The Greatest of All Time. Shorthand, GOAT — especially in sports contexts. But the single-minded pursuit of being the best (fill in the blank) in your sphere of influence can invade your professional and personal life, too. And when it does, it can be dangerous. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax talks with cohost Gary Schneeberger about why we should avoid chasing GOATdom – and, more importantly, how to do it. Warwick unpacks five insightful steps we can take to decouple our achievements from our identity to help us pursue a life of significance and a legacy we can be proud of. “Truly great leaders,” he explains, “don’t focus on their own greatness.”
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. So it’s not just for these great athletes, it’s very tempting to want to be the best in our field of endeavor, which is not wrong. But it’s getting your whole sense of identity at being perceived by your friends and neighbors and colleagues as being the best in whatever your arena is.
Gary S:
And it comes with dangers. It comes with great dangers of a loss of identity, where if your identity isn’t being the best oral surgeon and you’re not the best oral surgeon, then your identity is crushed in some way. That’s a crucible. One of the dangers is it allows you to, or it leads you to put your emphasis on the wrong things. I go back to The Natural. You put your emphasis on achievement, not relationships. And that’s one of the things that almost passes Roy Hobbs by in that film. He finally does get back together with his high school sweetheart, but a lot of years pass where he is putting his emphasis on trying to get achievement, and he’s missing relationship, he’s missing those things that are truly important that lead to what you call a life of significance. So there are some dangers that come from being wrapped up in pursuing single-mindedly being the greatest of all time.
Gary S:
The greatest of all time. Maybe you know it better in the context, we’re discussing the concept today, by the acronym G-O-A-T, GOAT. It’s a discussion often had over athletes, who’s the GOAT of the NBA or professional golf or pro tennis. We discuss that aspect on today’s episode, but really only as a jumping off point to talk about how this idea of being the GOAT invades our own professional and personal lives, and the dangers it presents when it does.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. Today, Warwick and I talk at length, not only about why we should avoid the pursuit of GOATdom but how. Warwick unpacks five insightful steps we can take beginning today to decouple our achievements from our identity to help us pursue a life of significance and a legacy we and our children and their children, and so on and so on and so on, can be proud of. As Warwick wisely says about halfway through our discussion, truly great leaders don’t focus on their own greatness.
Gary S:
So, listener, we have a fun episode today, and we’re not exactly sure what to call the episode. Warwick sort of thought it up, and we talked about it. And when we did, we sort of just put the name GOAT syndrome on the show, GOAT as in greatest of all time, a common discussion in the sporting world. Who’s the greatest quarterback, basketball player, tennis player, football player of all time. So Warwick and I the sort of threw out GOAT syndrome. We were going to call Warwick’s blog something about GOAT syndrome, and one of our team realized that there is actually something that’s a syndrome involving farm animal GOATs. So we didn’t want to call it that. So we’re not exactly sure what we’re going to call it.
Gary S:
I came up with this morning while I was getting ready, let’s call it, we shouldn’t be GOAT roping, we shouldn’t be trying to rope in and lasso being the GOAT. That’s not necessarily a great thing. But we will unpack in this conversation why sort of a single-minded pursuit of being the GOAT, the greatest of all, time is not necessarily the wisest thing for your life. And Warwick, what are your initial thoughts on why that’s true, why pursuing GOATdom is not necessarily the wisest course of action for us?
Warwick F:
We’ll unpack more the challenge with trying to be the GOAT or GOAT syndrome, so to speak, is you get your identity wrapped up in achieving that. And even if you’re the greatest of all time, at one point in sports or even in life, the challenge is, your chances of staying there, it’s not always that high. Some people will retain that position forever, but in many cases, they won’t. So it’s sort of an ephemeral goal that risks being beaten by somebody else. Everybody wants to be the best in whatever their field is. And so having your whole sense of identity being wrapped up in the greatest of all time, in sports, or at some field of endeavor, it’s a slippery slope that your sense of self and identity could be shattered. It’s a goal that is probably not sustainable, at least in terms of your inner sense of self-worth and psyche.
Gary S:
And this would probably be a good time to sort of begin the discussion by saying what we’re not saying. And we’re not saying, I don’t think, we’re not saying that you shouldn’t try to be the best you can be, you shouldn’t aim for being the best you can be. But being the best you is different than being the best them. In other words, the idea of a GOAT is to be the best of everybody who ever lived or everybody who ever played this game or did this profession. And that can be unhealthy. Trying to be a better you, working hard to be the best you can be, that’s a good thing. But wrapping your identity up in being the best whoever did x, y, z or q, can cause some problems.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s nothing wrong with striving to be the best in whatever your field is. Having your identity being wrapped up in being the best of all time in your environment, your profession, or even having your identity being wrapped up in achievement, in goals. Trying hard is good, realizing your whole sense of self and persona is not about what you do. Who you are is a lot more than achievement. And that’s really the root of GOAT syndrome, if you will, is getting your identity wrapped up in achievement, whether it’s the greatest of all time or being the best. So that’s the subtle thing, which we’ll unpack more as we go on.
Gary S:
Right. So, if you’re out there GOAT-roping, if you’re trying to be the GOAT, that’s where the problems can come in. And it’s fascinating to me as we talk about this, so many times in life, some of the best analogies we can make to a situation that we face in our day to day lives is through the sporting world. And the term GOAT tends to be used mostly in sports. People will argue incessantly. There are talk show careers that are made on who is the GOAT in football, who is the GOAT in golf, who is the GOAT in tennis, in hockey, in Jai alai. Who is the GOAT in whatever the sport is, that tends to be where the conversation starts. And that’s helpful to discuss in order to see how difficult it can be to one, establish who a GOAT is, and two, to stay there and how that can sort of knock us off our feet as we talk about as a crucible experience.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. And three, that we’ve really discussed was in golf, football and tennis. And part of the impetus for this discussion was the recent tragic car accident that Tiger Woods had in California. He was chasing Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 major golf championships. Tiger Woods was at 15, Tiger’s now 45, which is getting a little old, frankly, to win golf majors. I think Jack Nicklaus won his final Masters at Augusta at 46 I think. It’s not impossible with modern fitness but it’s tough. It was always going to be tough.
Warwick F:
Tiger’s definitely had his challenges, physically and otherwise. But then this car accident on top of that, which shattered his lower legs, it just made you think, oh my gosh, it was tough before, it’s even tougher now. And so, everybody, including me, just felt so badly for him about what he went through and we all hope he can come back and win more majors. Nobody knows exactly where his thinking is but it’s got to be tough. I mean, he’s got to be thinking, Jack Nicklaus’ record, love to beat it. The morning after the whole car crash has got to be, oh my gosh, now what.
Warwick F:
So that’s kind of was in my mind, and then you have others. Tom Brady recently won his seventh Super Bowl this last one with Tampa Bay before as we know it was with New England.
Gary S:
And that is, by the way, let me just add this, his seventh Super Bowl, just to put that in perspective, there have been 55 Super Bowls. 13% of all Super Bowls that have been won had been won by one quarterback. That is just astounding to me, and that is one of the reasons why people throw the word GOAT around when they talk about Tom Brady.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, obviously you’ve got Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw with four Super Bowls. And not having grown up in this country, you would know better than I do, Gary, about this, some people look at Joe Montana’s stats, but certainly, Tom Brady certainly has a right to be in the mix of being called the greatest of all time, if not lay claim to it. Winning seven is not going to be the easiest, and he’s still going, it’s not going to be the easiest record to break. But who knows?
Warwick F:
In tennis, which all Australians love tennis, there we have a real active discussion about who the greatest of all time, and is in a potential changing of the record. Roger Federer currently holds 20 Grand Slams. He eclipsed Pete Sampras’ record of 14, a number of years ago, which people thought 14, how can you break that? So he’s at 20. Now you’ve got Rafa Nadal that recently also got to 20. And because Rafa Nadal is so dominant on clay on the French Open, if he is vaguely healthy, he has a very strong chance come June when they play that championship in Paris of being considered maybe the GOAT in tennis, he will have broken the tie at 20. You’ve got Novak Djokovic at 18 majors. You’ve got three of the greatest players of all time playing in the same era.
Warwick F:
If you’re Roger Federer, it’s like, well, gosh, I thought I was in good shape. Just my luck to have, it’s almost like being Tom Brady playing against Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw in the same era. It’d be like seriously, really? Not that it’s easy now, but it’s that kind of a deal. But the point of those analogies is being the GOAT is ephemeral. Roger Federer is considered the second greatest player on clay in some ways. But he keeps getting beat by Rafa Nadal, so it doesn’t matter when it’s clay. So the sporting analogy show that Tom Brady of the three maybe has the greatest claim to being the greatest. Records are meant to be broken. It’s tough. And then the whole sense of, we don’t know where these three players stand, they’re different folks. But having your identity wrapped up in that, it’s a dangerous thing.
Gary S:
To the point that you just made about it being ephemeral, I’ve got a statistic sheet here in my hands. When he retired, Brett Favre, former quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, when he retired, Brett Favre was the NFL’s all time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns and quarterback wins. That’s GOATish statistics, right? He’s been retired for more than a decade, he’s been retired a while now. Now Brett Favre is the NFL leader in most times sacked, most career interceptions, and most fumbles. So, what was GOAT-ish in the good sense, greatest of all time, now is sort of GOAT-ish, in you’re the GOAT, the guy who kind of ruined the game. If you fumbled the most, been intercepted the most, and sacked the most, those are not auspicious statistics.
Gary S:
So, all that to say, if you wrap your identity up in what your numbers are, whether they’re numbers on a playing field or numbers in a ledger, from your career, numbers in your bank account for how much money you make, if you wrap your identity up in those things, those things can change. There’s a story, Warwick, that I’ve heard you tell a time or two, that I want to, as we sort of shift from the sports analogy into the real world. I’ve heard you say on a couple of occasions, and you write about it in your book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance, coming out this October from Mount Tabor Media.
Gary S:
You say in the book and I’ve heard you say before that while you were going through the period where you were the heir to the family media dynasty, you were told by family members, by your parents, that you had the ability, you could be, if this goes right, Warwick, if your running of the company goes the way it could go, with your experience at Oxford and at Harvard Business School, with the way you’ve prepared yourself for this, you can be not just a great leader of the company, you can be one of the great Fairfax’s, perhaps the greatest Fairfax since the founder of the company, your great, great grandfather, John Fairfax. That had to have been a lot to live with.
Warwick F:
Yeah, well said. That’s true. I mean, as I think I’ve said elsewhere, I made the mistake of working hard. Growing up in a wealthy almost aristocratic family, I sometimes jokingly feel like, it does feel a little bit like the royal family, it doesn’t feel like you had a whole lot of choice but to go into the family business. But I jokingly say that I made the mistake of working hard. So I got grades in school, I went to a good private boys school. Got into Oxford where my father, grandfather, elder brother has gone. Worked on Wall Street, got into Harvard Business School. So, all of that kind of working hard to do my duty and make my parents and family proud, that made people think, gosh, I mean, he’s intelligent, he works hard. Could he be one of the great Fairfax’s since the founder, John Fairfax?
Warwick F:
And so while humility is very important to me, that sense in my mind, I think it started affecting me in the sense, gosh, maybe I could do a whole lot of good for Australia. Maybe my name would be known generations to come. The thought did creep into my brain. And then you had some people around the time of the takeover, well-meaning believers saying, gosh, we’ve been praying for God to raise up somebody in the heart of the media for 20 years or more. And you’re an answer to prayer. Gosh. I could be one of the greats since John Fairfax, I’m an answer to prayer, I could have an impact on my country.
Warwick F:
Even somebody like me where humility and faith is so important, it starts seeping into your psyche and consciousness. So when the whole two billion plus takeover ended, it’s like, well, now what’s my mission? It’s almost like, you get too old to play football and now what do I do? Well, that mission’s over, that goal, that dream. It was a tough thing to deal with. So there’s some part of that GOAT syndrome in some sad way that I can identify with. Having your whole identity wrapped up in a goal or a persona, or what people are saying about you, about who you potentially could be.
Gary S:
And is it safe to say, I mean, you’re crucible, you lost the family business, 150 years in the family, gone. Price tag of $2.25 billion dollars, gone. But is it safe to say, even with that, that it was the sense of failure, the blow to your identity was even just one tick harder because of that? Did whatever bit of GOAT syndrome, GOAT roping, whatever bit of that seeped into you, did that make it even that much worse, even just a click worse, that failure?
Warwick F:
I think it was. It was a failure of epic proportions, and while it wasn’t so much the money because money has not been a driver for me, the sense of, gosh, the impact I could have had on the company, bringing it back to the ideals of the founder, have it be run well, the impact through newspapers on the country, that sense of what might have been and what could I have done, it’s sort of like unfulfilled promise. Somebody that may have been an incredible high school football or basketball player suffers a devastating injury, and they never know what would have happened in college, or professional, what might have been. And so, you have to live with the what might have been. And that’s not uncommon unfortunately. Because of the expectations others were putting on me, and I was putting on myself, that sense of what might have been just added to the difficulty, the bitterness almost, that feeling of failure certainly.
Gary S:
And that feeling that you had, that’s why we’re talking on Beyond the Crucible on the podcast that deals with how do you bounce back from crucible experiences. That’s why we’re spending so much time talking about great football players and tennis players and golfers and all of that. The reason we’re talking about that because it can affect us in our own pursuit of our professional dreams, our professional goals. And those are the dangers. Your identity gets wrapped up, not just in what you do, but in being the best there ever was in what you do. You and I’ve talked a lot about, in the movie, The Natural, with Robert Redford, there’s a great scene that you love in that movie. Describe that scene what happens and why that then applies to all of us in some way, what happens to Robert Redford’s character?
Warwick F:
The Natural is one of my favorite movies. It’s about a young guy from Nebraska that kind of makes a mistake, a woman that just is somewhat psycho, and she kind of basically injures him. And so, his promising career seems to be over. He comes back and, they don’t tell you, but I’m guessing somewhere in his 30s, with the mythical New York Knights team. I think you have a jersey.
Gary S:
I have a hat, a jersey, a T-shirt, I have the whole-
Warwick F:
Which I think is so cool. Anyway, just because he’s an honest guy that won’t kind of play ball with people who want to bet on sports, he ends up getting poisoned and he’s in the hospital. And the woman that he knew from when he was growing up played by Glenn Close, he’s in the hospital bed, and she is at his hospital bedside trying to comfort him. And Robert Bedford’s name in the movie is Roy Hobbs, that’s the character he’s playing. And he just says to Glenn Close, “Things really didn’t work out the way that I had hoped.” And she says, “What do you mean?” “Well, I just thought I would be one of the great baseball players of all time. I’d walk down my hometown and they’d say, there goes Roy Hobbs, the greatest there ever was.” And she says to him, “Well, Roy, but then what?”
Warwick F:
He looks at her. He does not understand the question what she’s saying. So you’re the greatest of all time. Well, then what? What’s after that? Almost not so what, but is that all there is? He cannot fathom the question that Glenn Close is asking him. I’ve thought about that a lot. And that’s just a perfect scene that epitomizes GOAT syndrome, that sort of there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was. Could be, there goes, John Smith, Mary Jones, the best there ever was.
Warwick F:
I guess the point of this episode is not just about great athletes or sports heroes. It could be, maybe you could think, gosh, maybe I could be the best lawyer in my town, the best surgeon, the best real estate person. Maybe if you’re a student, maybe I could be the best high school basketball player, swimmer, diver. In whatever arena you’re in, there is a temptation to say I want to be the best in my field, in my area, so that all my friends will say, gosh, there goes Joe, there goes Susan. They’re the best at what they do. They are the best. They’re the best I know personally. They’re the greatest.
Warwick F:
So it’s not just for these great athletes. It’s very tempting to want to be the best in our field of endeavor, which is not wrong, but it’s getting your whole sense of identity at being perceived by your friends and neighbors and colleagues as being the best in whatever your arena is.
Gary S:
And it comes with dangers. It comes with great dangers of a loss of identity, where if your identity is in being the best oral surgeon and you’re not the best oral surgeon, then your identity is crushed in some way. That’s a crucible. One of the dangers is it leads you to put your emphasis on the wrong things. I go back to The Natural. You put your emphasis on achievement, not relationships. And that’s one of the things that almost passes Roy Hobbs by in that film. He finally does get back together with his high school sweetheart, but a lot of years pass where he is putting his emphasis on trying to get achievement, and he’s missing relationship. He’s missing those things that are truly important that lead to what you call a life of significance.
Gary S:
So there are some dangers that come from being wrapped up in pursuing single-mindedly being the greatest of all time. And that’s why we’re having this discussion, and that’s why we’re going to pivot here in a minute to start talking about ways in which we can cut short that pursuit, that all encompassing pursuit of being the GOAT. By cutting that short, we can avoid some of the pitfalls and the heartache that come from it.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, I think it’s really two things. One is trying to avoid the pitfalls of getting into the GOAT syndrome. But then sadly, others, me to a degree, we’ll have times in which maybe, I wasn’t ever the GOAT perhaps, but I guess I had my expectations of trying to make a great contribution to the company and the country. But for those who are legitimately in conversation about being the GOAT in sports or in business, once you’ve had a fall from grace or you’re no longer in the mix, that’s hard to deal with too. So it’s really both the ones, maybe you’re on your way up, or how do you avoid the GOAT syndrome pitfalls. And if you’re already on top of the mountain and have fallen, what do you do then, how do you recover? So it’s both almost like vaccination, if you will, before you get the disease, and if you have the disease, how do you recover? It’s kind of both.
Gary S:
And when you’ve roped the GOAT. When you have achieved GOATness, not only is it ephemeral, but it’s not fulfilling. Here’s a quote from 17th century French poet, Jean de La Fontaine, said this, “Neither wealth nor greatness render us happy.” It can be not just fleeting, but it can be not fulfilling in the sense of you can get it and it’s not, it’s Glenn Close saying, and then what? Is that all there is? There are other things that are more important than just being identified from the outside looking in as the greatest of all time.
Gary S:
And we just had a guest on the podcast a few weeks back, Hank McClarty. And Hank talks about this. Hank was in many ways, close to the GOAT in his financial services career. He was on the cover of magazine, his firm’s were ranked in the top 10, 15, whatever they were. Hank, by his own description said he started drinking the Hank Kool-Aid, believing his own press clippings, and his life collapsed. He spent more than two years living with no direction and no job off of credit card points in a hotel relying on the free breakfasts. Not only was that not his identity, his identity was gone. He didn’t know what to do but he didn’t have a job, he didn’t have a direction. And what he found was significance. He was able to rebuild his career as he talks about in the episode. He rebuilt his success. But more important to him, based on gratitude and humility, he was able to build significance. And that’s what not focusing solely on being the GOAT allowed him to do.
Warwick F:
That’s absolutely true, and that’s a great example, the sad thing is, for those on the way up, there’s this myth that once I get to the top of the mountain, then I’m going to be happy and fulfilled. And the reason you feel stressed is because you haven’t succeeded in your goal to be the greatest in whatever field it is. I’m reminded of that fable, if you will, about there’re an anthill, and the ants were crawling over each other to get to the top. And one ant says to the other, “So, why are we doing this? What’s up there?” And says, “I didn’t know, it must be amazing, because everybody else is headed up the top of the hill.” And it’s like, yeah, I don’t know why we all try to be the number one financial advisor in the country, or the top real estate person or the top surgeon or the top this, I don’t know. But once I’m there and everybody goes, wow, this guy, this woman, they are the best.
Warwick F:
You want to realize that that’s ephemeral because sometimes, you might be spending your whole career to get there, and you’ll get there later in life. And by then, I wouldn’t say it’s too late to turn, but your years to change the whole legacy deathbed experience as we talk about. There won’t be as many. That’s almost the worst case scenario is reach the peak of success in business or in some other field when you’re over 50 or over 60, because you spent your whole life chasing being the GOAT and it’s like, well, now what.
Gary S:
And this is a danger, we haven’t talked about this in advance, we haven’t talked about it since you first brought it up, but you mentioned one time, when we were going through some stories to film a video for Crucible Leadership about some retirement community somewhere, where there were all these people who had had these great careers, and they were just so unhappy. Am I remembering that right?
Warwick F:
You’re right. I think it was outside of Denver, a bunch of wealthy folks, and that achieved success, but now they’re in some retirement home, and it’s like, well, now what. Probably mention it later, you’ve mentioned before about the whole headstone deal. It’s like, what do you want your legacy to be, and when you’re on your deathbed, you’re thinking about what people are going to say at your funeral, it’s typically not Joe, Mary, they were the wealthiest, the most successful, the best athlete, the best this. That’s not how you’re going to want your family and friends to remember you. It just is not.
Gary S:
It’s ephemeral and it’s fleeting. It’s ephemeral and it’s fleeting. And that’s why significance is neither of those things. significance is not ephemeral, it’s not fleeting. So, how do we, those of us who are listening here today, how do we avoid the pitfalls? How do we solve, what’s the solution to being so wrapped up in pursuing GOATness that we end up falling victim to its more insidious aspects? What are some keys to how we can avoid those things happening to us?
Warwick F:
I think the first one is, don’t focus solely on records. Records can’t be a benchmark of how we’re doing, especially in sports, wins, losses, stats. But rather than focus on records, I think some of the best athletes do that, focus on day to day improvement. Just focus on how can I be better. If you’re in business, what can we do today to serve our customers better? What can we do today to improve our product? If you serve your customers well and improve your product, you’ll probably make more money.
Warwick F:
Some of the most successful people in business know this, if ever you ask a CEO, well, what’s your vision, what’s your mission? To increase revenue 20% for the next five years. Smart business analysts will say, really, that’s it? That’s not a vision, that’s not a mission. The smart ones will say, it’s really to serve our customers, to treasure our employees. Some of the best companies like Southwest Airlines, their whole mission, what started them in Texas, was to unite families, bring families together by bringing the cost of an airfare at an affordable level at a time when air travel was incredibly expensive. That was their mission. Well, they’ve done fabulously well and been very profitable for many years.
Warwick F:
But that wasn’t the goal. The goal was really not about numbers. It was about a thought of bringing families together. The best companies, the best organizations are focused on, not so much on the records, but day to day improvement that’s really anchored by an altruistic mission, or vision.
Gary S:
And that’s the best way for an individual to live in pursuit of goals as well. One of the things I thought about as we were talking about this episode was focus on goodness, not on greatness. Focus on how you can be good, how you can do good for people, not on being great for yourself. I think that shift in things can be an enormous boon to your joy, not your happiness, happiness is circumstantial, and it can be rooted in success. But joy is internal. If you’re focused on bringing goodness to the table, not gathering greatness for yourself, I think that is one of the first prerequisites, one of the first steps toward a life of significance.
Warwick F:
I think that’s very true, is really, it’s what we talk a lot about when we talk about a life of significance, which at Crucible Leadership we define as a life on purpose dedicated to serving others. So it’s not about your own stats, your own record. It’s about the team, it’s about serving your customers, your employees. I think of Jim Collins, his book, Good to Great, which is really a great testament to what we’re talking about. He wrote it a number of years ago, but basically, he analyzed companies that had 15 years of reasonable returns, and then 15 years of incredible returns relative to the stock market.
Warwick F:
All of the leaders he looked at were what he calls level five leaders, in which they were driven, but they were humble. And when he asked these leaders, so what accounts for your success? He says, well, gee, I don’t know, I’ve got a great team. They’re almost humble. They didn’t say, well, I’m brilliant, I work hard, I’ve got a good strategy. We’ve got a killer app. I mean, whatever it is, it was just a humble sense of, it was outward focused, it was other focused. We have a good team. The truly great leaders are like that. It’s not about their own personal success, it’s about the success of the team. And serving their customers, serving their clients, serving others. There’s this altruistic other centeredness. The success, the numbers, that’ll all come. That’s a byproduct of their heart, which is other focused.
Gary S:
Another quote I’ll throw at you, Anne Frank said this, “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness.” That’s exactly what you just described. It’s not about “success.” It’s what do you bring to the table, what do you offer other people that you’re interacting with in the area of character and goodness. What’s another step?
Warwick F:
I was just going to say, just before, you triggered another thought by saying that.
Gary S:
Good. That’s my job, to trigger thoughts.
Warwick F:
As listeners will know, I love history. And two of the greatest presidents as historians would view would be Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. And their greatness wasn’t in their numbers. Yes, George Washington defeated the might of the British army that was the greatest army on the face of the earth in the late 1700s. That was an amazing stat, to defeat the greatest army in the world. Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War, at tremendous cost. So their stats were pretty good. But yet, you look at somebody like Abraham Lincoln was clearly very driven, very committed to the cause of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. But he was humble, it was about the team. He didn’t want accolades for himself. George Washington was a man of great character, great self-control. And he wasn’t focused on his own accolades, some of his generals and people almost wanted him to be a dictator at one point when the war looked like it was almost over. And he said, no, this is not what it’s about. We’re about creating a democracy.
Warwick F:
So, the greatness of the two greatest presidents was really the greatness of their character. And that’s why they’re remembered, not just because one won independence for America and the other one preserved the union. It was really their character that was their greatness to your point.
Gary S:
And it’s not impossible, it’s certainly not antithetical to be the GOAT and to have great character. But if you’re caught up in pursuit of GOATness, if you’re caught up in pursuit of being the GOAT, sometimes you can take your eye off the ball, to go back to the sports metaphor, to take your eye off the ball of character. And that’s what our guest last week, Hank McLarty, talked about. He was pursuing success, success, success, and he lost some of his character, he lost some of his integrity, he lost some of his humility, and that cost him dearly.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Truly great leaders don’t focus on their own greatness.
Gary S:
Right. Great place to move on to point number two of how we can avoid some of the pitfalls of trying to single-handedly become the GOAT, pursue the GOAT. What’s another way that we can sort of short circuit that and avoid that pitfall?
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think another way, and you hear athletes talk about this a lot, the great ones, is enjoy the process. It’s about getting better each day, but it’s like, enjoy the training. If you’re a football player, enjoy watching film. The truly great players, they love getting in the gym, they love watching film, they love trying to get just a little bit better. And what’s interesting is with these great players, if they’ve done their utmost to train, to prepare, to improve, if they lose, it’s like nobody likes losing, certainly great athletes don’t, but it’s like, well, I did my best. The better man, the better woman won today. The great ones are often humble in victory and magnanimous in defeat, because, yes, they want to do well, but the focus isn’t on, okay, the sheer act of winning. It’s they’re focused on the process of what do I need to do to be the best that I can be.
Warwick F:
It’s the training, it’s the little things. I’m sure, and you would know better than me, Tom Brady, probably practices endlessly. I think somebody that listeners wouldn’t know here, Steve Smith, is a cricket player in Australia and considered one of, if not the best in the world at the moment. He’s had his challenges. He practices incessantly, more than any other player on the planet, he’s just obsessed. He’ll be in his hotel room with his cricket bat, you’ve heard of shadow boxing, will be like shadow practicing. It’s just like move after move after move endlessly, 100, 1000 times in his hotel room. Does he ever sleep? It’s like he’s obsessed with every little part of his technique. And it’s all about the process. The great players are all about the process. So that’s another key is don’t focus on the result, just focus on each day, how can I get better? How can I enjoy the training, enjoy the practice. Enjoy the process.
Gary S:
And that’s not just obviously for sports. That is in your professional life, that is in your leadership life. Enjoy the process of having people entrusted to you to lead, enjoy the process of being able to lead that.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. It’s helping them improv, delegating. Certainly I know in Crucible Leadership, whether it’s a book cover or anything we’ve done, there might be like 10 meetings to get to a good result. I’m impatient by nature, but it’s like, you’ve got to realize, this is the process, to get a great result, you’ve got to have a good process, keep the team on board, listen to good advice, and just enjoy the process. Even if that’s difficult, for a lot of us, good things come with patience and a good process. I’m not into bureaucracy, but I have come over the years to realize a good process is the key to a good result. It’s critical.
Gary S:
The next step that people can take to avoid getting caught up in the negatives, for lack of a better phrase, GOAT syndrome is what?
Warwick F:
I’d say having other areas to focus on. I mean, one of the ways that it helps to have your whole identity separate from being the greatest in sports or in business or the arts, what have you, is have an outlet. It could be being with family, it could be hiking, running, painting. I think of, certainly it helps with stress. I think of Winston Churchill in World War II, and certainly some consider him to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest Prime Minister in British history. He was a very good amateur painter. So when he had to make incredibly tough decisions and things were looking very dire in the midst of World War II, he would get away to the country, and he would paint.
Warwick F:
So, having an outside relief, not just for stress, but just don’t have your whole sense of self-worth, your whole sense of self wrapped up in your profession. Have other outlets. It could be community groups that you’re involved in. Some people may be the coach of their kids sports teams and middles middle school, or what have you. Just have other areas that are outside of your main profession, I think really helps to provide a bit of balance, and frankly a bit of sanity.
Gary S:
The word that comes to mind as you talk about that, and the next point, point four, is having perspective. Having perspective. And I think it applies, having perspective on this whole question of being the GOAT and pursuing GOATdom. But there’s also having perspective on your crucibles. When I heard you just talking about your family and thinking about, and really spending time with your family. I think about in your crucible with the loss of the family company, your family, you were married, you had children. That perspective, that other areas to focus on, helped you get beyond your crucible so it can help you avoid the GOAT syndrome and some of the trappings of that, the negative trappings of that, but can also help you get beyond your crucible to have that perspective, right?
Warwick F:
There’s no question. When my kids were young in the 90s, after the whole takeover ended, just being able to play. I have two sons and a daughter. So boy, girl, boy. With my oldest son, those first few years, being able to throw a baseball or kick a soccer ball, or just the simple things of life, it just was immense joy. When I was working in the aviation services firm, I’d come from work, and like a lot of dads and moms would appreciate, they’re looking in the window of our house, and you’re walking down the path to the front door and it’s like, Daddy’s home, and they kind of run up to you and give you this massive hug. It just gives you a perspective. They don’t care that gosh, daddy’s lost this $2 billion company. They didn’t understand that at the time. They were too young. It’s hard for them to relate to too much even though they’re in their 20s.
Warwick F:
But those simple things about being able to play with your kids. I remember one year when my oldest son was 10, I co-coached his soccer team. Coaching sports is not really my gifting, but they were desperate and needed somebody, so you kind of, I don’t know, do what you need to do. It was okay, it’s just not the sweet spot of my gifted-ness. But all those things with my young kids at the time, it just gave you a perspective that they didn’t care about all that stuff that I was involved in. It’s just those simple things in life, being able to play with your kids, taking a walk in nature, it’s like, it gives you a broader perspective, than everything being thought of of what you do.
Gary S:
And another perspective generating point is your next point about keeping your identity separate from your profession. I’ve heard you say this often on Beyond the Crucible in your blogs. Why is that so important to stave off some of the negative consequences of pursuing at all costs being the GOAT?
Warwick F:
It’s so easy, we’re all human, unfortunately, and it’s so easy, especially if you start doing well, think maybe I am the best basketball player or the best real estate person or the best surgeon. Let’s say you get some awards and magazines, top surgeon in Maryland, Wisconsin, Illinois. There are professional publications that come out, and your name is there, one of the best. And that’s tough. And so, you have to realize who you are is not about what you do. It’s really more rooted, as we say in Crucible Leadership, in who you are as a person, your inherent value.
Warwick F:
We believe that, I think of Psalm 139, which says, we are beautifully and wonderfully made. Just as human beings, we have inherent value and worth that has nothing to do with what we do. I’m fortunate to have a wonderful wife, and she loves me not because of what I do, but because of who I am. And even in those first few years after the takeover, that never wavered. Now, I realize we’re not all blessed, we all have different family situations. But that helps you realize, who I am is not wrapped up in John Fairfax and some takeover. It’s more wrapped up in who I am as a person. So that’s really key is, you are so much more than your success and your profession. You are so much more than that. You have intrinsic value as a human being in terms of your character and who you are. That’s really the most important thing that people have to really get their head around. You have value in yourself.
Warwick F:
I almost think sometimes when people achieve is because they have an inherent feeling of lack of self-worth. I don’t know that this is always true, but it can be, an inherent maybe, a little bit sense of worthlessness or you should value who you are as a person. If you do that, it will make the fall from the pinnacle, which is maybe not inevitable, but records are meant to be broken. It will make it easy if you see yourself having value as a human being.
Gary S:
Yeah. Some of it might be tied to, you have to prove yourself worthy. You have to prove yourself worthy so you accumulate this record, you do this thing, you do that thing. And that becomes who you are. I want to run a real time experiment here. We have not talked about this. But you just said something when you were talking about keeping your identity separate from your profession, about accolades that came in. And we just went through a process.
Gary S:
Again, I mentioned earlier that your book, Crucible Leadership, is coming out in October. And one of the things we did on your book is we gathered endorsements from a wide swath of folks, people we’ve had on the podcast, people who are business leaders, people who are theologians, people who are business school professors and business school educators. I read those endorsements of your book, 28 of them, 29 of them, at the end of the day, we had 29 of them. And there were some incredibly positive things said about you. As someone who has just gone through the experience of having deep words of affirmation about your work presented to you, how do you keep your perspective in that moment? Help the listeners and the readers who are eventually going to grab the book, help the listeners process how to do that, because I just watched you do it and it was beautiful to see.
Warwick F:
That’s a really interesting question. I think part of what kind of occurs to me is, I mean, my faith is my life. As listeners know my faith in Christ is a bedrock of who I am as a person. I never want to go back to believing the press clippings or believing oh, I could be one of the great Fairfax’s. I’m human, I don’t want to be like, oh, look at this book, look at Crucible Leadership, Warwick’s back, redemption. I mean, I’m human, we all have our temptations. And so, if ever I start looking at these things and go, boy, that’s pretty, and I’m grateful, I’m unbelievably grateful for the very kind words that a number of people, many said, there. Almost it’s like a mantra, it’s like it’s all you Jesus, it’s all you, God. I just bring it right back to Him saying, it’s not me, any gift I have, it’s ones that God has given me. And the good fortune and the good team, good circumstances, the resources I’m blessed with to be able to do what I do, it’s all the Lord.
Warwick F:
So it’s really my faith helps me, if I ever I get tempted, I’m human, it’s like, it’s not me, it’s you, Lord. I just sort of open my hands and just say, it’s you, Lord, it’s not me. I’m just trying to be a faithful servant. I just turn praises back to him. That’s kind of what I do. It works for me. Whenever you feel like your temperature rising a little bit, your arrogance, your believing your own press clippings, that’s when I just turn to my faith and say, it’s not me, it’s you, maybe working through me. I don’t know how that translates more broadly maybe, maybe it’s my family, it’s my team. I’m just trying to be faithful here. I think there’s a way of looking at it more broadly a bit. That’s kind of what I do.
Gary S:
And that’s helpful. That’s a real world application of keeping your identity separate from your profession, and specifically, your achievements within that profession, because that’s where I think the GOATness comes in, it’s your identity is tied up not just in your profession, but your achievements in that profession. And when you write a book and you get endorsements from people, it’s easy to think, wow, I have achieved a lot. And to be able to tamp that down and recognize that you are more than that, that you’re more than your achievements. We’ve talked about it before on the show a lot. We are all more than our best moments and more than our worst moments. We all sort of live life in the middle. And that is true I think for pursuing GOATness. We’re more than how many Grand Slam titles we’ve won, how many Super Bowls we’ve won. And that is what really matters in life.
Gary S:
We’re getting to the point where, since we’ve talked so much about sports, I’m going to say the clock is winding down or something like that. I can’t think of a good metaphor for, captain’s turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. We’re going to land the plane here shortly. But you have one more point that I think is really critical for listeners to find the strength, to really take strength, find the strength to turn away that desire, as you just described it, the heat rising up, of wanting to embrace and pursue and even grasp at being the GOAT. And what is that final point that you have, Warwick?
Warwick F:
It’s hold it all lightly. Records come and go. Maybe you’re in the prime of your athletic career or the leader of the organization. But it won’t last. Records will be broken. And if you’re the CEO of your company, newsflash, you won’t be CEO forever. You’ll retire, you’ll get replaced. You might be asked to leave. I remember when my dad was, he was chairman of John Fairfax Board, before he was thrown out by some other family members in 1976. And as chairman of the large media organization, he would be invited to government functions and embassies deals, consular things. I think I remember my mother telling me that when he was removed as chairman, not only did those invitations not come. In some cases, I think he was told you don’t need to attend. The invitation was withdrawn. That does happen. Unfortunately, anybody that’s been in some area of success, there might be some who have experienced that. Well, you’ve got to hold all these records lightly.
Warwick F:
Of the three people we spoke about, one of the folks I most admire because I love tennis is Roger Federer. And I don’t know his psyche, but he sure seems like he has a pretty balanced life and has his head on straight. He has a nonprofit that helps underprivileged folks in Africa. He has a young family, I want to say he has two set the twins, which is kind of crazy. I think he actually blew his knee out one time helping bathe his kids and took him out for six or nine months. If you’re going to blow your knee, that’s probably not a bad way of doing it, right?
Gary S:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Recently he was asked because he’s tied with Rafa Nadal, and now they’re probably got to beat him in that record in the next few months, what he thinks of it all. And Roger Federer says this, as he’s talking about playing against some of the most incredible players of all time Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal. And Federer says this, “But all records are there to be broken. The guys are unreal,” in other words, his competitors, Djokovic, and Nadal. “We all know that. I hope they keep on going. I hope that they do everything they possibly want and they look back with no regrets. We want to leave the game with no regrets, and I think from that standpoint, we all sleep very well at night.”
Warwick F:
I don’t know whether they do but you sense that Roger Federer does. He loves the game, he’s like 39 years old, which is ridiculously old for a tennis player. Why does he keep playing? As that saying goes, for the love of the game, he honestly loves playing tennis. He wants to do well, and if he’s not the greatest of all time, his record is broken, which undoubtedly will be, he seems like he’s about as much peace with it as any athlete is, as any elite athlete is. So there’s something about him that really impresses me. I feel like of all the athletes I know, he handles the whole GOAT syndrome about as well as I know. Maybe his psychologist, if he has one, says actually there’s the real Roger Federer nobody knows.
Warwick F:
But as far as anybody knows who watches tennis, everybody feels like gosh, this guy, not only does he handle it well as is good character, and what’s the result of that, pretty much everywhere he goes, everybody cheers for him. People love him, not just his grace and ability to play tennis, but who he is as a person. It’s okay to be cheered for the right reasons, which is not just about his tennis, but about his character. If you’ve got to be cheered, let people cheer for you as a human being.
Gary S:
And that is true, not just of folks who are playing sports, that’s true of all of us in any field of endeavor that we’re involved in. As we wrap, Warwick, let me say a couple of things. One, all of the insights that we’ve discussed on the show today, you have in a blog that folks can find on crucibleleadership.com. So if you want to revisit any of these posts and sort of look more deeply into some of the points that we’ve made, Warwick’s perspective on them, you can read them at crucibleleadership.com under the heading of blog. You can find that there.
Gary S:
But there is a a summary of all this. You had these five points, but it all leads to kind of one great big summary of what our goal should be. And I’ve often thought of this in the last couple of months, in particular, as we talk about a life of significance, that what you’re about to talk about, legacy, seems to be like the the postscript to a life of significance. We live a life of significance and we leave a legacy. But how do all of these points when they add together, why is legacy such an important true north to go for?
Warwick F:
In some ways, people talk about living life backwards, when you’re on your deathbed, when you’re thinking of your kids and your spouse, giving your eulogy, if you could write it for them, one of our folks, I think it was Mike Valentine talked about what would you like your eulogy to be like, which is an amazing comment that he made. It probably won’t be about fame or success, it might be about being a mom, a dad, brother, sister, maybe about serving the people that you worked with, serving the people in your community. How do you want to be remembered by your kids, grandkids, and friends and neighbors? That’s kind of in part what we talk about legacy? Well, how about living your life today in accordance with what you would like the eulogy to be like, in accordance with those last moments of consciousness before we pass? You don’t want to be going oops, I blew it. I’m on my third or fourth marriage, my kids hate me. My employees think I was just the worst jerk imaginable. That’s one legacy. Do you really want that to be yours?
Warwick F:
And so, now’s the time to leave a legacy that you can be proud of. And that’s why we talk about a life of significance because to live a life well lived, to leave a legacy you can be proud of means to do that, I think from our framework, you have to live a life of significance, which is a life lived on purpose dedicated to serving others. When your life is other focused, when it’s built on a foundation of character, of values, of faith in something beyond yourself, that’s a life that you can be proud of. And ultimately, we only get one life, and it may be short or long, we never know the day, it’s just one of those uncertain things in life. So how about living a life today that you’ll be proud of tomorrow and that your kids, grandkids and family members will be proud of as they gather for your eulogy. Live your eulogy today.
Warwick F:
And if you do that, you probably won’t be so focused on being the GOAT in sports or business or the arts, or whatever field of endeavor. You’ll be more focused on other people, about, yes, using your talents to benefit others, working hard, but it will be more other-focused rather than self-focused. That’s really part of what it means to leave a legacy you and certainly others can be proud of.
Gary S:
And to tie the idea of legacy up in the idea that we talked about here, this idea of being a GOAT, we’ve talked about this before, and you alluded to it earlier, arguably the GOATs of country music, of rock and roll music and of jazz standards music, and that would be Johnny Cash in country, Elvis Presley in rock, and Frank Sinatra in jazz and standards. These were the GOATs in these musical genres, but their tombstones, their legacies, two of them don’t even mention that they were musicians at all. Johnny Cash has a psalm on his, Frank Sinatra simply has, “The best is yet to come,” a lyric from one of his songs, on his. Elvis Presley doesn’t mention that he was a recording artists, but the main things about how he was a son and he was a father, those very things that you talked about, having other things to focus on, having a perspective.
Gary S:
If anybody had the right to go out to as the curtain closed, since they’re all performers on their lives, as GOATs and to really trumpet their GOATdom from their tombstones, it was these three gentlemen, and none of them did it. They all focused on those other things you talked about, those other things that bring joy to life, that bring meaning to life, their families. That’s what they focused on. And I think that’s a great place to kind of tie the bow on the package of our podcast here today.
Gary S:
So listeners, thank you for joining us. Until the next time we’re together, remember this because it’s true, your crucible is painful. We know that. Warwick knows that. I know that. We’ve been through crucibles as well. But it is not the end of your story. In fact, your crucible moment can be if you learn the lessons of that crucible, and you apply those lessons moving forward, your crucible experience can be the jumping off point to a new chapter in your story. And it can be the best chapter of your life because that chapter will lead you toward two things that we talked about on this episode. And it won’t involve another one. It doesn’t lead you to GOATdom. It leads you to a life of significance and it leads you to a legacy you can be proud to leave.
He was, in his own words, an “intense goal-setter” from the third grade. And Hank McLarty achieved most of what he set his mind to: a football scholarship to Auburn, a financial services career at prestigious firms, recognition and wealth as one of the youngest and best in his industry. But when he started to “drink the Hank Kool-Aid” and believe he was as fabulous as the press coverage he earned said he was, his world collapsed. Living in a hotel with his two boys for two years, needing its free breakfasts to make ends meet, he slowly began to recast his vision — away from success and toward significance. Today, he says he’s blessed to have found both through Gratus Capital, the firm he founded on the principles of gratitude and humility.
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Hank M:
I had a thriving business, a stellar reputation, but what I thought was a good marriage. Two amazing boys, a brand new house I had just built, like I had all these things and literally with the flip of a switch, I lost everything in a very, very quick amount of time. And so, I think I was in a state of shock. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because I didn’t want anybody to know. And I was petrified because for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. And I had these two little boys looking up at me every day with a big smile on their face. Like, “Daddy’s our hero. He’s going to…” They didn’t know what was going on, except that they were now living in a hotel with me, and I just didn’t know what to do, and it was definitely the scariest time of my life.
Gary S:
Have you ever felt like that? Knocked down so hard by your crucible that you aren’t sure which end is up, let alone how to get up. You just heard today’s guest Hank McLarty, discuss the fallout from his fall from grace. Life in the fast lane to life at the Residence Inn. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
In this far ranging interview with Warwick, Hank opens up about how a lack of humility and gratitude led to him losing the lavish life he had built in the financial services industry and how his low point became his turning point. When he found the grit, his word, to rebuild his career and his reputation, he did it by forming his own company, Gratus Capital, where his goal is to grow his team and his character as he grows the portfolios of his clients. He’s recaptured success, yes, but far more important he says, is that he’s found true significance.
Warwick F:
Well, Hank, thanks so much for being here, really looking forward to the conversation. You’ve done a lot from your football career to finance and wealth management and non-profits. I’d love to just maybe start just, just to get a feel of your background, family, growing up, siblings, so tell us a bit about Hank McLarty and kind of how you grew up in that environment?
Hank M:
Well, growing up my childhood was pretty unspectacular. A normal kid playing sports, I have one younger brother, mom and dad, the four of us. So I will say one thing that was a little different about my growing up was, at a very young age, I started setting goals and that was something that I don’t know why it wasn’t something that went on in my family, but it was just something that I felt it gave me comfort to set goals and work towards things.
Hank M:
And so, as early, as third and fourth grade, I started setting goals for doing physical things like pushups and sit-ups, and would ask my dad to test me on Sunday. So as a normal childhood, other than when I talk about my childhood now, people look at me a little cross-eyed, like, “You were doing what?” And I’m not really sure what the motivating factor was, but I was a fairly intense goal-setter at an early age.
Hank M:
And so, by the time I got to high school, I started playing football and junior high, and that seemed to play into the whole goal setting and physical workouts and all of that. And for some reason, when I was in the 10th grade, I decided I wanted to earn a college scholarship for football, which is not that uncommon. It’s very uncommon for somebody that’s not starting for their JV year, their varsity team. And so, I wasn’t even good enough to start in high school, so setting that goal was a little bit unusual to say the least, but I liked what it did for me because it gave me kind of a North Star to focus on all through high school, and so, I worked extremely hard. It kept me out of trouble because my answer to everything was I’ve got to work out or I’ve got to run, what have you.
Hank M:
And so, by the end of my junior year, I still wasn’t starting for my high school team, which is not a good sign when you’re hoping to get a college scholarship. So, usually players by their junior year are known throughout the state, they’re on the newspapers all the time and there’s colleges recruiting them. So I asked my dad, I said, “Dad, I need some help from you. This goal is getting very far off in the distance, I need to do something drastic. I need to move away for the summer to get ready for my senior year.”
Hank M:
So he helped me to get a job on a horse farm in Kentucky, and I lived in a cabin by myself that summer. And so, I worked on the horse farm mid day, I ran in the morning and I worked out every afternoon at Wildcat’s Gym in Lexington, Kentucky, and I worked hard and it was a lonely summer because I didn’t know anybody there, but I came back for my senior year and I was in phenomenal shape. And that set me up to have some success. So third game of my senior year, there was a lot of college scouts at that game to see players from the other team that were already getting a lot of notoriety, and I had the game of my life. And the next day I got a full offer, a full scholarship offer from Auburn to go play linebacker there.
Hank M:
I got other offers from Tennessee and Georgia and Kentucky and so forth and ultimately decided to go to Auburn, so that’s kind of in a nutshell, my childhood, and getting out of high school and kind of that, I guess the genesis of all the goal setting and kind of intensity that I’ve had throughout my life and setting goals.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s fascinating obviously from the earliest age and not everybody’s driven. A lot of people are laid back and it’s not right or wrong, it’s different, but you’re obviously driven from an early age, did you see any of that in either of your parents or grandparents? I mean, where did that drivenness come from? I mean, do you have any role models in your family that kind of, you emulated a bit?
Hank M:
No. Which is a strange answer, but no. I think for me, my home life, I was never hit or abused or anything like that, but my parents had a very tough time. It was very unsettled at my house, a lot of drama and things of that nature. And I think setting goals kind of gave me something to focus on other than things that I wasn’t happy about. And so, it had nothing to do with any role model, it just something I fell into and it made me feel good, it made me feel good to accomplish something and check a goal off and to go do something that was hard to do and do it well and look back on it. That’s really the only reason I can say that I was doing it.
Warwick F:
So it’s not like your dad, for instance, was like ex military or one of these very driven people that you often hear stories about dads driving their sons like, “Hey son, you had a good game, but I know you can do better.” They’re always pushing, pushing.
Hank M:
No.
Warwick F:
It wasn’t that kind of upbringing, it sounds like.
Hank M:
No. In fact, I think my dad was confused and bewildered as to why I was doing all the things I was doing, making sense with him.
Warwick F:
Well, sometimes it actually can work out better when somebody is not pushing you and you’re doing it for you not to make anybody else happy. I mean, that’s to me almost the ideal. It’s too many pushy parents, I’m sure you probably in high school and in college, you probably ran across your fair share of your buddies, who had the pushy parents and scholarship stars in their eyes and they’re going “Come on son, you can do better,” and I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of that in your time?
Hank M:
Oh yeah. Certainly children living out their parents’ dreams and through that. So I guess in that sense when you put it that way, I’m probably lucky because the only reason I ever pushed myself was because I was pushing myself, nobody ever pushed me.
Gary S:
Hank, I want to jump in just for a second based, because I know from a conversation we had as we were preparing for the interview, there is the one story, right? About your dad when you sort of had it with football and you were going to quit and you talk to him and he did, even though he didn’t push you, even though he wasn’t trying to live his dream through you, he did help you, right? Stay focused on your dream and stay with your goal?
Hank M:
That’s a great point, Gary. Yeah. So, when I got to Auburn I had worked so hard. I mean, I had worked myself really hard in high school, maybe even to an unhealthy level to try to achieve, attain this goal. And so, once I got the goal, it was kind of like, “Okay, what do I do now?” So all these athletes at Auburn, most of them didn’t have to work that hard to get there. They’re just naturally gifted. They’re much faster, much bigger, much stronger, so I remember driving over to Auburn my first day, driving over to move into the dorm and start a summer practice, being very intimidated and insecure about my abilities. Can I hang with these amazing athletes? Because I had to work probably 10 times harder than them just to get here.
Hank M:
And so, I went over there with that attitude, “Am I worthy of being here.” Which is not a great place to start, but it’s where I started. So in my sophomore year, and so, I struggled a little bit, my freshman year. My sophomore year, a coach came up behind me in practice to motivate me and he didn’t mean to do it, but he kicked me, kicked me in the behind, and said, “Hey, come McLarty, let’s go,” and when he did, he just happened to hit my tailbone right on the end, and it was kind of like a funny bone, right?
Hank M:
It’s like a cattle prod on my butt or something. So I jumped up and I lost my temper and I spun around and I grabbed the coach and which obviously that’s not a good thing to do. And so our head coach at the time, my whole time there Pat Dye a known disciplinarian to do things the right way, he was up in the tower and he saw it happen.
Hank M:
And so, a lot of things happened, but one of them was, they ran me off the field, I thought they were going to kick me off the team, but they didn’t kick me off the team, they just ran me until I won. They just ran me every day, and it’s kind of like, to see what he’s made of, does he really want to be here, and so they were testing me.
Hank M:
And I wasn’t passing the test very well, I wanted out of there. I was whining to myself how unfair it was, and I called my dad who was living in Las Vegas at the time and told him I had this elaborate plan to leave Auburn and get a job at university of Georgia at the time, financially, my scholarship was paying for everything and we didn’t have the money. So I figured out this grandiose plan to get out of all these mean coaches and go to University of Georgia and get a job, and I was going to pay my own way.
Hank M:
So within about 10 hours, my dad was at the athletic dorm, he flew immediately from Las Vegas to Atlanta and drove down and I’ll never forget. He said, “Son, I’m going to tell you from personal experience. This is your scholarship, you’ve earned it, if you want to quit, I’m not going to tell you, you can’t. But from personal experience, I’m going to tell you that if you quit now, when things are difficult, it’s going to make it easier and easier in the future, when things get difficult for you to quit and walk away from something. And I don’t think you’re a quitter.”
Warwick F:
Wow. I mean, that’s… As you look back I mean, that is some profound advice that your dad gave you. I mean, that was a gift that don’t you think that he gave you back then?
Hank M:
Yeah. And that’s not what I wanted to hear. At the time I was probably 260 pounds and just a big muscle up baby sitting in his car, talking about how unfair the world was to me, and so, I wanted him to say, “Yeah, get out of here. This is unfair.” I mean, and he didn’t, he just said, “I don’t think you’re a quitter.” And there was no way I could respond any other way than to stay, unless I was just spineless. I mean, he challenged me in a unchallenging way and I got out of the car so mad at him, because I knew I couldn’t leave now, especially I had just met him. But he challenged me as a man and I stayed and I worked through it.
Hank M:
And it definitely is a foundation that of all the other times that we’re going to talk about today, that I could have quit. I didn’t, and that one instance was the foundation of me learning to never, ever stop when things are tough because you need to make a decision work through it and then make a decision when you’re not feeling negative about it, it’s a horrible time, took me a long-term decision.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, that’s a lesson that I think the audience needs to hear, is you don’t want to quit for the wrong reasons, you want to quit because, oh, it’s hard, and life is unfair, well, life is unfair. Everybody alive knows that. So to quit for that reason, you always inevitability will regret it. You don’t want to make a decision that you know you’ll regret. There’s a time to quit for the right reason and a time not to quit.
Warwick F:
And so I want to jump to the really first crucible, but kind of one of the things I’m thinking of is sometimes, and we don’t need to get into all the detail, but sometimes when there’s a bit of drama and uncertainty at home, by setting goals, it’s like, “Well, I can’t control the drama, but I can control who I am.” I can set my own goals, I can set my own path, and so sometimes we live our lives in reaction to things. And so, I don’t know, maybe there was… maybe you’re wired that way anyway, but when there’s things that you can’t control. “Okay, what can I control? Well, I’m going to set some goals, and I’m going to chart my course.” Does that kind of make sense? Maybe there was a correlation way back when…
Warwick F:
Yeah. So this is an amazing story because anybody that follows sports, there’s some people who were so gifted and sometimes they work out really well, and there are a number of folks that are really gifted that never live up to their potential, because it was all too easy. I mean, I grew up in Australia, so Australians follow tennis, I can think of without naming them. I can think of one or two tennis players that can’t miss. Going to win multiple Wimbledon’s majors that didn’t… I’m sure there’s football players, baseball, there’s a number of them, but the ones that have to really work hard and don’t have as much physical ability and natural ability, they’re often the ones that go further.
Warwick F:
Sometimes the ones that coaches want, right? Coaches want folks who have a good attitude and a work ethic that watch film.
Hank M:
There’s a kind of word that describes that grit. They have grit, that means that they have the intensity and the wherewithal to push through things when they’re not going well, and ultimately we all know that’s what’s necessary to succeed in life. I mean, life doesn’t always go well, so yeah, absolutely I agree.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Do you have the grit to get through it? So the first kind of major crucible you went through I understand was when you’re in college and you’re diagnosed with a blood disorder. So just talk about that whole… How that all happened and what happened and yeah, that story?
Hank M:
Yeah. So, after I went through that whole quitting exercise with my dad, things got much better and my attitude was great. I started feeling finally, like I was worthy of being there. I worked really hard and got myself in a position that I was really going to be contributing to the team and getting a lot of playing time. And so, I went into summer camp in August, in Auburn, it’s a little hot. It’s a very hot place, so in August, it’s a hundred degrees, very high humidity, and we’re doing… At the time we were doing four practices a day. And my coach he liked to push us a little harder than most coaches, so four practices a day and I had no idea I had this blood disorder.
Hank M:
And so, during this time of high stress on the body and so forth I had been losing weight over the previous week. I had lost about 15 pounds and it’s normal to lose some weight in those practices, but I had lost more than was acceptable and couldn’t figure out why, and I hit a guy in practice in a drill that normally I would dominate. And when I hit him, I passed out. And the next thing I knew, I woke up, they had me packed in bags of ice on the field, trying to get my temperature down. Apparently, my temperature was over 105, and so those field, the big bags of ice, you see at sports scene, so they had me literally laying down with bags of ice all over my body. And when they finally got my temperature down, they took me to the hospital and then did all kinds of tests, and I had a blood disorder that my immune system was kind of fighting me.
Hank M:
And so, next thing I know I’m in the head coaches office two days later when I got out of the hospital and they’re telling me that I couldn’t play anymore. So I had dedicated at that point, most of my life to the dream of being a starter at Auburn and being a contributor to the football program, and I was told I couldn’t play anymore. So that was kind of a redefining of me, because my whole identity up to that point had been… I’m a high school football player, now I’m an Auburn football player. I really didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life, other than that. And my grades were just, okay, so I had to… Well, first I had to get over the depression because I stayed in bed for about two weeks, I didn’t go to any classes.
Hank M:
My roommates were worried about me and I just didn’t want to get up. And that’s the first time I had ever been through anything like that. And then I finally got up and had to go beg some professors to let me make up some work, so I didn’t fail classes, and I worked through that. And then generally I got focused on my grades, I graduated, I think I had about four more semesters out of school, five more semesters, after that I made a 4.0 in all of those and got my GPA up to a respectable level and moved on after college.
Warwick F:
So were you a junior when this happened? Or what year were you? So you’d spent your whole life focusing on goals, football was sort of the medium, if you will, that you were going to… The playing field that you were going to aim for and you weren’t a starter for most of your high school, you’re able to get a college scholarship, I mean, some things maybe stars were aligned, you played hard, you were thinking of quitting, your dad gave you that talk and there you were, and then it feels like this is unfairly taken away from you sort of the coach kicking you on the backside, and you’re getting blamed for it, it seemed a bit unfair, but this is the ultimate unfair.
Warwick F:
It’s like, “How do you solve a blood disorder?” What’s the goal? What’s the program? What’s the plan? Okay, do I go back to Kentucky and work out harder? But it sounds like there was no plan that could overcome this, right? This was one goal you couldn’t achieve no matter what you did, it sounded like no fault of yours, obviously. So I know this is probably blindingly obvious, but you’ve told us a bit about how you felt that your whole sense of self was wrapped up in football on this goal, so those first few weeks, first few months, that must have been excruciatingly tough to have to deal with the new reality.
Hank M:
I think the best word is just lost. As I said earlier, kind of like, no matter what was going on, whether it was being invited to a party or dealing with girls or class, pretty much any decision I had to make my whole life from high school on, the North Star was always football. I always had an… like, I could just think about, “Should I do this or shouldn’t I?” How’s it going to affect this goal that I’ve set?” That was what I valued everything off of. And then I just felt lost without it, and I wasn’t really sure how to make decisions anymore.
Warwick F:
Well, inevitably for most of us and as listeners would know it’s a very different parallel, I suppose, but I grew up in a large 150 year old family media business, and when that ended on my watch, largely because it was my fault, I had this massive loss of identity. Well, who was Warwick Fairfax, if he’s not part of this Fairfax family media empire. I mean, I’ve no identity, it was just kind of crippling. So yeah, talk a bit about that few, because I imagine there have to… Would have to be in a hit to your identity, who is Hank McLarty without football? I mean, was that part of the sense of loss? It’s like, “That’s who I am. Who am I now?” Is that part of your internal discussion?
Hank M:
Of course, because I didn’t even know what it meant to just be a student. Without this thing I was passionate about outside of that. It was just a huge void there, that joining a fraternity or going to some local gym or something, none of that was going to fill it. And I had to start really… Because I’m a goal oriented person I had to start thinking about, “Okay, what’s the next phase of my life, I’ve got to get these semesters of school finished and go start a career.” And so then I started focusing on my career and that started filling the void.
Hank M:
Then when I started making good grades, which I wasn’t used to, you know I’m making great grades. I wasn’t used to that, that started filling the void and before I knew it, I was out of college and looking for a job, and then that became my identity. So I-
Warwick F:
It sounded like you sort of shifted. I mean, we’re all different. I’m a reflective person which has its good and bad sides, but it sounds like you’re a driven person that you don’t sit still for long. I mean, we’re all human, you might wallow for a few weeks or month or so, but you’re not going to sit there. It’s like, “Okay, this is over, it sucks, it’s awful, move on.” What’s the next goal? What’s the next one? It sounds like… Which can be…
Warwick F:
Reflection is good. It’s one of our guests said, there’s a difference between ruminating and reflecting. Ruminating is, “I’m a terrible person, oh my gosh, what happened?” Reflecting is like, “Okay. This sucked, this was awful, what can I learn from it, let’s move on.” Radical difference between… So you’re more on that healthier spectrum. So you shifted from understand to saying, “Okay, football’s over. What’s the next goal?” And so why did you pick finance? Why did you shift to that to be the next goal?
Hank M:
I’d like to say it was a dream, I had the dreaming of high school and college and I had this big plan, surely because I majored in finance really for no reason. And when I got out of school, I was like, “Okay, what does finance mean a bank or a brokerage firm?” So I’ll go interview at brokage firms. That was the very simplified basis for doing it. And I will say I interviewed probably 20 different banks and financial advisory slash brokerage firms, and every single one of them turned me down because I had no experience, I guess, to them I was a cocky former football player that probably was too big… in four months, who knows? I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t have hired me.
Hank M:
So I was certainly no glamorous high grades depth of experience with a passion for the markets, that was not me. I just wanted a job. And I think people saw through that and nobody wanted to hire me.
Warwick F:
So yeah. Because often, especially in this day and age of three kids in their twenties, I kind of know it’s like people build their resumes now it’s crazy, you know high school, summer jobs, I mean, just by the time you’re a college graduate, there’s all the stuff that they’ve done. President of the Auburn Finance Society they’re already invested on different batches of stocks and it’s all this stuff… I mean, how do people do all this? But they do. I mean, you hire people in your current firm, you’ve seen it, it’s just crazy what people at a given age have done.
Warwick F:
So I hear the challenges, so how did you get that first job? I mean, given people were… Well, you say seeing through you. I mean, at least rightly or wrongly they had a perspective of you, which maybe didn’t feel that flattering at the time, but you’d have…
Hank M:
Probably it was.
Warwick F:
I mean, you’re a smart person, you could probably tell what they were thinking, right?
Hank M:
Sure.
Warwick F:
I mean, how did you break through that barrier if you will?
Hank M:
So I wouldn’t say I broke through it. I found an angle. I went to an Auburn alumni supporter, a very wealthy man that lived in Atlanta that I’d become friends with. I had lunch with him and I told him I couldn’t get a job. And he said, “Well, I have all my money at Merrill Lynch, let me call the manager over there at Merrill Lynch.” I said, “Okay, I’ll take any help I can get.”
Hank M:
So I went to meet with the manager and he was so unimpressed, even after that guy called, he said, “Yeah, you’ve no experience, we’re just not hiring right now.” And so, I was at the time, I was living with my grandfather, I had a one bedroom apartment in Atlanta and I was living on his pullout couch, and I was pretty desperate. So the only person that I had had a conversation with that I had a reference point was the manager from Merrill Lynch.
Hank M:
So I went back to the Merrill Lynch office the next day, waited on him to come in from the parking deck, approached him again and said obviously I didn’t make a very good impression first time. I’d really love the opportunity, he blew me off, the next morning I went back, and the next morning I think he was a little frustrated and annoyed, but also somewhat impressed, I guess, that I was back there again.
Hank M:
And he said, “Here’s I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll let you take the Series 7, if you fail it you’re fired, if you pass it, I’ll give you a shot. But you won’t become an advisor, you’ll have to work for somebody as an apprentice. And in the meantime, while you’re studying, you wear jeans and a t-shirt to work, you go pick up lunches, move furniture, basically be a gopher for me and I’ll pay you $18,000 a year.” I was like, “Okay, done.” So, that’s how I got the job. It was very unglamorous.
Warwick F:
Again, another good lesson is even when people say no, just that level of persistence, I mean, I don’t know many people that would wait for the guy to go in, in the parking garage, like three days in a row or what have you, I mean, that’s not normal. But that shows persistence does pay. I mean, if somebody… Not to say everybody should try that, turn the tables and do that to you, but if proverbially, if somebody has that level of get up and go, I don’t know if you’ll say yes, but you’ll pay attention, right?
Warwick F:
It’s like, “Okay, this guy’s persistence is impressing me.” Okay. So you got your start at Merrill Lynch, and from what I understand, when you join a brokerage firm, it’s kind of like dialing for dollars. It’s like you just pick up the phone book. I don’t know if we’re pre or post internet then, but it’s a tough road those first year or two building the client base.
Hank M:
Yeah. For sure. And I didn’t like it at all. At least on the football field, I could see who was hitting me, right? I mean, right in this situation, it was just calling people that hated the idea you were calling them and throwing some cheesy line at them about, “Hey, I’m so-and-so from Merrill Lynch, how can I earn your business? Or some silly line like that.” And there’s nothing about it that’s good or fun or whatever, and frankly, I was failing miserably at it. I was in a group of people that they had hired and I guess, a class of people and we all trying to hit goals, so we didn’t get fired and you know hopefully move on to be an advisor, and I was way behind on all those goals and just kind of miserable just wasn’t clicking for me, and I started really questioning, “I don’t think this is for me, I need to find something else.”
Hank M:
And so about the time I was ready to, here we go again, quit I cold called this man in Atlanta and I threw the same cheesy line at him that I did to everybody else, and he cussed me out worse than any football coach had ever cussed me out. He said, “I’ve never even heard of that before.”
Gary S:
But he didn’t kick you.
Hank M:
No, he didn’t kick me. He didn’t grab me by the face mask, but if he could have, he would have, I promise you. He yelled and screamed to the point that I literally… I finally, when he slammed the phone down on me, I hung up and I thought nobody’s ever talked to me this way, I got to go get in this guy’s face. So I was like, “I’m good, anyway, who cares?” So I drove out to his office… I mean, I remember it like it was yesterday, I drove out to his office, I knocked on the door and here came this guy probably 60 to 65 years old.
Hank M:
He came and answered the door, like, “Yeah, yeah, what can I do to help you?” I’m like, “I’m the guy, you just said, this, this, this, this to, and I’m not… on your show. And I wanted to see what I could do to earn your business,” and I got up kind of real close to his face when I said that.
Hank M:
And he said, “Oh, I’m so so sorry. Don’t take it personal, you guys call me all day, I’m so frustrated with it and all, come on in, let’s talk.” So anyway, I talked to him for about three hours that afternoon, about life and sports and whatever, and then he introduced me to his partner who was the CEO. And they ended up great. They got a private equity firm to invest in their company, and they brought in about $15 million, and they called me up, this is after months of me building this relationship.
Hank M:
They called me up and they said, “Hey, you’re a little green, you don’t really know exactly what you’re doing, but we like you, and we trust you get somebody with some experience in your office and partner up with them and we want you to come pick this check up.” So I went and picked that check up and brought it back. I had to raise $10 million to get off the program, and this check was… So in one cold call and one client, I broke all my goals and graduated before everybody else and went from a dog to a hero overnight.
Hank M:
And the main thing that came from that, well, there were two main things that came from that. One was, it was another example for me. I was on the verge of quitting and yet again, I learned that every time I feel like quitting something, there’s something incredible on the other side of it, if I’ll stick with it. So, that was a massive part of what we’re going to talk about in a minute.
Hank M:
And the second thing I learned was I got this job by being direct and myself and confronting things with the manager to get the job. I got this huge account by being direct and professionally confrontational, like dealing with things. I think maybe I can do this job if I quit worrying about all the things, I don’t know, focus what I do really well and use all the resources of the firm to help me with the other areas. And that’s how I started building my business.
Warwick F:
With those and profound lessons for people, be yourself. I mean, you have this direct, never say die attitude. I mean, everybody can learn from that. I mean, very few people when somebody curses them on the phone with you know you play football, so I imagine your vocabulary is pretty decent in terms of different colorful language, but when you say, “Boy, there are some words I’d never heard off.” I mean, that’s… This guy obviously has a level of creativity in that arena that’s impressive.
Warwick F:
Most people would say, “I’m not going to go confront that guy.” 99.9% of people wouldn’t be but you said, “Okay, you know what? I’m not going to just sit here, I’m going to go and…” Because he was almost embarrassed, he gave you a shot and I mean, amazing, so what was… I can’t imagine what your manager’s face was like when I got so-and-so at X firm and he’s going to bring in Y millions of dollars, I just need somebody to partner with me. I mean he did his jaw fall on the floor. I mean, what was that manager’s expression like when you told him back at Merrill Lynch?
Hank M:
You know, I don’t know what they thought of me. I certainly was not an eloquent speaker of the financial markets and I was not. I didn’t have all the terminology and the language down pat or anything like that. I don’t know what they thought of me. I don’t know if they thought I was on my way out the door or maybe they thought I had more potential than I thought. I’m not really sure. I mean, they were definitely happy when I got off the program and brought in these accounts and I don’t know if they thought, “Well, that’s a one hit wonder and he’ll be out of here, I don’t know.” I was never that close with that manager, he didn’t give me a lot of feedback.
Warwick F:
So he never said, “Hey Hank, well done, you had more in you than I thought you did.” He never really gave you any kind of feedback? You never kind of…
Hank M:
No.
Hank M:
No, I don’t remember that.
Warwick F:
Oh, that’s kind of-
Hank M:
Maybe he did, I don’t remember. I just know that my belief in myself went up, at that, more so my belief in my style of doing things and I didn’t have… There was a lot of guys and girls in my class or in that firm that were significantly smarter, better, understanding of the markets, better understanding of financial planning, all of that. And I was just constantly looking around thinking I need to be more like that person or more like that person. And the result of this was more, I need to really train myself on what I’m good at and focusing on these things that I’m good at and be a student of the market and start to really step up my game. That’s really what I’m…
Warwick F:
Yeah. And now I want to shift here a bit to the kind of next step or crucible, but certainly as an aside, I mean, I’ve been blessed to work with a lot of good people and have a tremendous financial advisor. It’s funny, you said off air, you started at Merrill Lynch and went to Morgan Stanley. I also have a financial advisor that was at Merrill Lynch and when he moved to Morgan Stanley, I went with him. Well, I’ve been with him, I don’t know if it’s 15 years, I mean, a very long time, and the question is why? He knows his stuff about finance. I mean, markets, technical stuff, he knows that, but the reason that I have used him for so long is I trust him.
Warwick F:
Yes, he’ll speak straight to me, but I trust that he’s not going to sell me a line, oh… I understand a bit about how it works, the powers that be at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, they’re pushing something and they’re telling their brokers, “You’ve got to push X security because we’ll make more money off X security.”
Warwick F:
I knew he would never ever do that unless it was good for the client. It wouldn’t even occur to him. So I don’t need somebody to push me something just because the powers that be want to make… That’s what they’re selling this month. So trust is huge. I mean, I’d rather have somebody that I trust than somebody that was the equivalent of a rocket scientist in finance. There’s armies of people at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. I mean, it’s all these resources that if you’re smart enough, you can bring to bear, but it’s that trust, trust is everything. And obviously you’re in this business. I mean, I’m not preaching to the choir here, but whatever your style is, clearly the people that you work with, they trusted you that you will be straight with them and you are going to fight for their interests, not because of somebody in the firm told you it’s Tuesday and this is the security we’re pushing. Does that make sense?
Hank M:
Yes. For sure.
Warwick F:
So, okay. I want to shift, so you went from Merrill to Morgan Stanley, so how did that shift happen? Was there just an opportunity there at Morgan Stanley? Or…
Hank M:
Yeah, so Warwick… When I’m backing up for a second, when I closed that account, then it was kind of like, I see you don’t remember when I set my goal to be a major college scholarship football player, so now I was like, “Okay, it’s time for another one of those.” So I said, “My family’s not wealthy. I don’t come from money and so forth.” So I was like, “You know what, if I keep doing this, I bet by the time I’m 30, I can make a million dollars,” which to some people that’s not a lot of money, but to me and where I came from, that was a massive amount of money.
Warwick F:
From where you came from, and at that age, anybody was going to say, that’s a massive amount of money.
Hank M:
That’s right. And it would imply huge success starting from zero, to get to that point. So I’d set that goal by the time I was 30, I had a beautiful wife and two healthy young boys, toddlers, and I was making a million dollars or over a million dollars a year. And then Merrill Lynch made a few mistakes with a couple of our largest clients, and it almost cost me the relationships, and I decided to make a change to Morgan Stanley as a result of that, I moved my team over to Morgan Stanley and transitioned our entire… All of our clients, a hundred percent of our clients and our team over there, and I continued to grow. And I really… By this point I was pretty darn good with the markets. I was really good with client relationships. I knew very well what I was talking about. And I started to get notoriety for it.
Hank M:
I started to be on the cover of magazines and rising young star at Morgan Stanley and flying me all over the country to talk to other advisors about how I built my business, and unfortunately, all the humility that had gotten me to this point started to fade a bit, and I started kind of drinking the Hank Kool-Aid and my ego started…
Hank M:
Frankly, a lot of people in that business, right? It’s a very ego driven business, and I started falling into that trap. And so, the more magazine covers that I was on, the more I was actually… They wrote a book about the top 20 financial advisors in the entire United States. And at 34 years old, I was listed as number 12 across alll firms.
Hank M:
So I had reached a level of success at an age that was pretty unusual. I was aware of that and I believed in it and it made my ego feel really good.
Warwick F:
And that’s a tough thing. I mean, it’s a… Failure is not easy, but success, that’s pretty tough too. It’s tough to withstand when people are saying, “You know, Hank, you’re one of the rising stars here at Morgan Stanley, you’re reading this stuff and my clients love me, I am pretty good. I’m pretty hot stuff.” I mean, it’s hard… I don’t care where you come from, that is intoxicating.
Warwick F:
I mean, humility is funnily enough one of my highest values, but nobody’s impervious when I was growing up in the newspaper business unlike some people that come from wealthy backgrounds, I always worked hard and got good grades. I didn’t want to be some dilettante heir to some family fortune. So I had my dad saying, “Boy you could be one of the great Fairfax’s, because it’s five generation business and come back, I’m about to launch a 2 billion plus takeover,” and being a person of faith, I had some people say to me, some believers, older believers we’ve been praying that God would raise somebody up in the heart of the media in Australia. You’re an answer to prayer.
Warwick F:
I mean, you add all those things up. It’s like, “Gosh maybe there’s some preordained plan,” and I worked hard at Oxford, worked on Wall Street for three years, Harvard Business School. It was like, even though humility is one of my biggest values that it tends to erode that a little bit when you’re hearing some of this press and other people and you work hard, which is not a whole lot of people from wealthy backgrounds, frankly, do work hard. So it’s good. But then you can get pride over that, right?
Warwick F:
Look at me, I’m working hard. So yeah. Success is a tough thing to withstand, so you were rising high, you’re doing great, and then there was a fall. Sadly, sometimes it happens when you’re rising high, right? It just feels like the laws of nature. Right. The markets go up and down, I don’t know. It feels weird, so tell us about that fall, you were doing so well at Morgan Stanley and two boys, a wife, what happened then?
Hank M:
Well, speaking of my wife, at that point I think I was full enough of myself, she was getting pretty frustrated with me because I had developed into a ego centric person, not necessarily the humble person that she had met originally. So she was frustrated with me. I got approached by another firm to leave Morgan Stanley, it was a new firm that had some very established people running the firm. They had already brought in a couple of teams from Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley to join them in other cities, their headquarters were going to be in Atlanta. And they said all the right things that my ego needed to hear to convince me that I would be the man at this firm.
Hank M:
My team would be the anchor team of the whole company, and they were going to pay me a huge amount of money up front to come do this. And so, I introduced the CEO of this firm to a couple of my top clients, the clients… These are my two biggest clients. They loved the CEO. They thought it was a great move, but in my getting caught up with everything they were saying and the money they were going to pay me, I never checked their financials.
Hank M:
And so, I went in and resigned at Morgan Stanley, and the Morgan Stanley leadership went crazy because they had been promoting me, they said they were going to ruin me, and I didn’t care because I thought I had it all under control. And I left Morgan Stanley and got in my car to drive over to the new firm, and when I did, I called them and said, “Hey, I just resigned. I’m on my way over.” And they said the ever fateful words, “Well, we’re waiting on our next round of funding, we can’t write you your check yet, we should get it tomorrow. Come in tomorrow.”
Hank M:
And I thought that was curious, but I didn’t let it bother me, but it ended up… They never got their next round of funding, they shut down. They went under and I never walked in their office once. And so, Morgan Stanley increased my team. I had a team of nine people working with me, they increased their salaries and income and they cut my clients fees that were there and bad mouthed me to the clients, and then I ended up with nothing. I lost my entire business, and my wife and I split up. And the next thing I knew, all my assets were frozen and I had very little liquidity at the time because I’d spent most of my money on showy things.
Hank M:
And so, what little bit of liquidity I had, I had to give that to my ex-wife. And I moved into a small little motel that I lived in for 14 months with my two sons and wondered what I was going to do next, because I had no income.
Warwick F:
I mean, that must’ve been excruciating on so many levels. I mean, you’re a very smart person. I mean, the due diligence you do for your clients. How did you avoid… I mean, I spent years beating myself up because of launching the takeover I did and making some massively stupid assumptions months after graduating from Harvard Business School. I mean, I wasn’t an idiot, but sometimes there are reasons that smart people make really dumb decisions. Did you go through… I know this is obvious, forgive the obvious dumb question. Did you go through a period of self-flagellation, self-recrimination like, “How in the world could I have made that decision? How could I have not looked at the books?” I mean, come on. How did you process all of that?
Hank M:
You know Warwick, I don’t think it was so much, how did I make that decision? It was more, “How do I get back?” What, literally two days ago, or three weeks ago or whatever I had. I had a thriving business, a stellar reputation, what I thought was a good marriage, two amazing boys, a brand new house I had just built, like I had all these things and literally with the flip of a switch, I lost everything, in a very, very quick amount of time. And so, I think I was in a state of shock. I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I couldn’t talk to anybody about it because I didn’t want anybody to know, and I was petrified because for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do.
Hank M:
And I had these two little boys looking up at me every day with a big smile on their face. Like, “Daddy’s our hero, he’s going…” They didn’t know what was going on, except that they were now living in a hotel with me, and I just didn’t know what to do. And it was definitely the scariest time of my life. And for a little while, I didn’t know what to do, and basically just kind of had to sit and marinate in it for a while. And just feeling like I’m going to throw up 24 hours a day.
Gary S:
And there’s a story that you told me when we first talked Hank, about the hotel you were staying at, had free breakfast, and free food. Talk about that. I mean, from being a man who covers of magazines, flashy stuff. You’re living in a hotel that has free breakfast and you were surprised that that was so important to you at that time, right?
Hank M:
Yeah. I mean, in all my spending on the credit cards, I had built up a massive amount of points on the credit cards. And fortunately those points would work at this hotel, at the Residence Inn, in Buckhead, and so it just happened they had free breakfast too. So our morning routine was to get ready and before I took the boys to school, we’d go up to the little cafe area in the guests check-in of the hotel. And of course, living there for 14 months, we got to know him pretty well. But certainly it wasn’t a place that I had ever imagined that I would be after achieving the success that I had. But that being said, a lot of tears were shed at night after I put the boys to bed, a lot of self analysis, a lot of self-awareness coming around that maybe wasn’t there before.
Hank M:
So it was definitely the scariest and most painful thing I’ve ever been through. But at the same time, what I learned about myself in that process and what I’m still working to become, but I realized I have potential to become… A hundred percent of that came from those moments of just being scared as hell, and realizing… I mean, sometimes the only motivation I had… Because there was plenty of times I felt like giving up. If I hadn’t had those boys so dependent on me, I’m not sure that I… Who knows, I don’t know, it’s hard to imagine, but certainly, it was my motivation, was to be with them as much as possible and make sure that I was a good role model for them and make sure I could provide for them. And that was really the motivation to start the new company.
Warwick F:
What is it you mentioned that you obviously can’t imagine it was devastating time given how high you were flying and how well you’re doing, what is it that you learned about yourself during those very dark days? And probably at night, the boys are asleep and you’ve got time to think, which is not always a good thing, but you had that time, you’re looking at them and I got to provide for them and give them hope, what were some of the lessons that you learned about yourself during those dark days?
Hank M:
I learned a lot about my perseverance that became… James 1:4, it’s a Bible verse that I had framed and put in… At one time it was in my hotel room and it was in my office. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. That was something that kind of became my mantra because I didn’t know how this whole thing was going to turn out. I mean, there were many days that I thought I’m going to end up on the street. I learned that I’m a lot tougher than I thought.
Hank M:
I was spiritually, mentally, and even though I kind of figured out that I could work really hard and make anything happen with the getting a scholarship to Auburn, like I really realized in this scenario that I’m capable of a lot, but the gratitude and the humility that are necessary to be the kind of leader or the kind of father or the kind of friend that I want to be, are something that I have to stay constantly focused on, versus allowing the things of the world and shiny, flashy things to become important, or affirmation from others that really shouldn’t matter that much.
Hank M:
I should be affirming myself, if I’m living up to what I believe I should be doing. So those kinds of things were a lot of self-awareness that came from it.
Warwick F:
Those are some profound lessons. I think everybody can value from, especially people who are successful. And I believe you can truly be successful without gratitude or humility. If you don’t have that, in my book, you’re not successful. And certainly, you’re not somebody that I would admire or you would admire, right? Does that make sense? You’ve got to have some gratitude. And ultimately, people get tired of working with arrogant people.
Warwick F:
Clients don’t always like… It’s not a good way for a long-term relationship. It’s rather than, “Well, of course I have your business. I’m giving you 20%, 30% return a year, why should I be grateful? I’m the one doing the work, why should I be grateful?” You can have that attitude, but clients don’t appreciate it. They want you to be humble and grateful. So not only does it make good personal sense, it kind of makes good business sense too.
Warwick F:
And I’m sure you’ve said some young high flyers that have worked for you. You’ve seen, it’s like, “Okay, you’ve been there, done that, let me see if I can help you avoid some pitfalls.” You learn some perseverance about yourself that you… But you have a lot of, you hadn’t really seen. So talk about how that led you to Gratus Capital and maybe a new vision of how to do things. Because I’m sensing what you do now. I’m sure you do well financially, but it’s more than just the financial, the way you do business and the people you work with is different.
Warwick F:
You mentioned one other thing I don’t want to lose just seeing your sense of self-sufficiency and who you are, not needing others praise, it shouldn’t be like, “For my car to run, for my Ferrari to roll, if I don’t have the adulation from others, it’ll go nowhere,” no. Your car shouldn’t need other people’s adulation to roar down the highway if you get the metaphor. So that’s another huge lesson. Be internally motivated, don’t depend on others adulation. And again, I’m sure these are all lessons you’ve imparted to your team, but talk a bit about Gratus Capital and where that vision came from and what it’s about and how who you are is such a huge part of who Gratus Capital is.
Hank M:
Well, when I started the company it was really the only choice I had. I knew wealth management. I knew how to take care of clients, and why would I go to another company when they didn’t really… I didn’t have anything of value. I didn’t have clients anymore. I had to start over. So I decided to start my own company because at least I could be in charge of all aspects of it. I decided to do it differently. I didn’t want to name the company a Wall Street name or my last name, and it’d be about me, or a name that has to do with money and typical type stuff you see. So I spent a lot of time and came up with the name Gratus Capital because it was Latin word for grateful, and from day one I said, “This company is going to represent something different in the marketplace. It’s a company that’s going to be built on gratitude for our team, for other people, the clients that we work with. It’s a company that’s going to be built on humility.”
Hank M:
And I’m not sure I would have been capable of building a company on those principles prior to having gone through this. So the vision I had originally, it was just survival. It was just, I’ve got to figure how to make this happen quick. I’ve got child support, alimony, private school tuition, and I have no income. And so, I was in a very desperate place. I didn’t have time to cold call. So I went cold walking. I mean, I knocked on people’s doors, I got escorted out of buildings by security for soliciting. But at that point I was so low, I was kind of feeling like, “What’s one more person kicking me?”
Hank M:
I had really… I was so desperate at that point that I just needed to build the company and slowly but surely, I will say when I was out, I had that book that have been written about me. It was the only thing I had that kind of certify or clarified that I was somebody that knew what I was doing, even though my company was very young and I didn’t have a track record or anything like that. I did have this book and I could say, “Oh yeah, look at chapter 12, that’s me. There is somebody I used to know, have some access to media, and I used to have people write things about me that said I knew what I was doing, so take a look at that.”
Hank M:
So it was for some credibility anyway and sure enough, I closed my first big account, had a little bit of money to hire somebody and got a little bit of money to buy some software and then build some momentum and hired some more people and closed some more accounts. And then, we really started to build momentum. But it was really through the attention and the care that I paid to clients in a very different way than I did before. Because I was just so damn grateful to having clients trusting in this new company that I had started all on my own with nothing, and it was just a very different feeling and a very different approach.
Warwick F:
So talk about, let’s say, I don’t know some club, or what have you had. Some of your biggest clients from your Merrill Lynch Morgan Stanley days, and let’s say they’re ran into some of your clients at Gratus Capital and say, “Oh, you use Hank McLarty, a great guy. So tell me about Hank, what’s your experience?” What would they say about you, sort of the folks you knew in the old days and the folks that you know now? What are the contrast of the two, Hanks, if you will?
Hank M:
So if one of my clients that I deal with now… I only deal with a handful of clients now. Because I spend all my time running the company, but there’s still a few that I spend time with. They would tell you that I will fight for them like nobody that they’ve ever worked with. That I won’t take no for an answer, I’m an advocate for them, and that I’m extremely tenacious when it comes to making sure that their situations turn out the way they should, the way that I told them they would, and that when it comes to dealing with outside people that have impact on their situation, that I fight for them.
Hank M:
The asset management, the returns on their stocks and investments and the trust, estate, and the tax strategy, all of that is a given, my team is phenomenal. They’re the best people that I could ever get on a team, but what they would say about me personally is what I told them. That I’m extremely passionate about taking care of them.
Warwick F:
I’m just trying to contrast, because I imagine the folks you knew, when you were at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley days might say, “Well, that’s the guy who we know. He fought for me back then.” What would be the difference between the Gratus Capital Hank and the Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Hank? Are there any… What made the difference?
Hank M:
I fought for clients back then but I wouldn’t say that I would go to the lengths for clients then like I would now. I would say that the approach that I have is there’s just a whole different level of appreciation that I have for the clients that we work with. And I was never unappreciative before, I just didn’t really think about it a lot. Today, I and this team that I work with, we built this, we have a very special company, we built this. So when we have clients come and they trust us with other than their children and probably the most important thing in their life, like, I recognize that.
Hank M:
And my attitude, and my passion for taking care of them, and my team’s attitude and passion, because it all comes from the top is much more personable and much more intense than it was when I was in my prior.
Warwick F:
Do you think that there’s a level of humility and gratitude that has taken your level of perseverance, even your desire to perform for your clients to another level, in some ways if that makes some degree of sense?
Hank M:
Yeah, for sure. I also think that one thing I’ve learned, our company is close to 40 people now. And as we achieve my vision will be over 200. The greatest satisfaction I’ve ever had in my career has been building this team. I love taking care of our clients, but I’ve imparted that on my team members because they’re running the company now. So I think the greatest honor and responsibility that I have other than raising my sons is ensuring that this team can reach their potential. And it is now my North Star.
Hank M:
It is us achieving our vision as a company, me constantly working on my leadership skills, my ability to impact this team, bringing them together and getting them to believe in our vision. I mean, how many work places have a team that believes in something bigger than themselves? Like that is what motivates the hell out of me. Is looking now on Zoom calls, it used to be face-to-face. Now on Zoom calls and I’d go over our values and our vision twice a month with our team, and I see their eyes light up on the Zoom calls and I see them totally focused on what I’m saying because they buy in. There’s nothing in my career that I’ve ever done that gives me the motivation that that does. That-
Warwick F:
I want the listeners to hear that because what I’m sensing is there’s a big shift from Hank McLarty being focused on his own performance, maybe primarily in the old days to well, yes, you want your individual performance to be good, but I’m hearing you talk a whole lot less about Hank and a whole lot more about the team at Gratus Capital, and you used the word North Star. Your North star is helping your team be the best they can be for the client.
Warwick F:
Does that make sense? It’s a bit of a shift from I to we, and yes, the results are going to speak for themselves that vision and values will translate into superior performance. But do you know what I’m saying?
Hank M:
Warwick, I know exactly what you’re saying. I think that’s a great way to put it. I would not have put it that way but now that you do, I think that’s exactly the difference that maybe my clients today might say, because I take zero credibility for any success with our firm or any success with clients. Frankly, my team is all, they have more designations than me, my only designations is the rise and fall.
Hank M:
And then right again they’re all smarter than me, they’re more talented than me. The only thing I’ve been really, really good at is bringing them together into a team, because my team is amazing. And the only other thing I’ve done well is to motivate them and get them inspired to work together and get them to believe that our team is a unit, is more important than them as individuals. And I say that to them constantly. And a lot of that comes from the lessons I’ve learned the hard way that I hope none of them ever have to learn it the way I had to learn it.
Warwick F:
I know we’re getting to the point where we probably need to summarize here a bit, but again, this is probably an obvious question, but as you look at where Gratus Capital is, and yeah, just one of the things that we’ve have, it says that Gratus Capital today is ranked one of the top hundred firms in the US by Forbes. I mean, that’s a pretty amazing accolade, there’s a lot of financial firms out there and you’re obviously doing amazing. But as you look at what you’ve achieved, would that have been possible without just the crucible you went through being in that kind of Residence Inn, with two boys sitting there late at night, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to afford everything from school and food on the table, and just those darkest time. What you’ve achieved at Gratus Capital would’ve been possible without the lessons and those hard times that you went through?
Hank M:
Maybe for some, not for me. I think for me, I needed my ass kicked, and I got it kicked.
Gary S:
Not by a football coach?
Hank M:
No, no. I got my ass kicked by life. And as a result of a hundred percent of my own doing and my own decisions. But for me to realize what my potential and my abilities were, were never going to happen where I was. And I do think I have some good leadership skills, I have a long way to go, but I’m committed to becoming every aspect of what I can as a leader, and I think the major thing that motivates me now is I’m 51. Before you know it I’ll be 70 if I make it that far or 80, and I am scared to death of looking back on my life and saying, I did not leave it all on the field.
Hank M:
And I know for me to leave it all on the field, it’s not a dollar sign, it’s how many rock stars can I bring into this company and mentoring coach for them to become better than me. If I can look back and say, maybe that’s 20, maybe it’s 200, whatever the number is, I would never have been able to do that, had I been the old me. There’s a lot of people that will impact thousands, millions of people, they’ll make hundreds of millions more than I’ll ever make. But for me, looking back knowing what I’ve been through, if I can say that I have to my fullest potential worked hard, become a leader, a great dad, and had an impact on the team that I am lucky enough to get to lead, then that does it for me.
Warwick F:
And that’s one of the things we talk about is legacy. That’s a kind of a legacy that you’d be proud of, right? When the folks that you’re mentoring now, let’s say 30, 35 years down the track, your boys in 30 years, who was Hank McLarty? These are some of the things you’re hoping they would say, “Yes, a good dad. He was there for me.” Coworkers, “He fought for me, he helped give me opportunities. He developed me. He coached me. He mentored me.” Sounds like that’s the kind of legacy that you would hope or the portrait that would be painted of you, right?
Warwick F:
That’s kind of, I don’t want to use the P word, the plan or the goal, but it’s nothing wrong with plans and goals, but that sounds like it’s shifted, right? That’s the kind of image that people in 30 years time or 40 years time, that’s what you would hope that there’ll be saying of you, right?
Hank M:
So I’ll just, unless you want to ask me another question, I’ll kind of close my comment on that with this. When I turned 50, we had, I don’t know, maybe 30 friends come to my lake house for my birthday party and my sons were there. And at the end of the dinner, they started going around the table and making some very gracious comments towards me about who I am as a person, whatever. And my oldest son stood up and hopefully I can get through telling you this real quick, because I get emotional every time I talk about it.
Hank M:
But my oldest son stood up and he raised his glass and he said… He’s 24, so he would have been 23 at the time. He raised his glass and he said, “Most of you have no idea some of the things me and my dad and my brother went through. But I want to toast my dad because no matter what we went through, there’s never been a day that my brother and I ever wondered if we were my dad’s number one priority.”
Hank M:
And for me, even my friends came up to me after he said that and he’s like, “Buddy, you won. Like you won. When one of your sons or both your sons say that about you, you win.” And so yeah, to your point.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
That sound that you heard was not a barking dog, it was actually the captain turning on the the seatbelt sign because it’s about time to land the plane. Until we do that though, Hank, I want to ask you a couple of things. One is, you named the business Gratus Capital because gratus means what?
Hank M:
It’s the Latin word for grateful.
Gary S:
Correct. And if we could see it, if it were summertime and we were at the beach, you have tattooed on you, a couple of words that guide your life as you’re moving forward, correct?
Hank M:
Correct.
Gary S:
And those words are?
Hank M:
Gratus and humility.
Gary S:
Two key principles for how you’ve moved on to live your life. And one of the things about this conversation, and I think listeners will agree with me, in many ways, Hank, while your story is so unique, the beats of your story are almost prototypical, Crucible Leadership. The idea that you go through crucibles, you learn the lessons of the crucibles, you bounce back from those crucibles, and then you apply them to your leadership in business, in your profession, in your community. While at the same time you learn and how to lead a life of significance, focused on something larger than yourself, larger than just success.
Gary S:
You’ve got success, you’ve also got significance with your son saying what he said at that 50th birthday party. Before I wrap up with sort of what I think are three good takeaways, I’d be remiss Hank, if I didn’t give you the chance to let our listeners know how they can find out more about Gratus Capital.
Hank M:
Sure. www.gratuscapital.com. G-R-A-T-U-S.
Gary S:
Thank you for spelling that.
Hank M:
Yeah, definitely not gratus meeting free.
Gary S:
Bravo. That sound you hear is Warwick laughing and the plane landing, so Warwick did you have a final thought before I close?
Warwick F:
Just thank you so much, Hank, for being here and just your transparency, and it’s easy to talk about failure in a lot of ways and tragedy, but you’ve had your challenges, but you’ve also had success, and being able to learn how to be successful and be content, to be humble and grateful and successful, that’s very difficult to be. I doubt that you know too many people outside your orbit of Gratus Capital have all those things that are successful financially and are humble, and are grateful that is… Trust me, it’s really, really tough.
Warwick F:
And the fact that you’ve done that and the testimony from your son, and I’m sure if your coworkers had got up, they would have shared. Obviously your son is going to be the pinnacle of who you care about in terms of your kids and all. But I’m sure your coworkers would have shared some amazing things about how you fought for them, and you’re with them, and supported them, and so yeah, I think it’s just… We talk about a life well lived, it feels like you’re doing that. You’re living a generous life, focused on others and that’s an amazing journey that you’ve been on.
Warwick F:
And so I think listeners can really learn from this. It’s fine to be successful, but you’ve… I’m sure known a bunch of successful clients. And obviously I grew up in about as a wealthy, a privileged upbringing, as it’s possible to grow up in. There’s a lot of miserable folks who are very wealthy and so nothing wrong with being successful, I’m all for it. But being successful, and content, and happy and filled with joy, it requires some of the things that you’ve learned, some humility and gratitude.
Warwick F:
So that’s I think a message for folks that they don’t always hear. You can be successful, but you want to be joyful and happy, you’ve got to have some of those other things too, humility and gratitude. And so that’s a very important lesson for folks, yep.
Gary S:
I have been in the communications business long enough to know in the last word on a subject has been spoken and that was yours Warwick. I do have in summary, let’s call it an epilogue to the last word being spoken. I have a summary of some takeaways from this conversation with Hank McLarty that I think listeners you can apply to your own crucibles in your own movement beyond those crucibles.
Gary S:
Lesson number one, and Hank said it at the very outset of our conversation, you are never too young to set goals. Hank started doing it in third grade. Identify the things you’d like to achieve, to bring your vision to reality and break them down into milestones you can pursue as you walk the path to make that vision a reality. A goal set is a stone laid on the path that will lead you to the life you want. Despite the bumps along his path, Hank’s dedication to setting goals has helped him not just find success as Warwick just mentioned, but has pushed him through setbacks and failures to find significance.
Gary S:
A second takeaway point. The lesson Hank learned from his father. Don’t quit. Listen to Hank’s dad listener, don’t quit. Especially when you’re in the abyss of your crucible. When the chips are down, stick it out, stay the course, build your character, build your grit, is the word Hank used when we were talking about it. You will not only move beyond your crucible that you want to abandon, you’ll set yourself up to weather the crucibles that will certainly come down the road. And we heard it from Hank, his first crucible with football ending was not his last crucible. He’s been through others, and the grit he developed along the way has helped him through that.
Gary S:
And then finally, a third point is, don’t drink the, insert your own name here Kool-Aid. Hank’s greatest crucible as he explained, occurred out of a lack of humility and gratitude. He was on a roll and impressed with himself. His words not mine. So much so that it contributed to his crucible. It led to all that he believed to be true and important about himself to crumble. And it was in the rubble of that crumbling that he discovered a new vision. One that he’s passed along to both his children and to his employees. He took his focus off the only goal being the brass ring, and he put the focus on his offspring. It was the start of his life of significance. And that sort of shift in thinking can be the start of your life of significance as well.
Gary S:
So listeners until we’re together the next time, thank you for spending time with us in this truly moving and informational and hopeful and helpful conversation with Hank McLarty.
Gary S:
Warwick and I have a couple of favors to ask you, one, tell people about the podcast, if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, let people know that we’re out there, share a link with them in social media so that they can benefit from this as well. And while you’re at it, we’d really appreciate it if you would click subscribe on the podcast app that you’re listening to our show on right now.
Gary S:
So until that next time that we are together, remember this truth about your crucible experiences. Yes, they’re painful. Hank’s certainly were painful. Yes, they can knock the wind out of your sails that happened to Hank. They can change the trajectory of your life. They did that for Hank a couple of times where he felt like his identity was stripped away. But the good news is if you stick with it, if you learn the lessons of your crucibles, they’re not the end of your story.
Gary S:
In fact, as Hank’s story proves, they’re the beginning of a new story that can lead to a far better conclusion than you ever thought possible. Because the conclusion that your new story leads to is a life of significance.
Seton Hall University students who attend the Buccino Leadership Institute discover early the value of learning and leveraging the lessons of their crucible experiences. That’s because the institute’s executive director, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bryan Price, teaches a freshman course in which students share their most painful setbacks and failures with their classmates as a means of building confidence in themselves and camaraderie among their peers. It’s leadership authenticity Price learned as captain of the baseball team at West Point — spotlighting how vulnerability for a purpose pays big dividends in our lives and careers. And the sooner we learn our identity is not tied to what we do but rather to who we are, the better we become at the essential skills of reframing failure and not falling victim to imposter syndrome.
To learn more about Bryan Price and his leadership coaching services, visit www.topmentalgame.com
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
In organizations, when you try to put all the ingredients together of what makes an organization successful, one of those things is trust, trust between leaders and followers, trust within in peer groups, trust with the organization. And in order to trust you, I have to know you. And if I to really know you, you have to be vulnerable and share parts of yourself that normally, you might be willing to kind of keep from others. And so when we did this class, the setup was before the class starts, I asked my students, each student to come up with between one and three crucible moments in their life, and I described them very similarly as you and Warwick did at the outset. And I had those ahead of time. And then in that class, I talked about the importance of it, just very similarly to how Warwick did, and their importance in our growth. And then I lead from the front, I share my crucible moments with the class, and I ask some of my associate faculty, my associate directors to do the same. And then we turn it over to the students to volunteer. So you don’t have to volunteer if you don’t want to. But boy, the past couple years when we’ve done this, the emotional response that we’ve gotten from students that have shared their crucible moment has been extremely powerful.
Gary S:
College course on crucibles? You bet. At Seton Hall University, Dr. Bryan Price teaches his students the power of vulnerability with a purpose of sharing some of their most painful experiences in life as a key element of the leadership skills he’s imparting to them in the classroom. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. Dr. Price also shares in this interview with Warwick the lessons on Life and Leadership he learned on the baseball diamond, at West Point as a military officer and as head of Seton Hall’s Buccino Leadership Institute. A major theme of the stories he tells and the perspective he offers, the essential roles authenticity and identity play in mustering the resilience to move beyond your crucible.
Warwick F:
Wow. Well, Bryan, thank you so much for being here. I know we’re in a bit, we’re going to talk about what you do at the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall, the Crucible Moments class, which given what we do at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible, it’s all about crucibles and critical moments. I love the fact you have a class called that. So we’ll get to that here in a bit. And you’ve had just an amazing career at West Point and teaching there and Army Aviation and a number of combat tours. But before we get into all of that, tell us a bit about growing up in Sea Girt, New Jersey and kind of what was your family like and who was like a young Bryan Price and your family and all?
Bryan P:
Yeah, sure. So I’m actually reporting live from Sea Girt as well, which is, if you’re not familiar, it’s a postage stamp. It’s kind of a sleepy resort town on the Jersey Shore. And the reason why it’s called Girt is because we’re surrounded by water. It’s almost like a little peninsula where you have water to my north and south. And then the Atlantic Ocean is obviously on the east here. And I’m living in the same house that I grew up in. So that’s also interesting. So I was actually born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. But then when I was less than one, my family moved down to Sea Girt. My father was a sports writer and wrote for the Staten Island Advance for 44 years. My mom was a nurse. And I grew up with two brothers, one older and one younger. And as we speak right now, they are probably within three quarters of a mile from where I’m sitting. So fantastic opportunity growing up. As I mentioned, we’re on the Jersey Shore. So my years were spent playing sports, going to school, and then we had the beach and as we say here, it’s like, our lives are other people’s vacations because people would come to our town to vacation and we get to live here. So it was awesome.
Warwick F:
Oh, that is so cool. I mean is obviously growing up in a newspaper background. You were never tempted to follow in the family business and be a sportswriter or something? Did dad ever say, “Bryan, come on. I got in at the Staten Island paper and maybe from there who knows, the Newark Star Ledger or whatever.” Did you ever think of doing that or not really?
Bryan P:
I did. In fact in high school and this might be the first that I think anyone’s ever hearing about this. While I was playing on the basketball team, I went under a different name in my local town paper and was the beat writer for our team, which it’s funny. I went under a name from my favorite baseball player, which not many people knew named Mickey Hatcher.
Warwick F:
Oh, yeah, Mickey Hatcher, yes.
Bryan P:
And I wrote for the Coast Star. And so the funny part is, is like you could imagine, the access that I had to that team was amazing in terms of the reporting, because I was on it. But I had to be careful. If you go back through those files, I don’t want to write about myself. So it was all about the team and those sorts of things.
Warwick F:
You had to be careful. If like, the team played well, but boy the coaching was really awful. We could have won that but the coach was just asleep.
Bryan P:
Exactly. Who is this Mickey Hatcher guy?
Gary S:
I’m intrigued, I’m intrigued because Mickey Hatcher was a bit of a character as I recall, baseball player. He played for the Dodgers, mostly. And he was a bit of a, I wouldn’t call him a flake, but he was a bit of a character. So why was he your favorite player?
Bryan P:
One word, hustle. If you ever saw him play, whenever he would draw base on balls, he would sprint to first base. Whenever he hit a home home run, he would sprint around the bases and kind of interesting factoid on him, only hit two home runs the entire regular season in 1989. Kirk Gibson gets hurt so he gets to play in the World Series, he gets a starting job and hits two home runs the World Series. But he was a character, but I loved him less for the character and more for his hustle. And I emulated that in my play, or at least tried to.
Warwick F:
That’s awesome. So obviously high school, you mentioned three sport athletes. So which sports were they, out of curiosity?
Bryan P:
So I played football, basketball, obviously since the beat writers aspect. And then baseball was the sport that I probably excelled in at the most.
Warwick F:
Awesome. And then I know you went on to, you were the co-captain at West Point. So that was a huge deal, baseball. And do you ever, I mean, obviously, there’s a sports writing angle. Do you ever think, “Gosh, could I be good enough to kind of get to the next level?” Would you ever toy with that about minor leagues or more?
Bryan P:
So as a kid growing up, I mean that was always the dream. But at my size, I was always undersized. So in my playing days, I was no taller than I usually say I’m 5’7 1/2″. I don’t even know if you know and that half, if I’m there yet. But I know I got the most out of my my playing days. And my co-captain, Mike Scioletti, who will probably watch this, did get drafted by the White Sox. But he turned it down to continue his army career. But I felt like I got the most out of my out of my athletic ability. I’ve no regrets.
Gary S:
And one of the things that’s probably true, as you describe your baseball career, and your physical stature in the way that you played the game and what you liked about Mickey Hatcher, I imagine the name or the adjective scrappy was assigned to you at some point. You were a scrappy ballplayer. But as we talk about overcoming crucibles and moving beyond those failures and those setbacks, and what you’re teaching to your students now, being scrappy, I’ve never thought of it in these terms, but being scrappy is a key personality element to overcoming a crucible.
Bryan P:
Yeah, it’s funny, Gary, when you mentioned this. We all have like different narratives that rattle around in our brain over time. And by the way, just to answer your specific question, if you go back to the media guides during those time periods, I guarantee you’re going to find the word scrappy there. So you’re spot on, you’re spot on. But I don’t necessarily classify this as a crucible moment. But it’s one of those moments that it’s so definitive in my life, and I think to your point, helped shape how I saw myself and how I wanted to perform not just in sports, but in life. And so I was in eighth grade going into high school. And I had, again multi sport athlete, we have like an advanced version of, they call it the Babe Ruth League, where I come from, so there’s Little League, and then you kind of advance to this Babe Ruth League, and I had just been voted MVP of that league. The summer was winding down, and I would go and play, one of the great things about my dad was his job as a sportswriter, was he had a fair amount of flexibility. So we could go out in the summertime and practice and play.
Bryan P:
And I remember we would go to the high school, the local high school to play and inside of high school, they had a Coke machine. So we’d go play in the summertime, it would be super hot out. We kind of walk into the school. This is pre like school shooting days where you could just like walk into the school and go use the Coke machine and the janitor was there and the janitor happened to be from a family in our town that was known for athleticism, multiple generations of top athletes, and he saw me play so he came in and he said, “I’ve seen you hitting out there with your dad.” He said, “You look pretty awesome. Pretty good.” He goes, “What grade are you in? You are going into what? Sixth grade?”, and I was about to become a freshman.
Bryan P:
And again, it doesn’t sound like much to anybody. But to me, it was my height and my stature at that time. I said right then and there, I was like, this is how people are going to perceive me whenever I walk into the room. So I’m not going to impress anybody with my I saw your Tom Brady bit the other day Warwick, which is great. No one’s going to fall in love with the scouting report just off of paper. So I felt like I had to outwork everybody in whatever organization or group that I was in, because I wasn’t going to impress you on paper.
Warwick F:
Yeah. And that’s really tough when you’re a kid, and somebody thinks that you looked good for sixth grade and you’re about to be a freshman. I mean there are some stereotypes people have when they don’t really know who you are. But anything that’s physical, it’s sort of obvious, and they size you up. And so okay, therefore, he can’t do A and B. It’s like, all Australians play tennis these days. And some of these top tennis players for guys, they’re like 6’1″, 6’2″ is kind of about the minimum. And then some of these guys are 6’4″, 6’5″. The women, it’s like 5’9″, 5’10”. You’d be hard pressed to find a woman who’s in the top 20 or the elite that’s much smaller than 5’9″, 5’10”. So if you’re a some five foot girl growing up, five foot four. I mean, you get a lot of coaches saying, “Yeah, and I’m not really seeing it.”
Bryan P:
Yeah, exactly.
Warwick F:
And it just feels so unfair. It’s like it doesn’t capture the whole Tom Brady thing, which as everybody knows, his scouting report was just kind of abysmal, not mobile.
Gary S:
Weak arm.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, doesn’t throw a tight spiral. I mean, you would never draft that guy, but it misses the heart. Clearly you had a heart, passion, hustle. I want to talk a bit about before we shift to West Point and Seton Hall, everybody’s had crucibles. I think you mentioned your parents got divorced when you were young, and you lost your mom to cancer at 9/11, I mean, clearly around 9/11. That’s obviously tough. I mean, how did those things shape you? I mean some people, like parents getting divorced, you can be angry, and it’s always devastating. But some people are able to move on in some fashion, and some are not.
Bryan P:
Those two moments kind of stick out for me the most in the sense that as a kid, all you know is you’re a nuclear family. And when there’s a divorce, that can really shake up a lot of families. And in my case, it did, because my dad moved out of the house, but also my older brother went to go live with him, too. So it wasn’t just one person moving out, it was two people. But one of the things that I tell people in terms of why I felt like it was impactful to me was because I saw what love was like, and so my dad literally tried to find the closest place to our house where he can move, and again, a resort town, so it’s not like there’s a ton of apartment complexes around here. It’s mostly residential houses. And so he found an apartment that was four blocks away. And so I had the opportunity growing up, even though my parents were divorced, to see both of those individuals almost on a daily basis, to make it as normal for us as possible.
Bryan P:
And I think when you look at leadership, and putting others in front of your own interests, I saw my dad do that, because it wasn’t the greatest appartment that he was in, but it was close to us. And that was more important to him than having some type of great place to live. So that was kind of telling. The second one was, as you mentioned, so I ended up losing my mom in October of 2001. And that was also right around the time of September 11. In fact, when I found out, my mom had been sick for that year prior, but it really started to elevate in September. She was supposed to go into her first bout of chemotherapy on the morning of September 11.
Bryan P:
And so when I actually got home from physical training, I was at Fort Hood as a lieutenant as a platoon leader at that time, and so we just got done from our morning physical training, I come home and my mom is calling and I knew that she was supposed to be going into her chemo that day. So she says, “Turn on the TV.” We talked about it. Turn on the TV. And obviously, that was after the first plane had hit and then I was on the phone with her for the second plane.
Bryan P:
The hospitals had actually called her to tell her that her chemotherapy was going to be canceled that morning because our area’s hospitals were preparing for the triage. We’re close enough to New York City where they felt like they were going to be feeling the effects of of this tragedy. And so less than probably three and a half weeks later, she was gone. So everything accelerated very quickly. I know there’s lots of people out there that have lost loved ones at various ages. For me at that time, it’s tough. You never want to see your parents in pain. And it’s just kind of a wake up call. And maybe the silver lining out of all that is when you do experience that pain and personal loss, I think you look at the world differently. It’s kind of like somebody proverbial shaking you out of your rut and the lifestyle that you’re in. And it shakes you to say like this thing we have here called life is short, and you have to take advantage of it. And so I took both of those lessons from the divorce, but also from losing my mom, and hopefully trying to make that impact, that life of significance that you talk about in your fantastic book. And I think that even though no one wants to go through those tragedies, those things can serve a purpose in your life, if you’re open to it.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, it’s such a good point. That makes you think, well, every day is precious. You have obviously married and I think you mentioned earlier, you have a daughter and you said one kid?
Bryan P:
Yep, she was so perfect. Why bother?
Warwick F:
Well said, but it makes you value every hour every day, with your family, with students. Yeah, you go through a crucible, as we say, and you can either, which is understandable, wallow in them, hide under the covers, and be bitter and angry, either at the world or at yourself, if it’s through your own mistake. And setbacks can be one of varieties. Or you can say, “Yeah, this is pretty awful. But how am I going to move forward? How am I going to maybe use this in some way?” Obviously, you have empathy for people that have gone through those sorts of things. And just, yeah the silver lining I think with your dad, that’s sort of a remarkable story that irrespective of how the divorce happened, the fact that he was so dedicated to his family, that he was so close and spent so much time with you, that was something that it’s like, even when bad things happen, what’s important to you in life, you don’t let that go. And that probably was an incredibly invaluable life lesson that you learned from your dad’s actions. It’s often we learn as much or more from people’s actions than their words, right? His life, the way he modeled love and putting family first in that situation was, it was remarkable, really. I mean, a lot of dads wouldn’t do that. They’d say, “Okay, I’m out of here. And off I go.” But not your dad.
Bryan P:
He completely put his kids at the forefront and put his entire life, including social life on the back burner. Another kind of interesting thing is, again I mentioned the small town. And so my brothers and I, we would play sports all the time. And my dad, again given his schedule, was willing to be able to go out whenever we wanted to go practice. And so looking through the eyes of our 2021 lens back then, I’m sure there are tons of people in my town that thought my dad was crazy, and maybe demanding that we would go out and play. But the beautiful part is, I can’t remember one instance in my entire life, where my dad kicked me on the couch and said, “Hey, Bryan, you got to get out and practice, let’s go.” It was always us asking my dad. And he was like, okay, and going into the sports crazed world that we are today, and I have a daughter, obviously played sports, we talked about that earlier, that was also a gift for me of whenever my dad wanted to play with me, he was available. He was never the one putting guilt or pushing me to get out and practice. So that was another life lesson.
Warwick F:
And now I’ll shift here to West Point. But just to kind of talk about this for one more beat, what your dad modeled for you, I’m sure that you model for your daughter. Your daughter, you mentioned earlier is like an elite athlete on the top team for 12 year olds in the country. She’s obviously one of the top 12 year old girls in the country. Well, a lot of dads in those circumstances would be like, “You got to train, you got to do this, you got to do that. You could be in the U.S. women’s team, you could be the Olympics.”, and I strongly suspect that you encourage and support. But you’re not saying, “It’s 5 a.m. You’re working out, are you?” You’re probably not that dad.
Bryan P:
If my wife was listening to this right now, she would say, “Bryan, you better be taking your own medicine.” And so I have to fight that impulse in order to do that. And I’ll just be honest, while I think I am not bad in that regard. I feel like my dad was better, and it’s something to kind of shoot for for sure.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So I want to hear about the Buccino Institute. But tell us a bit about West Point, because obviously, and afterwards, you played on the baseball team, co-captain and I think there was some important lessons you learned about teamwork probably throughout your whole career, but I’m guessing that might have been the capstone of it. What did you really learn about yourself, about teamwork just by playing on the baseball team there?
Bryan P:
Yeah, well, I think just to expand it even further, the entire experience at West Point for those of you that are not familiar, it’s essentially a 47 month leadership laboratory. And so from the moment that you arrive to the moment that you leave, you are consistently learning about yourself all the way. And one aspect of that leadership model which is pertinent to this conversation, is that it’s designed to make you fail at something. And the way they do it is very interesting, because they give you so much work to do, that no one can possibly do it in a 24 hour period. And so you have to, at a very early age, kind of manage your expectations of what tasks are you going to do well, and what tasks are you just not going to.
Bryan P:
So for example, the differences between cleaning your room, studying for your chemistry exam, and shining your shoes for inspection the next day, and you have 45 minutes before lights are out, you got to figure out how to manage that. The other thing I’ll say is, no matter how skilled you are, no matter what an athlete you are, or how academically adept you are, there’s going to be something that you fail at. For example, you have to go off the 10 meter platform in the pool. And so there’s lots of people, I don’t know if you’ve ever gone off a 10 meter platform before, but even if you’re not scared of heights, that can be a significant emotional event. For another kid, it might be chemistry. For another kid, it might be on the marksmanship range.
Bryan P:
So what West Point teaches you, and I think the baseball team as well is, even when you do fail, you have to pick yourself back up, and then move forward. And I think that’s an especially important lesson for leaders, because I think all too often, there’s this streak of perfectionism in our society where leaders have to do everything perfect. And when you think about it, the most impactful leaders probably in your lifetime were ones that were authentic, and authentic people are vulnerable. And it’s okay to admit if you’re not great at something, or if you failed at something, and then move forward. And so that’s one lesson that I think West Point does a great job of teaching.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s so great, because so often in society, you see people that won’t admit their failures, that will not apologize and double down, triple down, what have you. But I imagine in your army experience, like in any organization, there are good leaders, bad leaders, and so so leaders. It’s just part of being human. Were you able to observe leaders that were able to admit that they made mistakes and were wrong, and maybe you were right, others were right. Did you have modeled for you leaders that you think these are folks are actually doing it right?
Bryan P:
Oh, 100%. I mean, on average, I don’t care what profession you’re in, you’re going to run into leaders that are good and bad in every profession. And so one of the things that West Point also teaches you is consider yourself kind of carrying, they call it a kit bag, but good lessons, bad lessons, put them in that bag, and reserve for later. But when it comes to servant leadership, which is the kind of model that we try to espouse at Seton Hall, is definitely espoused in the military. I feel so blessed and fortunate to have had leaders in my orbit, in my network that are some of the best people on the planet. And of course, you can see those things come out in crisis moments, because you’re in the military, whether you’re in combat or when the stakes are high, that’s when you really see people’s true colors. And to see people that you really trust, respect, and look up to, it’s been awesome. So yeah.
Warwick F:
I mean, it occurs to me in the military, if you’ve got some stubborn colonel, general that doesn’t want to admit failure, I mean bad things can happen to them. I’m not really a military student. But yeah, I think maybe World War One, you had them fighting 19th century battles with full frontal assault against machine guns, which was insanity. It was never going to work and thousands or maybe millions of people die, but general after general, whether it’s, I don’t know, French, German, British, maybe Americans later, they just kept with the same battle plan. And it’s like, this is idiotic, but nobody wants to admit that they’re wrong or that they’re clueless. And they haven’t been trained in tactics for what was then modern warfare. They’ve been trained in 19th century cavalry charge tactics when they were in their 20s. It’s just mind blowing. How could you keep doing the same thing and wasting enormous numbers of lives? You just have to think a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of, well, I don’t want to admit that I don’t know what to do here. I haven’t been trained to deal with this situation. What do we do?
Bryan P:
I think one of the phrases that helps manage that kind of aspect of it, and by the way, in the military, we’re probably one of the most hierarchical organizations that there are. There is a rank structure. But I do believe that they in certain aspects of the military, they do respect you to speak truth to power, and especially in the planning stage. But once the decision has been made, then it’s execute. But there’s a phrase that I think I gravitated towards when I was in the military, but one that I think is also applicable to whatever profession that you’re in. And its mission first, people always. And so, sometimes when you’re in the military, you get asked, saw the helicopter pilot. So what if you get to go take this very dangerous mission, maybe behind enemy lines, where you might have a high likelihood of some of your folks not coming back? And so they say, “Well, do you do the mission? Or being the leader, do you take care of your folks, and you not do the mission?” And you do both. You accomplish the mission, but you also take care of your people. So mission first, people always is kind of a nice catchphrase that I think is also applicable in business and sports and whatever profession that you’re exploring.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. So after West Point, obviously you became an Army helicopter pilot, did that for a number of years before going to Stanford. So before we get into sort of the Stanford and then combating terrorism center, were there are any key lessons you learned by being a helicopter pilot in Iraq, Afghanistan, and just all of that with sort of life leadership lessons you learned from that period?
Bryan P:
Yeah, I think both of them offered kind of their own different lessons. But as I mentioned earlier, when you are in those situations, you learn a lot about yourself, both good and bad, and maybe some things that you’re not super proud of about your own leadership. But I think so when I was in Afghanistan, for example, as a company commander, I had 106 people that were underneath my charge. And having that sense of care, love, devotion for those people, I don’t know, when I talk to people about, actually this is an interesting thing that we do with our students at Seton Hall, which is on their first day in our program, I ask all the students to take out a piece of paper and fill out and say, “What is your definition of leadership?” And when they do that, they can’t use Google, I don’t give them any primer, I collect all the answers. And then I put it into a word cloud.
Bryan P:
And for the past three years running, I’ve done this and the one word that comes out above any other is others. And if I had to use any one word to define leadership, that’s what it’s all about. It’s all about others. And if there’s one thing that leading in combat or being in the military taught me is the importance of others. And so that type of servant leadership style is kind of in our DNA. And it’s what we’re also trying to do with our folks at Seton Hall. One quick side story, I go from being responsible for 106 people in Afghanistan, weapon on me every single day, flying all over the country, I get back. And then within weeks, I’m in Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, which is one of the most beautiful places on the face of the planet. And I went from that environment in Afghanistan to Stanford where I was only responsible for myself. And in my first meeting with the graduate school people there, I said, “I’m here to see so and so.”, and she’s like, “Oh yeah, we’ll bring her right out.” And she walks out. And she’s barefoot and her dog is accompanying her. And I was like, it’s like culture shock, but two very high performing organizations, going from the military to Stanford. Again, I feel just very blessed that I had the opportunity to kind of learn in these really interesting leadership laboratories.
Warwick F:
And before you got to Seton Hall, you spent a number of years at the West Point Combating Center. But I think you mentioned when you first applied to teach there, it didn’t work out. But what was that like? I mean, it obviously worked out eventually. What was that like? Was that like, how could it not work out? I mean, I think I’m pretty qualified. I mean, what was going on?
Bryan P:
Yeah, this was really interesting. So I did my first tour there. So I went to Stanford. And after I got the Ph.D., I then started working at West Point in the Department of Social Sciences. And then I went to Iraq, I deployed to Iraq. When I went to go, there was a job opportunity that opened back up to become a permanent professor. So West Point is a mix of rotating faculty that will rotate every couple of years, and then a small segment that is kind of permanent faculty. So a permanent faculty job opened up and I applied to it and I thought I was relatively qualified for it. And I went and I interviewed and I thought I crushed the interview. And I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody this story either. So this is twofer here, Gary and Warwick.
Gary S:
Wow, we got exclusive here on Beyond the Crucible.
Bryan P:
So I’ve already given up my pet name of Mickey Hatcher out there. The second one is in the military, I don’t want to say the real army, but you don’t wear your dress uniform. It’s not like the movies. You turn on the movies and they’re wearing their dress uniform to go eat breakfast every day. That’s not happening. You were in your kind of fatigues, your battle dress uniform. And so for this opportunity at West Point, I had to wear my dress uniform. Well, the Army’s got this crazy thing every couple years where they’ll change up uniforms, and ribbons and all this stuff. And so when I went to go do this interview, I thought I did very well. But a couple weeks later, I get a phone call, it says, “Hey, you were not selected for this position. And oh, by the way, we noticed that your uniform, your deployment stripes were on the wrong sleeve.”
Bryan P:
And to me, when you talk about when you walk into the room, that’s what people see, this is something that was not super important to me, probably should have been. But I had taken my uniform to the military complex where I was stationed at, for them to put all the proper accoutrement and all that stuff on there. Well, the woman made a mistake and I didn’t catch it. And so I don’t know if that was the reason why I was not selected. But it was the only piece of feedback that I had gotten. And that was tough to swallow. I don’t know if that qualifies as a crucible moment. But that was one where I was like that was tough to swallow.
Warwick F:
Because you’d be thinking, “Seriously? I hope there was a better reason than I’ve got my, I’m not lying about my deployment. It’s not like I put on a ribbon I didn’t deserve, which to the military would be a serious deal, which I don’t think any right thinking person would ever do. But putting it on the wrong sleeve. I mean, my gosh, think of a better reason.” And there may have been a better one, but humanly speaking, it’s easy to go there and say, “Seriously?”
Bryan P:
But that’s never been my mentality Warwick. If anything, I was turning all that inward on me. My thing wasn’t, I can’t believe they would only focus on that. My thing was just beating myself up over. How could I have not? I should have checked that. I should have, and in the preparation for it, so I don’t fault them for it. But it was one of those where it’s like, “Man, I thought that was great opportunity.” And as it turned out, life is weird how it turns out, an even better opportunity opened up with the Combating Terrorism Center.
Warwick F:
Yeah, and then I want to get to Seton Hall. Is there anything you want to say that’s relevant to this conversation about your time at the Combat Terrorism Center, about learning about yourself and leadership? There’s probably, you’ve been through a lot so I don’t want to skip anything before we get to Seton Hall.
Bryan P:
I think the only thing I would say there is it was a very different leadership experience, because my team was all civilians. There were civilian researchers. And so leading a different type of individual, and then the other component of that opportunity was we did research that was in high demand for senior leaders in our military, as Gary mentioned in the intro. And so there I was as a major and then a lieutenant colonel, having to present information to Secretary of Defense, the CIA Director. I testified in front of Congress. In all those moments, those are like, you’ve heard of the imposter syndrome. I was battling that in severe ways. But what I learned about leadership there, I think, which is pertinent to this discussion, is someone told me one time when I came out of a meeting with my first, I think it was a four star general meeting that I had presented at, and I came out and my boss at the time said, “How did you think that went?” I said, “It went well.”, and he pulled me aside. He said, “You know, Bryan, the best leaders that are out there, you can tell by the proportion by which they speak in a meeting and the proportion by which they listen.”
Bryan P:
And by golly if I didn’t kind of think of that every time I was in a room with a senior leader, and to see how they operated, that’s a pretty doggone good heuristic for senior leaders is how much are they in transmit mode versus how much are they listening and taking in information. It was powerful.
Warwick F:
Well, that is a good that’s a very good lesson. So what made you decide to leave West Point and the Combating Terrorism Center and found the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall? Because if you’re a West Point person, a lot of West Point people will be like, “Okay, maybe I missed out on that full time faculty thing, but I kind of want to be here forever.” You’re West Point sort of for life. It’s funny as some listeners know, I’ve never been in the military and I’m from Australia, but I live in Annapolis, which is the home of that other place. I notice that you put in the bio on Seton Hall, it says West Point, the world’s premier leadership development institution. It may well be. I don’t know what the Navy folks think but that’s another story. But so what made you want to leave West Point and found the Buccino Institute at Seton Hall? Because that’s a huge decision.
Bryan P:
Yeah, it was. Thankfully, it was made for me by my wife. So I had always told my wife that if she would kind of follow me around for my first 20 years in the army, by the way, that’s what the time you can become eligible for a pension in the military. And I said, “Once I hit 20 years, then you can kind of get full veto power over whether I stay or go.” I thought she had forgotten about that. But apparently not, she didn’t. So that was the decision. But to me, the decision was like I had spent the bulk of my professional career going after and studying bad leaders and terrorist group leaders. So I wrote a book called Targeting Top Terrorists, which was published by Columbia University Press. And so that was my dissertation. That was my research. But that could be really depressing Warwick. And I wanted, I loved leadership, and I felt like what a great way instead of studying and going after bad leadership, can I help develop the next generation of good leaders? And so it was a tough decision, because I love my West Point team and my Combating Terrorism Center team. But it was a easy decision from a professional and a gratification.
Warwick F:
And as you look back, you’re probably gratified you made that decision, maybe gratified, because if you got full tenure at West Point, that would have been a lot tougher decision, it might have been, to leave.
Bryan P:
Yeah, no, I mean, so I could have stayed at West Point until I retired.
Warwick F:
So that wasn’t an issue. But it’s interesting, yeah. But shifting from studying bad leaders as you put it, I’ve never thought about it that way to hopefully instilling young leaders who will become good leaders, one of the most terrible things is if you study “bad or evil leaders.”, that they might be using good leadership tactics. So it’s like using good leadership tactics for bad or for evil. That’s got to be the ultimate depressing thing. It’s one thing if they’re hopeless, but when they’re not hopeless, and unfortunately, some evil people, some leaders of poor character, they understand a bit about how to motivate people.
Bryan P:
I think so. You’re exactly right. Osama bin Laden, for however evil you think he is, and sign me up for the person that thinks he’s evil, he demonstrated a lot of servant leadership. And one of the reasons why he had so many followers and was so impactful. I don’t buy into his reasons. But in terms of leadership, he was willing to sacrifice for his cause and be there for his people. So yeah, but it’s so much funner, more fun, working with, making people good leaders, as opposed to…
Warwick F:
So talk about the Buccino Institute. In particular, I love this course you have, Crucible Moments, what was really on your heart when you came to found the Buccino Leadership Institute? What was the vision you had for helping undergraduates learn about leadership?
Bryan P:
So they had a previous organization that did leadership in the business school, which is not uncommon for a lot of universities. That’s where leadership sits. But the university made a decision in the year that I arrived to expand that program. So it was the entire university as opposed to just the business school. And I think one of the things that makes our program unique, particularly in today’s world, is the fact that we are teaching leaders how to be leaders in an interdisciplinary environment. So it’s not just business school kids. I have a poet sitting next to the education person sitting next to the diplomat sitting next to the scientist, and learning about leadership in a four year program, I think is important to get that interdisciplinary field because that’s where the world is moving. We’re moving out of our silos and we’re moving more towards small teams of diverse groups. And that’s one thing that we’re trying to do there.
Gary S:
And it’s true, I would imagine, as you’re thinking on this crucible leadership course of study, your athletic experience, your experience on teams, because teams, I’ve been on teams, sports teams, I was a baseball player, too. I was never described as scrappy. I was the fat kid who caught. I was the fat catcher in the Bad News Bears, but teamwork on sports teams, sharing successes, sharing failure builds camaraderie and confidence. I suspect that was at least in the back of your mind, perhaps the forefront of your mind when you decided to talk about crucible experiences with your students.
Bryan P:
Yeah, you’re 100% right there. And whether you take that from the sports world, you could say the same thing in the military. But the reason why I had that course, I think in organizations, when you try to put all the ingredients together what makes an organization successful, one of those things is trust, trust between leaders and followers, trust within in peer groups, trust with the organization. And in order to trust you, I have to know you. And to really know you, you have to be vulnerable and share parts of yourself that normally you might be willing to kind of keep from others. And so when we did this class, the setup was before the class starts, I ask my students, each student to come up with between one and three crucible moments in their life, and I described them very similarly as you and Warwick did at the outset. And I had those ahead of time.
Bryan P:
And then in that class, I talk about the importance of it just very similarly to how Warwick did and their importance in our growth. And then I lead from the front, I share my crucible moments with the class, and I ask some of my associate faculty, my associate directors to do the same. And then we turn it over to the students to volunteer, so you don’t have to volunteer if you don’t want to. But boy, the past couple years when we’ve done this, the emotional response that we’ve gotten from students that have shared their crucible moment has been extremely powerful. I think it’s powerful for them, because it’s a cathartic moment of getting this off their chest and sharing something that they haven’t done with others.
Bryan P:
But it also empowers them that when they do that, afterwards, you see the kind of stress relief, but also the pride that they have that they were able to get through something very tragic, meaningful, difficult. And yet, I think there’s another side of it too, which is the students that are in the audience that are hearing these experiences, because some of those 18 year olds, and I’m happy about this, haven’t experienced that life trauma yet. And so the fact that they are seeing one of their fellow students get up and share this experience where they’ve endured this thing and have emerged stronger on the other side, I think it’s important for them to hear because in their minds, they go, “You know what? This is going to happen to me eventually. And when I do have that moment, I can be just as strong as this other student.” And so it’s a really powerful, powerful lesson.
Warwick F:
And that’s such an important point, because at 18, obviously you had some experiences with divorce, and obviously, I guess you weren’t 18, but later on your mother dying, but a lot of kids these days, they will have had crucible experiences. But even if they haven’t, life is not easy. They will. I can’t think of anybody that’s lived on this earth that hasn’t gone through a tough experience at some point. It’s sort of inevitable. Life is not easy. Things will happen at home and the workplace.
Warwick F:
And so yeah, just being prepared. I mean, one of the phrases, I know Brene Brown talks a lot about vulnerability. One of the phrases that I love that we’ve begun talking about is vulnerability for a purpose. And I’m sure you would talk about this with your students. It’s not always like, with a bunch of co workers, let me tell you about every dumb thing I did in school, whether it’s drugs or whatever, that has no relationship to the situation or what people are going through. That’s just sharing every dumb thing you did can be useful, but not always. But maybe if you’re leading a bunch of folks in the military, maybe you’re saying, “Yeah, first time I led a company of 10 people as a lieutenant, I was scared stiff. I couldn’t sleep that night, or I figured the noncommissioned folks, the sergeants knew way more than I did. But over time, I realized that OK a day at a time, I learned more, got a bit more confidence.”
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s the kind of thing and just not saying you’re in that position, but I’m sure it’s somewhat common for new commanders sharing that with other newly minted lieutenants. Well, that’s vulnerability for a purpose, because it’s like, okay, gee, if somebody that I respect, like Bryan Price, or whoever it is, can be nervous, I guess it’s okay to admit that I’m nervous too. Does that kind of make sense?
Bryan P:
Yeah, and I love, I’m a huge fan of Brene Brown too. And when she talks about vulnerability as a purpose, I think to tie it to leadership, you need to be vulnerable. If you’re vulnerable, you’re seen as authentic. And authentic leaders are trusted. And that to be an effective leader, you need to be trusted and then you can be effective. So I think it all ties together, for sure.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, and part of it with crucible moments is part of its vulnerability. And one of the other things I find is I’m sure you found this with your students, it’s when students share sometimes, let’s say it’s a mistake they’ve made. They think, well, if other people knew how stupid I was, they’ll judge me and I’ll be shunned. As a young 18 year old, a 19 year old, you’re absolutely thinking that. You’re thinking about that later, but when other people kind of slap you on the back, give you a hug or whatever, and say, “Hey, that was amazing you did that.” It’s like, “Well, you’re not judging me? I’m not ostracized?” That’s also and I’m sure you’ve seen that. It’s like, because that’s what you think if I share this, I’ll be rejected. I’ll be a pariah or something.
Bryan P:
Especially in this kind of Instagram happy environment that we have, where you have to put on these airs in order to show everybody that everything is fine, when in reality, my analogy for this is, I coach business leaders outside of West Point too. It’s the duck. When you look on top and you look on Instagram, the duck is kind of moving gracefully through the water. But if you had that underwater camera of said duck, that thing is churning, the water’s all muddy and churned up. And so I think people should not be afraid to show that underwater view of what’s going on in their life, and particularly when it comes to mental health, you know, when you need help get it in this world, in this country. I don’t know how it is in Australia, but I’m interested in your thoughts in terms of the comparison. When I coach athletes, if they have a sprained ankle, they go to the doctor for the sprained ankle. In this country, if you have a mental health problem, there’s still this stigma attached. I think it’s getting better, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Warwick F:
No, I think I know there’s some elite cricket players, I probably get it wrong here. But I think it may be Glenn Maxwell. But there’s one of these folks that has unbelievable talent, but does struggle with this. And then he says, “Look, I’m sorry, I can’t play for Australia or some elite team right now because I just need to take some time off.” And that’s accepted and they go through protocols. And so that’s great, which is important. The other aspect of crucible moments is vulnerability. But it’s demonstrating to young folks that it’s not the end of your story is as we always say in Crucible Leadership. You can learn from that, if it’s your mistake, learn from your mistakes. Even if it’s not, okay, what maybe I can help people who are survivors of this, whether it’s cancer, or whatever. Maybe I can use that to serve others. So it’s seeing crucible can be an opportunity for a life’s mission, a life’s calling can come out of that. And I’m sure that’s probably part of your discussions, I imagine with your students.
Bryan P:
You said something on our podcast that stuck with me, and I’ll probably butcher it, I’ll paraphrase you. And if I screw it up, you can fix it, Warwick. It was kind of like your crucible moment or your worst day doesn’t define who you are. And to me that is powerful, because when I work with athletes and business leaders, I try to decouple what they do with their identity. So when I work with elite athletes on the mental game, oftentimes they will self describe themselves as “I’m Sally, the swimmer.” And I say, “Okay, that’s a recipe for some self esteem and some identity issues down the road.” I say, “You’re Sally, the awesome kid, the awesome daughter, the awesome everything who also happens to swim, but you can do some other things in your life.” And I think it’s important to kind of decouple what you do with your identity, in order for both your sanity but also your self esteem, and as a leader, because you’re going to have those bad days, but like you said, don’t let those bad days define you.
Warwick F:
And that’s so key. Boy, that’s the whole issue of identity. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently. But I’m sure you probably have, I would guess, conversations with your daughter. I mean, she is one of the elite soccer players of her age. She might be on the U.S. team one day might be in an Olympic team, or maybe not. But try and instill in her she is not defined by her soccer ability. You’re happy for her. But she is defined by who she is as a person. I’m sure you, I mean, this is on your heart and mind, I got to believe, I don’t know whether it’s a conversation that you’ve had at least some, helping not get too wrapped up in it, because there is going to be some people. They’re going to say, “You know what? You’re one of the best players I’ve ever seen. I’ve been watching young people for 20 years. And you’re incredible.” They try to be helpful, but that’s not always so helpful when people tell you that. You know what I mean?
Bryan P:
It’s funny, first off, if you look at the statistics, it’s likely that she’s not going to be any of those things. I mean, just based off of the numbers, but this is an area where I wrote a blog piece about this, and I’m interested in your thoughts. I was actually hoping that she would have a failure moment earlier in her life. Because I mean, look, she’s a good player, but she’s on a fantastic team. The team is ridiculous. But I would prefer at some point, not to say that I want her crucible moment to arrive earlier in life than later. But if you go through life and you don’t suffer any type of adversity, how do you react? This would be a great research project to look at in terms of are people more successful or less successful, based off of when is that crucible moment happened in their life? Would you have been the same if you were 45 as opposed to when your crucible moment happened? I don’t know.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I never thought about that before. But that’s an insightful point. I was probably, in some ways fortunate that the whole thing, well, the takeover happened of the family media business when I was 26. And that ended by the time I was 30. But yeah, I mean, certainly the whole issues of identity growing up because I unfortunately worked hard, got good grades at school, Oxford, Harvard Business School. I was sort of, I’m not going to be this young, dilettante, wealthy kid. I’m going to work hard. And yeah, I mean, sort of, I wouldn’t call myself scrappy. I’m not a hustler in the sense of I’m a contemplative person. But in terms of determination and perseverance, I’m very, if not extremely high. And so yeah, that didn’t help all these expectations. You could be one of the great Fairfaxes, you could have this huge impact for your nation.
Warwick F:
I mean, so once when it ended, it’s like, huh, well, that’s not going to happen. I’m never gonna achieve anything, no matter what I do that is at the level that I might have achieved. So that’s where you really got to do some serious soul work and say, “Where is my identity? Is it being a Fairfax in charge of this mammoth media organization or as a person of faith? Is it in what God thinks of me? Is it in more spiritual eternal?” So yeah, I had some years to figure that out. But identity a huge thing.
Gary S:
So gentlemen, we are in a hover at the moment. But we are descending, and we will soon put the skids down on the helipad. Before we do that, I know Warwick wants to ask some questions about the things that you tell your students when they talk about their crucibles and how they get through them, because they’ll be very applicable, Bryan to our listeners. But before we get to that question, let me, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the opportunity to tell listeners how they can find out more about you, more about the Buccino School about anything that you’ve talked about here. How can they learn more about Bryan Price and what you do?
Bryan P:
Yeah, sure. So almost all my social media is under Top Mental Game. So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. For the Buccino Leadership Institute, you can get ahold of us at www.shu.edu\leadership. And then on Twitter, it’s @shuleadership, and Instagram, it’s @buccinoleaders.
Gary S:
And we will put those in the show notes, listeners, so you can see them written out.
Warwick F:
Just as we close here, I know one of the things you mentioned in advance, we talked actually quite about a lot of these things. There are some key principles that you advocate. And I think we’ve covered actually a number of them. But just wanted to give you a chance to explore any of these further. You talk about the ability to reframe failure, overcoming imposter syndrome, becoming aware of negative narratives, proper goal setting, process over outcome, identity questions. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve covered. Any of those you want to as we close, just really touch on a bit for our listeners?
Bryan P:
Yeah, I think one that is kind of near and dear to my heart, and it just keeps popping up over and over is kind of a combination of that imposter syndrome and those narratives that I told you about. In the past week and a half, and I just had a recent post on this as well, I coached a former Major League Baseball pitcher, who is now in the corporate world. I’ve coached a gymnast who is at the top of her game. I’ve coached a CEO that went from nothing in his family and he’s brought up, he’s the CEO of his own internationally known organization now. And it’s funny when you coach these people, one of the consistent themes that emerges through that is, at some level, there’s a confidence issue.
Bryan P:
And those confidence issues are usually borne out of this thing that we call the imposter syndrome where you feel like you’re not worthy of your promotion, or whatever things are happening positively in your life. Or it’s they’re based off of these narratives, oftentimes that are formed at very young ages. When I talk to this one person, not to give her age away, but she’s around my age we’ll say, and yet she thought back to a moment when she was 13 years old when somebody said something to her. And these things rattle around in our heads, but worse, they influence or negatively influence your ability to act.
Bryan P:
And I think that’s the most damaging thing and I told an individual that is in the corporate world, I say can you imagine if you are able to do coaching for every person in your organization and get to the root causes of either that narrative or that imposter syndrome, how much more productive, how much happier, how much more effective both that individual and the organization would be? I think that’s where the secrets lie. And it doesn’t matter, oftentimes, why this is so frustrating for both individuals and organizations is your feelings about your narrative or your suffering under the imposter syndrome is usually not rational. One of the things I try to do with my clients is to say, “Look at all the areas in your life where you have succeeded. And all you want to do is focus on that area where you failed or stumbled.” And I don’t know, I just think that that if we could unlock that both as you know, an organization, but as a country, I think we’d be happier, more productive because people are holding back. They’re playing small, and for no rational reasons.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
It’s interesting what you said there, Bryan, about that woman with the 13 year old experience. One of the things we’ve discovered on this show, this is the 58th episode that we’ve done. And one of the things that keeps coming up, and you actually alluded to it earlier in the episode, it was sort of a drive by moment, but you were talking about when you were about to be a freshman, I think and someone thought you were in sixth grade when they saw your stature and that, I mean, you’re not a freshman anymore, but that’s still the forefront of your brain. When you got asked that question, you talked about it. And we’ve discovered so many people on this show whose crucible moments or one of their crucible moments date back to single digits or early teenage years, those things that set up what you describe, what others describe as the imposter syndrome. And those things are hard to outrun. And one of the one of the goals of what Crucible Leadership does is to help you learn and leverage those things, so that you can then apply them learn the lessons of them and move beyond the crucible, so you can lead a life of significance. Warwick, any final words you want to leave our listeners with before I wrap?
Warwick F:
Thank you so much, Bryan, for being here. I mean you’ve served our country, you’ve helped students at West Point, you’re now working with students at Seton Hall and other athletes and folks in business and really teaching them about what true leadership is, what servant leadership is, what vulnerability for purpose is. None of us are perfect. Getting over the whole imposter syndrome, I mean that is really important. Almost, I’d say soul work, to be really effective leaders, you’ve got to start at the root. And that’s often at a soul level. You’ve got a good foundation at a soul self image level, you’re going to be so much more effective and compassionate. You have a bunch of weeds or some issues at a soul level, you’ll find it very difficult to care for other people. So you’re really dealing with what I’d call soul work, both with the athletes and the business folks you work with as well as the students. I don’t know whether they quite see it that way. But you’re setting that solid foundation that then enables them to be fantastic leaders to make a difference in this country and beyond. So thank you for the work that you do.
Bryan P:
Oh, thanks. And it’s always awesome to wake up every morning with those kind of challenges. And I hope I continue to have those opportunities. And thanks for what you’ve done with this podcast and your book and sharing your experiences. Because I think that’s where this is a topic that you’re bringing up in terms of crucible leadership that I think is going to move the needle for sure.
Gary S:
That is the second time listener that Bryan Price, our guest today, has said the word book. I am remiss in that the first time Bryan said the word book, I didn’t say the book Crucible Leadership comes out by Warwick in the fall. We actually have right now, October 19, as an on sale date on Amazon. So the book is called Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. So I just embarrassed Warwick. But it is, to Bryan’s point really encapsulates all of what we try to do here on Beyond the Crucible and even more so, what Crucible Leadership tries to do.
Gary S:
Speaking of Beyond the Crucible, until we are again together listener, Warwick and I have a little bit of a favor to ask you. And that is this. On the podcast app that you’re listening to the show right now, click, push the button whatever you need to do to subscribe. That would be a real great help for us, and that it helps us share it with more people interviews like this one with Bryan but it also will help make sure that you don’t miss one of these episodes where we talk about how to move beyond your crucible. So until that next time that we are together, always remember this and we’ve talked about it from the opening bell of this show, that is your crucible experiences are painful. They’re real. Whether you know the name crucible experience or not, you know what it feels like to go through if you’ve been through one. They’re painful, they’re real. But this is the great news. They’re not the end of your story, as we’ve talked about here with Bryan, as Warwick talks about every week on the show. Those moments, they’re not the end of your story. They can be the start of a brand new story, the best story because as you learn the lessons of them, as you apply those lessons and move forward, where you end up headed, the destination you end up getting to, where your helicopter lands, is at a life of significance.
From the outside looking in, Tracy J. Edmonds’ life couldn’t have been sweeter: a high-profile executive job with a Fortune 30 company at which she excelled. But on the inside, where she discovered it really counts, her career had come at a high cost because of a self-imposed crucible: not being her authentic self. So she decided to embrace both her figurative and literal wild hair — trading her corner office for a cubicle and tackling a vision that not only meshed with her gifts and passions but also allowed her to live who she truly was rather than conform to a corporate mold. She’s found her life of significance in coaching other women of color that to be the best versions of themselves, they have to be the real versions of themselves.
To learn more about Tracy J. Edmonds and her book Wild Hair: A Courageous Woman’s Guide to a Bold and Authentic Career, visit https://tracyjedmonds.com/
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond The Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Tracy J. E:
When we talk about being authentic and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components, self honesty. You’ve got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be. Or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. Once you say it out loud, you have to own sometimes what’s very ugly, but also, the big dream of what you could be.
Tracy J. E:
You have to have the confidence to work it out and the resilience to stick with it because it’s never just a straight shot. There’s going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you’re going to have to navigate. Times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, “Oh, you’re not so good at this.” Wow. Ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn’t give up. Now, I cried about it, and I said, “Okay, here’s the plan.”
Gary S:
So, what is the plan? Your plan to learn and leverage the lessons of your crucible to put yourself on the road to authenticity and the life of significance that flows from it. The woman dispensing the wisdom you just heard is leadership coach and author Tracy J. Edmonds, whose new book, Wild Hair; A Courageous Woman’s Guide To A Bold and Authentic Career, offers plenty, more insight and inspiration where that snippet we just played, came from.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. In today’s episode, Tracy tells Warwick about the breakthroughs in her personal and professional life, that she set into motion by embracing both her figurative and literal wild hair truths. She chose to move from a corner office to a cubicle in her career, because the success she achieved in the former, didn’t give her the purpose she found in the latter. She explains it all in truly poetic terms. Keep listening all the way to the end and you’ll learn why that word poetic is very, very intentional and quite beautiful.
Warwick F:
We’re going to get into your book here in a bit, but I have to say that I loved reading your book Wild Hair, and we’ll get into it more. Why? Because not everybody’s viewing this on YouTube, but people might think, “Well, why Wild Hair?” It’s not just a physical description, it’s a meme of your philosophy of life that can help so many women and so many people in general. I love that whole concept of Wild Hair. And subtitle of the book is, A Courageous Woman’s Guide, To A Bold and Authentic Career.
Warwick F:
You’ve been through a bunch of experiences, successful corporate career, and a lot of successes and challenges as there is with anybody’s career. But I’d love to start just with who is Tracy Edmonds? Kind of how’d you grow up? Parents, background. What’s the story behind the story, if you will? Who is Tracy and…
Tracy J. E:
Well, first of all, thanks for having me. This is exciting to be able to have this kind of conversation and talk about crucible moments. Because in fact, I have a chapter about that in my book. I’m super, super excited. One of the things though, I am not is a poet, so I appreciate the distinction. but to be honest, when I thought about what we could talk about with your listeners, it was important for me not to describe myself in the more traditional ways, but to describe myself in terms of my life experiences. And who those life experiences have changed me into and how I’m ever evolving. That’s just what came to mind. I did not have it prepared. I wrote it and said, “Hopefully they won’t send me a note back and say, “Okay, this is not what we’re looking for.”
Warwick F:
I thought it was brilliant. That was terrific.
Tracy J. E:
Well, thank you.
Gary S:
It was so good that it, we didn’t know that we could look for it, if that makes sense. I mean, truly it was informational and beautiful. SO thank you.
Tracy J. E:
Well, thank you.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Tracy J. E:
Who am I? I the African-American child of two alcoholic parents who came from very different backgrounds. A mother who came from the South in Tennessee, who’s struggled and had a difficult life and who was very, very dark skinned and a father who came from a sleepy, river town and was as fair as you, Warwick. I share that because I am the mix of that.
Tracy J. E:
I am the mix of two people who come from the same race, who had very different experiences being black in their own skin. Because that shaped me into who I became and I think quite honestly, drove me to address issues of diversity. They both had their challenges, which meant I grew up in a household full of love. I have two younger brothers, we are extremely close, but I also grew up in a household that was emotionally unstable, very often.
Tracy J. E:
I found myself stepping into, as the oldest, more of a leadership role to help sometimes my brothers to eat that night, because my parents were struggling with their own addictions and their own issues. Those things kind of shaped me into this young woman who believed education was everything, and went off to college to be an engineer, two years at Cornell University, and realized that I hated these classes I had to take.
Tracy J. E:
And found her way back home and back into college, but also working while I was going to college. That began like a 30, 31 year journey with one organization, honestly, that evolved over time, and a career where I could learn to bring all of that, that I just shared with you, into who I was as a leader, and to help other women and men, but women, especially, to lead in their lives.
Warwick F:
I mean, one of the things I observed from reading your book is that, you’re a driven, passionate person, has a heart for the world and to help folks. Where did that maybe drive and passion come from? Did you have like a role model? Where were the seeds of that?
Tracy J. E:
In my family, quite honestly, my mother and father, and it sounds like such a contradiction, because we were not a perfect family by any stretch of the imagination. As I mentioned, my parents had their own addictions and their own struggles. But we were loved and we were taught to be fierce and strong. I can remember my father sitting me down on the edge of his bed when I was 12 years old and saying, “Tracy, you are a black woman in this world. You will have to fight for what you get. You will have to be better than everyone else. We never give up, we never quit. That’s what it’s going to take for you to be successful in your life, but you’ve got it in you. You can do it.”
Tracy J. E:
My mother was an extremely compassionate woman, who had struggled a lot in her life, growing up as a child in the South, horrific things that had happened to her and finding her place in the world without losing that compassion. She was a victim of incest. She was a victim of racism, in some of the strongest ways. And for her to still have compassion and love and to see the good in people, I think she passed that on to me.
Tracy J. E:
I have this fierce desire to succeed in this life, whatever that looks like, but a desire to take my challenge and pay that forward. Whatever the journey is, it’s there to make me a better person. Hopefully, I can share that with others and help them along the way.
Warwick F:
You know, one of the chapters in your book talks about the value of mentors and in particular, those who are truth-tellers.
Tracy J. E:
Yes.
Warwick F:
You’ve had a dad who was a truth-teller, in a sense, he was your first mentor perhaps.
Tracy J. E:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And he was giving you encouragement, but he wasn’t sugarcoating it. He said, this is going to be tough for a black woman. Certainly, as you were talking as a young woman, it’s probably not easy today, it probably was worse back then. Not that it’s great, but there’s sadly often always worse. And he wasn’t sugar coating it, but yet he was encouraging you.
Warwick F:
I often think biblically, they talk about balance of truth and love. Your dad gave you truth, your mom gave you love. I’m sure your dad gave you love too, but truth and love that will make a lot of folks grow done in the right way and the right balance. Even though they weren’t perfect, did you look back and say, “Look, they weren’t perfect, but they were gifts in many ways. They were blessings as parents.”
Tracy J. E:
Gosh, absolutely. They were absolutely blessings. I would not trade my life growing up as a child, for anyone else’s. It was not perfect. I mean, I can think of times when my parents were arguing and I was sitting outside just crying, like, “Why is my life like this?” You think of everyone else’s life as perfect. Of course we know as we grow older that, that’s not always the case. But I can remember crying and thinking, “Why can’t I have a better life?”
Tracy J. E:
A moment came in my life when I had the opportunity to pay forward the gift of being a child of an alcoholic family. I had the opportunity to say to a woman sitting across from me at work, who was struggling, that, “I am a child of an alcoholic and I know how that feels.” Because she had a son. And to be able to have that conversation with her and get her on the right track to get the help that she needed and to turn her life around and become a productive employee.
Tracy J. E:
I don’t trade that. Because we don’t know when those moments of what we perceive to be negative experiences, will come back and be the gift that we give to someone else.
Warwick F:
That’s such a profound thought. Again, I’m being authentic when I say this, there was so many profound moments when I read your book. And that was, I forget exactly how you coined it, but sometimes crucibles can be a blessing. The crucible of growing up with alcoholic parents, you’re able to, as you just said, pay it forward and help that woman that I think you described in the book.
Warwick F:
I term it sort of vulnerability for a purpose. You can be vulnerable about things, that won’t help anybody, it’s oversharing. It’s like, “You’re telling me this, why? You did something stupid in high school and took drugs. Okay, fine. But so what? What’s that going to do with my situation?” And if it has nothing to do with it, it’s like, “Thank you, boss. This is not helping me at all.”
Warwick F:
But in this case it was sharing for a purpose. That’s such a key lesson. One last thing on your mother, and obviously she was, as you recount, like one of your best friends, cheerleader, you speak very movingly about her. Her ability to go through unbelievably difficult, if not horrific circumstances, I’m guessing not countenance what was done, but yet not be bitter, not let anger and quickness destroy you. That’s powerful.
Warwick F:
Forgiveness doesn’t mean acceptance. It doesn’t mean condoning. It’s a very, very big difference. That must have been remarkable. I don’t know if she told you everything that happened. Certainly as a kid, she probably wouldn’t have maybe giving you the PG version or the G. but that sense of not being bitter, that’s also a remarkable example, as I’m sure you looked back.
Tracy J. E:
It was a powerful example. I think what it gave to me, what her example gave to me, is that we have the capacity to forgive, for one. But also what we can take from the experiences that we have. I think a lot of times negative experiences happen, and we’re quick to say, we just want to push that out. We want to forget about that, we want to move on.
Tracy J. E:
But what I have found is that, every crucible moment, every one of those times, when I thought it was horrific, there was something in there that I could take from it, to forge a better version of myself. That was one of the big aha moments. I spent my 20s just being angry. I mean, I grew up in this environment where there was constant emotional upheaval. My parents couldn’t hold it together. They were struggling and fighting some real demons.
Tracy J. E:
Once I got through my 20s and got into my 30s and went through that moment where I had a child, I lost my mom. I had lost my father. I lost my mom. I bought a house. I had a child, got the big job. When all those things happened and I didn’t know how to juggle that, I essentially started falling apart. I would sit in the rocking chair with my new baby, she was three months old when my mom passed and I would cry. I could barely keep her in my arms because my mom was my best friend. And she died suddenly. Didn’t know she was sick, found her on the floor, took her to the hospital, dead in five days.
Tracy J. E:
I was distraught. I can remember saying to God that, “I hate you for doing this. How do you let a woman who struggled so difficultly in her life, who finally was getting over alcoholism, loses her husband, starts drinking again, and then dies. It’s not right. It’s just not right.” But what that ended up being, first of all, I had to vocalize that to be brave enough to vocalize that. Then also to realize that this experience of losing her, taught me how to be my own woman.
Tracy J. E:
I was a mother now and I needed to step up and be that mother. I had immersed myself in work because that’s what I knew how to do well. I didn’t know how to be a mom. My own mom left me. How was I going to be a mom? I didn’t know how to manage my marriage. I was only a few years into it. What I had been doing since I was in my early 20s was working. So I dug in on that.
Tracy J. E:
And I had to realize that, that was not what I wanted for my life. We have to think about what do we really, really want? Self honesty. I had to be honest with myself and say, “What’s most important to me is not work. What is most important to me is this child and my husband and family. How do I create that? How do I forgive myself for being so angry at my mother and at God and what do I learn from this?”
Tracy J. E:
Because my mom had that heart of forgiveness. It was like, “Oh, you have to understand, you don’t know someone’s journey and what brings them to the point where they show up like they do and not always in the most positive way.” What can I learn about me, out of this? I learned that I was a lot stronger than I ever knew.
Warwick F:
That’s a remarkable thing that your mother said. I mean, to be able to say, “Oh, you don’t know their journey.” I don’t need to know the details, but you do. At least many of them I, bet. For her to say that it’s like, how can you possibly say, “Oh, you don’t know their journey.”
Warwick F:
I understand intellectually, but how in the world, can you say it and mean it? It blows my mind. I think for most people that’s like, “I don’t get it.” You talked about kind of superwoman, if you will, that that’s sort of a level of, I don’t know, a superior character quality that’s mind-blowing to me.
Tracy J. E:
I think she was phenomenal. I’m a little biased, but what I learned like you just articulated so well, was her capacity to love, to forgive and to understand that our journeys do create our testimony. They do create how we show up. And that a lot of things that she forgave people for, because of the challenges they had in their lives, that created the worldview that they had, the actions that they took, even the ones that hurt her.
Tracy J. E:
She was amazing in that capacity. As I think sought to emulate that, or actually do the best I could with my environment, I drew upon those things that were taught to me. And I talk a little bit about this in the book. When we talk about being authentic and living your best life, having the career that you want, it always comes down to four components, self honesty. You’ve got to look yourself in the face and face the demon, whatever that may be.
Tracy J. E:
Or just clearly articulate what you want out of your life and your career. You have to have the courage to own that. Once you say it out loud, you have to own, sometimes what’s very ugly, but also, the big dream of what you could be. Then you have to have the confidence to work it out, and the resilience to stick with it. Because it’s never just a straight shot. There’s going to be hills, valleys, turns, things you’re going to have to navigate, times like I had in my career when I restarted my career where people say, “Oh, you’re not so good at this.” Whoa, ego blow. Never heard that before. But I didn’t give up. Now, I cried about it, then I said, “Okay, here’s the plan.” I think I learned those things from her.
Warwick F:
Remarkable. I want to talk a bit about just some of the professional path you’ve gone through and really led to the book. And now you have your own kind of consulting company to try to help and uplift women and particularly women of color. It’s probably your mission in life and maybe that’s your calling, God given calling or universe calling, however you frame it, which is awesome.
Warwick F:
You had a very successful career and became a chief diversity officer at a very large company. Talk about some of that journey. Because, that seemed like a sort of a challenge in which, and I think as you articulated very well in the book, for many women, and I think as you’ve mentioned, women of color, there’s a sense of, “Oh, I need to do certain things to be corporate, to fit in.” Because otherwise you don’t rise up the ladder. You will hit a glass ceiling. Talk about just that journey that you and others have been through and why that whole wild hair metaphor is so important. Because I thought that was just a brilliant way of articulating that message and your journey. Talk a bit about that whole wild hair meme and the whole wanting to fit into the perceived corporate mold.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. I kind of grew up in corporate America. I started my career in my early 20s in a frontline role. Worked for a major insurer in the state of Ohio and really just processing health insurance claims. I spent, as I mentioned before, 31 years at that company. And that company went from being just a statewide, small insurance company, to a national Fortune 30, public company. One of the most prominent in the field.
Tracy J. E:
During that time, I went and achieved degrees, got married, had children and navigated my way through that. But for a good portion of that part of my life with almost 20 years, I would say that I wasn’t really authentic. I wasn’t really owning my career. I figured out what it took or what I thought it took to succeed in that environment. That meant keeping my hair straight, looking as close to white as I could and playing the corporate game. Being the corporate soldier. And that worked very successfully for me.
Tracy J. E:
So I reached a level where I was right below the executive ranks, just about to make it into all the big bonuses and packages. I was pregnant with our third child and I kept hearing this voice in my head that was going, “What are you doing? How did you get here?” Like, “What? How did I get here? Well, I worked really hard and I did all these things.” And, “How did I get here?” It wouldn’t go away. It stayed in the back of my mind saying, “How did you get here?”
Tracy J. E:
The reality was, I was miserable. I had achieved success. I was making good money. I had the corner office. Literally, I had the corner office that overlooked the little brook in the back. It was beautiful. I had an assistant that sat right outside my door and I was miserable. I was on the phone from morning to evening. I was exhausted when I got home. I wasn’t as fully engaged with my children and I’m going, “I’ve worked for this company 20 years, but how do I reach this point?” I was doing something I didn’t even care about. I came to a company for tuition reimbursement and 20 years later, I’m a regional vice president of operations with 300 employees. And I’m going, ‘Okay, how the hell did I get here?”
Warwick F:
That’s an interesting crucible to discuss. Because in essence, it’s a crucible experience of success, right?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
There was a feeling of, I think you wrote somewhere, sort of a feeling of being trapped in the success. Most people don’t think of crucibles as “good things that happened to us.” But as the old saw goes too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. As you bore more deeply into that good thing and explored that corner office and explored that assistant outside your door, you realized what it took to get there, was to subjugate your personality a bit, to subjugate who Tracy was. And that was the crucible.
Tracy J. E:
That’s absolutely right. I realized that the “success” that I had in my career, was primarily due to what others saw in me. Now don’t get me wrong, I benefited by a great paycheck, a lot of perks, nice house, nice car, wonderful things that came from that. I didn’t take a job I ever didn’t want. But it was because others saw something in me and they wanted that. It was never about what I want.
Tracy J. E:
I had succeeded myself right into the crucible and I was burning up. I was literally burning up, because I was miserable, it was inauthentic. I came there for tuition reimbursement, my God, and I’m still there 20 years later, doing something that I found myself not caring about. So, my moment was when I realized, when the dissonance and the voice in my head got so loud, I had no choice but to answer it, “How did I get here?”
Tracy J. E:
That’s where those four steps we talked about, and I talk about in the book of being self honest, having the courage to face what you learn about you, the confidence to execute a plan to make that happen and the resilience to see it through, come into play. The wild hair, was the moment when, even after I made the transition and I left what I knew and moved into human resources. I did the soul searching the self honesty. I navigated a path into a new role and I built myself up.
Tracy J. E:
But even as I was in that space, I still was kind of playing other people’s game. Until finally I said, “You know what? I need to be me. I have got to do me.” And my hair was an expression of that. Not because I was trying to do some big thing that stood out and shocked people, but simply because I had been tired for years of the process of making my hair look like white hair. That process took a lot of time. That process damaged my hair. That process was not what I really wanted.
Tracy J. E:
It was a big decision to say, “I’m going to let this wild hair out, simply because this is who I am and what I want at this moment in time.” When I did that, oh my goodness, let me tell you, there were people who could not close their mouth. They literally jaw dropped, “Oh my God.” And you could see the look on their face because it was something so unexpected for them to see me look in this way.
Tracy J. E:
There were others who absolutely loved it. It was like, “This is you. This feels like you.” It was my kind of wild hair moment. But what it really stood for is, finding that wild hair, that thing that you are at a crossroads over and handling it and addressing it and doing yourself in the process, being authentic.
Warwick F:
It inspired other people, right?
Tracy J. E:
Oh, yeah.
Warwick F:
They said, “Wow, if Tracy can do it, maybe I can do it.” Right?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
It’s like they admired your courage. Just like, “I can’t believe she did that. I’d be too scared to.”
Tracy J. E:
Right.
Warwick F:
You sort of laid a trail if you will, for other women, other women of color. Because you write in the book, you spend hours on a Saturday or something. We’re not talking five minutes. There’s a beautiful moment where the person that did your hair said something like, “Finally,” or cheering you on. People don’t like to say anything, but when you do something, it’s like, “Oh, hooray.”
Tracy J. E:
You know what? I took a stand. In this case, I took a stand on my own beliefs and what I wanted for myself. But it has become symbolic for me, in terms of what I’m really trying to do. When you talk about purpose, I stand unapologetically for women. I stand here, all women, no matter what shade we come in, I want to be that inspiration. I want to be a source of affirmation, more than anything. I want to affirm them, that when we don’t look like the majority, it’s still okay. You are affirmed. I want to be that strength for them. For them to lean into their own leadership and show up in the way that is most comfortable for them.
Warwick F:
You mentioned some statistics in the book, which I think most people are probably pretty familiar with, about women getting paid less than men, less women in the boardroom, the corporate C-suite and stats, according to your book, which I’m sure is true. It’s even worse for African-American women or women who are minorities relative to women in total. It’s not easy.
Warwick F:
But you’re really preaching a different message, a different sermon, if you will. Some women would say, “Well, the key to success is fit in. Be like the corporate folks. Be more like the male executives.” You’re saying there’s a different road and it might actually be more successful, but at least you will feel better about yourself, whether it works or not.
Warwick F:
Not to put words in your mouth, but I think you believe not only will you be more true to yourself, it actually might be more successful than trying to be somebody or not. Is that kind of a fair summary?
Tracy J. E:
I think that is a fair summary. Because, I have found at least for me, and it’s not just for me, quite honestly, the women that I’ve coached. When I was true to myself, whatever that meant, if that meant the hair, if that meant putting my voice in the room, whenever I didn’t allow that dissonance between what others expected of me and what I wanted to be, when I closed the gap between those two, I was more successful. I had more impact, my career evolved and it happened for other women as well.
Gary S:
Now, Warwick said he doesn’t want to put words in your mouth, but I will put words back in your mouth, Tracy. Because, you and I have worked together a little bit on a press release for your book, which is coming out soon. Which in fact, by the time this airs may indeed be out. But you said this, I wrote this note down on something you said on this very subject. You said this, it was so good, I wrote it down to put quotes around. I’m putting these words back in your mouth here on the show.
Tracy J. E:
Awesome.
Gary S:
“No matter where you work, it always comes down to your values,” you said. “If you can’t express your realness, you don’t need to work there.”
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. I wholeheartedly believe that. And I advise others on that, every single day. I had a really powerful moment with a young woman who met with me after I participated in a panel for the United Negro College Fund. Working with UNCF, they have a leadership program for their college students and they bring professionals and executives together to speak all the time. I had my natural hair at that point.
Tracy J. E:
Afterwards, this young woman comes up to me, beautiful long, natural hair, African-American young woman. She says, “I have to talk to you. I am beginning my interviews for internships. I’ve spoken with my mom and my aunt. They both are telling me to relax my hair and to straighten it. I really don’t want to do that. That’s just not who I am. But I’m afraid I won’t get jobs.”
Tracy J. E:
I told her, I said, “You know what? I’m going to counter your mom here. But are you comfortable with your hair?” “Yes.” “Are you able to style your hair in ways that you believe will be professional?” Because let’s be real too, we have to know our environment. Can we style our hair or shape it in a way? I mean, even people who have straight hair come to work with styles that are appropriate, colors that are appropriate for the career that they want.
Tracy J. E:
“If you’re able to do that, my advice is for you to wear your natural hair. Because, if they cannot accept you for who you are, when you show up in a professional manner and you are capable of doing the job, then you don’t want to be there. You don’t want to be someplace where you have to subjugate who you are.”
Tracy J. E:
The challenge is when we get into environments, there’s so many cues that we get. Even when no one says directly, “Be less, be different, be straight hair.” What you see around you sends you those messages. When I looked up, as I was growing in my career and I would look up, no one looked like me. No one. When I would sit in the talent conversations and they would talk about the successful leaders and the folks who should move up in the succession ranks, typically, there was something wrong with the folks who came in a little bit browner skin. There was something they just had to work on. “We love her. She’s great. If we could just hone off this edge.”
Tracy J. E:
And so that, as you listen to that, you start to say, “Oh, I better hone that edge down. I better straighten the hair.” Because when I see what is successful, it doesn’t look like me. Part of what we have to do, when we embrace our authenticity, part of it is, we are creating the path for others. We are breaking new ground. We’re breaking glass, right? To say, “This is what it takes and this is how it can look.” Look at our vice-president. This is how it can look.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Tracy J. E:
And be successful.
Warwick F:
It takes courage to authentic. It won’t work always. I’m sure part of what you counsel is, be careful where you want to work for. Some environments are more friendly than others. None will be easy, but there’s impossible, difficult, challenging. Maybe, perhaps you’ll get there. If you can go for the, maybe rather than you’re sure to fail, because no matter what you do, they won’t give you a chance, maybe avoid those ones.
Warwick F:
But there is, I think, the power and we live in a culture where increasingly, a lot of young people of all backgrounds, they want authenticity. They want vulnerability. We had a guy on our show, Chris Tuff, wrote a book, The Millennial Whisperer, and a lot of HR research shows that young people, they want real. Give me the straight scoop. Don’t tell me the pandemic’s going to be over tomorrow. Be real with me. Tell me what’s happening. Be authentic, be vulnerable.
Warwick F:
There is part of a societal trend in that matter. It doesn’t mean it’s going to solve everything, but it helps a little bit. Even a couple little ripples or waves can be helpful. But it takes courage, because you think it may not work. It probably hasn’t worked for decades or hundreds of years, but just being who you are and being willing to share some of your experiences, which may be very different than your bosses, your coworkers, your life experiences.
Warwick F:
That provides a basis of connection of sharing stories that sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Again, not saying it’s people’s fault, but by not sharing and trying to fit in, I actually think it makes it harder in some ways. I don’t think it makes it easier. You may think it might, but it’s like people might say, “I don’t really know who that person is. They’re just so tight lipped.” If you want to have an excuse, you just actually giving them excuses in some sense. You’re not helping yourself.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
I don’t know, in some ways it’s a bit like jumping off a cliff. By being authentic and being vulnerable, it actually can create more connection and give you a greater chance of getting promoted. Not always. That sounds like radical stuff. Does that make any kind of sense?
Tracy J. E:
No, it makes total sense to me. When we’re vulnerable and we are ourselves, we create a human connection and that’s very natural. Humans, desire connectivity and connection. That’s part of why mother has a baby, they lay the baby skin to skin. They want connection. It’s a part of who we are as human beings. It’s interesting because I’ll tell you another story, that when I was chief diversity officer and I was doing a tour, if you will, where I was speaking about our plan for diversity, but I would talk about my hair. Because what I wanted leaders to know is that there are subtle cues, like we talked about, that say, “You don’t fit in.” I talked about my journey to my hair, what I share with you all.
Tracy J. E:
After that, lots of people come up to me, primarily women come up to me, because women can relate, not just African-American women, but keeping their hair from being gray. I have a woman who told me directly that she had a leader tell her, “And get rid of that gray, because people won’t… You look old.” Because she grayed early and she was in her 20s when she started to gray.
Warwick F:
Oh, my gosh.
Tracy J. E:
But here’s what really got me, is a white male came up to me afterwards and said, “Thank you for sharing your story.” I was a bit shocked. I said, “Okay, sure.” Because he in the majority. There’s a bunch of him. So I’m like, “For sure. You struggling. You’re really struggling to make it to the top.”
Tracy J. E:
But he said, “I have often not felt that I could fit in because I like to wear a beard, but none of the men here wear a beard. And I’m going to start wearing a beard, because that is what I like to do in the wintertime. But none of the men here, none of the executives here, none of the folks who report to the CEO, they don’t wear beards. And I didn’t want to be unsuccessful. But that’s who I am.” I was just so surprised that that resonated for him, in terms of how he wants to show himself to the world.
Warwick F:
There’s a sort of a little secret here that people, I don’t think, fully realize, every human on the planet is insecure.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Some show it by the shyness and reticence, others by their bravado and arrogance. But arrogance is just a sign of insecurity, deep insecurity, frankly. So we’re all like that. It’s funny, I grew up in about as different a background from you as possible to grow up in Australia from a very wealthy, affluent, 150 year old media dynasty, very respected family in the community because we owned the equivalent of Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. It’s one thing to have money, it’s another thing to be respected for generations as positive contributors to society. You’re used to hit all the benchmarks, right? You can have money, but be vilified.
Warwick F:
But yet Australia being a very egalitarian place, which is good in a lot of ways, even though I went to a very good boys, private school, everybody would say, “So, Warwick you think you’re better than us, do you?” Because their dads or mothers, they were bankers and lawyers, which you make a fair amount of money, but that’s not like media mogul level. In my own small little way, it’s like I wanted to be normal. I wanted to fit in. But I felt like I was in a class of one. Because nobody was sort of like our family.
Warwick F:
Very different background, not trying to compare it, not saying, “Oh, it was also terrible.” It wasn’t. It’s nothing compared to what your mom went through. But my point is, as I was starting to talk about my story, it’s like, who would want to hear my story about losing a 150 year old $2 billion business? Who would care?
Warwick F:
The time that changed for me is, we go to a nondenominational church in Maryland and I shared my story with just some regular folks. It’s like, they said, “Thank you, Warwick. Your story helped me.” How in the world can my story help any other human on the planet? Because nobody has gone through what I’ve gone through in that sense. Not that it’s so bad, but it’s in a small way a bit like your story. How in the world can a wild hair example of an African-American woman help some white guy? How in the world? But it could.
Warwick F:
I’ve learned in my own small way, how your truth, your story, if it’s shared with authenticity and vulnerability, can actually help other people. We think, “Oh, nobody can relate to me, because I’m so different.” In a very different way, I’ve sort of not felt what you felt, but you get what I’m trying to say. Is people tend to be insecure and tend to be, “Nobody really would understand me. If I tell them about who I am, nobody will. They’ll laugh or they’ll reject me.” Every human’s like that.
Warwick F:
When you share your truth, it allows other people to do that. It won’t solve everything, but it’ll help more than you know. Anyway, long-winded way of saying I agree with you. But does that kind of make sense at all?
Tracy J. E:
It totally makes sense. I think that that’s a very powerful point in these times in particular. When we think about how divided our country has been and continues to be quite honestly, that power of human connection, is where we can start to build communication. My story and your story may seem like they don’t relate to the people that we tell them to, to our audiences.
Tracy J. E:
But invariably, we have someone who says, “You know what? I get that. Because, here’s my story.” What that created, was communication and dialogue and understanding between two people at a human level. Once we can start to really humanize one another, we can build from there in terms of the issues that we address. We may not always agree on things, but we’ve reached a place of commonality of humankind.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Tracy J. E:
I think that’s what’s so critical in resolving some of these issues today. Because, like I said in my bio, I am an intelligent mother of a black son and I worry daily for his life, simply because of the skin he’s in.
Warwick F:
Sure.
Tracy J. E:
So for me to be able to make connections with others who don’t look like me and have a different point of view, that’s powerful. That’s how some of these issues can be resolved. Maybe one day I won’t worry every night.
Warwick F:
I think what you’re saying is so profound because, when you know somebody and their story and you humanize them, it’s hard to hate somebody that you view as a human being. I’m not an expert in racism, I’m not a psychologist, I’m not a sociologist. But just looking at history, people who are hated, often it’s because of gross ignorance and you don’t know them as people. You think of them as objects. Whether it’s Nazi Germany or wherever, there’s a lot of terrible examples of racism and inhumanity.
Warwick F:
But you start to know somebody as a real person, you might have all sorts of baggage and all sorts of screws loose, but it will tend to maybe melt the iceberg a little bit. If you treat them as a human, if you seek to understand them. I love that phrase of St. Francis of Assisi, “Seek first to understand then be understood.” It sounds really radical. “What do you mean?” Your mother was actually living that in a lot of ways.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Again, I’m not excusing anything, but the more we can try to understand people who are different than us, it’s hard to hate people that you like and care for and understand. It makes it harder, right? Why wouldn’t we want to make hatred harder and coalitions more possible.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. And we moved from labels, putting me in a category of Democrat or Republican, Trump supporter. We get away from the labels and we go down a layer and we start to see each other as like you said, humans, individuals, feelings. There’s a lot of similarities amongst the diversity.
Gary S:
And a key way of doing that is what this conversation has been sort of orbiting around. That is, wild hair, right? Is the metaphor of wild hair. Meaning, the true essence of who you are. You are far, far more, Tracy, than your hair. But your hair is emblematic of who you are. To suppress that, denies the world the opportunity to know you. Denies you the opportunity to be known by the world. That’s why it’s so important, why you’ve discovered such freedom to pursue new things in your career when you’ve made that decision to let that essence of yourself, that emblem of yourself show through.
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. It’s about kind of giving yourself that gift of acknowledging and being everything that you can be. That means you can’t deny part of your essence. We can only rise to the level of our authenticity. We only go as high as we keep it real. We have to be, again, that self honesty comes in, and sometimes that’s depicted externally, like in my hair, but most times it’s that inner work of what I really want and having the courage to pursue it in your career. That’s really important.
Tracy J. E:
What I try to do with everyone that I coach, is tap into the sense of what really defines them, their values, what is important to them. It starts being from a place of values and what you value in your life and the change you want to make in this world. Then we can define our careers in lots of different ways. We can’t let other things dictate who we are and what we value.
Warwick F:
I just want listeners to understand what you just said, because it’s so profound. I love, in your book, you talk about “authentic values alignment” more than just work life, which is related, but slightly different. But just helping listeners, whether it’s African-American women, women in general or people in general, it’s just be true to who you are and what you believe and follow a purpose that’s in line with those values.
Warwick F:
We actually talk about this in a sense in Crucible Leadership, is understanding your values, belief systems, faith, wherever it comes from and having a purpose that aligns with that. Then as you start to make career and job choices, it’s like, “Okay, does this organization, is this going to embrace who I am and my values? Can I be my authentic self? If I’m not, then see you. Moving on to the next place.”
Warwick F:
If you have some drive, there will hopefully be some options. That is so true, especially with young people starting out. You can obviously help folks in their 40s, 50s, beyond, but helping young people learn this at the beginning, rather than later on, that’s so huge. When you talk people, especially let’s say young women of color, do they hear what you’re saying? Or do they say, “That’s good for you, Tracy? But this isn’t the real world.” You say, “Well, I’ve lived in the real world for decades.”
Warwick F:
Do you have like some challenging conversations in which they say, “I’m not buying it. I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. This is Disneyland. What are you talking about?” How do people that you’re trying to persuade of your message, how do they respond? Do they hear you, or do they just think you’re just full of it and just don’t know what you’re talking about?
Tracy J. E:
Sometimes it is challenging for the younger generation in those conversations. I test this out on my children who are 35, 32, 23, 20, the ones that are out there in the workforce. I find that those that are a little bit older millennials, the 30s, tend to pick up on this because now they’ve lived a little bit and they’ve seen this. But the conversation with the 20 year old, 23 year old, they come from an environment and I don’t like to label groups, but I think what we can say about that generation, is they are a generation that had access to technology from birth.
Tracy J. E:
Unlike me, I didn’t. I grew and then technology came in and I learned it. What that has done is it’s created this sense of hyper-connectivity, this sense of immediate gratification, the sense of access. So those things are happening constantly. There isn’t always the time made to reflect on values. Values, honestly get shaped by what they are connecting to and seeing thrown at them in some ways.
Tracy J. E:
I literally had a conversation with my son a couple of days ago, where we were talking about the amount of crime that we’re seeing in our city, the city of Indianapolis. And especially the black men who are being killed or killing one another. The conversation is centered around what kids or young adults their age, want. And it’s money, it’s success.
Tracy J. E:
When you come from an underrepresented and a socioeconomically challenged area, you don’t always see the ways to get that better, safe and honest and value based. What you see is how can I get this in a way that’s may not always be legal, it’s the quickest way to get there. Sometimes I think that the much younger end of the millennial generation, does struggle with defining their values.
Tracy J. E:
Now, I was pleased to say, and I have to give my son a plug, that he talked about what he had learned at home. While he shares their perspective of, “I want it now,” there are just absolutely some things he won’t do, in terms of illegal things that he just won’t do to get it. We as parents, we play a strong role when we show up authentically and drive a values based family system. But also, we have to remember that our children are impacted by so many things outside of our control.
Warwick F:
It’s really a values war. They’re going to learn these lessons at some point, but hopefully it’s not like on their death bed. One of the things we talked about, is legacy. When you’re having your last breath or it’s your kids and grandkids at your funeral, what is it you want them to say about you? At that point, you don’t want to say, “Yeah, I was married three times, my kids don’t know me. Oops.” You don’t want to be having that as your last thought.
Warwick F:
We talk a lot about success versus significance. I mean, there’s a reason we talk about lead a life of significance. Again, this is an area where I know something about, because I grew up in about as wealthy, a background, as you can. I can tell you, there’s a lot of wealthy people that are unhappy, kids on drugs, on their third or fourth marriage or beyond. I mean, okay, you have all this money and you’re miserable. So what? It is possible to be successful, have money and to be a blessing. Let’s say you have focused on others, perhaps, maybe philanthropic. But just there’s a way that money can be a blessing. It doesn’t have to be a curse.
Warwick F:
But the idea that money makes you happy, that’s a lie that some in the world preach. But everybody realizes that at some point, but you don’t want it to be on your death bed when it’s like, “Oops.” I get why a lot of young people are thinking that way, but it’s a false God. It’s an idol, the risk of getting spiritual. You can be successful, you can achieve, you can go for it and be happy. You want to be happy? Think of others on the way up. Think of the bigger picture. Don’t just think of yourself. A self-motivated vision won’t lead to joy. If that makes sense.
Gary S:
That is a perfect time, I think I heard the captain turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. It’s getting close to the point that we’re going to land the plane. But before we do that, I want to do a couple of things. And, Warwick, I’ll give you another chance, of course, to ask Tracy a question. But Tracy, the first thing is, how can listeners find out about your book, Wild Hair? Where can they find out more about you and about your book?
Tracy J. E:
Absolutely. They can go out to my website, it’s tracyjedmonds.com and it’s Tracy with a Y-
Gary S:
And Edmonds with an O.
Tracy J. E:
Edmonds with the O. That’s exactly what I was going to say. On there, you’ll find out everything about me and you can scroll down to the bottom of any page and subscribe to get information about the book release and to stay in touch with me.
Gary S:
Fabulous. That last bit of conversation that you and Warwick had, Warwick was talking about legacy. And listeners, if you’ve been with us from the outset here, you heard early on in the conversation, Tracy said to me, “Well, I’m not a poet.” That comment came from something that happened, unless you’re watching us on YouTube, if you’re listening to us just in a podcast app, you didn’t hear the whole thing.
Gary S:
That is, we ask guests to give us their bio and most guests copy and paste from their corporate page, here’s their bio. Tracy did something different and I think better and beautiful. Tracy wrote what I described, or Warwick described, as a poem. I’d like you Tracy, as we do begin to land the plane, to just read for listeners. Because I think this is a perfect legacy. If one’s going to leave a legacy, what you wrote here is a great legacy of your life from stem to stern. Would you read what you wrote to us as your biography?
Tracy J. E:
I’d be happy to. I am a daughter, sister, mother, a wife, a friend, a survivor of loss, a rebuilder. I am an entrepreneur with depression, a speaker with anxiety, a successful chief diversity officer and a recovering corporate soldier. An author, a listener, a fearful, intelligent, black woman with a son. An open mind and open heart. A leader, a Lakers fan. I am a failure fighter success. Complicated, multi-dimensional, unexpected. A coach, a consultant, a fierce believer in possibility. Always growing real.
Gary S:
Warwick, you’re braver than me to say something after that. I would wrap. But I’ll let you have the last question and then I’ll wrap the show after you and Tracy have a chat.
Warwick F:
I just want to say thank you Tracy, for being here. I just found your message really inspirational. Just that metaphor of the wild hair. It’s funny, in the spiritual circles actually baptism, they talk about an outward manifestation of an inner transformation. You go to a baptism class and a Baptist church. My church is not Baptist, but I guess philosophically, I guess it probably would be. That’s in a sense what you’re talking about. It’s an outward manifestation of the inner transformation. Being authentically yourself.
Warwick F:
I love that just championing women of color in particular women. But I would say your message is focused on that, but I think it is helpful to all human beings on this planet, being yourself, not compromising, being true to your values, living a life of purpose, that’s based on your values. That’s a message everybody needs to hear. I’m an optimist by nature, all things being equal, that will help you be more than less successful, though I’m not naïve. But that’s a message that I’d say all people need to hear. I just found it very inspiring, and thank you so much for being here.
Tracy J. E:
Thank you.
Gary S:
Well, that’s interesting. I say to Warwick, “Do you really want to follow what Tracy just said?” And then Warwick steals what I was going to say? That’s pretty much the summary I was going to give. The idea about crucibles being an opportunity to ask, “What can I learn?” The idea of embracing authenticity and following your values as Tracy calls it, “authentic values alignment.”
Gary S:
Warwick, it’s funny, you didn’t really follow Tracy, but you stole from me, which is great, because you’re the host of the show and that’s the way it should be. With that, listener, we want to thank you for spending this time with us today. We have a little bit of a favor to ask you, Warwick. And I do, if you like what you’ve heard here, please click “subscribe” on the podcast app on which you’re listening right now, trundle over to the spot where you can leave a rating for us as well. What those things do, is allow us to get the show out to more people and more conversations like this one with Tracy Edmonds, that offer hope and healing through times of crucible.
Gary S:
Speaking of crucibles, remember this, as we part for today. Your crucibles are painful, there is no doubt about that. What Tracy described here today, was some painful times. What Warwick has described from the outset of this podcast that we’ve had here, has been some painful times. Your crucibles are real and they are painful. But, they are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of your story.
Gary S:
That new beginning, for you, can be the start of a chapter in your story, that’s the most rewarding chapter yet. The reason why, is because what Warwick said and what Tracy explained, both of them in their own ways, have made this to be true. Why it can be the most fulfilling time of your life, is because in the end, that road you’re on, when you learn the lessons of your crucible and apply them, is a road that leads to a life of significance.
Visionaries who are also mavericks, who prefer to conquer what needs to be conquered as a solo expedition, often find themselves foiled by crucibles that could have been overcome had they taken a team approach. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax unpacks why some leaders reject the aid of a team as they pursue their vision while others embrace tackling a mission together — and why the latter are usually more successful than the former. Yes, pursuing your vision with a team requires more patience on your part and a willingness to share the credit and let others have a substantive say in the goals you’re going after. But the benefits of camaraderie, the right mix of skills needed to get the job done and valuable input that can actually make your vision better while helping make it a reality are more than worth it.
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. You’ve got to realize you’re going to have to share the credit. But after all, is it about the vision or is it about your ego? And you pretty much have to choose. If it’s about your ego, then give up the vision because the chance of it succeeding, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty low. So check your ego at the door. Learn a bit of humility and say, “Look, if this vision is so important, I just need to have a bit of humility and realize I might need to hire some great people. Some of whom might be better, quicker, faster, smarter than I am.” But what’s wrong with that, if it will help you accomplish the vision? The only reason it’s wrong is, if you’ve got a fragile ego, well, if you’ve got a fragile ego, then get a stronger ego, and if you can’t do that, give up and don’t try to accomplish the vision.
Gary S:
Those are some pretty direct words from Warwick on this week’s episode, but they are critical words if you want to make your vision a reality in the wake of your crucible, or to avoid a crucible. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. What Warwick and I talk about today is the essential role, the indispensable role really, a team plays in you accomplishing the mission or goal for which you are charting a course. You’ll learn key tips like the aforementioned need for humility. Plus the value of selecting a team based on character, and not just job talent. Surrounding yourself with individuals who have the skill sets that will best serve your vision and why you need to be patient and not rush the process or skip vital steps along the way. If it’s true, as you’ve likely heard, “That without a vision, the people perish, then without the steps laid out here, your vision will likely perish.”
Gary S:
What we’re going to talk about today, listeners is I don’t know, maybe it’s a subject that you are a little wary of and it is… Here’s the title I’ve come up with as an organizing construct for what we’re doing. Without a team, a vision is just daydreaming. That’s what I came up with on the top of my paper right here. That’s what I wrote down. Warwick, why is that if it is, I hope it is. Why is that a good summary of the importance of teamwork to bringing a vision to reality?
Warwick F:
Typically to get a vision, to get a dream to happen, you can’t do it alone. It’s tempting to want to do it alone, but nobody has all the gifts, all the skills, all the experience to make a dream, to make a vision become reality. And so pretty much in the vast majority of cases, if you don’t have a team, your vision as we say is dead on arrival, it won’t happen. And so that is the cold, hard reality. How much does your vision matter? If it matters to you a lot, rightly or wrongly from your perspective, you are going to need to consider having a team. It’s not really an option in the vast majority of endeavors to not have a team for that vision to happen.
Gary S:
Now you use the phrase cold, hard reality. That’s not usually used for things that are sunshine and puppy dogs, right? That phrase is normally used for things that can be arduous, that can be difficult, that can involve friction and headbutting and those kinds of things. Why did you choose those words? Why are people especially leaders, why are they loathe sometimes to not just embrace a team, but create a team to help them enact their vision?
Warwick F:
It’s an interesting question. Think about the profile of a typical visionary. They’re typically passionate, determined, surrender is not an option. They’ve got perseverance, but very often they want to do it themselves. They’re impatient. When you have a group of people, it can take so long, endless meetings, endless discussion. The team doesn’t get it, after all it’s not their vision, it’s your vision. Visionaries are like, “I just want to do it myself. People are just annoying. They just get in the way. I just want to get this thing done. Let’s just go, let’s make it happen.” People can be a pain in the neck, a drag, it’s just get out of the way, people are the enemy at times.
Warwick F:
I mean, I’m overdramatizing a bit, but the typical founder just the whole team thing, it can certainly make things longer. Why would I want to do that? Now, sometimes they’ll grudgingly do that, but it’s kind of kicking and screaming. It’s not like, “Oh, joy. I have to have a team, right?” It’s like, “Oh, joy. I need to go to the dentist.” Well, if you need a filling, if you don’t go to the dentist, you’re going to be in pain. So ultimately it’s like, I may be afraid of dentists, I may not like them, but I’m going to go because what choice do I have? Pain or solve the pain? But you don’t go, “Oh, joy. I’m going to the dentist. It’s the highlight of my day.” So typically leaders feel about getting a team the way they think of going to the dentist, it’s a necessary evil.
Gary S:
I mean, here’s another thing that undergirds these teams are by definition filled with people. People are by definition folks with opinions and views on how to do things and the larger your team, and by large, I don’t even mean 8,000 people. If you’ve got five or six people on your team, you’re going to have five or six different opinions about pretty much every aspect of that vision. And I think one of the challenges, one of the roadblocks to creating a team is this idea that as we go through things, we’re going to go two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, and two steps back. We’re going to butt heads. We’re not going to see eye to eye.
Gary S:
We’re not going to get along and we’re not going to move the ball down the field. Which is an interesting metaphor, because in order to move a ball down the field in a football game, you got to have a team, right? I mean, one person out there… Tom Brady, as we’re recording this episode, Tom Brady just won his seventh Super Bowl. But Tom Brady hasn’t won a single one of those without a team. We can have a separate podcast if he’s the GOAT or not, even Tom Brady needs a team to make his vision a reality.
Warwick F:
It does, but for all those would be Tom Bradys, it’s like the problem with the team is, I’m throwing to a particular route and the receiver is on the wrong route. So it gets intercepted. I mean, what a pain? I was hoping people would block right, but they didn’t block right, and I got sacked. So it’s like, even people that want to be, would be Tom Brady’s. It’s like, yeah. You know what happens? It sounds good in theory, Gary, but I’ll get sacked when the receiver will go the wrong route and I’ll get intercepted. That’s what team means, if anyone wants to be cynical, you need it, but you don’t want to get sacked or intercepted either.
Gary S:
Right. Before we move on into some of the tips on how to create a team, we should stop and camp out a little bit about, what does success look like with a team? I mean, if you can’t make a vision a reality without a team, what does it look like with a team? I brought up Tom Brady and he’s won seven Super Bowls all with a team. But a couple of quotes that I pulled together that I thought were extremely interesting, and here’s football again, not that I want to camp out here all day, but Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach of my Green Bay Packers said this once, “Individual commitment to a group effort, that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, and a civilization work.” If you prefer to move out of the sports arena and get into the leadership business space, here’s something Andrew Carnegie said, “Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.” Exactly what we’re talking about. “The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objective. It is the fuel that allows common people to obtain uncommon results.”
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, those are great quotes. I mean, a great team will be comprised of a diverse set of backgrounds and the skills who, as committed, if not more committed than you are to the mission, it’s really a case of one-and-one equals three. That’s what a team does. It’s greater than the sum of its parts. So picture you have a team that’s even more committed than you are to the vision. They’re all on the same page that the diverse set of skills and things that just go like it’s autopilot. I mean, there’s a beauty of a team when it works well. I mean, I can think of probably my favorite sport to participate in growing up was rowing or crew as they say here. And I rowed in eights, obviously eight people in a rowing shell.
Warwick F:
And I remember one time when I was rowing for my college at Oxford, Balliol College, and the boat I was in was probably they were little bit more talented, maybe a lot more talented than I was, but when you’re rowing with seven other people and you’re rowing in complete unison, the boat is flying through the water. It’s steady. It’s just a beautiful thing. Obviously, when you’re not rowing together and the boat’s going side to side, and it can be a little painful, but when you’re all rowing in unison, I mean, to me, I often think of rowing as the ultimate team sport, because if one person’s not rowing hard, it makes everybody else’s job so much tougher. So it’s a feeling you never forget when you’re in that zone so to speak, as they say in sports, where everything is in complete harmony, and it’s just graceful, it’s movement and you’re all functioning as one, that’s the feeling of a great team.
Gary S:
Yeah. And we haven’t talked about this beforehand, but it just popped in my head. One of the things that you write about in your upcoming book, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance coming this fall from Morgan James Publishing, one of the things you write about, one of the people you write about there, you talk about historical figures and their successes and the things that they learned through their crucibles. And there’s one that sticks out to me. And we haven’t talked about this in advance, but with all that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, you talk about Louie Howe one of his advisors. And to me, that’s an example of Roosevelt people think he’s this like grand, he did it all by himself. And nobody really does anything by themselves, but Louie Howe was very critical to Roosevelt’s ability to achieve the successes he achieved in his presidency.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. As listeners probably know, in the early ’20s Roosevelt got polio, which is very rare even back then for an adult. And his legs pretty much were paralyzed. He could move very ungainly with these massive heavy braces. And it seemed like his political career was finished. This was an era where if you had polio, it was like a life death sentence. You meant to just sit at home while the rest of your years away, somehow it was a shameful thing, even though clearly it’s not your fault. But with the help of his wife, Eleanor and Louie Howe, they helped him realize, you know what, life’s not over. Louis Howe helped Eleanor go around the state of New York speaking. And she was more of a introverted, shy person, but very determined woman.
Warwick F:
She kept his name in the political press circles and Louie Howe was just master behind the scenes campaign director and really helped Franklin Roosevelt become governor of New York and then ultimately president. But, yeah, he had an amazing team Louie Howe and Franklin’s wife, Eleanor, that really believed in him and his mission, certainly without Eleanor but without both of them, nobody would really have heard of Franklin Roosevelt, other than somebody that was on the ticket of a Democratic candidate that lost in the early ’20s, but he wouldn’t have become president.
Gary S:
And it goes back to what I said is the organizing construct for this conversation, without a team, a vision is just a daydream. Without those folks that you’ve just talked about, his wife and Louie Howe, Franklin Roosevelt was a daydream. Maybe he wanted to be president, maybe he wanted to rise to… But he could not have made it happen. And I think it’s safe to say, right? Anybody, any person that we could think of who’s achieved greatness has a team underneath them.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
There are very few mavericks who don’t have at least some people behind them who are helping them along the way.
Warwick F:
That’s so true.
Gary S:
So you’ve put together in a recent blog, some tips, some guidelines for people, for leaders to navigate how to create a team. It seems to me, one of the ways to avoid some of those conflicts we talked about early on, and you just hinted at it a little bit. One of the ways to avoid those conflicts is to get the right people on the bus, as Jim Collins would say. You want the right people on the bus, in the right seats. And there are ways that you can go about compiling a team that can both help your vision become reality and also help you from going crazy in the process. Right?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, there are some key things you need to look for in a team. I think as you’re doing that, the first thing you need to do is really change your attitude. And we’ve talked about this a little bit in our discussion here, but you need to stop the whining, stop the complaining. Or as we say in Australia, stop the whinging, which is like whining squared. It’s worse than whining, whinging. No whinging. It’s like, “Okay, I know it’s going to take longer. You’re going to have to talk about the vision a gazillion times, and they’re not going to get it initially. So you can have to talk about it more and engage them.” And we’ll talk a bit about how you do that in a moment. But, yeah, it’s going be a pain in the neck and it’s going to be difficult, but ultimately it’s worth it because there’s a difference between succeeding and failing.
Warwick F:
And if you really care about your vision, then you know what? You just got to suck it up and do what it takes to get the right people and get them all engaged. So really, before you start hiring people, change your attitude, okay? Quit whining, quit whinging, quit complaining, and realizing this is going to make your vision succeed. So if there’s one thing that you should never remember as you’re doing this, is your vision important or not? Do you want your dream to succeed or fail? It’s a binary choice. It’s yes or no. If your vision is that important, suck it up, change your attitude and get your head in the game, so to speak and realize you need a team. So that’s the first thing, change your attitude.
Gary S:
Is there a little bit of maybe in some cases, ego that pops into this, the reason for not wanting to have a team, I used the word maverick a little while ago. Is there this maverick go it alone, independent, do it myself, I don’t need anybody. Can ego play in there and is that part of what you have to suppress and change in your attitude?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean very insightful point. Absolutely. You’ve got to realize you’re going to have to share the credit, but after all, is it about the vision or is about your ego? And you pretty much have to choose. If it’s about your ego, then give up the vision because the chance of it succeeding, it’s not impossible, but it’s pretty low. So check your ego at the door. Learn a bit of humility and say, “Look, if this vision is so important, I just need to have a bit of humility and realize I might need to hire some great people. Some of whom might be better, quicker, faster, smarter than I am, but what’s wrong with that if it will help you accomplish the vision. The only reason it’s wrong is if you’ve got a fragile ego, well, if you’ve got a fragile ego, then get a stronger ego, and if you can’t do that, give up and don’t try to accomplish the vision.
Gary S:
Do some ego pushups and that will help build your ego muscle, not in the way that we tend to think of it, which is an overactive ego, but to have a more elastic ego, one that can bring other people into the team, into the vision. And that leads logically, Warwick, to your second point.
Warwick F:
Yeah, absolutely. And so this is where you could read 10 different leadership books and they will say this point, but it’s very rarely done. So it’s not always you have in management something in which all leadership management experts agree, but which typically doesn’t get done, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. There are a lot of things in life in which experts disagree, not this one. And that’s what this is. And that’s basically, you hire for character and attitude and alignment to the mission first, skill second. So basically if you had to boil it down to its most critical character first, skill second. Now, typically what happens is, let’s hire the person with the most experience and Ivy League degrees. And look, there’s nothing wrong with Ivy League. I mean, I did, my undergrad as listeners know at Oxford and got my MBA from Harvard Business School.
Warwick F:
So I’m not against education, but just because you went to the so-called right schools and even if you have experience, which is obviously helpful, it’s character, that’s the most important thing. And so people might say, “Well, what do you mean by character?” And so what I mean by that is, part of it is what Jim Collins talks about in Good To Great level five leaders. Yes, you want people that are driven and determined, but you want people who are humble back again to the ego. You might have to check your ego at the door or your team does too, because you cannot get on with a team if everybody wants to be the prima donna and have the lights shine on them all the time. So you want them to be driven, but they need to be humble.
Warwick F:
They need to be team players. They need to want to learn from others. If they say they’re going to get something done, they will get it done. There are certain key characteristics that you want. And here’s the thing is, some people talk about hire for character or hire for attitude, train for skills. Why do people say that? Because skills, at least if you have some degree of natural ability or some degree of aptitude, if you are good with numbers and are detail orientated, if you train somebody in accounting, they can usually get it. I’m not talking about training somebody that hates math and is not detail orientated. That’s probably not a good use of time. But assuming there’s some degree of natural aptitudes, let’s assume there’s some degree of training, rather than hire the best accountant or the salesperson who has this great degree, who are the people that you feel like have the right aptitude, the right character?
Warwick F:
That’s really the most important thing. And it flies in the face of what people do. Why? Because if you’re an HR manager or a line manager and you say, “Okay, who did you hire? Well, I hired somebody with 20 years experience at GE or X, big company. Their undergrad was at Cornell or Dartmouth or somewhere.” Okay, great. And so some other person might say, “Well, I didn’t hire that person. I hired somebody with five years experience at a smaller company. And they went to a state school in Nebraska.” If that doesn’t work out, what happens? You passed up the Ivy League person with 15 years of experience with GE, for somebody with a smaller company that went to some small college in Nebraska, really?
Warwick F:
That’s the problem. If it doesn’t work out, it’s like, well, look at the pedigree. How can you… So people are risk averse and how in the world do you measure character? I mean, I described it, but it’s not quantifiable. Therefore, it feels risky. And people hate risk. So that’s why people might say, I hear what you’re saying, but… That’s the problem.
Gary S:
I found an article from… speaking of Ivy League schools and speaking of Harvard. The Harvard Business Review wrote an article a few years back on eight ways to build collaborative teams and among the eight factors that they listed that lead to success go right to the point that you’re just talking about. Their fourth point was ensuring the requisite skills for the team to be successful. And here’s what they wrote, the folks who wrote this article. Human resources department that teach employees how to build relationships, how to communicate well and how to resolve conflicts creatively can have a major impact on team collaboration. So there you’ve got HR departments who aren’t looking at the location or the pedigree of the university, or the education as much as what are those “softer skills”, those relational skills, those being able to work together skills, people who can find that, that is a huge determiner in how successful a team will be.
Warwick F:
It is. And it reminds me of Daniel Goleman’s work in emotional intelligence. There’s a lot of notoriety the last 10, 15 years or more. And he talks about these softer skills, like the ability to persuade, but the ability to listen, to empathize, those are critical components when you have people on your team that want to listen and they want to compromise in a good sense. They want to find, okay, where’s the win-win in this with other team members. They can empathize with others. It’s extremely hard to teach those skills. You either wired that way, or it’s linked to your innermost values, people’s innermost values and wiring tend not to change. Try to train people for values. It’s not impossible, but training people for skills is infinitely easier than values and inherent wiring.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think more and more people realize it’s important. What it really comes down to is you got to have some guts, some courage to do what you know is right. And take some risks in hiring people that may have a little less pedigree, a little less experience. They have the raw talent, but more than the talent, they have the character, the attitude. It’s funny, I came across this in the paper today, speaking of Tom Brady. Okay? I’m sure you’re familiar with this. So here’s his scouting report, his NFL draft evaluation about Tom Brady. “Poor build, skinny, lacks great physical stature and arms strength, lacks mobility, and the ability to avoid the rush, lacks a really strong arm. Can’t drive the ball down field, does not throw a really tight spiral, system type play who can get exposed if forced to ad-lib, gets knocked down easily.” That’s the scouting report. I think from memory, I think he went in the fifth round or something.
Gary S:
Yeah, fifth or six round. Yeah.
Warwick F:
So if you look at that, it’s like, “Well, okay, case closed.” But what’s this missing? Some of that’s true. I don’t think he’s the most mobile quarterback in the world, but what’s that missing? It is missing his heart, his character, his work ethic, his ability to learn to grow. I mean, the way he keeps himself fit, physically and nutrition is off the charts. He’s what? 43 or something?
Gary S:
He’s 43. You’re right.
Warwick F:
So, why would you hire Tom Brady? Well, not based on the scouting report, right? You would never draft the guy based on this, and it’s not all wrong, what this is saying. It just misses stuff. It misses his heart and his determination. And that’s why he’s as great as he is. Do you want to be the one that misses a potential Tom Brady on your team, because of some superficial evaluation that misses the heart? No.
Gary S:
Right. And yet it is true. And I think the third point that you bring out in your blog about the importance of teams and how to construct them, it is true that you do need people who have, as you put it, a diverse set of skills, skills are important, you can’t ignore them. So, what’s the key about finding a diverse set of skills in the folks you put on your team?
Warwick F:
Well, first of all, you got to recognize that you need it. And I know it may sound obvious, if you’re in a organization, yes you’re going to need engineers, manufacturing types, research and development, marketing, sales, finance, you’re going to need a broad range of skills. But sometimes what happens is, if you’re a can-do person that wants to get something done yesterday, some of these people are going to be like chains, you’re going to have an accountant saying, “Well, I’m not sure about the cost analysis here. It’s looking a little dubious.” You’ll have marketing and sales saying, “I’m not sure if the market really wants that product.” The engineer is like, “I’m not sure we can design a product that will actually function properly. Certainly not at a cost effective price.”
Warwick F:
So it sounds good. But inevitably, depending on your personality, typically people with diverse skills have diverse personalities. The type of personality required to be in marketing sales and an accounting or engineering is radically different in almost all cases. So you first got to realize some of these people are going to be annoying to you, but they’re doing their job. Let them do their job even if it’s like, “Oh my gosh, here we go.” Wait, because the engineering folks saying, I don’t think we were quite ready yet. Sometimes they will be overly cautious, but sometimes it’s like you know what? Maybe it’s not ready. If you’re building a car, do you want the wheels to fall off. If the engineering saying, “One of those parts seem a little brittle and the tests don’t look good.” Well, maybe you might want to wait.
Warwick F:
I mean, imagine if you flying an airline, you are not going to ignore the safety folks saying, “Yeah, we’re all worried about that engine. It’s causing some problems more often than it needs to.” So I think part of it is recognizing you will need a diverse set of skills. And the other thing comes back to humility. You’re going to find people on your team because they have skills that you don’t, that in their area, you might feel like, boy, I’m a moron. I’m an idiot compared to them in their area. And that’s okay. You cannot be the expert at everything. Park your ego at the door, assemble a team who know more than you do in their area, because collectively the sum of all those wonderful people will be a set of skills and capabilities that will be mind blowing.
Warwick F:
So it sounds obvious, but people don’t tend to like to hire the best and the brightest in their areas. In part because of ego, and in part because their personalities will be different and you will get annoyed. You will get frustrated. Inevitably, you know you’re going to get frustrated, certain people with different skillsets that you know you need them, but it’s going to be frustrating.
Gary S:
And for listeners who are also viewers, who are watching this on YouTube, you may notice on my sport coat I am wearing six lapel pins and to Warwick’s point about a variety of skills and they can be annoying. And sometimes there can be headbutts. These are six lapel pins of The Avengers. You’ve got Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, and Black Panther. You got strength, you got speed. You got stealth, you got smarts. You’ve got all these different things going on. And the unit, The Avengers, is greater than each individual member. But boy, if you’ve seen the movies and read the comic books, they can fight. They end up saving the earth, but they get bruised themselves from themselves sometimes in getting there. And that is true sometimes of many teams in the real world.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, they needle each other. I mean, I don’t know if it was The Avengers, but wasn’t there a superhero movie where they had like a civil war or something between them?
Gary S:
Yep. That was The Avengers. Captain America and Iron Man, they’re at the top of my lapel pin. It’s right here.
Warwick F:
Yeah. On opposite sides of your sport coat, funnily enough.
Gary S:
Yeah, I planned that.
Warwick F:
So you don’t want to be like that movie. You want to realize, “Okay, come on. We don’t need to have a war. We’re on the same team, we have different strengths, but let’s harmonize here.”
Gary S:
In your experience Warwick, do you have an example of what you’ve been talking about here for the last few minutes plays out? Do you have an example, be it personal or historical that you could point to that can help listeners understand in real time, real terms, how this way of compiling the team works?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, obviously there are ones in history. You think of Abraham Lincoln, he had a team of rivals who were… They were so-called a team of rivals because they were his opponents for the Republican presidential nomination. And they each thought that the better man hadn’t won. So initially they didn’t respect him, but because he felt like they were the best people for the job, he assembled a very diverse group of people who were on his cabinet. So committed was he to the team that I remember one of them, Samuel Chase, I believe was treasury secretary. And the guy was really good treasury secretary, but the guy had a massive ego and he just did whatever he could to undermine Lincoln. Eventually he went one step too far.
Warwick F:
He kept submitting his resignation as some political ploy to try to get more power and eventually reluctantly Lincoln accepted it. But then what he ends up doing is nominating him to be chief justice at the Supreme Court. And this is a guy that did his level best to undermine Lincoln, but Lincoln said, “He’s the right person for the job.” And so that’s was remarkable, but it wasn’t easy, but he assembled a diverse group of people, irrespective of the opinion that they had of him because the country and in the throes of Civil War at the time he assembled them, probably about to go to war. He needed the best people, whether they liked him or not. So that’s really taking team and putting your own personal agenda aside, just at the ultimate level.
Gary S:
Yeah. And that is again, one of those situations where if he had not done that, what we think of Abraham Lincoln, the greatness we see in Abraham Lincoln, those are behind the curtain greatness things that we don’t tend to think about. That’s why the book Team of Rivals is so interesting because it opens the gates on those things that we don’t hear about all the time in the history books or in the movies, where they have the… I mean, movies are all about the hero, right? And I mean, going back a few podcasts ago, the idea of heroic leadership tends not to work. As we discovered with our guests, Joe Badaracco, heroic leadership tends not to work. And in fact, this communal team leadership is the way that things get done that last. I think that’s the safe thing to say.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And if you want to read one single book about a historical figure and how they were able to assemble a team, it’s Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s written as a historical book, but it’s a great book. There’s a lot of lessons for leaders. And what’s the pay off? After he died, these people, that were his rivals, not only were they in tears, but they were praising him as the greatest leader they probably had ever known. I mean, that was… How do you turn people that disrespect you, think you’re this country bumpkin from Illinois, which was way out in the middle of nowhere in 1860, to this deep level of respect? I mean, that’s an amazing transformation.
Gary S:
And another book that comes to mind as we’re talking about these things is actually a book that was the focus of just about half of our podcasts ago, podcast 25, 26, which was ironically the first of two episodes we’ve done that we’re two partners and both of them ended up being because we did another one later, that was also about an Arctic explorer that went around Antarctica, go figure. The book I’m thinking of is Nancy Koehn’s book Forged in Crisis. There are some elements in her chapter on Arctic explorer, Ernest Shackleton that talk about some of the very things we’re talking about here, how do you hire people? How do you find people to be on your team that are going to lend the greatest opportunity for success to your efforts? And she unpacked some things about Shackleton that are a little bit different than what we might expect are the “wise decisions” to make in bringing people on board, literally.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it was a incredible discussion. It was podcast 25 and 26. And really her book is interesting. I mean Forged in Crisis, it deals with some great leaders, it deals with Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer that we’ll explain here in a little bit, Abraham Lincoln, the great abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who Lutheran pastor in Nazi Germany that died for his opposition to Hitler. Rachel Carson, that many think is the founder of the modern environmental movement. But Ernest Shackleton was interesting because he was driven in the early 1900s. Think of the space race in the 1960s, US Soviet Union. Well, there was this race to be the first to discover the north pole or south pole between a whole bunch of different countries. And Ernest Shackleton had this vision of being the first to cross Antarctica from one to the other.
Warwick F:
So he leaves in late 1914 and by 1915 he gets stuck in this ice floe basically. He unfortunately was impatient enough that when all the experts said, “Don’t go, the icebergs, the ice floes were as big as we’ve ever seen them.” He decides that he was just going to press ahead anyway. So he gets his team stuck in January, 1915 in an ice floe. And they’re there for about 18 months or so in this ice floe. Finally, he escapes in a small boat and in about August, 1916, he finally rescues his people and he rescues all of them. So, what were his hiring practices, because clearly they’re going to need it. They don’t know it’s going to be this bad, but they’re going to go through a lot. So what kind of people did he hire? And here’s where he didn’t…
Warwick F:
Yeah, he wanted skills obviously, but he really hired for attitude. He was so thorough. One of the things that Nancy Koehn, the author of that book says is that he had 5,000 applicants for 27 spaces. And he was looking for attitude. He would have them do an audition, sing a song, or do a dance, do some play acting. And he was looking for healthy, pragmatic, optimistic people. And he told them, he didn’t sugar coat it. I mean, he said, “It’s not going to be easy.” It’s reported that he placed an ad in the London Times that said this, “Men wanted for hazardous journey, long days, long nights, cold days, danger all around, safe return uncertain. Honor and glory in case of success.”
Gary S:
Yeah. Sign me up.
Warwick F:
So it’s like, “Hey, you got a pretty good chance of dying, but maybe you’ll get some glory who knows?” But he was looking for this pragmatic, optimistic, can-do attitude. Well, if you’re in the middle of… stuck on a boat in Antarctica and it’s absolutely freezing, gale force winds, having people have a pragmatic optimist spirit can do, that’s the difference between life and death. If he just went out and, okay, these are the people who have maybe been on the most polar expeditions and then all about whatever it takes, but they have a crummy attitude, they’re defeatist. I mean, I don’t know if that’s possible to have that, but maybe some better than others. They may well have died. So in this case, hiring for character and attitude was the difference between life and death for him and his team, literally. So I mean, it was really remarkable what he did in 1914 when he was hiring people.
Gary S:
And that’s what we’re talking about for what listeners are going to face in their leadership responsibilities. Probably not literal life and death, but it can be life and death of your company. It can be success of your division. It can be the impact of the nonprofits you lead or the neighborhood association that you run. And these things that Warwick is talking about, these teamwork overlays, how do you pull a team together? These insights will prove invaluable again, not in a literal life and death situation, but it is the difference between in many cases, your vision becoming a reality and your vision being just a daydream, never getting out of your head or getting out of your head and then getting high centered somewhere along that path. I mean, that’s fair to say.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Yeah. I mean, I can think of a more contemporary example of really hiring for the right personality. I’ve been fortunate to be on the elder board of my church and the board of my kids’ school and was involved in governance in both organizations. And in hiring people for the boards of both places, yes, we were looking for a diverse group of people and experiences and talents, but we were also looking for attitudes. And so we had them fill out this application. And certainly one of the questions in both is, do you believe in the mission of the organization, you could be a wonderful human being, but not really be on board with the mission. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are, if you don’t believe in the mission of the organization, then forget it.
Warwick F:
But then we also said, so are you the kind of person that has to be right all the time? Because there’ll be times in which maybe there’s a decision between investing in project A or project B. It’s not a moral issue, typically where there’s disagreement. I mean, it can happen, but hasn’t in the organizations I’ve been involved in, and you might be the only one that believes project A should be invested in and everybody else believes project B. Okay, well, you got to park your ego at the door and say, ” Okay, maybe I lost out on that one, but it’s okay.” Be willing to listen to your fellow board members, speak your truth. Absolutely. We want people that are going to be wallflowers and stand up for what they believe in. But we don’t want people who are ego driven that have to dominate and control.
Warwick F:
And so we specifically look for that. We ask for examples for these things. We even ask people that know them, give us references and we ask them, so tell us about this person. So we spend a lot of time on character and attitude, and what’s the result of being in the vast majority of cases, almost all I’d say, we have had terrific board members on who are collegial, speak their truth not wallflowers, but yet are willing to work together and don’t have to be the prima donna. So even in this state, you don’t have to be Lincoln or Shackleton. It can work today. Those are two non-profits that can work in your non-profit, your team, your board, whatever it is, it is possible to hire for character and attitude.
Gary S:
And the other thing, as you’re hiring for character and attitude, as you’re bringing a team together, the fourth point that you make in your blog is you as the person who is assembling this team, you as the leader, you need to be the chief evangelist for your vision. So as you’re looking to build a team to bring your vision to reality, while that’s going on, while that work is happening, while that team you assembled is moving things down the track, you’ve got to maintain your role as the leader, as the evangelist for that vision. Don’t you?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And so you might be asking in case I got this diverse team, and a lot of good different skills, and a good attitude. So what do I, as the founder do, do I just sit there and see everything happen on autopilot? Well, no. Your chief job is to be the chief evangelist, the chief visionary. It’s your vision after all, as the leader of the organization. If you have no vision, then I would question why do you want to be the leader of the organization? Step down, let somebody else have a go. But assuming you actually have a vision and some passion, which is required to lead anything anywhere, anytime, do not pass go, kind of thing. Then your job is to get everybody on board with that vision. And so it’s not just a matter of, well, I gave one speech once five years ago.
Warwick F:
Isn’t that enough? No, you need to constantly give that speech, but not only do you need to give that speech in that talk, you need to ask people. So how do you see that vision working out in your area? In engineering, in sales and manufacturing, in your department, in your division, in your group? How does that work? Ask them. If they say, “Well, I have no clue.” That’s obviously the wrong answer, but there are many right answers. And so you’ve got to enfold them. And the other thing as I write about in my book is, if somebody has a good idea, it’s okay for that to be a contributor to the vision. As I say, 80% of your vision with 100% buy-in is better than 100% of your vision with 0% buy-in.
Warwick F:
So it’s okay, again, I use this analogy, the Michelangelo statue of David in Florence, which we were fortunate enough to actually see for the first time, a few years ago. You’ve got to be willing to give the hammer and chisel to your team members and let them contribute to the vision. Because if it’s 80% of your vision, it’s still a win. So part of it is constantly communicating your vision. And the second part of it is making sure that your team knows what it means to them and can contribute to it. All that creates buy-in. You have to have your team bought into the vision and unified. If you don’t have that, you’re in trouble. It’s like sand in the gears. The car’s not going too far.
Gary S:
Right. And let’s pause just for a second and put the big tent of Crucible Leadership around this discussion. All the things that we’ve been talking about listener, are ways to avoid a crucible or ways to potentially avoid. You can’t control all outside forces, but if you don’t have a team, the way that Warwick has described it, if you haven’t assembled them, hired for attitude and a little bit of skill, but complimentary skill, any of those things gone wrong if you’re not conveying the vision that your vision to them, and you’re not becoming an evangelist for it, and you’re not reinforcing that, all of those things can lead to going back to Shackleton, getting stuck in the ice. And that can lead to a crucible happening as you’re trying to move down the road of taking your vision from your head to the reality of making it happen.
Gary S:
So from a Crucible Leadership perspective, this discussion is great for leadership in general, but it’s also extremely important for Crucible Leadership because it’s one way that you can’t ever inoculate yourself completely from crucibles, but you can put some things in place to help you avoid them. Or if you hit them like Shackleton did, when he hit the ice, he was able to overcome that crucible because he had applied these lessons of bringing together a good team.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, life is tough. Crucibles are going to happen to you, but you don’t need man-made, woman-made, people-made. You don’t need human-made crucibles. You can make your own crucible. You can build your own iceberg that can sink your Titanic. It’s possible to do that, but why would you do that? And so, if you don’t want to hit the iceberg and sink your ship, well, make sure you hire people of character that don’t have some vendetta or some agendas saying, “I have a big ego, at the first chance I get, I’m going to stab you in the back and see if I can remove you as leader.” If you’re working with some big organization, it’s quite possible, they’ll talk to your superiors, they’ll befriend them, just like you’ve seen in the movies or Shakespeare for that matter.
Warwick F:
And they’ll say the classic lines of “Joe or Mary, they’re great people. I mean, Joe is really is a great person. I feel like that may be past it a bit. Maybe they’re not quite up with the times”, and little bit by little bit, they’ll throw some shade against you. Happens in, I’m sure superhero movies all the time. Those subtle things that the best villains are ones that smile, but say the subtle nasty things behind your back. So you don’t want to hire those people. And you don’t certainly want to turn people into that, which you can by ignoring their comments, not listening to them. So yeah, you can make icebergs if you want to. And here’s the thing from the other side, and in Crucible Leadership, we have this perspective, your vision often comes out of your own crucible.
Warwick F:
Maybe you’ve had a devastating failure or setback could be not your fault. And it’s like, I don’t want anybody else to go through what I’ve gone through. And this vision is, as I’ve said, in a different context, burning a hole in my heart, I want this to happen. If your vision has come out of your crucible, the last thing you want to have is that vision derailed. So if the vision is that important, if it’s has its origin in your crucible, which in my experience often is the case, it’s too important to fail. Therefore, park your ego at the door, hire the right people, be the chief evangelist of your vision. Listen to them. So from a crucible leadership perspective, don’t make icebergs where there are none, don’t make crucibles where they don’t have to be any. And if you’ve gone through a crucible, isn’t it this whole thing you’re doing this vision too important for it to fail? That’s why these things are so important.
Gary S:
Because we’ve been talking about teams. And because I’ve used this as an excuse to talk about The Avengers, and I got to wear my Avengers pins today for the show, rather than say, it’s getting to be time to land the plane, the captain’s turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. I’m going to say, Nick Fury has said it’s time to begin landing the Quinjet. It’s time for The Avengers to be on the ground and go fight whatever nefarious things are happening. So we’re getting to that point where it’s time to do that. But there’s one more point Warwick in your blog that I see as a book end to your first point, right? Your first point was you need to build a team. And sometimes ego gets in the way, sometimes the worry of head butting and tension and problems get in the way. The other thing you have to remember on the back end of it is to be patient, that is also critical. You can stop it before it ever starts, and you can stop it before it finishes, because you’re impatient and you rush it. Right?
Warwick F:
Exactly. I mean, that’s one of the most important things as the founder, as the visionary, you have to be patient. I mean, visions can take time. Maybe you didn’t have the right team members. Maybe it’s not the right time in the marketplace. It takes time to get a team on board, be it unity around whatever aspect of the vision that it is. You’ve just got to be patient. I think in my own case, you talked about Crucible Leadership and the book it’ll be coming out later this year. Well, the vision was birthed in 2008. That’s like more than 12 years ago, at my church where I gave some sermon illustration. My pastor wanted me to, and I talked about my experiences and what I learned in the family newspaper business, and my mistakes and failures and what I felt like since it was a church, maybe God had taught me, or I just learned in general.
Warwick F:
And when people felt like, gosh, they could relate to this in some weird way, which is strange. Because there weren’t too many media moguls in the congregation, but anyway, the vision was birthed is the point. Well, it’s taken more than 12 years to get to the point where I’m going to have a book published. And we don’t have time to get into all the details, but it took forever. Over the course of last few years, I’ve assembled a great team who have branding, marketing, public relations, communications skills, book cover design skills. We’re just going through a period now, we’re trying to just nail down the book cover. That’s not easy. It’s really difficult.
Gary S:
No. As someone involved in those discussions, I can testify to that.
Warwick F:
But we’re getting there and you just got to be patient because, I mean, it won’t be quite at this level. I don’t think because, I’d like it to be. But I think of Thomas Edison and the light bulb, he tried 1,000 different filaments before, I think it was a cotton thread or something with something coated on it. I mean, it’s like sometimes genius happens just because you’re Mozart and you wake up one day and boom out comes a symphony. But even in creative areas, in many, if not most cases, greatness or even things that are good come out of just persistence and hard work. And a lot of discussion and fine tuning.
Warwick F:
So, all I have to say is, and look it’s taken me more than 12 years with this book and it’s been worth it. The team, where I’m now, the endorsements I’m fortunately gratified to be getting, it’s worth it, but be patient. Your vision is too important. If your vision is that important, have the courage to be patient and assemble the right team, with the right attitude, get them on the same page, be the chief evangelist, but be patient. Your vision, your dream is too important. Be patient.
Gary S:
This is a perfect confluence of circumstances for me to say what I’m about to say. So you mentioned endorsements. And there have been some great endorsements for the book that people will be able to see both in the book and as we roll out the book and promote it when it comes out in the fall. We talked earlier about Nancy Koehn’s book Forged in Crisis. And you said that there were other things you could say about the book, but you didn’t want to get into… We don’t have time because Nick Fury has told us to land so we can go save the world. But I will say this as the PR guy on the team, one of the endorsements, listener, we hope you’ll become reader. One of the endorsements is from Nancy Koehn herself, from the Harvard Business School. And she said of Warwick’s book, Crucible Leadership, Embrace your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance.
Gary S:
Nancy Koehn recommends it with these words, “Nuggets of leadership gold.” Now, if I were going to do it, I’d say that’s the end and let’s get out. Let’s end the show and direct people to review the blog to get all of these tips, wind up for them, but I’ll give you as always the last word before I summarize.
Warwick F:
Vision is hard. It’s hard to make it reality. And I’ve known certainly in my own life with my book or even school or church board. I remember one time, I had this vision of governance was important in one of those organizations and the president of the board at the time, was like, “Yeah, not really seeing it at the moment.” And I was convinced this was absolutely critical, so I was like, “Okay.” Well like a year or so later, he’s like, “I think we need to do governance study and bring in take governance to the next level.” Okay. Well, it requires patience. Whether you’re on a nonprofit board or whether it’s a vision you have, it requires patience. And if it’s that important, park your ego at the door, get the right people with the right skills and the right character.
Warwick F:
Who want to play as a team, who want to learn from others. They don’t have to be right all the time. Consciously and subconsciously, I’ve tried to do that with my own team at Crucible Leadership. And we have all those things, people who are driven, who believe in the mission, but who can park the ego at the door and don’t have to be right at any given front. And we have discussions. We come to consensus, we have all those things. Well, that doesn’t happen by accident. I wanted people who were driven, who believed in the mission, but I wanted people that will play nice with each other. If you had a big ego, trust me, you would not be on this team. And frankly consciously looking for it. You get great benefit out of that. Talented people who can park the ego at the door that passionately believe in the mission. Your vision, and your mission deserves that, don’t compromise on that. Find the right people, be patient and more than likely good things will happen.
Gary S:
Well, we began this conversation listener with me saying the organizing construct for what we were going to talk about was this idea that without a team, a vision is just a daydream. I can say being part of both this podcast and part of Warwick’s vision to bring Crucible Leadership to life and his book to life that he has assembled a team. He definitely has checked his ego at the door. I don’t know how many times I have said to him in phone conversations, “Well, as George Bush used to say, you’re the decider you can decide to do what you wish to do.” And Warwick gets insight, gets opinion, seeks the counsel of those he’s brought on board. And that leads to the vision that’s in his head is not a daydream. It’s a reality. And you’re going to see it in October of this year, when the book comes out. First part of the tangible vision of Crucible Leadership, or maybe the next part.
Gary S:
Perhaps the first part was the website. And somewhere after that, is this podcast Beyond the Crucible. And speaking of this podcast Beyond the Crucible, listener, as we park for this week, Warwick and I do have a favor to ask you. Please, if you have enjoyed what you’ve heard, just click like on the podcast app that you’re listening to this on, share it with friends. This looks really good on social media. It’s got a nice logo with Warwick’s face on it. It’s very nice. I actually have a T-shirt made of it that I wear sometimes, never on the show, but I do wear it sometimes just because I’m proud of the show.
Warwick F:
Funnily enough, I don’t wear it.
Gary S:
To be clear. It’s the only T-shirt there is that has been made. I own it. And Warwick is way too humble to wear his own face on a T-shirt. So click like, subscribe, please, and share it with friends. Because the more people who know about this show, we just found out yesterday that the show has begun to chart on Apple iPod charts in the US, and Australia, and Japan. And a lot of places, it’s not charting in the top five, but it has begun to chart. It’s gathering momentum. You can help us continue with that momentum. And until the next time that we’re together, listener, thank you for spending this time with us. If you remember nothing else about this show, remember that your crucible experiences can be difficult.
Gary S:
They are life-changing in many cases, they certainly were for Warwick. They certainly were for me, but they are not the end of your story. They weren’t the end of Warwick’s story. They weren’t the end of my story. They’re not the end of your story. They can be in fact, the beginning of a brand new story that will be the most rewarding part of your life, the most rewarding story of your life. Because when you get to the page that says the end in that story, you will have arrived at a life of significance.
He was born with Poland’s Syndrome, a rare disease that left his right hand malformed and his muscle development non-existent. But Johannes Atlas was also born to parents who, as he puts it, “refused to baby him.” Their support led him to overcoming his physical challenges on a variety of sporting fields and his emotional challenges by believing — as him mom and dad told him often — he was “enough.” Coming under the tutelage of business mentors as a young adult and inspired by his faith, Atlas has launched a growing speaking career and is encouraging others to overcome their own crucibles en route to a life of significance through his Pressing Toward the Mark events.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Johannes A:
My dad is very wise, just a lot of wisdom. I mean, he has a lot of insight that he shares with me, just things that blow my mind at times. And so yeah, and just how they raised me and everything. They really just normalized it, and really gave me that how-can-I attitude because in that I had to figure it out how I can do this. And so, I think that was something that my dad really helped me with. Super grateful for it today because I mean, it’s made all the difference. And not even just for me physically, but in business, in self development, in just a lot of areas. I then asked myself, “Okay, well, how can I do this?” And so, it’s transferred from physically, how can I do this, to how can I in my emotions, in my career, in my relationships. And so, it’s given me a figure-it-out mentality.
Gary S:
A figure-it-out mentality. There may not be a better phrase to describe the mindset we need to overcome the crucibles we encounter on our journeys through life. That’s what today’s guest, Johannes Atlas, has discovered as he’s navigated through life being born with a rare disability known as Poland syndrome, which left him with physical abnormalities affecting his right hand that caused some emotional challenges he spent decades sorting out.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. Johannes, he goes by Joe, explains to Warwick that he’s found his footing thanks to the wisdom of mentors, and the belief that Poland syndrome or not, he is enough. It’s a message he shares these days through his public speaking and his Pressing Toward The Mark events.
Warwick F:
Well Joe, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. It’s funny, you were telling us off-air just about the origin of your full name, Johannes. I want you to just tell our listeners, I think it’s a pretty neat story about your dad and his thinking.
Johannes A:
So yeah, my dad, he made me Johannes. He actually comes from Johannesburg in South Africa. And it translates to King. And so yeah, he really liked the name. He actually wanted to name me Johannes Charleston Atlas, would have been the full thing, but then my mom threw in Patrick. So, it’s Johannes Patrick Charleston Atlas.
Warwick F:
There you go.
Gary S:
Wow. That’s a name of royalty right there, young man.
Johannes A:
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Warwick F:
And I have a feeling, as we’ll get into later, when you think of king it probably has more than one meaning. That’s a spiritual meaning, and an earthly meaning. As a person of faith, that’s pretty cool to have a reminder in your name, every day it’s like okay, I know who my king is, right?
Johannes A:
Right, right.
Warwick F:
So, that is so cool. So, now you grew up in California, did you?
Johannes A:
Yes, California.
Warwick F:
Right. And you’re there at the moment?
Johannes A:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Okay. So yeah, just tell us a bit about growing up, about your family and background, and just tell us a bit about Joe Atlas, and as you grew up.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, I was born with Poland syndrome, so you can see the difference on my hand. For people who might just be listening, to give you an idea my right hand will literally fit in the palm of my left hand. So, one thing that I’m grateful for growing up in regards to my parents, is that they never babied me. They never gave me any special attention, they just treated me like normal. And on top of that I played a number of sports growing up, so I played baseball, basketball, football, tennis, Muay Thai. And in playing all these sports it allowed me to figure it out. And that’s the thing I’m most grateful for was the mentality that it gave me as to figure it out, because there was certain things, and not even just in sports, but there was just everyday life things that I wouldn’t be able to do like everyday individuals would.
Johannes A:
I would have to figure it out in my own kind of way. And so, I didn’t really become conscious about my hand until about high school. And so, of course in high school everybody wants to fit in and be cool, and so because I wanted to fit in and be cool ideally this thing wasn’t cool to me. So yeah, that’s where I would hide my hand in my pocket, I mean, on a regular basis. Unless I was doing something where I needed both of my hands, my hand was always in my pocket just to hide from the circumstances or from situations from being teased and being made fun of, I just hid my hand in my pocket all the time.
Johannes A:
And so, in those moments was when I … Was when the baggage for me, my emotional baggage was really started, unconsciously. I didn’t really know that what was happening, but it wasn’t until some years later, I’ll get into that. But so, after high school was when I would really want to … I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and really just grow as a person, because I felt … I was feeling stuck, a little bit, and I felt that me, hiding my hand in my pocket, it was becoming a problem. And so, I got involved with this finance firm and it was … Though we taught about finance, it was more like a leadership and self-development course. And so, super grateful for that as well. And within that, it was a lot of teaching you to believe in yourself. And so, within that, between that and …
Johannes A:
I grew up in church, and then at a certain point I started speaking at church as well, was where I’d actually gotten the desire to want to become a motivational speaker. And so, I remember the Sunday too, where just during Sunday … Excuse me. During church on Sunday, there we go. So, you know how we have … There’s altar call at end of service.
Warwick F:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Johannes A:
And so, during altar call it was breaking my heart to see Sunday after Sunday people coming up and getting prayed for. But I mean, just some of those are just the most macho-y men coming up and crying, and just to see them dealing with life was just … It hurt my heart. And it was in those moments where I was like, “Lord, we can do something. We need to do something about this, because it’s just not making sense why some of these things are going on.” And so, that was where I really started wanting to become a motivational speaker, and I have … From there, I started doing videos on Facebook, and on Instagram, and some on YouTube as well. And I then, in the beginning of 2020, I’d actually started my first event. It was called Pressing Toward the Mark conference.
Johannes A:
And it was right before COVID hit, perfect timing. And then I ended up going on tour with this guy named… I spoke in Texas, and in L.A. as well. And then it wasn’t until May of last year that I had this experience with God where he opened my eyes to my own baggage. And I was able to then free myself from the things that I was dealing with for over the past number of years.
Warwick F:
Boy, that’s a remarkable story. I just want to delve a bit into your parents, and how they raised you in a way that was probably so helpful, but just … Because I think most listeners, and me included, until we started speaking I’ve never heard of Poland syndrome. So, how does it come about? I mean, I’m assuming it’s in the womb, or it’s some genetic thing. But for listeners who may never heard of Poland syndrome, what is it? I mean …
Johannes A:
Yeah, so it’s characterized by the underdeveloped chest and arm muscles. It’s all characterized on one side of the body. So, it’s all on my right side. So, on top of my hand being smaller than my left, I don’t have any chest muscle on the right side of my body. So, there’s no cure for it, they don’t know what causes it, it’s not genetic, it’s not like my mother was smoking or drinking, or anything. Nothing crazy in the womb, it’s just like a freak thing. It just happens.
Warwick F:
And it’s not like it’s hereditary, it’s not like you can go back a few generations and there been others in your family with it, it’s just … It sounds like it’s fairly rare, and often when things are fairly rare they don’t really understand what it is, because there’s so many things to focus on. So, as you were growing up, I mean obviously you must’ve felt different than the other kids. How did that affect you where you were, I don’t know, three, four, five, six? At a young age. Obviously you were aware of it, but how did that affect you, emotionally, physically, just in general?
Johannes A:
It’s funny because I remember there was just certain moments from elementary school where I think it was on my part, where I was trying to fit in with the wrong crowd. And I wasn’t quite fitting in. And just, I got into a couple fights in elementary school, and just not getting teased and made fun of for my hand, but just for, I guess in a sense, for being different. Wasn’t directly correlated to my hand, but was just being different in a sense. And so, it was in elementary school is when, I just realized this not too long ago actually, was that was when I was really seeking that acceptance. And that was something that I couldn’t seek in other people to give, I had to seek that for myself and give myself that acceptance that I was looking for.
Johannes A:
But yeah, no, it was just in elementary school was kind of where it started a little bit. But then, eventually as I started getting older, I found my crowd to fit in with.
Warwick F:
Obviously not that many of our listeners will have Poland syndrome, but it’s inevitable when you’re in elementary school, kids always want to fit in. And kids can be mean, anybody that’s different, they look different, they’re from a different part of the country, maybe they’ve moved, anybody that’s different gets teased. I don’t know what it is. I think you could go to any culture, at any age, at any time, and it’s just … I don’t know. From a spiritual perspective, I guess you could say the fallen nature of humans. But it’s so sad that anybody that’s different will get teased. I mean, and probably you’ve seen it in others, and whether it’s your skin color’s different, maybe you’re not as athletic, or you’re a bookworm, or you’re … I don’t know what. You’re quiet, or whatever it is, anybody that’s different gets teased.
Warwick F:
I mean, you’ve probably obviously seen that. But I don’t know, it’s pretty sad. You would think that kids would give each other a break, but not always.
Johannes A:
Yeah, it’s a weird part of human nature, and it’s not until sometime after high school, or sometime after grade school that we really start to come together more as a unit. The teasing kind of really stops. It’s more of kid stuff, but … Typically, not all the time. But typically I guess it’s when we get older then the … We become more unified at that point.
Warwick F:
I want to kind of talk a little bit about what you said about your parents not babying you, and that’s probably, in hindsight, was a remarkable gift. Because a lot of parents would’ve, “Oh, we’re so sorry, Joe. This is awful, and we’re going to put you in … We’re just going to baby you, we’re going to protect you, and put our arms around you, and we’re going to make you safe from the world.” Which is a noble goal, but not always … Maybe wouldn’t serve you. So, talk about your parents’ attitude, and in a sense, if it was, the blessing that it was in terms of how they handled all that.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, and just as you were saying, yeah, my parents, they never … Just like you were saying, they never babied me. The thing was, it was never really a huge topic of conversation. But there was one thing that I … When I was little, I would kind of put my hand up like a chicken wing, so I’d put it up like this. And so, my dad would tell me all the time, “Hey, put your hand down.” Because I would, just for no reason, just for no reason, I would have my hand up.
Warwick F:
Right.
Johannes A:
And so, he trained me in that to put my hand down. Within that, them allowing me to play sports, and then my dad also helping me with that a little bit, to help me figure out how am I going to do this. Because when I played baseball, I would catch and throw with my left hand. So, I would catch the ball, I’d have the glove on my left hand, catch the ball, take it off, grab the ball then throw it really. It was a quick little exchange. But it was just little things like that he helped me figure it out.
Warwick F:
For most people, that wouldn’t be easy. I mean, I grew up in Australia, so we played cricket. So, maybe you would’ve been better off there because there’s no gloves. Unless you’re the wicket-keeper. So, you would’ve been, at least in fielding, would’ve been fine. But-
Gary S:
Well, and there was a professional baseball player, Jim Abbott, who had the same … I mean, it wasn’t Poland syndrome, but he did the same thing. Caught with a glove, took it off, and threw it. And he threw a no-hitter with that … It is a triumph of the will to be able to pull that stuff off. And I would imagine, Joe, that doing that the confidence that gave you right from little league on, each step you took, that helped build confidence and helped you overcome some of those hidden doubts about yourself.
Johannes A:
Yeah. No, it definitely did. Because just like you were saying, it gave me that hey, I can do this. And me having to figure it out, and let me know hey, you can do this. You can figure it out if you’re willing to. So yeah, no, it definitely did.
Warwick F:
And it’s really remarkable, because your dad could’ve said, “You know what, Joe? Forget baseball. Any kind of football, pick anything like that you can’t do it. Just accept your limitations.” Some parents, maybe a lot, would’ve said that. But he’s like, “Okay, now don’t think of yourself as limited. You just have to adapt, be smart.” And that’s so good. I mean, I think of an earlier era with polio, like Franklin Roosevelt had polio, there was a time in which in, after the ’50s, if you had polio it was meant to be a shameful thing. You would stay home, don’t go out. Somehow they were almost blamed for it, which is kind of crazy. But I like to think we’re a bit more enlightened now.
Warwick F:
So, the way your parents handled it was so wise. It’s just, again, don’t think of yourself as even challenged, just okay, there are some challenges, but let’s figure out how to adapt. And that’s a big lesson I’m sure you probably share with other people. We all have limitations, some a bit more obvious than others. But just figure out a way around it. I mean, your parents set you up for success, and not all parents do that. But, I don’t know. I mean, as you look back do you feel like boy, the wisdom that they had is truly remarkable in terms of how they really tried to help you?
Johannes A:
Yeah. No, I definitely do. Especially in regards to my dad, because we grew up in church. My dad was a minister, and so I used to … My dad is very wise. Just a lot of wisdom. I mean, he has a lot of insight that he shares with me, just things that blow my mind at times. And so, yeah, and just how they raised me and everything, it was they really just normalized it, and really giving me that how can I attitude. Because in that, I had to figure out how I can do this. And so, I think that was something that my dad really helped me with, and super grateful for it today. Because I mean, it’s made all the difference, and not even just for me physically but in my … In business, in self-development, in just a lot of areas. I then ask myself, “okay, well how can I do this?”
Johannes A:
So, it’s transferred from physically how can I do this, to how can I in my emotions, in my career, in our relationships? And so, it’s given me a figure-it-out mentality.
Warwick F:
That’s awesome. So, you mentioned your dad was somebody that went to church, and faith was important. So, what role did that play in your family, and you, as you were dealing with challenges in growing up? How did that all weave itself in the spiritual side?
Johannes A:
Having that spiritual advisory, growing up, because I was born and raised in church. And so, I mean, just a lot of the … Just hearing stuff Sunday after Sunday. Especially as a kid, I didn’t really know what was really going on, I didn’t really understand what was … Everything that was going on, but as I gotten older … It was after high school when I had got my first job, I had quit going to church. Because I started working Sundays. And so, then those next few years was when I really started my heathen backslide. And so, yeah. But then after a number of years I really felt that pull to come back. I felt that in my heart, and I wanted to go back. My parents, they weren’t, “Hey, you need to go back to church. You need to get back in …” It was nothing like that, but I wanted to.
Johannes A:
And so, then kind of going, getting back into church. But even with that, growing up I’ve been, in a sense, a voice of reason for a lot of my friends growing up, helping them with a number of things. I remember in, again, in elementary school actually, where I have a thought that I wanted to be a counelor. Just because I would help my friends a lot with stuff that they’re going through, and things like that.
Warwick F:
You use apparently a phrase, that you were … Maybe you were seven or eight, you were the playground mediator. So, talk about what did that look like? You’re on the playground, people are having fights, teasing each other, what did that look like for you being the playground mediator?
Johannes A:
It was kind of cool, just helping my friends when … Dealing with some of the problems that they were dealing with, whether it be personal or at home, or between some of their friends I’d kind of help them bring resolution to it all. And whatever that they were dealing with, to, “Hey, it’s not that serious, guys. Let’s just have fun and be friends. We all came here to have a good time.” And just bring the level of aggravation down a lot was … It was fun. It was definitely rewarding, I’ll say that.
Warwick F:
And that’s also remarkable, because again you could’ve been internally focused, and feeling sorry for yourself, which would be company understandable. But it sounds like you weren’t focused or obsessed with yourself, you were focused on others. Even at an early age, which is truly remarkable. I don’t think too many kids your age, seven or eight, would’ve been thinking, “Hey guys, we don’t need to fight here.” And thinking of others. So, as you look back do you feel like that’s, I want to say not normal, to be focused on others as much as you did? But sounds like you did.
Johannes A:
I think I can definitely attribute that to growing up in church, because the greatest commandment’s in the Bible, love God with your everything. Second is to love your neighbor as yourself. And so, and just not being so focused on me all the time, I just always just hey, what can I … How can I help? What can I do? Just having that servant leader’s heart was something that, again, growing up in church I’m super grateful for.
Warwick F:
Well, and that shows a tremendous degree of empathy, and one of the things, I’m sure you probably talk about this, it’s easy to wallow in our own challenges sometimes, as self-inflicted sometimes, at no fault of ours at all. But either way, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, and as understandable as that is it sometimes is more healing, or more rewarding when you’re focusing on trying to help others. And it sounds like you’ve done that your whole life. For listeners who may have other challenges, talk about how focusing on others in some ways is sort of healing, or at least … Why is that the way to go? I know obviously the Bible talks about that, which we agree on, but why is that helpful rather than being obsessed with your own challenges and problems? Why is that really a better way to go, focusing on others and trying to help them?
Johannes A:
I feel like when it comes to helping others, in helping others we really help ourself. So, we are a spirit, and the Bible says that there is one spirit. And so, we all have the spirit of God within us, whether you know or believe that, or not. Everybody has the same spirit. And so, it’s like when I go to counsel somebody I’m secretly kind of counseling myself as well. And just on helping somebody deal with whatever they might be dealing with. But in helping somebody through a challenge, through some kind of struggle, it also simultaneously helps to minimize what I am going through. Not in a sense that saying that what I’m going through is not a big deal, but it takes the pressure off of me and helping to focus on somebody else, but also to realize that hey, what I’m dealing with, it’s not as big as I think it is.
Johannes A:
Or it’s not as great as I feel it is. Or though hey, it may be a big deal but if I’m helping somebody else to go through what they’re going through, I know that I can make it through what I’m going through. If I’m able to help somebody else while I’m still struggling. Or whatever the case is. But in just helping others, it does such a tremendous work in us, while we don’t even realize it may be doing a work in us but it’s subconsciously and secretly doing a great work in you when you take the time to help somebody else though we may be struggling.
Warwick F:
I think that’s so true. It’s also empowering because when you’re not focused on your limitations, and you’re focused on helping others, it’s probably empowering. It’s like, well, look what I can do. Yes, I can do baseball and other things, but I’m impacting people’s lives. I mean, look at the impact I’m having. It probably makes you feel maybe a little less challenged, and a little bit more empowered, and capable of look … You can say obviously God, through you, which I think we can agree with, but look what I can do. Look at the change I can make in my world. I mean, that’s an empowering, uplifting, and energizing concept. I mean-
Gary S:
And I’ll jump in here, Warwick, because what you just said reminds me of something you’ve said about your own crucible. When you said, “Hey, I can do something.” I remember you talking about that job that you got at the aviation services company, and it wasn’t … You weren’t leading a multi-billion dollar company, but you came to a point where you said I can do this. After feeling like after the failure of the takeover, that there wasn’t much you could do, you found that success. And it’s remarkable, listener, catch this, Warwick’s crucible and Joe’s crucible are extraordinarily different. But the emotions that they’ve expressed about hey, I can do something, that was powerful. Wasn’t that powerful for you, Warwick?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, it’s obviously always a challenge comparing crucibles, because I feel like what I went through is nothing compared to Joe, and his situation in terms of the challenge. But yeah, I mean, more generally, yeah. I mean, there was a time in which lost a 150-year-old family business founded by a strong person of faith in my family for generations. And it fell under my watch, yeah, I was feeling pretty bad about myself, and everything I touched I just destroy. And maybe I should just go away and hide, and maybe I won’t hurt people. I mean, I don’t know if it was quite that graphic. Maybe a little bit, but little bit by little bit, as you do things, you’re not screwing up, you actually can help people or do something positive, it’s like, well … I call it a drop of grace. It’s a little drop of grace.
Warwick F:
Like a little drop of water in the dessert. It’s like wow, I can do that. And little bit by little bit, you connect enough drops of grace and you got a pool. And, I don’t know about an ocean, but maybe like a big pond. Maybe even a little lake. But it’s … Yeah. I mean, I found it very helpful. It’s not every once in a while I’ll read something, or somebody writes some article and it’s like, oh yeah, that’s right. That was me. Yeah. But it is true. I mean, in my own very different way, as you’re focused on others it is so empowering. So, talk about high school, teased a bit, but it sounds like you got through that. I mean, how’d you get through the whole high school thing? Was that the pinnacle of teasing, if you will? Or gee, I’m different, kind of thing?
Johannes A:
Yeah, that really was it. And it was then that, how I kind of dealt with it, was I would just … I mean, consistently, my hand was always, always … My hand was always in my pocket. Unless I was doing something where I needed both my hands, it was just, my hand was always in my pocket. And honestly, that also carried over until when I got out of … Even though I got out of high school, it wasn’t until that I got involved with the Riverside Chamber of Commerce where that was a position where I was really nervous to get into, because being involved with business, business 101, you look somebody in the eye and you give them a firm handshake. And that was the thing that I was really nervous about was because I didn’t want to be reminded of the reactions and the faces that I would get when I would go to shake somebody’s hand.
Johannes A:
Whether it be pull back, or they would shake my hand and freak out, or just various things. And so…
Warwick F:
And that’s a challenge-
Johannes A:
For that.
Warwick F:
… because in our culture, we tend to shake hands with our right hand. Now, obviously some people are left-handed, but the majority, I don’t know what the percent is, the majority are right-handed. So, culturally you lead with your right hand. I never really thought about it until now, but even if you’re shaking a left-handed person’s hand, my guess is they’ll still stick out their right hand because why just make life difficult? They just say, “Oh well, here we go again.” But that’s got to be … Yeah. Because then people feel awkward, and they’re like …
Johannes A:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
Which, even if you weren’t feeling awkward, you are going to feel awkward once they feel awkward. So, it’s like-
Johannes A:
It’s funny you say that, too, because I’ve tried to shake with my left hand a few times, and exactly that. It was a awkward moment at that point. So, yeah.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Well, at least during COVID, and one of the small blessings there, the whole elbow bump. It’s like, okay. I can do that, I can do an elbow bump. So, nobody’s shaking hands these days. But speaking of that metaphor of drops of grace, it sounds like that Riverside Chamber of Commerce, that was somewhat of a significant step for you in your outlook, and your feeling that you can contribute. So, talk about how that really helped change your thinking, or grow your thinking a bit.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, in doing that, because it’s, like I say, Riverside Chamber of Commerce, where I’m in a room with a lot of … A bunch of business owners, and we’re all just talking, and connecting, and networking. And so, it’s obviously a lot of shaking hands. And so, in just doing that I was … Like I said, I was literally nervous to do it because I did not want to be reminded. But at that point, I was really wanting to get out of my comfort zone. And so, I got into it anyways, and so I started shaking people’s hands. And some people noticed, and other people didn’t. And it wasn’t really a big deal. And it was kind of within that, and just the habitual shaking of hands that I started to … I learned to begin to get over it a little bit. Even after being involved with the Chamber of Commerce, there was still a little bit part of me that wasn’t until about eight nine months ago, that I really got over it.
Johannes A:
But there was still a little bit a part of me that still stuck, that still held on to that ill-feeling I had toward it.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve felt this, but there’s this concept where if you seem to be over it and not awkward or embarrassed by it, somehow it helps other people not be embarrassed by it, or feel awkward. Have you felt that with other people? If you’re like, “Hey, this is cool. It’s okay,” that it’s easier for other people to relax and not worry about it? Have you found that?
Johannes A:
Yeah. Sometimes I’ll make little jokes about it, and it does kind of help ease some people’s tension about it a little bit. Or they’ll go to shake my hand, and they’re like, “Oh.” They’ll make a comment, and I’ll make a comment and say something funny, just to … Yeah, I have noticed that, and it’s … Yeah. You’re right. And it’s only when I made it a big deal that it’s been a big deal to people. When I don’t make it a big deal, then it’s not a big deal to people. It’s interesting how that works out, but yeah.
Warwick F:
It’s an important lesson. So, what was the role of being an ambassador at the Riverside Chamber of Commerce? What did that involve?
Johannes A:
So, in being an ambassador we were pretty much just helping new businesses coming in to the community, and pretty much just situated, come in and network, how can we help you, in what ways can we assist them at that point. Invite them out to different events that we had, pretty much getting … Because we would have events from time to time, and it was pretty much getting as much people as possible to come out, and network. And talk about their business. Because Riverside, it’s a big business city as far as … It’s small businesses. And so, it was a lot of just pretty much getting the community to build itself.
Warwick F:
And I imagine you had all sorts of different businesses, maybe people from different cultures, different backgrounds. So, talk about how that felt like helping a lot of very different people? Because I’m guessing it was a lot of different people, a lot of different backgrounds. So, how did that feel helping those folks?
Johannes A:
Yeah. When I was involved, I was a little bit more on the backend of it. I didn’t really get to the front to see all the different businesses and whatnot. But no, it was rewarding in a sense to see the different businesses, and people come out and network, and come back and talk about it a little bit later where some people would come back to our meeting that we had every week, and they would say how much some of the events that they’ve came to made a difference. And some of the networks and connections that they made at that point.
Warwick F:
Okay. So, talk a bit about what you do now with Pressing Towards the Mark, and … Yeah. Just the things that you do now.
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, with Pressing Toward the Mark conference, that was actually a God-given idea. I remember I was driving home and then just God dropped the idea in my mind, was like, “Hey, have an event at the … Have an event.” And he was like, “Call it Pressing Toward the Mark.” And I’m like, “Lord, that’s dope. I love it.” So, I really had no idea how it was going to work or anything, but God told me to do it so I’m like, “All right, I’m going to do it.” And so, I just started getting everything going. I found the venue and I started marketing, and finding people to come to the event. So, that was my first event. And so, with Pressing Toward the Mark, it was really just about pressing toward your goal. Whatever goal you have in mind, whatever it is that you want out of life it’s pressing toward that and making sure that you achieve what you want, because we only have one lifetime.
Johannes A:
And so, might as well get what you want out of this life.
Warwick F:
And so, what are some of the keys from your perspective, about pressing towards the mark? How do people do that? What’s some of your key philosophies there?
Johannes A:
In Pressing Toward the Mark, one of them was to … You have to really believe in yourself. And between believing in yourself, having mentorship, and growing was where my key points in that. So, with believing in yourself, the Bible says that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And so, if you don’t have the belief in yourself, if you think lowly of yourself, that’s something that we have to become aware of and heal from that, in that sense, to be able to believe in ourselves so that we can achieve what it is that we’re looking to achieve at that point. And then, having mentorship. I had my mentor there as well, and so I pointed that out to the audience, to have people to come in and help to give you positive criticism, or help direct you. What could you have done better? What could you have done different? And things of that sort, to better guide you down the route that you’re going.
Johannes A:
And then growing. Growing as a person is the other huge part of that, is because we can’t excel past who we are. And so, we have to grow to the point of what it is that we’re looking to, whatever it is that we’re looking to grow towards, what it is that the goal that we’re looking to achieve. We can’t grow past that, or we can’t move past that unless we grow to who that person is, and in the thinking of the mind of that person who it is that you’re wanting to be, you have to become that.
Warwick F:
You said a couple very important things, just the importance of mentors. Sometimes we have this attitude, I don’t need help, I can do it all myself, but it’s amazing … You’ve probably found, when you’ve asked, there are probably people that actually are happy to help you, that want to help sometimes, but they go, “Nobody cares, nobody wants to help.” But if you found in your own experience where maybe you’ve asked people to come alongside, that you have found people that actually want to help you get to where you want to go? Has that been your experience?
Johannes A:
Oh, definitely. Definitely. Once you just start talking about what it is that you’re wanting to do, and your mission, your goal, people, yeah. A lot of people are very willing to help. But I think simultaneously, I’ll say with me in the beginning, when I first got started into it and I would have conversations with people, there was still that part of me that didn’t necessarily believe in myself. So, my baggage for me was that I’m not enough. What I ended up making my hand mean about me, was that I’m not enough. And so, when opportunities, when that’s one way how it affected me, when certain opportunities would come around, because I had that belief about myself was that I’m not enough, I messed up certain opportunities. But yeah, people are definitely willing to help. Willing to-
Warwick F:
Yeah. So, how did you overcome that concept of I’m not enough? Because some of it’s internal, but you have a daily physical reminder, and if you choose to go that way you can say … You can look down, okay, I’m not enough. I mean, how did you overcome that concept? Because if you hadn’t overcome that concept life would’ve been very different for you. How’d you get past that?
Johannes A:
So, it was a moment. It was literally in a moment that that was happened. So, some time, it was in last May. I was praying, because at a certain point in my life I was just … At this point in my life, I was just really just feeling stuck in a sense. I was wanting to grow, but I wasn’t sure what was going on. And so, I prayed, I’m like, “Lord, open my eyes up to me beyond the limitations of my understanding.” And so, because at that point I was ready for the answer. It was within about a week and a half to two weeks, I got an answer to that prayer. And so, I remember I was standing right here in my room, and I’m … God had opened my eyes up to a moment back into high school when I … There was moments when I would get teased, and I got made fun of, that he opened my eyes up to that moment.
Johannes A:
And it was in those moments that I took on that identity of I’m not enough. So, those were the moments of my innocence, my trauma that I had then made it mean about me that I’m not enough. But when you look at the moment, none of that means that I’m not enough. None of that means that. When I really look at the moment from a camera’s point of view, nothing in that situation means I’m not enough, but that’s just the identity I then attached onto it. So, once God had opened my eyes up to that, I then, at that point, just affirmed the opposite. And I told myself, “I am enough. Who I am as a person, I am enough.” And really just in saying that, I had to really feel that, really emotionalize that. And from that point moving forward, there … I had to keep in mind too, because there were certain moments that, moving forward, that would trigger that feeling of I’m not enough.
Johannes A:
But then when they would come about, I would catch it. And I would affirm that I am enough. And it’s just a consistent thing of hey, no, Johannes, you are enough.
Warwick F:
Joe, what you’re saying is so profound, because every human being are going to have days when they think, “You know what? I’m not enough. I’m worthless, I’m …” You may not say it out loud, but inside there’s hardly a human that hasn’t had that thought once in a while. Maybe often. And so, being able to affirm no, I am enough, you have a spiritual foundation obviously. I think of Psalm 139 that says, “I am beautifully and wonderfully made.” And it’s hard to say, I mean, really? But from God’s perspective, everything happens for a reason, and he all makes us different. We look different, we have different background skills, but in his eyes we are all perfectly made. It sounds a strange thing to say, but biblically that’s what it says, right?
Johannes A:
Right.
Warwick F:
And so, if you think you’re enough, and God says you’re enough, what more do you need. You and God together, it’s not a bad team. So-
Johannes A:
A good duo, right there.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So, that’s important. And whatever people’s spiritual beliefs, I think just that concept that you are enough, you just have to own that concept. Whatever your anchor is, it might be a different faith, or a different philosophy, spirituality, it’s got to … Unless you start with believing that you are enough, you can’t really do anything. That’s the rock in which you’ve got to found your ability to contribute to the world, and move forward. So, that sounds like that was huge. You’ve had mentors, what are some other aspects of really helping people press towards the mark, and achieve their goals. I mean, how do people grow beyond that?
Johannes A:
I would say it does vary person by person. I mean, a lot of it starts with awareness, and you have to be self-aware in seeing … Being aware of who you are as a person, being aware of your strengths, and your weaknesses, the things that you struggle in. And in being aware of that, just notice. It firstly starts with just noticing where the struggle is. And when you notice it, hey, it’s not right, it’s not wrong, it’s just what is. And so, then at that point you then have to have the desire to … Or, yeah. You have to have the desire to want to grow at that point. It’s easy for us, as human beings, just to stay where we are, to stay in our comfort zone. But it’s like you have to have the desire to really want to grow and get out of our comfort zone. And so, at that point, once you become …
Johannes A:
You start becoming aware of it, for me hey, I noticed that I was … I struggled getting out of bed in the morning. I struggle with procrastinating a lot, I struggle with my discipline. Notice those areas where the areas of struggle, and then become aware of it. And in becoming aware of it, then you start working on doing something about it. Sometimes just take little baby steps, sometimes just hey, if I struggle getting out of bed in the morning, then let me put my alarm clock across the room. Find one little step, just take little baby steps instead of trying to conquer the whole mountain at the first step.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things we talk about in Crucible Leadership, is small wins. I mean, I’m not somebody by nature that moves a million miles an hour. I’m a sort of thoughtful person, which can be good. But so, sometimes the mountain can seem overwhelming, but it’s like if you look back, okay, what did I accomplish today? Okay, I did this, this, and that. Okay, if you connect enough small wins it ends up being a big win. But rather than saying, “Oh, that’s impossible, I’ll never, like in your case, be a motivational speaker, I’ll never do this and that.” Okay, what’s a small win? Maybe I can talk to somebody, maybe I can prepare, maybe I can practice with friends and neighbors. I mean, there’s probably a series of small steps you’ve taken to get to your goal.
Warwick F:
Rather than saying, “Okay, gee, I don’t know if I’ll be able to speak at, I don’t know, Staples Center, or something in L.A., or some massive auditorium. And gee, that feels a little far away.” Okay, well maybe one day. But let’s start a little smaller. Maybe there’s some place locally. You know what I mean? Sometimes you can set the bar so high that unless you do that today, then I’ll fail. Well then, okay, just small step at a time, right? Does that make sense?
Johannes A:
Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. And that’s something that I really been attaching onto more and more. And I have it written at the top of my white board here, just 1% every day. Just a 1% gain every day, and at the end of the year you’ve grown 365%.
Gary S:
That is a fantastic word, and I will take my one small step as the cohost of the show, to say that I think that I also heard the captain turn on the fasten seatbelt sign, and it’s getting to the point that we’re going to be moving toward landing the plane. Joe, before we do that, and Warwick asks you another question or two, are there places in social media that folks can find you? One of the things I thought fascinating about your story, and it went by really quickly, but you mentioned that you got your start in reaching out and helping people manage those things that torment them, those things that challenge them by using YouTube videos. And that is a fascinating way to leverage that technology to live a life of significance. But how can people, if they want to know more about Joe Atlas, and your speaking, and your conferences, how can they find you?
Johannes A:
Yeah. So, right now I’m working on a website, that’ll be up pretty soon here. It’s JoeAtlasSpeaks.com. It’s not up yet, but when it does come up … Facebook, you can look up my business page. It’s Speaking To The You In You. That’s the name of my company, and then on Instagram it’s J-O underscore speaks.
Warwick F:
So, I know one of the things you talk about is … And that’s been your whole life, is not letting crucibles, not letting challenges define you. For those people that may be listening right now, and they’re going through a crucible, it could be physical, personal, a marriage breakup, a death of a loved one, getting fired, I mean, how do you avoid letting your crucibles, letting your challenges define you? What’s the way out?
Johannes A:
I would say that whatever the situation was, whatever your crucible was, however it made you feel, you are completely valid for how you feel. That’s first and foremost, I want people to know that. You’re completely valid for how you feel. But now, looking at it, knowing what you know now, do you want to continue to feel that way? And that’s a big thing that people sometimes, we as people, have to take the time to answer. Do we want to continue to feel that way? And then, if not then what is it that I want to do moving forward, but wherever that area that brings us the most hurt, or trauma, wherever the area of our struggle is, we have to work to bring resolution to that area so that we can move forward in what we’re dealing with.
Gary S:
I have been in the communication business long enough, gentlemen, to know when the last word on a subject is spoken. And Mr. Joe Atlas, you spoke the perfect last word in our conversation for today. Well, so I’m going to do what … I mean, there’s a lot. I’ve pulled three takeaways, I think listeners can take from our conversation. There’s a lot more than that, but the three that sort of leapt off to me, and Joe, I got to tell you I do this in every episode, and it took exactly 45 seconds of you speaking when I wrote down number one. So, you’re the fastest person to the finish line on a takeaway that I’ve done yet.
Johannes A:
Awesome.
Gary S:
But takeaway one from this conversation, listener, I think is this. Take the time in the midst of your crucibles to, as Joe did, figure it out. There’s no timer on moving beyond your crucible in most cases. It’s not like an action movie where the hero has to diffuse a bomb before the numbers on the dial get to double zeroes. You can press into the pain, face the challenges, look at the lessons you’re being taught, and then apply them as you press ahead at your pace. Second takeaway, believe you can bounce back. Truly believe that. We hear the word mindset a lot these days, it’s a popular term. And as Joe put it, he built a figure-it-out mentality in navigating life with his physical challenge. He was encouraged by his parents that there was no limitation he could not conquer. You find that encouragement in your own crucible.
Gary S:
It might be your parents, your spouse, your friends, whoever it is find a person or people who give you support that you need to conquer your crucible. And then the third point, give to others. Become a mentor. Help them with the challenges they face, talk to them about their emotions. Help them articulate and pursue their goals. Again, as Joe put it, funny, as all three of these points I say as Joe put it, as Joe put it help them press toward the mark. Help them understand that they are enough. Listeners, thank you for spending this time with us on Beyond the Crucible. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you. If you enjoyed this conversation, if you got some insight and some hope and encouragement from it, we ask that you would click subscribe on the app in which you’re listening to the show. We also ask that you drop by and leave us a rating.
Gary S:
The more ratings and subscriptions we get, the more people we can bring these insights, like Joe Atlas has shared with us today, to more folks. And until that next time that we are together, please remember this. Your crucible experiences are painful. Joe described some very painful, traumatic situations. He did it with some lilt in his voice, but the pain was real of what he experienced. But the beauty of that, it was not the end of his story. It was just the start of his story. And it can be the start of your story, your crucible can be, if you learn the lessons of them. If you apply some of the lessons we talked about here. And the reason that it can be the start of your story is that it brings you to a place, you learn those lessons, you leverage those lessons to a place that allows you to pursue a new story that can be the most rewarding one of your life. And it is rewarding because as it has done for Joe, as it has done for Warwick, it leads at the end of the day to a life of significance.
Bringing a vision to reality is not easy. You might have a vision for a new business you want to start. You might want to take your department at your company to the next level. Or you might have a nonprofit you want to start that you just know will help people that so need to be helped. But once you have such a vision, what do you do with it? Getting a team on board with your vision is not easy. How can anyone fully grasp the vision you have? How can anyone be as passionate about it as you are? And therefore, how can anyone do as good a job as you would in making it a reality?
But the paradox is that without a team, typically our vision won’t happen. It will be dead on arrival – if it actually arrives. If we want our vision to become reality, in most cases we have to have a team by our side to make that vision a reality. So how do assemble a good team? If we are honest with ourselves we often have a lot of internal resistance to bringing on a team. We will have to overcome the following preconceptions we may well have in building that team:
A team won’t get the vision
Everything is going to take so long; implementation by committee is a nightmare
Inevitably there will be division and conflict which, of course, will make things take even longer
How do we move beyond these mental and practical blockages? Here are some tips to assembling a good team and alleviating at least some of the above challenges.
1) Change your attitude.
Your vision almost certainly will not become reality without help. That means you need a team. And yes, it might seem like things will take longer as you discuss steps and initiatives with your team. But remember, you want your vision to happen, so time spent hiring the right team and making sure that your team is on the same page is time well spent. Your desire for your vision to come to fruition should fuel your patience.
2) Hire for character, attitude and alignment to the vision.
In typical hiring practices, we look for those most skilled and qualified for the job. Do they have great experience at great organizations? Do they have good grades from great schools? While this is not wrong, qualifications and experience, while important, are not the most important hiring criteria. Character, attitude and alignment to the vision are. You can train for skills — at least to a large degree — but it is much harder to train for character, attitude and alignment to the vision. You want people who are driven, yet humble (Level 5 leaders, as Jim Collins calls them in Good to Great). They put the team first, before their own success. They don’t always have to be right. They truly want to listen to others. They are curious and love to learn. They are reliable. They get done what they say they will get done. They are also 100 percent committed to the vision. When you find people like this, do not let them go!
3) You want a team with a diverse set of skills.
In particular, you want a team with a different and a complementary set of skills to yours. If you are a founder or a visionary, you will often be driven and passionate about your vision. You may well be entrepreneurial and impatient to get moving immediately, and may not want to take too long thinking things through. “What we need is action and action now!” is one of your favorite phrases. Fair enough. But you might want to surround yourself with some thoughtful and reliable implementers who will think things through step by step. Depending on your organization, you may well need engineers, manufacturing and operations people, research and development, marketing and sales, financial people. A diverse range of skills. In a smaller start-up business or non-profit, you might just have two or three people on your team. Figure out what key skills are needed to compliment your own, even if the personality of those types of people really annoy you. You might find engineers frustrating because it seems like all they say is that your dream is not practical. The financial folks might say that what you are trying to sell is too costly. The sales and marketing people might say that there is no market for your product. But the collective wisdom of a diverse team is powerful.
4) You need to be the chief evangelist for your vision.
Your primary job as the founder and visionary, is to get your team on board. You do that in two ways. First you talk about your vision often, at all times and in many ways. Second, you ask your team what the vision means to them and to their department. What does the vision look like in engineering, manufacturing, finance, and marketing and sales? Then ask them, how the vision could be improved. Yes this is risky, but if the vision is improved, why turn away a good idea?
5) You need to be patient.
By this stage, you have hopefully hired the right team; character, attitude, and alignment to the vision first, skills second. You have a team with a diverse set of skills that are complementary to your own skills. You have also continually communicated your vision to your team and asked them for input into the vision. Once you have done all this, you need to be patient. You need to honor the process. You need to wait. Yes, “wait,” that dreaded word. Trust your team! Yes, that means honoring the process, allowing your team to have input each step of the way, listening to push back, working it through, getting resolution. It all takes time. A lot of time sometimes. But it is worth it.
Being patient, hiring the right team with character, attitude and who are aligned to the vision, with a diverse set of skills, takes time. It also takes time continually reminding your team of the vision and continually listening for input. Why bother with all of this? Because your vision is important. The world needs your vision. So you need to be patient, hire the right people, honor the process, including listening to your team’s input. If your vision is too important to fail, it is too important for you to be impatient.
Reflection
Think about your attitude. If you are a go-it-alone impatient visionary, what is the first step you need to take in changing your attitude?
What are the critical character and attitude qualities you need for your business or non-profit to succeed; and how will you ensure that your hiring practices are changed to include these qualities as well as ensuring that new hires are aligned to the vision?
What processes and mechanisms will you put in place to ensure that your great and committed team is heard and has buy in, so that your vision truly does become reality?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.com.
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👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
What do you do as a thought leader when crucible experiences force you to face that you’re a “practice struggler”? That’s the situation Kaley Klemp faced when she and her husband, Nate, hit a patch in their marriage so rocky they wondered if it might be the end. But they fought their way back by changing their mindsets from seeking fairness from each other to showing radical generosity to each other. In the process, they applied some of the very team-building skills each had learned in their careers to bolstering their relationship — a journey they capture in their new book, THE 80-80 MARRIAGE: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship. Kaley explains in this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax that strong marriages, like strong leaders, need ample doses of vulnerability and authenticity.
To learn more about Kaley Klemp and The 80-80 Marriage, visit www.kaleyklemp.com
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Kaley K:
My husband and I tangled our handlebars on a bike ride and, as we fell, he fell harder and also hit his head. And so there was this dual experience of traumatic brain injuries and not having a community. I was not near family where … And I didn’t have many people. I was brand new. There wasn’t even a friend network to go to. And so, in that space, my husband and I ended up, we just hooked each other’s negative thinking patterns and instead of moving closer together in that crucible, there was a moment where we really started to move apart. And there was a conversation where both of us said to each other, “You aren’t the person that I married. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but this isn’t going to work.” So there was very much a moment where we weren’t sure we were going to make it as a couple.
Gary S:
For a married couple, crucibles don’t get much more serious than that. In the midst of an already difficult time, confronting the thought that the love you vowed would last forever might not even last a few more months; yet, that is exactly where today’s guest, Kaley Klemp, found herself a few years ago.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. On today’s episode, Warwick talks to Kaley about how her relationship with her husband, Nate, got to such a perilous crossroads and how the two of them were able to pull it back from the precipice. The key, you’ll hear, was in changing their paradigm from marriage being about “fairness” to making it about radical generosity. It’s impossible, Kaley argues, for any relationship, particularly a lifelong romantic one, to be 50/50. That’s why the Klemps wrote, The 80/80 Marriage, which makes the compelling case that both spouses have to be committed to giving more than they expect to receive to make wedded bliss a reality. And here’s the bonus for professionals like the Klemps and many of you, our listeners: The principal she discusses are wise practices for the boardroom as well as the living room.
Warwick F:
I’d love to hear a little about Kaley and maybe where you grew up and your family, just a bit about kind of the background of who is Kaley Warner Klemp and what makes you, so to speak.
Kaley K:
I love that question. Well, thank you, Gary. Thank you, Warwick. I’m so delighted to be here. So I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which happens to be where I live now. And little girl, one of the things that I think is kind of neat about my past is that my parents decided when I was in kindergarten that I would be in the bilingual class in my elementary school. And so I’m not sure if you know much about Boulder, Colorado. It is not well-known for its diversity, and yet, I got to be in classrooms in kindergarten through sixth grade where for that entire period of time, I think I was the only girl in my class who spoke English at home. And it’s a neat place to start to develop perspective and empathy. And I have to think that some of that fueled my desire to understand people even more that shows up in my life today. I’m the oldest of three kids. We got a brother and a sister. My folks are still right here in Boulder. I’m really lucky that my family is awesome.
Warwick F:
Well, I think you would tell me earlier that Nate’s parents are also from Boulder and I think you said what? All your families is pretty much within 45 minutes or at least your parents and Nate’s parents. You have a daughter. I mean, that’s… I’m assuming you probably get on reasonably well with them all. I mean, it could be a blessing or not.
Kaley K:
Thankfully, we don’t live under one roof. I think that would be too close. But I know, it’s been Warwick such a gift that if I think about it through the lens of my nine year old, it really is a village that’s helping to raise her. Today, actually, she is with my parents up skiing in the mountains. So there’s something really magical about… I think my in-laws are phenomenal. I’m one of the just luckiest people in the world that all of the mother-in-law stories don’t apply for me. She’s actually wonderful. And I didn’t grow up near my grandparents. My parents were both from Michigan and my grandparents, when I was little, I was in Colorado, and they were in Michigan and Florida. And seeing my daughter’s closeness with her grandparents, I wouldn’t trade lives with anybody except maybe her.
Warwick F:
Well, That is so neat. My parents are no longer living, but they were in Australia, and I’ve lived here since the early ’90s. And my wife’s parents were from Ohio, so we saw them and then spent part of the year in Florida. So we saw them quite a lot. But I think people don’t appreciate it. A little bit off track here, but life in Australia is very different than here, because Australia’s the same size geographically as the United States, but there’s not that many people, not a whole lot in the middle. So if you are from Sydney which I am, pretty much all your friends, they’ll go to university… Sydney University, University of South Wales.
Warwick F:
I have an older sister that has four daughters and they all live pretty near. Now if you’re more than 20 minutes, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh. The other side of the Harbour Bridge.” You’re like, “Forever.” So I didn’t realize in Australia, being near family’s not that uncommon, because if you’re from Sydney, why would go somewhere else? Nothing against Melbourne, but you just get used to Sydney. In America, it’s very different. People are everywhere, like obviously your experience in Michigan.
Warwick F:
So it sounds like you had pretty good upbringing and I think I saw some of the TEDx talk when you’re a little girl and the whole peanut butter and jelly shoelace thing. That’s so, so neat. I guess some maybe some perfectionist tendency I think is probably the story. But there was a good point there. It was a fun image and fun story.
Kaley K:
I appreciate you watching. Yeah, indeed, I was… Some perfectionist tendencies for sure and a bit of a precocious little girl to scold my mother on her sandwich making skills.
Warwick F:
So before we get into 80/80 marriage, what lead you on the path that you’re on, because you just have a passion for leadership and helping leaders think maybe more holistically from everything from values inventory to Enneagram mindset? Was it something about your upbringing or family? What led you on the journey that you’re on? What’s the origin story, if you will, of why you do what you do?
Kaley K:
Yeah. That’s a great question as well. So I can actually trace it to a moment. So my dad, when I was growing up, he was an entrepreneur and ran a software company once upon a time when computers took up entire rooms rather than in our pockets. He laughs now about it, like, “I remember having to program in the middle of the night, because it was the only time it was cool enough or the computer would overheat.”
Warwick F:
Oh, jeez.
Kaley K:
So totally different world. But he was part of an organization called YPO or Young Presidents Organization. And when he sold his company, he was asked to come facilitate some events. And in 1999, he asked me… I was in university… so he said, “Hey, do you want to come see what I’m up to? Do you want to come participate in this event that I facilitating?” I said, “Sure.” How interesting could it be?
Kaley K:
So I went to the event and that was the moment in 1999 where I absolutely fell in love with this tool set and knew that I wanted to be committed to it. And really specifically what it was that through that experience, I saw people see themselves more clearly, see some of the patterns and the choices that they have been making in their lives more clearly and that facilitated a path for them to actually make different choices and to do things differently in their lives going forward. So as you saw in my TED talk, I don’t think that should get us very far, but I actually think deep self-understanding and making choices can. And seeing that happen for person after person, I was hooked. It was like, “Okay. I want to do that.”
Warwick F:
Hmm. So there’s something about just helping people understand who they are. I think people intellectually realize that that’s important, but somehow that particular vision resonated very deeply. Because somebody could have said, “Oh, that’s neat. But okay, that’s important.” But why did you feel like that was for you? Why did that tug at your heartstrings or why that piece of music, if you will, really feel like, “This really fits who I am and what I believe in.”
Kaley K:
Gosh. That’s an excellent question. I think it was mostly about having people… To your point, it was that they saw themselves more clearly, but I think they also were able then to see the ways that they were creating… I’m going to call it suffering. And there are different flavors of that… certainly very acute, dramatic and also more subtle, almost like a rock in your shoe kind of suffering. But in seeing that, they could realize what some of the things we have been doing were costing them, and that to me… I think what tugged at my heartstring was recognizing, “This was a way that I could participate in people making their own lives better.”
Kaley K:
And then I think about… and gosh, again, this goes back to COVID where there’s so much about contagiousness… the idea of if I can help people be contagious for good in their own lives and in the companies that they’re leading, in the teams that they’re on, in the families that they’re members of, that I think really pulled at my heart.
Warwick F:
Right. Because I think, probably a bit like you, good leadership can make such a difference. I have three kids. They’re in their 20s. And I’ve done my fair share of helping them prep for interviews and somewhat good at that, got a lot of practice, and throw out all these questions, “Why do you want this job?” And “What about you really fits here,? and “What are your strengths?” And then the awful question is “What are your weaknesses?” How do you answer that and still be positive, but yet be honest?
Kaley K:
Exactly. And have it not feel like the person on the other side is like, “That’s not a real weakness. Thanks for trying.”
Warwick F:
Yeah. Like when I applied to Harvard Business School, you don’t want to write, “Well, I’m a bit of a workaholic, and I’m so dedicated to studying that all my other life goes by the wayside.” It’s just so trite. But what I tell them is, “Assume that most bosses you’ll work for won’t be good.” They might be really good, but it’s not like 90% of bosses are clued in, empathetic, strong leaders, but yet listen. It’s just, don’t assume that’s normal, because it’s just not. It’s typically if you have an issue in performance, the time you find out is when the pink slip happens and you’re fired and it’s like, “Well, I just don’t like giving negative feedback and it just makes me feel uncomfortable. So I feel better if I just ask you to leave that way we don’t… It’s easier for me.”
Kaley K:
It’s so funny. I was-
Warwick F:
And that’s normal.
Kaley K:
… actually having this conversation this morning with somebody who runs people and talent. And the conversation that we were in is the imperative of early and direct feedback for exactly the reason that you’re saying that if you give constructive feedback early, then people know what to work on, they know where they stand, there’s clear expectations and there aren’t surprises later on. For the piece that we were talking about, that’s really interesting that I think you’re alluding to is the hidden cost of trust when there isn’t that conversation. Because then people who they think they’re doing well, because they also aren’t receiving feedback, start to have that worry in the back of their minds, “Is that pink slip coming for me?” And so, there’s a distrust of absence of feedback or too much positive feedback, if there isn’t the balance of constructive feedback.
Warwick F:
Yeah. So obviously in the family business I grew up in, which listeners will know, was a large, 150-year-old family media business. There were times, especially when it was it founded, where it was run very well. John Farifax, my great-great-grandfather, he was… Everything he… It would have been… I don’t if he did the 80/80 marriage, but he had a wonderful marriage, great relationship with his kids, an elder at his church, his employees loved him and he grew a very successful business. It’s really everything was in balance. But there were days in more recent past when it wasn’t really so well run.
Warwick F:
But I can think of one episode that really illustrates, perhaps, good leadership, some of the things you probably advocate, is years ago, before I went to Oxford, I had an internship at J. Walter Thompson, which was a big advertising agency back in the day, about four or five ad agency mergers ago. And there was a guy out from Canada who was running the Australian operation, and he made a point at these all hands meeting appraising people. It so happened that that local agency had the local Kellogg’s account.
Warwick F:
And so he said, “I’ve been chatting to the J. Walter Thompson folks back in the U.S. and North America and they said that the work that you’ve done here on Kelloggs has created some of the best work that Kellogg has seen worldwide at J. Walter Thompson.” He said that to the team, and I thought, “Boy, that’s good leadership. He’s praising them specifically in amidst their peers who also worked there.” So that sounds like a normal thing to do, but that’s not normal, that kind of specific praise. One of the things I say, one of my little adages is, “When it comes to praise, if you see something, say something…
Kaley K:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
… and be specific and encourage.” It’s one of my highest values. But anyway, that’s a whole other discussion.
Kaley K:
I think that the specificity is one of the things that so often also gets lost. The generic email that says, “Hey, team, good job.” It means a little something, but very quickly finds its way to the delete folder; whereas, the specificity of the recognition, who said it, to whom, I think to your point has it stick and feel really more significant and true.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. So before we get to 80/80 marriage, I know, speaking of origin stories, from what I understand, there was a bit of an origin story, 2007 was not a good year. I know I’m reminded of Queen Elizabeth who she had a year she called her annus horribilis, a horrible year, in which Windsor Castle almost burnt down and it was pretty tough year for her. Pretty remarkable woman. What is she, like 95, and still riding horses? It’s unbelievable. I think her husband’s like 97, and I think they’re trying to discourage him from driving as much as before, because he’s had of couple accidents. But look, we all would have over 95. So talk about 2007 and why that was such a tough year and how that was part of the back story of where 80/80 marriage and the book came from.
Kaley K:
Yeah. It’s a hard story in some respects, because, as you were saying, Gary, when we started the show, it’s not necessarily fun to go back and relive. We refer to them as the dark years. So the backstory of 2007 is that… So I’m originally from Colorado. I went to school in California, more of a West Coast mountain past, and moved out to New Jersey to be with my brand-new husband. And people would ask, “Oh, you’re newlyweds. How’s the extended honeymoon?” And that was not our experience. The way it happened was my younger sister, about to turn 20, was a student at Boston and was a pedestrian hit by a drunk driver. And so, she was in the hospital. She was in a coma. Experienced quite a number of physical injuries. Spent some time in a wheelchair. Traumatic brain injury. And that was the beginning of this year of our marriage.
Kaley K:
Right on the heels of that, literally weeks later, my husband and I tangled our handlebars on a bike ride and as we fell, he fell harder and also hit his head. And so, there was this dual experience of traumatic brain injuries and not having a community. I was not near family, where… And I didn’t have many people. I was brand new. There wasn’t even a friend network to go to. And so, in that space, my husband and I ended up, we just hooked each other’s negative thinking patterns and instead of moving closer together in that crucible, there was a moment where we really started to move apart. And there was a conversation where both of us said to each other, “You aren’t the person that I married. I’m not sure what’s happening here, but this isn’t going to work.” So there was very much a moment where we weren’t sure we were going to make it as a couple.
Kaley K:
And so, as I fast forward to two springs ago, out on a hike… which now we do date nights also, but really most committed date hikes… there was that backdrop and looking back and wondering. Really the catalyst of this book, The 80/80 Marriage, is about the context of modern marriage and looking at, “Hey, now against this backdrop where we’re with our partners, we want things to be fair. We treat each other as equals. And oh my goodness, the list of things that we are trying to accomplish in a day, a week, a month, really is quite extensive. How do you do that and stay connected and in love?”
Kaley K:
We often would refer back to 2007 and say, “What do we wish we had known then? How do we wish we had been able to establish our mindset? Gosh, if we could go give advice to ourselves back in 2007… who knows how stubborn we would have been and whether or not we would have taken good advice… but we’re do we wish we had laid a different foundation?” And now, when I work with leaders and with couples and based on the hundred interviews that we did with couples to say, “What are the tools and what are the practices that help those really work?”
Gary S:
Can I go back to 2007? Because I want to get one little slice of emotion from you in that you and your husband at that time professionally were making it work. You were in a professional context working with leaders. You were thought leaders. And you came to a point where you realized, I think… you tell me if this is what happened… but you were thought leaders who realized that maybe you were practice strugglers. What did that feel like? As your advising people, “Here’s the proper way to navigate work relationships,” you’re having trouble navigating your marriage relationship. What kind of dissonance did that cause for you emotionally?
Kaley K:
That’s a great question, Gary. If I were going to look back and analyze what I was doing at that point in time, I was using work as a way to escape from how hard things were in my personal life. And so, in some ways, I think I was able to compartmentalize and say, “Hey, professional relationships are different from intimate relationships.” And out of one side of my mouth, I think I might still say that’s true. But I think they are actually much more closely connected than I would have given them credit for. I think the dissonance, to your point, was happening from the perspective of saying, “I can’t do this” and the facing into the struggle and the sadness and then not having the cover story of… I don’t know about you, it’s easier said on a podcast or on a Zoom or give a talk and here’s the shiniest, most palatable version of myself to then trying to turn off the camera and really cry quite hard.
Warwick F:
It’s interesting that you were both successful, obviously. You’ve got a whole consulting, coaching career. You mentioned husband. Is he an academic, consultant? He’s pretty successful in his own right.
Kaley K:
Yeah. Yeah. At that point in time, he was getting his PhD. So we both… We met at Boulder High, which I think is such a cute part of our story. We were chemistry lab partners. I will save you all of the puns. And then, both went off to Stanford, and then I stayed in California when he went to New Jersey. So he was getting his PhD at Princeton. But to your point, winning teaching awards, publishing his dissertation, doing research, to then be a professor at Pepperdine where many, many students were looking up to him in the same way that leaders would look to me. And so, there is a moment, too, of, “Are we taking our own advice and what advice do we have to take?”
Warwick F:
Well, it is interesting. The old joke when you may be chatting to… I don’t know… some support folks. For instance, if you have an Apple computer and you have an issue, the support teams are so incredible. They’re so helpful. But you wonder if they get off the phone… You could be talking to them for an hour about something so stupidly simple and says, “That’s okay. No, that’s fine. I can help you with the next step.” And they get off the phone with their significant other and probably zero patience and maybe start yelling and it’s like, “Okay. So you seem to be so good professionally, so calm, so patient. And then when it comes to family, where is that person? Where did they go? Is it captured by aliens? What is the deal here?” It’s probably something that you find that not only other people, but did you find that you and your husband professionally how you dealt with people was very different than how you dealt internally?
Kaley K:
Gosh. I’m thinking about my nine-year-old daughter who she will come home from school and she would have a fit or be upset or no manners. I’m like, “I don’t understand. Your teacher says you’re so good.” She said to me once, “Mom, I used up all my good behavior at school.” And so I think-
Warwick F:
Sounds like you can identify with that a bit, huh?
Kaley K:
I guess. And so that’s the story that I’m thinking about where I think there can be a moment where it’s “I used up all my patience” or “I used up all my good behavior” or “I used up all my good questions. And I think there’s a bit of… I’m going to call a reprioritization where in recognizing… And I think about this a lot in present day is, “Who are my most important relationships and am I treating them as such” or “Am I using up all my good behavior with strangers and giving my most precious relationships… my husband, my daughter, my family, my dearest friends… the dregs?” And if that’s the case, “How can I adjust where I’m spending my time and energy so that I’m nurturing those that I would say are most important?”
Warwick F:
It’s funny how often we devote so much time to professional lives. Obviously, you want to look and act professional, be understanding, because if you don’t, it’s not good for your career. Nobody wants to work with somebody that’s just rants, raves, impatient. It’s not a good way to get promoted or to get business. So, that’s an obvious, it’s going to hurt my career, paycheck. I can’t do that. At home, it’s not the same. But I know you do a lot of things like 360-degree feedbacks, Enneagram, values inventory. Do you ever laughingly say, “I wonder if I did a personal values inventory about what’s important to me?”
Warwick F:
I don’t do as much executive coaching with… I’ve got a book coming out next year and do a bunch of other things. But one of the things that I would sometimes ask clients, “Tell me about your values and then to what degree do you think that you’re living your values?” Then I would say with a straight face… if they say, “Well, I’m not really living that…” “Okay. Would you prefer to change your values or change what you’re doing?” And I would say it with a straight face, because as a coach, it’s the client’s choice. If they want to change their values, who am I to judge somebody else, some other human being? I actually, as a coach, really believe not judging other people’s paths. Everybody has their own journey. Well, 99.9% of sane people aren’t going to say, “I’m going to change my values.” Okay. Well, then… Just so many people that are going so fast, they’re not thinking, “I actually may not be living my values.” So if you probably rated values, I’m guessing family wouldn’t be, I don’t know, value number 80, I’m guessing.
Kaley K:
Right. Right. Exactly.
Warwick F:
It’s probably up there somewhere. So if you did a values inventory and then compared how much is Kaley living some of those… I’m not picking on you. All of us would be in there. You’d be like, “Hmm. I teach this stuff. I have a values inventory. Hundreds if not thousands of gone through it.” And then, “Okay. Hmm.” You probably had that moment.
Kaley K:
Oh, my goodness. For sure. And I think you pointed to it. There’s the cobbler whose children have no shoes. In doing the work with and for other people, there can be a forgetfulness around doing the work for yourself. And in some ways, this is a really beautiful bridge to 80/80 that we start with the mindset of radical generosity. So instead of 50/50 fairness to stretch to 80/80, to radical generosity.
Kaley K:
But what you’re describing is one of the foundational principles of shared success. And first is really, “Do you know your own values?” And then, “Have you had the conversation with your partner to ensure that those values align.” So to your point, we actually now have a chalkboard in our kitchen. We’re that family. We put our values. And we’ll have conversations often on our hikes where we’ll ask, “Hey. Are we living in alignment with these? Are we choosing love or are we choosing something else? Are we choosing impact or are we choosing something else? And if we’re choosing something else, to your point, is there a different value that now is superseding the ones we have or is there an adjustment that needs to take place in our lives?”
Kaley K:
And what I’ve found and what we’ve found is that knowing those values lets you set clearer priorities and that installs your boundaries where you can say yes and no to things with a much clearer conscience, because it’s rooted in… Love is a value of ours. That quality of relationship which shows up with my job or with my husband, with my family, that’s important. And if I’m not living that, gosh, I need to make different choices.
Warwick F:
I think what you’re saying is so important, and I think it was Socrates who said something like, “Unexamined life is not worth living.” Well, you’ve got to know yourself, but you’ve also got to know your partner, the person that, in your case, married to and what you collectively think is important. And so many people, they’re so busy with to-do lists and if you have young kids, “I got to take my kid to soccer, ballet, whatever it is.” And it’s who’s doing what and where and “I got to work late.” It’s you have conversations on to-do lists, rather than who are we, what are we about?
Warwick F:
So talk about this, because I’m fascinated with everybody talks about fairness, 50/50, how do you split things up? And so this whole idea of radical generosity… So talk about the old paradigm and the new paradigm. What’s the difference between the typical, “It’s all got to be 50/50. Split it down the middle,” which it’s hard to argue against fairness. It doesn’t sound like such a terrible concept. But talk about how what you’re advocating is radically different.
Kaley K:
Yeah. Well so, if fairness worked, I would say we should keep it. The trouble is that it doesn’t actually work, and it takes me to introduce, there was this brilliant story where a couple was talking about their relationship with their parents and they were saying, “So we did Father’s Day with your family, and so we’re going to do Mother’s Day with my family. Well, for your family, we left on Friday and came back on Sunday, so for my family, we should leave on Friday and come back on Sunday.” And it was hilarious, because what they were talking about, when they actually unpacked it, both of them said, “Neither of us wants to go for the same duration. We only want to go Saturday for lunch.” And yet because we had to make it fair, there was all sorts of kind of horse trading around things that they didn’t actually even want.
Kaley K:
So one way it doesn’t work is because you end up advocating for things that you don’t really even desire. And the second reason it doesn’t work is it’s actually a psychological principle, which is called availability bias. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with it. But the idea is I know everything that I do in service of our relationship. So I know every soccer practice that I drop off at. I know every thank you card that I write. And I also know every invisible hour that I spend thinking about Thanksgiving dinner and who’s gluten-free and what we should serve and how to arrange it so that it’s COVID safe, et cetera, et cetera. My partner doesn’t know most of those things, and I don’t know most of the things that they’re up to. Some things I can see where I watch him drive the trash cans down the driveway to have the trash go out, but I miss, “Hey, did he have to have a conversation to fix something that happened in our finances or who’s waiting for the cable guy?” There’s so much that’s invisible that fairness ends up being where I completely overestimate the things that I’m doing and underestimate the things that you’re doing. So we can never even get to an accurate picture to strive for fairness.
Warwick F:
Boy, that is so well-said. And some of it, too, there’ll be things that each person is good at and not good at. In my case, I married an American girl, who I met in Australia. We’ve been married actually a little over 30 years and very blessed. And she’s very creative. She’s an interior designer by profession, and she’s just… We have a wonderful home. She’s incredible cook. I’m not. So if we did 50/50 fairness about cooking, the family would suffer. That wouldn’t be so… Now, obviously, happy to wash dishes and all that and take lead on that. My kids are in their 20s, so they’re obviously at an age where they actually can help with that. But she’s creative, so she really doesn’t like numbers. That’s not right or wrong. It’s how she’s wired. So she’s happy for me to do the finances and because I’m from Australia, it can be a little bit complicated between Australian stuff and U.S. stuff and it gets a tad complex.
Warwick F:
But when it comes to major decisions, whoever’s taking the lead will make sure the other person’s informed and you’re on the same page. But we’ve come to a rhythm where we both do what we’re good at and interested in. If something needs to be fixed, I’m pretty detail orientated, so I’m like the secretary basically, which I’m happy to be my wife’s secretary. I have no problem with that. “Warwick, you need to call this contractor or this and arrange this.” Got it. I’ll make it happen. And so it happens. So I don’t know. It’s more just making sure each person does what they can contribute. So I don’t know. Does that make sense or fit at all?
Kaley K:
Yeah. Well, so I think you’re saying two things that are really connected. So one is about you would miss out on joy if you tried to make it totally fair to the point of she enjoys cooking. Not only would the family suffer… I’m not …cooking too much… but there’s a space where she enjoys it. So trying to make it fair actually is in that negative. I think the other thing that you’re speaking to you though is intentional roles. That one of the things that we found especially in our interviews is that people will end up doing things just because they do. And we fondly refer to it as the wing-it approach.
Kaley K:
There was one couple we were talking with, and I thought it was so funny where the dad was saying, “I don’t know exactly how this happened, but I’m the toothbrush guy.” There was no conversation about it, but if he’s not there, the children don’t brush their teeth. He’s like, “There’s something very strange about this.” But there’s a way that you and your wife it sounds like have made really wise choices where you say, “I’m going to take the more detail-oriented things. I’m going to take more of the financial piece.” And she says, “I’m going to take the creative or the design or the cooking piece.” But you both know, so there’s not toe stepping nor is there resentment where she’s like, “How come I’m not doing that?” And you’re like… You’re also not saying, “How come you’re not balancing this account?”
Warwick F:
Right. Right. It’s true. I don’t know where it fits, because I’m no expert on marriage or whatever, but certainly other concepts that… words like acceptance and forgiveness. For instance, I grew up in a very wealthy background, so I’m not like Mr. Fix It. Yes, I can assemble an Ikea piece of furniture, but if you want me to-
Kaley K:
You’re better than I am.
Warwick F:
If you want me to build a deck, no. I’m not the build-a-deck guy.
Gary S:
It’s funny. I did not grow up in a very wealthy background, and I can’t do that stuff either. I can hammer a nail in the wall, but that’s about it.
Warwick F:
So it’s not just me. Okay. That’s good to know.
Kaley K:
We’re all in good company here.
Gary S:
There you go.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I guess my point is my wife’s dad, he was a oral surgeon and did fine and all that. But he was Mr. Fix It. So it’s like, “Well, my dad can do this and this. Why do you have to call someone?” Well, fortunately, we had the means to do that, but I don’t have any interest in that nor am I good at it. And so, we each had some things in which we had to accept about the other. And then, when we make mistakes, obviously, I’m a big believer in forgive and communication, I’m hypervigilant about communication. I’m often accused of over-communicating.
Kaley K:
Is there such a thing?
Warwick F:
If I think there’s 1% chance there’s an issue, make sure there’s not. I’m very vigilant that way. So acceptance, forgiveness, where does that fit into the 80/80 concept, because obviously these are not new concepts. What’s your thought about all that?
Kaley K:
I think that that would fit in that mindset pillar. We think about mindset and structure as being the two pillars. But in this mindset of radical generosity, there’s, in some ways, three mutually reinforcing positive things. So one is this idea of contribution. So I want to show up giving my best. But I think what you’re describing is wearing the glasses of appreciation, rather than those of criticism. That as you’re contributing the gifts to us and the family, I notice those, I speak to those, I recognize those, I appreciate you for them, rather than wearing my glasses always a deficiency where, “How come you can’t fix that” or “How come your cooking isn’t great” or whatever it might be that, as we are giving to the relationship from a spirit of radical generosity, as we’re seeing our partners through those glasses of appreciation, so if they’re seeing them through radical generosity.
Kaley K:
And then, there’s clearing, which is really when something happens because we’re human. We make mistakes. We’ll say things that are off. To reveal that inner experience, ‘Hey, when you said that, I felt embarrassed.” And to make a request about it, “My request is that in front of our friends you present me in a positive light.” And what I noticed and we were talking about candor earlier and its importance in leadership, I think in intimate relationships is just as important, because that little tiny thing, if you clear it right away, it is that. It’s an opportunity for knowing each other and closeness. But if that little tiny thing somehow gets reinforced or gets bigger or grows legs and runs away, before you know it, there’s a significant issue that, in some ways, has a very addressable root, had you caught it early.
Warwick F:
I think it’s so true. You talk about radical generosity, the thought came to mind is radical encouragement. Again, as I mentioned, it’s one of my highest values. But encouragement begins at home. Rather than tell your friends, “Oh, my husband/my wife, boy, I really like A or B.” Well, how about telling them? And, as you said, cut them some slack when they make mistakes.
Warwick F:
One of the things I think people are loathe to do in our society is apologize. People think apologize is weakness and vulnerability, which I think it’s strength. It’s okay. I have this attitude, which I don’t always live. If there’s a 50/50 chance I’m responsible, why not apologize? I’m a person on faith, so it’s like I think God will cut me some slack if I apologize for something I wasn’t guilty of. The universe won’t hold it against me. I think it’s okay. Err on the side of… I’m not saying you go overboard, apologize things that you know is totally not your fault. But there are certain principles to me that are really… That whole radical generosity, encouragement, vulnerability, being willing to listen and admit maybe that you were wrong and… I don’t know. I feel like that doesn’t always happen. And that’s where snowballs happen.
Kaley K:
I think that you’re naming something so powerful, which is it is vulnerable. And I appreciate Brene Brown so much for helping translate vulnerability into an expression of courage, because certainly that’s how I experience it. But there is a trust enhancement in a vulnerable act which can be revealing if something hurt my feelings, even if my inner voice is saying some version of, “You should be bigger than that” or “You shouldn’t let little … bother you.” But just, it’s vulnerable to say, “Gosh, that affected me.” And it’s also vulnerable to say, “I’m sorry” and to own your part and to recognize that sometimes intention and the experience that the other person has, they don’t match and to be able to clean that up where you say, “Gosh. That wasn’t my intention and I’m so sorry that it landed that way.”
Warwick F:
So just talk about as with the 80/80 book and all and you had successful consulting, speaking, how has that whole between 2007 and writing this book, how has that shifted maybe your paradigm or maybe career direction or… I don’t know… if it has. I have a feeling it’s caused a shift, not just internally, but in terms of what you do and where you see yourself going.
Kaley K:
Well, so especially since writing or beginning this process of writing the book about two years ago, a lot has really shifted. So as I think about my work, the paradigm has become really different. That I would say I am certainly guilty for the first 13 years of my marriage really thinking about me and what my career is going to be, and being supportive and really jazzed about the things that my husband was doing, but saying, “I have my things and you have your things” and not thinking about it in terms of, “How do we win together?”
Kaley K:
And so, being in the conversation just from a different perspective where instead of saying, “They would be good for me to take on this client. Would it be good for my career to do this keynote?” Really asking the question, “What’s in the best interest of us and our relationship and our family?” It’s a little cheesy, but I’ll tell you anyway. So we named our family unit. So the first two letters of each of our names, so it’s Kajona and –
Gary S:
Awesome.
Kaley K:
And so we’ll ask, “Was that in the best interest of Kajona?” We’ve made really different choices based on, “Okay. What’s in the best interest is for me to not travel that week” or “What’s in the best interest is for you to cut down to 50% time. What’s in the best interest is for us to get outside help for that.” But framing it differently has absolutely done a paradigm shift.
Gary S:
And it’s interesting that we started talking about you worked a lot with leaders in professional contexts, and now you’re spending time in personal relational contexts. None of us think twice about doing what you just said in professional contexts. Is this in the best interest of XYZ Corporation? Is this in best interest of my team? Why is it so hard or harder to do it in the context of relationships? I hear you say that about your family, about Kajona and I think, “Wow. That’s revolutionary.” It’s not revolutionary in business. Why is it revolutionary in personal relationships?
Kaley K:
It’s a great question, Gary. I think there’s actually, there’s two sides to that. I think what you’re describing happens in excellent organizations where that is explicit. Make the decision that’s best for the organization first, and I will hear leaders say, “Make the decision that’s in the best interest of the organization, not the decision that you think I’m going to like.” And I think in a lot of organizations, there actually can be a slipping back into, “Well, gosh, what will advance my career,” rather than, “What’s in the best interest of the organization?” “What will make me look good” versus “How will this promote the product or the service or the company or whatever it is that we’re up to?”
Kaley K:
Answering your question now, I think it’s one of the great mysteries of life that many of the things that are natural in organizations… For instance, almost every organization I’ve worked with has a mission or a vision and a set of values. And yet, many, many family units don’t. At least they don’t have it explicitly stated. I think some of it is recognizing that the lines are blurry. I think certainly now where home and work as intermingled as they have ever been. But I think there’s also a space where some people feel resistant to the idea of running their family like a business, that they’re like, “I want to work to be work and I want family to be family.” And I respect that mind. I think, however, bringing in some of the best tools from both sides is really valuable. Bring in that planning those values from the corporate into your family. Bring from your family that idea of radical generosity, which in a corporate setting is often phrased as “assume positive intent.”
Warwick F:
You raise a really fascinating point that when in an all corporate organizational setting, you say, “What’s in the best interest of the organization?” Well, your family unit is an organization, so what’s in the best interest of this family organization as a whole, because we’re a unit? Not about my interest or his interest or her interest. What’s best for the team. And if you ask the right questions, if you’re people of good will, you can probably come up with the right answer.
Warwick F:
Then you maybe go back to your values list. So if we have to choose between my career, your career or other organizations, which organization is a highest priority in our values list? It’s probably your family organization is the most important, more important than other organizations or careers. And then that’s a value judgment. I’m guessing it’s probably the way yours is. So if that’s true, then let’s make sure we put the values of the family organization first and let’s talk about what that looks like. It’s not about winners and losers. Let’s collectively agree. And it’s probably mission possible. It sounds like you can have the big war, but with the right questions and the right mindset, those things can get resolved. Does that make sense? People that think that way, right?
Kaley K:
I think that’s right. And I think maybe we’ll mix in too many metaphors here, but I think about it also like sports teams, that if you’re only thinking about your own stats… I recently watched The Last Dance. If Michael Jordan were thinking exclusively about his own stats, they would not have been world champions all those years. And you could see if you watched that, there was a mindset shift where it went from “I’m going to score the most points. I’m going to have the most rebounds. I’m going to be the MVP” to “We’re going to win as a team and as a unit.” And with that mindset shift, totally different things became possible.
Warwick F:
But what you’re saying is if you want to win in marriage or in life, don’t think about your own stats.
Kaley K:
Yes.
Warwick F:
That’s kind of what you’re saying.
Kaley K:
Win as a team.
Warwick F:
Yeah. It seems like it’s a … So one other thing you talk a lot about here in Crucible Leadership is we have the paradigm which we talk about we’re not against success, but what we say is we want people to lead a life of significance, which means a life on purpose dedicated to serving others… however, each individual, however they look at that paradigm. So it’s pretty clear to me as I see what you’re doing, but talk about what a life is significance looks like now, given where you are now and given what you’re just doing with 80/80 marriage. I could guess, but rather than guess, what does that look like for you?
Kaley K:
I would love to hear your guess. My greatest dream, Warwick, is that this book would have an impact so that couples have additional tools to be able to win as a team and that, in my world, the more teamwork, the more generosity, the more love, that there is in the world, the better place it gets to be, and that if these tools can serve in that way, that feels to me like a very significant contribution.
Warwick F:
Can you imagine a generation of kids growing up in families where their parents practice radical generosity and that’s modeled for them, so they, in their turn, with their partners, husbands, wives? That will cause a ripple-like revolution, a positive revolution, a blessing, if you will.
Kaley K:
That is a dream that I would love to see come to fruition.
Gary S:
That sound was the captain turning on the fasten seatbelt sign. We are going to be landing the plane soon. Before we do that, there’s couple things I want to do and I know Warwick will want to ask you another question I’m sure. But one thing, Kaley, first of all, how can listeners get a hold of you, find out about the book, find out more about you and the services you offer?
Kaley K:
Absolutely. So the easiest place to find out about the book is 8080marriage.com.
Gary S:
And those are 8-0-8-0, right?
Kaley K:
8080marriage.com. Exactly. And if you are an Instagram person, every day we put a tip or a challenge out on Instagram. So follow us there on Instagram. It’s also 8080marriage, so 8-0-8-0-marriage. And then, you can find out more just about me either on that site or at kaleyklemp.com.
Gary S:
And those are both with Ks, correct?
Kaley K:
They are. K-A-L-E-Y-K-L-E-M-P.
Gary S:
See with a last name like Schneeberger, I’m always very, very focused on the spelling of things. I want to ask you one last question before I let you go and then Warwick will finish up and that is: For people who are listening to this, our listeners who are hearing themselves in some of the crucible-like experiences you’re talking about, and they don’t know where to begin, they don’t know what to do what’s next. I’ve heard this. This makes sense.
Gary S:
But now what? One of the things Warwick has talked about much on the show, of late in particular, is the power of one small step. You may not have to have the entire road map before you start moving toward a solution, moving beyond your crucible, but there is one small step. What in your estimation, in your advice, in your wisdom, what’s one small step listeners who find themselves maybe trying to live a 50/50 marriage and they want to get to an 80/80 marriage? What’s one small step they can take?
Kaley K:
Well, so I think there is an internal step and there’s an external step. So the internal step is to change your self-talk from fairness to generosity. At anytime that moment of resentment arises, just to change it to say, “And in this moment, what would radical generosity look like?” That’s an internal shift. If you want more externally, I would say absolutely a small step is read the book. Whether you implement it or not, it’s a great place to start.
Gary S:
Bravo. The PR guy in me applauds that answer. Warwick, back to you?
Warwick F:
Yeah. Wow. That’s awesome. So I think you’ve said before there’s probably been a shift in really,… I think the whole 80/80 marriage and how to have more fulfilled marriages and relationships is probably your passion I’m guessing. So we also talk a bit here about legacy. As you think of what you would like your legacy to be, how does the 80/80 marriage and that whole thing play into what you would like to feel like you’ve left the world in terms of all this?
Kaley K:
Gosh. It feels like such a big question.
Gary S:
That’s why it’s the last one.
Kaley K:
Right. Do I get to define my own legacy? For me, it’s relationships across the board. So if the work that I do with leaders through 15 commandments and conscious leadership and drama-free office creates healthier relationships for our people as they spend so much of their time at work, and then, those more connected, more generous relationships for people at home. If relationships are enhanced, gosh, it would be incredible if that were a piece of the legacy that I got to leave.
Gary S:
Well, that right there was the sound that… I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word’s spoken and that was it. Normally, I try to wrap up in some key takeaways, but here we talked about transparency on this episode, and I’m going to be transparent enough to say that I’m not nearly as good as Kaley. So I wrote notes, but I’m not going to say them. Listener, your key takeaways are: Listen to the show again, because Kaley really unpacks things extraordinarily well. That’s her area of expertise. And this isn’t a 50/50 exchange where I’m anywhere near as good as she is in doing that. So please go back, check out her website, listen to this show and dig into the insights that she offers, because the insights she offers can indeed help you through your crucibles.
Gary S:
And speaking of crucibles, until the next time we are together to talk about crucible experiences to offer. Warwick has said this, “We operate in the realm of hope.” That’s what we do. We try to provide hope that you can move beyond your crucible. So until the next time we’re together to talk about those things, please remember this about your crucible experience, whether it’s professional or personal or a mixture of both. Right now, it seems extraordinarily painful probably. It will not always feel that way. If you learn the lessons that your crucible is trying to teach you, if you dig in, if you’re transparent, if you’re vulnerable, if you’re authentic and you see inside what the crucible’s trying to teach you, and learn those lessons and apply them moving forward, your crucible in that case will not be the end of your story. In fact, it will be the beginning of a better story, a new chapter in your story. And why it is a better story is because that chapter in that book leads to a different destination and that destination is a life of significance.
From the tragic beginnings of being orphaned then abused by his guardian uncle, to his adulthood as a crack addict who fathered seven children by five woman, Marvin Charles was an unhappy story just waiting on a sad ending. But then he got sober and embraced God as his anchor — and dramatically rewrote his destiny. Divine Alternatives for Dads — D.A.D.S. — the nonprofit he founded 20 years ago after navigating the legal system to put his family back together, has helped 5,000 men reclaim their roles as fathers and learn the practical and emotional skills to knit their own families back together.
For more information about Marvin Charles and D.A.D.S, visit www.aboutdads.org
Enjoy the show? Leave a review on your favorite podcast app and leave a comment at our YouTube channel. And be sure subscribe and tell your friends and family about us.
👉 Take the free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment to discover where you are on your journey of moving beyond your crucible and how to chart your personal course to a life of significance: https://beyondthecrucible.com/assessment/
Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership.
Marvin C:
The freedom that I had caused me to be arrested all over this country. It caused me to live a lifestyle that caused me to become an alcoholic addict. Now, I was free, and the thing about freedom is usually when a person gets free, they move into a particular community and they stay in that community, and so they become accustomed to that community and all that goes on in that community. If it’s drugs and alcohol, when you’re in a community or an environment that does that, and you don’t try to get out of that, because everything else seems strange to you, or unappreciative, you didn’t know that. Well, I did that. I did that for 20 plus years.
Marvin C:
I wound up having seven children from five different women, and then the desire to get clean came and went, but I never could hold that down because I didn’t have any focus.
Gary S:
That doesn’t sound too much like the fruits, at least the good fruits of freedom, does it? Yet that’s the life, today’s guest, Marvin Charles, lived for decades. The life he desperately wanted as an orphaned and abused child who just wanted to live life on his terms.
Gary S:
Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. You’ll hear today in Warwick’s extremely moving conversation with Marvin, how sometimes the things we long for to ease our pain can actually cause us more pain. Sometimes our crucibles, if we don’t process them wisely, can lead to more crucibles. But here’s the good news that Marvin’s story underscores. From your greatest pain can come your greatest triumph. He’s found a life of true significance through learning the lessons of his missteps and applying them to help men, many of whom are living just like he used to, embrace their role as fathers, and build lives of joy. He does it all through Divine Alternatives for Dads Services, acronym, DADS, the Seattle nonprofit he’s been running now for 20 years.
Warwick F:
Well, Marvin, thank you for being here. I love what your organization does. Divine Alternatives for Dads Services. I love what Gary just read about, what was it? Embracing a living God for a larger purpose?
Gary S:
That’s exactly it. Yep.
Warwick F:
Boy, that is powerful. Marvin, before we get into DADS and what you do, I’d love to hear a bit about you in the Seattle Area, understand. I’d love to hear a bit about your background growing up, early memories, kind of set the scene of who is Marvin Charles, and how did he grow up and a little about your family story.
Marvin C:
I’d be glad and honored to do that, Warwick. I’m born and raised in Seattle. I had what was called, I don’t know if you remember the program, Leave it to Beaver.
Warwick F:
Right.
Marvin C:
That was my family. It was the urban perspective of that, but I guess later on it became the Cosby, but trust me, all I knew was Leave it to Beaver. I had a sister, Marion and I. We were we had a mother and father in our home. My mom prepared lunch for us, we walked to school together when things were much more sensible during that time. It was the early ’60s. Then one day we came home from school and my mother was on the couch and she was on the couch for a couple of days, and then they rushed her off to the hospital and we never seen her again. Well, she passed away.
Marvin C:
I remember I was nine years old. My sister was seven, and my aunt and uncle came over. My father was there. He was a guy who spent a lot of time working. She took care of the home and the children and he worked and provided the resources that it took. But when this part of our life was stopped, we had to move to live with our aunt and uncle. This was the aunt and uncle that you had to dress up to go over to their house. They had plastic on their furniture. It’s the one you really didn’t want to go there, but so now we were living there.
Marvin C:
I remember the first thing my uncle told me was that wasn’t your mother, that’s not your father. You guys belong to the state, but we’re going to take care of you. I was nine years old. If I didn’t know anything else, I knew that at nine years old, that’s not what you tell a nine year old.
Warwick F:
When you heard that, you’re nine and they’re saying, we’re your aunt and uncle, but you belong to the state. Emotionally, what are you hearing from them?
Marvin C:
Well, you know what? Mind you, our mother had just passed away. I couldn’t get past that aspect of it. I remember running out the house and going next door and my cousin coming to get me, his son, “What are you doing? Why are you doing this?” It was what I knew that I was in for. I couldn’t even wrap my heads around what he said or what was taking place, it’s what’s getting ready to happen next. I stayed in that mind frame for six years when we went to move with my aunt and uncle. The first I got, I remember I was playing with my sister in my room, and I broke the window, my glass window pane, and so he made me go outside, get some bricks across the street in a lot, bring them back, crush them up on newspaper, then kneel in them while I held two other rocks over my shoulders.
Marvin C:
If I lowered my elbows below my shoulder, he threatened to hit me with this strap. That was the first punishment at 10 years old. That can give you a snapshot of what I was faced with for the next six years. Then I wore a Catholic uniform to a public school so all the kids made fun of me. It was really an alienation that from the time I was 10 years old till I was 16, that was really humiliating. I spent a lot of time living in my head, really living in my head. Didn’t have friends that I could play with or people I could count on. I always kid and joke about it, but I’m very serious about it. I felt like I never went to prison because I did a long time in prison because I had already did six years in prison, and that was my mindset.
Marvin C:
At the time I was 16, I really couldn’t take it anymore. I would complain to my guidance counselor at school, and I lost my door key. The guidance counselor said, listen, don’t run away. If you run away, run to the youth center, because if you don’t, the police will get you and just bring you right back. That was the only advice that … I have marinated on that advice for a long time, and so I lost my door key, came home one day, begged my sister to leave her key out. She left her key out. My uncle came home, stepped on the mat, found the key and was waiting for me when I came to the door, and he said, Listen, I want you to go get another brick from across the street.”
Marvin C:
I knew what punishment I was slated for. When I went to go get the brick, I just took off and kept running, and I ran to the youth center. They called him and told him that they had me and that there was no need for him to come looking for me, and they set a court date and they brought us together a week later. I remember my aunt, I’m sitting between my aunt and uncles the most. I was 16 years old. I was scared to death. I didn’t know what was going to take place. The judge asked my uncle, he said, “This child has told us about a number of different things that had taken place, and I want to know, are they true?”
Marvin C:
My uncle said, “Yes, your honor. I believe if a child lives in my household, he must abide by my rules and regulation.” The judge slammed the mallet down and said, I make this child a ward of the courts. I don’t think my uncle was expecting that.
Warwick F:
When the judge slams that hammer down, what do you think he was saying? He was giving a judgment about his rules and regulations on your uncle? What was that judgment that, that judge gave to your uncle, would you say?
Marvin C:
That I was to not go back to that household.
Warwick F:
But do you feel like in some sense he was condemning your uncle’s behavior or your uncle’s disciplinary philosophy or something?
Marvin C:
I think, for me, all I saw was I’m free. I mean, it’s like, I can imagine this, and I know this is probably not a ethical topic to speak about, but I just imagined myself what a slave must’ve felt like when they got a chance to see freedom and nothing stopped them. That was how passionate I was about just being free. Free of the stuff that I was faced with for the past six years. That was a good thing, but it was dangerous as well, but I only came to know that later.
Gary S:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
Right. I want to pick up that in a second, but your uncle obviously showed you plenty of discipline, but did he or your aunt give you an equal measure of love, that unconditional love that every human spirit craves sort of like milk? Was that any part of it?
Marvin C:
I don’t think so, and that’s something I’ve had a lot of time to ponder about. What gives me the significant understanding about that is because love wouldn’t allow me to go off the rails later on in my life, which then I realized I was recreating the same situation into my own children’s life. Why was that?
Warwick F:
Yeah, and that’s a scary thing that … I love history, and sadly history tends to repeat itself. Most of us throughout the last several hundred or thousand years, we don’t learn. People will persecute others, take advantage. You hear about people who are raised alcoholic homes and they become alcoholics, or they’d been abused as a kid and they abuse their own kids. I can’t imagine how you could possibly do that. I’m not a psychologist, but it seems like it’s all too common.
Marvin C:
But here’s why, because truth be told, you don’t know anything else. You only do what you know. If you were raised in an environment that those behaviors that you were faced with are what you learned, so then you come and grow up and then you’re faced with the same circumstances that you … I don’t mean the behavior part of it, but a circumstance like now I’m a father and I have a family, and I have to raise my family. I remember specifically using these words, my uncle used to say, “I want you, and I want you like you came into this world.”
Marvin C:
Now, that meant, go upstairs, take all your clothes off because I’m getting ready to spank you, so you knew when he said that, right?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Marvin C:
When I became a father and started having children around me, I would use the same language. I want you, and I want you like you came in this world. Where did that come from? I didn’t like it when he was doing it to me.
Warwick F:
You probably didn’t even realize what you were saying in the context where it came in the heat of the moment. Out it comes, but that is haunting, I guess.
Marvin C:
It was. To be honest with you, when I got free from that situation, I moved into another foster home that the state paid my friend’s mother to give me a place there. He had his nieces and nephews living there and he and his mom and her boyfriend, and all I would do was clean up and wash dishes, and mop, and clean because I didn’t know anything else. The kids would make fun of me. They would say, “What are you …” I’m 16, 17 years, and all I know how to do is clean up behind people. I started getting a little looser with that. It was the ’70s and things were going on in black communities across this country.
Marvin C:
I went and saw the movie Super Fly. Now, all of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I know what I want to be. I don’t have any restraints. I don’t have any people saying, you ought to do this. You ought to do that. I thought the utmost that a person could have is freedom, and I had plenty of it. So I went and got clothes and looked like him, I went and got my hair fixed like him. I went and did all of these things. Now, I spend the next 20 years trying to do everything I thought he did. Now, I didn’t know. I just saw a movie. A movie lasted two hours. I spent 20 years trying to live into that movie.
Warwick F:
Is that what you were talking about earlier about you crave freedom and you got it, but yet there was a side of freedom that you didn’t appreciate. What was that side that you learned later about? Freedom is a wonderful thing, but there was something about it that didn’t seem so positive. How would you frame that?
Marvin C:
The freedom that I had caused me to be arrested all over this country. It caused me to live a lifestyle that caused me to become an alcoholic addict. Now, I was free. The thing about freedom is usually when a person gets free, they move into a particular community and they stay in that community, and so they become accustomed to that community and all that goes on to that community. So, if it’s drugs and alcohol, when you’re in a community or an environment that does that, and you don’t try to get out of that because everything else seems strange to you, or unappreciative, you didn’t know that. Well, I did that. I did that for 20 plus years.
Marvin C:
I wound up having seven children from five different women, and then the desire to get clean came and went, but I never could hold that down because I didn’t have any focus. Then I realized one day I went to a treatment center that I stayed there for 90 days. That 90 days of clarity gave me something that I had not known. First of all, halfway through there, I met the person of Jesus Christ. Somebody asked me, “Don’t you want a personal relationship with Jesus?” Which I had no idea what that was.
Warwick F:
You didn’t really have much of a faith upbringing, either from your parents or uncle and aunt, they weren’t like even religious or church going?
Marvin C:
Not at all. In fact, he said, “I want you guys to go to church.” His statement was, “And don’t wake us up to take you. You need to make it there.” So, there was no real strong preference of that in our household. It was before my mother passed away, but at nine, that just fleeted out away. My lifestyle, certainly that didn’t compliment it at all. You know what I mean? This Jesus that I knew was this kind of Jesus, anytime I was in trouble, Lord, if you get me out of this, I won’t do it again.
Warwick F:
Kind of what they call a transactional relationship.
Marvin C:
Exactly, and I never kept up my end of the deal. You know what I mean?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Marvin C:
Yeah, that’s what took place, but when I got to this treatment center, I met this person called Jesus, and I was in a place, my children were scattered throughout the foster care system. My girlfriend was still using and I had two babies by her. What I realized, and this is, I think the epiphany that I had, I had children who were growing up in the foster care system just like me. I recreated the same thing in their life, and if I didn’t like it, how could I do the same thing to them? I think that’s when the wheels started turning for me.
Marvin C:
All I knew how to do is Jesus, if you are who you say you are, then help me. You have my undivided attention. I’ve created something in their lives that I didn’t like it, and I didn’t realize that my disobedience has caused this, and I need you to help me get out of this. That was all I was looking for.
Warwick F:
What was the paradigm shift? Because you’re living a life where you’ve got a number of different relationship, different kids with different folks. I mean, there’s a shift in thinking. What was the old way of thinking? How did that shift … I mean-
Marvin C:
That’s a great question. In my former life, after leaving my aunt and uncle and turning 18 years old, I managed to graduate my high school. But after seeing the movie Super Fly, all I wanted to do was be a pimp, and I lived that lifestyle very well all across this country. But when I picked up this crack cocaine habit that I started really doing myself bad. I started being with women and I wasn’t treating them good, and I wasn’t treating myself, and they weren’t treating me.
Marvin C:
The lifestyle just started being really wonky, really up and down, and I got tired. I literally got tired of living. Then, one of the mothers left me my son, who was my third child, his name was Marvin. He was five years old, and I didn’t have any stability for him. I knew that that wasn’t right. I tried to get in other relationships and play house and do these things, but none of that was working. It came to the point where, if I really want to get clean, I’m going to have to set my son someplace, and I don’t know any place that’ll be appropriate for him, but I got to weigh this.
Marvin C:
I took him to his mother’s house, which was not a good place at all. She lived with her grandmother, all her sisters, they all had children, and he was in the midst of it, and I wasn’t very well liked by that particular family, but I had to put my son somewhere. I went into treatment and I had to really deal with this thought. The first thought was, I just need to get off these drugs. I just really need to reframe myself. What is it like to think clearly without being under the influence? Can I make some reasonable decisions?
Marvin C:
That was a turning point that this gave me an opportunity to really see life through life’s lenses. I still didn’t know what to do. I was 40 plus years old. I got seven kids. I don’t have a trade, I don’t have a degree, I don’t have anything, but I trusted the Lord enough to guide me and lead me. Three months in treatment, I got out. The mother of my two youngest children came in as I got out, and so the courts gave me the opportunity to say … Let me throw this piece in. I left one of our drug-filled environments with my seven month old daughter, because I was mad about guys coming in and out of my house and saying, I want to see your old lady, and so I just grabbed the baby who I had been changing diapers and feeding for the seven months since she was born.
Marvin C:
I went to the hospital to leave her on the steps of the hospital, and I got to the hospital and I couldn’t do it. I went to a woman’s shelter and they told me, “Take her to the CPS office.” So, I did that. CPS is a child protection agency. I went there, I took my daughter there and they treated me like I was public enemy number one. They were right to do so because they had been coming … I had two other children who were in custody of the CPS, and they had been coming to our house, knocking on the door, and we’d tell everybody to be quiet, and I wouldn’t respond. Now, I’m showing up on their doorstep, and they’re like, “So, now what do you want us to do?” I just was determined.
Marvin C:
I said, “Listen, I don’t know what to do.” Well, there was a lady who came out of the back and said, “Listen, in order for us to do this, the mother’s going to have to sign off.” I said, “No problem.” She drove me in the baby back to our drug-filled environment, I told the mother, “We need to sign and give this child up. I want to go get myself together.” She signed the paper reluctantly, and then the lady left with the baby. I went to say goodbye to the baby. I got locked out of the house so instantly I became homeless. I knew that I’m 40 plus years old, this is no way for a 40-year-old man to be living.
Marvin C:
You don’t have anything to do with your life. That stayed on my mind once I got into treatment, and when somebody introduced me to Christ, I said, “I’m here, I surrender. Show me what to do.”
Warwick F:
You were sort of at the bottom of the pit, the bottom of the crucible. It sounds like before you saw that movie, Super Fly, you were maybe drifting through life, maybe life’s unfair. I didn’t have a great life. People weren’t nice to me. It’s all about me. I don’t know. Was there a conscious plan? Who cares about everybody else? Nobody else cares about me. The world’s not fair, it’s so messed up. I’m just going to enjoy myself and just get through each day as best I can. Was it like something along those lines?
Marvin C:
That was my script. It’s about me. I’m going to take care of me. Everybody always said I was bad. Well, I’m going to be a bad man. You know what I mean? I went from Hollywood, to New York, to Washington, DC, to Florida, to Texas. To me, for a while, that was a life. Allowed me to do pretty women, plenty money, but that’s the lure. That was the lure because it was not substantial.
Gary S:
It’s true, isn’t it, Marvin, that it was about you, you just said that, you were living for yourself, but you mentioned, as you were going through those years, you had several children.
Marvin C:
Yes.
Gary S:
I think you even said, at one point when you and I talked before this, that you had brought Marvin Jr into a crack house with you. While you’re living for yourself, you are creating a family, and at what point did you realize, as you were coming back from your crucibles, as you were trying to come to yourself and live a more responsible life, did you … What was that epiphany moment when you said, oh my gosh, I’ve got these kids and I have a responsibility to them. When did that happen for you?
Marvin C:
Again, when I stood in front of that hospital to leave my seven month old daughter on the steps, I realized that she didn’t ask for this. None of my children asked for that. Why does this seem so familiar? It’s because I was left, and because I was left, it doesn’t give me the right to leave somebody else. There has to be something different. It has to be. What I came to the understanding was, and I think this happened in treatment, but if I don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for me.
Marvin C:
If I don’t make the attempt, whatever it was, if I don’t make the attempt, so when I entered into this relationship with Jesus Christ, what I did was … I didn’t, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like a light bolt of lightning came out of the sky and hit me and said, no, no. I had to work at this relationship, and I didn’t know anything about Jesus, I didn’t know anything about the things that he does in people’s lives. All mines were experience, and so here was my first experience. I got a treatment. I knew I still loved the mother, who I’m married to today, but she was still using, and the thought about …
Marvin C:
When you’re in recovery of drugs and alcohol, they tell you, “You need to leave your past behind you.” Well, I found that very difficult to do. I got children, but how do I do that? It caused me to have to lean on this person, Jesus. You have to guide me because I don’t know what to do. I’m scared to death. I don’t have the experience that most people have. So, who do I trust? It came down to just this, Warwick, I had to trust Jesus for everything. For everything. I didn’t know how to do that. I remember I would ask people, “Hey man, does Jesus talk to you?”
Marvin C:
People would look at me like, well, he’s crazy, but I didn’t know anything to do. I’ll tell you this, let me add this little piece here. That same son that talking to you about, he’s named Marvin, he’s 31 years old today, and the mother of his children passed away six months ago, and he’s gotten his children, and he and I had a volatile relationship for years. About six years ago, he came into my office, and we have a Bible study in my office and he sat down. I was late that day. I walked in and he’s in the middle of the Bible study, and he’s ranting, and he’s raving, and he’s talking loud and crazy.
Marvin C:
I sit in the corner and I’m like, wow. There’s about 25 men in this room. We call this Bible study park bench to Park Avenue, because you got people who come out of the ivory towers and people who come out prison sitting in the same room together. Then one of the brothers got up and said, Here, man, here’s what we do in this room.” And they picked him up. My son is 6’8″. I have two of them, one 6’7″ and one 6’8″. They sat him in the chair and the brothers got around him and laid hands and prayed for him. He got up and he went and sat down, and I saw what he did, and I knew he’d been angry at me, and I apologized over the years because God made me understand that there was a lot of damage I did, but nothing ever happened.
Marvin C:
When I sat down in that chair that day, and I began to say, “Man, I used to drag you from crack house to crack house. I used, I wasn’t real responsible. I did all kinds of things, and I’m sorry. I know I’ve told you this before, but I … And I think the fact that I’ve made that a mens’ comment to him in the room full of 25 men, it did something. It broke something, because he got up, he came over to me, he got on his knees, and he put his arms around my calf and he said, “Dad, all I ever wanted to do was make you proud of me.”
Warwick F:
Oh wow.
Marvin C:
Wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Wasn’t a dry eye in the room, and I’m thinking, God only you could have done that. I’ve tried to do this for years, but it didn’t work, but you did it.
Warwick F:
Well, I guess His timing. That’s powerful. It sounded like, obviously the big shift in your life was with faith in Christ, I mean, your faith gave you an anchor for your soul that you probably never had before. It gave you a purpose and a reason for living that maybe you didn’t have. I mean, was that part of the shift?
Marvin C:
You’re so spot on. I need to add a little bit to that story. When I got out of treatment and we fought for our kids, Jeanette and I fought for our kids through the system, which is why we started DADS because we had a victory. We had several victories. Well, here was one of the victories that gave me an astronomical belief in Jesus, more so, I tell my favorite line is, you can’t beat me having faith in what God will do for you. Here’s what happened. We were just putting our house together, our family together, children were coming home. We had to get jobs, and my wife and I, and we were really trying to debate, okay, maybe you ought to stay home with the kids and I go to work because we can’t afford daycare with four kids in our house and all of that.
Marvin C:
That worked itself out. Then one day I came home from work and the phone rang. I answered the phone and somebody said, “Is this Marvin Charles?” Well, I thought it was a telemarketer. I said, “Yes.” The lady said, “Well, there’s a lady who’s been looking for you for 43 and a half years and she’s your mother, and she lives right down the street from you.” I was like, what? I couldn’t believe it. Jeanette had just went to pick the kids up to bring them home. I said, this lady just called and said, “My mother has been looking for me and she lives right down the street.” We loaded the kids up when we went to that house, and there was this lady standing on the corner with her daughter and her niece, and it was my sister and my mother.
Marvin C:
I got out of the car and I grabbed this woman and we looked identical. So, she told me, “I had you when I was 14 years old, and my mother had a baby who was born seven months after you and the state wasn’t going to … Because my mother was on welfare and they weren’t going to take care of both of us, so they took you and put you up for adoption.” Then the next day I asked her about my dad, “Where’s he at?” She said, “Well, the last time I know he was living in Oakland.” We contacted him. I jumped on a plane to see him. Shortly after that, she jumped on a plane to see him. Now, mind you, when I was in treatment, the first prayer I prayed from this new relation with Jesus Christ was Lord, help me put my family back together again.
Warwick F:
The amazing thing is you probably didn’t know that you were adopted, right?
Marvin C:
Well, yeah, my uncle told me that, I belong to the state. That’s what that meant.
Warwick F:
Okay, but you didn’t know that you had a mother and…
Marvin C:
No, no I didn’t know none of that. I had none of that.
Warwick F:
That is so unbelievable.
Marvin C:
Let me tell you what happened, Warwick. My mother jumped on a plane and went down to visit my dad. He asked her to marry her. She said, yes, they come back to Seattle. Now, I have this whole family that God put together.
Warwick F:
But that was one powerful prayer. Power of prayer, but I’d like to hear a bit about DADS, but I think there’s a part of your story, where, from what I understand, you got this award from The Atlantic Family Center. You put your family together, and as you put your family together, it gave you a vision of a mission and ministry, so talk about how you put your family together and then how that shifted into this whole movement, this ministry that you have.
Marvin C:
Really, it was out of complications that really the ministry came alive. My wife and I, after putting our family together, and then I went … We did Good Morning America, we did some TV overseas, and when we came back, and after the dust settled, there was a real simplistic question that evolved. During that time was a crack epidemic and it was really strong in communities all over this country, and we felt like we had got a reprieve from it. So, we said there were people that we got high with, we did time with, we did crime with who were faced with the same situations. How could we take what we’ve learned from navigating the system and help other people navigate the system. We literally called ourselves systems navigators.
Warwick F:
Just so the listeners know, because not everybody might understand the story, you had like six kids, they were foster care, but you brought all your kids together. You dealt with the system, got housing, got clean, got a job, to talk just a little bit about that as we shift to what you do now, because you were living what you now help other people. Because that’s a miracle in of itself. It couldn’t have been easy what you did.
Marvin C:
See, we never looked at it like that. We looked at it like God gave us the ability to navigate the child welfare system, the child support system, the state system, where they give you money to take care of your family, but at some point, you have to pay that back. So, we were saying, okay, how do we do that? Well, I’ll tell you, this was the motivating moving factor. One day I come home from work. I got one job, it’s paying for all six of us in this house to take care of this family. We got a rental property.
Marvin C:
Money wasn’t coming very fast at all, but we were making the best of it. Now, mind you, you got to keep this in mind. I told you about the high part of life that I lived when I had no cares in the world. Now I got all these cares and not enough money to take care of it. Because of my relationship with Jesus, I was tempted a lot of time to go and resort back to some other mindsets, but that’s what God delivered me from. Why would I go back there? So, how do I keep and maintain this? Well, then one day the child support system emptied my bank account out and I didn’t know what to do. I never had child support system, but my wife did, because the children were in the foster care system, it created a debt with child support. A lot of folks don’t know. Right?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Marvin C:
She convinced them that, “No, it’s not my money. It’s his money. But because we’re married, he put my name on the bank account.” I don’t know how she did it, but she convinced them, they put the money back.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Marvin C:
Then what happened was she said, “Do you know how many other people are suffering through this? Just this aspect of it?” So, she worked with her child support counselor and built a very good relationship with them. So much so till literally, we would on the weekends go and talk to people who were having the same problem. I set up a little office in our house, where during the week the kids would go off to school, and from 10 o’clock to two o’clock, she would literally be working with clients or fathers in the community who had some of those same issues.
Warwick F:
That was part of the birth of DADS, of Divine Alternatives for Dads so it took a bit about, I think we understand how it was birthed. Talk about what that does and just the important mission that you have. What is that?
Marvin C:
Our mission statement is to give fathers hope by walking together in supportive community, helping navigate systems, relational and legal barriers which separate fathers from their children. We really believe that once you inform a father of the opportunities that fathering or fatherhood gives them, it changes the whole mindset of a father. It changes. I always say the greatest gift that a father can give is to prepare his children for a future that he will never see. Men get that. There’s another simplistic thing that we found out over 20 years ago.
Marvin C:
Most fathers want to just be heard, and there are not opportunities system-wise where they get heard. I have a conference room in my office here, and that table, we called the strongest table in the State of Washington because it has everybody’s tears, everybody’s complaints, everybody everything, and they get to leave it right there. Because of that work that we’ve been able to do, we found out some significant things. In low income communities, when fathers have children, most fathers are there in the hospital when the child is born. Then I ask fathers, how many of you were there when your baby was born? They all raised their hands.
Marvin C:
How many of you signed the birth certificate? They all raised their hands. Well, what they don’t know is they didn’t sign a birth certificate. What they signed was a paternity affidavit, which is a promissory note to say, you will pay child support for this child, even if you find out it’s not yours, because this is a legal binding document. Now, I don’t tell him not to sign it. What I say is just know what you’re doing. Understand. It’s a lot of things like that, that we’ve … Information we’ve come across the last 22 years and we try to share with people. Don’t get mad at the system. Don’t get mad at the mother. These are some of the things you’ve done. You just took it for granted when you were doing it. How do I know? Because I did it.
Warwick F:
It sounds like there’s two levels. There’s the practical level navigating child welfare, helping them get clean, helping them get a job, helping them get housing, all of the things that you need to do to get your kids back. So, there’s the practical, but it sounds like there’s sort of the spiritual soul component in which people don’t change unless they have a reason to, unless you can shift their thinking. I imagine some of it might be, look, like you, I wasn’t treated fairly, life is unfair. The system is messed up. Nobody cares what I think. Nobody wants to listen to me. Why should I care about anybody else when nobody cares about me?
Warwick F:
That whole thinking says, that’s probably not an easy … It’s not easy to shift that thinking, but somehow, that’s a lot of the heavy lifting you do, is trying to shift this. Some of what they say is true, like life is unfair. There is systemic issues. There are objectively things that do make life unfair. It’s not all their fault, but it’s easy to wade into all of that and just say, well, life’s unfair, so why should I care? How do you shift that thinking? Because it can’t be easy.
Marvin C:
Well, it’s not easy unless you think about it or you see it through a different set of lenses. Let me give you an example. The mentality that I had to have in order to embrace this person called Jesus Christ was a significant embrace, a significant way of thinking. But then I thought about it, and I said, well, whatever the devil asked me to do, I went and did it. I had no problem. If he said, I want you to go up in this bank with two 45’s, one in each hand, I would do it. Christ who is the preventer of me of sin and sin in my life and living a righteous life wouldn’t ask me to do any of those things. So, how do I find what he ask me to do more complicated than what the devil did?
Marvin C:
I had to seek and nourish my understanding on that. That’s the same thing I try to bring and preach to men that walk through my door.
Warwick F:
What’s the answer to that? Because that’s a really good question. Why is it harder to do what God wants you to do?
Marvin C:
Because it was easier for me to do what the devil want, and this stuff that God wants me to do is new to me. But guess what? Being a pimp was new to me until I took the challenge of trying to do it, right? So, give Christ the same opportunity. That’s what I had to do, and so I do this to men all the time. Here’s one of mine trade secrets. A man will come in and he’ll talk to me about what the mother’s doing, and how come the mothers were late, and this is … I let them talk for 30 minutes, and I purposely let them rant and rave for 30 minutes about what the mom does. Then I stop them and said, “I thought you were here because you wanted to see your child.” “I do.” “Well, you’ve talked for 30 minutes and haven’t mentioned the child one time.”
Marvin C:
If I was a judge, I wouldn’t see anywhere in the world that you wanted to be involved in the child’s life. That’s the first linchpin. You can’t tell me that it’s about your child, but all you’re doing is talking about the mom and the unrighteousness. You’re going to have to get over that. That’s not going to work. You catch them at the doorway with that understanding.
Warwick F:
It does. There’s something about maybe all human beings, no matter what they’ve been through, when they have a son or a daughter, when you say, you’ve got a responsibility to care for them, do you feel like there’s something, maybe a God given anchor, a thread, something that you can build on that it catches?
Marvin C:
Yes. Yes, exactly. Because most of them will resort back to the thinking, not initially, but they will resort back to the thinking, I don’t want my child to grow up like I grew up.
Warwick F:
I want to give my child a better life, a better opportunity than I had.
Marvin C:
Because of the significant turn of events in their life, they get away from that. It’s like being on an island, they get away from that thinking. I said, “No, I’m a perfect example.” What we say to men is, “Just go get yourself together. You know why? Because one day your child is going to knock on your door, and what are you going to tell them? You know what they’re going to say? If you’re not together, they’re going to say, “You’re just like what mom said you were.”
Warwick F:
That is a powerful motivator, isn’t it?
Marvin C:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And the vision, I’m sure of your son, you’d apologize, but the power of when an apology is accepted, when you’ve been forgiven, that moment, I’m sure you share, because I talk about vulnerability for a purpose. That story probably helped a lot of other guys. You can have that moment with your son and your daughter, and that’s something that you probably treasure forever in your heart.
Marvin C:
It’s crazy because they treasure it just as much, and that’s what DADS try to say is, you’re sitting here complaining about not being with your son, but what most men won’t do is think, and I mean think that their child is somewhere missing them just as much.
Warwick F:
It is interesting. The Bible talks about sin can be passed down through seven generations, basically means forever. It’s sort of a metaphor, but yet virtue can have the same effect. Obviously, as we talked about off air, I grew up in as different a background as you did. I mean, very, very different background, but one of the things I remember is the fellow that started the family media business. He was a strong a man of Christ as you could possibly get. He was an elder at his church.
Warwick F:
This is like in the early 1840s, he came out from England with nothing. He was a very good husband, very good dad. He’s employees loved him. When he died, his employees said we’ve lost a kind and valued employer. Yet, every aspect of his life was in balance. He was successful, but yet, he had incredible relationship with his kids. As I said, elder at his church and with his wife. Well, that faith lasted several generations. As the family became more successful, became a little bit more traditional, and a little less Christ centered, but that positive legacy has lasted for generations.
Warwick F:
I’m the fifth generation. The impact, you talk about how there might be people that you have an effect on that you don’t know. Well, that’s my great-great-grandfather. Very few people will know their great, great-grandkids, it’s almost technically impossible unless you live to 150, but yet, that positive aspect and the effect that he’s had on my life, my dad was a little bit more ecumenical, good guy, but a little bit sort of intellectual, not quite the same faith set in us, but that influence that he’s had on my life, John Fairfax, my great, great grandfather. It’s hard to quantify. That’s a touch stone. That’s a legacy.
Warwick F:
Well, the people that you work with, they have a chance to affect five generations in their family, kids that they’ll never know. That’s a blessing that can, maybe not last forever, but last for a long time.
Marvin C:
I would challenge you to say forever.
Warwick F:
Exactly.
Marvin C:
Yes, right. Because children nowadays are equipped or have access to equip their selves on their own. Well, I’m a prime example of what that will do. I don’t want my seven … I had another daughter at 54, so I’m 65 years old, so I just need you to know that. But the difference is she was raised up … She’s being raised up in a two parent home, and she has no idea about the other part of it. Her siblings come to her and said, “You don’t know how good you have.”
Warwick F:
You’ve got it so good. You’re sort of …
Marvin C:
Right, but like you said, she has a relationship. We’ve sent her to a Christian private school, and we tell her, we do not hide from it. This is where we came from, this is what we do. Our communication level is so open. She has a group of friends that she’s closely connected to. I look at what I’ve learned from her and her being raised in that environment. Yes, I do see the impact that I could have on my youngest child’s life for generations.
Warwick F:
What I love about what you said, I’m sure this is part of what you do in DADS is like change, obviously from your perspective, or from mine, have a focus in faith, Christ-centeredness, but at age appropriate levels, don’t hide who you were. Don’t hide the pain because again, my case is very different, but my dad was married three times, my mother, twice. Fortunately, I was from the last marriage of each, but I’ve seen the devastation that divorce can have, even in wealthy affluent families. In some cases, maybe lack of parents being around, lack of love, nannies raising kids, which is not very healthy.
Warwick F:
I was sort of paranoid a bit about divorce. I was very careful. I wanted to make sure my wife, who we’ve been fortunately married over 30 years to have somebody of character who loved the Lord. I’ve told that to my kids. You got to be careful. Make sure from my perspective that your wife or husband has a strong faith and character. Well, I don’t hide from my kids. You don’t want to be like my dad or mom in the sense of all the marriage. You don’t want to be like that. At age appropriate levels, the challenges we’ve been through can help our kids, help our grandkids. Does that make sense?
Marvin C:
Yes. It makes a lot of sense. I’m sharing with you that my son who now has his two children is not married, but he has a young lady friend, and they’ve agreed to parent these two children. I had to go to her job, my wife and I, and tell her how much we appreciate her. She said to me, I’ll never forget this. She said, “Anytime a guy friend that I’ve been with parents shows up, it’s usually to tell me to leave their son alone.”
Warwick F:
Interesting.
Marvin C:
I said, “No, that’s the least of my worry. I want you to know that we’re here to support you because just to be with him and be willing to take on this responsibility, we know it’s not an easy one.” I really wanted to tell her, I wish you guys would get married, but I felt like I was way out of place with saying that, but that’s my prayer. That’s my prayer. If you’re willing to put that time and energy in, then that’s warranted. I see something taking place in the lives of these two grandchildren.
Warwick F:
It’s amazing, the power of unconditional love and support, instead of like I don’t know, a spring in a dry land. If a plant gets a little bit of unconditional love, it’s like they can change people. That’s what you do with the guys you work with and the girlfriends, wives of the guys you work with. I mean, it has an impact. I’m sure you see that.
Marvin C:
Yes, it does. Warwick, we’ve seen over pretty close to 5,000 men in the last 20 years that we’ve been in existence. It has a major impact on the lives of the children that are connected to these families.
Gary S:
That is a term, a perspective that we talk a lot about, Marvin, at Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible, the idea of the legacy that you leave and certainly your life of significance, your legacy is in the lives of those 5,000 men. As we get to the point now where we’re going to bring the plane in for a landing, I wanted to have you unpack a quote that I’ve seen you give, because we’ve been talking a lot about … You’ve talked a lot about your personal experience with struggling with your own fatherhood and then embracing your fatherhood.
Gary S:
We’ve talked about the way you’ve helped other men do that. Warwick talked a little bit about his situation, but backing up to a 30,000 foot level, you said something, and I want you to explain this to our listeners. You said that fatherlessness is like aids to society. Explain what you mean by that, because I think it’s a powerful metaphor for what the lack of involved fathers does in society.
Marvin C:
I’ll talk about the disease and then I’ll talk about the cure. I’ve often said that fatherlessness is like the AIDS virus. If you know anything about AIDS, AIDS doesn’t kill you. What it does, it breaks down your immune system, and the infection that you catch is what kills you. Well, fatherlessness is the same way. If you take a father out of the home, the family doesn’t die, but what it does is open the family up for infection, teenage pregnancy, at risk youth behavior, all of those things that has impacted the society in which we live in.
Marvin C:
What we believe in DADS is, one of the cures is, how do we reengage the father back into the lives of the children? And in some cases, maybe even the family, but I think that what we try to do is draw the attention to the father, how important his life is to the children that he’s fathered. I think that there’s not enough understanding for men to understand the value that they are to their children. Number one is, and I’m guilty of this, and most people in the world are, is we never listen to children.
Marvin C:
My wife showed me a prime example one day in our office. There was this father and this mother who had a five-year-old son, and my wife had the mother in her office, and I had the father in my office, and the child kept running back, saying, “Mommy, look at this. Mommy, look at this.” Then he’d run to the dad in my office and say, “Daddy, look at this, look at this.” That child showed the mother and the father, what Jeanette and I are pointing it out, the importance that both of them were to him. A lot of times when adults make those decisions, they don’t look at the importance of the father and the mother to that child’s life.
Marvin C:
They only see their own importance. That’s how I think if we can get people to understand the importance that both of them are to that child’s life, it could change the matter.
Warwick F:
Wow. That’s wonderful as we kind of begin to sum up here. I mean, a lot of people I’m sure in the Seattle Area and beyond look at what you do with DADS, Divine Alternative for Dads Services and say, well, Marvin, this is like a miracle. You’re changing families lives, fathers lives. Wow. I mean, how do you do it? Obviously, the Lord has his hand on everything you do, but what would you say, in summary, is some of the keys of why what you do makes such a massive difference?
Marvin C:
There’s a scripture that I came upon in my early days of recovery. This preacher, when I wasn’t familiar with the Bible, where to go, he said, “Just go to Psalms 119 and read that every day.” That’s 175 verses that I read every day, and I read them. Well, then there was two that jumped out at me that I think described it to the T for me. Psalms 119, the 67th verse says, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word.” I could see myself in that scripture, going astray. Then, a couple of verses down from that is the 71st verse, and the 71st verse says, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, or I might not have sought your way.”
Marvin C:
I said, that’s me all the way. That is me. I want folks to know that I believe that I could never get right enough with Christ to where I could make a difference in anybody’s life. But when he pointed me to those scriptures, I realized that the ground was level at the foot of the cross, and I had just as much of an opportunity as anybody else and I use those scriptures to let people know that you have the same opportunity. It’s about what you want to do though. You can’t blame that on anybody else. You have to make a choice. Nobody could stop you. That’s been the meat of my sermon.
Gary S:
I have been involved in the communications business long enough, and I’ve been a Christian long enough to know when the last word in a conversation is spoken, and you just spoke it, Marvin. Before we go, though, before I close, I want to give you the chance so our listeners can know more about DADS. How can they find DADS on the internet? Where can they go to learn more about your organization?
Marvin C:
Our web address is www.aboutdads.org. Again, that’s www.aboutdads.org.
Gary S:
Excellent. Warwick, any final thoughts before I close?
Warwick F:
Well, only it’s just remarkable what I hear, Marvin, talk about the work you’re doing with dads. You do all the practical things, which are really necessary in terms of helping dads get clean who have substance abuse issues, housing, negotiating with the whole child welfare system, but nobody changes without a reason. You give them a reason, a faith underpinning from your perspective and mine, a faith in Christ. You help them realize that they are fathers, and that has a spiritual eternal significance, legacy significance. You give them a reason to change.
Warwick F:
Nobody changes without a reason, and it’s even then it’s hard. It seems that the spiritual anchor, the underpinning is transforming lives. As you say, what’s exciting, it’s transforming lives of maybe grandkids, great, great-grandkids they might never know, but they will hear the stories of lives being changed and their great, great grandfather, or whoever it was, led the start of a shift in their family. I mean, that’s an amazing vision, amazing legacy that you have in so many people’s lives.
Marvin C:
Well, thank you.
Gary S:
That ding that you heard, listener, is the captain turning on the landing gears, that sign that says it’s time to land. So, we’re landing the plane at this moment. As I like to do at the end of episode, sometimes I’ll pull some key takeaways, three key takeaways. There was one moment here. I’m just going to go with one key takeaway from our conversation with Marvin Charles, and there was something that Marvin said when he was talking about going through his crucible and how he, on the other side of that crucible, he and his wife took what they learned going through their crucible and applied it to help others.
Gary S:
He used this phrase about … They had a victory. They had a victory over their own crucible, and from that, they’ve applied it to the creation of DADS. I think the takeaway on that point is your victory, regardless of what your crucible is, your victory in overcoming your crucible can be and often is the jumping off point for your life of significance. The lessons you learned and applied, and the actions you’ve taken in moving beyond the failure, setbacks, and missteps of your life can be offered to help others to do the same thing with their failures, their setbacks and their missteps.
Gary S:
Out of your pain can be birthed your purpose. That’s what we’ve just talked about for the last hour with Marvin Charles. Until we are together next time, listener, thank you for spending time with us. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you. On the app that you’re listening to this podcast right now, we’d ask that you’d click subscribe. That will ensure that you’ll never miss an episode and it will also ensure that we’re able to get really, truly, we hope hopeful and helpful content like our conversation with Marvin into the smartphones and the computer desktops of more people.
Gary S:
Again, until the next time that we are together, please remember that your crucible experience is painful. We know that. All three of us have been through crucibles of our own, but here’s the good news, that crucible experience that you’re going through, or maybe you’re starting to come out of is not the end of your story. In fact, as it was for Marvin, it can be the beginning of an entirely new story, an entirely more fulfilling story, an entirely life-changing story for you and for others, because where that story takes you, as you begin to write it, as you learn the lessons of your crucible and walk through them, that journey can take you to a totally different destination. That is a life of significance.
It’s no secret we live in a divided world, especially in the U.S. But disagreeing over issues and how best to solve the crucibles we face in our world and communities does not mean those who think differently than us are the enemy or evil. BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax explains the danger in demonizing “the other side” from the comfort of our own echo chambers, and the breakthroughs that can occur if we refuse to judge and commit to listen to and understand the views of those with whom we disagree. Seeking unity, he explains, creates opportunities and growth in our pursuit of lives of significance.
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Transcript
Warwick F:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Crucible Leadership. Don’t assume you know other people’s motives and what’s in their heart. It’s one thing to say, “I disagree with a policy.” Like, you might say, “I think that elementary schools in my state should be opened sooner than the government or other people saying they’re open.” They can meet legitimate policy disagreement, legitimate healthcare disagreement. But don’t assume the other side’s evil or wrong, that’s just dangerous when we get into these sorts of policy disagreements.
Gary S:
Evil is far too big a word, far too big a word to be used with such little discretion. It’s a very big word and it does, as you pointed out, it applies to certain things for sure, but most of the time when we have disagreements with someone over the kinds of issues that you’ve talked about, and we’ll continue to talk about here, it’s not evil that we’re talking about it’s disagreement. We’ve become, in some cases, so either entrenched or so kind of stickumed to our viewpoints that when someone comes along with a different viewpoint, it’s easy to characterize them, it’s too easy sometimes to characterize them as evil and that has real world ramifications.
Gary S:
Indeed, it does. Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co host of the show, the communications director for Crucible Leadership, and the owner of the voice that just ended that snippet you just heard. That clip comes from a conversation Warwick and I have on this week’s episode about the dangers of divisiveness, when it extends beyond disagreements over ideology and veers into losing sight of another person’s humanity. Warwick shares several tips about what we can all do to prevent that from happening, from making an intentional effort to push past the comfort zones of our media and relational echo chambers, to seeking first to understand not change the mind of someone with whom we disagree. The benefits of taking these tips to heart and putting them into practice can help you avoid crucibles, get through crucibles that have already occurred, and maybe just maybe find unlikely companions to join you as you pursue your life of significance.
Warwick F:
We live in a divided world where it seems like we can group ourselves into camps and there’s a tendency to view the other camp, whatever that might be as the enemy, not just that we disagree with them. But they’re the enemy, they’re bad people, they’re misguided and it creates a sense of hostility. I mean, certainly in the US this last year couldn’t have been more divided, politically, there was divisions of race that dates back hundreds of years, systemic racial issues. It’s really was the capstone in a sense was the assault on the Capitol building, I feel like it’s days ago, it doesn’t feel like it was that long ago.
Warwick F:
We live in Annapolis, Maryland, which is about 30 miles from the Capitol building, it’s not that far away, which was obviously a tragedy lives were lost and that’s taken division to a level that it should never get to. So there are those issues and even with things like health care, with COVID, everybody’s concerned, everybody wants to get the vaccine but there are divisions. There are some people who are very careful and don’t leave their homes and taking it very seriously. I have to say we probably are more on the careful end of the spectrum, and some of those people say, “Just listen to Dr. Fauci. It’s about the science.” Others say, “Look, you guys are being too cautious, we got to live our life.”
Warwick F:
Some people would go out and party which obviously some of us think is not the smartest thing in the world. But then you have divisions over more complex issues like the opening of schools. If you have elementary school kids, it’s been tough just to keep them locked down over the last year. So then you lose a year of education. So some people think kids aren’t as likely to get the COVID-19. So what do you do about school closings? What about restaurant and businesses that may go under because of strict lockdown?
Warwick F:
So even there, it’s easy to say just follow the science and it’s hard to disagree with that. But there are disagreements over science to a degree, there are disagreements over how that’s applied. So even with something like COVID-19 where you think, well, why would people disagree over that? It’s like, be sensible, be safe, wait for the vaccine. Well, it’s not that simple. From school closing to businesses to restaurants, that’s just one small example but it’s, I feel like in some sense you could say that certainly in this country and maybe beyond, people are as divided as they’ve been in decades, maybe since the Vietnam War, I don’t know but there is massive division.
Gary S:
With that division, I mean, it’s nothing new, right? Division over anything is nothing new and you know this if you have a family, or if you have a community, or if you have a business, I mean, we know that there’s division that occurs. But one of the things that you really wanted to address is this idea that you can disagree, I mean, I’ve heard it expressed as you can disagree without being disagreeable, but it’s the level of animosity that is ginned up by these disagreements. The working title for the blog that you’ve written on this subject is, Don’t Assume the Other Side is Evil. I think that’s where it’s yes, there’s tension, yes, there’s disunity but it goes to the point that the other person is not just wrong in our minds, sometimes the other person is evil and that really degrades relationship and community.
Warwick F:
That’s very true, and I want to just be clear here, I’m not saying that evil doesn’t exist in the world, I prefer not to try to call people evil because that means examining somebody’s soul and claiming what’s in their heart. I think from my faith based perspective, only God knows what’s in our hearts. But I think we can objectively look at actions and say those actions are evil acts. So whether it’s somebody like Stalin or Adolf Hitler in World War Two and three million Jews being killed, those are clearly evil acts. So it is possible to say that certain acts are reprehensible. Assaulting the Capitol, people dying, yes, can be correct to say that’s reprehensible.
Warwick F:
So while there is evil in the world, there are evil acts, I think it’s dangerous to accuse people who disagree with you as being “evil.” So labels get hurled around in our dialogue, people are called Nazis, fascists, socialists. I mean, those are dangerous terms. I mean, Nazis probably maybe one of those dangerous terms you can use that should not be used lightly and can be seen to minimize what happened in World War Two. So I mean, there is evil, but don’t always assume the other side’s evil be wary of using motives. We will get to this more in terms of some thoughts and pointers, but just don’t assume you know other people’s motives and what’s in their heart.
Warwick F:
It’s one thing to say I disagree with a policy. Like you might say, “I think that elementary schools in my state should be open sooner than the government or other people saying they’re open.” They can be legitimate policy disagreement, legitimate health care disagreement. But don’t assume the other side’s evil or wrong. That’s just dangerous when we get into these sorts of policy disagreements.
Gary S:
Evil is far too big a word far too big a word to be used with such little discretion. It’s a very big word, and it does, as you pointed out, it applies to certain things for sure, but most of the time when we have disagreements with someone over the kinds of issues that you’ve talked about, and we’ll continue to talk about here, it’s not evil that we’re talking about it’s disagreement. We’ve become, in some cases, so either entrenched or so kind of stickomed to our viewpoints that when someone comes along with a different viewpoint, it’s easy to characterize them, it’s too easy sometimes to characterize them as evil, and that has real world ramifications.
Gary S:
One of the things that you tried to unpack, and you do an excellent job of unpacking in the blog, which will be out if not by the time this airs, will be out soon thereafter and you can find that blog at crucibleleadership.com. One of the things you tried to do is not only explain how this comes about, what the challenges before us, but how to sort of how to meet that challenge and rise above that denigrating language, that disparaging language, that dangerous if you will, language of thinking of disagreements with yourself as evil.
Warwick F:
Absolutely true. I think one of the images that came in my mind of that you can have a forest like in California or in Australia, kind of earlier in the year. It’s funny, pre COVID there were bushfires down the east coast of Australia that were as bad as they’ve ever been, and that seemed to be the cataclysm of 2020. Well, who knew that a short while later that it wasn’t the cataclysm, we were entering COVID. But there’s a number of accelerants, if you will, that are causing these fires to be worse. Certainly in our political system, there are political action committees on the left and right and they have a vested interest in saying the other side is evil. Saying if the other side wins control of Senate, Presidency, Congress, whatever the issue is, the world’s going to end. They raise money, because you don’t raise money by saying, “Well, I think the other side has good points.” So our proposition is to find some harmony in the middle. Well, that just doesn’t do it for people, people often motivated out of anger and rage.
Gary S:
And fear.
Warwick F:
And fear. Absolutely. I mean, what do the political consultants say? The best ads are ones that are negative ads and appeal to people’s fear, because studies show it works.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
Therefore, positive ads may be uplifting, but don’t tend to work as much. Very sad to say, and then the other accelerant, if you will, is social media. Now, in the Vietnam War era, and gosh, I think probably it was only more in the early 2000s that social media began to take off from Facebook, Twitter, all these different mediums and social media. There are things you say on social media that you would never say to somebody to their face, or about somebody you don’t know. So the combination of money in politics, fueling division, profiting over division and social media, it makes the underlying tendency for people to stay in their people groups and only associate with people they know. It’s an accelerant, it makes it so much worse, those factors of money and politics and social media.
Gary S:
As we begin to segue into talking about actions we can take, things we can do to drop the rhetoric down and to avoid even the thought, the impulse of thinking that someone’s evil because they disagree with us. It’s important to sort of frame this up in the context of crucible leadership, in the context of crucibles. One of the things that can be an accelerant that is just circumstantial is a crucible moment, what we’re talking about, about the pandemic and the views of the pandemic that people have.
Gary S:
That’s a crucible, I’ve heard it described as a collective crucible that we go through, when we’re going through hard times, when we’re going through setbacks and failures and those kinds of things we are raw, and we can on social media, in relationships, lash out and think, not just the worst of someone who disagrees with us but we can think, the really absolute worst, they’re evil, there’s something innately not good about who they are. It’s not just a difference of opinion, it’s almost a difference in humanity, we dismiss them as not having humanity or not having the right to have their humanity acknowledged. I think in crucible moments, those situations become even more potentially incendiary.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I think that’s so true. I mean, if you’ve been fired by a boss or your company, sometimes you’ll think, well, maybe I had a role in that, often, you’ll be thinking, well, my boss is terrible, and awful. There’s a tendency to think when bad things happen to you that you’re sort of pure as driven snow, if you will, and the other side’s evil. Because accepting responsibility or that there could be issues that both of you have, I mean, that is human nature and probably the other side of it. Beyond that is, we all tend to be in different people groups. It could be where you grew up, it could be ethnic, it could be country, it could be cultural, urban versus rural.
Warwick F:
It’s easy to take on the views and philosophy of what other people group you are from, which is understandable. But then what’s not so good is assuming that people who are different than you whether it’s political viewpoint race or what have you is somehow wrong or somehow bad, there is this natural tendency, human tendency to congregate in people groups, and listen to those people groups and assuming the other people groups is somehow wrong or even worse than wrong.
Gary S:
Right. Self interest is not always in the public interest, if it’s taken to an extreme self interest. We are a pluralistic society, we are people with lots of different opinions and that is as good of a place to sort of segue, Warwick into the points that you’ve developed on just how to build unity in the midst of these diverse viewpoints and diverse people groups that we all live among, and that we haven’t as a collective been doing a very good job of in the last six months, 10 months, 12 months. We’ve got some work to do in this area for sure.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, and really the first point is what we’ve been talking about is, don’t assume the other side is wrong. When I say the other side, what does that mean? Well think of your own life. What people group do you think that you’re in? It could be racial, ethnic, it could be, “Well, I think of myself as an engineer and I’m not one of these creative folks who continually want to re-engineer everything and make my life miserable at work.” I mean, whatever people group is relevant to you and really, the question is in my mind, in which group that you’re in? Often you could be in a nationality group, an ethnic group, a profession group, a sporting group.
Warwick F:
There’s all sorts of groups, multiple groups that we self identify with. Which one of those do you have the most angst in? Some groups, it’s not really a big deal. Some people get really hot and bothered about sports, others like sports but the world’s not going to end if their team loses.
Gary S:
Well, I don’t know, I feel sometimes like my world’s going to end if my Cubs or Packers lose, but that’s a different podcast.
Warwick F:
Well, I’m with you. As Australian, I’m a huge cricket fan. Australians care about cricket the way Canadians care about hockey. So it’s easy to get too emotionally involved in sports, which would be another podcast.
Gary S:
Indeed.
Warwick F:
So I’m with you. But whatever that is, whatever the other side means for you, which depends on which people group you feel that you’re in that you have the most angst about, don’t assume that they’re wrong or evil or wrong headed. So that really is the launching point of really the first key point is, try to understand the other side. First step is don’t assume they’re wrong and evil. Okay, so having made that leap of faith, innocent until proven guilty, then kind of the next step is well, try to understand them. Where this is hard is that we live in a not only divided society, but a divided media society.
Warwick F:
So people increasingly tend to watch their news channel or read their online news of choice that agrees with their opinion. It could be political, it could be social, and that just increases your internal rage. The other side is awful, well, I read it online. I watch my news channel. They agree with me. Well, how about watching another news channel even if you disagree with it, or read another online source, another media outlet and just get perspectives from the other side. Even if you don’t agree with it. It’s like, “Well, I disagree with 70% of it, but 30% of what they said they actually have a point which I hadn’t considered.” So that’s one thing is trying to understand the other side and one initial way is just by viewing media and getting input from different sources, different books. I mean, we have a lot of information in our fingertips, utilize that opportunity.
Gary S:
Absolutely. Echo chambers are dangerous places to live. They’re not just to hear reinforcements of what you believe all the time, it doesn’t challenge you and it goes against the grain of what we talk about at crucible leadership all the time. What do we say in crucible leadership? You’ve been through a crucible, the key to moving beyond your crucible’s to learn the lessons of your crucible. Slow down stop, what was my fault? What is trying to be taught me in this experience? How can I learn from this experience?
Gary S:
Similar thing can play out when you hear things that you don’t agree with, if you’re only consuming that which you agree with, you’re not being challenged to overcome your feelings about the other side, I wrote Warwick an op-ed a little over a year ago for a publication, and this is one of the things I said. I just want to read this because it goes in great line with what you’ve just said in the last couple of points. I wrote this. It’s only in seeing the “other guy” as just as deserving as we are of respect and an opinion and the right to advocate for his or her position that we can ever hope to find our way to civility in public discourse. The immediate and ongoing demonization of those who think differently than we do, whose values don’t align with our own may make for boffo ratings but it does nothing to help us persuade others to the course of action we believe to be right. Worse, it degrades the greatest and freest country in the world.
Warwick F:
I mean, that’s so true. It’s funny, I was just thinking about this this morning. I can think of a figure from history, Winston Churchill, that nobody could accuse him of not having strong opinions. He had very strong opinions.
Gary S:
Yes.
Warwick F:
And was one of the most eloquent advocates of his opinions in the English speaking world. His speeches are as good as any. I mean, Lincoln was up there, but you think of Lincoln, Churchill, their ability to express themselves in a way that was compelling was almost unprecedented. But yet, he obviously in the 1930s is railing against pacifism and saying, “We need to wake up to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany and we need to rearm.” Everybody thought he was silly old Winston and warmonger and just ignoring him. But yet, he never took disagreements personally.
Warwick F:
So later when he was prime minister, there was I can think of three different people that he was very magnanimous, with. Stanley Baldwin, a former prime minister in the ’30s of Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who famously said, “I’ve met Mr. Hitler and we will have peace in our time.” Which, one of the colossally terrible statements.
Gary S:
He’s waving his piece of paper, I can still see him in the newsreels, right? Waving his peace of paper.
Warwick F:
Exactly needed a good PR guy or somebody to say, “Don’t say that. Are you really sur?” But you know, he would try to help them where he could, meet with them. He didn’t hold it personally and later in the supreme ignominy if you will, when he lost the 45 election against Clement Attlee from the Labour Party who was advocating national health care, prosperity, people are tired of war, and I get why people would have voted for him. People said, “Oh, Attlee, what a terrible person he is to Churchill.” He said, “Look, I may disagree with his policies, but he’s our prime minister, how you dare you speak to him that way.”
Warwick F:
So here was a classic case of a man with unbelievably strong opinions but he didn’t hold it personally, he didn’t talk about his adversaries at least politically as evil and was magnanimous and charitable to them personally, that’s really rare. So that’s really, I think, a model of don’t impugn other people’s motives.
Gary S:
Right, and the idea, so the first two points that we’ve kind of talked about here about how do you not treat those who disagree with you as evil, the first is kind of widening, right? It’s opening up the spectrum of our inputs. Don’t assume they’re evil and then, as you take in information, don’t live in an echo chamber, we’re all on social media or in news media, you’re only consuming those people who affirm your beliefs, have people who will challenge those beliefs. The third point that you talk about, Warwick is so important in interpersonal relationships in particular, and that is the need to listen, which is a critical part, I note of, in fact, it’s a chapter in your book, Crucible Leadership coming out in the fall from Morgan James Publishing.
Warwick F:
Indeed.
Gary S:
There’s a chapter on listening, it’s a key part of overcoming a crucible and it’s a key part of overcoming this impulse that we have sometimes to think of people who disagree with us as evil.
Warwick F:
It’s very true. I mean, it obviously it starts with not impugning other people’s motives, it helps if you can read stuff online or on TV, view things on TV from people with different perspectives than you. But I think it’s inevitable in our day and age, we’re going to come across actually real live humans that disagree with us, because we live in a diverse world of diverse opinion, diverse people groups. So that’s where I think it’s very helpful to actually listen, to really listen to people, try to understand their life experience, their heritage, their background.
Warwick F:
We all have different viewpoints for a reason. I can think of the whole, I think I briefly mentioned it earlier. The whole urban, rural kind of background. If you grow up in the US in a more rural area, you might be a proponent of you have friends and neighbors that will help you but ultimately, you’re responsible for your own life, your own job, your own livelihood, the so called kind of rugged individualism because it’s all about everybody pulling themselves up from the bootstraps, we don’t need government. The whole philosophy goes with that.
Warwick F:
Or there can be more of an urban city viewpoint in which there’s often been systemic racial issues and challenges. I mean, obviously that exists in all areas. But there can be a viewpoint where government’s not necessarily bad or evil, and there there to try to promote equality, and inclusion and fairness and people who are impoverished need to be helped. So those are fundamentally different viewpoints. But objectively, maybe there’s some elements of truth in both. So rather than just say, “Oh, people who have this other viewpoint than me are wrong and evil.” How about listening to them? If you’re from more of a rural area and you meet somebody more from an urban area, so we vote politically very differently help me understand your perspective. Why do you vote the way you do? Why do you have a perspective on the role of government? Which may be fundamentally different than me, help me understand. And that’s just almost never happens.
Warwick F:
If you approach a dialogue with respect and humility, it’s funny, some of the other things I’ve been thinking about is there are some underlying characteristics in the sense of character qualities that are important. If you approach this dialogue with somebody who looks different, thinks different, acts different, believes different from a standpoint of humility, a standpoint of empathy, vulnerability. Help me understand if you say, well, help me understand because I know you’re an idiot, it’s not going to be very effective. If you say, help me understand and they really believe you do and keep trying they might say, “You’re so different than me, there’s no way you want to understand my perspective or my history.” Which there might be issues that go back hundreds of years or more.
Warwick F:
If you approach it with humility and empathy real dialogue can happen but it requires a certain soul care, soul examination to be able to approach things with humility rather than with anger and self vindication or vindictiveness. So there’s heart work that has to go first.
Gary S:
Because the end goal of that conversation needs to be, what can I understand? Not how can I hammer the other person with my beliefs. It’s, we’ve lost I think in some great sense what argument is truly all about and that is to try to persuade another person. When we’re talking to someone, a true argument like a rhetorical argument, like a forensics debate is you’re trying to convince people, and we’ve lost that sense, I think, where we want to make clear what we believe but not listen to what someone else believes. I think one of the key things to do in these conversations, and you summed it up well, we need to lay our ideology down long enough to get to know the other person’s humanity. Because from that, we can learn some things and learning some things is again, from a crucible leadership perspective, learning, listening are not just good things, they’re essential things to move beyond those moments that can be the most trying of our lives.
Warwick F:
I mean, I can think of an example in my own life that I talk about in the book, as you mentioned coming out this fall, where listening, that whole chapter really was birthed in that life experience in which as listeners know, I grew up in this very large hundred and fifty year old family media business with papers the equivalent of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, TV, radio stations, I was the fifth generation. Turmoil and division in my family going back generations. So in 1976, when I was 15, some of the other family members threw my dad out as chairman of the company.
Warwick F:
Well, I felt that was wrong, unconscionable, It was very clear to me who was right, who was wrong. My dad was I loved very much, was a righteous person who was persecuted unfairly. So that was my position and not consciously but subconsciously what led up to the $2.25 billion takeover 11 years later in ’87 wasn’t conscious, was look what these people did to my father, we need to bring back the company in the ideals of the founder and management’s not good. I had this whole perspective and I never really dialogued with other members of my family, obviously at 15 that’s a bit, a lot to expect.
Warwick F:
When I was 26, coming back from Harvard Business School, I mean, still young but I was so convinced by my parents’ perspective and their version of history, that I knew who was the good guys and the bad guys, who was right, who was wrong and there was never any dialogue with other family members to say, “Look, this is what I’ve heard my perspective, I’d love to hear what your perspective of why you removed my dad as chairman and what your views of the company and the future.” I never did that. Now I’m thinking, I still don’t think it was right that they threw my dad out as chairman, maybe there was another way of doing it. But I never really took the time to understand the other perspective. So yeah, I mean, I’ve thought a lot about that, of not making assumptions about somebody else’s viewpoint.
Gary S:
Yeah, that leads to the next two points, I think, to discuss on steps we can take to create a more civil community in both our small C community and large C community that you talk about, and you hit on both of them with that example. One is don’t impugn other people’s motives, and you just acknowledge that you kind of did that with the people who dismissed your dad as chairman, and then seeking to understand maybe at 15 you’re not emotionally developed enough to try to understand why it was maybe the decision to have your dad removed as chairman, but those two things kind of go hand in hand. There’s impugning of other people’s motives, that’s a slippery slope that you can start sliding down that can lead you to say, “The person who did those things is evil.” Seeking first to understand if you don’t do that, you’re kind of hitting a brick wall and that’s easy to go, “That person’s evil.”
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah, not impugning other people’s motives, seeking first to understand. Seeking first to understand is a very radical concept. I mean, it’s pretty revolutionary and it really comes from St. Francis of Assisi, who said, in his Prayer of St. Francis, “That we should seek more to understand then be understood.” Now, in some cases, you could say, “Look, that’s crazy. There’s been some cases systemic persecution for hundreds of years. Are you kidding me?” So, I would say, this is a general philosophy, and how you apply it individually one could debate.
Warwick F:
But the basic concept is, we tend to go into a discussion, if we ever get there, which we typically don’t, because we stay in our echo chamber and read our own media. So we don’t even get into a middle ground where we can have a dialogue, if we do where they’re haranguing other people for how they’re wrong and evil and we’re right, we’re yelling at each other. So if we get to human contact with others it’s often yelling and trying to prove we’re right.
Warwick F:
So let’s say you happen to get in some ground with other people who are different than you or think differently, just rather than to say, which is easy to say, “Look, the first thing we need to do is you need to understand me, I need to be understood, because unless I’m understood I refuse to listen to you.” You often hear that in our society, and in some cases maybe there’s fair reason for that. But as a general rule, the bigger man, the bigger woman, the person who has maybe more courage, if you will, more humility takes a very radical approach in saying, “Look, I’m pretty angry about a bunch of things but I am going to park that at the door and I’m going to start with, so look, I know we have different viewpoints, I’d love first to understand why you have that viewpoint? Where does it come from?” Talk about your background, is it parents, society, friends and neighbors, help me understand not just your perspective, but why you have that perspective and why that’s maybe part of your heart, identity. You don’t have to use all those words, but start with trying to understand the other person first. That is radical, and they might be kind of blown away.
Warwick F:
It’s like, excuse me, you don’t want yell at me, you don’t want to give me your three best points of why your argument is true. Who are my favorite commentators, really starting with that one. You’re starting with, help me understand, and you got to do it with humility. It can’t be some manipulative game because people will pick that up. That is almost unprecedented and unheard of, it’s radical and revolutionary to do what St. Francis advocates.
Gary S:
I don’t know if this will embarrass you or what it will do. But one of the things I’ve heard you say more than pretty much anything else is when you describe yourself that you interact with people with questions. You have said on more than one occasion, you’ve said Warwick that someone will say to you after a meeting, “Well, those are really insightful points that you made Warwick.” And then you’ll think what?
Warwick F:
I’ll say, I don’t know what you’re talking about I was just asking questions.
Gary S:
Right. I mean, the idea of asking questions that is rarer. I mean, go to social media, we don’t ask any questions on social media, social media is a one way street. I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, I think this, and then if we deviate off to a side road, or an off ramp, it’s, and you’re wrong if you don’t think this. Whereas what you’re saying is think in questions, look to understand the other person, find out why they believe that way and I would argue, if you believe the other person, whoever that is, “the other side” the other person is evil that’s one of the reasons why we don’t want to find out what they think because we don’t think it’s worth understanding. Back off of thinking that they’re evil, that opens you up to wanting to understand what they have to say because they have the same humanity that you have.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I mean, it helps to be curious. I like to think I’m a curious person that loves to learn, and I have strong opinions about a whole bunch of things. I typically prefer not to harangue people with my opinions, and maybe in my own home where we’re chatting about things over the dinner table. That’s different. But everybody does that. That’s fair game. Anybody can feel free to express their opinions. But I mean, I’m naturally curious and I think to develop as a human being, it helps to understand perspectives of people who are different than us and think differently, because it makes us richer, richer people, we learn more.
Warwick F:
So I think, and that’s a high value of me is, I think I’ve heard somebody talk about in one of the podcasts we had on talked about intentional curiosity. I love that phrase, because I think we do need to be intentionally curious the world would be a better place if we were more intentionally curious.
Gary S:
That is a great on ramp to the final part of our conversation, and that is, what are the benefits? Okay, we’ve talked about, here’s the situation we’re in, it is rife with division. We’ve talked about ways that we individually can help move beyond that division, we can take that crucible that we all find ourselves in with a division in our communities in our country, how we can apply some lessons, how we can apply some tactics, do some things to help tamp down the division. Now comes what’s the benefit of that? Why try to do that? What is the upshot? How does that make us a better place?
Warwick F:
I really think that unity creates opportunity, and you have to have immense courage in our day and age, want to go for unity. Certainly in the political world that we live in is a very good example of the cost of unity. The cost of compromise is massive and very rarely happens. In this country and in others certainly here. If you talk to somebody on the other side of the aisle politically, and try to form a compromise, you will be seen as a sell out by your party. You’ve got a very high probability of being primaried, and depending on how safe a seat is for your side, that primary probably has a really fair chance of winning. So you try and compromise your political career has a good chance of being threatened if not over and you will be assailed in the negative advertising by the purists on your side.
Warwick F:
So the cost of trying to be unity is quite likely to be your job, well, that’s that takes a lot of courage. Now sometimes maybe the better angels in your district might say, look I disagree with my congressman or woman, but you know what? I respect the fact that they stick to their principles. It can work, but I don’t pretend it’s an easy sell. So that’s sort of one example. But there’s so many things in life that if we try to just understand the other side, like I think of one example, I think in the northwest area of the US, Oregon, Washington State there’s a big logging industry and you often have groups, environmental groups that want to protect the climate, which is a noble cause and protect the beautiful forests that are there. Then you have companies and folks that work in the logging industry that say, “That’s great, but my livelihood depends on being able to cut trees down. So you’re putting me out of work, I don’t have food to put on my family’s table, to pay the rent.”
Warwick F:
Well, it’s also important to try to not put people out because people matter too. So the question is, can you come up with a middle ground in which you both protect people’s jobs, but somehow protect the environment too? Those sides are not necessarily evil or wrong, both sides have reasonable opinions. So it’s too easy to get into this us or them. That’s one good example where you just trying, so okay, the other side is not evil, respect their opinion. It’s not easy to square circles I realize that, but people of goodwill can sometimes find compromises that may not be perfect, each side will have to give. But really, without some degree of unity, you get in this endless shouting match, which typically, nothing gets done and nobody gets helped and that’s typically what happens in politics in many countries, is all these things that everybody knows needs to be fixed but because we’re too entrenched in our camps, stuff doesn’t get done, whether it’s healthcare, the economy, what have you.
Warwick F:
So, there can be growth, there can be opportunity if you try to seek honorable compromise. Honorable compromise doesn’t mean selling out, it means understanding the other side’s perspective and maybe one and one can equal three. It can be in politics, it could be in business. You can have people that say, “Well, this is the way we’ve always done it in this company.” The younger entrepreneurial folks are like, “No, but we want to make this great change.” Well, maybe you can preserve the identity, the ethos of the company, while still using new technology and maybe there’s a middle ground. I mean, this sense of division isn’t just politics, it’s in business, it’s in society, it’s in a neighborhood, it’s everywhere. Try to understand the other perspective.
Gary S:
One of the goals I say all the time when you have disagreements on even substantive issues and approaches to those issues, is there a patch of grass that we both can stand on where we’re able to work toward a common good solution? The example that comes to my mind when I think of that, is there a patch of grass that we can stand on is the first President Bush, George H. W. Bush, and President Clinton. Now, when President Clinton beat President Bush, there was no love lost, there was no love lost between them.
Gary S:
President Bush was not happy to be a one term president, but years later, when President Bush’s son George W. Bush was president, there was a situation that came up where he brought together his father and President Clinton and they worked on some missions together for the good of the country and in doing so they didn’t just accomplish things that were good for the country, they became friends to the point that people would suggest President Bush, the elder, would suggest that he might have been in many ways the father that President Clinton lacked growing up, and President Clinton never corrected him on that. That is an amazing example of finding a patch of grass to stand on, that first leads to good policy decisions, first leads to good things for the community and the country, and then leads to friendship.
Warwick F:
Yeah, Gary, that is an absolutely excellent example. It really, both men are respected, both former presidents are respected for that. I mean, just to help listeners remember in ’92 when the first president George H. W. Bush lost, that was sort of amazing because he, by most historians account handled the first Gulf War well, he united NATO and a bunch of countries against what Saddam Hussein did in invading Kuwait. Well, at one point, he had like 80%, 90% approval. I mean, it was off the charts, but then maybe some economic issues, his approval rating fell, and then he had a third party candidate and Ross Perot that siphoned off about 15%.
Warwick F:
So if it hadn’t been for Ross Perot, there’s a pretty good chance Bush would have won. So Bush could have felt maybe justifiably, this isn’t fair, I did a good job and I am one term president, which as we know, nobody wants to be one term president and here’s this Bill Clinton, Governor of Arkansas, I mean, okay, Rhodes scholar, Oxford smart guy, but he could have felt very miffed and could have taken it very personally. As you say, when George W. Bush, President H. W. Bush’s son called them to do some relief work, I think it was after the tsunami in Indonesia.
Gary S:
Right. Right.
Warwick F:
They became friends almost like, I think Bill Clinton would joke, yeah, I’m sort of a son by another mother or black sheep of the family.
Gary S:
Right.
Warwick F:
He joked he was invited to the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine and they became friends, which is remarkable that that would happen given that President George H. W. Bush, he minded greatly losing, it wasn’t a small thing and this is the guy that beat him. It’s an incredible example of just don’t take it personally and they found ways to work together for things they both thought were important.
Gary S:
They could not have done that, let’s be clear in the context of what we’ve been discussing, they could not have done that. President Bush, H. W. Bush, Republican, President Clinton, Democrat, very different ideologies, they could not have done that if their ideologies led them to believe that the other was evil.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I can think of another example of that nature in my own family. My dad was chairman of Fairfax Media, John Fairfax Limited as then was, I don’t know, maybe 40, 45 years, a long period of time and he was also intellectually curious. He would like to meet with people of different faith perspectives, different political perspectives. So a friend of his was a former prime minister, Bob Hawke, he was a member of the Labor Party. In fact, when they became friends, he was head of the trade unions and Bob Hawke was a brilliant man, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, but certainly in his trade union days was seen as pretty left wing.
Warwick F:
My dad would probably be conservative, I wouldn’t say rabidly so but more on that end of the spectrum. So their political viewpoints couldn’t be more different, but yet they became good friends. Yet, politically, there’s a lot they didn’t agree with but yet, obviously, they both respected each other’s intellect. So that to me was remarkable that they could become good friends despite the fact that had very different worldviews.
Gary S:
Yeah, and I have a similar story in my own professional career. I worked for a nonprofit that had an ideological footprint, which it is doesn’t matter and in sort of stepping on with that ideological footprint, I as a PR guy for that that organization got in lots of debates in media with someone who represented another group which had a different ideological viewpoint. You could find me and this individual in stories a lot, arguing with one another across the notebook of the reporter in question. It turns out that the individual for whom I worked was getting an award and an honor and there was going to be a ceremony and the guy with whom I would argue in the press was protesting the honor, and he announced he was protesting the honor.
Gary S:
Well, I was sick of arguing across the notebook with him. So I called him up and I said, “Hey, we’re going to be in the same city, do you want to have dinner?” And we had dinner, and we sat down. One of the things that we discovered is that despite our ideology being different, our backgrounds were quite the same. We were both in public relations, we had far more in common to the point that you make in the blog, we had far more in common than we didn’t. The only thing that we really didn’t have in common was our ideology, and that wasn’t the whole sum and substance of who we were.
Gary S:
So fast forward through that experience, we became friends. He lived in New York, when I would go to New York, I’d stopped by I’d say hi, we would have conversations to the point, Warwick that when I published my book, on sort of my manifesto on what makes good public relations, this individual endorsed it. He endorsed the book, and said very nice things about me. He’s a PR guy I’m a PR guy. He wrote, “I’ve had the misfortune of being in PR battles with Gary Schneeberger and let me tell you, it’s no fun because he’s the best there is.” That is the kind of thing that you get when you lay your ideology down and you look at the humanity of someone.
Warwick F:
I mean, can that can you think of an endorsement that’s better than that? I mean, that’s the other side saying, I don’t like doing battle with this guy, because he’s too good. Doesn’t feel fair. I mean, you couldn’t have written a better endorsement than that. Right?
Gary S:
Right, and neither one of us to this day have changed our views on the issues that we would have disagreements about in the press, and we had disagreements after we became friends in the press. The point was, he didn’t think I was evil, I didn’t think he was evil and one of the reasons why that was able to happen is we sat down across a dinner table from one another and just talked as two human beings. Finding the humanity is key.
Warwick F:
That’s remarkable. I think it’s worth listeners pondering the story that Gary shared. What would have happened if Gary in New York from time to time, if he’d never reached out to this guy and said, “Let’s have dinner.” What would Gary and this other guy have missed out? A lot. They never would have known that they had more in common than they thought that endorsement wouldn’t have happened, obviously, there’s no way he would have endorsed you without that dinner and without that dialogue, you would have been seen as the enemy. So think of what would have been lost to you and this other person without you taking the remarkable step of saying, “Let’s have dinner.” Right?
Gary S:
Even in that context, I remember coming back to work after I did that, had that first dinner, and one of my colleagues came up to me and asked me if I at dinner said, “Did you talk to him about the chilling effects of these policy proposals that he’s doing?” I still remember what I said, Warwick, I said, “I haven’t thought about it since then.” I still remember what I said to my colleague, I said, “No, I did not take the time to whack him with my worldview mallet while I was trying to understand his humanity.”
Gary S:
Sometimes, many times, there’s a time to argue passionately for what you believe and there’s also a time to lay that worldview mallet down and have a discussion, a dialogue that helps you get to the humanity of someone.
Warwick F:
I think those are words to live by. So listeners, little role reversal. Just listen to what Gary just said, don’t whack people with your worldview mallet while you’re trying to create a relationship with them and understand them. Think of those words, words to live by. So true.
Gary S:
Well, I don’t know what to do now because that’s normally what I say then we wrap up. That’s a good place to kind of put the plane down on the tarmac. If you summed up Warwick this discussion from top to bottom, what do you want listeners to kind of walk away with overall? As we’ve talked about, here’s the situation we face in the country, in our communities right now, here’s some steps we can take to lessen that, to not think of people as evil. Here are the benefits of not thinking of the other side as evil. What’s the summary that you want to leave people with?
Warwick F:
I think people who just stay in their people groups, their ideology group, read own media read, watch their own TV stations, social media, listen to their own people all the time, you’re missing out a lot. Your viewpoints could grow, evolve, more than that your understanding of people who are different than you, think different than you could grow immensely. Well, think about this country, if people tried, had the courage to fight the underlying interests that make money over division, think what would happen with our country, if you had people willing to listen, and work with other people?
Warwick F:
If enough people do it and people can see, boy, some good things are happening, then people will begin to not listen to the negative echo chambers that are out there. It just takes a few people standing together for principled compromise, principled, what’s that center ground which is good for the country? It’s not just about the country think about businesses. Very often we surround ourselves with people that look like us to believe that what we do, how about having diversity of background of race, and political viewpoint? Economic, social, every other viewpoint. Respect other people’s viewpoints you might disagree passionately, but diversity means diversity in every possible conception of that word. Very few people do that.
Warwick F:
People, certainly when it comes to ideology, they like mixing even in the workplace. Workplaces are not that diversified, certainly in many ways they’re not diversified enough racially, or background. But they’re certainly also not very diversified in some cases when it comes to political viewpoint. There’s tremendous opportunity for growth. I mean, growth often happens when you have diverse viewpoints, coming together, brainstorming and coming up with ideas and solutions that never could have happened if you’re just talking to people with your own viewpoint.
Gary S:
Now that’s good, because now the roles are back. You’ve just had the last word and I get to wrap. So that’s great. Thank you for that, and thank you listener for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m going to add a little bit to what Warwick just said and I think Warwick will agree with me when I do this, to give you an extension of the homework that he gave you. Don’t whack the other guy with your worldview mallet and in fact, go out, find someone, maybe it’s on social media, find someone in your business, find someone with whom you have deep disagreements, and make it a point to reach out and have a conversation and to truly try to understand them. Ask more questions than you make statements and that can help deflate a crucible that you might be on the edge of creating or maybe you’ve already created in terms of relationship. Also it can help knock down, tamp down this divisiveness that we talked about at the top of the show.
Gary S:
So until the next time that we are together, please one, go to crucibleleadership.com to check out Warwick’s blog on this. Please hit subscribe to the podcast on the app on which you’re listening to it right now. We’d also love it if you’d go and you’d leave a rating. If you enjoy what you hear on Beyond the Crucible, leave a rating what you think about it. Heck, if you don’t enjoy it, you can leave a rating too. But we’d prefer if you did enjoy it, you left a rating but anybody can leave a rating, we’re not saying what kind of rating you have to leave. But if you find these dialogues to be interesting, go leave a rating at a podcast app and let us know how we’re doing. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we want to know. We want to know how we’re doing so that we can make this an experience that you enjoy.
Gary S:
Remember, until the next time we are together that your crucible experiences are difficult. They’re trying and they’re challenging. They do indeed change the trajectory of your life, but they’re not the end of your story. They are in every case, they can be the beginning of your story, and they can be the beginning of the best part of your story. Because where they lead when you learn the lessons of them is to a greater destination than you could have imagined before the crucible and that is to a life of significance.
