your crucible, you did. You grew your family, you raised your family, you and your wife, Gale, did all of those things, but you specifically in a box sort of set aside this idea that, "I need to have my side of the story told because it's just not that important to me."

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, so in the nineties... Yeah, I mean, I tried and applied to a bunch of jobs, but it's hard for a kind of ex-media mogul to get a job. Nobody believed I'd be humble enough to get just some regular job. And yeah, I mean, I tried to move on as best I could. It was difficult, I've got to say, but eventually, kind of the mid-nineties I worked in a local aviation services company and business financial analysis. So, I was trying to move on in that sense, but the idea of reliving memories and writing my side of the story and let me explain myself I just feel that's lame and, it's going to sound arrogant, almost beneath my myself.

Warwick F:

It's like a lot of what I did I brought on myself. It's not quite as simple as it's all my fault. There was rifts in the family going back decades, well, almost generations. But I don't want to write some tell-all book and just start causing more harm, more friction in the family by just explaining my side and, "Hey, look what other family members did throwing my dad out as chairman in 1976." Whatever it is, I wanted to move on with my life and I did not want to write a tell-all book explaining my side. And it was so painful that I didn't want to relive it.

Warwick F:

So for multiple reasons, if anybody asked, "Hey, are you thinking of writing a book?" It's like, "No, it was painful." I have no desire to write some tell-all oh, woe is me. Those books are boring and lame, and I just wanted to move on with my life. I didn't want to go back and relive past agony for some reason. It just seemed to be no point. What's the value in that? Of whining and complaining and whinging, as we say, in Australia, which is whining squared. No whinging. So I wanted to move on, accept my lumps and let posterity or God or whoever make the judgment and I just have to accept that for better or worse. That was kind of my attitude, so to speak.

Gary S:

Yeah. And it's important to say, and I'll do this as your public relations guy. When you say it was beneath you to respond in a book, what you mean isn't what most people would think is , "It's beneath me." I don't think you mean that, what you mean is it's antithetical to what your character is. It's antithetical to who you are. It's not how you're wired, is to defend yourself. That's fair?

Warwick F:

Exactly. It's against my values, which is just to me defending myself and saying, "Oh, look what I did." I mean, most of it was my fault, so it's not the easiest thing to defend. But it's not just a case of, "Oh, that's what God would want us to do, never defend ourselves." It depends on the situation, but my wiring is not to defend myself, I'll do my best and let people make their own judgments. I'm not even saying it's the morally correct, necessarily, it's just how I'm wired for whatever reason.

Gary S:

Right. Right. I have no idea how you're going to answer this question, so this is the fun part. I said at the top that there's some things that we're going to talk about that we haven't traversed before, and this is one of those areas. You talk so often Warwick about feeling when the takeover failed after it had succeeded, when it ultimately failed, and you felt like you'd let your ancestors down, your family down. I wonder, was there a part of not wanting to write a book in addition to what you just talked about about not wanting to defend yourself, not wanting to go crawl inside that pain again for no good purpose? Was there a part of it even a slice of it that was you didn't want to put your family through that again either? You just wanted to move on the entire sort of Fairfax family, from your perspective, you didn't want to get that back out in the news again if you could avoid doing that.

Warwick F:

Yeah, I think that's fair. I didn't want to put my family through it all in some big public spat and what have you. And yeah, as you mentioned, I felt like I let my family down, parents, relatives, caused friction within the family. I felt like I let God down in some naive view, founded by a person of faith, the company, John Fairfax. I thought maybe God had a plan to resurrect the company image of the founder. I'm a person of faith, so that sense of letting God down was crushing.

Warwick F:

And I was raised Anglican, but maybe from a Catholic theological point of view where you talk purgatory, maybe I subconsciously felt I deserved to be in purgatory. I deserve to be blamed for all of this, so why defend myself? Whatever was thrown my way maybe I felt like I deserved it, and so I deserved to be there while incoming arrows came my way. Maybe there was some fatalistic, "I deserve this pain, so don't defend yourself." I haven't thought about it quite that way, but maybe there was this weird purgatory view of life in those days. I deserve whatever I was going to get kind of mentality.

Gary S:

Fascinating. Yeah. And again, to me, that's extraordinarily fascinating because we've been working together for more than two years and I've never heard you sort of talk about it in that way. So, I hope listener what you're hearing from this is some aspects of this story that just haven't really been unearthed before, haven't been talked about before, because Warwick has not. Until this book, I'll say it again, Crucible Leadership, Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance out today if you're listening to this podcast on the day it is released on October 19th, you really haven't spoken about a lot of the things that are in this book until this book. So what you just said makes perfect sense. All right, it seems like we may have gotten past the first negative section, right? The "I don't want to write this book." Is there anything else in the "I don't want to write this book" section that you feel you need to say before we move on to how we started down the on-ramp to the road that led to the publication of the book?

Warwick F:

Not really. It was all so painful, I deserved it and I wanted to try and forget anything to do with Fairfax Media and my past life, and move on. I guess in a couple bullets or so, that's what I was feeling.

Gary S:

Well, and we could have saved like 15 minutes of the show by just doing that. But I think it was far more interesting to get the more robust discussion of what was going on. So, we'll move on to section two of this, the turning point, the pivot point, the inflection point. And this is where the book where your mind changes a little bit. I've headlined this in my notes because I kind of know what you're going to say, but section two is, "I may not want to write a book, but I think I'm being called to write a book." Tell us what are the first breadcrumbs of that? How does that come up? When does it happen in the process in terms of after the takeover? And what brings it to life?

Warwick F:

Yeah, I mean, probably the key event was when I gave a talk in church in 2008, which I'll mention here in just a second. But there was a few breadcrumbs before then, in which I mentioned I got a job in an aviation services company doing analytical kind of things. I then from there round about 2003 felt like I wasn't using all the gifts I had and I was playing small. Not that it was beneath me, but I felt like I had some gifts I wasn't using. So, assessment I did with my career coach seemed to line up with executive coaching. I got certified as an International Coach Federation executive coach. I began to see, I had a leadership perspective and the questions I was asking. So my self-esteem began growing a little bit. And then right around 2007, about a year before that talk in church, I became an elder at my church. It's a non-denominational evangelical church in Annapolis, Bay Area Community Church, around about, these days, about 2000 odd. And then I got on the board of my kids' school, Annapolis Area Christian School, a Christian school.

Warwick F:

So all of those I began to see that I had a leadership voice and I could actually contribute to things in life and society in a meaningful way. So my self-esteem, drop by drop, brick by bricks, began to come back.And really, a turning point, a pivot point, if you will, one of the biggest ones occurred, as I mentioned, in 2008, when the pastor of our church, Greg St. Cyr, he was giving a message on the life of David who was being persecuted by Saul because he was a good man and Saul felt jealous. So he was hiding in a cave feeling sorry for himself. And so, the pastor asked me to give a message on a righteous man falsely persecuted. I said, "Well, it's not me, I brought a lot of trouble on myself." And so, I gave like a 10-minute talk. And weeks and months afterwards people said, "What you said really helped me." And I'm thinking, as I often say, there weren't any ex-media moguls in the congregation that I know of.

Warwick F:

It's one thing if you're talking about cancer, abuse, loss of a loved one, sadly way too many people go through that, but how can you identify with losing a $2 billion company? I hadn't looked at it in a while, but as I reread kind of the speech I gave what's eerie is that there's so much in there that I talk about today, yesterday, the last few weeks, last few months. It's what the book is all about. I hadn't decided write a book at this point, but the whole thing about the book, the world looks at, and I'm reading from the speech I gave in 2008, "the world looks at all this as a terrible loss. To me, personally, it represented freedom from bondage, the freedom of expectations. I can now be free to be myself, to be exactly who God wants me to be." And I said, "God has provided for me financially, not to the degree I had before, but more than enough of me and my family. I'm truly blessed. God is faithful."

Warwick F:

So, it's like I'm talking about this stuff, and I talk about this today. But kind of the next kind of beat in the story is, I began thinking in the back of my mind, "Huh, if my story can somehow help people, I wonder what that would be. Is it a book?" And I began my thinking from there's no way, at all, ever in this millennium or beyond will I ever write a book, period, with a couple of million exclamation points, there's no way. It started shifting slowly, but like moving a aircraft carrier. And I began thinking, "Hmm." And this was around about April 2008. Within a few weeks, again, a person of faith, elder at my church, et cetera, obviously I read through much of the Bible. They had these 90-day Bibles and ways of doing it. So I decided I was going to read through the whole Bible in 90 days, figured out a plan with some advice. Each day I would read a chapter in part of the Old Testament, part of the New Testament, a couple Psalms, Proverbs. And I began on May 28th, 2008 and finished August, 13.

Warwick F:

And I would write typewritten notes. I mean, it's kind of bananas, but it's over a hundred pages of typewritten notes, like Microsoft Word notes. That's not mean to say everybody should do it this way. I'm not saying that's at all necessary, but I just felt there was something about that speech that's like I just felt like I need to get in touch with, from my perspective, God and His wisdom, because I felt there was something there, given the congregation's reaction.

Warwick F:

And it was somewhere along the lines of the middle of that as I'm getting in touch with my most innermost truth, the depths of my soul, the depths of everything I believe, and the depths of everything that I am, I felt like God telling me, "You need to write a book, and it needs to be a lessons-learned book." But the combination of that speech in church and doing the intense Bible reading and journaling, I just knew it was from the Lord, and I knew I needed to do it. And obviously, it was going to be painful, but the call was clear. And so, the long journey began in 2008 because of that.

Gary S:

Let's rewind a little bit for the listener who may be going through his or her own crucible. And as we say all the time, you've probably not lost $2.25 billion, but it's a crucible and it hurts and it's knocked the wind out of your sails, and it's changed the trajectory of your life. In your story, are the breadcrumbs for bouncing back from any crucible? You say it all the time, Warwick, and it's been interesting for me. This is our 88th episode. Early on, you weren't saying this, but as we talked to more people on this show, you began to say this. And you say it often, and that is, it starts with one small step, right? The journey back to moving, as the title of the show is Beyond your Crucible, is one small step. For you, that one small step was saying yes to your pastor asking you to give a sermon illustration, right?

Warwick F:

Exactly. And that was not an easy step, because talk about my story it brought, I don't know if it was 2000 people then, maybe it was 1500, who knows what the numbers were? But a lot of people. I was like, "I don't want to do that," but I just felt like the Lord saying, "Trust me, you got to do this." And I'm not somebody that's comfortable speaking in front of people. I'm reserved, shy by nature in some sense. It's the last thing I wanted to do, but I felt like if this can help people, if this can help one person, I need to do this. It's not about how I feel or how I feel comfortable. If this can help somebody, then I got to do it. But yeah, that was a step of faith, a step of obedience from my perspective. And it was not a small step to get up in church and talk about what I went through, It was no small step at all.

Gary S:

I forget exactly who it was when we did the series on resilience. I think it might have been Lucy Westlake who said this. We asked her to define resilience, and I think she said, "Say yes." Right?

Warwick F:

Yes. Exactly.

Gary S:

The idea of resilience is to say yes. And that's what you did. As difficult as it might be, you said yes to something that was a challenge. You can't say yes to something if your head's in the ground. You can't say yes to something if you're in bed sleeping it off, sleeping through it. To your point, that to move beyond your crucible you have to get up, do something, keep moving forward. That, yes, even that difficult, that scary yes, right? Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Do something every day that scares you." You had to do something that scared you, and that was the turning point that led us to where we are today.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, if it's in service of others then it's worth doing. And so as I look back, those are the two key moments. To talk in church and reading through the Bible in 90 days was incredible. But as I look back, look, I'm a person of faith, so I believe God orchestrates things. There are a couple other things that led me to think, "I can do this, and this could work." I had a friend, Margie Warrell, who's Australian, who I met at some coaching conference in Washington, DC, somewhere around 2006. And she's somebody with a lot of courage and confidence. And she weaved her story into a book and originally self-published, and then she sold enough that she was able to get it published. And I thought, "Boy, that's pretty impressive." I mean, she has a lot of get up and got a lot of courage. And another pivot point is, I was at a leadership conference in California, I think it was in Palm Desert, I believe -

Gary S:

I used to live near there. I might have been there at the same time, who knows?

Warwick F:

Yeah. Well, you never know. I think it was probably like a Marriott, one of these massive places with pools and the whole setup. And this was one of the top leadership conferences you can go to. You had people like Patrick Lencioni and Jim Collins, and certainly people of that caliber. Well a guy got up by the name of Michael Abrashoff, who is a former captain in the U.S. Navy. And he wrote a book called It's Your Ship. And he wasn't Mr. professional speaker, but he was weaving lessons from his time in the Navy on that ship into a lessons-learned format. Every chapter was a different theme. And each chapter talked about an aspect of being on that ship. And I thought, "Boy, that is interesting, that lessons-learned, weaving your story in a thematic way around different aspects of leadership." Again, at the time, I wasn't thinking, "Let me write a book," but those were foundations that were set. So once I'd done the 2008 talk in church and I'd done the extensive Bible reading, I just began to think, "This could work."

Warwick F:

And the other thing that really hit home is, he in a sense was up against some of the most prolific writers and leadership great speakers. He was just a normal guy. He wasn't Mr. professional speaker, but yet people were transfixed. And we're talking about vice presidents, senior business leaders in the audience, because he was sharing a story, and he was sharing themes of leadership and parables and allegory. And probably the highlight for me is when somebody asked him, "So, what's something that maybe you felt like he could have done better?" And I don't know that he was anticipating it. He said, "When you're in the Navy sometimes you're really competitive. It's kind about winning."

Warwick F:

He was in the Pacific Fleet making your ship the best ship in the Pacific Fleet. And I was so focused on, quote-unquote, winning, that I could have done a better job of sharing what I'd learned on my ship with my fellow captains in the Pacific Fleet, because we're all part of the U.S. Navy, right? We're all meant to Navy, country first, not that he didn't put his country first, but rather he was so focused on, quote-unquote, winning. I thought that was remarkably vulnerable and valuable piece of advice that he gave. Again, the value of vulnerability for a purpose. So there were all these seeds that were sown, even though I didn't realize it at the time, so that you add them all up to the talk in church and the extensive Bible reading. It all added up to, "I know what I want to write. I want to write a book about my story, but through themes of leadership." And that's when the beginnings of the outline was formed.

Gary S:

Yeah. What I love about that story about the guy at the leadership conference who told stories of other leaders is that is what you did you do in Crucible Leadership. What's great about that is it aligns perfectly. Again, we'll talk about your personality, your character, who you are. I could right now as a test text 10 people who know you and ask, "Could you imagine Warwick ever writing a full-on memoir. From page one to page 290 it's all about just Warwick." And every one of them would say no.

Gary S:

In fact, I'm going to ask Jack, our producer, who's hiding in the background to just send me a message on Zoom, Jack, and asking me if you could ever imagine Warwick writing just a memoir, it's all about Warwick. I don't think anybody who knows as you thinks that would happen. So you found a way to tell your story, but to weave it together with other things that is more than just, "Here's what I went through." It's, "I understand what you've gone through and you can learn from what I went through how to get beyond what you've been through." And you can also learn from other leaders throughout history. That's a perfect construction for the book

Warwick F:

Absolutely. I mean, so as I was writing this book, I wasn't talking about what I went through to justify myself, it was largely... I don't diss or talk badly of other people. It's really more about, I'm talking about my own mistakes and I'm reasonably harsh about that, but it was all because, "Here's what I did, don't do what I did, but instead do some of the things that other members of my family before me and other great inspirational faith, historical leaders did." It was all in service of the reader. It was in service of leaders at all levels. As we like to say from the boardroom, from the corporate suite to community leaders who may just want to reclaim their neighborhood, their neighborhood park for kids. It was all in service of others. I was writing about some of the most painful things I went through, not to justify myself so that people would think, "Oh, look how bad he is," or whatever, more self-flagellation. That wasn't the motive at that point, it was all about in service of others. If it can help other leaders at all levels. That was the driving mission behind the book.

Gary S:

And the phrase that you were searching for a few minutes ago, a minute or so ago, is from the board room to the living room, which I have been trying to get us. I have been trying to get us to say about Crucible Leadership since the outset, and this is the first time. So on this celebration day, when Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance comes out, we hear it will help you become a better leader from the boardroom to the living room. There you go.

Warwick F:

Indeed. Indeed.

Gary S:

Thank you for saying that. I feel good that's out now. That alleviates my crucible, but I have this great line, and I want it to be used, and now it's used, so I feel better. The process of writing, you mentioned it was painful, that's what kept you away from it for a while. I actually know, but people would assume the writing process was had its own pain with it.

Warwick F:

It did. I mean, I began in 2008, it took at least five years to write the first draft. In part, life does get in the way, but think about writing about some of the most painful stupidest, or just painful experience you've ever gone through. I couldn't do much more than a couple hours a day and I had to take a break. I mean, this is so painful, reliving my worst mistakes or just the worst experiences I had, but I kept going in service of others. I didn't have some detail plan. I mean, I had a chapter outline of maybe 10, 12 big themes, and I knew I wanted to do it in lessons learned. I wanted the theme of authenticity, an earlier draft I was thinking authentic leadership. Somebody else has that title which had different, more scholarly work.

Warwick F:

But as I began writing that first chapter, the themes began to coalesce the three strands. I realized my story would be the keel of the boat, but then I wanted to talk about my father and the lessons in leadership I learned from him about my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax, and the lessons I learned from him. I love history, so I wanted to weave in lessons from historical leaders, as well as lessons from inspirational and biblical leaders. So that was all formed by the time I was in the middle of the first chapter. And so what I would do is, I would sort of write a chapter at a time. So if I got to a chapter and I thought, "Gosh, I want to weave in a story about Washington," I would stop and say, "Let me find a good book on George Washington." I'll read it, make notes on it, and then figure out how can I write about it in two or three pages? And so, obviously, I had to pause a bit to read the book and write the notes before I finished the chapter.

Warwick F:

And so, I would just go chapter by chapter until it got done, until that first draft got done. And it did take probably around five years. It's just a long process of very painful... Yes, life gets in the way, but every time I stopped and read a book takes a while to read a good book and write notes on it from page one to page 500, or whatever it is. It was a long process, but I trusted the process.

Warwick F:

I mean, it's going to sound weird, I prayed every day, it's not about me. I had this mantra, if you will, that I would pray to God and I would say, "Let my words be your words, let your words be my words." I just wanted to make sure that I was writing what I felt called to write from my inner soul. And I just started and I just kept going, and eventually, that first draft got done, but that was the end of step one, just finishing that first draft. It was a long, long journey, just even after that first draft. It wasn't like, "Hallelujah!, Let's go get it published." It wasn't remotely that simple.

Gary S:

That puts us at kind of the point that we're going to shift a little bit into the next chapter of the journey in a bit. A couple things we want to do before that. One thing I want to do is, one of the things you just said... I mean, we're talking here about the journey for you in writing your book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, which is out today if you're listening to this episode, when it drops, October, 19th. A lot of the words that you said, if you took writing book out and put in another crucible, finding a job, or learning to go on after the loss of a loved one, or a divorce, or something painful, or a business failure of your own that's less than $2.25 billion. Whatever your crucible may be, that idea of you said it was a long process, but you trusted the process. That really is a bumper sticker for how you move beyond your crucible, right? Follow a process and trust it.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I mean, whether you believe it's God or your true inner self, your inner soul. I think most people are spiritual. You know when it's, to your very core, the depth of what you believe is true and what you believe is right. Trust that and trust yourself, and trust the process. I mean, I just went step by step, page by page, book by book that I was researching, and trust that, that it will work out and just keep moving forward. One more step, one more step, and eventually, five years later the book got written. Well, it would've been easier after six months saying, "Oh, my gosh, maybe I'm only on chapter one." I can't remember after six months or so. I can't imagine it was more than two. It's like, "My gosh, this could take decades." I mean, I could have said, "Forget it." But I didn't because I felt like this is too important. This is in service of other people.

Warwick F:

I didn't use the word a life of significance, but if I had it's like this is about helping other people live their lives of significance, bouncing back from their crucibles. It wasn't fully formed, but that's what kept me going. One more step, one more step, because this is too important. We're just going to keep going, trust the process, and trust that call that I felt. And that, to your point, yes, I think everybody that's been through a crucible has that potential. And the key is that vision that anybody has, if it's in service of others, some higher calling that links to your deepest held values, that will fuel the perseverance, the resilience, as we say, to keep moving forward. But that's the key, that inner call, that sense of in service of others, that's the key to getting something that may seem impossible done.

Gary S:

That is a good place for me to say this, if you've listened to this show in the past, listener, that one of the things I say in pretty much every episode is the captains turned on the fasten seatbelt signs and we're getting to the point where we got to land the plane soon that's my way of saying it's getting close to time to wrap up. I'm not saying that now, I'm bringing in the plane metaphor to say this, this would be a good time for some inflight entertainment as it were, because you've done an audio book, Warwick, in addition to the actual written book, Crucible Leadership, you've done an audio book of you reading it yourself.

Gary S:

And we have an excerpt that we want to play here because it continues the thought of the section we were just talking about, you feeling called by God to write your book, staying on that path, continuing to do it. It was hard, but you pushed through. And this excerpt gives a nice flavor for the audio book version of Beyond the Crucible. So, I'm going to say, let's roll tape, as they say, or as they used to say.

Warwick F:

It has taken years to get to the point where I am now. It has been a voyage of discovery to find out who I am and to live in light of it. It has taken years to throw off the weight of others' expectations and to only live in light of who God made me to be, to cast a vision all my own and make that vision a reality. Growing up, one of my dearest wishes was that I would never become world-weary. Somehow, through all the trials leading up to the takeover of the family media company, and all the trials since then, I have not become cynical or lost hope. I have been a bit battered and bruised, but I have persevered. How has this been possible with all that has happened? It's only been through God's strength.

Warwick F:

There are some great scriptures on perseverance that have encouraged me along the way. These are two of my favorites, "Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:2-4, "Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him." James 1:12. These scriptures talk of how trials test our faith and give us the opportunity to persevere, which helps us become more mature. There is a refining fire, the crucible, that trials offer. I may not consider it pure joy when I consider all the trials I've been through, but I absolutely believe that God has a plan for my life, and I try to allow the trials I've been through, make me a better person and try in my own way to help others.

Warwick F:

This thought that God did not mean me to be in charge of the family media company, but has another purpose for my life has been a source of immense comfort. The belief that God does not make mistakes has been a huge and helpful thought for me. Without my faith, and the thought that God is in control, there is no way I would've persevered through the trials I've been through. So long as I put my faith in God and realize that my significance is not in what I can do for God, but in what He did for me by sending His son to die on the cross for my sins, I can put the things that the past behind me and persevere, and move on to live the rest of my story as God intended.

Gary S:

So what is it like, Warwick, to read your own book as an audio book? I mean, what kind of experience was that?

Warwick F:

Well, it wasn't easy. I was with the good folks, with Jack and Whitney and the team at Content Capital in Austin, Texas. And they have a tremendous team and do a great job. But yeah, it took most of a week, four or five days to do, but it was kind of strange to just read this book out loud. Yeah, it's a whole other, I don't know, it's a whole other experience as you go through. It was actually kind of enjoyable in some ways. It's not easy, but if this can help other people it's worth doing. Some people like audio books, you hear my voice and it's reliving all these moments. It was not an easy experience, but it was is definitely a worthwhile experience, there's no question.

Gary S:

Before we move on to section three, which is I've titled this, how do I get people to read it now that it's written? Before we leave the reading of it, I need to say, I said in that segment that if I asked 10 people who knew you well, "Can you ever imagine Warwick would write a book that would be just about himself given his character that's says that's not who he is? And I said, I would ask our producer, Jack, who's in the background as we're doing this. Jack has indeed confirmed that, no, he cannot imagine you doing that. That's not in your character to do so. So, all right, let's move on to the third part. So we've gotten over, I don't want to write the book. We've gotten the book written feeling that God had called you to do it and empowered you to do it. Now, you've got a manuscript in your hand, how do you get people to read it? A book isn't a book after all until it's published. How did that publishing journey start for you?

Warwick F:

Well, it was a long journey. So, I had this notion in my mind. So we're talking around about 2013 or so, about five years after I started writing it, that I would pursue a publish in Australia first strategy, because my notion was very few people have heard of my story in the U.S., but in Australia it was one of the biggest corporate takeovers in Australian business history. Fairfax Media was this iconic brand, if you will, and there could be some interest. So I went down to Australia and followed up subsequently, and I was able to chat to literary agents, to publishers. And they were definitely intrigued, because sometimes if you're not a published author just talking to a publisher is not easy, but given the level that this company was at and the magnitude of the story they were kind enough to give me a hearing.

Warwick F:

And so, some was like, "This is intriguing, but we want a tell-all book." And even then it's a lot of years after the company went under in 1990, even if it had been a total tell-all would've got published, who knows? But some they want memoirs that are like that. Just throw the dirt around. Just tell us your perspective. They might have even have said, Charitably your truth, right? Just go for it. And I would rather the book not be published than do that. It was like a never ever will I do that no matter what. I would rather the book never see the light of day than do that, it just against everything I believe in. And then others would ask me, "So, what genre is it? If you had a bookshelf in a bookstore," which not as many of those, "but in concept, where would it go?" And I said, "Well, it's part memoir, it's part leadership, part self-help, part faith, maybe part inspirational." That's the wrong answer to say to a publisher.

Warwick F:

"What bookshelf is that on?" And I could say, "I don't care. It could be on five or six different ones." Totally wrong answer. They want to know a shelf. So that wasn't helpful. And I didn't want this to be pigeonholed as a faith-based book or a pure leadership book or pure memoir, because my goal was more thematic. Yes, it's a leadership book at its heart, but I wanted to tell stories of inspirational, historical, faith leaders, my own story, my dad's, John Fairfax's, my great, great grandfather. It was clear in my mind what I wanted the book to be. The vision of the book was crystal clear and I didn't want to compromise the vision. So another lesson, when you believe in your vision, persevere. Compromise can be a good word, compromising your vision when you feel it's a calling, not a good idea.

Warwick F:

One publisher, a business publisher in Australia offered me some very good advice. Well, a couple different publishers. One said, "Well, Warwick, I know your story isn't as well known in America, but I would pursue an American publisher first, because they're going to have a blank slate attitude. They're not going to have all these preconceptions about what your story should be." A lot of people's minds are made up or they just have certain preconception of what happened and how the story should be played. So one publisher said, "You should pursue a U.S. publisher. Another one said, "Warwick, in the business space, in the business leadership space, you need a brand. You need a following of dedicated followers that when your book comes out will want to read it." Well, I have a Harvard MBA. I get the concept of branding, gosh, that made sense. I was pretty set on Australia first publishing, but at that point it's like, "Okay, I get it. I probably need to be open to other things."

Warwick F:

And so through a friend of a friend by some miracle, I don't think it's a miracle or an accident at all, some divine help, I got connected with Cheryl Farr who runs a branding and marketing organization called SIGNAL in Denver. And so, I gave her the manuscript. And as we went through it, she and her team very insightfully said... And it wasn't called Crucible Leadership back then, I don't know if it was Lessons Learned in Leadership or whatever the working title was. But Cheryl and the team said, "The story, isn't the takeover. The real story is how you bounce back and how you can help people bounce back from adversity." And we came up with this phrase, "lead a life of significance," and said that's collectively that's what it's about. And so then that whole branding thing, we said, "Well, we need to write a blog, and we need to get the message out there." Cheryl had known you, Gary, and your firm ROAR for a number of years. You said, "Well, I think it might be time to get the word out about it."

Warwick F:

And so, we started us talking and you said, "Warwick, I think there could be a podcast here." And so you had a buddy Steve Reiter, and Right Turn Media definitely helped us along the way with the podcast. And so, you've done a lot of work in radio and that kind of thing with Focus On The Family and Hollywood, and obviously, many years in journalism. So, the whole vision began to grow beyond just a book. It began to grow into social media and blog, podcast. And then, in more recent past, well, we need to get the message out through events and speaking. And so, I brought on board Kerry Childers at Kerry Childers Consulting, who's helped us with that. And then as we began to think audiobook and progressing our podcast still further. We've got in touch with folks Casey Helmick at Content Capital and Jack, and Whitney. So, the vision just progressed to where we are today. I mean, each step of the road and all these folks that I've mentioned have been extremely helpful.

Gary S:

And what ended up happening is that the book, Crucible Leadership, birthed the organization, Crucible Leadership, or vice versa, or they were both birthed kind of at the same time. There's a symbiosis there, I think, that's interesting. One of the things I love about what you were just about people telling you in Australia, that the U.S. was probably a better market. I think that's true because in Australia, and this book is being released in Australia today as well, in Australia, the story is, I think, first, about you, the takeover, the aftermath, and then secondarily about bouncing back from your crucible and all those things. I think here in the U.S., your personal story may not be as resonant here in the U.S., but the lessons from your story might be more resonant here. Less sizzle more steak, if you will, but I think that's where your vision will come true. And you never wanted this to be about you, and here in the U.S. it's going to be, yeah, about you, but I think it's first the lessons you learn that readers can learn from the book, secondarily, the memoir portion.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I think what you say, Gary, is profoundly true in Australia, certainly Australian media. I mean, if you are a journalist at Sydney Morning Herald or some of the other Fairfax Media papers, your life has been directly affected by what I did and subsequent decades of management, which some would say mismanagement, there's whole books about what happened after the takeover failed. And even then people somehow find a way to blame me even in the decades since when I wasn't even in control, but somehow things would be magically different if the Fairfax family were in control.

Warwick F:

But yeah, I mean, it's true here in the U.S. the story is interesting, but they're not so fixated on the story, they're able to say, "Okay, that's interesting. But okay, what can I learn from this? How can I translate this into my own life?" They're not so fixated on the story that they aren't able to see, "Okay. What does this mean for me?" So I think you're right. It is easier for a U.S. audience to look at it and say, "Okay, that story is interesting, but what does this mean for me in my own life, my own vision? And how do I come back from my crucible? So they're focused more on the lessons learned aspect than all of the drama and the saga of the takeover itself. So, that's very true.

Gary S:

That sound you just heard, listener, was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelts sign, indicating that we have to put the plane on the ground here in just a little bit. Before we do that though, Warwick, first, I want to give you a chance if there's something that you want to share about this journey that you've not shared to please do so, and then I have a question for you after that.

Warwick F:

One thing I wanted to mention is, I mentioned that in Australia I was concerned that people were trying to pigeonhole this as memoir, self-help leadership, inspiration. Again, somebody mentioned to me, the great folks at Morgan James led by David Hancock and then the imprint, Mount Tabor Media, that's being published as part of Morgan James, Chris McCluskey. And both Chris McCluskey and David Hancock when they read the manuscript, they believed in it, and they believed in it as written. Yes, we condensed it a bit because it was a little long, which is always a good thing. Less is more. But they didn't say, "Well, we've got to pigeonhole it." They said, "No, we believe in what it is." Yes, it's a leadership book with aspects of memoir and inspiration, self-help, historical, but they didn't say well less God or less leadership, or less self-help or whatever. So I'm so grateful for the folks at Mount Tabor Media and Morgan James in believing in this book and getting it published today. So huge, huge, thanks to those folks.

Gary S:

As people hear this, Warwick, it's the first time in anyone besides you and me and the production team is going to know what's in the book in any detail. You're a published author, how does that feel? How does that feel at the end of the journey that you've just spent the better part of this last hour describing?

Warwick F:

It's an interesting question. It feels gratifying, I'm very grateful, thankful, I'm blessed. But I'm not one to sort of sit back and kind of do a dance in the end zone and spike the football, and say, "Yeah, look at me I'm so wonderful." It's not in my nature. And one of the things I've been very focused on is, just because I have a book that's been published by a great team and a great publishing outfit and have a great team, yourself, Cheryl, and so many others, Keri. Okay, that's good, but what's the next step in the journey? Because it's about the message, it's about helping people, it's not spiking the football and saying, "Oh, look at me." I just don't think that's helpful. And just because I have a published author doesn't make me better or worse than any other human on the planet.

Warwick F:

And so I'm a great believer in don't spike the football, be thankful, be grateful, but this does not make me a better human being than anybody else. And so, I'm grateful, I'm thankful, but I don't have the spike the football mentality, I'm thinking, "Okay, great. This is good, I'm thankful. What's the next step? How can I help more people bounce back from their worst days so that their worst day doesn't define them? How can I help people have hope and healing so they can lead lives of significance, lives on purpose dedicated to serving others?" I'm focused on how can I use this book and the podcast and everything we do to help others recover from their darkest days. The journey continues, the mission continues, the vision continues, and we'll see. One more step, one more step, and we'll see where it takes us, but I just want to be faithful to the process, be true to what I've been called to and let's keep going. So that's kind of my mentality.

Gary S:

That sound is the plane landing on the ground. It does so, Warwick. I'm going to coin a phrase. Now that the plane's on the ground and everybody's getting things from the overhead bins, I'm going to coin a phrase. What you just said, Warwick, the phrase is, that's Warwick being Warwick, right? That's Warwick being Warwick. Your lack of ego in the worst sense, in the most damaging sense, that's who you are. You started this process. You talked about it here. "If my story can help some people I'll get up in church, even though it's difficult, and I'll speak." And moving on now that the book's out that's exactly where you're at. I have one more thing to say, and that's this, the captain, as everybody knows if you've ever flown in an airplane, doesn't just turn on the fasten seatbelt sign. He or she also communicates with the crew sometimes and the crew then passes the message along.

Gary S:

And I do have a message for you, Warwick, direct from the cockpit. It's from your wife, Gale. She sent it to me this morning to surprise you during the recording of this episode when your book comes out and I'm going to read it to you now. "Warwick, this is your co-pilot. As someone who has been in the passenger seat with you through your years of turbulence I am so proud of your accomplishment. I know there were days you could only write for a short time because it was so draining on you to relive all the events of the past that brought you here. You held onto your belief that God would make something of the ashes left behind. I'm so impressed to see how you have used some of the toughest moments of your life to encourage others. I am looking forward to seeing the way your story and the wisdom gained from other leaders throughout history encourages others to live a life of significance! Love you, Gale."

Warwick F:

Wow, that is just mind-blowing. I mean, that's incredible. Wow, that is just such an amazing... I mean, she gets it. She gets what it's all about. She gets why I'm doing this. I'm not quite sure what to say, that's just remarkable. She's been with me for 32 years. I mean, she gets it. She gets why I'm doing this. She gets it. I'm so grateful. I'm so blessed to have her as my wife. And that was another thing, be a different podcast, but I definitely thought the Lord's calling saying, "This is the one I have for you in life." And that was one of those steps of obedience which I am so, so blessed by. So yeah, following the Lord and His calling from my perspective can lead to tremendous blessings. So I'm so blessed.

Gary S:

Listener, we will see you next week.

In advance of the Oct. 19 release of host Warwick Fairfax’s book, CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP: EMBRACE YOUR TRIALS TO LEAD A LIFE OF SIGNIFICANCE, he and cohost Gary Schneeberger discuss the key building blocks inside its pages. You’ll hear helpful, hopeful details — from Warwick’s own journey and the stories of some of history’s greatest leaders — about the importance of embracing your crucible, discovering your purpose, crafting your vision and leading and living with impact. You’ll also get your first extended glimpse into why CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP has been called “equal parts memoir and master class,” “moving and vulnerable,” “a gift” and “a must for all leaders” filled with “nuggets of leadership gold.”

To explore Crucible Leadership resources, and to pre-order CRUCIBLE LEADERSHIP: EMBRACE YOUR TRIALS TO LEAD A LIFE OF SIGNIFICANCE, visit www.crucibleleadership.com/book

Highlights

Transcript

Warwick F:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I'm Warwick Fairfax, the founder of the Crucible Leadership. How do you have that level of perseverance? And this is where I think it all comes together. It comes from not letting your worst day define your life. It comes from having an anchor for your soul or your faith, whatever that means to you. It comes from living that faith out in character, humility and integrity. It comes from not living your parents or friends design, a vision, your own vision, based in your own wiring and design. And it comes with having a vision often formed out of the ashes of your crucible that you feel will make the world a better place, that will help impact the world and really help folks live a life of significance.

Gary S:

That friends is Warwick describing some of the insight and inspiration he's packed into his book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. I'm Gary Schneeberger, his cohost. If you're listening to this episode the day or soon after it goes live, Warwick's book releases in just a few days on October 19. If you're getting to our discussion a little later, what are you waiting for? Press pause, visit crucibleleadership.com, click on the book tab and order your copy today. If you can't wait to read it, the good news is you don't have to wait to learn more about what's in it. Warwick talks on this week's episode about the key building blocks of the book described by one endorser as equal parts, memoir and masterclass. You'll hear helpful, hopeful details about the importance of embracing your crucible, discovering your purpose, crafting your vision and leading and living with impact. They are all critical way-points that will guide your journey to a life of significance.

Gary S:

The first question I wanted to ask you so that you can frame this up for listeners is that while on the back of the book here it says the sections in bookstore shelves, you'll find it virtual and brick and mortar is in leadership. This is not a traditional leadership book, is it?

Warwick F:

No, it's not. A lot of people write leadership books that basically look at me, I was super successful, follow my example. And it just doesn't offer five clear linear points, it's more a collection of stories and parables anchored by my story as well as the story of my dad's, Sir Warwick Fairfax, my great great grandfather, John Fairfax, stories of historical, inspirational, faith leaders. So it's really a collection of parables and stories about what it means to bounce back from your worst day from crucibles to live a life of significance. So it's not I'm so wonderful, follow me, because look how successful I am, but it's a very different leadership book.

Gary S:

And there is an aspect. There is an aspect to it, not follow me, but here's the lessons I've learned. You talk about those lessons and what people can learn from them so they can move beyond their own crucibles. That's a fair point, right?

Warwick F:

Absolutely. A lot of it's more I made some mistakes in my young and youthful, naive and idealistic days. And I think my motives were fine, but definitely made some mistakes. So a lot of it's here's some of the lessons I've learned, because I think one of our premises, when you go through a crucible, there are lessons to be learned, there are always lessons to be learned. And so that's a key theme of the book is learning the lessons of your crucible and seeking to find a life of significance, a vision for your life, from the ashes of that crucible.

Gary S:

Excellent. Well, enough preamble, listener. Let's get into the meat. And there's plenty of meat in this book. How we're going to do this, just so you know I feel like a pastor at a sermon, here's the three points I'm going to make and then we make the points. We're going to go through four sections. Warwick begins the book with laying out four sections of the book. I'm going to give you all the sections and then we're going to break into and talk about each section individually. The first section is to embrace your crucible, the second section, part two, discover your purpose, third section, craft your vision, fourth section, live and lead with impact.

Gary S:

And what we're going to do is we draw through this outline as Warwick is going to talk a little bit about not just what's in the book, but what his story was, his own crucible experience that led to him writing the book and some of the lessons that he's learned from family members, in some cases, some of the lessons learned from some of history's greatest leaders. It's not quite an audio book, although there is one of those coming. It's not quite a documentary about the book, but it's going to give you a really good grounding in what the book's about so that when the book comes out, you'll have an idea, one week from today, if you're listening on the day that this goes live. One week from today, the book is out. It'll give you a grounding to know what it is you're going to get.

Gary S:

So let's start, Warwick, with part one, which I remember early on when we were working together and the manuscript was coming through the process and I was looking at it and embrace your crucible. I'm like, wow. That's like embrace barbed wire for some people. I think of my crucibles is like I don't want to put my arms around that. But the idea of embrace your crucible, why is it that it's not just survive your crucible, hold your breath and get through it? But the idea about embracing your crucible, what is the benefit, the need, the necessity of that?

Warwick F:

Yeah, just thinking about the image you mentioned, embrace barbed wire, hug it, yeah, it does sound so strange. And that's not a bad metaphor, because crucibles, literally it's like molten metal heated to a very high temperature that forms something new. Well, crucibles are always painful. It could be your fault, not your fault. On our podcast, Beyond the Crucible, we've had every kind of crucible from people being paralyzed, abuse, business failure. And it's always painful. But really what we talk about here at Crucible Leadership is you have a choice with a crucible experience. You can either hide under the covers and say, "This wasn't fair, this wasn't right, this is so painful, I'm just going to lie here for the next 30, 40, 50 years until life inevitably ends."

Warwick F:

Or you can say, "This was awful, painful, but how can I move forward?" And ultimately the key premise of the book is how can I move forward and live a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So really a crucible provides the ultimate inflection point. Do you give up on life or do you continue and try to find good, try to find purpose and meaning out of that pain? And so it's a binary choice that all of us face.

Gary S:

And that it's interesting that you just talked about crucibles, what they are, why you have to learn from them, how you learn from a little bit. And we'll unpack that a lot, listener, as we go on. But you also talked at the end there about the goal is a life of significance. And it occurs to me that Warwick's just done what you're not supposed to do with a book. He's flipped to the back pages to let you know what the ending is. And the ending is here's your life of significance. That's your goal of the end game of moving beyond your crucible is to move into a life of significance. So that's the arc that we're going to discuss today. That's the arc Warwick has lived, that's the arc many of our guests have lived and it's certainly the arc of the book.

Gary S:

So by way of getting us started here in the digging in the dirt of what happened in your life, what was your crucible? Tell listeners a little bit about how you got introduced to the idea of crucibles in a very painful, personal way.

Warwick F:

Yes. I went through a very public crucible. So I grew up in a 150 year old family media business in Australia founded by my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. So I'll chat about in a moment. But by the time I grew up, this had grown into a very large media company. It had magazines, newspapers, TV stations, radio stations. It had the Australian equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, a mammoth company. So I was a fifth generation and by the time I came around, I was seen as the heir apparent, a little bit like the royal family as I sometimes think. I had about as much choice of not to go into it as Prince William does of saying to his grandmother or dad, "I don't think this is for me. It's no." So I spent my growing up, preparing myself, undergrad at Oxford like my dad had some other relatives; Wall Street, Harvard Business School. Came back in '87. My dad died in early '87. I was from his third marriage. He was in his 80s. Launched this $2.25 billion takeover.

Gary S:

Stop for a second and repeat that number and make sure people heard 2.25 what?

Warwick F:

Billion. It's unfortunately with a B, 2.25 billion. And so I said, unfortunately, because things went wrong from the start, other family members sold out. They didn't want to be in a privatized company controlled by a 26 year old, which I think, I guess makes sense. Three years later, the debt was so high that when Australia got in a big recession, the company went bankrupt. So I was trying to preserve it in the image of the founder, had to be well managed, top of being taken over by corporate raiders. And what I did, directly led to it falling out of family hands. So that in a nutshell is my crucible.

Gary S:

Right. Now, there are myriad reasons why that could be painful. One, is that word that starts with a B. Others are emotional. We have seen on this show, we've heard on the show from guests who have experienced both, who have experienced financial setbacks not quite at the level that you have experienced them, but also the emotional setbacks. And one of the things I say all the time as the co-host of the show is, "Okay, guest C, your physical crucible is nothing like what Warwick's gone through, but the emotions are the same." And emotionally, you've said many times, emotionally, it was harder than what happened to you financially. Can you explain just a little bit about what happened to you emotionally in public and how that affected you?

Warwick F:

Yeah, fair point. Obviously, this was major news. It was the front covers of all newspapers. There was a headline sanying banks end Fairfax era. There was savage editorial cartoons. My wife's American, which was fortunate at the time. So we left Australia in late 1990, and I've lived in the US ever since. So I felt like I couldn't move on with my life in Australia. And the issue wasn't so much the massive sum of money that I guess I lost. It was more just the sense I let my parents down, ancestors. We had 4,000 plus employees. It was like a $700 million company. Now, they didn't lose their jobs per se, but it was more just instability. Who's going to buy us, what's going to happen.

Warwick F:

And so my self esteem was crushed. And because the founder was a strong person of faith as I am, I felt like God had this vision to resurrect the company in the image of the founder or have at least be run along his principles. So I felt like there was almost this divine crucible that I had let God down. So really it just devastated my sense of self and self esteem. So yeah, that was the hardest part of my crucible.

Gary S:

Here's the good news, listener. We've gotten to the point where we're done talking about the negative pain parts of things. And now we're going to turn a little bit, because the purpose of the book is not, as I say on the podcast, as we say on the podcast every week, it's not to wallow in those things that happened. And there's no wallowing here. Warwick does talk in his book about what he went through. And we'll go through the emotional beats and also what he did for living beats, those kinds of things that happened, the self esteem beats. But really, Warwick, what you talk about, the idea of embracing your crucible is that from embracing your crucible, you pick up, you learn some things that are important in guiding you on the journey back from your crucible.

Gary S:

So I'm just going to throw out a couple of words to you that you discuss in the first section of the book and let you pick which ones you want to talk about. You talk about the importance of having an anchor for your soul, having something outside yourself that's firm, that's bedrock, so that when the winds come and it feels like you're getting blown over, you got something to hang on to. And you talk about the power, the necessity of authenticity. The worst thing you can do in the wake of a crucible is to pretend it didn't happen, stick your head in the ground, just everything's fine and dandy.

Gary S:

We've all heard stories about that, right? The person who rents the big expensive car, and they're trying to project... I guess we just had recently, Dov Baron, called it an Instagram life. You don't want to do that. You want to live authentically. So explain a little bit from your perspective, why is it important to have an anchor, pursue authenticity? Pick one of those two words that you think is most important for people to know. And again, the whole thing is unpacked in the book.

Warwick F:

Yeah. The whole concept of find an anchor for your soul, I really think of this image of you're on a ship and there's just a massive gale, there's huge storms, and you've got to cling to something, you dig your fingernails into the wooden mast on a sailing ship, and what's the anchor that's going to get you through the storm of your crucible? And for me, it's my faith and faith in Christ. It could be faith in something else which we'll broader, which we'll get into. But you've got to find amidst the storm, amidst almost this whirlpool, you've got to find an anchor and find a way just to keep being yourself. Don't like fake it till you make it kind of thing. It's just be real, don't pretend I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm good. It's like you don't have to get into every detail with people, but be real. But yeah, amidst the storm, you've got to find an anchor for your soul. Otherwise, you'll get sucked into a vortex and you want to escape. So it's like a lifeline. It's critical to find that anchor, whatever that means to you.

Gary S:

Yeah. And what you just said in addition to finding that anchor, be you. And that's the importance of authenticity, which is extraordinarily important as well. One of the things I love about the book, Warwick, is that it really is three strands in essence. There's your story, there's a bit of memoir to it, what you went through, there's the principles that you learned from that, and then there are that other people can learn from as well that you impart to people to help them on their journeys.

Gary S:

And then you tell some stories of family members of sometimes historical and religious figures, spiritual figures, as you think about this idea of embracing your crucible. As a means of starting a journey to get you to a life of significance, you talk about finding an anchor, you talk about authenticity. Is there a story? And there are many. We don't have time, unfortunately, to unpack every one of them. Buy the book and you can do that now, listener. You can read every one of those stories. But is there a story that comes to mind to you, Warwick, about what we've just been talking about, what you've just been unpacking?

Warwick F:

Yeah, there is. I think about the life of John Fairfax, a man of great faith and he had his own crucible in which he made a choice not to let it defeat him or define him.

Gary S:

And let me stop just for a second to say, John Fairfax, for people who do not know is your great, great grandfather, the founder of the company. Yeah.

Warwick F:

Indeed. Absolutely. So yeah, he came out from England in the late 1830s to Australia. And the crucible that drove him out was he had a small paper in England and he wrote an article about a local magistrate, a local lawyer, and the lawyer sued him twice. Now, the judge found in John Fairfax's favor saying, "Look, the article was accurate." But the court costs ended up bankrupting him. So the judge said, yep, what you said was right, but he was so fed up with the whole thing. He decided to leave England. He was bankrupted by the whole thing and moved to Australia. He ended up buying into the Sydney Morning Herald in 1841. And ended up growing it into a huge company.

Warwick F:

So he didn't let that setback define him. He was willing to move forward. And he had this vision of a newspaper that would be independent. It's masthead was, may Whigs call me Tory, Tory call me Whig, which basically in modern language may conservative call me liberal call me conservative. So he had this vision of an independent paper that would help grow the young colony of Australia. So he did not let, as we say, his own worst day of being bankrupted in England define his life. He chose to move forward. It's a tremendous example of embracing a crucible.

Gary S:

Yeah. And the generations that it affected after that, the legacy that came from that, the legacy you're still living is a remarkable one. Okay. There's section one of what we're talking about, about embracing your crucible. Okay. I've done that, says the listener. I've embraced it, I'm trying to learn lessons from it. What then happens after that? And the second section that we talked about that the book deals with is discovering your purpose. You mentioned earlier, Warwick, that you felt like that you inherited your purpose from your great, great grandfather and your fore-bearers after that.

Gary S:

This section of the book, fascinating. And again, here are some subjects that come up in there; humility, integrity, servant leadership, self sacrifice, character. You talk about those things in great detail, why they're important, why they were important to you, why they were important to your family members, your father and your great, great grandfather in particular. But what you really pull on and focus on in that section is faith. I know it's important to you to explain not only how faith helped you, but what you mean when you share that with people who are coming through a crucible, when you talk about the importance of having faith. You talked earlier about an anchor to hold onto, for you it's faith. You believe it's faith in a general sense. For others, unpack that a little bit from your perspective and then from the perspective that you try to coach people on.

Warwick F:

Yeah, it's a good question, Gary. Basically, it fleshes out this concept of find an anchor for your soul. I talk about in the book faith in the general sense. I'm clear about my own Christian faith, which there was a legacy of that in my family going back to my great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. For me, it was through an evangelical Anglican church when I was at Oxford University where I committed my life to Christ, so to speak. But as well get into, I'm an executive coach at heart and by profession. So I believe everybody has the God given right, so to speak, to choose their own path. So when I say faith, everybody has to find their path, find their anchor. So it could be a major religion such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. It could be a philosophy, a set of values and beliefs.

Warwick F:

We all have values and beliefs. So whatever that is, don't ignore that, don't ignore what you believe, and I'm not telling you what it should be. You have to figure that out for yourself, it's your right to find your path or whatever that is, your way back from your crucible, your way forward in life. To lead a joyful fulfilling, a life of significance, is based on that anchor, based on whatever your values and beliefs. So it's really important. It's not about listening to other people, it's more listen to yourself, listen to your soul, live in light and in harmony with your soul of who you truly are.

Gary S:

All right. I'm getting back to embracing my co-host responsibilities. And we're going to mash up two game shows here. We're going to mash up the price is right where we're going to spin a wheel for something. So you can pick a story, spin the wheel and pick a story, and then we'll do it a little bit with like the Fast Money round in Family Feud, so we can get it done in about two or three minutes. So what story in your book really had the most impact on you in writing and in telling that, that you think will be instructive for readers?

Warwick F:

Yeah. In terms of the whole discover your purpose, George Washington, the first president of the United States, he was called the indispensable man of character. One of the themes in this section of the book. True faith has its outworking in how you live, humility, integrity. If it doesn't manifest itself in how you live, then what use is it, frankly?

Gary S:

What's the fruit of what you say you believe, right?

Warwick F:

Exactly, right. And so he was called by some pretty amazing contemporaries, George III, who he defeated. George III of England said he must be the greatest man in the world. Napoleon after, he was exiled on the island of Elba, said they wanted me to be another Washington. Well, why did they say that? Because really at the height of his power, he gave it up voluntarily in like 1783 Treaty of Paris. Britain recognized US independence. There was a bunch of generals in the so called Newburgh Conspiracy that said, "Hey, General Washington, we don't think we've been treated fairly, our pay has been locked up in politics and Congress." It's funny politics existed even back then.

Gary S:

It was dirtier back then. It was even dirtier.

Warwick F:

Yeah, bureaucracy. And so he said, "Look, this is not what we're about. We didn't fight this war for me to be a dictator." And so then later on in 1783, then, believe it or not, capital of the United States or what would be Annapolis, which is where I live in Maryland coincidentally, he basically said, "I retire from the theater of action." He just said, "I'm going to go back to Virginia." And he had no intention of ever being in public life. That's why George III called him the greatest man in history. Now, as it happened, the country wasn't done with him. And so in 1789, he was elected president by the electoral college unanimously, the only president to receive 100% of the vote. Doubt that will ever happen again.

Gary S:

No.

Warwick F:

And so why was he elected by everybody? Because of his character. He wasn't a military genius. He lost more battles than he won. But he was a man of immense character. He truly lived his beliefs. So it's just an incredible example of a person walking the talk.

Gary S:

Yeah. And what I love about what you just said before we move on to the next section is that when we started to talk about discover your purpose, we talked about some of the building blocks of faith, of what we're talking about. We talked about humility, integrity, servant leadership. I just listed them off, self sacrifice, character. What you just described about Washington in that very short story hit on all of those, right?

Warwick F:

Absolutely.

Gary S:

It checks all of those boxes. Those are the things. It was funny to me as you were talking about what people said about what his contemporaries, even those, not that he didn't just defeat George, he separated from his country. He left. He broke off. I'd love to see if LinkedIn was around at the time, the recommendations that would be on George Washington's LinkedIn page. That would be fascinating. Next, we're going to move on to the third section of the book, which is craft your vision. Vision is an important word. Craft is an important word in that section, craft your vision. But I think the most important word would you agree is your right, because you can craft a vision that somebody else's, you can craft a vision you think the world needs it. But talk about why it's so critical to craft your own vision, and then how you did that in your own life.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Basically, you can't inherit a vision. It's often in families. Maybe your mom or dad was a lawyer, a banker, accountant, doctor, whatever. It's like, well, you know what? This is a good business, it's a good way of making a livelihood, I can get you in, I'm certainly networked in my profession. And there's some logic there, but what happens if you don't have the innate wiring to be a doctor or a lawyer? Maybe that's not your passion, maybe you just want to paint, maybe you want to play music, maybe you love math, maybe you want to be an engineer. It's not about just following what your family or friends say is logical, you want to live in light of your design and have a vision that you care about.

Warwick F:

And I was in a sense the poster child of, in a sense, what not to do in that growing up in this 150, our family business, a bit like the royal family, it was, as they say in the US military, a duty, honor, country thing. I felt like I had no choice. So I spent my whole life trying to prepare myself to one day take a leading position, as I mentioned, at Oxford, Wall Street, Harvard Business School. Not because I was passionate about going to business school, it was all about fulfilling a role. And so when the whole company went under, it's like, "Well, now what do I do with my life?" I was age 30. And it's like I had no clue. It took me years which is a whole other story to find out but you don't want to live somebody else's vision. You can't inherit a vision. You have really the God given right to follow your own path, live your own life. It doesn't mean dishonoring your parents and friends. Be you, be real, be authentic, follow your own vision.

Gary S:

There are a couple of things you say in the book. And this would be a good time since we're probably about halfway through the episode to do a public service announcement. Here's the book, if you're watching on YouTube, it's Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, by Warwick Fairfax out October 19. Can be purchased at where all great books are sold online. You can also go to crucibleleadership.com. We have a tab on the book, give you a lot of details, including the astounding number. I can say that you can't, you won't, the astounding number of endorsements of people who have said things that they love about this book, including Nancy Koehn who's a professor at Harvard Business School who said that you weave together history and his own fascinating life experience to offer a series of vital leadership insights. Whether you're responsible for a company, a foundation, an arts organization or a government agency, you will find nuggets of leadership gold in this book. That is just one of 29 endorsements that you'll find on the website. You'll find many of them in the book.

Gary S:

I say all that, not to embarrass Warwick, but to frame the book that we're talking about here in a way that you will understand that truly, it's not just me who thinks it's a great book or Warwick who thinks it was a worthwhile book to publish, lots of people who have read this book have great things to say about it. So back to our programming. You say a couple of things, Warwick, about crafting your vision that I think are really interesting for this discussion. One, you say the seed and they're connected. So I'm going to ask you the question and ask you to talk about them at the same time. You say that the seeds to your vision, your unique vision are within. So unpack that a little bit. And then you also define vision, is defined in the book as a present picture of a future reality. Talk about how those two things go together. Seeds to your vision are within, and a vision is a present picture of a future reality.

Warwick F:

Yeah. I think often the seeds of your vision can come from the ashes of your crucible. Maybe you're a cancer survivor, a victim of abuse, and you might be, I never want anybody to go through what I went through, I want to help others. A vision needs to be anchored in your design, which from my perspective, divine design. So whether you love, art, math, science, whatever it is. It's really combination of your inherent wiring, plus crucibles often where the vision lies, not always, but it has to be something that you're off the charts passionate about. And from my perspective, vision has to be others focused. It can't be all about money, power, fame, some narcissistic internal deal, because every psychologist, every religion, to my knowledge, will say that does not lead to happiness or joy or fulfillment.

Warwick F:

It has to be others focused, a life of significance, a life on purpose dedicated serving others. So really the seeds of your vision are found within in that sense. And you know when you have a good vision, when you can feel it, taste it, touch it, you dream about it. When I think of John Fairfax, he was head of a local library there. And he and a buddy of his who were to found the company, they talked about this plan, the plan. And they had a vision of what the Sydney Morning Herald that they would buy was going to be like. They knew what they wanted to do. They had a dream, they had a vision. It was so compelling. They probably had trouble sleeping at night. So that's a great vision in which you can just feel it, picture it, smell it, touch it. And it's just compelling. It just drives you forward. That's when you know you've got a great vision.

Gary S:

So how did Warwick Fairfax post takeover failing, find the seeds of his vision within? And as you teased a little bit, it wasn't overnight. We had a guest on the show during our harnessing resilience series, Heather Kampf, who found her resilience in five seconds after she fell on a track, got up and finished the race and won. It took you a little longer. It takes a lot of people a little longer. It can take time to find the seeds of your vision within and act on them. So what was that process like for you?

Warwick F:

Yeah. It's interesting sometimes... Typically, it's not overnight. And for me it was steps of faith, really, steps of, from my perspective, trying to hear the Lord, some higher power, just step by step. So the first step was I worked in aviation services company in Annapolis doing finance and business analysis. From there, I felt like, from my perspective, God telling me, "You know what? You're not using all your gifts and abilities. You're playing small." Nothing wrong with what I was doing, but I just felt like there was more. And so whether you think it's God or some inner voice within yourself, whatever your perspective is, one big lesson, listen to that voice, listen to that gut. Yes, get advice from trusted folks. So I ended up leaving that company going into executive coaching

Warwick F:

After a mid career executive coach gave me an assessment, I began to find my leadership voice in the questions. And step by step, I ended up being on a couple of non-profit boards that was a good fit. And then talk in church was another pivotal moment we'll get to, I think, later. And eventually, that led to Crucible Leadership, the podcast, the book, blogs, but it wasn't like this grand plan. I think that's one of the things that people need to understand. And we'll unpack it a bit more in example of Walt Disney here in a moment. That's a tremendous example that I'm talking about. But you might have a sense, but you don't always have this grand plan all laid out. Just focus on what's the next best step for me now, what do I feel within myself I need to be called? And that's key to beginning to walk your vision out and make it happen.

Gary S:

It's a unique GPS, isn't it? It knows the destination, a life of significance, knows where you're at coming out of your crucible, but it doesn't necessarily give you all the turns, turn on this street, turn on that street. It's a journey. We call it a journey for a reason, because you have to work that out.

Warwick F:

It might tell you what street to turn on when you're like 100 foot or maybe 10 foot away, maybe. But, okay, what's the next turn after that? Not telling you. Life tends to be... You could debate philosophically, theologically why that's the case, but it just is, basically.

Gary S:

Yeah. You mentioned that Walt Disney is going to come up. Before we get there, I want to ask you a question about vision in the context of the workplace, in the context of leadership, a lot of what we've been talking about. And as we said at the start, the book is a leadership book. There's also a bit of not in love with the term, can't think of a better one, a bit of self help, a bit of self management. And then there's also some faith components to it. But from a purely business perspective, the idea of having a vision, you have this great thing you talk about, about the importance of sharing your vision with your team as a leader and ways in which you can do that in some compromises, maybe you have to make some sacrifices, maybe a better word you have to make to do that. Unpack that a little a bit.

Warwick F:

Yeah. One of the images we use in the book is Michelangelo's statue of David that's in Florence that a few years ago, I actually had the pleasure of seeing. And you think of your vision is like that, it's perfection, but you've got to give people the hammer and chisel which when you think your vision is perfection is tough. But what we say in the book is 80% of your vision that has 100% commitment is better than 100% of your vision with zero commitment. So you've got to be willing to share, to take input. We talk in that section, which we don't have time to get into, but listening and advising, listening from a broad cross section of folks, listening to a few on your team or some advisors outside, but really to craft a great vision, you've got to be willing to let others play.

Warwick F:

You can't just hold the ball in the playground and not share, because, hey, it won't happen. But even in this stage, are there other people that can make your vision better? Is not this narcissistic, it's all got to be mine. If you truly believe in your vision, why wouldn't you want other people to help make it better? It's just logical, but if you're others focused, you'll do that.

Gary S:

Warning, warning, danger. I'm about to embarrass Warwick, because one of the things that you talked about earlier is the importance of authenticity and what you just described is what you do as the head of Crucible Leadership. Those of us on the team, we have input into the vision. I'll give you an example of yesterday. Yesterday we were talking about some aspect of the audio book. And here's the cover of what it looks like. And there's like eight people on the email. I chime in and say, "Hey, why don't we put an endorsement on there?" And Warwick is like, "Well, okay, I like it looking cleaner that way." And so I bring it up again and Warwick listened to it again.

Gary S:

Here's what even members of the team don't know. Later on Warwick texts me and says that he asked another member of the team about it. In other words, he didn't just go, "Okay, I've already said no twice." He went and explored it. He was willing to expand his vision a little bit if that increased buy in. And that's the stuff that, again, my job is to point out this book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance is available starting October 19. Warwick indicated there's some stories we can't get into here in the podcast, but he gets into all of them in here. Can't encourage you enough to dig in and get those. Tell us in the time we have left in this segment, Warwick, about Mr. Disney and his vision.

Warwick F:

Walt Disney, he was a great visionary. But I think it's important, everybody knows the movies, Walt Disney World, Disneyland. In the late 20s, as he was starting, he didn't have this big grand vision. He loved cartoons, animation. That was his passion. He didn't know where it was all going to lead, but he was somebody that he didn't really let failure overwhelm him. So one key early moment is he was in New York in 1928 and a distributor of his cartoons, which back then was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which likely nobody's ever heard of. And there's a reason. The distributor swindled him out of his cartoon. There was some fine print, Walt was an animator not a lawyer.

Warwick F:

And so here he is going back with his wife, Lily, on the train to California, because remember this is the late 20s and you didn't fly there from one coast to the other back then, not easily. And rather than being depressed, he started doodling on a napkin some circles. And he drew a mouse and that became Mickey Mouse. Now, nobody's ever heard of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, but everybody's heard of Mickey Mouse.

Gary S:

I've heard a thing or two about this mouse character.

Warwick F:

And so he was just the serial visionary. In like 1937, I think it was, he created Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, an hour and a half animated color movie. Everybody thought called it Disney's folly. It'll never work. It'll hurt your eyes. Nobody will sit through an hour and a half cartoon, are you crazy? But they did. He pretty much bet the farm on that one. Later on in like the 50s, he created Disneyland in Los Angeles. Again, people thought this is nuts, it was very expensive. Amusement parks then were dirty places that weren't clean, a place for a family, and you're going to have a cover charge? It'll never work. And so he had this attitude of vision. There's this quote that he said that I think is very on point. Walt Disney famously said this, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

Gary S:

Say that again.

Warwick F:

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. So that was Walt Disney. He didn't have this big plan when it was in 1928 to create Disneyland still less Disney World. But just step by step, he had this gut instinct, he trusted himself. He never gave up. He did not let that guy swindling him out of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to define his life. That could have been his worst day in his life at the time. Did he wallow for hours, months? No, on the train back, he moved on and created Mickey Mouse. Who does that? That's why he's such a great visionary.

Gary S:

He did not let someone swindling him out of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit be the end of his story. And you, Warwick, did not let the failed takeover of the family media business be the end of your story. The fourth section that we're going to talk about from the book, the fourth section of the book, is to live and lead with impact. And this is really focused on organizational leaders, how they do it, how they inspire, how they achieve and why that's important. Resilience is key. You've certainly manifested that. As you've indicated, it wasn't two weeks from the takeover to today. It was a couple of decades. Unpack for listeners, this live and lead with impact and why persistence resilience is such a key component of it.

Warwick F:

It is. And I want to feed some of the strands of what we've been talking about into this, because perseverance is key because life is hard. Life sadly is not Disneyland where every flower is perfect, everything's clean. Everybody loves Disneyland. It just seems just so perfect. Well, life isn't like that, unfortunately. We have moments, we have days, but life is tough. And so you've got to persevere as Walt Disney did. He didn't let this distributor swindling him out of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit get him down.

Warwick F:

And so how do you have that level of perseverance? And this is where I think it all comes together. It comes from not letting your worst day define your life. It comes from having an anchor for your soul, your faith, whatever that means to you. It comes from living that faith out in character and humility and integrity. It comes from not living your parents or friends design or vision, your own vision based in your own wiring and design. And it comes with having a vision often formed out of the ashes of your crucible that you feel will make the world a better place that will help impact the world and really help folks live a life of significance. You have those things. All things being equal, you will have a lot of perseverance and like, hey, this is too important, this is too important to fail. This is about helping people. This is about freeing people's souls.

Warwick F:

We're just going to keep going. And you'll also find, as we say, a group of fellow travelers. You'll have people who've embraced that vision and say, "You know what? I'm with you. We're in it." And they'll have different skills than you will, different talents. But you have a team that has if not more committed to your vision than you. And so combination of perseverance and a talented team that you empower, you get out of the way, you don't step on their toes and their areas of expertise, you provide guidance, all of that fuels a perseverance to succeed. But all these strands form... If you have a vision that's just anchored in your narcissistic needs for wealth or self adulation, that, in my view, will not have staying power for the long run. It's hard to persevere.

Warwick F:

And certainly, who would want to follow some narcissistic, self-important, self appointed king? Nobody's going to want to follow that. You'll be alone in your mansion, high atop the hill. And you just don't want to live that life. As Thoreau says, "A life of quiet desperation." You don't want to be that person, but perseverance is really the key as it pulls together the other strands to leading and living with impact.

Gary S:

What I loved about what you just said, Warwick, it's the words you said, it's the things you said, it's the concepts you imparted to the listener, because they're extraordinarily important. But what I love most about what you just said is the passion in your voice when you said it. You described yourself often and you did it in this show, I believe early on. You're a reflective advisor. You're soft spoken. You're even keeled when you speak. I don't know that I've ever heard you speak with as much passion as what you just did in summarizing what is in that book. I'm not making this up. I've got tingles as I hear that, because that is you rooting around in your life of significance.

Gary S:

You just talked about the sadness of living a life of quiet desperation. What I just heard there is a man who's living a life of loud significance. And that is extraordinarily rewarding for me as your friend. And I hope, I pray extraordinarily helpful for listeners who hear it. We have talked in each one of these sections about a story. And this was a funny one, because as we were talking about this beforehand, I'm like, you're going to have a hard time picking what story you're going to talk about, because some of your favorite people are in here. In the book, you talk about Nelson and Wellington British military leaders. You talk about Lincoln. You talk about that stuff. David, you talk about David from the Bible, but the one that you wanted to camp on here, also a big hero of yours. And I think that's a great place to wrap this discussion. The captain has put on the fasten seatbelt signs and it's getting time to land the plane. And we're about to do that. But talk about the persistence, the resilience and the impact it made of Winston Churchill.

Warwick F:

Yeah. Everybody's heard of Winston Churchill, but he's a fascinating guy. He was the grandson of the Duke of Marlborough, one of the famous aristocratic families. And he did not have an easy life. His father didn't believe in him at all. He just basically thought of his son as a waste of space. And his father died young for a variety of reasons. Back in those days, you didn't see a whole lot of your parents if you were the son of an aristocracy. So I'm not sensing, there was a whole lot of affirmation, but yet he had this persistence, this sense that he could become somebody and live a meaningful life. And so in the 20s he was called the star of the government by then, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

Warwick F:

His wilderness years began from about 1929. And then a couple of years on, he lost a lot of money in the stock market crash. He was hit by a car in New York City in 1931 looking the wrong way, which I guess happens if you're English in New York living in America. So he made a number of political mistakes, which he tended to. He let his mouth runaway with him. And so come the 1930s, Nazi Germany was on the rise. And pacifism, whether it was, in Britain and America was at its height. But Churchill could see that you can't trust Adolf Hitler, you can't trust Nazi Germany. And they all said, oh, poor old Winston warmongerer, and they wouldn't listen. It was immensely frustrating. He could have said, "Look, the heck with these guys, if they're so stupid to ignore Nazi Germany, let it be on their heads," but he didn't give up. He kept giving speech after speech, after speech.

Warwick F:

Well, finally as Hitler wore on and took over Czechoslovakia in 1938 and then Austria, people began to say, "You know what? Maybe Winston's right, maybe we can't trust this guy, Hitler and Nazi Germany. Maybe they won't just leave us alone." And finally, as we know, war broke out in 1939. And eventually by then he was getting older, Churchill was voted in as prime minister in May 1940. So after many years in the wilderness, finally, he came. And never once was he vindictive. He treated the people that came before him, prime ministers, Chamberlain and Baldwin, with respect. There was not a bitter bone in his body.

Warwick F:

But that sense of perseverance was so much a part of him. If ever a country needed perseverance it's Britain in 1940, with Battle of Britain, America wasn't in the war. All of Europe was conquered by Nazi Germany. And he gave this famous speech that inspired a nation to persevere, to hang in there. And he uses these immortal words in 1940. He gave this speech and it says this, "We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the field and in the streets and we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender."

Warwick F:

So that's pure Churchill, that's pure perseverance. And he helped a nation persevere under the darkest of times. So he had a life grounded in perseverance, and he inspired a nation to have perseverance with his rhetoric and his example, it's true inspiration of somebody that never gave up and never just gave in when life was looking grim, personally, and for his country.

Gary S:

With that story, the Spitfire has landed. The Spitfire has landed. And what I love about what you just said at the end is that it's a great bridge to our next episode is everything that you just described about Winston Churchill, never giving up, not allowing his crucibles that he went through to be the end of his story. It's not only what the podcast is about that we do every week, but it's what the podcast is going to be about next week, because next week is the day. When next week's episode goes live, it is the day that the book goes live. That book in case you missed it, the first 127 times, I mentioned it in this episode is Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.

Gary S:

And what we're going to talk about on next week's episode, Warwick, is the other half of this story. We've talked today about the content of this. What we're going to talk about next week on the day that the book releases is the publishing journey that you went through, where you had to, in a very real way, live by the words that Churchill spoke, never give up, never surrender, keep moving forward, where you had to find your vision and craft it, and you had to put it into practice and you had to... It's the journey of you following. It'll be an interesting show. It will be an unpacking of the journey of you following to write the book, everything that's in the book. So I can't wait for that conversation. That will be that will be an interesting one, for sure.

Gary S:

As we close, I'm going to change things up. I'm not going to do my usual post amble, I guess, I'd call it. I'm just going to say this. We talked in this episode about the contents of Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. And what sticks out top of mind for me is, Warwick, talked about if you live in your crucible, if you don't move beyond your crucible, if you wallow in your crucible, if you try to craft a vision that's not uniquely you, if you're doing things that aren't in line with your gifts and passions and those things, and you're aiming for something besides significance, you end up living a life of quiet desperation. What you've heard here today, listener, what we hope we've inspired you to do is to live a life of loud significance. We will see you next week to talk about how the book, Crucible Leadership, came to be.

Note: This blog is excerpted from Chapter 9 of my bookCrucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a life of Significance, which comes out Oct. 19 from Mount Tabor Media and Morgan James Publishing. In this piece, I discuss the lessons I learned from my failed $2.25 billion takeover bid of my family’s 150-year-old media company – and also what my experience can teach all of us about the importance of crafting and pursuing a unique personal vision rooted in our passions, talents and beliefs.

The experiences and travails during my days at John Fairfax Ltd. have affected me in many ways. They have affected my view of myself, my view of vision, and my understanding of what it takes to make vision a reality. They have also affected how I help others.

At a personal level, my “failure”—which I consider my life’s greatest crucible experience—hurt me deeply and has humbled me, but ultimately, I believe it has made me wiser and put me on a better path. What was searing was the repeated thought that I had this great vision, this God-given vision as I believed it was, and I let God down.

John Fairfax Ltd. could have been so great, and I blew it. How did I blow it? Count the ways. Either I blew it by not being the take-charge leader the job needed, or I blew it by being too impatient for change and not really giving other family members involved in the family business a chance to embrace the vision I was trying to make a reality. Perhaps I would have found some commonality between my vision and their visions. I did not ask, so I do not know. Either way, I failed in my mission to bring the vision to reality.

More Lessons Learned

But what was worse, in some ways, was what I learned about myself. That was not fun. I learned that perhaps I had a hero complex, the desire to be the crusading avenger who saves the day.

I had also made assumptions about the rest of my family, who they were and what they were about, based on others’ perceptions. I had not tested these assumptions by talking to my relatives myself and listening to them. There was resoluteness there, but there was also the other side of that, which was stubbornness. These reflections about who I was, my character and my motives, were not fun or easy. But part of living life well is learning from your failures and living life in light of these lessons.

So what are some of the lessons learned? You have to be humble. You cannot have this ego complex that you are going to be the savior of the world. That is dangerous and does not often work out well. You can hurt a lot of people while you are trying to save the world. There is another saying, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” I may have been trying to do the right thing. But a lot of bad things seemed to happen: to me, to others, and to the company. Having a “save the world” ego complex can be dangerous. And it is all-too-often the fuel of a devastating crucible.

You cannot inherit a vision. Just like you cannot inherit your parents’ faith, you cannot inherit your parents’ vision. I tried it and failed. If it is not your vision, no matter how noble it is, do not try to make it your vision. If you do, you risk facing a life-changing crucible of your own creation, causing pain in your own life and the lives of others.

For this reason, it’s important to have an accurate assessment of yourself, a healthy self-awareness. As a leader, as a human being, it is not enough to have a great and worthwhile vision. You have to ask yourself, in all humility, Am I the right person to make that vision happen? Do I have the skills and the gifts, let alone the requisite experience, to bring that vision to reality? How has this experience with vision shaped me and molded me?  

Funnily enough, I am still attracted to vision. These days, though, I am more cautious regarding my own role in a worthy vision. I no longer see myself as always central to the picture. I am happy to help others with their visions. I am older and hopefully wiser. I have a few battle scars. I am more realistic, both about the challenges of making a vision a reality and about who I am and who I am not. But I have not given up on vision.

As I have said, I hate cynicism and defeatism—the sense that it is hopeless, nobody cares, why bother. Fortunately, through God’s grace, I have not become world-weary. I am still idealistic. I still have hope. I still believe the impossible is possible. I am committed to the truth that crucible experiences can be overcome if we learn the lessons of them, craft a vision to move beyond them that is rooted in our gifts and passions, and dedicate ourselves to making that vision a reality as we pursue a life of significance.

What It Takes to Find Your Own Vision

In my capacity as a coach and consultant, when people ask me for advice on job transition, or if people who have sold businesses come to me looking for a new direction, I have a paradigm I use. I ask them about their gifts and abilities. I ask them about their passions (that is, what activities or causes they are excited about). If they are Christians, I ask them how their planned new job or activity would advance God’s Kingdom. (If they are not believers, I might ask them how that job or activity would fulfil a higher purpose.) So, if that new job or activity is in the center of their gift set, in an arena they are off-the-charts passionate about, and they believe it advances God’s Kingdom or fulfils a higher purpose, my belief is that they will feel fulfilled and, I would say, “called” to that position.

In my life, too, I try to live by that model. I believe I am at my best when I am advising, facilitating, and writing. I am passionate about my faith. I want everything I do to advance God’s Kingdom. When I advise, my desire is to help people follow a calling that fits them, that draws on their greatest passions and talents. Helping people fulfil their visions gives me as much pleasure and joy as anything else in life.

Sometimes to be the best version of yourself you have to go through some trials and tribulations you do not want to experience—crucibles. Research done by Crucible Leadership has found that 49 percent of business leaders have had crucible experiences, events so painful that they have fundamentally changed their lives. I am certainly among that 49 percent. I have experienced much pain, and much self-reflection and soul-searching. The benefit of coming out on the other side of the failed takeover is that I now have a vision I am truly excited about, one that is truly my vision.

Where does vision come from? Is it internal or external? It would seem vision is often inspired by external events or comes from sources outside ourselves. Consider John Fairfax’s vision of the great newspaper he wanted to build one day. That vision was nurtured while working for a London newspaper and during the trials of working in newspapers in Leamington. His vision was cemented by the crucible of failure and then flourished under the promise of the young colony of New South Wales.

There was much external encouragement, such as that from John’s wife, Sarah. Yet that is not to say there was no internal component to John’s vision. Perhaps the greatest internal influence was his character, coupled with his aptitudes. John’s character made him want to build a newspaper that was fair, would fight for just causes, and help build a young colony. The facets of John’s character—fairness, justice, and compassion—were inextricably woven into his vision. Remember:

Vision occurs when deep-seated beliefs and character meet circumstances in an area in which the visionary has aptitude. This was certainly the case for John Fairfax in a way that was not true for me.

Reflection

Order Crucible Leadership here