His big-deal career and its big-money perks left him unsatisfied. So he stopped seeing success as outperforming others and started serving others. Today he’s the best-selling author of The Millennial Whisperer and making a lasting impact on the leaders of tomorrow.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the podcast, and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And, you have clicked play. We really hope you’ve clicked subscribe and then maybe you’ve shared with folks on a podcast that deals in what we call crucible experiences, those moments in life most of us if we’re honest with ourselves know all too well. They’re painful, they can come out of nowhere sometimes, they are failures, they’re setbacks. They are those things that knock us off balance, can knock us off the trajectory of the life that we’re on.
Gary S:
But we talk about them here not to sort of wallow in the pain of them. We examine the pain of them, but we talk about them here as the title suggests, to help you move beyond them. And, the reason for doing that is that we believe that beyond those crucibles can be some of your best living, where you can truly find a life of significance. And with me as always, is the architect of Crucible Leadership without whom we would not have a Beyond the Crucible podcast, the host of the show, Warwick Fairfax.
Warwick F:
Thanks, Gary, very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
And our guest today Warwick, is Chris Tuff, which is a fabulous last name. I’m very jealous Chris, about your last name. Tuff is an awesome last name. Chris Tuff, is the author of the USA today bestseller The Millennial Whisperer. In his book, Chris offers research based time tested strategies for bridging communication gaps between millennials and the rest of the workforce. Millennials are on track to make up three quarters of the workforce by 2030.
Gary S:
With that being true, it’s crucial for employers to harness the strengths of this generation and help develop strong leaders for future generations. In his book, Chris, debunks myths about millennials while providing an in depth look at generational stereotypes that do tend to be true. He shares practical real world tested solutions to better understand millennials and effectively recruit, retain, and motivate this passionate generation. Welcome Chris, and Warwick, take it away.
Warwick F:
Well, Chris, thanks so much for being here. I love what you do with millennials helping organizations understand that generation, I think it’s 20s maybe 30 somethings which is a crucial generation, and as you’ve mentioned, just is poised to be huge proportion of the workforce. I love the titles of your books, Millennial Whisper and your new one which we’ll talk about here in a bit, Save Your Asks, all about kind of networking and listening.
Gary S:
Very good work by the way, we get it right, Save Your Asks, with a KS on the end.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
I was trying to pronounce it correctly.
Gary S:
Bravo. Well done.
Warwick F:
Wouldn’t want people to have a different understanding of what the book is about. Obviously, saving your behind is probably not a bad idea either but that would be a different book.
Chris T:
Yeah, it would.
Warwick F:
But anyway, so Chris, tell us a bit about yourself, how you grew up, and how that led to kind of your crucible which really shifted the direction in your life.
Chris T:
Sure.
Warwick F:
But tell us a bit about who is Chris Tuff?
Chris T:
Absolutely. And, thanks so much for having me. It’s a privilege to be here. One of the big things for me is I grew up in an overachieving family, the youngest of six kids, my dad was a turnaround specialist, CEO, kind of turnaround guy. And, I say to everyone that one of the best things that my dad ever did for me was he never set me up with a job interview. And, I graduated from Vanderbilt University top of my class 2003, and it took me 64 failed interviews until I found lucky 65th which was at a digital advertising firm, right as we’re coming back from the .com bust.
Chris T:
But it was through that experience that I was able to be put into kind of this Plinko game of jobs in life that was somewhere close to my own passion and purpose. And it took a couple of lateral jobs, moves, until I became one of the first kind of early people working directly with Mark Zuckerberg and the social media, emerging media, social media kind of arena if you will. And I use that as my first… I like to call it currency, right?
Chris T:
We all have our own currencies that we put off into the world, and that was my first currency that was pretty close to my own passions and my own purpose, but that’s what brought me to my firm where I’m a partner. I’ve been there for almost 12 years now. And what happened three years ago was, on the outside I was killing it, right? Sheryl Sandberg, would have lunch with me when she was coming in town, and I was flying all over the world and hobnobbing with the who’s who, But inside I was suffering.
Chris T:
And there are two things what ended up kind of becoming my rock bottom catalyst moment. Going back to my favorite professor in college, Bryan Griffith, who actually helped me with the Millennial Whisperer, something’s always stuck with me and crisis catalyzes change. And, when I had a little bit of time to look at my life I was feeling incredibly unfulfilled. And a couple things changed in the month off that I took from work, and one of those things was my metric of success. And, my metric of success was beating my older overachieving brothers in the game of life.
Chris T:
And, I changed that to success being judged on a daily basis. When my head hits the pillow at night, “Did I have the impact that I intended?” And I can happily say three and whatever years later, that I’ve had a successful day every single day since changing that. But the other thing that I really started to shift was really having impact through people. And, it was through kind of that leadership and being that servant leader that we’re hearing more and more about, that I was not only feeling more fulfilled, but I look around me and I was like, “These millennials are awesome.”
Chris T:
I got a team of 30 of them. They’re some of the best out there. And it was actually on an executive retreat with Tommy Breedlove, he was leading the retreat, and we didn’t know each other at the time. And I introduced myself and I was like, “I don’t really know what I do anymore but we’re 390 employees, mostly millennials but I’ve kind of become the millennial whisperer.” And I shared my story, I talked about my rock bottom moment. I was very vulnerable and I sat down and Tommy looks at me with his big blue eyes and his Southern drawl, “You better write that book.” And I was like, “What book?” He goes, “The Millennial Whisperer.”
Chris T:
And it was in that moment that The Millennial Whisperer was born, and I did a pretty quick sprint to write and publish it over an eight month period. And we’re 14 months on the other side of it, and it’s brought me to stages like Nike. I’ve been on the main stage at Nike and working with some of the world’s largest and most prestigious corporations, but also small businesses. I’ve worked with some dental clinics locally as well as some restaurants, and what’s so amazing is my favorite quote from this book is, “Millennials aren’t the problem they just expose all the problems.” And, there’s a lot of things that we talk about out there but that’s kind of the journey of what took me into being a published author.
Warwick F:
Gosh, what a great story. It’s not everybody who grows up with a dad is an entrepreneur turnaround manager. Those guys tend to be very driven, very focused, take no prisoners coming through because don’t have time to wait, don’t have time to other than action, action now, was your dad kind of like that image you have of a turnaround guy.
Chris T:
And wait. So, also British. So, he… Yeah, and an old Etonian. He went to Eton. And here I am, right? I come out. I’m the youngest of six kids. I’m an identical twin. Right?
Warwick F:
Wow.
Chris T:
So, kind of struggling for my own identity, and the most emotionally in tune sensitive kid. It’s like, “Where did this kid come from?” So the juxtaposition of that, and my dad was always really interesting, and I think one of my big things out there, and I see it actually even with my bosses is there’s this constant yearning for that validation. Right?
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Chris T:
And, I think it’s actually indicative of why I wrote this book because you’re finding that from a generational standpoint. There’s a lot of similarities there and it’s important to look at that relationship of parent and child for especially the expectations of younger millennials and Gen Z-ers, because what they’re craving more than anything else is real connection with their bosses. You can’t just be the bossy boss.
Chris T:
You’ve got to also be a mentor and coach to them, and you’ve got to take that. We’ve always been brought up that you can’t be friends with your boss, right? And that line goes out the window, not always out the window but everyone on your team wants to feel like you have a vested interest in their life. So go ahead and follow them on social media, connect with them on a Monday, say, “Meg, I saw on Instagram that cat you adopted. That’s adorable. Tell me more about it.” Right?
Chris T:
That creates a real connection. And, I use my relationship with my dad is one of the examples of it is a reason why you have such a shift in the expectations of these younger workers, and we can talk more about that.
Warwick F:
Gosh, some of my listeners know I grew up in Australia and sort of almost an English Australian background, went to Oxford like my dad and a few relatives, so I’m not English but I understand the mentality and Eton, one the top private schools in England. So did he come across as, I guess, I think in England of sort of the SAS which is sort of the British equivalent of Special Forces, this kind of tough no nonsense. English people don’t do a lot of drama. They’re just quiet, resolute, here we go. Was he kind of a bit like that?
Chris T:
So, it was interesting. When he came over to the US, he found that it was incredibly more efficient than England in all their ways, and it was a lot more egalitarian, right? And, there was nothing less egalitarian than Eton where he came from.
Warwick F:
Well, yeah. That’s the top of the social spectrum. When I was in college in the late 70s, early 80s, class system was still pretty apparent. So yeah, it would have been culturally radically different here.
Chris T:
And so it was actually… It had the opposite effect to a certain extent where I hear stories when I talk to people now that he’s retired, but I’ll talk to people, they’ll be like, “Wait was your dad Tim Tuff?” And I’ll be like, “Yeah, he actually was. A lot of people don’t put it together. What was like?” They’re like, “Chris, a lot of the stuff you talk about in your book he did that. Did you know he knew every single person’s first name at Harlan? Thousands of employees and he knew everyone’s first name. Did you know that at lunch he would sit with a different group every single time?” As I was about to publish the book I sent it to him and he was like, “50% of the book I really agree with and it’s something I’ve been practicing for a while which is just good leadership.”
Warwick F:
Yeah.
Chris T:
And then he was like, “The other 50% I just don’t know well enough to have commentary on.”
Warwick F:
Okay. That is so neat to have a dad like that. And, I love the story you share that he was obviously driven, connected, and he could have connected you with stuff, but it sounds like he had almost a better path that he wanted you to achieve that success and feel that sense of validation yourself. That’s sort of amazing. I actually have three kids in their 20s and they’re all… Well, the older two are definitely millennials, the younger 22 is probably on the bubble. And by the way, millennials what is it, 22, twenty?
Chris T:
24 to 38.
Warwick F:
Okay. I hear you there. And yeah, that’s something for me to think about. I tend to want to help my kids without running their lives. I really try to be almost a more like a coach than … Whatever you want to do, as long as you love it. Try to do my best but boy your dad had a really smart idea. So fast forward a bit, you mentioned the crucibles, you got into Vanderbilt. It’s one of the toughest colleges to get into in Nashville, Tennessee. Great school, you became a partner at a very young age of a great ad agency. Is it Atlanta or…
Chris T:
Yeah, 22squared in Atlanta and in Tampa.
Warwick F:
And, you’re doing so well making all these connections but somehow you felt like you’re being successful, but is there more to life than just success? I think you mentioned work-life balance. You have two daughters.
Chris T:
Yeah. Exactly.
Warwick F:
You know young kids, they’re only young for a certain time and then they’re gone. And, you don’t want to kind of ignore that and yep, “Sorry, I missed your ballet recital, your soccer game,” whatever they’re doing, “But I’ll be at the next one.”
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
Reminds me that haunting Cat Stevens song, Cats in the Cradle. You don’t want to be that person. I’ve always loved and hated that song in a way. I’ve tried not to be that person. Nobody wants to be that person. So talk about the shift as you shifted in your thinking of work-life balance, you shifted in your thinking about what success is, being through people not just to them. So, your thinking shifted. So, talk about that shift.
Chris T:
Yeah. I think there was also an element of just letting go of the game. Right? Growing up in a very well to do family as well. Yeah. My brothers all went to Harvard and Harvard Business School, and there was a lot of this status piece going around. And one of my favorite podcasters, Naval, has something I think really profound to say about status and it’s that status is a zero sum game.
Chris T:
And because when you’re gaining someone else is losing and in this kind of crucible moment of my own, I was able to really take the time to reflect on not only what was important to me, but what I’m driving for. And, I was able to let go of the game of life that was kind of playing all around me as well as it really was keeping up with the Jones’s to a certain extent, of the better car, the bigger house, the more lavish vacations, the private jets, all of that stuff, and I took it right down to the foundations.
Chris T:
And, I was even telling Tommy’s group for his executive retreat earlier that I was on today, that for a year I didn’t have any friends. I another big piece was I quit drinking which was kind of a component of if it was a big soup, it was like one of the main ingredients of this soup and that I knew it was an important piece and contributed to an anxiety that I wanted to take out.
Chris T:
So I quit drinking, I doubled down on my family, I changed my metric of success, and I started living a little bit more for the moment and less for the status piece. And I think it looks easy on a timeline but for a year I didn’t have friends. I legitimately had almost no friends. All of my old friends went away and then at the same moment, I turned to my wife and I was like, “You know what, I have no friends.” And she looked at me because I’m such an extrovert and she was just sad for me.
Chris T:
And I was like, “You know what, I’m really bored.” And it was one of my best friends. I was kind of confiding in him, who he was just… He was one of my newer friends. He goes, “Chris, you know boredom is just a synonym for serenity and peace, right?” I was like, “Oh, so that’s what this is.” I was even talking to amazing author Shelley Paxton, who wrote a book called Soulbbatical, which talks exactly about this.
Chris T:
The importance of finding a little bit of time to recollect yourself. And, that’s what came right after what was kind of manifested as many panic attacks and being distraught a few days in a row. I was like, “Things have got to change.” And, so I took that month off. And, these were the epiphanies that came out of the moment but also that kind of trickled through for the next year. And then I met Tommy, and that kind of is the stake in the ground to what was built off of and now become my next platform if you will.
Warwick F:
You made a really important shift in your thinking because I get it. I grew up in a wealthy high status family, and 150 year old, very large media organization, you could belong to all the exclusive clubs, Oxford, Harvard Business School, all the rest, and I wasn’t driven by status. It was more just wanting to live up to the expectations of my parents, but because my mother was very outgoing and could throw parties like you wouldn’t believe, people would come from Hollywood and they would tell their friends, “You got to go see lady Fairfax because the parties that she throws are not what you’re used to in Hollywood.” And, that’s saying something. They were pretty amazing.
Chris T:
That is saying something.
Warwick F:
We would see the … I don’t know Liberace, Kirk Douglas, some famous folks, top business leaders, and it’s like in general, are they really happy? These are successful people, business leaders, politicians, prime ministers, ambassadors, but are they happy? And you can be very successful and happy but if you’re measuring your sense of happiness by how far you’re climbing up the mountain, there’s always somebody better as I’ve said in other podcasts.
Warwick F:
In sports, we talk about the greatest of all time like at the moment, Roger Federer, maybe in tennis but he’s got a couple of folks, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, nipping at his heels. But few of us will be like, “Is it possible that you’re going to be the greatest advertising executive in history?” It’s possible but maybe not. So if your success was measured by that benchmark, there’s a high probability of failure even if you get to be number two of all time, which would be incredible.
Warwick F:
So, if you measure success by that, you’re almost doomed to fail with about 99.9% possibility as opposed to, “Well, I just want to do what I do, what I love, and let the chips fall where they lie. And I want to help people.” See your epiphany I think it’s vital both for your family, but also for your own sense of self. And, that shift was huge. I want to shift to Millennial Whisperer and your other book, but does that make sense? Does shifting how you define success?
Chris T:
It was the greatest thing and I must credit Mark Manson, who wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. He’s got a chapter about success.
Gary S:
A flip?
Chris T:
Yeah, yeah. A flip. Exactly.
Gary S:
Not giving a flip. I was just checking.
Chris T:
Exactly. But it was actually through that and he tells the story of the Drum. It’s a pretty famous story at this point but he was the drummer for Megadeth. And, the whole story behind it was he was originally in Metallica. And I’m probably botching this a little bit, but after he was kicked out of Metallica, it was right before Metallica hit it huge and he was like, “You know what, I’m going to take them on. I’m going to create something even bigger.” And he created the most amazing heavy metal band, almost as big as Metallica.
Chris T:
And if you look at any of his interviews, there’s all of this anger in him because his metric of success was beating Metallica. And so at no point was he ever able to be fulfilled, and here he was selling out stadiums, and which is nearly impossible, but yet he harnessed all of this anger because his metric of success was absolutely off. And that was really the catalyst for me. I was like, “I got to look at my metric of success. Oh, wait. It’s beating my brothers in the game of life. That’s horrible.”
Warwick F:
And they may care or they may not have cared about that. I don’t know whether there was a competition. It’s kind of crazy.
Gary S:
And before we move off of this subject, I think it’s important for the listener to hear what we’re talking about. We’ve heard a lot of crucibles, a lot of stories, a lot of tragedies, a lot of failures, a lot of setbacks, a lot of traumas, a lot of trials on Beyond the Crucible. But this crucible that Chris has gone through and other people right now are going through, some of you probably listening.
Gary S:
Strangely enough, it’s success. The crucible is success itself. And whether or not you were the kind of success you’re pursuing, how you define success, the way you define success, if you don’t define it in the proper terms for your life and your family and the balance of those things, can be a crucible in and of itself. Is that a fair assessment of where you found yourself Chris?
Chris T:
100 percent. And one thing that’s interesting, I went and saw the number one psychiatrist in the nation. And, I’m not going to name names but he’s pretty well known. And he brought me through all these analyses because I’m like, “What is going on with me?” And he was like, “Chris.” And, at this point we got a pretty good relationship. He turns to me, he was like, “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Chris T:
I was like, “Bad news always first.” He goes, “Well, I don’t have that much of it. But the bad news is that your rock bottom is most people’s mid-point. Here’s the good news. Unlike some other family history and stuff, from a chemical standpoint you’re really good. And one of the things that I have to employ and I’ve never told anyone this is that, do two things for me. Don’t do drugs or alcohol because that’s just going to take away from your enthusiasm and your joie de vivre. And two, go give back to the world because what you have is something special.
Chris T:
“And, it is your duty to take all of this enthusiasm and this optimism that you have even at your lowest point right now, to give go off and do that to the world, and obviously I was like, “All right, I can’t wait to tell my wife this result.” And I told her and she’s like, “Yeah. No, it’s absolutely right.” So I think, yes, it’s all of those things but also there are a few other elements that I think everyone’s low points are different. Right? And sometimes it doesn’t take that ultimate, that crisis, I don’t think to catalyze that change. But I think it does take sometimes a period of strife that if you’re to look on a timeline, it is a crisis in your life. So…
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think one of the things we often say in Crucible Leadership is you can’t compare crises. Somebody might have lost a loved one, or we interviewed a navy seal that kind of was paralyzed in a parachuting acccident. There’s a lot of different crucibles. And those people will say, who’ve been through much worse crucibles than I have, they’ll say, “You can’t compare crucibles. Every crucible is just as valid as every other one.” And that’s them saying it not me. And I think it’s so true.
Warwick F:
But I think one of the keys before we shift to the books you’ve written and Millennial Whisperer, is everybody wants joy and fulfillment. Everybody wants happiness. And striving for success in and of itself is not the way there and what, you’ve found, I’ve found, I think a number of our guests have found, is significance when you focus on a life on purpose helping others, that does satisfy.
Warwick F:
You do something for somebody and it changes their life even in a small way, you feel good about yourself. We’re just wired that way. So, there is one path in which we can say with a high degree of certainty, you want to feel fulfilled in life, think of others, give back. There is a path where there is hope. So…
Gary S:
And I want us to get on the on ramp to you talking about your books and talking about how you’ve experienced that Chris, by reading something from your book, The Millennial Whisperer, because I think that’ll get us there. This impressed me so much. Listen listener to how Chris, found what success really looks like for him. This is just three paragraphs from The Millennial Whisperer.
Gary S:
“With each passing day, they his team rewarded me with production and loyalty crushing goals and all the key performance indicators we could throw at them. Yes, these millennials. It was almost as if the second I relinquished any desire to be perceived as the more traditional hero style of leader, it unleashed something powerful and almost unstoppable in them. You know that guy who sweeps in and saves the day and solves all the problems in the workplace, that’s the hero leader. That’s who I tried to be for the first 13 years of my career. That’s what almost took me out.”
Gary S:
“Instead, I made my millennial employees the heroes and assumed the role of the guide and coach that caused me to shift to equipping them rather than to trying to make them all clones of me.” That really as you talk about changing your definition of success to doing things, not to people, toward people, but through people, that seems to summarize that pretty well to me.
Chris T:
Yeah. And it sounds a lot better when you say it than when I read it. Right now I think it’s absolutely true. And going down to my own purpose, my purpose, and it has been this stated for the last seven years, even before my kind of crucible moment, and it’s to inspire and connect. And everything that I’ve done has kind of followed that stake in the ground. And so, one of the key things that was important for me was, once again, shifting the metric of success and having impact through people.
Chris T:
It’s interesting as you look at the needs and wants of this next generation, you’ve got to look at what makes them the way they are. And my favorite thing when I go into some of these corporations and I talk to these, usually it’s around the 45 to 55 year old executive. And they say, “Chris, why in the hell did these kids show up on my doorstep at 24 years old and they don’t even know how to communicate?”
Chris T:
And they go on this long rant. And I said, “Well, there is a reason for it. And, the reason is because it was really your generation that parented them.” And because there’s a lot of whether it be participation trophies, snowplow parenting. I’ve had parents come in and try to negotiate their kid’s salary. I’ve got time and time again, all of these examples of how these kids have just been, snowplowed parented through a lot of their formative years. And, it’s also why I use the example to help inspire and a lot of these other parents don’t give your kids job interviews.
Chris T:
Don’t set them up because it’s just going to get them on the wrong track and 10 years later they’re going to be a lawyer, and completely unfulfilled because that’s where your connections were. So let it happen with natural selection. And so one of the other pieces is you’ve got to also look at that kind of relationship. And the two key pieces that if anyone can walk away from how they can approach either their millennial children, and Gen Z children differently, or their employees, and the two biggest things of what they’re craving is connection and context.
Chris T:
And that connection piece, they want to see that you take a vested interest in their life. And that’s why certain things like rewards and recognition are so important to them. They were rewarded and recognized all the way through when they show up at an organization, they expect a certain amount of that. You can do it too much but you got to have some component there of building them up.
Chris T:
But then it’s also if you take the four leadership characteristics of what they find most important. Number one is inspirational leadership, two is transparency, three is authenticity. And that unto itself is really where I like to kind of talk about, “Let’s focus really the things that we can do as leaders to be better leaders, and then the culture piece will be a byproduct of that.” So, I can go any which way…
Warwick F:
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s fascinating. So, talk about how… And I think you’ve talked about how millennials are misunderstood. But see, I guess you’ve mentioned some of the key components of what millennials want. Would you say that that makes them different than other generations? What’s different about millennials versus these others?
Chris T:
So, there’s two reasons of what makes them so different. One is the impact of social media and digital media on them. And it’s also what makes older millennials different than younger millennials. And then two, it was really the impact of the recession of 2008. Older millennials were in the marketplace, and then younger millennials saw their mom and dad lose their jobs and then inherited all this student debt. So, the needs of both of those are even different. And the needs of older millennials versus younger millennials, and Gen Z-ers, are also a little bit different. You always see this with a generation. But there are certain things that I like to focus in on in terms of the things that they all want, right?
Chris T:
And one of those from an organizational standpoint, work flexibility. You look at what COVID did, but one of the things they craved for so long and weren’t able to ever get and the thing that I actually came up against the most was your easiest fix when I go into these corporations that could do it physically knowing that 35% of any organization can actually work remotely, where it’s not physical labor or some of these other things, but it’s like, “This is an easy fix for you guys. Just let them work from where they want to work. And if you can’t trust them, then you’ve got a hiring issue. If you can’t trust them to work from where they want to work then you’ve got a hiring problem.”
Chris T:
And so, you look at some of these things, and you look at a lot of these needs and wants. And once again, I go back to millennials aren’t the problem, they just expose all the problems. But the other side is true with social media has impacted them profoundly, and that there’s a lot of things they can learn from the older generations, one of them being the interpersonal muscle as Tommy would say. Right?
Chris T:
At age 13 they’re given a brand new phone with a Snapchat account on it. So their first flirtation, they didn’t have to call mom and dad and get through mom and dad on the phone, and then get to the other person and then create… That creates this interpersonal muscle that no longer really exists. So it’s up to us to help teach those things to them, and to help bring some of those…
Warwick F:
And, they’re bombarded with things that can be helpful or not helpful. Just the horror stories of young teenagers they get affirmation, but then they get torn down by friends in some cases that can lead to even suicide just because of social media and just the … It seems like easy to say horrendous things on social media. Even with my own two kids, I’ve got a two sons and a daughter, the daughters in the middle.
Warwick F:
When look at my older two, Facebook is kind of one of their social media outlets of choice. My youngest son who’s 22, Facebook is so for the older people, “I use Snapchat. I never use Facebook.” And my older two don’t really do Snapchat as much. So there’s not that much difference between the 29 and the 22 year old in terms of age, they’re all in their 20s, but yet how they use social media is different.
Chris T:
Yeah. And, it impacts all of us. It’s not just them. In The Millennial Whisperer I call it the Pinterestation of a generation, and it also leads into one of my rules my 7030 rule, but a lot of us suffer from the grass is always greener complex. And my 7030 rules in place that on the first day of employment I tell them, “30% of your job is going to suck and I’m sorry. 70% should fire you up and fill you up but welcome to life.
Chris T:
And any of your friends that you’re seeing their perfect lives, play it on Instagram, they’re full of it. Right? And listen, I’ve done it too.” Right. And I tell the stories of some of the things that I’ve done. But it’s like that’s not a reality. So let’s figure out from your job description, what’s in your 30% zone of suck, and then what’s in your 70% zone of fire you up and fill you up. And by doing that, when they have three days in a row of doing Excel documents, and budgeting, or whatever that zone of suck thing is they don’t quit in order to pursue it.
Warwick F:
It’s sets their expectations. That is so smart. I want to dwell a bit on those four things. You talked about inspiration, Authenticity, transparency, and then the culture kind of being affected by the others. When you say inspiration, is part of that millennials kind of want purpose and meaning at work? I don’t want to midtread it but…
Chris T:
100%. 100% but they also part of that interpretation of the real interpretation of inspirational leadership is also that connection piece, right? So there’s elements of you got to reward and recognize your people, you got to take a vested interest in your people, and you’ve got to start opening up more of this idea to be both the boss but also a mentor and a coach to them, as well as potentially a friend.
Warwick F:
Right. They don’t want to see themselves as just a small cog in the big machine.
Chris T:
Yeah.
Warwick F:
And maybe people in the 50s said, “Well, that’s just life work isn’t meant to be fun. I’m a cog and I just go to work, punch the time clock, and I go home and try to recover on the weekend.” But that people aren’t thinking that way. It’s not the 1950s. They’re looking as you say, for some connection. They want to feel like that their boss cares, that there’s meaning, that the boss actually knows their names, the names of their kids, what they do for fun on the weekend.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Warwick F:
They want to feel that they care. And back to you they said authenticity and transparency, you can read all the books but I’m sure millennials they know if you’re faking it. If you’re just reading from a manual, or seminar you just went to, or a book you just read and it’s not real. As I often say that one of the worst as you would know, one of the worst things in advertising is doing great advertising for a product that’s awful because people will really, really get angry. That’s the worst possible combination, great advertising with a product that sucks. So you don’t want to be that manager, right, that just says all the right things, asks all the right questions but you know they could care less about your life.
Chris T:
Massive disdain for hypocrisy. You’re absolutely right. And, the other piece to that is if you ask anyone, and I’ve seen this in corporations, “Hey, Bob, do you consider yourself to be an inspirational leader?” When you talk to Bob, he’s like, “Hell yeah.” They laugh, they light up, it’s like, “Thanks, Bob.” And then you have two people on Bob’s team, “Hey, is Bob an inspirational leader?” Their first question is, “Is Bob going to find out if I tell you the truth?”
Chris T:
And it’s like, “No.” He’s like, “Heck no. He’s not. He doesn’t do anything to take a vested interest in me. He doesn’t get me fired up. I don’t know where we’re going, blah, blah, blah.” I created an assessment that breaks down some of those things, but gets the input from all of their employees that are oftentimes younger. But transparency I think is another interesting thing. And I talked about connection and context. A lot of people misinterpret transparency to be one of two things on that spectrum.
Chris T:
They either interpret it to be on one side financial transparency and they say, “Chris, I’m not going to tell everyone how much we’re making and what our profit margins are.” It’s like, “No, it’s not that.” Or they go to the other side of it and they say, “They interpret it as vulnerable.” And they say, “Chris, I’m not going to cry in front of my people.” And we’re not talking about Brene Brown and vulnerability.
Chris T:
What they want from you in transparency, is context. Why are you making the decisions that you’re making? So you’ve got to be giving them the data and disclosing those pieces to demonstrate that. So when you lose a new piece of business or something happens, talk to them about why and what it is that you learn from that. Don’t just sugarcoat everything, and especially X’s were brought up this way, that you have to sugarcoat and only present the good news. You got to throw that out the window and instead inform them with this context so that they can start connecting the dots themselves. That’s what I do.
Warwick F:
People want their bosses to be honest with them about, “Okay, if we’re having a downturn, what happened? And maybe it’s even, “Look, this is the direction the company’s going in. I don’t know that I completely agree but I’m doing the best I can.” Or, “We got hammered by the market or competitors and here’s what we’re trying to do. And, I think maybe went in the wrong direction but here’s what we’re going to do next.”
Warwick F:
They want some transparency in the sense of honesty about what’s happening. And you don’t have to get into every detail but give them enough that they kind of, “Okay, the guy’s being straight with me.” And I’m sure trust is got to be huge. If you don’t trust your boss, you’re not going to walk off the cliff for them. You got to trust them. You got to believe that they have your back.
Chris T:
Exactly.
Gary S:
That gentlemen, well, you may have heard was the landing gear starting to come down on landing the plane. Before we start to really land the plane, we’re just sort of have the little chimes go off in the landing gears going down. Chris, I’d be remiss if I did not give you a chance to let our listeners know how they can find out more about you, about The Millennial Whisperer, and now I’m going to try it, your upcoming book Save Your Asks.
Chris T:
There you go.
Gary S:
How can they find out more about?
Warwick F:
And if you can give just maybe a couple thoughts about the key component of Save Your Asks.
Chris T:
Yeah, yeah.
Warwick F:
What is the thrust to that book?
Chris T:
So the best place to find me if you actually … I’ve got a free offer for getting a hard cover of the book if you go to quiz.themillennialwhisperer.com, I’ll send it to you all up in the show notes. But you just take a quiz, I’ll tell you what type of millennial leader you are and then you just have to pay for the shipping. If you have any issues, I’ll send you a free PDF, I’ve no problem with it. The more people that read the book, the better.
Chris T:
It’s just about getting the book out in the world. And, the business model and ROI on it is we’ll have a longer discussion about that. But it really is impact that I’m trying to make. So go there, check it out. The best place to get in touch with me is actually on Instagram. And, I’m @T-U-F-F22, the number 22. And, I respond to almost every single thing there. And then just themillennialwhisperer.com, you can find more stuff about the book as well as the assessments and a lot of other fun, free tools for you.
Chris T:
In terms of moving to the Save Your Asks piece, and it’s I think a good next layer on top of the impact that I’m trying to make. But one problem I think I had I asked myself, “Am I having the impact on also the younger generation in helping them to learn how to better network, and use real authentic connection to drive that networking coupled with.” I want something that anyone can take and be able to pivot their career to a place where they are more fulfilled and in line with their purpose.
Chris T:
When passion, purpose, and profession all overlap, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But in order to get there takes a lot of work in some of these things. So, I wanted a tool that people could execute on that. So it’s essentially how do you better network your way to a more fulfilling life through some tactics and the book title itself is a call to action. You two are the best examples.
Chris T:
Every single day I bet people are reaching out to you saying, “They’re going and wasting their one ask out of the gates.” Right? And they’re like, “Hey, can I be on your podcast?” It’s like, wow. How about doing a little bit of research and understanding what it is that drives us, and what we’re all about, before you go in for that ask.” Right? I call them, “Askholes”. I already hooked you up this, that, and enough is enough.
Chris T:
And I think with a shift in mentality and saving that ask when you start focusing in on genuine relationships, amazing things happen. And, one of the tactics that I’m writing about is this idea of just having a longer view. The tactic itself is called shawshanking. And, this was taught to me by a guy I met in the early days of Facebook, and it was six years after we had first met at Menlo Park on Facebook, blah, blah, blah, whatever, that we’re at dinner, and we had just signed a huge deal.
Chris T:
And I turned to him and I said, “Jason, how in the heck did you keep in touch with me the most ADHD guy in the world? Here we are probably your biggest deal today. Right?” And he goes, “I shawshanked you.” And I was like, “What is that?” He said, “Every single week for the last six years, I’ve had some form of communication with you, and not once have I asked you for anything. I was just checking in, keeping up the relationship whatever.
Chris T:
I wasn’t ever asking anything. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to try that tactic.” And I tried that tactic at the agency and we ended up landing one of our largest clients 18 months later after I became best friends with the person. And one of the things that I’ve made it now known is shawshanking is a verb. And when you start focusing in on creating genuine relationships, and real connection, just like The Millennial Whisperer, amazing things happen.
Chris T:
And in order for us to actually start being freed, and living that life, we’ve got to evolve our currencies and continually do that with side hustles and passion projects. So encourage your people to pursue side hustles and passion projects to offset that 7030 rule, that 30% zone of suck. Sometimes it’s a 5050, sometimes it’s flipped where it’s 70% of their job sucks, but it’s up to us to help them pursue that. But we’ve got to pursue those things ourselves because that is how we truly evolve our currency to be that thing that is changing with our own heads and heart.
Warwick F:
Well said. That’s awesome.
Chris T:
As you could tell I get pretty excited actually.
Gary S:
Yeah. It’s fascinating to me to think that you have a twin brother. Is he the calm one or is he the excitable one?
Chris T:
My wife is an identical twin and I’m an identical twin. So we’re both identical twins. I equate some of our amazing marriage to the fact that when you grow up with someone exactly like you, not many people can have that bond. But our twins are both very different than us, and I think one of the best probably experiments or validations, to the idea that your spouse molds you whether or not you understand that we’ve had foils, we had identical foils, and then we both went off and married these very different people.
Chris T:
And now here we are 13 years later, and we look, and we’re very different. And so my twin brother is actually a private school teacher, and head of admissions for a school in Connecticut. Julie, my wife’s twin sister and her, they’re both professional soccer players. And they’re both kind of still in that domain but they’re also very different from one another. So it’s really interesting that kind of the science and psychology from a sociological experiment standpoint.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Gary S:
Well, that is fascinating information too. Yes, the tires are on the runway. We are landing the plane.
Chris T:
Let’s do it.
Gary S:
Before we go listener, let me summarize for you I think some takeaways from this episode with Chris Tuff. One, Chris, talks and you heard him say it a couple times that crisis can be a catalyst for change. It’s certainly was in his life. Crisis was a catalyst for change. One of my greatest joys in co-hosting this podcast is when the guest’s way of looking at life and leadership, and Crucible Leadership Warwick’s way of looking at life and leadership sync up.
Gary S:
And while Chris says crisis can be a catalyst for change, we talk at Crucible Leadership about how your crucible can be the launching point to a life of significance for you if you learn the lessons of that crucible. So instead of asking why in the midst of a crucible or a crisis, ask what. What can you learn from where you find yourself? That’s takeaway one. And then takeaway two from this conversation is take a long look at how you define success.
Gary S:
If it’s to beat others, Chris said his idea of success was to beat his older brothers. If it’s to beat others and to gain things, not to help others and to put people ahead of things, you may need to reassess your definition of success because redefining success can be how you find success. I’ll say that again. Redefining success can be how you find success. That’s what happened to Chris, that’s what happened to Warwick, and that’s how in Crucible Leadership we talk about finding success that is couched in being a life of significance.
Gary S:
The third thing that you can take away from this is the great example that Chris, gave in his book about if you’re a leader, don’t try to be the hero. Empower others to be the hero. You may see on my lapel pin if you’re watching, I have Captain America. Don’t try to be Captain America to those you lead. Be Nick Fury, be the head of the Avengers not the Avenger. Help them along that way, pour into them, become a mentor and a coach. Help them in their hero training. Together, you can help the world and you can change the world. And then the final piece of takeaway advice is the one that… I just want to say the words. Don’t be an askhole.
Chris T:
Yes.
Gary S:
Thank you. Thank you listener for spending time with us on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. We would love it if you would go to crucibleleadership.com, poke around, see some of the blogs, we have an assessment there that you can take, you can sign up. Most importantly, you can sign up for an email to get insights from Warwick, about how to live as a crucible leader, how you can become a crucible leader, how you can move beyond your crucible as the title of this podcast says. So until the next time we are together on this podcast, please remember that your crucible experience is tough, is difficult.
Gary S:
Right now you could be feeling a lot of pain. But as Warwick expresses every time we do a podcast, and as Chris has expressed here, those difficult times can in fact be some of the best times in your life. They’re far from the end of your story. They can be if you learn the lessons of them, If you use your crisis as a catalyst for change, those moments can be the start of a new story that’s the most rewarding of your life, because at the end it leads to something truly important, a life of significance.
After losing her husband to a military training accident, she fought for joy for herself and her four children by moving beyond surviving.
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome, everybody, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, your cohost and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. You have clicked play on, we hope you’ve clicked subscribe to, a podcast that deals in what our founder refers to as crucible experiences.
Gary S:
Crucible experiences are those moments in life that are painful, those moments in life that are setbacks, failures, traumas, tragedies, things that happen to us, things that sometimes we have a hand in bringing about. The common thread, though, of why we talk about crucibles on Beyond the Crucible is that very reason the show is called that.
Gary S:
How do you get beyond your crucible experiences? How do you get through that pain — not just deal with it and shove it down, but how do you get through it? How do you move on to a better place which we refer to as moving on to building a life of significance?
Gary S:
As we talk about this today with me is the architect, the Lego master, if you will, of Crucible Leadership, our founder Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, this is going to be, I think, a meaningful show.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Very much looking forward to it.
Gary S:
Our guest today is Sarah Nannen. Sarah is the founder of Beyond Surviving, a movement that teaches a proactive and renegade approach to mental health and emotional resilience while navigating grief and trauma recovery. She became a military widow and solo mother of four in 2014 when an aviation accident claimed her husband’s life.
Gary S:
Her personal journey through rock bottom now informs her work with those navigating painful life transitions who seek to live extraordinary lives. She’s devoted her career to teaching sustainable wellbeing and a new paradigm of deep systemic integration of mind/body healing to anyone seeking to move beyond surviving the ride of life, to move beyond just surviving that ride of life.
Gary S:
Sarah’s background as a Naval Officer informs her leadership perspective with a community focused model for cultivating resilience and sustainable wellbeing. She is the founder of Renkon Yoga Studio and hosts The Other Side of Rock Bottom podcast, which launches this summer.
Gary S:
Take it away, Warwick.
Warwick F:
Sarah, thanks so much for being here. Really appreciate it. Before we get into your crucible experience, which some people are like, “Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve had a crucible…” Sadly, you obviously do understand that, you know what it was, you know the date, but tell us a bit about who you are, Sarah, and how you grew up, and a little bit about your family and in the lead-up to your crucible. Just a little about Sarah Nannen.
Sarah N:
Sarah Nannen grew up in Central Illinois in the middle of America, I guess. A good old farm community U.S. of A small town. Played sports, was pretty smart. Played the violin, went off to college, did the ROTC thing, became a naval officer, married my college sweetheart. I was four babies in when I found out that he passed.
Sarah N:
I was just doing that average life. My average life looked like living in Japan at the time. We were a military family on the move. He was a fighter pilot. Once I got out of the Navy, my whole job was holding down the fort while he went off and did the fighter pilot naval aviator thing all over the world, and I had a lot of amazing experience with that. Our kids were five, four, two, and newborn that wild day that upended all of that everyday average American dream thing we were doing and changed the direction of our life forever.
Sarah N:
That’s a little bit about me.
Warwick F:
Wow. Until that point, and that was obviously the defining crucible of your life, had you had any others? Did life seem pretty normal? Wonderful family, siblings, parents, grandparents, was it like, “Life is good. I’m blessed.” Was that your experience?
Sarah N:
My mother-in-law described us as the golden couple. We were both high achievers, and everything we envisioned we managed to create. We were both very successful. I grew up with great, supportive family. Everybody was healthy. We were running marathons in our free time. And short of the hardship and the crucible of going on a deployment and being locked on a ship with 300 men for six months, I would say this is certainly the defining crucible experience of my life.
Warwick F:
What made you decide to go into the Navy?
Sarah N:
The honest answer is that I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I found myself heading off to the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana with an undecided major and a lot of potential ahead of me. I knew that I could be anything and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a passion, a purpose, a direction, but I knew that I loved to travel and I knew that I had always been a natural leader. So it made perfect sense to go off on an adventure, become a naval officer, travel the world and see if I could figure out what was important enough to me on the other side of that.
Sarah N:
I ended up majoring in Spanish and business because that seemed fun and useful enough. I got to study abroad a couple of times and then, upon graduation, off I went to meet my ship on deployment.
Warwick F:
Wow. It’s funny, as listeners would know, that it’s ironic that you had a naval career because, even though I’m from Australia, for some reason we ended up in Annapolis, Maryland, which is you would know is home of the U.S. Naval Academy. You see a lot of people in their uniforms and they all change. It’s one particular day a year when they go from whatever it is, white to blue or other way around and Navy football is big in our town. Not my background, but definitely we’re a Navy town. What kind of ships were you deployed on? What was your role in the Navy?
Sarah N:
My ships were rather small gas-turbine frigates, destroyers, cruisers, and my role, surprisingly enough, as a Spanish major, was engineering. That’s a unique thing the Navy likes to torture their young officers with. It’s offering them the role of leadership in an area that they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing and the only training you get is from the people who you’re responsible for.
Gary S:
That does sound like a government job.
Warwick F:
It does.
Gary S:
For sure.
Warwick F:
Where did you meet your husband?
Sarah N:
We met the first day of ROTC on campus at the University of Illinois. We both had high school sweethearts coming into college, but we had a connection and a friendship that first semester. By New Year’s Eve, we had ended our high school relationships and started one of our own.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Sarah N:
We go way back to … 2000 was the year that we met in university.
Warwick F:
I’m assuming you were never deployed together or anything like that?
Sarah N:
I was a naval officer. He was a naval aviator, but he was a Marine and he would not hesitate to remind you that he was not in the Navy. Thank you very much. We didn’t ever deploy together. In fact, we were married several years before we lived together because I was stationed in San Diego and he was in flight school in Pensacola. Lots of traveling back and forth and getting well-versed at long distance. Even when we weren’t deployed, we weren’t often together until I got out the Navy in 2009.
Warwick F:
Once you were married, how did your service work then? Because with four young kids, how did you manage to balance Navy and kids?
Sarah N:
I actually got out of the Navy six months after our first baby was born. I was at that decision point in my career that I had served the time that I was required to, based on the agreement that we created. Having a newborn was a no-brainer. I took a lot of maternity leave and then finished out the last three months of my … I was on shore duty so that helped nicely that my work was essentially an office job.
Sarah N:
When I got out of the Navy, then I transitioned full time to stay-at-home mom, which was also a very interesting in hindsight crucible moment, going from naval officer to commander-in-chief of the house, and all of the really big life changes that came with being at home with just my amazing baby rather than fighting the ship all day long every day.
Warwick F:
That was a big decision, but obviously everybody’s in a different situation and totally understand.
Sarah N:
We were tired of living far away from each other, to be honest, Warwick, and I had made the decision to get out so that we could finally cohabitate and have the same address.
Warwick F:
I’m assuming given he’s a Marine they don’t fly off the ships. I’m assuming they fly off land or…
Sarah N:
Sometimes they do. They’re often deployed to aircraft carriers and they also will have land-based deployments.
Warwick F:
It meant that you could actually be together as a family, at least a reasonable amount of the time.
Sarah N:
Theoretically. We did have the same address, So that helped.
Warwick F:
For sure. I understand. And so how long were you married?
Sarah N:
We were married in 2005 and we were together since 2000, so 14 years all told.
Warwick F:
Wow. It was in Japan when the… And it was a training accident, was it?
Sarah N:
Yes. Oddly enough, I was in Japan and he was in the U.S. in Nevada at TOP GUN. You may have seen the movie? Similar but different in real life. He was at a high-level training command learning some really exciting things that he was tasked to essentially bring back to his squadron and train this squadron around and had an aviation accident that we never saw coming. Of course, when they go on deployment, you’re worried all the time and anxious, but as a military spouse, I think you take training for granted so often. You know there’re risks involved but you certainly, you don’t expect it.
Warwick F:
Assuming the equipment works and there’s no pilot, what have you, you would just assume that you’ll be okay.
Sarah N:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Now, you were in the Navy, you understand the Navy Marine culture. I’m assuming you see in the movies and maybe I think you’ve recounted this: two officers, they’re walking down towards your front door and I think you mentioned, you knew why they were there. You knew…
Sarah N:
It’s just like you see in the movies. Even as I describe it, I can feel my body remembering that moment. You have those crucible moments and you can’t unsee them. And it truly is. You see them coming up the steps and you just know why they’re there, which is helpful, because I don’t think they wanted to have to say the words to me and we both took a while to figure out how to talk to each other about what was actually happening.
Warwick F:
Do they say the words? You just see… “On behalf of a grateful nation,” that whole…
Sarah N:
That came more toward the funeral time. In that moment, I think they were attempting to just say, “I don’t know how to say this, but there was an accident.” At that point, I was already in my complete dissociative psychology state of crying and shaking my head “No,” while welcoming them to my home while remembering that my children were at the lunch table and trying to navigate all of the complexity of that moment with as much grace and also the overwhelmingly human emotions that naturally come out when you find out that your partner has died.
Warwick F:
The fact that you were in the Navy, did that make any difference to how you experienced it as opposed to any other spouse of somebody in the military?
Sarah N:
I love that question. I think it didn’t affect at all my grief experience and the intensity of the emotions, but it did afford me a comfortability in that environment that I felt ease in asking questions to high-ranking members of the military that I think others may not have. Even though spouses don’t worry about rank, there is this understanding of this structure of power. I had no qualms about talking to the general in very clear terms and asking questions. I think I maybe knew what questions to ask in a way that someone who doesn’t have as much exposure to that kind of thing might. I do think it did help.
Warwick F:
Yeah. You want to know what happened and how could this possibly happen because I’m sure, again, we don’t need to get the details, but I’m sure your husband was very good at what he did otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to TOPGUN. It’s not like he’s some rookie first time up in the air. Where’s the control stick? Where’s the gauges again? He knew what he was doing so I’m sure that was one whole episode. I’m assuming there’s probably a good support system. Sadly, this happens other navy spouses. You probably could talk to not just spouses, but officers too, because you were an officer as well.
Sarah N:
Yeah. I think that I had a relationship with a lot of his coworkers. That seems like a strange word. But his peers that maybe other spouses didn’t… Again, there was a mutual respect perhaps that I had earned knowing that I had also served. I did feel again that I could call up or text someone who I saw as a friend, not just someone that worked with him and say, “I need you to tell me. Tell it to me like it is. Don’t sugar coat it. I know that you’re trying to be careful with me, but I need to know the information. Whatever you can tell me is appreciated.” That really helped me make sense of it from an objective standpoint.
Sarah N:
I think a lot of people, particularly in the work that I do now, they are left grappling with what happened, how could this happen, and I think in an attempt to protect us from what happened, they also rob us of some really basic information that helps us turn this horrific event into a very scientific matter of fact thing.
Sarah N:
That was how my son, who was five at the time, engaged with it when I told him what happened. “Daddy had a crash. They’re not sure if he’s okay. They’re looking for him, but they don’t think he’s okay.” And he said, “Well Mom, there’re helicopters with lights on them so they’ll find him. Don’t worry.” He was just so matter of fact about the thing because young children don’t have all of those social stories to apply on top of the information. It’s just information.
Sarah N:
Having that access to information and I guess the privilege or the self-appointed privilege to say, “I’m going to ask these questions that other people might not feel safe asking.”
Warwick F:
You feel you at least had a closure in the sense that you knew what happened and why. You felt like you were being given the truth not some, I don’t know, whitewashed or sanitized version for spouses. That probably helped to a degree. One of the things I think I’ve read is you have four children and your youngest daughter was, was a few weeks old?
Sarah N:
Yeah, six weeks old.
Warwick F:
That’s one, obviously, of the tragedies when you have four, even your oldest at five, it’s still young, would have some memories.
Sarah N:
Very young.
Warwick F:
But your younger ones probably obviously your little daughter wouldn’t have…
Sarah N:
She never met him actually. She was born while he was already gone. He watched her birth via FaceTime.
Warwick F:
Oh my gosh.
Sarah N:
the pictures that we have of them together are screenshots of them looking at each other through technology.
Warwick F:
Not only do you have the tragedy of your husband but the sense of my youngest daughter and my younger kids are not going to know their father. I want to obviously talk about how you got beyond that, but I think it’s probably obvious, but the listeners are still going to want to know. Some have gone through your experience, some have not.
Warwick F:
What were you feeling about those two tragedies in a sense, your husband dying and especially your youngest daughter never having met their father? Your probably youngest two not really having many memories of… What was your emotions in those weeks and months afterwards?
Sarah N:
I really appreciate you making those two separate things because I think often people see the story as one giant tragedy with no way out and it really was this very juxtaposed personal loss and figuring out who am I now without him and also this overwhelming sense of pity being too young to be a widow, as everyone likes to phrase it, that I was clamoring to reclaim my autonomy and my existence without him in a way that was very projected upon me that my life was over and everybody knew it. They were there to help me suffer through the rest of my life.
Sarah N:
But then there was this other very clear desire to protect my children from unnecessary pain and also to really help them experience the pain in an honest way that was useful to their healing rather than hiding them from it. Navigating what’s the appropriate amount of disclosure and dialogue with a two-year-old or a five-year-old around what’s happening and helping them express that in ways that are age appropriate and even accessible.
Sarah N:
There was a lot of information involved because young children really don’t even understand the concept of death. I had to teach them what that even meant before I could get to telling them what had happened.
Sarah N:
Luckily, I had a really beautiful chaplain with me and he was able to help me create this lesson essentially and talk about some things are alive and some things are not alive and some things haven’t life in them and some things don’t have life in them, and sometimes the things that had life in them don’t have life in them anymore.
Sarah N:
We’ve looked at nature as an obvious teaching tool. You can see that this plant over here is alive. This tree was alive but is no longer alive. Remember that time we went hiking and we saw that big tree on the ground. And then you can see a fake plant in the house that clearly does not have any life in it, but looks like it could. Just giving them some basic understanding of life and death and what it means to be living and what happens when you’re not living was our starting point.
Sarah N:
They think as they grow and as they continue to grow, they will have new experiences with their grief. They will have new questions. They’ll have new understandings as they learn to identify as themselves. They’ll also look back and want to know more.
Sarah N:
One of the things that I’ve done to help them know him without having known him is that he’s always remained a part of our conversations. They’ll be able to describe him to you. They know what food he liked. They know what teams he liked. They know how he liked to spend his time. I’ve posthumously created this relationship to him for them that they feel as though they remember even though it’s simply information that I’ve continued to help them create this image of who he was and I think that’s really helpful that even though they don’t have a lot of memory of time together, they feel like they know who he was though.
Warwick F:
Wow. I just can picture just those first few months and years where you’re dealing with your own grief. You’re obviously highly intelligent person. You don’t get into the navy without being a leader. Intellectually, you know what needs to be done. It’s almost like it’s a terrible mission. It’s difficult but I need to overcome. Intellectually, you probably, in some sense, had an idea of what you needed to do, but then you’re a human being and-
Sarah N:
Thank you.
Warwick F:
Sadly, even though you might know the right things to do when you’re getting counseling and all the rest, you still have to deal with just we’re all human and it’s devastating. You’re trying to be strong, deal with your own emotions, but then you’re also trying to help your children and just be in this, to use your phrase, fetal ball weeping every day.
Warwick F:
That may be normal and totally fine, but that may or may not help your kids. It’s like, “Gosh, I got to be strong for my kids. Even if I don’t feel like I’m particularly strong at any given moment.” That’s got to be, “I’ve got to try and help them when I’m having enough trouble helping myself.” You’re, “I don’t think have any energy to help anybody else other than me.” That’s got to have been… Having four children, so young, that’s got to have been a huge stretch on internal resources to try to keep yourself sane and be strong and calm for your kids.
Sarah N:
It’s interesting that I actually had to reverse-engineer my grief after that initial shock, because within the week we were on an airplane back to the States with 13 suitcases and living with my folks and then seeking a house and buying a car and finding a pediatrician. There wasn’t actually space for me to be anything but strong and mission-driven, as you pointed out, that was my auto default, was to go straight to strong.
Sarah N:
It took probably a year before I was able to circle back around to, “Now that all that’s done and we have somewhere to live and they have a school to go to. Now, what do I do?” That was the point where I was capable to start interfacing with the grief and the emotions and the fears and the unknowns and all of the, “Who am I now?” And even the complexity of the social thing that continued where as much as I would work to find strength in myself or find something to inspire me, my identity always came back around to his death for the people in the world around me.
Sarah N:
It took a lot to really reclaim my sense of self and then even more to get to a point where I could stand in that and say, “Yes, and …” because so many people could only see the tragic widow no matter what I did and-
Warwick F:
It’s that, “Oh, that’s Sarah Nannen. She was the wife of that marine pilot at TOPGUN. It was so tragic. Oh my gosh. How will she get through this? It’s over.” It’s Sarah Nannen who is… The who-is never changes. It’s frozen in time. You’re perpetually that age and that grief stricken widow and there’s no end. Does it feel like a prison? Like they don’t let you out of the box. That’s who you are and it’ll never change.
Sarah N:
It did feel as though I was supposed to climb into that widow box and let everybody seal me in there and set up shop and be happy. “This is your job now. Your job is to grieve and remember your husband and help us grieve and remember your husband and for the rest of forever, this is what we will do. When Memorial Day comes around, when his birthday comes around, we’re going to come back around to you so that we can grieve together. That will be your life.” And it felt so small.
Gary S:
Yeah. This is a fascinating point. To hear you talk about that, Sarah, you began several minutes back where you said something along the lines of, People looked at you like your life was over, and Warwick, listeners who know your story, there’s a very similar emotion happened to you when the takeover bid failed. And in some ways what you just described in talking to Sarah about you’re supposed to be in this box and you’re the widow of this pilot, you in many perspectives people thought, “You’re the young man who tried to take over the family business and it didn’t work.” You were seen like that too.
Gary S:
I think a lot of listeners who’ve been through crucibles, through really heart-rending crucibles, have felt that experience, that they are frozen in time, to use your words, Warwick. They’re frozen in time as a widow. They’re frozen in time as a failure. They’re frozen in time as someone who’s been injured in some way physically and they’ve lost some physical part of who they were.
Gary S:
What’s great about this conversation is we’re about to turn a corner here in talking to you, Sarah, where you have created a new life from the ashes of what was from … even the expectations of people that you were going to stay there, you created a new life just as you created a new and rewarding life, Warwick.
Warwick F:
It’s so well said. Obviously, you don’t want to compare tragedies because it’s one thing losing 150-year old-family business, but a spouse now that feels pretty up there as about as bad, the toughest thing as you could possibly go through. But in a sense-
Sarah N:
It is a meaningful comparison though. It absolutely isn’t. I think it’s a very universal thread that when we have what you call a crucible moment on the other side of that we’re asked to identify as a cancer survivor or as a survivor of that person or he figured out how to fix that failure. It always comes back around that moment.
Warwick F:
They always see you… In my case, as listeners know, I was 26-year-old, just back from Harvard Business School, launched this two-billion plus takeover, wanting to bring back the ideals that I’ve found. It fails. It’s funny. My dad has the same name as me. He was knighted so he was Sir Warwick so I was always called young Warwick. That’s like 30 plus years ago. It’s a long time.
Warwick F:
But in the Australian media’s eyes, I am perpetually 26 years old, the idealistic, naive, foolish kid who let a 150-year-old family company go and I’ll forever be young Warwick. I’m in my fifties now. I don’t feel like young Warwick anymore, but I’ll always be young Warwick. The people put you in that box.
Warwick F:
In your case, in terms of how you moved on, I love the fact that you talked about even though you’re a very strong-driven person, you are sensible enough to say, “I actually need to experience the grief.” Some people would say, “You know what? I’m moving on. I’m not doing this grief thing because I’m not going to be a weak, little jellyfish. I’m not going to do grief. I’m going to be strong.” I think you had the wisdom to realize being strong doesn’t mean to say that you can’t move on without grieving.
Warwick F:
Talk about some of the steps in terms of how you moved on and then obviously how that gets into how you help others because I have a feeling that was maybe step one is you got to feel the grief before you can move on.
Sarah N:
It’s one of the strongest things we can do is turn toward it. What I find over and over, and I did this myself, is that we have this model of grief that the statute of limitations ends when the funeral happens and then everyone starts looking at their clock and watching how you behave. “Isn’t it about time you …” Fill in the blank. We have that sense of urgency of “Get on with it and get on with your life and figure it out. You’ll be fine.” When we choose to come toward it, something changes and that’s, I believe, the only way that healing can actually happen.
Sarah N:
What’s tough is that the model we’re given to fake it till you make it and put on a happy face creates this really ruptured reality where externally everyone sees us as incredibly strong and powerful and inspiring and doing great — and internally, day by day, we are imploding and crumbling and hurting.
Sarah N:
Something really damaging happens to the psyche of a human being when you’re asked to live in two realities at the same time and neither of those realities involve your truth. Neither of those realities involve healing. The performative external world is happening and maybe you’re succeeding at the performance of life, but you’re not reaping any of the rewards. You can’t experience any of the richness of your lived experience because internally you’re so devastated and your physiology and your psychology are in such a dissociative distressed place that you feel like your sleep walking through the world.
Sarah N:
I think there are a lot of people on the planet who have experienced a variety of crucible moments that are stuck in that place because it feels like success. It looks like you’re making it. When we have those moments of pain, we chalk it up like, “Oh, I’m having a bad day.” “Oh, it’s just a hard day today.” Or, “Maybe I’m depressed. Maybe I just need some medication. I don’t know. I just can’t stop crying.”
Sarah N:
I always invite those people who come toward my work with curiosity to just turn toward that, whatever you’re feeling, the fear, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the heartbreak, the tears, turn toward it and be curious about it. What’s coming through? What hasn’t been expressed? What hasn’t been said? What tears haven’t been cried? Because my experience isn’t that unique in that when something devastating happens that ruptures our reality, interrupts our sense of self, whatever it is, a death, a loss, a failure, a health crisis. There is always a huge amount of stuff to do to triage the moment whether it’s hiring lawyers, filling out paperwork, packing bags, moving houses, going to the hospital.
Sarah N:
There’s so much to do externally that that becomes the new dissociation. You distract yourself with the busyness of the work, and we’re wired to be capable of delving into what must be done because humans are amazing and that’s part of our evolution is that our nervous system actually has the capacity to override itself with all of these incredible, useful hormones to make the body parts do the things that must be done to keep survival happening.
Sarah N:
Very few people have said, “I just laid on my bed for a year and waited for it to get better.” No one gets the opportunity to do that.
Warwick F:
You had four young children. There was stuff to do.
Sarah N:
There’s a lot to do.
Warwick F:
Kids to school, kids to change. But I like what you’re talking about. There’s the being and the doing. Yes, you’ve got to get on with life, lawyers, probate, homes, moving halfway around the world, but yet you’ve also got to deal with who you are because you can’t be your best self to your friends and especially your children unless you deal with that. If you don’t help yourself, your kids will be affected, like it or not. You were smart enough to know that it’s for yourself, but it’s also for your family.
Warwick F:
Talk about… That sounds like the cornerstone. What are some other steps which as well as you help others lean into the pain, but that seems so profound. A lot of people will say, “I don’t want to lean into the pain.”
Sarah N:
It also seems very cruel.
Warwick F:
They are.
Sarah N:
You’re virtuous. You lean into the pain, don’t you want to do that?
Warwick F:
Just jump into the cauldron of molten lava and just feel that fire burning. Why would anybody want to do that? But obviously-
Sarah N:
A lot of people who start working with me say, “I expected this to be heart-wrenching, painful, excruciating, and I can’t believe that it wasn’t those things. What you’re asking me to get to is like, ‘How do we do this? How do we lean into the discomfort? How do we make time to feel it? And how do we get the resources to feel it in a way that doesn’t actually completely annihilate us?’ Because that’s what we expect.”
Sarah N:
I apologize in advance that what I’m going to say is going to sound really simple and it always sounds almost too simple to even be useful to the people who work with me and then they’re all, of course, amazed later on how life changing it is.
Sarah N:
But one of the things that I started with, don’t tune me out, is breathing practices and a yoga practice. The reason that that was so incredibly important to me was I was very adept at facilitating an out of body experience. I think that was part of why I could be so strong. I will just turn off this part of me and do what must be done. There was a very dissociative experience in the moment of hard times where I wasn’t really there and I wasn’t really present, but I could do the things.
Sarah N:
The breathing practice and the yoga practice helped me become more fully embodied. I realized that this was getting into yoga language, but when we learn how to stay present, physically, physiologically, psychologically, socially in this human being container that we’re walking around in, we suddenly have a whole new experience of our life and ourselves.
Sarah N:
These two practices not only helped me come back to myself fully and fully inhabit myself and be aware of myself and be capable of witnessing myself more honestly rather than just performing my experience. But they also helped me reset my physiology.
Sarah N:
I think that that’s something very important that we miss as humans on this planet in the game of mental health and winning at life is it’s always this external thing, cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ll just go to a therapist and I’ll talk it out and I’ll use my intellect and my language to just fix everything. You can go to all the therapy you want. If your physiology doesn’t know that you’re safe yet, the therapy will never really actually land.
Sarah N:
Part of the work on the other side of anything that ruptures your identity and your existence and sense of self is that you have to learn how to teach your body that it’s not in danger anymore.
Sarah N:
The breathing and the yoga was actually this very accessible modality that I could practice without being perfect at it to everyday say, “I’m going to learn how to let my nervous system come back to neutral and out of survival mode so that not only can I be here in this moment, but I also have access to my modern brain now.” Because when we’re in survival mode, we go down, down, down the evolutionary chain, way back to that place where everything is dangerous or safe, good or bad. We don’t have access to this incredible intellect that’s capable of immense and endless solutions to life’s problems.
Warwick F:
Yeah. It’s that whole fight or flight, primitive human being notion. I love what you’re saying. I guess from my perspective as a person of faith, there’s different tools to do I think what you’re talking about. When I’ve gone through some different crucibles, for me prayer, spiritual meditation. For me, maybe it might be reading scriptures. Is there a thought that for me… Some spiritual thought that some wise person perhaps up there is trying to tell me.
Warwick F:
Obviously, there are different ways of doing it. For people of faith that might be one language, but it can be others whether it’s meditation, yoga. There are different ways of trying to understand, what’s going on. What am I feeling physically? Emotionally?
Warwick F:
For me, if I feel depressed, frustrated, I have to… Why am I feeling this? I’m a reflective person by nature. That’s just like breathing to me. I always think, “Why am I frustrated? What’s the issue?” And then I’ll try, I don’t know, maybe deal with it’s the wrong way, but at least name it, recognize it.
Sarah N:
Yes. That’s a tremendous tool, is cultivating that emotional intelligence and articulation so that you understand what’s actually happening, because so often our language around crucibles is very rudimentary. “I’m sad. I’m grieving. I’m angry.” We don’t go beyond that.
Sarah N:
Another tool, and I want to come back to something you said in a minute, but another tool that I teach people is intentional language use, being very intentional about what they say and how they say it. Because when you say, “I’m aware that I’m sad right now,” it has a completely different energy and meaning experience in your physical body than “I’m sad.”
Sarah N:
There’s this permanence when we say, “I’m sad.” “I’m sad and I will be sad forever.” But, “I’m aware that I’m sad right now” helps you get curious about, “Why am I sad right now? Let me name all the reasons. And then what might I be able to do to either express that more completely or to support the sadness so that it can move through.”
Sarah N:
But the thing I wanted to come back around to is when you offered up being a man of faith, I think that spirituality has many directions and flavors and labels and options. I think that prayer and meditation are accessible to everyone. I think what’s the best way that I heard it described was that prayer is speaking and meditation is listening. I think we innately do both when we’re either in meditation or in prayer. I think naturally both happened.
Warwick F:
It’s so important to deal with these things. Everybody’s different. But for me, if I get really anxious or something weighs on me, it affects my stomach which it does for many people. And I start getting more sensitive to tomatoes or acidy foods. There’re certain foods that if your stomach is out of whack, you stay away from. But other people maybe headaches or some, I don’t know, but for me, it’s the stomach.
Warwick F:
If you don’t deal with this stuff, not only will affect you emotionally, it will affect you, as you say, physiologically. There are more and more science is understanding there’s a direct relationship between the emotions and the physiology.
Sarah N:
Yeah. There’s a very good reason.
Gary S:
I want to hop back a few seconds to what you said, Sarah, about the importance of language. I’m a word guy. I’m an old journalist. I’m a PR guy now and as I was reading through your materials, I love the fact that you called your coaching business Beyond Surviving. I love the fact that you have a quote on that website that says, “Let’s interrupt the pain and shake up the pattern so you can move beyond surviving. It’s time to enjoy the ride.”
Gary S:
I did a very quick search before we hopped on this interview because Warwick loves history and he loves historical perspective on subjects like we’re talking about. I went back farther than you usually go, Warwick, and that was Aristotle. This is something Aristotle said about this very subject about moving beyond surviving. This is what Aristotle said. “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” In your estimation and your experience, Sarah, why is survival not enough? Why should that not be where we point our compass, our GPS?
Sarah N:
Wow. First, thank you for that quote. What a beautiful contribution.
Sarah N:
I think anyone who is feeling unfulfilled, feeling alone, feeling unhappy, feeling hopeless, “depressed” is the word we’d like to use in modern America.
Sarah N:
I think any of us who describe our life that way are in survival mode. What’s so tragic to me is that we’ve been taught to settle for that and believe that that’s the best we can hope for, that life is hard, and some people get lucky, but most of us just suffer and struggle. Life is hard. So few of us understand how self-empowered we are, how many resources we have all around us, how much life is a proactive participatory experience rather than one that’s only in receiving mode.
Sarah N:
I think we are wired for survival, of course, so that is the default when stuff gets hard, but we’ve also been taught and programmed and modeled that that’s the best you can hope for.
Sarah N:
What’s really important for me and I’m so grateful for your work, Warwick, and others like us who are preaching this gospel of there is more than the thing that happened to you. Jung said, “I am not what has happened to me. I am what I wish to become or what I choose to become.”
Sarah N:
I think it’s so often that we, in America, in the modern day, are so quick to still completely identify with our hardships rather than identifying those as one moment in the time of our life.
Sarah N:
I do this exercise with my clients pretty early on. I asked them to create a timeline of their life and I remind them that when you were seven, your crucible moment was the wrecking of your bike and the bloody knee that you had and that is such a blip in your past now, but it was a defining moment that you can remember. You can totally go back to in your mind’s eye and feel in real time what that was like for you.
Sarah N:
I teach people to see that this is not the ending of your story. It’s one chapter in this broader context of what’s possible and when you have a crucible… I call it a catalyst moment, when you have a crucible experience, it wakes you up to your life and the ownership of your life and the value of your life in a way that you didn’t have consciousness around before.
Sarah N:
We take it for granted. We’d sleep walk through life. Our job is to get a retirement plan and a picket fence and a couple of kids and the right car and we should be happy and we are not taught to gauge our life by the fulfillment that we experienced or even how to get fulfillment beyond the external and the material.
Sarah N:
These crucible moments are a gift and I don’t mean to dismiss or minimize anyone’s suffering because no one deserves to suffer and yet time and again, it is those individuals who experienced some kind of hardship that activates or awakens them to the richness of life in a way that they will never take it for granted again. They deepen into their relationships. They deepen into their ownership of their life. They create something meaningful.
Sarah N:
I know that without this experience, my life would have never taken the trajectory that it did to the place where I’m incredibly enriched and fulfilled and joy filled and inspired excessively actually because of what happened to me and because I understand how much of a treasure it is.
Warwick F:
Talk about how that tragedy you went through was a catalyst just to take you on a whole, maybe mission’s the wrong word, but a whole new mission. Talk a bit about that because it sounds like it was a defining moment in an obvious way, but yet in a way that’s not so obvious. Talk about how that launched you into a new whole direction which is fulfilling and, is it wrong to say in some sense, gives you joy, what you did.
Sarah N:
No, please. I am absolutely joy filled with my life and my work and that’s where the challenge is honestly is that people still want me to be in the widow box. For me to say, “I’m joy filled and I’m in love and my life is beautiful,” is confusing because people cannot conceptualize how that could be possible.
Warwick F:
You feel some people might say, which would be very cruel to say to really honor the memory of your husband, you shouldn’t be happy. I don’t think anybody would say that but you think they’re thinking that?
Sarah N:
I don’t think they would say it out loud but I am certain people think that maybe you just didn’t love your husband that much if you could get on with the show so easily. That is something that I think we grapple with within these catalyst moments is what does it mean about me if I’m not devastated for the rest of my life by this and there’s a lot of clients who come to me who are afraid to let go of their grief because the grief is the thing that feels like love now. I can’t see them, I can’t touch them but I…
Warwick F:
The obvious thing is if it were possible to speak to your husband in some strange metaphysical sense, he wouldn’t say, “No, I want you to grieve and be sad the rest of your life.” He would say what you would have said, if heaven forbid, your role’s were reversed. You’d say, “I want you to get on with your life. Don’t forget me. But get on with your life and live a happy and joyful life.” He would say that. I’m sure, there’s no doubt. And you would have said that to him if the role… How is that dishonoring his memory? I know this is obvious, but as you say, people put you in a box.
Sarah N:
It’s the demonstration of how small I think the concept of love is within our humanity. People are like, “How could I ever love anyone again?” I say, “I have four children and I don’t only love my first son, I actually love them all quite equally, perhaps even more expansively, because there are four.”
Sarah N:
I think we’re so much more capable of fast love and deep intimacy and connection and joy than we realized because we’re sold this story of find your soul mate and live happily ever after and they’ll complete you and everything will be grand. Really tearing down the wallpaper of that belief system that the American Dream seems to be built upon and getting real with the fact that there’s no person who can complete you or make you feel loved unless you are deeply connected to and in love with yourself. You’ll never really actually experience intimacy or connection or fulfillment no matter how great you think your marriage is.
Warwick F:
I’m not in marriage ministry, so to speak, but that’s what you hear people say is if you feel like your husband or wife is the one who’s going to complete you, you’re here in trouble. You basically got to be happy with who you are, not seek fulfillment from some other person, or… Talk a bit about more what you do and just how you try and come alongside other people. I love that phrase, leaning into the pain and very countercultural. Obviously, I’m sure you’re not against counseling, but it’s counseling and, right? Talk about some of the and, so to speak, that you do to help other people go into the grief.
Sarah N:
I’m going to answer this by also answering the question I didn’t answer yet which is how did you get here. I did what I was supposed to do which was go to all the resources that were thrown at me to solve the problem that I had.
Sarah N:
I very quickly realized that many of these people didn’t actually believe in my healing either. They also saw me as a permanently wounded project that would need therapy for life and would always have this deep rift of emotional baggage dragging behind me. I found myself doing a lot of BS’ing with my therapists. “I know what to say right now because I am a type A overachiever. The right answer when you ask me that question is, ‘I’m doing just fine.” I never really got to this place of vulnerability nor did they ask me to go there. They couldn’t guide me there because I don’t think that was a part of their service.
Sarah N:
I had to go off grid and search for resources that could see me as a human and could really challenge me to become more curious about what my actual experience was rather than projecting onto me what they thought it would be and what I think what they thought I should be doing.
Sarah N:
What I found there was really useful but I had to look quite hard for it. It wasn’t packaged as the normal mainstream. “Here’s what you do when you’re grieving.” I decided that I would create it because one day I did come to a moment in my life where I looked up and around and thought, “Geez, I’m really happy.” This is the thing that nobody told me was possible, let alone real, and here I am.
Sarah N:
I guess it’s my job to let other people know this is a thing we can do just in case they’re also buying the line that the best we can hope for us is surviving.
Warwick F:
And it’s okay to be happy. You don’t have to apologize no matter what the tragedy is. It’s okay. Give yourself permission. It’s okay to be happy. Don’t feel guilty. Because I’m sure you had people saying, “I feel so bad. I’m happy.”
Sarah N:
Absolutely. I think that’s a general theme anywhere you go if someone experienced this pain and then finds themselves happy, they feel it’s confusing. It’s disconcerting. How could I be? How dare I?
Sarah N:
Essentially, what I’ve done is create this coaching program that’s built up on community and mind body resourcing and teaching people tools and language and the ability to self-reflect rather than deflect and dissociate. I started out working primarily with widows and it was really and continues to be really powerful and exciting and to watch them evolve beyond navigating their widowhood to navigating their lives in a broader context beyond that label.
Sarah N:
They can now see themselves as human beings, not widows, and it’s exciting because then we get to do the fun stuff of finding out who am I without that identity. I don’t have to leave behind what happened. I don’t have to forget to heal. I can always have that love story as a part of me and looking forward, what do I desire to create? What do I desire to experience?
Sarah N:
We don’t get there overnight. Of course, there’s a lot of terrain to cover but that is ultimately where we head is getting to the place where the pain feels like a part of the story that they’re very familiar with rather than one they’re grappling with.
Sarah N:
After a while, I noticed there were a ton of threads that were coming through because I was also working here and there with people whose father had passed or their brother had died or their friend had died. I just noticed that it wasn’t any different than working with the widows. The language was slightly different but the same fears and concerns and lack of ability to express what they were feeling and didn’t know how to. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do… It was all the same.
Sarah N:
This has evolved with time looking at the psychosomatic experience of navigating a painful life experience and what is missing in the culture that we operate in, filling that in with tools and self-resourcing and the ability to turn to ourselves with curiosity and notice what we’re experiencing so we can be honest about that and make choices and express ourselves in new ways to find our way to the truth of who we are rather than staying in that box, whatever the box might be.
Gary S:
Sorry, this is a good time for us to do a couple things. One, it’s about time to shelve the book back on the shelf, but the other thing, Sarah, I would be remiss if after you explained all of that, I did not give you the chance to let listeners know how can they find out more about what you do and get in touch with you.
Sarah N:
Thank you for that. I’m on Facebook and Instagram and also have a website. My name is Sarah Nannen. It’s lots of letters so I’m hoping you have show notes somewhere. But if you look for me on the Facebook or the Instagram or connect with me at sarahnannen.com, S-A-R-A-H-N-A-N-N-E-N dot com. Write that down for them so they don’t have to remember.
Gary S:
Yeah, I will. And you got nothing on Schneeberger for long letters in your name. But I digress. Warwick, I’ll give you the last question.
Warwick F:
Thank you so much, Sarah. I love what you do. I just have this image in my mind I think of that whole scarlet letter thing from Salem, Massachusetts. It’s almost like for some widows they feel like they have the big W on their forehead. It’s OK to can have it somewhere, it doesn’t have to be that big. It doesn’t have to… You are more than your tragedy. A tragedy doesn’t define you.
Warwick F:
I remember in the ’90s. I wasn’t, and as listeners know, I wasn’t in particularly good shape and there were some well meaning people that said, “Gosh, after that tragedy that Warwick went through and losing all that family business, and he’s pretty bad shape. He’ll probably never amount to more than that. He will always be just a pile of broken pieces.” Now, they wouldn’t say that to my face. But I felt that. I probably resented it a bit at the time, but it’s like, to me, you want to get in touch with what you’ve been through.
Warwick F:
But to me as I’ve been on a couple of church board and a school board and now with crucible leadership, there’s a healing balm, healing element as you’re focused on using your pain to help others. It doesn’t mean it totally goes away. There’s always a scar, but the combination of just understanding who you are, dealing with that, being real with that, I love that phrase, leaning into the pain, but then finding a purpose for your life and in our language a life of significance.
Warwick F:
That’s also part of not being defined by your tragedy. You’re more than just that day in Japan when those two marines, whoever it was came down that your front walkway. You’re more than that in that hour, that day, that minute, and everybody is.
Warwick F:
I love what you do and thank you so much. It’s a great mission, ministry and obviously, it gives your life meaning, purpose, and joy, and wholeness. You now can probably say you’re a whole… You’re not a disassociated person. You’re a whole person, right?
Sarah N:
I strive to be.
Warwick F:
Mind, body, spirit. That’s the goal, right? Be a whole person with a mission to help others which you have. I think you can really help a lot of other people and you have and it’s a message people really need to hear. Thank you so much.
Sarah N:
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Gary S:
This is when I know it’s been a great show when I have… And I’m going to show it to our YouTube viewers, when I take notes about here are some takeaways you can have for the show and then Warwick steals a couple of them when he summarizes his statement. I normally have three takeaways. I’m only going to have two today.
Gary S:
Warwick took number one which is don’t stay in the box. You don’t have to stay in the box. That’s number one. The way I phrased it was, we hear all the time that you’re never too old to move beyond your crucible. I think what Sarah has proven and what Warwick has proven in his own stories, it’s also true that we’re never too young to move beyond our crucible, that we are not frozen in time, even if we’re young, that’s not our destiny forever and Warwick just unpacked that a little bit and Sarah talked about it much in our conversation.
Gary S:
Another thing that Sarah really made clear in our conversation, listeners, is do not fake it until you make it. Healing is a proactive experience that requires intention and support, projecting everything’s okay while everything isn’t okay can deepen and actually worsen the pain of your crucible. Even though it may appear to those people who are onlookers that you’re winning, you really aren’t. You’re only surviving and survival isn’t healing. Do not be an actor in your own life. Be a character in your own life.
Gary S:
And then the third point, I think, that we can walk away with from this really meaningful conversation is never settle but strive. Life is hard but it’s also, as Sarah put it, a proactive, participatory experience. There’s more than the bad thing that happened to you and you can move beyond that bad thing that happened to you and you can grab a good thing that’s waiting for you. That is what we hope to point you to each week on Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
Until we are together the next time, listener. Thank you for joining us. Remember that your crucible experiences are indeed painful. They can knock you off balance. They can change as they did for Warwick and Sarah the trajectory of your life, but they are not the end of your story. In fact, if you lean into the pain, as Sarah says, if you learn from those experiences as Warwick has talked about, they can be the start of a new story, a new chapter in your life that can become the most joyous and most rewarding because it leads you to a life of significance.
Mike Valentine was a blue-collar kid who grew into a blue-collar young man, a longshoreman’s son who began working as a steelworker as a teenager, walking his first skyscraper beam at 14. His was a hardscrabble existence: He spent the next decade and a half addicted to alcohol and beset with its devastations — bar fights, car accidents and times behind bars. All that changed when his daughter was born — and he turned his attention to living life in pursuit of a worthy purpose. Today, as founder of On Purpose Now, he helps clients address the psychological, emotional, practical and spiritual aspects of life and business to awaken dormant energy and harness real power. What have his 30,000 hours of coaching others through crucibles and crossroads taught him? That every one of us has a gift to give, a purpose to live and a vision to build … and that the purpose most people want to aim for is characterized by love, grace and peace. In this episode, he tells BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax that pain offers us a great awakening. “What we find at ground zero,” he says, “is the bottom of our hearts.”
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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
Gary S:
Welcome, everybody, to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the podcast and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And you have clicked play, we hope you’ve clicked subscribe to this podcast, because Beyond the Crucible is a podcast that deals with how you deal with crucible experiences in your life, those difficult moments in your life that can really shake you up, that can really kind of knock you sideways, can sometimes leave you feeling as if life will never be the same again. And our purpose, and you’ll hear it extremely well in today’s episode, I think, our purpose in talking about those moments is to give you hope and actionable tips on how you can move beyond them.
Gary S:
Our guest today, Warwick, is someone who can really help us with that. And Warwick, by the way, listener, is Warwick Fairfax, who is the host of this program and the founder, the architect of Crucible Leadership. Warwick, this is going to be a good one, I think, and it will offer great actionable steps for listeners.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. I’m very excited to have Mike here, and yeah, it should be a great discussion.
Gary S:
The Mike that Warwick just referred to is Mike Valentine. And I’m going to tell you just a little bit about him, listener, before we get going here. Amidst the shadows of life-defining challenges, Mike Valentine activates a rare ability to bring to light the transformative power of purpose and produce real results. With the combination of a strong backbone, kind heart and direct approach, Mike has been professionally coaching people from all walks of life for more than 25 years. Mike has spent over 30,000 hours in developing leaders and scaled the ladder in three industries. His experience as a seasoned entrepreneur and corporate executive balances his training as a leader, and now his unique role as a life-purpose coach.
Gary S:
Mike has taught corporate leadership development, worked with personal and family relationships, and the realization of peak performance and human potential. The fires of life have tempered Mike’s character and left a burning devotion to helping others live happier, healthier lives, expressed through trans-personal purposes. For the last 12 years, Mike has pioneered On-Purpose Guidance Systems, which transcend the usual approaches by unlocking the power of true intention to create sustainable change and real results. His integral expertise, addressing the psychological, emotional, practical, and spiritual aspects of life and business, awakens dormant energy and harnesses real power. With this methodology, Mike supports people in all walks to make the shift to live On Purpose Now.
Warwick F:
Well, Mike, it’s so great to have you, and appreciate you coming here on the podcast. I really love that whole On Purpose Now theme. It definitely just certainly feels like it makes so much sense. We talk here a lot in Crucible Leadership and, in this case, Beyond the Crucible podcast, about living a life of significance. We’ve actually used the phrase, a life on purpose; who knew we were both kind of subconsciously on the same wavelength? But before we get to kind of On Purpose Now, which I’d love to hear you unpack it some more, it would be great to hear some of the back story, some of the circumstances, some of the challenges, maybe even crucibles that… There’s always a reason behind our vision, there’s always a reason behind our passion, and I’m sure you have a burning passion for helping people live on purpose. So Mike, tell us a bit about Mike Valentine and how you grew up, and kind of maybe the path that led you to where you are now with On Purpose Now.
Mike Valentine:
I was born in Baytown, Texas, which is the East of Houston. If you know Houston, that’s not the brighter side.
Gary S:
Yes.
Mike Valentine:
My dad is, or was… he passed a little over a year ago, but was a union longshoreman, and his best friend was a union iron worker. And by the ripe old age of 14, I was hanging iron in downtown Houston. So much of what I learned about living on purpose, I learned walking a beam. And it’s way too simplified, but it really is simple. There’s death three inches either direction, or less, and it’s important to land the next step.
Warwick F:
Right. You don’t land the next step, that could be your last step.
Mike Valentine:
Yeah, the second one doesn’t matter yet. Unbeknownst to me, that was part of my training, learning to live fully in the moment, to be right at the edge of death. And in the late ’70s, early ’80s, we didn’t wear safety harnesses. And so the only thing between me and death was gravity, and it was pulling for it. Unbeknownst to myself, that was some of the training to really learn how to stay present, in the moment, take the next step, maintain balance, be sure you got your tools with. You don’t want to drop them. There’s a lot of good training in that. But prior to that, I don’t know…
Mike Valentine:
I was sharing with Gary when we spoke before that when I was seven years old, my parents went to Mexico, and they came back and shared of the starving children in Mexico begging for money and food. And a boy, that they had connected with and taken a liking to was my age, seven. And they told me about it. And I remember my heart sinking and my throat welling up. You didn’t often cry in front of my dad for no reason, but it was right there. And when they finished telling me, I don’t know if it was exactly then, but shortly after, I decided I needed to get my second bike in shape. That young man could use my bicycle. And if he had my bike to beg, he could get to more people faster.
Mike Valentine:
So I went to the garage and started to repair my spare bike. And my dad came out and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting my bike in shape for…” I believe his name was Juan. “I’m going to get my bike in shape for Juan, and we’ll send it to him.” And my dad said, “Oh, don’t be silly. You can’t do that.” And honestly, he may as well have told me I can’t help my fellow man. I know he didn’t intend that; he was being practical. In hindsight, I can see that. But I developed stomach ulcers, worrying about other children who didn’t have…
Mike Valentine:
We were lower-middle class America, but we had the necessities, we weren’t hurting, and I had a spare. And if I couldn’t give my spare bike to that young man, how would I help people? It presented a very unique dilemma. At seven years old, I developed stomach ulcers, and we didn’t know that was very young to have stomach ulcers. And one day, as I was crossing the backyard, they doubled me over and… I didn’t go unconscious, but I was in deep pain. And when the pain passed, I had a sense of something that easily, now I can say, was purpose. I certainly couldn’t say it then, but I would say now, that something in me knew the world lives in fear, and it doesn’t have to.
Warwick F:
So just talk about that experience. You’re seven years old, and you probably didn’t… you certainly wouldn’t have thought in those terms. My sense is, even at seven, Mike, your worldview and your father’s was very different. I’m sure you didn’t say, “Yes, I have a different worldview than my dad.” Who does that at age seven?
Mike Valentine:
No, I wouldn’t have said that, either.
Warwick F:
But yet you clearly did. Again, doesn’t mean that your father was a bad person, but your view of the world and how it should operate, maybe even your sense of values, was a bit maybe different. So talk about… In hindsight, as you look back at a seven-year-old Mike Valentine and your dad, talk about the difference in your dad’s frame of reference and how he saw the world and how you saw the world, even at age seven.
Mike Valentine:
And that continued until his passing. You’ve hit the nail on the head there, very keen insight on your part. Of course, you’re right, I could not say, “Oh, I have a unique worldview to yours and let’s work this out diplomatically.” That wasn’t an option. But that desire to live in service of something greater than my own existence, I would say from that day, until I was 28, haunted me. Within the setting that I lived in, both in my home and in the environment… Union ironworkers are not generally the most enlightened trade on the planet. I was in an environment that had, in my opinion, no chance to really, not only fertilize and grow and expand that in dialogues with people, but couldn’t even talk about it.
Warwick F:
It almost feels like, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, that your dad maybe thought like, “My job to take care of my wife, my kids, my immediate family. That’s my job.” If you’re an ironworker, it’s take care of your brothers in your local union. It’s like every other people can take care of themselves, but it’s not my job to take care of other families, of people in other countries. That’s not what I’m here about. Kind of family first kind of deal. Was that kind of a bit of the mindset? Do you think of your dad and-
Mike Valentine:
That’s exactly right. And I would say this… And thank you for saying my brothers, because they were. No question, I hold no superior place on the planet than those guys. I’ll tell you, I think that all of us, unbeknownst to ourselves, we met God on the beam. We didn’t know that’s what we were doing, but fear can’t walk the beam, and you need something greater than that to take the next step. And so I have gone back. In fact my dad passed, like I said, just a little over a year ago. I spoke with his best friend this weekend and a few times in the last year, and I’ve been able to have some of these conversations; he’s 78. And it’s interesting to see his response. He’s still bidding work for the high rises in Houston. But that’s exactly it: take care of my tribe and protect it fiercely, up to and including with arms, if needed.
Mike Valentine:
It’s really interesting, Warwick, you struck a nerve in me that I haven’t had the chance to really express, I don’t think, very often. If you were to watch my progress from there, you would say, “Well, he became a typical ironworker.” How much you drink, who you can beat up in the bar, the women that you hang with, became the measure of manlihood. And seeing no option, I did; I stepped right in, I would say, in hindsight, unfortunately, but it was all I could see. But I was conflicted and contradicted inside. I could not understand, and so I drank more Jack Daniel’s to anesthetize it.
Mike Valentine:
And then I actually loved being on the beam, because there was freedom there. There was total freedom on the beam. At the edge of death, and fear dissolving with each step, there’s total freedom walking the beam. I almost set… My old tool belt is on a statute to my right here. It’s here to remind me there’s a day’s work.
Warwick F:
As I’m listening to you, Mike, it almost… And I can relate to this in some small way, although we couldn’t have grown up more differently. I grew up in a very wealthy… back in Australia. Upbringings couldn’t be more different, radically different, but yet I can relate in one sense. It almost feels like you were living somebody else’s purpose, somebody else’s life, somebody else’s worldview. Protect your tribe, protect your family, protect your brothers in the union, kind of “Live a hard life,” whether it’s alcohol, women, that’s the environment you were around, I’m guessing.
Warwick F:
So that was sort of normal for your tribe, the expression you used, but somehow I sense that it’s like, “Is this all there is? Do I just want to live somebody else’s life, somebody else’s purpose?” There was something within you that said… I felt like I said, “No, I’m not against this, but I want to be more than this.” Does that feel somewhat where you were, that you were to some degree living somebody else’s purpose or some other group’s purpose?
Mike Valentine:
I haven’t actually looked at it that way, but that’s spot on. That’s exactly where I was, but not knowing how to talk about or shift to, or bring forth my own, which like you said, was very different. But that’s exactly it. So I excelled at football for four or five years, and at 14, I found Jack Daniel’s whiskey, and it became a dear friend for the next 14 years. And at the end of that trail of tragedy, there had been 33 automobile accidents, 12 vehicles totaled and four trips to jail. And knife fights, gunfights, street fights. And then, as miracle, crucible, or divine intervention would have it, a young lady was born into my marriage. And the day I sat… Her name is Whitney, and the day… She’s 32 now.
Mike Valentine:
The day that I put her on the couch, bringing her home from the hospital, my dad was actually running the video camera, and it’s just… liquid started to flow from my eyes, and that didn’t happen often. I’m a pretty tough guy by then. Strapping 26 year old guy that… So I turned away and I didn’t know, I didn’t understand what was happening. I certainly didn’t want my dad to see, and I didn’t want it on video. But within the next two days, I knew that I had been struck by love. I knew that love had come in a package that I couldn’t deny, and it had been absent, because… And I could tell it was absent when it became present.
Mike Valentine:
As fate would have it, within those two days, I ended up putting my mom… my sister and I ended up putting my mom in rehab for cocaine abuse. And so I had a fairly good crucible right here, a daughter, two days old, a friend of my mom’s had gone to the house I grew up in and committed suicide, struck out heroin and beat his brains in with a golf club. And my mom walked into that situation and I came home, and my wife and my daughter’s mother told me what had happened. And my aunt said, “You have to do something.” And I said, “I can’t do something. I have a two-day-old child. And by the way, I love her, and I’m a little mixed up about all this.” And then by the end of the conversation, I realized she was completely right, that there was something that needed to be done.
Mike Valentine:
Fortunately, I had some conversations, and my mom was… either she was going willingly or I was calling for the straight jackets, but I had I had had those conversations. And she went willingly, and she’s been clean and sober for 33 years now. But that was a major. And I would say what we find… In my deepest belief, what we find in ground zero is the bottom of our hearts. And I’m someone who went over and over until I figured that out. And then I’m like, “Oh, maybe I don’t have to go to these extreme bottoms to activate the bottom of my heart, or the depth of love and care.” I have, since then, come to believe that people who will have conversations… but it’s there for all of us. So it’s evolved to, we all have a gift to give, a purpose to live and a vision we would love to build and create of a better self and world. And it generally is some expression of love.
Warwick F:
So that was, obviously, a key turning point in your life, that bottom. In hindsight, as you were kind of engaging in behaviors that probably weren’t that helpful to you, maybe there was somebody within you, like maybe the seven year old boy saying, “I don’t want to live this life, sort of crying to get out.” It’s like, there’s got to be something different. And then you just… The birth of your daughter and then your mother and her challenges, it sounds like that was just a pivotal moment where you said, “Okay, I’m not going to live the same way anymore, I’m not going to continue these behaviors that are destructive to myself and my family. I’m going to change.”
Warwick F:
So what caused you… Because some people hit that bottom… And you would probably know better than me, just some of the folks, brothers, they don’t change. The bottom continues like for the rest of their life, however long that is. But you made a choice. What led you to make a choice to live your life differently, live your life on purpose, as you would say?
Mike Valentine:
I’m going to respond in a paradoxical, and by the time I’m finished, it may sound like a political answer, not a political party. But A) I would say that it was so piercing, the experience of love for my daughter, so piercing, it was undeniable. It was a burning bush for me at that point in life. It’s like something lit up the bush and said, “Mike, you need to turn some things around.” And then the compelling love to mold myself into something that could exist as somewhat of a father. I’m sorry, I’m getting touched to think of it. She’s 32, and I have three grandsons now. And I’ll be 58 on Sunday. So-
Gary S:
Well, happy early birthday.
Mike Valentine:
Thank you. It was just so piercing that it was irrevocable in my mind. And I would say that that is an act of grace. I don’t see how I deserved or earned that in any way.
Gary S:
It’s interesting to me to hear you describe the part about getting to the bottom of your heart, as an adult, as an adult who’d been through some very difficult, very trying, very painful experiences. Some happened to you, some of them you set into motion, as you acknowledged here. But just that phrase, “getting to the bottom of your heart,” is interesting to me, because of the story you told about being seven years old. You have given an interview…
Gary S:
I read an interview that you gave about that story. And you said something in that story that was really interesting to me. You ended the story by saying, although you couldn’t say it then, when you weren’t able to give your bike to that child who was begging, who was roughly your same age, “Although I couldn’t say it then, it was a sense of purpose in my DNA,” you told this reporter, “in my genes to help others. I was incarnated to help people discover their gift, their purpose, and create their future.” To me, when you talk about getting to the bottom of your heart after some very difficult experiences in adulthood, it sounds to me like that may describe what you found at the bottom of your heart. Is that fair?
Mike Valentine:
That’s what it evolved to. I’ve never heard it said back to me, and thank you for that. And the way you just shared it, Gary, that’s beautiful. Though, you could say that giving him my bike meant helping them discover their gift, purpose, and vision. We could translate it now. And it took years though, to get that clarity. So I was going to back to Warwick’s question right there. So I would say it’s an act of grace that I don’t see any way that I earned. And then paradoxically, I did take practical steps. I got involved in my mom’s recovery, I got interested in… I had no concept of God, I had never owned a Bible. It had all been dark for as long as I could remember, probably since I was seven, maybe.
Mike Valentine:
My mom told me to… We were in the rehab room and I said, “Mom, I don’t even have a Bible.” And she said, “Well, here, take this one out of the drawer.” And it says, “Gideon’s. Placed here by Gideon’s, please do not remove.” And I’m like, “Mom, it just can’t be right to steal a Bible. It says right here, don’t steal it.” She said that “It’s better you steal it than live without it, son.” So my first was Gideon’s.
Warwick F:
Boy, those were very profound words from your mother.
Mike Valentine:
She was right in hindsight, but it didn’t… something didn’t feel quite right, but… And I didn’t end up going particularly a religious or Christian route-
Warwick F:
Sure.
Mike Valentine:
… but I tuned in. And then what evolved from there for me… Like you said, it is a mystery to me, how some people go to bottom and they have a peak, if you will, a glimpse of the bottom of their heart, but they don’t activate what’s there. And that’s become much of my trade, is you’ve been to enough bottoms, let’s go back to one of them and see what you didn’t pick up, that treasure that lies there. But what I did do in a practical way is I loved that daughter so much. And one day, her mom and I had an argument and I said, “You’re going to have to explain this to our daughter, how you’ve handled this,” and drove off in an anger.
Mike Valentine:
As I was driving, I heard myself say, “You’re going to have to explain to our daughter how you handled this.” And I realized I was talking to me. And she became the symbol of that love and the symbol of the desire to find that, eventually evolve, as Gary said, to the belief that we have a gift to give, a purpose to live and a vision to build.
Warwick F:
It almost feels like your daughter became this talisman or the symbol of your purpose. You can’t but have helped think, when my daughter reaches seven years old and she wants to give a bike to a kid in Mexico or some other thing, I’m going to say, yes, I’m going to encourage it. I love my dad, but I’m going to take a different path, and my daughter will grow up differently. That had to be in the back of your mind.
Mike Valentine:
Well, amazing that you bring that up. I said my daughter has three boys. Over the years, her and I cleaned out closets, drawers and toy boxes around Christmas, so that to make room for the new stuff coming. But where we took it was into the streets of Houston to the homeless people. We went, ourselves, and delivered it. She handed her things. We picked out the little girl in the front yard, and she is a very tenderhearted, young lady, a beautiful young lady. And just before the onset of coronavirus, she took in two foster children, one, three months old and one three years old. And she didn’t mention it. It is kind of typical of us to do very kind things, but not talk about them at all.
Mike Valentine:
She took pictures of her foster children. And I’m like, “My goodness, that’s one, two, three, four, five boys in your home?” Between three months and 11 years. So I don’t know, but I do believe that that tenderness… And I did have the chance. Not only to maybe say, “Let’s get this bike fixed up and package it,” at her will, but to also learn how to express that in my life as an example, hopefully, that had some positive effect on her.
Warwick F:
Well, that is so powerful. I think the listeners, we can all see the genesis of your vision for helping others, see the gifts, the diamonds maybe in the rough, may;be even the grace that comes with being in the bottom that had to have fueled a passion, a mission for you in life to help others live lives on purpose. I talk a bit about it. I think you can understand the genesis of this, but talk a bit about On Purpose Now and the tools and the principles that you give people, many of whom may well be in the bottom, or certainly being through transition. Maybe they’re not at the bottom, but they’re living life aimlessly and they’re thinking, “Is this all there is? I punch a clock, I go to work, but is this all there is?” And so talk about what you do helps people, whether they’re in the bottom or just maybe they’re just drifting through life, as many of us do.
Mike Valentine:
It’s the full range, Warwick, from… I have pioneered, organically discovered a method to work people through the events of their past and release the fear and look at the decisions they made about their view of life, their self, their capacities, and the other people involved. And when we’re afraid, we make decisions… I made five things. Those make up the root belief system, or the ego, in my approach. And so I’ve reenacted now 38 rates. And by reenacted, I don’t mean we reenacted the physicality of it, but through visualization. What happened next? What did you decide? What happened next? What did you decide?
Mike Valentine:
So it’s the range of people who’ve been deeply abused, all the way to the executive who wants to achieve the next level. The heartache is the same. And I don’t mean to discount the impact of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, at all. But from rape to one of, I would say, milder cases, I could not understand why this guy seemed so depressed and what was moving with him, and we finally got to the work, and his heartbreak was as a junior in high school, he was cut from the baseball team, the varsity baseball team. And the way he learned was approaching the fieldhouse to see on the list that he’s not on the team and all his baseball buddies were there, and that broke his heart.
Mike Valentine:
The day he believed love failed him was the day that he started to invest his faith in fear. By then he was 17, so… So the process is a pathway of endarkenment. So I start with, you have that gift to give, a purpose to live and vision to build, and most people say, “I have no idea how to discover it.” And I say, “Oh, that’s easy. We’ll go through your deepest heartbreak, grief, guilt, and shame that you’ve experienced in life. That’s where you left it. So we’ll just go back there and find it.”
Mike Valentine:
It’s so curious to me, Warwick, that they know it as well as I do. I’ve been down that trail with between two and three thousand people. But when we get there, to this place I call ground zero, and you look at this fear-based belief system, diagrammed on a wall, you’ve had this idea of what this is. I know I’m my worst enemy, but I graph it with a series of beliefs, associated behaviors and emotional results, the wonderful resentment and guilt and remorse.
Mike Valentine:
When you see the diagram, the ego is an addict. It’s addicted to fear. And for me, I would just put as my top behavior, those 14 years, believe all these things. I’m not good enough. I deserve to be beaten, raped, abandoned, thrown to the trash as a series of beliefs. And my top line behavior is just get some more whiskey. So take the whiskey out and now get some more food. Take the food out and now it get some more adrenaline. And eventually, through an iterative process, I saw that this system is going to get ahold of anything; a wife, a work assignment, inadequacy in creating technology solutions. It could get hold of anything. So there’s nothing to do, but let it be. Growing awareness, admitting that I have a fear-based system that leads me to guilt and shame, and my ego’s an addict, and accepting it. I do that when I do.
Warwick F:
Because part of dealing with things is you’ve got to recognize it and accept that we all have certain behaviors. Whether it’s in-built or learned, it doesn’t really matter, but… I know I do. We all have certain things, and part of it is recognize and accept it, and just saying, you’re not a awful person just because you have certain fears. Some people are claustrophobic, some people are afraid of heights, which obviously could be a bad one if you’re an ironworker, to be afraid of heights. But we all have different fears, and recognize, accept it. That’s the first step to be able to deal with it, which obviously, I’m sure, is what you help people understand. Right?
Mike Valentine:
That’s step one, to expose all of… My goal in the deeper work I do of our initial interaction is to diagram on half a piece of paper, a hundred percent of what’s holding you back in life, and that’s your call or the call of the person going through the process, I can’t know. But I know what it feels like at ground zero with them. Again, it’s fascinating. I’ve been there more than the people I’m working with, but they often know, this is it, this is ground zero. We look at this diagram a bit like you would look at 9/11. Wow, those buildings are really crumbled there. And this is really a mess. It’s interesting, it’s almost like the darkening of the shadow against this darkness of it. The light is so much brighter.
Warwick F:
So talk a bit about that. I get the part about understanding your fears and some of these challenges. Talk about how the light becomes visible as you recognize the darkness, if you will, as you recognize the fears. How does that work?
Mike Valentine:
Well, I think we could use today’s environment.
Warwick F:
Sure.
Mike Valentine:
I think there are… Well, no discount to the tragedy of lost lives and ill people and what they’re going through, and yet there are some spiritual gifts embedded within this, putting the whole world in timeout and obliterating our future. It brings us into the moment. And the light is in the moment, but that’s not enough. If you will, the circuitry, the organism, a willingness. My part Is willingness, intention and honesty. I’m willing to see something new there. And somehow pain is a great awakener. It almost presses it out and up.
Mike Valentine:
So it’s not always a visual light, but it’s like, for example, what would you have liked to have had there when you were so embarrassed being cut from the baseball team? I would like to have had a sense of connection and friendship, maybe a love or adventure. He saw baseball as quite the adventure, he loved to play. So maybe he would have said connection, friendship, and adventure. And I’m like, “That’s probably what you abandoned right there, so let’s recollect it.” And what I said earlier, that I think that all of our purposes are some form or some branch of love, and so we could just pull that out and say, “Okay, now create your purpose to live with friendship, adventure, and connection.”
Warwick F:
As you’re talking, I almost feel like if you could go back in time to your seven year old self, you could have probably mapped your purpose out, right there, saying, “Talk about the pain of not being able to give a bike to this kid in Mexico.” What about that just fueled your sense of purpose? And I don’t know whether you would have said, “I just want to help people, and I want to care for them.” There was a genesis of your probably lifelong vision right there, at seven years old. If you go back in time, use some of your principles and methodologies, I know it’s seven, it’s hard to figure it all out, but there was a genesis of a vision right there, amidst that particular ground zero, if you will.
Mike Valentine:
For sure. And I can patch it back for you. At my very first cut of bringing it to language, this was not too long after the post ironworking era. So my first way of languaging my purpose was very simple. Excuse me. Live constructively and help others do that as well. So you could say, exactly, that was right there at the seven year old event. I was living constructively, now I can get to work, I can put this bike back together, and I can help… I wanted to see him… I literally could see this young man, my age, getting around faster. I wasn’t going to tell him to stop begging, I was just going to tell him do it better.
Warwick F:
And there’s the other side of, the light is the cost of not living on purpose at age seven, was ulcers, was bad ulcers. And so when you don’t live on purpose, there can be an emotional, even a physical consequence, as there was for you and beyond. But that’s everybody’s story in a sense, if you’re not following your purpose.
Mike Valentine:
I think so. You could fast forward it right into today. I think that we’re in a bit of a global crucible. We are definitely in uncertain and redefining times. And back to what you were saying there, at this place of ground zero, so first of all, I brought my willingness and intention. There was, in my opinion, an opportunity of grace. And then my daughter became symbolic of my purpose, as you said, but then I stayed with it. I refused to believe that I couldn’t live in that level of connection and love to something greater than myself.
Warwick F:
Absolute, and that’s… Go ahead.
Mike Valentine:
Over time. Not a hundred percent, for sure.
Warwick F:
No, no. But I think that’s one of the other things that I’m sure you talk about it, is life’s about choices. It’s easy to say, I have no options. This is the life I’ve lived, my dad’s lived, my grandfather’s lived. This is just what we do, and whatever. I’m reminded I went to college in England and certainly, years ago, the whole class system was so strong that if you ever dared to say maybe you want to go to college, “Well so you think you’re better than me? You think you better than your dad? What’s your problem?” That your tribe would say, “Don’t you dare go outside of the tribe because that’s wrong. You’re trying to…” Et cetera. Which is incredibly destructive way of thinking, but yet…
Warwick F:
I think what I’m assuming what you talk, if not preach, is that we have choices, how we want to live our lives, we don’t have to live what other people say we should. And so that’s probably a key part of living on purpose, wouldn’t you say, is choose, make that choice to live on purpose, to use your gift for the world.
Mike Valentine:
I walk people through a series of questions. The first one is, do you want to live on purpose now?
Warwick F:
Right.
Mike Valentine:
And we might sit at the table with a cup of coffee and get to know each other, and I would say that, “That’s my question to the world.” The most predictable and almost a hundred percent of response is, “I don’t know what that is, I don’t know what that means, and I don’t know how to do it.” So I stay with the original question that I didn’t ask you if you know what it is, what it means and how to do it, I asked you, do you want to live on purpose, giving what you know about the idea of purpose? I don’t think anyone’s directly said no. Some people have walked away and never came back, I take that as a no, or at least not my style of purpose. I don’t think anybody has said, “No, I don’t want to live on purpose.”
Mike Valentine:
I’ve come to believe, Warwick, that the idea of purpose is in the mind of every human. It’s the like the question of God, it’s in there. I think that, “What am I doing here?” is in the mind, already, for all of us, I think is-
Warwick F:
We all want to live on purpose. One of the things, I think, I’m sure you talk about too, is the whole concept of legacy. As you’re on your death bed, what do you want your life to be? I made millions of dollars, or I had a nice house, or maybe I lived a life, in your terms, on purpose, that somehow made the world a better place and cared for others? Which do you want your legacy to be? 99.9 percent of sane people, it’s obvious what they’re going to pick. I’m not against money, but it’s like, legacy, purpose, they’re sort of two sides of the same coin, if you will, or they’re related.
Mike Valentine:
You bring up an interesting thought I’d love to share, if I may. A young man I have been working with for several years, close to 33, called and said, “My mom’s got cancer. She’s terminal. And they don’t have any hope. Stage four here and there and all over her body. Would you meet with her?” And I said, “Well, I think so, but I don’t quite know what I would say.
Warwick F:
Right, right.
Mike Valentine:
I’m certainly not someone who cures cancer.” I probably wouldn’t have taken this call. And he said, “But I just want her to find if it’s even just a moment of peace between here and her death. And I just would… if you’d be willing to talk to her.” I said, “Of course. For you, I’ll talk to her.” So we scheduled it and he had shaven his head, she had lost her hair. And when they came through the double doors downstairs here, they were both weeping, arm-in-arm. And I got them into the conference room and sat them down, and I said, “Just cry, guys. Just let it out.” And maybe a long minute, they…
Mike Valentine:
She had very bright blue eyes, and I learned later she was my age. But her name was Joyce. And when she finished, I said, “What did the doctors say?” She said, “They say I have nine months.” I said, “What do you think?” She said, “I don’t have nine months. I have six or five.” I said, “Has your birthday passed?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “No more birthdays for you. Right?” She said, “Right.” I said, “So if you had six, you won’t see next Valentine’s Day, but you will get through Christmas.” And she cried a bit. And I said, “What are you most afraid of?” She said, “I don’t think my kids are going to be… I’m afraid my kids won’t be all right.” And I said, “They won’t. They’re going to miss you. They might go off on tangents, rebelling at your loss. Nothing we can do about that.”
Mike Valentine:
She said, “I am afraid that I’m not right with God.” I said, “Then you’re probably not.” She said, “How do you know?” I said, “Well, people who are probably don’t have that question.” She said, how do I get right with him?” I said, “You probably know that answer better than I do.” Anyway. I walked her through a process called a but reduction worksheet. And I said, “What do you most want to live between now and your death and to leave behind about this six months that you think you have ahead?” She said, “I want to live with grace, dignity and respect.” So I said, “Okay, your purpose is to live with grace, dignity and respect.”
Mike Valentine:
She said, “But my kids want me to prepare my eulogy and funeral, but I don’t have the energy all the time. And we went through it all, my kids may not be okay. I’m going to miss them. I didn’t get to live as long as I want to.” Pretty heavy stuff. And at the end, I said, “Are you still afraid that you’re not right with God?” She said, “Now I feel grace, dignity and respect in this moment.” I said, “Don’t forget this moment. Plan this moment into your mind, because if you can do it right now, you can do it again tomorrow. And maybe you’ll do it twice tomorrow, and three times the next day.”
Mike Valentine:
We had a long conversation. I said, “About this eulogy, do you want to write it?” She said, “No, I don’t want to write it. That doesn’t seem right to me.” I said, “Do you want me to write it?” She said, “Yeah.” So I took out a piece of paper and I said, “You tell me what you want your funeral to look like.” And we put it together. Her son, balling. And I asked her what music she wanted, she named three songs. One of them was Amazing Grace by Elvis Presley. And-
Warwick F:
Wow.
Mike Valentine:
So I queued them up on YouTube. And when I finished writing her eulogy, I read it to her and she said, “That’s it.” I said, “Your eulogy and your purpose are the same thing. The only way to make this true about you when you die is to live it today.” And something happened for me in that conversation. I’ve been teasing around this for years, and it got clear, with her having a shortened period of time and facing that reality.
Warwick F:
Right.
Mike Valentine:
So flipped the paper over to her son and I said, “We’re going to have a funeral today in the conference room. You read the eulogy, I’ll play the music.” And we had a funeral in the conference… her funeral in the conference room.
Warwick F:
Wow.
Mike Valentine:
The wrinkles from her face started to disappear. But my point is that what you’re saying, the legacy. We could say legacy, however you would use terms. But what you want people to say about you when you’re gone, you live today, now.
Warwick F:
And those are clues to what your purpose should be, as you’re-
Mike Valentine:
For sure.
Warwick F:
… writing that eulogy. That is such a brilliant concept. What you did with that woman is just… that was an act of grace, an act of love. That’s an amazing thing that evolved, but that can apply to all of us. Right? What-
Mike Valentine:
I was terrified what I would say. I’m like, “A woman who’s facing death, I don’t know what to say.” And on the elevator, I said, “Well, just show up and say whatever I’m moved to say.” That’s one of those things that I’m for sure came through me, but not from me.
Warwick F:
Well, certainly, as a person of faith, half of life is just showing up and trust, if you’re a person of faith, that there’s some higher power that will give you the words when you need it, kind of thing. Trust the process and trust that there’s something out there that will help you. So, wow. When you’re talking on purpose, maybe this is a dumb question, but is there a sense that on purpose, somehow it needs to benefit others? Like, if somebody said, well, my purpose is all about me and getting rich, and I don’t care if my family lives or starves, who cares? It’s all about me. That’s my purpose. Is that even possible or is that like some weird psychotic…
Mike Valentine:
Thank you for the question. There is much confusion about a purpose or a goal. Everything you mentioned is a goal. Those aren’t purposes. There is some other place, some other time, some future, and therefore, not accessible in this moment. A purpose, like she said, to live with dignity, respect, and grace, you can do that now. And then from there, yes, you establish those goals. But starting in the center of that… To live with grace, dignity and respect, now, how will you do that? I need to have some conversations with my children about what I want to be sure they know-
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Mike Valentine:
… about how I love them.
Warwick F:
As you’re talking, I’m almost thinking back to legacy. For those who were reasonably sane, just to make that as an assumption, if you asked about the whole eulogy thing, I can’t figure of almost anybody on the planet will say, “I don’t care about my family, I don’t care about my kids, it’s all about me.” Then they’re being self-deceived. They’re not being honest with themselves. So to me, how can a purpose not have some sense of altruism, some sense of serving others? Because it almost feels like that’s not purpose, or not a purpose that anybody that I know could have. Does that make sense?
Mike Valentine:
Completely. I think it extends as service. So I think the three most common words used in people’s purpose are love, grace and peace. You could see the core negative emotions or fear-based emotions is fear, sorrow and anger. So now we’ve got to balance. And then I think that most everyone’s purpose is an extension of love, grace and peace in some way. And again, I didn’t make this up. Prior to doing work, I learned it as I did the work. And I would bet… I haven’t done it, but if I were to go back and look at the written purposes that we’ve put out for maybe a few thousand people, I don’t think I would find more than 45 words that are woven together.
Warwick F:
That is just profound: love grace and peace. I’d be hard pressed to think of three better words than that. That’s awesome. But talk about people that you’ve seen, that you work with, that you’re blessed to be around, who are living lives on purpose. What’s the difference between the before and after? Just their spirit and their bearing, talk about the difference that living a life on purpose makes.
Mike Valentine:
For some people, it looked exactly the same, but you can tell something is different on the inside. I would say that’s at least half, or maybe a small majority. And other people change everything, because their life was… But it seems like for the small majority of people, their life is fairly aligned with what’s important already, they just-
Mike Valentine:
… have been… You can look at it like a spiral. Get an education, add a house, a wife, some children, some money, a few toys, spiraling in toward the center of your heart. And I’m saying, let’s cut across the grain, go to the center and spiral out. And so it’s already somewhat aligned for most people, it doesn’t necessarily… We have a friend in common, she has a… Well, she’s about to make some pretty drastic changes. But she stayed with what was important, she didn’t knee-jerk towards a whole different life. But it migrates towards, let’s say to live with grace, peace and love.
Mike Valentine:
If you were to reiterate that in your mind, bringing intention, honesty, and practice to that daily, it would reshape things around you. Your goals would be different, they’re set differently. But I’ll share one young man, he played pro baseball, he had hit a grand slam in the last high school baseball game and the first college one, so two in a row. A pretty accomplished guy, who was running a real estate company, a mortgage bank. And he met with me and said, “I’m thinking about designing a coaching company, and I hear you’ve got a lot of content.” And I said, “What’s the matter with your neck?” He said, “Well, I got a crick in my neck, my back hurts.”
Mike Valentine:
“Your eyes are bloodshot, you look kind of red. How many hours are you working?” He said, “16 a day.” I said, “How many days?” He said, “Seven or so.” I said, “We’re not building any company. That’s not happening.” And I said, “You have a gift to give, a purpose to live and a vision to build a better self and world.” And we got to work right away. He’s a go getter guy, with all the tools to be an extraordinary person, and already extraordinary at that point.
Mike Valentine:
He shed two companies and focused on the one that was the broadest expression of his purpose, which is residential real estate and growing a brokerage, even though the other company made more money. And then he took Fridays off at noon, and then he took Fridays and Tuesdays off, and now he coaches his 11 year old son’s baseball game, and he got his neck straightened out.
Warwick F:
I love how you’re describing this, because sometimes people think this road to Emmaus moment, the scales come off, Paul lives a radically different life, or some spiritual epiphany. But it’s not always like that. I love that phrase you mentioned of sort of the inward spiral and the outward spiral. As we often say on Crucible Leadership and Beyond the Crucible, there’s nothing wrong with success, but in service of what? And so is it imbalanced, so you’re working 16 hours a day? Are you able to take vacation with kids or do something meaningful? But just as you were talking about that person, that friend you were working with, just the outwardly life may not look that different, but yet there was more of an outward focus and an inward focus that led him to make subtly different choices about what businesses to focus on.
Warwick F:
To you, his life may be profoundly different to the others, it may be just a slight shift, but it doesn’t mean selling your business or going and being a missionary, some foreign country. It can be just a change in perspective of what you’re already doing is what you’re saying, which is just… to me, it’s an interesting thought.
Mike Valentine:
Certainly, he got clear about his purpose and then his goals look differently. I would say that underneath there’s a treadmill, for most people, the fear-based belief that I’m not good enough, I’m unwanted and/or I’m unlovable. And so when I finally get that money, prestige status, political office, home, relationship, finally, I’ll be happy and live with purpose. And I’m saying it’ll never work.
Warwick F:
That almost feels like a good summary in a sense, is, do you want to live a life on fear or on purpose? Right? And most people choose on fear. “I’m afraid of what my dad might think,” or what my friends or my tribe, so to speak, to use the term we used earlier. “I’m living life based on fear or obligation rather than on purpose.” That feels like a dichotomy.
Mike Valentine:
Spot on, fear or purpose. Fear or purpose. I say that my craft is a life purpose guide, or that’s my role, but really, my skill is fear hunting.
Warwick F:
What a great phrase, fear hunting. Wow.
Mike Valentine:
That’s my skill, is to go down the darkest tunnels and eliminate the fear. And the elimination of the fear of the purpose is so obvious. We don’t have to go chase the purpose, we just have to admit the fear. And at that point, that choice becomes obvious, exactly the way you said it, fear or purpose.
Gary S:
I would actually go see that movie, The Fear Hunter. I would, absolutely. Whether Robert De Niro was in it or not, I would go see that film. Gentlemen, we’re at the point where we’ve got to begin to land the plane. It’s been a robust discussion about purpose and significance and overcoming crucibles. And I would be remiss, Mike, if I did not give you the chance to let our listeners know how they can reach you, how they can learn more about On Purpose Now and how they might be able to engage with you.
Mike Valentine:
My website is OnPurposeNow.com, so you can go there. You can send me an email at Mike@OnPurposeNow.com. And either way, I’ll reach out or see how we can connect. On my 55th birthday, I decided that the sports I like do not watch time elapsed, they watch time remaining in the game. And I took an app and decided, if I get a good, long, healthy run of it, I’d like to go 88 years. And on Sunday night at midnight, I’ll have 30 to go. Right now, I have 30 years and two days and about eight hours, but who’s counting?
Gary S:
Well-
Mike Valentine:
It’s not morbid to me, it helps me-
Gary S:
Absolutely.
Mike Valentine:
Today counts, I’m clicking them off. But my point is, those who would choose a pathway… I think there are many paths, one way. The way is love. I’m talking about a pathway, and purpose is a path, as is many of the spiritual teachings. Many paths, but the way is love. Those who want access to the path of purpose, I’ll be here. So shoot me an email, learn what you’d like on the website. I am, hopefully, next week, going to launch from a no-cost workshop, Zoom workshops, and they’re fear hunting workshops. Face the fear, feel the freedom. I’m going to do a few of those.
Mike Valentine:
As COVID-19 took over, I realized that demand and value of what I do has gone up, but the price people will pay is probably going down. And I asked myself a question that I’m going to stay with until we get the all-clear sign, which I think may be some time from now. And my question was, how can I help people do for a 10th of the cost better than 70% of the impact? And so I’m challenging myself with that in this crucible time. All this color that I’ve talked about, can I activate it without being at the bottom?
Gary S:
That is an inspiring thing that you’re doing and obviously, it will be a helpful and healing thing that you’re doing for many of our listeners, and certainly for the people who have engaged with you. Speaking of our listeners, I have been… this conversation has truly been fascinating, between you and Warwick, Mike. And I’ve sort of taken three notes, three takeaways that I want our listeners to have as we close up. Three key takeaways, I think, from this discussion. And the first one was at the very beginning. And I love the way that you expressed this, Mike, the idea of putting one foot in front of the other and doing it one step at a time. This is a skill, listeners, that Mike learned walking steel beams. And not steel beams on the ground, he was walking them well above the ground. Because he was not harnessed to the beams, it could have dire consequences had he fallen.
Gary S:
But when you’re up there and you’re walking those steel beams, when you’re putting one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, the second step doesn’t matter. That’s the first step to walking out a vision, to finding your purpose. Your path to moving beyond your crucible and living a life of significance begins with a single simple step. And as Mike says, fear cannot walk the beam, so walk bravely and boldly. So there’s take away one, I think.
Gary S:
Takeaway two, Mike told me a moving story about looking for the treasure that lies in the bottom that you’ve hit, the crucible experiences that you’ve been through. As tough as it’s been, what good came out of what happened to you, or what good could come out of it? Finding beauty in the ashes of your life is one of the most certain ways to keep yourself out of another fire. And then I think the third point that we had a great discussion of here is the idea of building a vision. Warwick talks about living a life of significance, Mike talks about living on purpose. They use some of the same language.
Gary S:
But here’s a hint as you’re looking to live a life of significance, build a purpose, craft a vision. It’s almost always, as Mike said, rooted in love, loving yourself and loving others. That will fuel your purpose, listener, and it will likely revolve around these three things that Mike said. Fuel the purposes of the clients he works with, which touched Warwick when he said it. The three things that your vision, your purpose almost always will revolve around when you get right down to it is living in love, grace and peace.
Gary S:
As we sign off on this episode of Beyond the Crucible, we hope that those are things that you do indeed find the wherewithal to walk in as you pursue your life of significance. Thank you for spending time with us on Beyond the Crucible. Warwick and I have just a little favor to ask on the app that you’re listening to this podcast on now, click or tap subscribe. What that will do is make sure that you don’t miss fascinating conversations like the one we just had with Mike Valentine. And then it’ll also help us tell more people about those conversations, so that they can begin to chart their own course for moving beyond their crucibles.
Gary S:
Until the next time that we’re together, please remember that crucible experiences are painful and they happen. We have research that shows they happen to… Almost half of people are willing to admit they’ve had crucible experiences. And they are painful, but they do not have to be. And in fact, in most cases, are not the end of your story. They can be, if you learn the lessons of them, if you find the purpose in them, if you cast a vision from them. Those crucible experiences can be the start of a new story, a new chapter in the book of your life. And the most rewarding one of all, because it’s a chapter that leads to a life of significance.
Listening is one of the most necessary, and least practiced, leadership skills in business and life today. And lest you think lack of listening is a new phenomenon, brought on by the last few decades of tech advances that have created tech distractions, think again. Harvard Business Review found in 1957 that people remember only about half of what they hear, even when they’re trying really hard to dial in. In this episode, BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax explains why great leaders listen — and how they can do it better to get past crucible moments and avoid additional ones. One of the critical keys, he tells co-host Gary Schneeberger, is asking good questions of your team to gather information from them that can help enhance your vision and, just as important, signal to them clearly that you’re not just paying “ear service” to the insights they’re sharing with you. “The price of engagement from your team,” Fairfax notes, “is listening.”
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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
Gary S:
Welcome, everybody, to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the co-host of the podcast and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. You have clicked play. We hope that you’ve pushed the little button that says record on a podcast that deals in painful experiences that we have in life that we call crucible experiences. They are those things that can happen to us. They can be sometimes caused by us. They can be professional, personal, sometimes both. Many times both. But what they all have in common is that they’re things that knock the wind out of us. They’re things that can knock us off the trajectory of our lives and make us feel like we’ve lost our way. Our purpose in talking about them is to help us move beyond them, hence the name of the show, Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
We don’t talk about crucible experiences here so that we can wallow in them. We talk about them so that we can move beyond them. Helping us do that, as always, is the architect of Crucible Leadership, and that is Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we have a pretty interesting conversation, I think, I hope, I pray, on tap today for listeners.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Looking forward to it.
Gary S:
We are going to be speaking today, listener, about a topic that should be near and dear to your hearts because you’re listeners to our podcast, and that subject is listening. Listening and leading. In particular, how listening impacts leading. I want to get our conversation kicked off by reading a quote about listening in a leadership context from a book that I’ve recently read. Here’s the quote, just to set the stage for what we’re going to talk about. Then when I’m finished with the quote, we’ll let Warwick take it from there and we’ll start our conversation.
Gary S:
But the quote is this: “Good listening allows leaders to hear ideas that will make their visions better and their plans to implement those visions more likely to succeed. Good listening allows leaders to learn of potential pitfalls and roadblocks that enable them to cast their vision in ways that increase the likelihood of success.” Before I turn it over to you, Warwick, to begin the discussion, do you have any idea who wrote that?
Warwick F:
Well, I was going to guess Stephen Covey, but I’m not sure.
Gary S:
It’s not Stephen Covey. It is, in fact, Warwick Fairfax.
Warwick F:
No. What?
Gary S:
That, listener, that is just a teaser of the book that Warwick is publishing that will be out early next year, sometime next year, that is called Crucible Leadership, and it talks about some of these very subjects that we talk about on this podcast. So I fooled him there. He didn’t know I was going to read that. But that’s a good sign, Warwick, that when you write about something, when you hear it, it surprises you that you wrote it. So that’s a good sign. If it helps you, it’ll absolutely help the folks who buy the book.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Well, I probably shouldn’t disagree with that, right, if I wrote it.
Gary S:
Absolutely. It’s a good jumping off point for a conversation about the importance of listening as it pertains to the practice of leadership.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Great leaders listen. Listening is an absolutely critical component of leading. But it’s interesting, often the people that get promoted to be leaders, they’re not often promoted because they listen. They’re promoted because they get stuff done. They’re action men, action women. It’s like their listening time is just to get stuff done. You want leaders who get things done. You don’t want philosophy professors or people who are contemplative. I tend to be more contemplative and reflective myself, but ultimately leaders get stuff done. So that’s good, but sometimes in getting things done they feel like they know what they want to do, they know where they want to go, they tell the team, “OK, let’s go.” So the thought of listening, it’s like, “Look, I don’t have time to listen. We’ve got to get stuff done here. Let’s stop twiddling our thumbs. Let’s go. Let’s start the engines. Let’s hit 60 in 2.3 seconds. Let’s go.”
Gary S:
I think listeners probably can relate to that. I think they’ve worked in situations where there have been bosses like that, where they’ve maybe felt steamrolled sometimes by ideas that the boss has. The boss doesn’t necessarily listened. Whether that’s in work in a large corporation, if it’s in even a group setting that you’re in, if you’re in the PTA or if you’re in some organization like that. There are people who are at the head of organizations or associations or even just friendship groups who sometimes do less listening than they probably should and certainly less listening than is valuable. So one of our organizing principles as we talked about what we’re going to talk about is just helping establish for listeners, Warwick, why is listening so critical for leaders?
Warwick F:
Really, the price of engagement is listening. If you want to succeed, if you want to accomplish your goals, you will listen. If you want to fail, and most leaders don’t like to fail, if you want to fail in achieving your objectives, then don’t listen. So there really isn’t any choice to effective leadership but to listen. I’ve heard it said often, people don’t necessarily have to feel like everything they say gets to be part of the solution. They have to feel heard. If people feel truly heard, they’ll be willing to accept a direction even if it wasn’t maybe one they chose to go to because they feel like the leader heard them. And that’s really the most important thing. So if you want your team to be committed to your vision, you’ve got to be willing to listen to them. And really listen.
Warwick F:
I mean, we live in a society today where people prize authenticity. They want you to be real. If you’ve gone to a bunch of seminars and you go through the motions and say, “Aha. Yeah, I hear you. Interesting. Hmm. Thank you,” but nothing happens, people can spot that a mile away. They can tell if you’re listening or not. You can’t fake it and make it. You will fake it and fail. So if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to really do it, not just pretend. Pretending doesn’t work.
Gary S:
Right. All of us have heard the phrase, “So and so is paying lip service to something.” You can’t pay ear service to something, either. You can’t fake it until you make it, as you say. You can’t fake your way through it. And it’s interesting, for our conversation I pulled an article from Fast Company magazine of a couple years ago, and it has 6 Ways to Become a Better Leader. One of the things that they talked about was this very thing. In fact, Fast Company’s number one way to become a better listener was, “Listen to learn, not to be polite.”
Gary S:
It’s not just about hoodwinking people into thinking that you’re hearing them. It’s not just about being for the appearances of it. You really want to learn something. Whether or not, as you said Warwick, whether of not after you’ve heard what they’ve said, you heed what they’ve said. You’ve got to make it clear to them that you really value their input.
Warwick F:
That is so true. I mean, really, leaders are learners. Leaders are curious. I don’t care how successful you are or how bright or how many achievements you’ve made, leaders typically are successful and they’ve achieved a lot and they’re driven. They don’t get to where they are without that. But you can never assume you are the font of all wisdom and you have nothing to learn from anybody, from any of your team, from any book, any person, any human that’s ever lived. I mean, that is gross arrogance and more than arrogance, it’s just stupidity and it’s wrong. If you’ve hired a good team and if you have any sense, you will. If you’ve hired a bunch of yes-men and yes-women, then that’s a whole other problem. But assuming you’ve hired people of intelligence and ability, they collectively will know things that you will not.
Warwick F:
You add up the sum of all those components, and that is a powerful amount of knowledge and wisdom and energy and drive, perhaps more than even you have. So why would you not want to listen to your team that undoubtedly will make your ideas better? That’s what great leaders do. They listen to their team because… Another facet, if you’re head of some company, you might have somebody in sales, in manufacturing or marketing, and each of those people are subject-matter experts in their area. You as a leader will know something, but you’re not dealing with customers every day. You’re not dealing with front-line workers and machinery every day. They will have information, expertise and learning that you don’t, and collectively that’s an enormous amount of understanding. So it just makes sense to listen to their perspectives because it may give your information and insight that you don’t have. Not listening to your team, it makes no sense at all.
Gary S:
One of the aspects of what you just said, playing off from that, Warwick, is that if you over time do not listen to your team, to those experts, to those folks who are on your team because they have skills and talents and abilities and perspectives that will help you achieve your vision and achieve your mission, if you don’t pay attention to that, if you don’t listen, over time that will degrade their desire to share with you. The very thing that they have that they can offer, if a leader’s not listening, they can learn to be quiet. We’ve all seen it. Hopefully not all of us have experienced it, but we’ve all seen it in meetings. If a leader doesn’t listen, people don’t feel comfortable sharing. If the people you have on your team who are there because of their expertise and their talents don’t share, that doesn’t give you a chance to listen and it can lower your chances of success.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Certainly if you’ve got good people on your team, they’re people that can work elsewhere. Good people, highly valued. If you don’t listen, what’s going to happen is, in our mobile job market or at least before COVID, obviously, it was pretty mobile and not quite as mobile now maybe, but in general the labor market is mobile, they’ll leave. In fact, good leadership, people who listen, it’s not really that common, unfortunately, which we’ll talk about in a bit why that’s so. But because of that, people enter the workforce, enter your company, enter your organization somewhat skeptical. They won’t assume you want to listen. They will assume you may not. So even if you ask them, “Hey, we’re about the launch this initiative, I’d love people’s opinions,” you might hear crickets.
Warwick F:
You’re actually going to have to work. It’s a bit like fishing. You’re going to have to throw that line out a few times. You’re almost guilty until proven innocent in the area of listening just because it’s so rare. So you’re going to have to work hard. Now once you’ve earned people’s trust over the months and over the years, people will share. But it’s like a starter engine. You got to crank it a bit for that to happen. So if you have a few times where you’ve just gone ahead like a bull in a china shop and not listening, that’ll take a while to undo because it’s back to what they expect.
Warwick F:
Bosses don’t listen. So you’re not starting from a level playing field. You’re starting from a position where they’ll assume you probably won’t listen, even before they even know you. So then you’ve got to work at it and convince them that you really care and that you really want to listen.
Gary S:
Yeah. It’s tenuous, too. That connection is tenuous, as you pointed out. Just one time. It only takes one time to not listen, to be the bull in the china shop, to go ahead and push through, where people will think, “Whoa, OK, my ideas aren’t appreciated.” You’re right, not feeling appreciated, not feeling heard, is one of the things that can lead people to walk out the door, and that can severely dampen your chances of getting your vision enacted and making it a reality.
Warwick F:
Just as we talk about making the vision reality, you don’t have to listen to everybody but you have to listen to somebody. One of the things that we say in Crucible Leadership, if could be 100 percent of your vision but it might get 0 percent buy-in. Well, it’s better if it’s 80 percent of your vision and 100 percent buy-in. One achieves a lot, the other achieves nothing. So leaders fear, “If I listen to my team, it’s not even going to be close to what my vision is. It’ll be some watered down monstrosity that’s not going to go anywhere.” That’s the fear. But if you’ve got a smart team, that won’t happen. Again, you don’t have to listen to everybody, but when they look at the final vision, they’ve got to be able to say, “That part of the vision, that idea, that was mine.”
Warwick F:
I think of one example from history. I think I read it in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, a fantastic book about Lincoln and his diverse cabinet, diverse in terms of politics and ideas. In his second inaugural address, in one of the most famous speeches in the English-speaking language in American history, he talks about “with malice towards none and charity towards all.” Lincoln could write a good speech. The Gettysburg Address. The guy knew how to write a speech and deliver it. Well, as reported in this book, he actually asked some of his senior cabinet, “Hey, I’ve got this draft but I’d love your input.” Now I don’t think we know exactly what happened, but you’ve got to assume that some of their input went into that speech.
Warwick F:
I don’t know that we know, was “malice” from one person and not the other, or “charity.” But can you imagine being his team? Lincoln, by this time we’re looking at the second inaugural in 1865. I mean, they knew him by then. The guy was amazing. It’s like, “He’s asking me for my opinion on the second inaugural. Oh. My gosh. Wow.” Well, if Lincoln can do it in an area where he was superbly good at, maybe the rest of us can listen to our team, too.
Gary S:
Right. And it’s another one of those situations, it only takes one time. Doing that one time. I mean, if that was the only time that the member of Lincoln’s team saw something that he said go into a speech that the president gave, I would imagine his descendants are still living off that, if he’s passed that story down. It only takes one time to build that confidence, build that camaraderie that allows a team to help your vision become reality. Because a vision not made reality isn’t worth much, except maybe telling old stories after. “I had this great vision once.” But a vision that becomes reality because there’s team buy-in, even if it’s only, as you said, 80 percent of your vision, that vision is one that can change the world and lead to a life of significance.
Warwick F:
If there’s one thing leaders hate and visionaries hate, is a vision unfulfilled, a vision not becoming reality. That should motivate leaders to listen because the alternative is failure. The alternative is not achieving success and your vision not becoming reality. The more you’re passionate about the vision that you have, the more that you should want to listen to your team. So that should, in theory, be motivating.
Gary S:
Right. So we’ve talked about why listening is so critical. Let’s turn the page and talk about why listening can be so difficult. Just to set the stage again for this part of the conversation, I found a Harvard Business Review article that talks about listening to people and it gives, in three paragraphs, a pretty good summary of why listening is hard and that listening is hard. That’s important. But here’s just a couple of paragraphs from this article, “Listening to People,” from the Harvard Business Review.
Gary S:
“It can be stated with practically no qualification that people in general do not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary aural skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening. For several years we have been testing the ability of people to understand and remember what they hear. At the University of Minnesota, we examined the listening ability of several thousand students and of hundreds of business and professional people. In each case, the person tested listened to short talks by faculty members and was examined for his grasp of the content. These extensive tests led us to this general conclusion.” Listener, hear this.
Gary S:
“Immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he has heard, no matter how carefully he thought he was listening.” The fascinating thing, Warwick and listeners, about this article, just in case you think a lack of listening and that listening being hard’s a new invention, this article from the Harvard Business Review was published in the September 1957 issue. This is a problem that has existed throughout the generations. 63 years ago, the science, the study were still around “how do we make people listen better?” And we’re still struggling with that today. Because listening is hard. Why is it hard, Warwick?
Warwick F:
This is going to sound a little simplistic. It’s because most people, they don’t want to listen. They don’t care. They’ve got big egos. And leaders tend to have big egos. You don’t get to be successful by saying, “Oh, it’s really not me, it’s my team.” I mean, it would be nice if a few more humble people became leaders, but yeah, it’s hard to listen. Even if you agree with the textbooks conceptually, if you don’t want to, if you don’t care. I think great leaders are curious. They want to learn. They want to listen. They want to know, understand people of different cultures and backgrounds. That’s what it takes to listen. You’ve got to really have this abiding desire to care, to learn. You’ve got to be humble, park your ego at the door and say, “Look, I might have ideas, but I’m not the font of all wisdom. There might be other ideas that are better than mine.”
Warwick F:
So really, it really is a matter of the heart. You do what you care about. If you care about something, it’s amazing how good a job you’ll do. Whether it’s at work or if you want to be a good baseball player or an artist, a painter, ballet, you name the activity that you’re passionate about, you will do really well — assuming you have some skill — because you care about it. Well, the same is true for listening. If you really care about it, you will be able to do it. That is the sad reality is, you’ve got to care. You’ve got to want to listen. You’ve got to believe that other people are valuable and have valuable opinions and are worthy in of themselves and are worthy of listening. It’s really a matter of the heart and the character. It’s sad but true.
Gary S:
I’m going to give a couple of quotes here and I promise you I’m not going to fool you with quotes from you this time. But here’s a couple quotes about just the difficulty of listening, why listening is so difficult. One is from Stephen Covey, who you thought the first quote was from, which you’re in good company when you’re saying things that Stephen Covey says as well. Stephen Covey said this about listening. “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply.” A similar perspective came from someone I believe to be even wiser than Stephen Covey. My mother, Martha Schneeberger. When I was growing up, just barely in double digits, maybe right before mid double digits, my mom said to me, “Gary, a good ratio when you’re interacting with people is to listen twice as much as you talk. To limit your lips and let your ears rule the day.”
Gary S:
What’s fascinating to me about that, Warwick, is that in this article that I spoke about in Fast Company, about how to be a better listener, one of the things that they say in here is, “Pay attention to your talk-listen ratio.” That’s one of Fast Company’s pieces of advice, too. Mom was right. It says, “If you’re a note-taker during meetings or conversations…” This is fascinating, listener. Think about this. “If you’re a note-taker during meetings or conversations, try keeping track of how much you listen versus how much you talk,” says Fast Company. “Mark off a section of the paper and write down the names of all the people on the conference call or in the meeting. Whenever a person talks for more than a sentence or two, put a check mark by his or her name. This includes you, too, by the way. The visual representation of comparing listening to talking might hold some lessons for you.” I thought that was fascinating.
Warwick F:
That is such a good point. It reminds me of a story of when I joined a board a number of years ago. The board president told me and the other new board members, “Remember that you have two ears and one mouth.” That was his subtle way of saying that should be the ratio. When I’m on boards I tend to be pretty active in my opinions, so I have to say, yeah, I think I’m pretty reasonable at listening but that, I think, was a challenge for me. Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the worst things you can do is be listening to somebody and just be looking for an excuse or a way of inserting what you perceive is your wisdom. As you put it, it’s paying lip service to what’s being said.
Warwick F:
Because people can tell if you’re not really listening and you’re just looking to exposit on some of your perceived brilliance. They can just pick that. So one of the things that’s interesting to observe about new leaders is when they come into a new position, for the first few months they will listen. They will learn the culture before making any big changes, and I think you mentioned to me, you used to work in newspapers for many years. That’s one of the things you practiced.
Gary S:
Yeah. Absolutely. I would, if I took over a newsroom or I took over any team in any position I had, people who were not happy with the previous administration would always come to my office and say, “Well, what about this? And change that and do this.” I was always in knowledge-acquisition mode. I wanted to hear what was going on. I wanted to hear people say those things to me, but I needed to understand how things were run. I needed to understand how the people who ran them and how the people who carried out what was being done, how they felt about what was being done before I could change anything. To come in before you hear and observe how things are done and change how things are done, you’re operating from no place of knowledge.
Gary S:
So you can cast a vision, in Crucible Leadership language, you can cast a vision for how you want this department, this newspaper to run, but you’re not going to get buy-in if you’re basing it off just your first impressions. I think that’s one of the great things that listening does for us, is it helps us move off of first impressions or assumptions or prejudices or those pre-conceived notions or our own expertise, and allows us to have the wisdom in many counselors, as the Bible says. It allows us to have that and then act on that information to make that vision come to life.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And that’s such a good example. Great leaders, whether they’re coming into a newsroom that they’re leading or an organization, they want to get all the information. What’s happening so far? What are the challenges? What are we doing well? Armed with all that information over the first few months, they’re in a far better position to make a determination about where the company or the newsroom needs to go. The people in the newsroom or the organization are much more likely to listen because you spent the first few months listening to them. You can say, “Well, I’ve heard A, B, and C from person X, Y and Z, and based on this, this is where I feel like we should be going.” People realize you’re listening, they realize you respect them, and you’ve got much greater chance of succeeding with enacting your vision. I mean, it sounds so simple and in a sense, it is. But just having that wisdom to listen first before you make a whole lot of changes, it’s such a good example.
Gary S:
Yeah, and it’s the kind of thing that leads back to what you were talking about, the enacting 100 percent of your vision or advancing 100 percent of your vision or sticking to your guns on your vision so strongly that you don’t even open up the floor to input, could leave you with a vision that’s stalled. As opposed to 80 percent of a vision is a pretty darn good percentage, right? If you have an 80 percent field goal percentage in basketball, you’re a pretty good shooter, right?
Warwick F:
Exactly. One of the things I mention in the book, Crucible Leadership, that will be coming out next year, the image I have which hopefully will help leaders who are really reluctant to do this. There’s a statue in Florence by Michelangelo. It’s called the statue of David. It’s one of the greatest sculptures ever made. I actually had the good fortune in 2018 of seeing it. It is amazing. So just imagine you think your vision is like the statue of David. It’s like perfection. You’ve got to be willing to give your team the hammer and chisel and make a few changes. If you think your vision is like the statue of David, emotionally, psychologically, that’s hard because they might desecrate perfection. I get why it’s hard. But you’ve got to realize, well, maybe your vision isn’t that good.
Warwick F:
I mean, not to burst people’s bubbles. Maybe it’s pretty good. Maybe it’s even great. But you know what? Maybe it could even be greater, and why would you want to settle for merely good when you could settle for great or fantastic? So it’s a decision of the will. It’s like you might say, “I don’t want to do this because they could desecrate perfection,” but you’ve got to proverbially give people the hammer and chisel and say, “Okay.” Your hand may be trembling as you give the hammer and chisel over. It’s like, “Oh boy, here we go.” Sweat may be pouring off your brow but you just go to do it. You got to make the leap and let them do it and you might find, much to your surprise, it’s even better. Really, listening, it’s a decision of the will. It’s a choice.
Warwick F:
Do you want to be successful or do you want to fail? Do you want your vision to be greater or do you want it to be lesser? Do you want your vision to happen at all or do you want to sit it in some dusty file cabinet gathering dust? I mean, the choices are pretty clear. If you want to be successful, if you want your vision to become reality, you will listen. You will make that choice even though it may not be what you want to do. Leadership is about choice. Choose the path of success rather than failure. Choose the path that will get your team on board and will stop the good people leaving. The bad people often don’t leave because they might feel like, well, they’ve nowhere else to go.
Warwick F:
The good people, they’ll leave in a heartbeat. They won’t put up with stupid stuff, and not listening is just really the height of stupidity. So for so many reasons, keeping your good team members on board, being successful, not failing, having your vision become reality. There’s so many reasons why listening just makes sense. You’ve got to get over yourself and over your ego and you’ve just go to do it.
Gary S:
That is an excellent time to turn around and talk about the last aspect of this, and that is how do you do it better? How do you become a better listener? I’m going to go back to the Fast Company article because there’s an example in here that they give that is really their third tip for becoming a better listener in a business context, is this: “Ask more questions. One of the simplest ways to be a better listener,” Fast Company writes, “is to ask more questions than you give answers. When you ask questions, you create a safe space for other people to give you an unvarnished truth.”
Gary S:
I want to say this to the listener, and it’s fair game, Warwick, because you on some podcast somewhere praised your team at Crucible Leadership, which includes the marketing folks at Signal, includes myself from ROAR, but I’m going to throw a little praise your way because you are excellent as a leader at asking questions. I want listeners to, as you listen to podcasts, go back to other podcasts and listen. You will hear Warwick say one of the most common phrases he’ll say in our business meetings, but also in the podcast when interviewing a guest. He’ll end a statement that he makes with the phrase, “Does that make sense?”
Gary S:
We get transcripts from the podcasts and if I type in, “Does that make sense” it will pop up five or six times. But that is one of the things that Warwick does very well, not to embarrass him as he’s said to us when he’s praised us in this podcast, not to embarrass him, but that is one of the chief ways. Ask questions. That’s fair. I’ve heard you say more than once, Warwick, that you’re not a take-charge Rupert Murdoch leader. You are a reflective adviser and you lead by asking questions.
Warwick F:
Thank you for that. I mean, it’s funny. I laugh in one sense at myself because, especially on the boards I’ve been on, sometimes I’ll try to make a point and I feel like, I don’t know, it’s like it doesn’t really get heard. But then I ask a question and it might be getting to the same point, and people will say, “Oh, good point.” It’s like, “What do you mean, good point? I just asked a question.” At least for me, I find asking questions a whole lot more effective. But you’re right, I mean, it starts with, you’ve got to care. If you don’t care, at least as a leader you want to be successful and have your vision become reality. So it requires discipline.
Warwick F:
Let’s say you’re meeting with your team. You want to ask them questions. “So how’s it going in your area?” You want to care about them as individuals. “How’s the family?” People are holistic people. They don’t just park their human selves at home. So you do want to care about them as individuals. But just ask how’s it going in their area, what do you need, what can I do to help, what are some of the challenges, do you have any ideas of how to solve those challenges. And be disciplined in the sense that don’t be too quick to offer solutions. In fact, it’s probably not helpful because sometimes one of your subordinates, one of your team members, may ask you, “So what do you think I should do? I’m not sure about this.” Basically give me the solution. A wise leader doesn’t take that bait.
Warwick F:
There’s a time and a place for help, but the first line of defense, if you will, should be, “Well, that’s a great question. I’d first like to hear what you think. What do you think? So you’re having this problem with a certain customer. What are the issues? What do you think you can do to solve it?” Be a good coach. Good leaders are good coaches. I’ve taken the odd coaching course and I’m an executive coach, certified, have done some, obviously, a lot of coaching courses. Be a coach. So really, I think often the best way to lead is by asking questions. If you’re a good leader and you’re experienced, and let’s make that assumption, you will ask good questions because you’ve been there. You’ve been in their shoes. Focus on asking good questions that help your team members find the answers themselves. That is part of the art of great leadership. Be a little slow to offer solutions to every question that comes up.
Warwick F:
I’m not saying never offer advice. More offer advice in terms of in principle how to solve problems rather than, “Oh, let me write a 10-page business plan that solves your problem in your area.” That is not really helping them.
Gary S:
Right. It also makes for, I’ll say this, it also makes for meetings and team discussions that are more robust. If you’ve got a leader in those meetings, going back to Fast Company’s thing, if you’re putting check marks by people who are saying more than two sentences at a time and the leader of the meeting has 17 check marks, people check out, right? People grab their phones. People start doing things and they’re not paying attention. The great thing about meetings that we have at Crucible Leadership, all virtual, but still there’s times when you will say at the end of a discussion of a topic, “Okay, Gary. Okay, Alex. Okay, Cheryl. Okay, people on the team, what do you think of that?”
Gary S:
It creates engagement on the team in the task at hand. That is critical for that whole idea of, it enhances your vision and floats all boats. If the leader has created the boundaries, you got to give people a crayon so they can color within those boundaries so that they can be part of the solution. Listening is critical to that. Asking questions. If you never know as a member of a meeting when the leader is going to ask you a question, you pay attention in that meeting.
Warwick F:
One of the things I really believe really and strongly, don’t just ask the senior vice presidents or the senior leaders of your team. You’ll have senior members and junior members, typically, in your team. All age groups, all levels of experience. Yeah, I mean, it’s easy to think, “Oh, let me ask somebody who’s got 20 years of experience at doing X.” One of the things I try to do is ask all people. Because A, it’s important for them to feel heard, but B, they might actually offer some thoughts that you weren’t expecting. So whether they’ve been there one year, two years, five years or whatever, you want to ask opinions of all the members of the team, not the ones with the PhDs and 30 years of experience.
Warwick F:
I mean, obviously that’s really valuable. But you want everybody to be heard, and it will often be surprising where some fantastic idea comes from. It often comes from places that you wouldn’t have expected. So, that’s really important, too. Don’t just listen to the people with the long pedigrees that have been there forever. That’s helpful. Got to listen to everybody. Everybody has to feel heard because you want everybody’s wisdom and you want everybody to be firing on all cylinders, all moving together. So that’s listening to everybody, not just the senior leaders is so important.
Gary S:
Right. In the same way that being followed as a leader because of your title is the least thing you want, you want people to follow you because of your character and because they identify with your leadership and they feel heard and all those things. Same thing. If you only, as a leader, ask questions or seek the opinions of those with the titles, you’re doing it wrong, too. It’s not going to lead to the best result. So the example you gave is a really good one.
Gary S:
We’ve come to that part of the show, Warwick, where it’s time to begin to land the plane, as I like to say. The captain’s turned on the “fasten seatbelt” sign. One last point, I guess, I want to make about listening and the fact that it’s hard and how to overcome it. One of the reasons it’s hard is that it’s just hard. Let’s go back to that Harvard Business School study of 63 years ago. Its conclusion was this: “Immediately after the average person has listened to someone talk, he remembers only about half of what he’s heard, no matter how carefully he thought he was listening.”
Gary S:
Listening is hard because it’s hard. You really have to put effort into listening, and that’s been what we’ve talked about here. How do you put that effort into it? I think the best way, and I’d love to hear your opinion on this, the best way to get over the hardness of it, the best way to improve in it, is the same way that you improve in tennis: practice, practice, practice. Is that fair?
Warwick F:
It is. It’s like you say, well, riding a bike for the first time is hard. When you first start riding it when you’re a kid, you’re wobbling and doing circles all over the place. Well, as you practice more, it gets easier. The same is true of listening. I do believe that at the core of it, you got to care. You got to park your ego at the door. But even if you might have only just heard 50 percent of what they just said, it’s ask follow-up questions. “Person A, I heard you say A, B, and C. That was really interesting. Talk more about that. Now when you said this, I was a bit unclear of what you meant.”
Warwick F:
People don’t mind if you ask them, “Hey, can you talk about it more,? or, “I might have missed that point you made. Can you say that again?” They don’t mind if you’ve missed something if you ask, “Can you please repeat that, rephrase it, explain more?” It doesn’t really matter whether you’ve only heard 30, 40, 50 percent of what they said if you’re in a dialogue and you follow up with more questions because, by the end of it, you have a conversation with somebody for 10, 15, 20 minutes, you will remember the core things. If you want to do what good coaches do, there’s always the phrase “mirroring,” which is, “So you’ve mentioned a number of things, Paul, Sally. What I heard you say is these three things. Is that fair that these are the three most important things that you think that we should pay heed to?”
Warwick F:
They’ll either say, “Yes, well, that’s pretty close but…” At that point, they’re going to feel heard. If you can summarize the three most important things they’ve just said, and if you got it wrong, you got two, well, they’ll tell you. So it requires practice, but it also requires a bit of perseverance and a bit of conversation and you will remember the most important things if you have a dialogue with them and you ask more questions.
Gary S:
That is the perfect place for the landing gear to be down and the plane to be on the runway. Let me summarize what I think are three good takeaways, listener, from this episode about listening and leadership. One, the price of engagement of your team is listening. You can’t pay ear service to them. You have people on your team for their skills, for the talents, for their abilities. Listening lets you benefit from their expertise.
Gary S:
Second point. Leave your ego at the door. In fact, leave it behind the door. Don’t even bring it in the room. Be curious. Care. Want to learn. Be humble. You are not the font of all wisdom. But you can accumulate all wisdom by being an active and interested listener.
Gary S:
And then the third point, which we just finished up talking about here. Practice, practice, practice. Listening’s hard. It was hard 63 years ago when Harvard Business Review wrote this article. When it comes to truly hearing others, practice may not make perfect, but it certainly makes less imperfect. And that is a jumping off point where you can start turning things around and you can start building better teams and building better leadership.
Gary S:
So thank you, listener, for listening to our podcast today talking about listening. Want you to know that Warwick sends emails out regularly with some of the very kinds of tidbits that we’ve discussed on the show today. You can go to crucibleleadership.com and you can sign up to receive those emails on a regular basis so that you’ll always be on the leading edge of the things that Warwick is discussing and discovering about crucibles and how to find your way through them, find your way beyond them as this podcast is called, Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
So until next time that we’re together, thank you for spending time with us and remember this as you’re sitting there right now in your car, in your home, listening to this. You might be in the middle of your crucible, but remember, that crucible experience is not the end of your story. In fact, it can be, if you learn the lessons of that crucible, you apply the lessons of that crucible, and you do indeed listen to those around you to help you move beyond that crucible, that experience can be the jumping off point to the greatest chapter in your life because that chapter will lead, in the end, to a life of significance.
In times of crisis, such as the times we are now living in with the health concerns surrounding COVID-19, uncertainty about the economy and many people feeling excluded, leadership becomes even more critical. Clear and decisive leadership would seem to be the order of the day. You feel that you need to move now — less talk, more action. But yet when you give the call to act, nothing much seems to happen. Why is that? Why does it seem no one is listening to you – at least not well enough to get what needs to be done accomplished?
The question you should be asking is not why your team is not listening to you, but why are you not listening to your team? Good leaders listen. The price for the commitment of your team, which enables bold, decisive action, is for you to listen.
Here are some tips for listening that enable better leadership, especially in crucible moments:
1. Your team must feel heard.
It is not enough to go through the motions and pretend to listen. Your team must feel you are really listening to them and taking their input on board. They must know you really hear them and are not just paying them “ear service.”
2. Your team must feel that you care.
Your team can feel lack of authenticity a mile away. They have to believe you care not just about their opinions but about who they are. People are whole beings, with hopes and dreams. They do not leave these at home. Again, they need to feel that you care about them.
3. You have to adopt someone’s input into your plans.
While you may not have to accept everyone’s input, on all subjects if month after month and project after project passes, your team makes suggestions and NO ONE has their input included in your organization’s plans, clearly they will feel you are not listening and don’t care about them or their opinions
4. People need to be heard, more than they need their opinions to be accepted.
What this means is that if people feel you genuinely hear them, they are OK if their specific opinion is not included in the final outcome. Again, so long as someone or some people’s input is included over time. People feel a greater need to be heard than to be right.
5. Trust your team.
If you are a good leader, you will have hired a diverse group of people with diverse skills. They will have expertise in their specific areas that you may not have. Combined, they well may have more skills and certainly knowledge than you have. You can’t know everything, and you are not doing their jobs day to day. So a smart leader will probe and ask good questions to ensure sound plans are being enacted, but their bias will be to trust the great team that they have assembled. The bottom line: why wouldn’t you listen to the team of all stars that you have assembled? If you have not built such a team, why is that? Could it be that you are too insecure to surround yourself with bright, able and driven people?
6. Be flexible.
It is great to have a plan and a direction. But circumstances change. The economy could change. The market could change. Or perhaps some members of your team could have a brilliant idea that could alter the trajectory of your plans. Determine your course, but be willing to modify it as you receive input about the one constant you and your team face: change.
7. Be curious.
A curious person is someone who wants to learn. A curious person is humble, because they know that they don’t have all the answers. Great leaders are lifelong learners. They always want to get better, to grow and to learn more. Listening is a key way to do just that.
At the core of leading well is listening. It’s a matter of the heart, a matter of character. Do you really care about your team? Do you really value their opinions? If not, examine yourself. Do you have an overinflated ego? Do you feel you have nothing more to learn from others? Do you feel that you have all the right answers? If that is you, you have a choice. Change! Care more, listen more, let you and your team grow together. Or leave! Let someone else take your place who will lead better.
To accomplish the organization’s goals, to lead well, even to lead decisively, you need a leader of your team who will really listen. The goals of your organization are too important to play around. Either lead well and listen, or get out of the way.
Reflection
Are you really listening to your team’s input, or are you just going through the motions?
How much do you really care about your team and their lives? If you don’t, examine your heart.
What do you need to do today to demonstrate to your team that their opinions matter?
To explore Beyond the Crucible resources, including our free Trials-to-Triumphs Self-Assessment, visit beyondthecrucible.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/
Fewer than 10 percent of those living with Parkinson’s Disease are under 60. Tim Hague is one of them. As a nurse for two decades, he sensed immediately what was wrong when, at age 46, he noticed a tremor in his left toe. His self-diagnosis was soon confirmed, and in the months that followed he pressed deeply into his Christian faith to grasp “Why has God done this to me?” But he refused to wallow in regret or self-doubt, and just three years later he was competing on, and winning, The Amazing Race in his home country of Canada. The platform the show provided led him to see Parkinson’s as winning the lottery, as he began a successful speaking career and launched a nonprofit to put his medical training to use helping others with the disease. In this episode of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE, he tells host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax that he’s learning every day to live the lessons of his book, Perseverance: The Seven Skills You Need to Survive, Thrive, and Accomplish More Than You Ever Imagined. “I have to believe that there is something good in this for me,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”
To learn more about Tim Hague and his book, PERSEVERANCE, visit www.timsr.ca
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
Gary S:
Well, welcome, everyone, to this episode of Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the podcast and the communications director for Crucible Leadership, and you have dialed in to, pressed play on, hopefully pressed subscribe to, a podcast that deals with our crucible experiences. Those are things most all of us have been through: painful times, trying times, failures, setbacks, those things that can be so upsetting to the applecart of our lives that it can feel like they changed the trajectory of our lives. And we do indeed talk about them here, and we do indeed go over them here, but not because we want to live there, not because we want to wallow in them. We go over them as a jumping-off point to discuss how to overcome them, how to move beyond them, because it is in moving beyond them that we can chart a course to a life of significance.
Gary S:
Here with me for this episode of the show, as always for every episode of the show, is the architect of Crucible Leadership and the host of the podcast, Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, we’ve got an interesting, and dare I say what will be an inspiring story, I think, for listeners today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Great to be here, and wonderful to have Tim with us.
Tim H:
Thank you, Warwick.
Gary S:
The Tim … That was Tim right there, listener, and Tim is … I’m going to give him the introduction that he deserves. Tim is Tim Hague, who is a retired nurse of more than 20 years, who devotes his time to professional speaking and writing, and is founder of the Parkinson’s wellness center U-Turn Parkinson’s. He’s the author of the best-selling book Perseverance: The Seven Skills You Need to Survive, Thrive, and Accomplish More Than You Ever Imagined. Side note: I’ve read much of the book. It’s worth getting. Get it, listener. We’ll tell you how at the end of this podcast.
Gary S:
He has spoken for TEDx and is sought after across North America for his motivational and inspiring topics, which are living your best and the power of perseverance. After having been diagnosed with young onset Parkinson’s disease at the age of 46, Tim and his son went on to win the first season of the reality television series The Amazing Race Canada. He is an outspoken and effective advocate on behalf of people living with Parkinson’s around the world, and I will tell you at the end of the podcast how to find out more about Tim and his work.
Gary S:
So, Tim, welcome. Warwick, take it away.
Tim H:
Thank you.
Warwick F:
Well, Tim, just awesome to have you, and I know we’ll get into this in a bit, but I love the concept in your book: perseverance, surviving, thriving. You don’t often think of those concepts together, perseverance and thrive. So I’d love to hear more about that in a bit. But tell us a bit about Tim Hague and your story and how that kind of led up to your crucible experience. Yeah. Just tell a bit about yourself, and yeah. That’d be a great place to start.
Tim H:
Sure. Well, thank you again for having me on the show. It’s a pleasure to be with you today, and yeah, my life was an interesting story right from the beginning. We all say we started when we were born as a small child. So was I, but it started off in Iowa with a 20-year-old mom who found herself pregnant by a 30-something-year-old married black man. She ended up being sent to Texas to have me, put me up for adoption. I was adopted by a family from Kansas who not only adopted me, but then adopted five more like me in addition to the three kids that they already had. So that’s a total of nine that I grew up in. Eventually I moved to Canada after making my way through life, and there’s lots of story there that I’ve just skipped over, but made my way to Canada. My wife is from Canada. We met in Bible school back in the day.
Tim H:
In Winnipeg, I grew up. I like to say that I was born in Texas, raised in Kansas, but I grew up in Winnipeg, and there’s a whole long story to that as well. But an important part of that is learning to live in the cold. You mentioned before we got started here today, the brutal weather of winters, and like I said then, I like to say it’s only the strong who live here.
Gary S:
I am with you, brother. I’m in Wisconsin, so I feel your pain and your shivers.
Tim H:
But also the strength. You have the fortitude to live in it.
Gary S:
Indeed.
Tim H:
I like to think that living in Winnipeg has taught me a lot in the terms of persevering. I was being prepared for, if you will, dealing with Parkinson’s, because perseverance is a big part of living with Parkinson’s. Parkinson’s disease is not a quick, get it and you die five years later. This is a lifetime kind of disease. This is a marathon of a disease that requires perseverance, and we can go into more of how I define perseverance as we go here.
Tim H:
But at this point, I’ve been married to my wonderful wife Cheryl for 34 years, have four fantastic children all grown up. My youngest two are twins, and they just turned 22. My oldest son … he’s married, have wonderful daughter-in-law. They have two children, 4 and 17 months, having a great time with them, of course. Then I do travel and speak a fair bit, wrote the book and am executive director of U-Turn Parkinson’s here in Winnipeg.
Tim H:
So that’s the Coles Notes of Tim Hague right now.
Warwick F:
Wow. So I’d love to hear a bit more about just the experience with Parkinson’s. Before we get there, before that happened, I think you were 46. Were you-
Tim H:
Yes.
Warwick F:
… at the time when you got Parkinson’s? Tell us about how was your life? I mean, obviously I have a younger brother and sister who are adopted, and sometimes that works out great. Sometimes it just varies in the family. So how was your life just growing up a bit differently? I mean, many people have been adopted, and then moving from Texas to Kansas. Pre-Parkinson’s, how would you describe your life?
Tim H:
Life was fantastic. My parents came off the farm in Missouri, grade-eight educations, but fundamentally strong Christians, sound foundation of faith that we were raised with, and they made it very clear early on that Christ was the center of life and that that’s what everybody was based on, that we were made in His image, that there was fundamental worth to all of us regardless of what our origins were. And so there was never any question in our minds whatsoever that we were loved. We simply were, and they did everything they could to provide for those nine kids. They put a roof over our head. They put clothes on our back, food in our bellies, got us an education, and while they certainly didn’t maybe have the appreciation for higher education that others might, they did everything they knew to do to prepare us for life and to get us the education and set us out on our own the best that they possibly could.
Warwick F:
It sounds like you had a loving home that they … It’s one thing to kind of preach Christ. It’s another thing to live it and to show kids who you’ve brought into your family that unconditional love and acceptance. But it sounds like they actually did live what they preached, if you will.
Tim H:
I have been in church all my life, and I can give you every reason why you should ever leave the religion, the faith, the church. I’ve seen it all. One of the things that keeps me so grounded to my faith is that my parents lived out what it meant to be adopted as sons of God, that to be brought in from somewhere where you didn’t belong, where you weren’t born, and to be made a son and an heir and to have full rights as if you were born there … They’ve lived that out, and yeah, it has greatly impacted my faith journey to the good.
Warwick F:
Wow. That’s wonderful. I mean, a lot of folks, obviously as you would know, don’t grow up in a loving home with that unconditional love, and that obviously tends to bring lifelong challenges of self-worth and what have you, and that’s a blessing to have that. So it sounds like you made your way to Canada. You became a registered nurse, met your wife in Bible school. It feels like life was pretty good.
Tim H:
Life was…
Warwick F:
Did you feel like, “God, you’ve blessed me. I don’t know where I would have grown up elsewhere, but you’ve put me in a loving home. I have a loving wife, loving kids.” Did you say thank-you-Jesus things? That’s pretty awesome.
Tim H:
Yes.
Warwick F:
I mean, was that kind of your life? I don’t mean to sugarcoat it, but does it feel like that was your life, in a sense?
Tim H:
In large part, yes, because I always had what I needed. We were never rich. We didn’t have vacations every year. We didn’t travel. We didn’t do things. But we had what we needed, and I was always cognizant of that. I was aware of the fact that my experience as an adopted child was so very different from lots. Now, did we face discrimination? Yes. Mom and Dad were white. We were all mixed race and brown of some nature or another. So we had hard times.
Tim H:
I always like to joke that the one father, I was dating his Latino daughter, and I was never the right color brown for him. I was always too black for the white man’s daughter, too white for the black man’s daughter, or vice versa there, and the wrong shade of brown for the Latino man’s daughter. I never quite fit except at home.
Warwick F:
Right. Certainly, I mean, there’s discrimination now. Certainly years ago it probably wasn’t better. So yeah. Growing up in that environment, that’s just, sadly, probably fairly normal is discrimination by the narrow-minded and the unenlightened, if you will.
Tim H:
Absolutely. Our first pastor showed up at home to tell Mom and Dad the mistake they had made in adopting this black baby. So we told him we disagreed with his theology and moved on.
Gary S:
It’s amazing you said just a few minutes ago that the foundation of your faith was strong because of your parents, and to have a person who’s in leadership, quote unquote, in the faith to come and say something like that … That shows how strong the faith that you lived and were taught is, that you were able to dismiss that, I’ll say it, ignorant comment from someone in leadership. That shows the strength of that, and that strength undoubtedly serves you well as you continue to bump into crucibles throughout your life.
Tim H:
Absolutely.
Warwick F:
Yeah. Just on that note, there’s a real sad dichotomy between the unconditional love of your parents and the narrow-mindedness of that pastor who, I guess, not to be judgmental here, but obviously wasn’t attuned to biblical teachings and the teaching of Jesus that we’re all children of God, and so I don’t know. Maybe he missed a couple chapters or something, or a lot of chapters, but sad but true. There’s many people that … That’d be a whole other discussion, how many pastors over the centuries and Civil War have proclaimed Jesus while yet denying Jesus in so many ways, which is, I find, impossible to understand, but that will be another discussion.
Warwick F:
So it sounds like life wasn’t perfect, in this sense. It’s not like you were rolling in money and could go to Disney World every year or anything, but you had a wonderful upbringing, loving wife, found a wonderful home in Winnipeg. So tell us about when Parkinson’s happened. At 46, and you would know much better than I, you don’t expect that at that age. So tell us how that whole episode happened.
Tim H:
Well, the diagnosis came about somewhat unremarkably. I had been a nurse at that point for 18 years, and Dad had Parkinson’s. Now, it wasn’t a big deal for us that he had Parkinson’s at the time, because he died ultimately of complications to heart disease. He had diabetes, and then Parkinson’s came along later and kind of layered into that, and we were always more concerned about the other.
Warwick F:
This is obviously your adoptive father.
Tim H:
Yes. This is my adoptive father.
Warwick F:
Obviously this wasn’t a hereditary deal, obviously, but that’s a coincidence.
Tim H:
Well, interestingly enough, I know my birth mother. I’ve known her for many years, and my maternal grandfather by blood also had Parkinson’s when he died. So it was coming at me on all fronts. But yeah. I had been nursing for 18 years when I noticed a tremor in my left big toe, and I knew at that point that it was either probably MS or Parkinson’s. I had seen lots of both, and I’d self diagnosed in about five minutes, and then went on a number of months to see my doc and see a specialist and be formally diagnosed in February of 2011 at 46 with young onset.
Tim H:
Now, how did I feel about that? I was ticked is how I felt about it. I was not excited by this diagnosis. I knew very well what it would likely mean for me long term, and I simply was not happy. Me and God had to do some business over this one just because it’s a rough diagnosis. So yeah. That’s how it came to be.
Gary S:
You told me, Tim, when we talked earlier that a very, very small percentage … I mean, tell the listeners the percentage of people who are diagnosed with Parkinson’s at that age. It is not common at all.
Tim H:
It’s under 10 percent that are diagnosed with Parkinson’s under the age of 60. Typically, Parkinson’s is an older-person’s disease, and you’re typically diagnosed over 60. When I was diagnosed, I knew no one under 60 who had Parkinson’s, and I spent … It was a fair while before I met anyone my age with Parkinson’s. I call it one of my two lotteries that I’ve won.
Warwick F:
What was the other one?
Tim H:
The other one was The Amazing Race.
Warwick F:
That’s interesting, and we’ll get into this in a moment, but it’s interesting, two lotteries that you have won. Yeah. I know the listeners are going to be thinking, “Okay. Winning Amazing Race … I get how that’s winning a lottery. How is getting Parkinson’s winning a lottery?”
Tim H:
Well, not all lotteries are good, but the second lottery that was good only happened because I won the first lottery. I am convinced that had I not come down with Parkinson’s disease, I never would have made it onto The Amazing Race.
Warwick F:
So before we get there, again, maybe this is obvious. I mean, you were obviously feeling angry, frustrated. Was there like, “Well, God, you’ve blessed me in so many ways. I have a wonderful wife,” … I’m sure you had kids by then. It’s like, “Well, what’s up with this? I know you talk about this grand plan you have. I’m not getting how … How’s this help anybody? What’s the deal?” I mean, I’m assuming you went through that conversation with yourself, God, just friends.
Tim H:
Absolutely. It was extraordinarily frustrating, because here you are, a young man in the prime of life, not even middle-aged yet, and now you’re faced with this chronic, debilitating disease that has no hope to it. There is no hope in Parkinson’s, and to date, there are precious few things that control our symptoms, and there is no cure for it, and we’ve been working on a cure for a long time. Michael J. Fox Foundation has now spent alone over a billion dollars on research for a cure, and we’re really no closer to a cure than when he started.
Tim H:
So yeah. I was frustrated when I was diagnosed, but I had to spend that time with God and walk through what I think most people walk through, that question of, “Is God good? Why has he done this to me? Why has he allowed this to be done to me? What is my relationship going to be with him in light of this?” And I had to come all the way around that and determine, is God a good God? Well, at the end of the day, yes, I believe that God is a good God. I believe that he is God and that I’m not, and so if he is a good God, if he is, and I believe that fundamentally, then I have to believe that there is something good in this for me. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
Tim H:
The logic doesn’t work, at least for me, to say that if you’re going to believe that he’s a good God and then to turn around and say, “Well, this isn’t. There’s nothing good in this,” and that he means no good in this and it’s just death and destruction and curse, those things don’t fit together. But I do believe he is good. I do believe he has my best interest at heart, and I do believe he will make this life worth something in the end, whether I understand it entirely or not.
Warwick F:
I’d imagine there was some keys to try to … How would I say it? Maybe the word is “accept,” because unlike most people, being a registered nurse, you knew far more than your average person. You knew the life expectancy, the progression of the disease, the statistics. You probably knew much of this before the diagnosis, didn’t have to go on the Internet or read a bunch of books. You probably knew most of what you were being told, and so it’s not like, “Oh, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” or “I’m going to have some false hope or some miracle.” Miracles can happen, but there’s a reason they call them miracles, because it’s kind of rare.
Warwick F:
But it sounds like you did some wrestling with God, and there are, I’m sure, others listening maybe that don’t have Parkinson’s, but they’ve been through tragedy, whether it’s loss of a loved one or abuse. There’s all sorts of things, and they’re probably asking themselves, to the degree they have any faith, “How could a good God allow suffering and pain?” It’s a question I don’t think any of us will fully be able to answer, at least not on this Earth. But you had to do a lot of wrestling to make sense that, well, maybe God can use it somehow.
Warwick F:
So obviously there’s not a whole lot you can do about the physical side, it sounds like, based on your knowledge, which is far more than mine. If that’s not something devoting a whole lot of energy to the physical if you felt like, “Okay. I’m not going to be able to invent a cure here. So I don’t know that investing my energy in that is going to be the best use of my time” … I’m guessing you probably thought that, but yet, how did you go through a sense of, “How can I accept this and somehow use it for good in some fashion?” How did you get to the point where you got beyond not the physical side, but the emotional and spiritual devastation that that diagnosis would have caused?
Tim H:
Well, I haven’t been very successful at it yet, but I’ve always considered myself a bit of an entrepreneur, and so I just came to the conclusion that if this is what God’s given me, if this is what life has dealt me, if this is the road I’m supposed to travel, then there must be something I’m supposed to do with it. So I do what I do and just start a business, and I’m shocked that my wife let me get away with it, but that’s what we did. We started a charity. So as a nurse, my desire is of course to work with people, help people, and so that’s what we did. We channel that energy and any negative and the things that I need to work out through the charity.
Tim H:
Fortunately, Warwick, there is a bit of physical that you can do. One of the best things that you can do beyond the medications that we take is exercise, and so I’ve always exercised a lot. I’ve run one sprint-distance triathlon in my time, only one full marathon. I never liked the long, long distances, but I’ve run lots of half marathons, and so we continue to run and continue to work out, and a lot of our work through the charity is around…
Warwick F:
What is that charity again? What does it do, the charity?
Tim H:
U-Turn Parkinson’s. It is a wellness center for people living with Parkinson’s. Our goal there is to help them physically, help them figure out their day-to-day, what you do with your life now that you have this disease, the intellectual side of wellness, the spiritual, the social, the emotional, and look at that entire sphere of what it means to live well with Parkinson’s.
Gary S:
Now, we’re going to get on, I assume, very quickly to The Amazing Race. Before we do that though, I want listeners to hear what Tim just said. In his previous career, in his career before Parkinson’s, he was a nurse. He was dedicated in his career to helping people. His crucible experience came. He was angry. He was frustrated. He worked through that, and his vision and his path out of beyond the crucible, as this podcast is called, is doing the same sort of thing in a different way, helping people.
Gary S:
To all listeners out there who are on the front end of the crucible and you’re still in the anger and frustration stage, know that, as you work through it, it may very well be what you were doing before the crucible that brought you satisfaction, that brought you significance, you can do perhaps in a different way. And I would guess, Tim, you would say, in no less a rewarding way, by moving on, learning the lessons of your crucible, and finding perseverance and vision to continue to help.
Tim H:
Absolutely. It gives me no end of joy and meaning in life to see that I can take everything that I spent my years on in nursing, my education and all those years at the bedside and in management, and now turn them to a charity that’s still helping people. My life hasn’t … It’s drastically changed, but in a lot of ways it hasn’t. Fundamentally, I’m still doing much of what I ever did, just in a very different capacity, and I’m very grateful for that.
Warwick F:
As you’re helping people, I often find there’s sort of a healing balm, if you will, that as you’re focused on helping others it gives meaning to life, and maybe it doesn’t make the pain less, the physical pain, but maybe the emotional and the spiritual. Maybe it lessens it a bit or … Do you know what I mean? There’s a spiritual, emotional healing component when you’re using your pain to help others. Does that make sense?
Tim H:
Absolutely, because it goes back to that question of, “Is God a good God?” In the midst of this diagnosis, you could say, “Well, this is miserable.” Well, it is. There has never been a day gone by that I have not wished that I didn’t have Parkinson’s, but in the midst of this, you can see the purpose, the reasoning, the continuation of the life, the continuation of the journey, that everything that I’ve been taught and learned and experienced through life was building me to this moment, and it allows me to now walk this part of my journey with as much confidence as I did prior to Parkinson’s, and in some ways more.
Warwick F:
That’s one of the fascinating things, I think, about a crucible is … You, I’m sure, as … Well, nurses around the globe right now with coronavirus, are in the front lines in a very dangerous environment, as you would know better than I would, but they do such wonderful work. But it’s another thing to come alongside somebody, saying, “I know what it is to have suffering. I know what it is every day to physically have challenges. I’m not sitting here above you as some clinician. I’m with you in this.”
Warwick F:
So when you say to somebody, whether they have Parkinson’s or maybe other diseases or other challenges, they can’t say to you, “Well, Tim, you don’t know what it’s like.” You can say, “Well, I do. Trust me. I do,” especially for Parkinson’s, but even with MS or other diseases or challenges. You don’t have the same symptoms as other diseases or abuse survivors or whatever, but you know what it is to suffer and every day to have to get up in challenging circumstances, and that gives you a platform that you didn’t want, didn’t ask for, but a platform you didn’t have before. Does that make sense?
Tim H:
Yeah. Absolutely it makes sense. So the question then becomes for me is, how will I then respond? I meet lots of people who struggle with that point. They get everything I’ve said up to this point, but now they have to decide, “Will I choose to walk forward in this? Or will I continue to fight it?” and I choose to walk forward in it, because I see a lot of added misery in trying to fight it. There are lots of people who pour their heart and soul into a cure. They just want to be cured. They just want it to be fixed. They want it to go away, and there’s very little hope in that, whereas there’s lots of hope that can be given, can be gained by accepting, learning contentment, learning perseverance, and being able to walk forward, trusting in a good God who says he’s got our back. I know some people will balk at that statement right there and say, “Well, that’s just a crutch,” and I’ll say, “Amen, brother. What’s yours?”
Tim H:
We’ve all chosen to believe in something. We have all chosen to believe in something.
Warwick F:
Exactly, and I do want to get to The Amazing Race, but what you’re saying is so profound. I want listeners to really understand that accepting things, whether it’s a diagnosis of Parkinson’s, MS … It could be a business failure. It could be losing a loved one, losing a child. We had somebody on the podcast a while ago that lost his 19-year-old son to a stroke out of nowhere. It’s like, how does that happen? Perfectly healthy one day, but it can happen.
Warwick F:
So there are some things you can’t change. Death is not something that we can change. You may not like it, but what’s the alternative to acceptance? To me, it’s almost madness or despondency. So I think, for many people who have gone through crucibles, the first step to moving on is acceptance, and the alternative to acceptance is so much worse.
Tim H:
It is.
Warwick F:
Don’t you think?
Tim H:
I agree, and of recent, it’s comes to light more and more in the Parkinson’s community that it’s very likely that a lot of our Parkinson’s is being caused by environmental pesticides, chemicals, stuff that we have done to ourselves. So again, I have to come back to this idea of blaming God, this idea that it’s somehow God’s fault. Is it God’s fault that we’ve poured all this crap into our environment? If that’s what’s given me Parkinson’s, that’s probably not God’s fault.
Warwick F:
So just talk about The Amazing Race and kind of what you’re doing, because it sounds like The Amazing Race Canada was a pivotal moment that launched you into what you’re doing now in your work on perseverance and thriving, not just surviving. So talk about how that was really a pivotal moment in your journey back.
Tim H:
Well, it’s what provided us the … It launched us into the charity and into the speaking and gave us this platform. It was my wife’s idea. She was always a bit of a fanatic of the American show, always said we were going to apply if it came to Canada, and true to her word, when it did, we did. Only, we didn’t, because we discovered that we had to be gone for several weeks, an extended period of time, away from family, completely cut off. So she decided that it would be best for Tim Jr. and I to apply, for multiple reasons, but one being that she said they would love my Parkinson’s. She said they’ve done all kinds of other things, but they’ve never had anyone on the show with Parkinson’s, and the short story is she was right. They did love the story, and that’s what got us on the race.
Tim H:
The race was that classic underdog story. I like to call it that Cinderella story, that come-from-behind win that nobody expected, because, Warwick, we sucked. Day in and day out, we struggled. Whether it was just getting lost over and over again or my Parkinson’s, we were not the bright, shining stars that you would anticipate winning The Amazing Race. We came in last twice, hit both of what they call a non-elimination leg where you should be sent home but they save you, managed to survive those, managed to survive the entire thing, made it to the end, and only because of the advice of my wife did we actually win.
Tim H:
She had told us right before we ever left … She said, “Tim, pay attention. There’s going to be something you need along the course of the race that you’re going to have to repeat or need for something at the end,” and right at the beginning, we noticed these flags and flowers that kept showing up. We memorized them, and the very last task of the race was needing to put the provincial or territorial flag and flower on a giant map, and I was the only guy that finished it of the three teams. The other two teams never finished it. I did it in two tries in about 10 minutes.
Warwick F:
That’s challenging. Now, how many provinces are there in Canada?
Tim H:
There are seven provinces, three territories.
Warwick F:
You had to know all of the provinces and territories and flags and flowers? That’s tough. I know Americans might say, “Well, hey. There’s 50 states.” Actually, there’s more provinces than there are states in Australia. I think we have five, from memory. Still, who memorizes state flowers and stuff like … Well, provincial flowers in your case.
Tim H:
Nobody.
Warwick F:
So that’s amazing. So you were the only team that did it?
Tim H:
Mm-hmm.
Warwick F:
What was it like having you and your son kind of around The Amazing Race? I mean, that must have been an incredible experience. I mean, he was probably doing his best to help his dad, and you’ve got probably more years and hopefully some more wisdom, and so between the two of you, you probably made a great team.
Tim H:
I like to think we did more or less. Again, we struggled a lot, but it was fantastic running the race with him. I mean, there were a couple of times that he simply saved our hide. I needed the strength of a young man. That got us through it, and that was huge, and so we had a great, great time running the race together. It was unbelievable.
Warwick F:
When you look at it, you can’t help but think there was the hand of providence there, because having watched The Amazing Race a bit before, the odds of you coming last twice and two non-elimination rounds is probably really, really remote.
Tim H:
Yes.
Warwick F:
So the odds were stacked against you, but somehow there was a hand at work perhaps that said, “You know what? Tim Sr. and Jr. … They’re going to win this thing,” even though it didn’t look likely. That’s an amazing story in itself, right?
Tim H:
Well, it is, and this is what I try to wrap perseverance around is that perseverance is something that can be learned. It’s practical and tangible, and that this story of The Amazing Race is such a classic example of perseverance. I’ve said so many times, we could have given up. We could have stopped. We could have chucked in the towel. Nobody would have ever said, “But, guys, you were so close. You were doing so well,” because we weren’t. We simply were not, and yet we chose to persevere. We chose to stay in the race. We chose to stay in our lane that we had been called to, and in doing so, we won.
Tim H:
Now, people say, “Well, yeah, but I’m not going to go win a reality television show and win a bunch of prizes and money and whatnot.” Well, maybe not. Maybe you’re going to win something far more important. Maybe you’re going to win your kid or your spouse or the job or the … Who knows what? But it’s about not just rolling over with the diagnosis, not just rolling over with the event, no matter how bad it is, but having faith that this has entered your life for a purpose and that you’ve been given and will be given all that you need to walk this journey if you will just stay on the journey.
Warwick F:
I think what Tim is saying here is so profound. I really want listeners to hear that, because we talk about this in Beyond the Crucible quite a lot. Sometimes you’ve gone through a tragedy. In my case, it was totally different. It was, you might have heard, losing a 150-year-old family media business in Australia founded by a person of very strong faith, and as a believer myself, that alone felt like, “Yep. God had a plan, and I blew God’s plan,” which is poor theology, but in my early 30s that’s what I thought.
Warwick F:
So not at all physical. I’m not at all comparing. No tragedy is comparable to another. Whether it’s that or physical or financial or losing a loved one, you can say, “Okay. This is awful. I’m going to be angry. I’m going to hide under the covers, and for the rest of my life, whether it’s five years or 50, I’m going to be bitter, angry and never leave the home.” That is a choice, but to me, that’s not really a particularly productive choice. You could have made that choice, but you chose not to and said, “Okay. This is awful. I never would want that on anybody, but how can I use it? It sounds a bit trite, but, “My pain for a purpose” and you have to inspire others.
Warwick F:
So talk a bit more about this message of forgiveness. I know there’s a number of messages, excuse me. Perseverance. That will be a whole other book. Maybe that’s a second or third book, forgiving what the world puts at you, but talk about some of the steps in perseverance and how you try to help others with Parkinson’s, but even beyond that, just people who’ve gone through tragedy. What are some of those steps to perseverance and wholeness and wellness?
Tim H:
Well, one of the first things for me is to be honest and say that very few days are easy. Most days are hard. When you wake up with this disease and it impacts you right from the get-go, most every day is hard, but therein lies the part of the emotional side and the intellectual side. Who ever promised that life was going to be easy? Nobody promised me that. I mean, the fact remains that I have been given so many things all my life, as we talked about. I have been blessed.
Tim H:
I was not born in the slums of India or Nepal or Nicaragua and many of the other places I’ve had the opportunity to visit around the world. I was born in North America, which set me ahead of 90 percent of the world from the get-go. A nursing career, a family, everything that I’ve been given, and now to think that because I’ve been given Parkinson’s that this somehow changes everything? It doesn’t. Parkinson’s gave me The Amazing Race. It added blessing to my life. Where I’ve been given so much, it’s added more.
Tim H:
So one of the skills I talk about in the book is let go of the happiness myth, letting go of this idea that I’m supposed to be happy all the time, that nothing’s ever supposed to impact my world in a negative way, because that’s just not accurate. It’s not the truth. Understanding the nature of luck. I had a boss who always said to me, “Tim, 80 percent of success is just showing up every day. The rest is probably going to take care of itself,” and I find it amazing, like on the Race, every day that I just show up, how lucky I get, and I’m using that tongue-in-cheek very much, but the more I just show up and do what I feel I’m supposed to do, the luckier I get.
Tim H:
I accept limits. I accept the fact now, I didn’t always, that my doctors were right, but I had to choose. I was always that guy who could do everything. I could be juggling 12 balls and look at the other four coming at me and integrate them in and keep going. I could just always handle lots. I can’t handle lots anymore. Parkinson’s has taken my nursing career away from me. I have to be very careful of how many things I take on in a given day, because I do nap every single day probably at least an hour, because I have to. My body won’t work otherwise. So I’ve had to come to terms with and accept the limitations that this disease has placed on me.
Tim H:
Then the other skills I’ll leave for the book, but there are seven things that I’ve listed there that I’ve learned and am learning that perseverance can be learned. It’s practical, positives steps that we can take to genuinely influence our lives to the good.
Warwick F:
There’s so many profound things you’ve said. One of the things that I’m thinking about a lot as you’re speaking is accept limits. Now, your limitations are clear with Parkinson’s. I mean, those who understand it, and you understand it very well, would know there are specific limitations. Those who are paraplegic, quadriplegics … They have very defined limits. But even those who might feel like they don’t have physical limitations … We have limits, whether it’s geographical, where you were born, maybe background, race. There’s all sorts of things. Maybe that’s not a good example of limit, but that will have-
Tim H:
But they impact our-
Warwick F:
… certain consequences that they will impact you even if it’s because of other people’s bigotry or narrow-mindedness. But even things like talents. Some people are very athletic, and others are not. They might be more artists and painters, and maybe their buddies in high school were standout basketball players. You know what? I have two left feet. I could train my heart out, but if we’re both training equally as hard, my buddy will always win because he’s naturally gifted. That’s a limitation. It doesn’t mean you can’t try to play basketball, but your odds of being in the NBA is zero, pretty much.
Tim H:
As good as naught.
Warwick F:
Yeah. I think it’s a myth. We all have limitations, and often we want what we don’t have. I’m somebody that did well in school, I’m not terrible athletically, but I’m not particularly tremendous, so I’m never going to be as good as my buddy or whatever. Limits is not a bad thing. Just use the areas that you … This is a bit different than what you have, but what you have gifting in. Accept that you can’t do everything, and try to channel your energies into areas that are more in light of how you’re limited. I don’t know if that makes sense at all, but my point is it’s not just for people who have Parkinson’s, this concept of accept your limits. Is that a fair statement?
Tim H:
Absolutely, and it’s reminiscent of a book I’m reading right now called The Hope Quotient by Ray Johnston, where he talks about finding what you’re gifted in, finding what you’re good at, and that’s the flip of accepting limitations. Limitations are the things that I’m not good at or can’t do, but find what you do love, what you are good at, and focus on those things, and take that and run. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with my nursing is find ways of taking what I know, what I do, and integrating it into this life that I now lead.
Warwick F:
So as we kind of begin to wind up here, just talk a bit about how you’ve used the concepts of perseverance in the nonprofit you run, and talk about how you’ve integrated that to really try to help people. How do you do that?
Tim H:
It’s something that we in large part try to live for the people that we’re around every day. A lot of the folks I interact with on a day-to-day basis are seniors. They’re older, 65 plus for sure, a lot of 70 plus. So not only is life in its, if you dare call it, golden years, but their young years are gone. And they’re into the latter part of life, but to nonetheless live out that things don’t have to be as bad as they seem, that we can still find hope, that we still can find joy. We can still be excited to get up every day and to exist as we are. I look like this. I didn’t anticipate looking like this or feeling like this or being like this, but that I can find hope and joy and a way forward regardless. And then we talk a lot about all of these skills and things as we go.
Warwick F:
These are primarily people with Parkinson’s?
Tim H:
Yes.
Warwick F:
Obviously most of them would be older, and do you find as you’re talking to people in, as you say, their golden years about some of the principles of perseverance in your own life experience … Do you find that you can see glimmers of hope …
Tim H:
Oh, yeah.
Warwick F:
… in their eyes, and maybe they feel like, “OK. Maybe I can be productive. Maybe I have some wisdom to offer friends, kids, grandkids”?
Tim H:
We’ll call this guy Charlie. Charlie sat around at home for probably years after his diagnosis. The first day he showed up at the center, scraggly beard, hair all over the place, exceptionally overweight, could barely understand him. His voice was very affected by Parkinson’s, had a hard time walking, moving. He talks better. He walks better. He has lost weight. He has a smile on his face again. His wife has thanked us profusely for everything that this has done for their marriage, their relationship, for him, and just the fact that we’ve been able to get him off the couch exercising a little bit and giving him a community, and that, Warwick, is what ramps me up every day.
Warwick F:
So it sounds like that’s a good test case, because it sounds like there were things you did physically and in terms of wellness that also emotionally and spiritually … When you combine all those factors, the health, wellness, emotional, spiritual, there’s not just changes in demeanor. There’s even somewhat increased … I don’t know. Not mobility, but-
Tim H:
Yeah increased mobility.
Warwick F:
… increased functionality, in some sense, that doesn’t cure things, but it makes a little bit of difference physically in well being, but certainly probably a lot of difference emotionally and spiritually, and that person probably had very little hope and how has hope and actually has life, in some sense. So that must be so rewarding.
Tim H:
It is so rewarding. It is thrilling, and we have literally watched him come back. It’s just been absolutely amazing. So therein is my hope.
Warwick F:
To me, that’s a message that I think we can all learn from, in the midst of our crucible: there is hope. Sometimes you can change your circumstances. Very often you can’t. There are lifelong, typically unalterable changes to your life. It doesn’t mean you have to like it, but OK. As you said, you choose to accept the limitations that there are, and so now what? You choose to let go of anger and either forgive other people. Sometimes that crucible is because of what things are done to us, or not be angry at the universe or God, because what good would that do? It doesn’t really help you.
Warwick F:
Anger never helps you. It’s not productive no matter how understandable it is, and then channel it in a way that helps other people, which you’ve really … I mean, you’re sort of a role model, if you will, of how you deal with crucibles in a productive manner and live life and have hope. And you’ve given a lot of other people life and hope, many you know, many you probably don’t know. They’ve heard your story, read your book, listened to your talks, and that’s leaving a legacy that your kids and grandkids and beyond can be proud of, right?
Tim H:
Yeah. I certainly hope so, and thank you for that. I certainly hope so.
Gary S:
That is an excellent place to begin the process of what I like to call landing the plane. So we’re not going to touch down yet, but I can see the guys on the runway waving those flashlights. Before we do that, I would be remiss, Tim, if I did not give you the chance to let listeners know how they can learn more about you, get your book. Where can they go to find out more information about you?
Tim H:
Timsr.ca. That’s timsr.ca, and you can see all the work that I’m doing there as well as the book, and I hope you have the opportunity to pick it up, and hope you enjoy it and that it’s encouraging.
Gary S:
Speaking of the book, I wanted to kind of end on something on page … I think it’s on page 222, from what I printed out from the Kindle that I was looking at. You’re talking about this in the context of your Parkinson’s, these two paragraphs I’m going to read. But as I read it, I thought, “This is a recipe for perseverance in the time of COVID-19.” Here’s what you wrote, and listener, pay close attention to this scenario that Tim describes and the emotions and the actions that grow from it. This is what Tim wrote in Perseverance.
Gary S:
“In Malcolm Gladwell’s book David and Goliath, he talks about the people of London during the Luftwaffe bombing in the Second World War. Gladwell describes the incredible transformation that occurred in some who survived the bombings day after day. They came to expect to survive. I love that,” Tim writes. “They took precautions to protect themselves, but they’d go about their daily lives as best they could all the while growing less terrified of the daily bombardment. This is the lesson I try to apply to my life with Parkinson’s,” Tim writes. “Some days it may be terrible, and I can anticipate that it will get worse. It will likely one day be debilitating and may even impact my death. However, today I’m very much alive and well. I’m learning to expect or survive each day and, more than that, to live the best of my ability.”
Gary S:
Obviously that’s about your experience with Parkinson’s, but is that fair to apply that to what we’re … To me, it seems a fair analysis of what we’re going through with COVID right now.
Tim H:
Absolutely. I think it’s fair to apply to all of our struggles. Every struggle, every person will be different, but we have to learn to survive, and in surviving, we suddenly realize, “Oh. I can do this. I survived last week. I survived the week before. I survived yesterday. I think I’ll survive today, and if I’m going to survive today, well, can I do a little better than just survive? What can I actually do to thrive? How can I live my best today? What does my best look like today?”
Gary S:
I have been in the communications business long enough to know that a statement like that is when you drop the plane on the runway. Let me summarize for you, listener, the, I think, three takeaways from our discussion today with Tim Hague. First, it is normal and it is okay to get angry in the aftermath of your crucible, just don’t stay there. Find the strength, the vision, and yes, the perseverance to move beyond the crucible, as this podcast is called. Process your emotions with friends and family. If you’re a person of faith, press into that. Dig deeper and see what the bigger picture might be, even what the blessing in your crucible might be.
Gary S:
Second point I think is a good takeaway from our discussion, in bouncing back, expect to stumble. Sailing will not always be smooth. Your boat will take on water. You’ll hit choppy water. You’ll veer off course, but do not let that encourage you to quit. As Tim’s life proves, even if you think you suck, you can still win the amazing race that is life.
Gary S:
Finally, the third point, which is the title of Tim’s book. The third point is to persevere. Tim talks about it. Warwick talks about it in Crucible Leadership, and perseverance is not a pill you take. It’s a skill you learn. So seek joy knowing that it is eternal, unlike happiness, which is circumstantial. Accept the limits that your crucible has brought, but do not give up. Think differently and find a community. At the beginning of the day to the end of the day, perseverance is not a solo sport. It’s a team sport. It’s a team pursuit, and it’s best done in group.
Gary S:
So listener, thank you for spending time with us today in this very inspiring conversation with the very inspiring Tim Hague. Warwick and I have a little favor to ask you. If you feel like you were blessed, if you learned some things here, if you were inspired, if you found hope, if you found a little healing from anything that we talked about either on this podcast or on previous ones, please click subscribe on the app on which you’re listening to this right now. That does a couple of things. One, it makes sure you will not miss any episodes down the road where we talk to other guests who offer their perspective on what it means to pursue a life of significance, and it will also allow us to continue to attract guests like Tim who have true inspirational stories to tell.
Gary S:
So until next time when we’re all together, thank you again, listener, for spending your time with us, and please do remember, as this conversation has brought out, that crucible experiences are indeed painful. Crucible experiences can indeed, as we talked about here today, make you feel sometimes like you want to just stay in bed with your head under the covers. Tim described a man he helped at his non-profit who lived like that for a while, but that needn’t be your story, and your crucible experience needn’t be the end of your story. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new chapter, a new book in your story, and it can be the most rewarding chapter and book of your story that there is, because at the end of the day, it can lead you to a life of significance.
Ernest Shackleton and the men he was leading on an expedition to cross Antarctica had piled up a breathtaking number of life-threatening crucibles by late 1915. Stuck motionless in polar block ice for months, hundreds of miles off course with no way to communicate their location to anyone who could help, Shackleton and his men were running low on the supplies they had already been forced to ration in miserly fashion when their greatest disaster struck: The ice that had trapped their ship now closed in to crush it, leaving the men fully exposed to the bitter cold with no choice but to traverse the ice floes that surrounded them in desperate search of safety. Shackleton’s mission had changed for good from one of discovery to one of survival for himself and his men. On this episode of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE, Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn, who profiles Shackleton in her Wall Street Journal best-seller Forged in Crisis, explains in detail how the British polar explorer’s only hope was to forget the disasters he and his crew had endured and “face forward” with grit, ingenuity and improvisation. “Crisis leaders get better and better and better,” she tells host Warwick Fairfax. “You can see it iteratively if you study them like I do.”
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Transcript
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the podcast and the communications director for Crucible Leadership, and you have clicked play. We hope you’ve clicked subscribe to a podcast that deals with a subject most of us know all too well, crucible experiences. Crucible experiences are those things in life that are painful, traumatic, can feel like they take the wind out of our sails, can feel like they take the trajectory out of our lives, that they put us on a path that we necessarily didn’t want to go on. We talk about crucible experiences here because we believe in our experience and the experience of our guests has shown us that if we learn the lessons of our crucible experiences.
Gary S:
If we apply those lessons moving forward, we can not only move as the title of the show says, we can not only move beyond our crucibles, but we can move into a more rewarding life that’s rooted in our vision and our values that helps other people, and that ultimately leads us on a path to significance. Today’s episode is pretty special because it’s the second part of a conversation that we began last week with the host of the program, Warwick Fairfax, who is the founder of Crucible Leadership and his guest Nancy Koehn. Now, Nancy is a historian at the Harvard Business School who focuses on crisis leadership and how leaders in their teams rise to the challenges in high stakes situations.
Gary S:
For the purposes of this episode of Beyond the Crucible, she’s also the author of a book called Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times. It is one of the individuals of the five that Nancy Koehn profiles in that book, the case study she unpacks in that book. One of those five people is Ernest Shackleton and he is the subject of last week’s episode and this week’s episode. Ernest Shackleton was a British Explorer, a polar explorer who about 100 years ago, was on a quest to discover the South Pole. The problem was another explorer, a rival explorer discovered the South Pole first, but Shackleton had Arctic exploration in his blood. He wasn’t going to give up on still traversing that area.
Gary S:
He hatched a mission in 1915 to travel across Antarctica, and the plan was to leave early in the year. When others found out about Shackleton’s desire to leave early in the year in 1915 to travel across Antarctica, they told him, “Maybe you don’t want to do that. The pack ice, the ice flows are looking pretty bad this time of year and going South might not be the best idea for you or your men.” Shackleton heard that advice, but he did not heed that advice. In January 1915, he set out with his crew to travel across Antarctica, problems started immediately. We talked about those problems last week on Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
Pack ice did indeed impede the progress of the ship to the point that the ship was dead in the water, and not just for days, not just for weeks, not just for a couple of months, but for several months. In fact, it wasn’t until late autumn in 1915 that the situation changed in any marked way. It didn’t change for the better, the pack ice around Shackleton’s ship actually destroyed the ship. The ship sank, and the men had to scramble out of the ship, climb up on the ice flows and try to figure out what they were going to do next. Shackleton was faced at that moment, and that was where we left the conversation last week with Warwick and Nancy Koehn. Shackleton was faced with what was he going to do next, and Warwick asked Nancy Koehn a question at the end of last week’s episode, how did Shackleton muster up the wherewithal to move on? How did he forget what had come before?
Gary S:
How did he forget the mistakes he made that led his men to the precarious position that they were in? How did he face forward, as Nancy Koehn said, and tackle a new mission to rejigger what he was after? He could no longer even ponder traveling across Antarctica. He now had a different mission, and that mission was the life of his crew, saving the life of his men and getting them home safely to England. When we left this conversation last week, Warwick asked Nancy Koehn, how did Shackleton muster up the perspective, the boldness, the courage to take a step forward and move out in this new mission? What we’re going to hear now is part two of that episode in which Nancy Koehn answers Warwick’s very specific question.
Nancy K:
It’s a question for all kinds of crisis leaders that come out of the mists. I mean, Andrew Cuomo in New York state, Abraham Lincoln who never managed anything more than a two person law office and becomes president at the center of the Civil War and a huge administrator. I don’t have a kind of scientific vector leads to vector leads to vector analysis. Here’s how I’d answer that question and I’m going use a quote from Mr. Lincoln. This is from his annual address in December of 1862 to Congress. “Our occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.” That is to me, a microcosm of what happens in a crucible, a really searing crucible or a real crisis. You realize, “Holy cow, this is really terrible. I got to raise the level of my game.
Nancy K:
I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I can’t see how to get through the day, much less how to get through the month or the week or the year, but I got to step it up. I just got to find my muscles.” It’s in that realization that I’ve got to do it and the next step. It’s all steps. It’s not a giant, something like your eagle wings suddenly come available and you rise up into the heavens or you’re Rocky and you’ve drunk the raw eggs and now you beat Apollo Creed. It’s not like that. It’s the first step. Then it’s the next step, and then your confidence builds and people’s confidence in you builds, and so you rise to the occasion. I think that’s what happened with Shackleton. I think he thought as soon as that ship got stuck, “I got a brand new game. What am I key priorities here?” My key priorities for him initially were morale of my men since suddenly everything stopped. Where we’re going is end, over.
Nancy K:
What are we going to do? How do I keep them from doing what the men did on Scott’s expedition under weak leadership, which is kind of collapse inward into disunity. Then the disaster that can happen from that in life or death situations, and then you deal with that. Then you’re like, “Oh, the ship’s going to collapse. It’s going to get cracked. We’re going to be without a ship. Then what do we do?” This constant kind of meeting with the self to say, we’re going to figure this out next and then we’re going to figure this out. In the doing of all that, you are stoking, you are building, you are lifting the 15 pound weights of those muscles and they are getting stronger. Crisis leaders, they get better and better and better. That’s what’s so interesting, and you can see it iteratively if you study them like I do.
Warwick F:
What you just said is so critical. I mean, as you know the title of the podcast is Beyond the Crucible and crucible leadership is the whole website and brand. A crucible really tests the measure of a leader. The flame is turned up and how do they respond, and the people you’ve all mentioned, certainly Shackleton as we’re talking about here, he rose to the occasion. He became a better leader. It’s the test. The good goes to the top just like the whole molten blast furnace deal. It’s the same thing. Talk about some of those key attributes that when things got most difficult, his leadership was just rose to such an amazing level. What were some of those key things that really we can learn so much for today?
Nancy K:
Let me answer that question by telling your listeners just a tiny story. The men decamped from the ship, abandoned ship with some supplies, three lifeboats, and about 120 of the photographer Frank Hurley’s negatives, including some moving film footage in September. They’re making camp on the ice. Shackleton, by the way, puts great attention into who’s going to be with whom in which tent. Then specifically he takes what he calls his doubting Thomases, the folks that are negative, that are like, “Well, I’m not sure how we can do this.” He puts the spreaders of potential psychological and collective contagion in his tent, adding new luster or power to the, keep your friends close and enemies closer.
Nancy K:
That’s really important how you manage and deal with people. The ship goes down. The men are on the camps with lots of routine. He’s got a routine. The duty roster varies every single week. Everyone sticks to a routine. Everyone exercises, everyone socializes at dinner by moving around tents. After dinner, moving around tents because we don’t want people getting too alone and too negative and too isolated, all these different aspects of managing morale. Then in November, mid November, the ship goes down and he sees it in the morning, starting to crack and the ice starting to open. Then in the course of about eight hours, the course of a working day that the ship falls with its broken mast and all it’s ropes everywhere through the ice, and then the ice closes over and it’s gone and there’s literally no line on the horizon.
Nancy K:
Now, for a team of Naval men, scientists, soldiers enlisted men officers, this was like the world coming to an end. They are 2000 miles from anybody, they have no Waze or GPS or text messages. There’s no Facebook posts. No one knows where they are. I mean, the men are just, they’re shell shocked. They’re in the worst state they’ve been. They kind of stagger their tents. Shackleton paces the ice because he can sense how this is just a game changing moment for his team and whether he can keep them unified and following orders and trying believing they can get home. He paces the ice, and later in his diary, all night long and he’ll say, “A man must shape himself to a new mark the minute the old mark goes aground.” What’s he saying? He’s saying, I got to raise the level again. There’s a new mark. We aren’t on the ship anymore, all our bearings are lost. I’ve got to do something different.
Nancy K:
Next morning, this is really important, lesson number two. He walks around the tent with Frank Worsley, the navigator and they have cups of hot tea and milk for the men. He says, “Lads, get your tea. Come on here, gather round.” He does a little town hall meeting, and the first thing he says is, “Ship and store is gone, now we’ll go home.” In later years, when the men were interviewed, some of them were interviewed by the BBC about how did they survive, by the way, to almost a man they said, “The boss,” which was their nickname for Shackleton, “Made us believe we could do it.” Many of them recalled that. The whole world had just dropped away. We were at a new incredibly low point and there he is saying, “Let’s face forward. Ship and store is have gone, so we’re going home.” That kind of ability, second lesson, the leader to show up no matter what he was feeling inside. We know he’s pacing, he was anxious.
Nancy K:
He was uncertain. He didn’t know how he was going to shape himself to a new mark to show up before his men confident, strong, looking out after their welfare, facing forward. That is incredibly important because in a crucible, everything is magnified, magnified impact. Everything is heightened, so how the leader, how you show up for yourself actually affects your ability to access your resilience muscles. I think that was really important. He showed up every day, no matter whether he slept or not with his courage muscles tight and the men believing that he knew what to do next. That was really important. A third thing that he did that I think was very, very important was to manage the energy of his men. We’re going to talk about that. Energy is really important to morale, and morale is really important to action and unity. For example, when men seem to be flagging after dinner, he’d say, “Let’s have a dancing contest on the ice or let’s play the banjo.”
Nancy K:
He insisted when they left the shift that they keep this banjo from when he enlisted men because it was mental medicine. He would try and get the men involved in something that was a kind of recovery, social recovery exercise. To use an even more pointed example on a boat journey that he and five other men will make in 1916 to get help, he would see a man flagging, his energy flagging and spirits starts to fall and he’d order up hot milk for everyone. What he was doing was just like a mother kind of soothing a child by giving them something to drink or soothing a partner. He would never single out the man because he didn’t want that person to be embarrassed. He just had this depth of understanding of energy and its relation to how we feel and how confident we are, and he used that over and over and over again to literally manage the energy and take care of his flock. That’s something else that’s very, very important about his leadership.
Warwick F:
I mean, he’s learning all this at a time where, I mean, I can’t imagine there were many books about leadership empathy in the early 1900s. It would have been much more mechanistic than obviously the science of leadership has gone on a lot since then, but he just seemed to learn about, as you said, the importance of starting with the internal, managing himself. I mean, just saying to the men, “We’ll get you home.” I mean, the chances of them getting home when they were locked in the ice in 1915 was a billion to one. I mean, it would be almost zero. No communication, yet somehow he led them to believe in the virtually impossible, which is remarkable to me.
Nancy K:
Two comments on that, I think important insight, Warwick, first many years ago, I stumbled on this definition of real leadership that I love. It’s in the beginning of the book and I can claim no credit for it other than stumbling on it. It’s from an American writer named David Foster Wallace who wrote this in a Rolling Stone article many years ago when he was following John McCain around on the campaign bus when McCain was running in 2000, making his first run for the presidency. This is what David Foster Wallace wrote, “Real leaders are individuals who help us overcome the limitations of our own weaknesses, selfishness, laziness, and fears, and get us to do harder, better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.” I think this is just such a great definition and it’s with me always. It describes Shackleton very well. What he was able to do is he kept raising the level of his game without textbooks, without Harvard Business School seminars, the chivalric code of the British Navy for God’s sakes. Empathy was not a word we were teaching people.
Nancy K:
They’d put stripes on their Navy wool coats, right? The fact that he could do these things and keep raising his level of the game, including all lots of improvisation, lots of powerful signaling, because he knew that men take signals from what he did, not just words, not just the actions was he was in a sense helping the men do harder, better things than they could get themselves to do. When the BBC says, “How did you do it?” In the 1930s when they come back and interview all these survivors. They said, “The boss made us believe we can do it.” It’s a perfect illustration of the impact a leader can have by as Bono the rock singer once said making the impossible possible. That is the most kind of nurturing or empowering aspect of my research. I have discovered all kinds of people, including Churchill. Let’s not forget late May 1940, who made the impossible possible by learning how in a crucible to raise a level of their game and help others do the same thing. That is the potency of great leadership in crucibles.
Warwick F:
That is such a great connection you make there, Nancy. May, June 1940, France has fallen, most of Europe has gone, America is a year plus away from entering. The betting money would be on Britain’s not going to be able to hold off against the might of the German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe and somehow he makes the whole nation believe we’re going to hang on, which that’s… I mean, how do you do that? It’s millions of people believe, you know what if Winston says, we can survive or you know what we can survive.
Nancy K:
All those RAF base commanders, they’re like, “Okay, we’re sending them all up now.” I remember there’s a story from the summer of 1941 when Churchill goes to visit some bases, he says, “How many Spitfires do we have in reserve?” He says, “None, they’re all up in the air.” The point is that you don’t need to do it with enormous amounts of reserve and slack, you just need to do it. He did, and he made people believe they could do it. It was so important. The whole world history hinged on those months in some very real sense.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. I want to get to how Shackleton was able to get his folks off the ice, but you mentioned just, as you said, the power of just giving his men belief, just managing emotions, mixing people up, troublemakers, even people of different classes, officers, crew, the whole games, animal, vegetable, mineral. Managing people with food and drink, I think you mentioned. Just so many tools that he managed to keep morale up, and so they were on the ice for a very long period of time, but then eventually there’s a turning point when he launches his folks to get to Elephant Island. Talk about they’re on this ice flow, floating hundreds of miles off course. He’s looking for an opening in the ice where he can launch these lifeboats, and so talk about that part of the story where eventually they’re able to launch their three lifeboats.
Nancy K:
The boat, just to pick up the last skeins of the story. The Endurance goes down in the ice. It’s gone forever in November 1915. The men then pass December, January, February, and almost all of March. In that same berg, seal and penguin meats start to dry up. The morale is very low. It’s late March. They’re waiting. All the men are watching Shackleton most keenly for the ice to break up enough for them to launch three 20, roughly 22 foot each lifeboat open lifeboats and sail Northwest. They have some rough idea from what’s called a sextant, what today we regard as crude navigational device that charts the angle between the Sun and the Earth’s line horizon to make navigational coordinate estimates. They’re waiting for the ice to break up so they can sail Northwest. This is up the Western side of what is an archipelago of islands on the South American side of Antarctica.
Nancy K:
They’re hoping to get far enough North to an Island where a trading ship, some kind of ship will find them, or where they can find an Island called Paulet Island where Shackleton knows previous expeditions have cached supplies. That’s the goal, and they set off. Then finally the ice breaks up enough. Shackleton wasn’t wanting to go too early, because they only get stuck in ice in those lifeboats really, then they’ve lost their navigational. They’re setting their transport capacity. Eventually the ice breaks up enough, Shackleton gives the go ahead. With water that they’ve melted from ice in barrels and supplies, they leave their camp and they have some supplies and they head Northwest. It’s an incredibly horrible journey that lasts five nights and six days. The first three days, they just basically go round in a circle.
Nancy K:
Then eventually as they get close, Shackleton fears the men are dehydrated. Some of them have probably the early stages of dysentery from contaminated water. Their eyes are glazing over. He’s worried he’s going to lose him. It’s terribly cold. Shackleton decides to sail quickly to an Island much farther South than he hoped to reach where no one will find them. Basically, it’s a big rock in the South Atlantic called Elephant Island, and that’s where they end up in early April 1916. It’s the men’s first moment on dry land since December 1914. There’s freshwater. They’re ecstatic to be on dry land. They stagger up, drink, immediately set up camp and then Shackleton starts trying to rehabilitate them physically. He knows, here we go, lesson number four. You don’t get a straight GPS map to get out of a crisis or a crucible.
Nancy K:
You navigate point to point with lots of uncertainty and lots of pivots. Shackleton’s like, “No one’s going to find us here. I need the next step.” Immediately, probably by the next morning, possibly even the evening they arrive decides we’re going to have to sail for help. Everyone can’t stay here because we won’t ever be found and we can die. He starts making plans right away to take one of the lifeboats, reinforce it, put a canvas mask on the top of it. It’s an open lifeboat, rowboat basically, put a mast up, canvas deck, excuse me, mast up, sail and put 2000 pounds of rocks in the bottom to give it some kind of haft, some ability to withstand the waves of the South Atlantic. He decides he and five carefully chosen men will sail back to South Georgia Island and the whaling station where they know they’ll find civilization. That’s the next two and a half weeks of time and attention. The men are all getting ready to outfit one of the lifeboats. James Caird, it was called just to make this incredible journey across what anyone that sails will tell you or some of the world’s most difficult seas.
Warwick F:
I think you mentioned that’s like an 800 mile journey.
Nancy K:
It’s an 800 mile journey.
Warwick F:
Gale, force winds. I think you’re right. There was some massive wave that was bigger than any wave that Shackleton had seen and he had had some experience in the seas. Somehow they made that 800 mile trip, which in itself, as you write is almost unprecedented. Certainly, it was remarkable that they even made it.
Nancy K:
It’s still considered the greatest open boat journey in the history of navigation, that’s a long long history my friends. Several years ago, an explorer and an environmentalist named Tim Jarvis reconstructed the journey with a carefully reconstructed boat, same supplies. They had a big diesel powered steam ship following them for safety and things and they barely made it, right? No one’s really done it as Shackleton did. Even Jarvis and he’s extraordinary seaman and he’s an explorer. They get, this is April 20th 1916, they get to South Georgia. The rudder is damaged. The boat has been banged around in a hurricane a few nights before they arrive at South Georgia it’s so bad. The hurricane is so bad that it actually sinks 500-person passenger boat that’s about 300 miles away. They don’t know that, and so they have to tuck in and they have to dock or come into the island. On the opposite side of the island, from the whaling station, which is where help is. The rest of the island is all uninhabited and completely unchartered.
Nancy K:
The next part of this incredible story that just keeps getting harder is Shackleton and the two really tough, smart, good guys he’s brought along. The other three men that he brought along were men that he didn’t want to leave on the island because they were doubting Thomases and he didn’t want them spreading pessimism and negativity on the Elephant Island while he left to try and get help. Again, managing morale. The next part of the story is Shackleton and his two men, companions Tom Crean and Frank Worsley take some nails out of the boat, make some impromptu crampons by nailing those nails into the back of the bottom of their boots. That was some rope and kind of kerosene lamp and a small fire, kerosene fire, and they set out over this and it’s just this incredible 36-hour journey across this mountainous island, where they’re almost dead a couple of times, including just, I’ll give you one example of improvisation. Another important aspect of leading ourselves in crucibles and leading others.
Nancy K:
They get too high and nightfall’s coming and Shackleton’s worried they’re going to die. It’s so high in altitude and they can’t get down fast enough. Shackleton says, “Let’s just sled down.” They coil up this big rope flat like a rug made of rags and they sledged down into the darkness, not knowing what they’re going to find. They fall more than 2000 feet in 18 seconds. They fall into a snowbank safe, in a much lower altitude, much warmer, and they stand up solemnly and shake hands and carry on. After 36 hours of tredging, they get to the whaling station and they knock on the door and no one recognizes them because everyone’s given Shackleton up long ago for dead. The men haven’t shaved or bathed in months, and Shackleton’s first question is, “When did the war end?” The clerk there at the whaling station, “It’s still going on. The world’s gone mad.”
Nancy K:
Then the next chapter of the story is Shackleton’s again, it’s so incredibly hard that even Shakespeare couldn’t have thought this up, or some disaster film screenwriter. His next journey, next chapter is try and get a boat that can get back through the waters that they just traversed to get his 20 or 22 men still left on Elephant Island. He spends the next, so that’s May 12th when they get to the whaling station. He spends the next four months. It’ll be all of May, all of June, all of July and all of August trying to get a boat that can get through what is now become pack ice again, and actually get its way all the way-
Warwick F:
It takes him three or four tries. I mean, he-
Nancy K:
It takes him four tries, four different boats. Each of the first three tries, they encounter pack ice, and he’s afraid they’re going to get trapped, and so they turn back to go back to port.
Warwick F:
Talk about the scene, I think you write maybe is it August 1916, where he finally is on the steamer. I think you’re right, the Yelcho from Chilean government loaned him. He’s pulling in and the men see him. Talk about that scene because that’s months after he’s left.
Nancy K:
It’s incredible. Even telling it right now, I take a deep breath because it’s so incredible. He had gone gray with worry in the interim and he started to drink. Shackleton could put back one or two in London, but he hasn’t drunk thus far on the expedition. He starts drinking. He’s so worried. He goes gray, and he has this basically a tugboat from the Chilean government where they have gone and gotten the boat. They’re coming back from Santiago to Elephant Island and the men spy the boat. They’re outside picking up barnacles to make soup because they don’t have any penguins or seals and they’re really low on food. They spot the ship and all the men pour out from these overturned lifeboats that they’re using a shelters and they built kind of weaseling properties, bivouacked kind of shelters.
Nancy K:
They pour out and Shackleton’s on a steamer with Worsley and Crean, these two men that had accompanied him all the way and he starts counting the men. He gets to 22 and Worsley said he was like, “He lost 30 years off his face.” His face breaks into the smile, the wrinkles disappear and he says, “Oh my God, all 22. They’re all alive.” He jumps into a lifeboat from the tugboat, the Yelcho and he starts sailing and saying, “Lads, I’m here.” He starts throwing cigarettes from the boat to them as they get there. They all pile on really quickly. He doesn’t even go ashore to see the setup. He’s so worried about pack ice. He just gets them all on the Yelcho. They sail for Chile, huge celebration because everyone had given them all up as dead. Then they sail on to London, where it’s August 1916 and World War I is still raging and a number of the men, most of the men on the expedition who have lived through this incredible, incredible survival story, enlist, and the last kind of piece here is tragically, or not the last piece, but the last piece of this expedition piece is tragically, two of those men are killed in combat almost right away. It’s like to do all that and then die in a machine gunfire, but that’s what happened.
Warwick F:
As you mentioned, some of them weeks after they got back, it wasn’t very long.
Nancy K:
Yes, yes. It was incredible.
Warwick F:
The last chapter I find really interesting is Shackleton, I guess hadn’t got over the polar bug. It’s after World War I, society is fundamentally changed, the world is different. The whole polar exploration fever is gone. Many things have gone. The world is totally different, but not for Shackleton, and so somewhere around 1920/21, he decides let’s do it again. I think you write was it eight of his crew. I mean, let’s do it again. It’s like who are these people? Why do you want to do this again? What kind of leader can inspire people to do something, I don’t know, almost say suicidal again. It’s like-
Nancy K:
A great crucible leader. He sends the call out in 1920 to go again. It goes out to four corners. All his men have scattered, the war’s over. He himself has been lecturing in the United States trying to recoup some of the money for the debts he owes for the expedition, on the speaker circuit in America. The world, I mean, no one cares about the pole anymore. No one even cares about individual heroism. That just got wiped away in the mass carnage of the First World War, and so he sends call out and then, it’s more than eight. I want to say it’s 12 men answer in like, “Yes, sir, boss. Here we come.” They all gather and the ship takes off in late 1920, and they, guess what, they go just like they had in 1914. They go to South America to pick up a few more supplies. Then last port of call is again, South Georgia, the whaling station.
Nancy K:
That night, the first night they get there, Shackleton has a massive heart attack and dies in his sleep in his cabin. His men bury him there. Then they go on and kind of travel along the Vahsel Bay, which is this bay that they wandered on the Endurance as the currents carried them and back to Elephant Island, just to take a look at their place where many of them spent five months and then they come back. It’s more of just a kind of reliving, I think, of the cohesion and the triumph of the human spirit that, that journey was. Then the expedition just fades in the midst of history. No one cares. I got home. The men go on to their wives. The BBC gets interested in the story and does a series of radio interviews in the 30s, and then they slip back into the mist of history and no one, no British school kid, no exploree aficionado is talking about Ernest Shackleton.
Warwick F:
I think as you write. They were talking about Scott.
Nancy K:
They’re were talking about Scott who died on the way back… Exactly. The martyred, lousy, insecure leader, who effectively martyred his men. God, King and country, but they still died. Beginning in the 1980s, it’s almost like a Phoenix rising, partly by the efforts of Roland Huntford and other very good polar explorers. A larger story starts to come out both about Scott and Shackleton, and then it’s again, almost from underground, this collective global kind of cottage industry or grape vine of real interest in this story and about the impossible being made possible just comes to be incredibly popular. There are Shackleton schools, there are Shackleton societies. I get emails every single week and have for 20 years about people wanting to talk about Shackleton. Right now in the COVID-19 crisis, everyone I know wants to understand how they endured and triumphed in these life and death circumstances
Warwick F:
There is something about the intrigue of the epic failure. Being Australian, as you probably know, one of the key military episodes in Australian history is Gallipoli. For Australia, we became a nation in 1901, but in reality we became a nation in, I think it was 1915, somewhere like that, and Gallipoli where just real briefly, as you know, it was on the shores of Turkey. Turkey was an ally of Germany in World War I. The British commanders sort of dithered and just made sure that the Turkish forces had plenty of time to get machine gun nest on the hills, and were just horrifically executed. Then these poor Australians were landed there on the shores of Gallipoli with these high hills and mountains, machine gun nests, no hope of success, but yet even though it was a failure, just the heroism and the courage amidst that has defined a nation.
Warwick F:
Even now Australian cricket teams, when they go to England, we’ll stop on the way as a kind of a morale boost. Anyway, Gallipoli is a whole other thing, but there’s something about the epic failure, but in this case, it’s more than just the epic failure is just what Shackleton learned his ability to move on. As we sort of summarize here, for leaders today, who may never have heard of Shackleton, what are the two or three things why Shackleton holds so many lessons for CEOs, leaders of nonprofits, leaders in the COVID-19 crisis that we’re all going through, corporate leaders, governmental leaders? When everything is so uncertain, what are the key nuggets would you say that we need to learn about Shackleton?
Nancy K:
Well, just to kind of present them in uncharacteristically succinct form, you have to step into the fear, right? You take the step. Courage is not the absence of fear as Mandela said. It’s the willingness to walk into the fear. Kind of square your shoulders and tighten your core and realize that you are still standing and can take the next step. People behind you can take the first step. Step into the fear, feed and water yourself and your people carefully, both emotionally and physically and mentally, keep your fingers tightly on the pulse, the morale of the people around you, face forward and learn, right? Let go of what was and what didn’t work in the past, learn from it, and then move forward, especially in crucibles and crises. There’s just too much at stake to spend a lot of time rehashing the past.
Nancy K:
I said on the Charlie Rose interview I did several years ago when my book came out, I said, “I learned and Shackleton learned that why is never the question. Why me, why this, why the suffering, why the calamity, why the failures, it’s never why. It’s what can I make in this wreckage and how can I redeem, reclaim? Just as a crucible, it’s about high flames literally, and its ability to kind of reshape things. How can I be forged into something better and stronger and more committed to service. Another lesson that’s really important in Shackleton that we haven’t talked about that I see over and over in these leaders. These ordinary people who do extraordinary things, or at least people that make the impossible possible is they ultimately in the doing, in this forging, in the crucible, cross the bridge from the narcissistic, I need to do this.
Nancy K:
This is my bullet list. This is my agenda. This is my career. They cross the bridge to a more powerful place called thou or we. You discover these people, each discovers, Lincoln discovers all that narcissistic quest for public office and power becomes, “I got to save the Union. We have to save our country.” It’s the crossing of that bridge from I to thou or I to we. When you discover that who your most powerful, most luminous most noble self is, is actually in service to others, and that, that’s the best way to serve yourself that you find your ruby slippers, right? That secret weapon, your super power that you’d never known you had. Shackleton discovers that and keeps growing in that commitment to the mission with God is my witness. I’ll bring them all home alive. Then last but not least this ability to keep improvising and pivoting, right.
Nancy K:
Improvising with we’re going to sail for South Georgia now. Improvising for we’ll sledge down the mountain, so we don’t freeze up here. Improvising, but always in service to this worthy mission, I will bring them home alive. Come hell or high water, I will do it. That, of course, the constant engagement with the mission helps shore up your endurance muscles and your ability to say as Shackleton once said, I just love this. “Obstacles are just things to overcome after all.” I think that’s a really empowered statement. All of those things are really critical to individuals in a crucible who will ultimately use that experience to lead other individuals in a crucible.
Warwick F:
Just to summarize here because I now need to probably bring it to conclusion. I mean, to me, a crucible really tests the metal of a leader. With these five people, they became better people. They became, maybe there were the raw materials there who knows, but somehow it forged them into something that they weren’t before that. As you say very well, the ability to move forward and not brood on the past, the ability to realize it’s not about me, it’s about other people. It’s about, as we say in Crucible Leadership, a life of significance, a life on purpose, focused on others, all these great leaders do that. The reason it’s so important for us to study them and why your work is so important is there is a reason we call them great leaders because great leaders don’t happen every day. They’re very rare. It’s like finding diamonds. You can look through a lot of rock to find a diamond, and so that’s why studying them and what you do, the work is so important because who else are we going to learn from? There are very few people that we hold up as role models or to learn from unfortunately.
Nancy K:
Well, but maybe it’s not quite such a small kind of circle of people or a small group of people Warwick. I’ve come and I’m still studying courageous leaders. We’re writing a case, a research associate and I are writing a case right now about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the emotional intelligence and awareness of, not just John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, but a few other people including people like Adlai Stevenson and Tommy Thompson, who was the former ambassador to the Soviet Union who was called in. The emotional intelligence piece that is as important as any of the military expertise in that conference room of the White House in helping resolve this without nuclear war becoming the logical end of our action. The more I’ve studied this, this phenomenon of great leaders, the more I’m convinced that great leaders are made, they’re not born. If that’s the case, then there’s lots and lots of potential greatness out there. I think it also comes in many different shapes and sizes. We cover, in our lives, people who end up exerting a lot of power, a lot of authority, a lot of influence.
Nancy K:
I went through chemotherapy. I saw great leaders on the infusion floor in those nurses, right? I’ve seen school principals who are great leaders. There’s a woman right now in Ohio who’s the health secretary, who’s facing death threats because she knows a lot about social distancing and healthy protocols, and people of certain smaller group, very small group of people are very angry and armed. She’s a great leader and she’s getting greater by the day as she holds this idea about your health. The collective health of Ohioans is my charge and I’m obligated by that. I will discharge that obligation. I think that one really important message for people in crucibles or helping someone in crucible is out of this can come your greatness, but you have to work at it and you have to say, “My project here isn’t just to get through this, it’s to get better and stronger and fuller and more empathic and more compassionate and more competent. I’m going to work on that as I navigate to these high winds and big waves.” That’s really important, but you have to decide that for yourself and then you have to stick to it. That piece is a covenant that you make with yourself, and it’s really powerful, but it takes work real work, but incredibly rewarding work as well.
Warwick F:
Well said.
Gary S:
Normally, at the end of a podcast, I will launch into what I consider the three takeaways, but I’ve been in the communication business long enough to know that when there’s this much Harvard Business School in the house and it’s been summarized so well, I’m not going to bother doing that because I think Nancy has summarized it all very well, listeners. I will say two more things. The second one, Nancy, I’m going to give you the chance to let people know where they can get your book. The first thing I want to do is to kind of draw the balloon strings together of everything that we’ve talked about here is to say something that Nancy says in her book, listener and something that we say on that Beyond the Crucible all the time.
Gary S:
I think one of the joys of co-hosting this podcast is seeing people from different backgrounds, different crucible experiences land at the same place without ever having communicated. Here’s what Nancy writes in her book. She says, “It takes reserves of emotional awareness and discipline for leaders to balance attention to the path ahead with knowledge gleaned from the past.” Here’s what we say at Crucible Leadership, learning the lessons of your crucible to chart a course to a life of significance is critical. Two ways of saying sort of the same thing, balance what came before with what lies ahead and focus on a life of significance. Nancy, I would be absolutely remiss if I didn’t let the listeners know how they can learn more about you and get this fantastic book for themselves.
Nancy K:
I’ll answer the second thing first. The book is fantastic, not because I wrote it. It’s because these people live such brave lives and they’re loving lives as well. These are not just superheroes with cloaks and leaping tall buildings. These are ordinary people who live magnificent lives and they’re inspirational just to… It was an inspiration to me just to have the privilege to write about them. It’s available almost anywhere books are sold. I read the audio. If you like audio books, and you’d like the audience to be the voice. I choke up a little bit at the end about Rachel Carson, so that’s just a little tease. Then I have done an extraordinary amount of media videos. I have a very active social media life, which I conduct purely around lessons of leadership.
Nancy K:
There’s no pictures of my horse or my dogs or my outfit problems or me eating chips. There’s no vitriol or exuberance. There is lessons every day. Right now, I’m running a classroom called, that you can find on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, every day, a new lesson leading yourself in crisis inside number we’re up to 64 with resources there. Then my website, which has just launched in a new form is called nancykoehn.com. It has videos, articles, podcasts, radio interviews. I do a regular spot on NPR. We kept links to all of those on all kinds of leadership topics, do there’s just a plethora of material for the interested listener.
Gary S:
For folks who are listening, and as I often say about Warwick since he has a silent W in the middle of his name, Nancy Koehn so you know is spelled, listener, K-O-E-H-N.
Nancy K:
Thank you for that.
Gary S:
Those social media accounts that Nancy talked about as well as her website, it’s nancykoehn.com, nancyK-O-E-H-N.com. Thank you listener for spending time with us here at Beyond the Crucible. Warwick and I have a couple of favors to ask you. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here in this incredible story about Ernest Shackleton, one would be to click subscribe on the podcast app that you’re listening to this to right now. That does a couple of things for us. One for you, it helps make sure that you don’t miss any episode of the show so that you can continue to get these interviews and these discussions of the key elements of crucible leadership. Then second, we would ask visit crucibleleadership.com, where you can find blogs that Warwick’s written.
Gary S:
You can take an assessment to see where you fall on your own journey to a life of significance, and hopefully that will add even more fuel to your fire to reach that life of significance. Until the next time we’re together, thank you for spending time with us and remember that crucible experiences, as we just saw in this interview with Nancy Koehn can be extraordinarily painful. They can be very difficult. They can be hard to move beyond, but if you stay after it. If you continue to, as Nancy said, put one foot in front of the other and continue to take one step at a time. It’s not the end of your story by any stretch of the imagination. It is in fact, the beginning of a new story, that can be the most rewarding story of your life, because it is one that leads to a life of significance.
Nancy Koehn was on track for an administrative leadership role at Harvard Business School, where she taught the history of leadership to the world’s best and brightest. But a series of personal crucibles — the death of her father, a divorce that came without warning and decimated her finances, a cancer diagnosis — caused the floorboards of her personal and professional lives to crumble beneath her. Her career aspirations drydocked, her sleep interrupted nightly at 1 or 2 a.m., she sought solace in the love of her intellectual life: history. When she picked up a book on Abraham Lincoln to help pass the agitated hours, she discovered in the trials of the 16th president that there was not only a way through her setbacks but a way beyond them. In this interview with BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax, Koehn explains how her search for lighthouses of hope in the lives of great leaders who were dented by crucible experiences helped her find healing through FORGED IN CRISIS, her best-selling book about their trials and triumphs. Host and guest take a deep-dive look at the incredible story and important leadership lessons of British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton — a conversation they conclude in next week’s episode.
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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
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the show and the communications director for Crucible Leadership. And you have happened upon a podcast, hopefully subscribed to a podcast that deals in crucible experiences. Those are those moments in life that really can change the trajectory of your life. They can be painful, they often are quite painful, they can be failures, they can be setbacks, but what they have in common is they are things that can kind of knock us off balance a little bit, and that we have to recover from. And focusing on crucible experiences here at Beyond the Crucible is the title of the podcast, is to help you the listener get beyond the crucible.
Gary S:
Many times we do that by interviewing guests who’ve had powerful crucible experiences themselves and have bounced back from those experiences to live a life of significance. And today, we have a slightly different, a slightly more in-depth guest that we will tell you about in just a minute. But first, I want to welcome the architect of Crucible Leadership and the host of the show Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, I know that you are personally excited about our guest today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary, very excited to have Nancy here, and it should be a fantastic discussion.
Gary S:
The Nancy to whom Warwick referred is Nancy Koehn, a historian at the Harvard Business School, where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration. Koehn’s research focuses on crisis leadership and how leaders and their teams rise to the challenges of high stakes situations. Her recent book, Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times spotlights how five of history’s greatest leaders successfully navigated crises, and what we can each learn from their experiences.
Warwick F:
Well, thank you. Nancy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I love what you do in focusing on leadership and in particular, how organizational leaders today can learn from some of the great leaders in history. And you have this remarkable book, Forged in Crisis, in which you have five very different leaders with five different stories but some commonalities in how they approached leadership from within and then without. I love that you teach this and you’re teaching it to MBA students at Harvard Business School. This obviously we discussed, I went there in the ’80s and have very fond memories of the class discussion.
Warwick F:
I also have an abiding interest in history. My dad and I, who grew up in a large family media business, one of the ways we communicated was through history. So I found this book fascinating. So Nancy, before we get into the book, tell me a little bit about yourself and what led you to write this book, because I know you have some personal history that led to this.
Nancy K:
I’m from a middle class family in the Middle West of America. And I went to Stanford as an undergraduate and then went to Harvard and just never left, got a PhD and a masters, a couple of masters, and then ended up at the Harvard Business School in my very late 20s. And as we now knowing how way leads on to way, I found myself recently tenured, this is now about, let’s see, 16 years ago. I’ve just recently tenured, very difficult journey, very important bridge for academics to cross over into lifelong job security and great academic possibility in terms of what you do.
Nancy K:
And then, two things, first thing is, I was writing a case, a Harvard Business School case we teach in these units of analysis, a strange product called the Harvard Business School case, which has a real-life piece of action, not usually a history case, but I’m a historian, so I write history cases that we then teach to MBAs and executives as a way of drawing out lessons or insights or watch outs or things that they can take unto themselves, absorb in order to make better decisions. Now, I was writing a case about Ernest Shackleton, and I was so caught up in the story and how this person just raised the level of his game so extraordinarily and so consistently over these two years that these men, he and his team, were stranded on the ice in the second decade of the 20th century.
Nancy K:
And then in the middle of that, and here gets to the root of your question, Gary, my life started falling apart very quickly and in very large, as Sylvia Plath would say, hunky blocks. In mid-2002, my father, who was 72 and spry and energetic, dropped dead. My mother, who had always been someone prone to depression, just kind of collapsed inward like a black hole in terms of her own sense of the world and her sense of her place in it. And then not many months, less than a couple of seasons after my father died and my mother’s life was turned inside out and I and my sister with it trying to care for her, and my brother, and my husband, who I had been married to for just about 15 years, one day said, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m leaving. I have a lawyer and we’re going to get all your Harvard retirement and all the money that you made,” because I was the only one who had worked full time during our marriage.
Nancy K:
And those floorboards caving in under me were even harder than my father’s because I loved him so much and I was so surprised. I lost a lot of weight. I kept on teaching at the Harvard Business School and my students were talking about making bets on how much weight I had lost week by week, and they were calling me the disappearing professor Koehn. And then not long after that, same, again, just a couple of seasons, I was diagnosed with pre-cancerous conditions. And not long after that, I was diagnosed with breast cancer, even though I had no risk factors.
Nancy K:
So the middle of this, there’s this torturous divorce going on because I don’t have any money other than my Harvard retirement, and trying to hold onto it in a no-fault divorce state, and then I got cancer again. And as all that happened. most of it happened in the span of three years, all of it happened in the span of about five. In the end, in the no-fault divorce, I lost most of my money, and then I had to figure out what to do. And my career at the Harvard Business School, which had this administrative upward trajectory, I was interested in administration, I wanted to be a contributor and a leader at the school, that immediately ended because I was sick. And cancer, “Oh, that’s serious.”
Nancy K:
My whole life was completely transformed and I went through just astounding self-questioning and grief and self-flagellation and the constant asking why, which is not the right question, but I didn’t know that at the time. And in the midst of all this, now to answer the question, this is all important to know. In the midst of the early parts of the crisis, right after my ex-husband had walked out, I couldn’t sleep. Everyone listening to this podcast who’s endured the crucible moment knows what I’m talking about. And so I would go to sleep and wake up at 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM. Well, there’s not much on television, you can’t really vacuum at 2:00 AM.
Nancy K:
And one night in the midst of the existential wanderings I was doing metaphorically, I picked up a book of Lincoln’s writings, Modern Library Edition of Lincoln’s writings. I never read much Lincoln, I was trained as a European historian. And I started reading Warwick at the very back of the book. So this would be the second inaugural, and that’s one speech after that and some memos and some letters, and reading backwards into time. And the more I read, the more I realized… This took about three days, I’m reading a couple hours each night. I remember sitting in bed, my Spaniels were on the bed, and I said, “You think you have problems, Ms. Nancy, Mr. Lincoln had it a lot worse.” And that was the beginning.
Nancy K:
So my quest, which I couldn’t see at the time, it was much more than historical, it was personal, was to find lighthouses, examples of individuals that had just so crushing calamity, crucibles, and then try and understand how they not only navigated through these extraordinary storms. They’re extraordinary, they’re inside and then they’re out, but there’s some… but the most powerful ones, the ones that involve the most suffering and the most change are inside. And I wanted to understand how these people, not only navigated the storms, but then in the process got better. And so that is where Forged In Crisis came from.
Warwick F:
Wow. So as you’re doing this, obviously you’re a historian, but it was part of like, “I’m going through this massive crisis.” Any one of these would derail many people. Most of it was unfair, whether it’s health, husband, father. Were you curious of, “How did these great leaders get through it because A, I would like from an academic point of view to know, but B, maybe that could help me too.” Was there a dual purpose behind the whole analysis and book?
Nancy K:
Completely. Completely. And I don’t think I really recognized the personal so obviously. I had been at Harvard Business School then for, what? I don’t know, 12, 13 years. I’m a very serious historian, I do my homework. I cut my teeth doing serious archival work on my previous two, three books, so I knew how to do the detective work. And I was just fascinated historically that people hadn’t been interested in these questions. No one asked like, “What will Shackleton’s interior life look like on the ice when the ship goes down?” Well, no one had asked, “How did Lincoln really manage this internally when his personal life was falling apart and he’s at the center of the civil war storm.”
Nancy K:
And then I started looking for other people like this and the same questions and this great personal again, largely being at the time, personal fuel, helping me move forward. So I was extra conscientious as a historian and as someone who was becoming so interested in leadership about doing my homework, because I was feeding off of what I was learning.
Warwick F:
Wow. So you had a powerful motivation and this is again, probably blindingly obvious, but as you were researching it and thinking about these great leaders, it probably took your mind off what you were going through and what for most normal people would be a combination of anger, bitterness, or to use a Lincoln word a little melancholy, perhaps that would be normal for most people. Did it take your mind off it as you were researching and-
Nancy K:
Yes and no, it’s like a toggle switch. You go, “Oh yeah. Like I could use that” or, “Oh yeah, that happened to me too, Mr. Lin… But here was something that happened to me early on. And I do think it was grace that happened. So this was early on in the beginning of this terrible years. You can’t say annus horribilis because I had so many years that were so awful so I can’t use the Queen’s expression for the Royal family. Anyway, I had this moment of grace and it was really early on, my ex-husband just walked out. And I remember him standing there by my car and I thought of Oprah Winfrey, who I had… Really didn’t know very much about. And I remember thinking to myself and I shook my hand at the sky a little bit like Scarlett O’Hara halfway through Gone with the Wind, Vivian Lee.
Nancy K:
And I said, “With God as my witness. I’m not going to get angry. I’m not going to be a victim. I’m going to make something good out of this. Even if I have no idea what.” And I returned to that over and over it was like a personal covenant. I didn’t have any idea I was going to try and get better. I didn’t have an idea what was going to happen in my life. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the next day, much less the next month. But I just knew that. And I kept coming back to that over and over and over again. And honestly it saved me. That was really… It was grace. I don’t think it was Nancy. It was really powerful.
Warwick F:
No, that is so big. And I want to get to these five leaders that you mention. When I think of some great leaders, obviously Lincoln is one, Churchill was another, they knew how to deal with bitterness. With Churchill, I mean, he had some challenges with Baldwin and obviously Neville Chamberlain. He disagreed with what he did, I remember there was one instance when I guess Clement Attlee as you know, won the 45 election and Churchill is thinking, “Hey, I saved Britain. This is the thanks I get, thank you so much.”
Warwick F:
And so then one of his buddies started laying into Clement Attlee and Churchill basically said, “Don’t you dare do that. The people voted for him.” So he disagreed with his policies, but he wasn’t bitter. And so I think of a Lincoln or a Churchill, they have many attributes, but the ability to not be bitter and to tackle the issues of the day, that seems to be a number of hallmarks of great leaders.
Nancy K:
I could not agree more. Lincoln says at one point in the war and at one of the nadirs of the Union Army’s fortunes, he says, “What I traffic in is too vast for malice.” And over and over you … We’re not Martin Luther King. There’s so many great leaders who understand this. You just can’t, you got to close that bitterness vitriolic eye for an eye door most of the time, because it won’t take you and the people that you influence because Churchill still exerted enormous influence. Even 45, it won’t take them… 95% of the time. It takes them nowhere good. Maybe 99% of the time, the emotional awareness and discipline Warwick to do that I think is one of the pillars of people who make themselves into great leaders.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. So one final comment before talking about the five, and then we’re going to focus on Shackleton. What I love about what you do, because I’m not a historian, I love history, but definitely not a historian. But when I read history, whether it’s Lincoln, Churchill… even my dad loved English history. So I was brought up on Wellington and Nelson as even though I’m Australian as Anglophiles, I guess are. And so when I read about them having gone to Harvard Business School and in my own little way, write and think about leadership, I read about people in history and think what are the key leadership attributes? What are the lessons today? Which I feel like that’s the lens you’re looking at. Because you teach at the Harvard Business School. And historians, they’re wonderful at what they do, but they don’t always look at it through a leadership lens because that’s not what they’re there for. They’re there to write a history and that’s fine, but you look at it through a different lens, which I think is amazing.
Warwick F:
So let’s talk about these five because they’re very different. I mean, Shackleton, Lincoln, Douglas, Bonhoeffer I’d heard of them, I must confess Rachel Carson in your book, I hadn’t, but her story is equally amazing.
Nancy K:
It’s unbelievable.
Warwick F:
So yeah, it’s a race against time to write Silent Spring as she was going through cancer. There are so many leaders, but why these five? Because it’s an interesting selection.
Gary S:
And I’m going to jump in for just a second to say these five leaders are profiled in Forged in Crisis. So here’s the book that that we’re talking about. Just want to make sure …
Nancy K:
Paperback and hardback. Audio and ebook.
Gary S:
So the five leaders that Warwick is speaking of are masterfully profiled in this book. Sorry. Yes.
Nancy K:
Thank you, Gary. I love you. So what’s interesting is that Churchill by the way, was on the cutting room floor. And there were a number of people that didn’t make the book that were close… because I probably had 12 that ended up as five. The book was… I originally going to write about seven and then it was, that was like was year 10. And I thought, God, I’m never going to finish. So it got a little bit, I’m a slow writer, I’m just a slow writer. I’m a careful writer. And I think I’m a better writer for being a careful writer in terms of reader, comprehension and these… but in any event, I think they chose me. Warwick I think they chose me.
Nancy K:
There was something early on about reading just a little bit, for example, of Carson’s story who about whom I knew almost nothing. Rachel Carson, the woman who more than any other single individual, just for listeners that don’t know her story really founded the modern environmental movement with it, just an extraordinary book, a path breaking book, a revolution making book, she published in 1962 called Silent Spring while she was battling metastasizing breast cancer. And so it was a race against time. But I didn’t know much about her. I remember my mother reading the book when I was a little girl and loving it, but I just read a little bit, I thought talk about unexpected calamity. Talk about the world caving in around you, talk about someone who’s going to access her courage and resilience and mission purposeful like worthy mission muscles. And I just … something I knew, I just knew.
Nancy K:
And so these people chose me and it wasn’t… the hard part was making it only five, but I needed to publish the book before I died. So I could have been at this for 20 years as it was, it was 15. So that’s really what happened. I got to know each of them incredibly well. And just one last thing, because I care so much about these people. I know them. Mr. Lincoln will always be Mr. Lincoln, not Abe, not Abraham. Rachel will always be Rachel, Dietrich is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I think about them all the time. Because I spent a couple of years with each of them. There was a moment… whenever I’m at the edge of the cliff or however big the fall is I think about them and I take sustenance or I take a lesson from myself from one of these people. So they have made a major impact on my life.
Warwick F:
That’s amazing. I want to focus a bit on Ernest Shackleton because I’d heard of him and the whole polar exploration race. I know you talk about this, but for modern listeners, they may not be aware in the early 1900’s’ the whole polar race was a bit like, I guess the space race in the ’60s. And I guess it was an era of King and country and glory and Britain, Norway, and I guess US and some other folks, it was pre World War I, a very different era. So talk a bit about Ernest Shackleton and who he was and what made him tick. I know that the real story begins in 1914, but there’s a backdrop to who he was and Scott and that whole deal.
Nancy K:
So he was Irish born. Born in 1874 and his father wanted him to be a doctor. But from a young age, he loved the sea, even though he was born in County Kildare, North of Dublin. And he spent some time as a ship’s boy and then as an officer on the Merchant Marine, and then he gets a chance right after the turn of the century, this was the 1800’s into the 1900’s to join, what, as you were saying Warwick, was one of the ships from Britain racing, South against ships, from other countries and teams from other countries trying in what is called the heroic age of Antarctic exploration or polar exploration to be the first team to discover the South Pole for their country. That’s why it’s a lot like the space race, who we’ll get to the moon first, who will get the ship up for the man’s spacecraft first.
Nancy K:
And he does this, he tries this twice two different efforts in the first 10 years of the 20th century, learns a lot from a bad captain in the first expedition, a lot from a failed expedition that he captains between 1907 and 1909, and then comes home short of the pole, doesn’t get to the pole in either expedition and then comes home and the pole was actually discovered in 1911 by a Norwegian named Roald Amundsen in what today is still an unequaled feat of really a polar exploration on either end of the earth. Astounding story of really courageous leadership and very smart decision making and great bravery and team cohesion. And after the pole’s discovered Shackleton motivated, this is important, motivated by fame real narcissistic drive to do this for God, King and country and be the man, the man, who does it, gets a new idea.
Nancy K:
He’s like, “Well, the pole’s gone darn it. Didn’t get that. I need to do another first.” And he gets this idea beginning in, I think that’s really as early as late 1912, that he’ll be the first to lead an expedition that will sled across the entire Antarctic continent from one end from the South American end to the Australian end and cross literally the magnetic pole in the process, collect scientific samples, but be the first and they’ll do it for Britain. And that is the beginnings of this extraordinary story, a story of failed mission on the one hand, but the story of a different kind of even more important success that begins in 1914.
Warwick F:
I’m curious about his motivation. I mean, just reading your book. I mean, he starts out what, like at age 12 or something and by 16, I guess it is. And then by his early 20s he’s has he’s captain’s master or whatever it’s called. He’s really an adventurer, but the thing with Robert Falcon Scott, who is very prominent and famous and the Royal Geographical Society, some obviously it failed, but for some reason, I don’t know why Scott decides to blame everything on Shackleton, which would seem like unfair, grossly unfair. But that seemed to be, if it was that a bit of a turning point or like a motivation, it’s like this ax to grind or I’m going to prove them wrong, or what part did that lay in his whole motivation? Do you think the Scott episode?
Nancy K:
It’s a great question. So just for our listeners, Robert Falcon Scott this well known naval commander was the captain of the first expedition, the head of the first expedition Shackleton was on in the first five years of the 20th century. It fails miserably. The men don’t get along Shackleton and Scott particularly, like oil and water and the men almost die on the way home. They don’t get very far, as far as I get, they almost die trudging back to base camp. And when they get back to England, Scott publishes a memoir, a book about the expedition and a scathing, just scathing indictment of Shackleton. So Shackleton’s just beyond angry. Doesn’t respond publicly, but I think a great deal of what motivated him to try and do it again on his own terms was partly anger about what Scott had said, but even more important… This is important, what he had learned about bad leadership from Scott…
Nancy K:
So really an interesting lesson that several of the people in my book, at least as my editor said, “The fantastic five” learn is you can educate yourself about how to lead well by actually learning what doesn’t work, by people who are actually really lousy at leading. And there are plenty of those people and they’re textbooks too so to speak. And so Shackleton, I think part of his leadership is actually formed out of his reaction to all the things he sees Scott doing wrong. And that’s a very important influence on all the expeditions he will have after that, after that one with Scott.
Warwick F:
That is fascinating. It’s such a great point for listeners to understand is observing poor leadership can teach you a lot and it can help you understand, okay, when it’s my turn, I’m going to do it differently. And obviously Scott found his demise and was it, when was it like 1911, 12, somewhere in there when I don’t know that was poor planning, poor leadership, he got to the South Pole finding that Roald Amundsen had beat him anyway. Then he dies on the way back. But I don’t know. Do you have a view on that with just it’s another example of poor planning and the ultimate failure?
Nancy K:
Well, it was, he lost his life and all his crew mate, all his, all the teammates to the polar team that he goes out to the team for the pole that had gone with him. I do. And in fact, it was that reading so carefully about that expedition. It was a race in 1911 for your listeners, between Scott’s team, from Britain and Amundsen’s team from Norway, both men were actually starting from points, not that distant on the Australian side of the continent racing South and Amundsen’s team is just over and over by every metric such as success. And Scott’s expedition is a terrible failure ending in the most important loss of all, which is the lives of all the men that went to the pole with him. My work is incredibly influenced by a much greater scholar of polar exploration. A guy named Roland Huntford at the University of Cambridge, the world’s foremost expert on the subject.
Nancy K:
And there’s just no question in my mind. I think in his mind, in many scholars’ minds, that it was insecurity. It was poor planning. It was the inability that comes out of insecurity, not to make tough decisions that all good leaders have to make. Ultimately it was the inability to say no to some of his men. It was flying by the seat of his pants. Improvisation can be important, but this was really uncalled for improvisation that killed Scott and his men. So yes, the blame rests squarely at the feet of Robert Falcon Scott and his poor leadership.
Warwick F:
And you compare that with Amundsen and as you write maybe it was the Norwegian thing, but just the planning using cross country skis and sled dogs, which is probably more of a use for that in Norway than Britain, I think you write that he actually was ahead of schedule. Just something ridiculous.
Nancy K:
So, but the Amundsen story is an extraordinary, one of courageous leadership, careful planning team cohesion, a couple of things to keep in mind, just to seal this for you. The men, the Amundsen team make their way to the pole and back to base camp two weeks early. So that’s how fast they’re traveling. No one has ever come close to equaling this kind of feat with sled dogs and loaded sleds are getting lighter as they go. Secondly, the men gained weight on their way to the polar plateau to the pole and back. Because they were so well supplied and third, they had so many supplies coming home that as they got within a few days, sled ride from base camp threw all kinds of things, kerosene other supplies out to lighten their load. Some of those supplies were found 50 years later.
Gary S:
Wow.
Nancy K:
This is an astounding story of good leadership. There’s a book for your listeners that are getting hooked here called The Last Place On Earth by Roland Huntford, that you will not be able to put down. You won’t even look at Netflix for three days while you read this.
Warwick F:
That is great. So let’s talk about the 1914 expedition. And one of things that fascinated me was the way he recruited his crew. I mean, that, there’s a lot for modern leaders to understand. So tell the listeners a bit about his recruiting methods, which still to this day, people don’t tend to use, business school professors, such as yourself will tell leaders. This is how you need to recruit. And they’ll say, “Thank you,” and ignore you or ignore most people. But I digress. I’m sorry. Talk about his recuiting mechanisms.
Nancy K:
Well, they were unusual there, but they’re very relevant to turbulent times, which you might say, “We just have a wee little bit of here in the community,” and the way I would characterize what he did was to hire for attitude. And then tweak skill, develop, do some nurturing of certain skills, but hire for attitude. So Shackleton who incidentally, my friends had 5,000 applicants for about 27 spaces on his expedition team. He would ask everyone that came into his office in London to do a what today we call like a short audition, sing a song, do a dance, let’s have a little play acting here. And the idea that he was looking for was a healthy, pragmatic, optimist, not sugarcoating it, you’re going to the South pole, it’s dangerous.
Nancy K:
The stakes are always life and death. So it’s not sugarcoating. It’s not they’re all as well when all is not well, but it’s a pragmatic optimism and can do attitude. It is rumored. We don’t really… we can’t really corroborate this, but it makes a good story that he placed an ad in the London Times that read something like 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.” So not really your typical monster.com Craigslist kind of ad. But what he’s doing here is literally trying to self-select, attract people who are ready for that kind of environment and who not only can get by, but in a sense, thrive are attracted to it. And that’s what he does.
Nancy K:
And I’ll tell you one last comment Warwick, I know this case, the story I thought I knew it well, and I work at the Harvard Business School. I spent a year researching it. Now. I feel like I know it like of the age spots on my hands. So I know it really well. And there’s not a time that I teach this case, that I don’t think that his hiring of these particular men with this particular set of attitudinal characteristics was so important. Not that, Shackleton’s leadership mattered a great deal. He had the right material and it’s incredibly important.
Warwick F:
Yeah. As you say, “Hire for attitude, train for skills.” So important. But so few leaders, even to this day, do that, they hire for qualifications. And I love the categories that you write that he had these three categories mad, hopeless, impossible. I just obviously it’s the possible, I just, he had a sense of humor, which I find very endearing. So talk about, so it’s 1914 and I love this, you write that the day that Britain declares war on Germany, he sets, we get the approval from King George, the fifth. It’s an amazing concurrence of events. So he sets forth. He goes to Argentina and then he reaches South Georgia islands. So pick up the story from there, he’s got his crew and it’s like late 1914. And he has, he has a big decision to make a momentous decision.
Nancy K:
Yep. So he and his now 27 men crew and some sled dogs, which they haven’t yet trained and a cat, a stowaway cat named Chippy set sail from South America and took their last port of call, which will be an island, south east of the tip of South America called South Georgia. There’s a whaling station there and it’s the last place they can take on supplies and post mail. And to get there in early December, 1914 and the whalers all say them, they’ve been out. They say, “You know, captain, the water South of here are just chockablock with icebergs. You’re going to hit pack ice. And you may get in trouble, really recommend your hole up for a while and hope some of this melts” and Shackleton who’s restless, he’s chasing fame and he’s out to do something that’s going to work this time and be the first isn’t really very patient.
Nancy K:
And so he makes a decision after a relatively short layover in South Georgia that he and his crew are going to go ahead and try and navigate their way through the ice down. Now, they’re a little bit South. They’re a little bit Northwest of where he wants to be. So they’re going to be heading Southwest and Northeast. And when getting Southwest and that’s in December of 1914 and they are by the third week in January, along the coast of Antarctica, they can see it. It’s 80 miles away. It’s in sight. Shackleton elects one night. This is the third week of January. He elects one night to say, “Let’s just instead of tucking in here and unloading, let’s just sail a little bit farther along the coast where they’re now heading West along the coast. I want to get the right place to make base camp.
Nancy K:
And in that decision, local decision to head South anyway, despite the warnings, and then in that tiny little decision to just sail a little bit further along, lies the fate of the expedition. Because one night the ice freezes around… these are huge bergs, freeze around the Endurance, which was the name of his ship. And it’s locked in an immovable, vice. They can’t blast themselves out. They can’t pick themselves out with shovels and pickaxes. They’re stuck. They can’t motor themselves out with diesel power that they’re stuck. And then they’re mostly floating aimlessly on the current.
Warwick F:
And they’re stuck for a very long time.
Nancy K:
Their stuck… that’s January 3rd week of January. They’re stuck for the rest of the month, February, March, April, May, June, July, August. In August the boat starts getting rammed terribly by just these broken burgs. And it starts to get damaged. It’s like the vice now is crushing the ship. And so Shackleton makes a decision right in very early September to abandon ship. He had been planning for it. He could tell the ship was going to get…
Warwick F:
By then it was hundreds of miles away from where he wanted to be. Because the ice flows are just moving. And so a lot of things to admire about Shackleton, but let’s look at those two decisions, the decision to go when everybody said, “You know, the ice is as bad as we’ve ever seen it, the floes are really far North.” And then the decision to not get into a little inlet and he wanted to go to Vahsel Bay, the original place. So what motivated that decision, is I think as you write, he didn’t really maybe write this down, but you have to think if he was the leader that he was, he realized in hindsight what a colossally bad decision, but what do you think motivated him to make either of those really cataclysmic decisions that were so fateful?
Nancy K:
So I’ve taught this case many, many times down to all kinds of groups around the world. And I think Shackleton was a man in a hurry, and that made him reckless. I don’t think there’s any way he gets a pass here. He made the wrong decision going South. They should have waited. That was a wrong decision. I don’t think the second decision, well, let’s say a little further along was of the same order of magnitude. But that first decision is a big deal. And it places him, it was a traffic accident. The cop would give him 90% of the blame for the accident. It places him, the ship getting stuck and what followed at his feet. And I think he knew that by the way, he never said anything about it. But I do think that part of what he was doing in the extraordinary leader that emerges out of this big mistake is partly owning the responsibility for something he realized he was a big part of. He was culpable of.
Gary S:
An Interesting couple of sentences, Nancy that you wrote in the book that talk about where Shackleton went from there. This is what you write, “His consistent ability to face forward was the thing that allowed him to become successful from that failure again and again, he refused to become mired in what had already happened. What had not worked, what had been missed, who was to blame for the most recent setback or disappointment.” That is a critical piece, not just for what happened to Shackleton and for our listeners who are trying to bounce back from their own crucibles.
Nancy K:
Absolutely. I just marvel at this… There’s a passage in Matthew, I think it, is where Jesus says the farmer that constantly looks backwards over the problems his plow has harvest no crops. And it’s a little bit of the same thing.
Nancy K:
When the stakes are high and there’s a lot to do in front of you. You just can’t keep looking back and scratching your head and pointing fingers and miring yourself in bitter accusations. Everything can’t be a tribunal of the past going forward. And so this was one of those instances, there many to come right on the ice where it’s like, “Okay, this happened when we need to learn from it. And then how do we literally turn ourselves around to look at the future and what we’re doing next? And that’s about self-discipline. So much of what I have learned about how these people did it has to do with self-regulation. And he did. And that really helped his men. Who, by the way, also made mistakes along the way, but he didn’t stop with a tribunal to prosecute and then punish someone.
Nancy K:
We moved forward, we learn from it and we move forward or think of Mandela, think of Nelson Mandela coming in to the presidency of the Republic of South Africa after 18 years, talk about a chance to get bitter and decades of apartheid to get bitter and basically saying, yes, we’re going to figure out a way to reconcile, but we’re not going to spend the next 10 years punishing all the folks that kept apartheid alive. Or Lincoln, “with malice toward none. With charity toward all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” So, and Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction still in its infant stages when he was assassinated in April, 1865 was not about tribunals and blame and looking backwards at this point that you’re both making Warwick and Gary is really important about leaders, particularly in crucibles and crisis. And for all the rest of us, we got to turn our necks and our bodies around or look forward.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And I think I want to talk about how we move forward, but I think to me, there are… one lesson is even great leaders make colossal mistakes. I mean Shackleton made mistakes. I’m sure Lincoln, he had his challenges. Some people criticize him for moving a bit too slowly on emancipation. It was a challenging time. That’s a whole another discussion. It’s a very nuanced discussion. Churchill, I think he was on the right side of India, but on the wrong side… On the wrong side of India, excuse me, on the right side I think of Israel. And so there were times in which he made really colossally, stupid decisions as we all do. And so it’s easy to look back and say, “Well, yeah he was a bit bitter about the treatment he had from Scott. He missed being the first one on the South pole. So he does this, let’s cross the whole of the South pole,” from what you’ve written a number of folks said that seems challenging, like risky, insane, but we’re human. It’s like, “Gosh King, country, glory.”
Warwick F:
So even great leaders can make mistakes. But I think, and certainly in my own life, as listeners know, with growing in a large family media business and the whole $2 billion takeover that I launched literally months after I graduated from Harvard Business School, it’s like, “Was I not paying attention?” The education is fantastic, but at least for me, my emotions and my dad dying earlier that year. And just, there’s all sorts of emotions, which we don’t need to get into here. But I talked about in other podcasts, that cloud your judgment.
Warwick F:
And so I like to think of myself as a reasonably sane, intelligent person, but I look back and think, how could I have made such a colossally stupid decision, emotions get in the way we do. But I think where your focus is not so much on what was clearly a cataclysmically poor decision, it’s the miraculous way that he was able to move on. So there’s some great attributes of leadership, but most people don’t do this. Most people wallow in bitterness and anger. How did he move on? What about him enabled him to flip the switch saying, “Okay. That was, I’m responsible for getting my crew here, but time to move on.”
Gary S:
Well, how did he do that indeed? How did Ernest Shackleton completely leave behind the failures of his journey up until this point and move forward with a new journey, with a new mission after this? Stuck in the ice for months, knowing that it was in large part mistakes on his part that got him there, how was he able to take a breath, forget what went before and focus on a new journey ahead? And that will be what we discuss, what Warwick and Nancy Koehn talk about in great detail on the next episode of Beyond the Crucible. We’ve split this episode up like this into two parts, because there is such richness in the details of the story of what Shackleton after doing some things wrong, what Shackleton did right moving forward to get beyond his crucible and as an on ramp into what that discussion will be like next week, on Beyond the Crucible.
Gary S:
Here’s some analysis that Nancy Koehn offers in her book, Forged in Crisis in discussing some of the lessons that came from Ernest Shackleton’s experience, his failure and then the way he overcame that failure and move beyond that crucible. Here’s what Nancy writes in her book, “Shackleton jettisoned one objective to walk across the continent and embraced another to save his crew. This is an important lesson that all leaders operating in great turbulence must learn. How to let go of former goals and embrace new ones, even dramatically, different objectives as circumstances demand.”
Gary S:
Those are the insights that we’re going to hear next week on part two of our interview on Beyond the Crucible with Nancy Koehn. So until that time comes listeners, thank you so much for spending time with us. And please remember that your crucible experiences while very painful, while things that will knock you off the trajectory that you’re on just as they stopped Ernest Shackleton from pursuing his expedition for months stuck in the ice, trying to figure out how to move forward.
Gary S:
Those things while your circumstances will obviously be very different, those emotions and the things that you must do to overcome to move beyond those crucibles are things that are universal. That’s what we’ll talk about next week. But remember that those crucibles just as Shackleton discovered, those crucibles are not the end of your story. Those crucibles in fact can be, if you learn the lessons of them, if you apply the lessons of them, if you move forward one step at a time, those moments can become a new chapter in your story and a rewarding chapter in your story, perhaps the most rewarding chapter in your life story, because it leads at the end to a life of significance.
Life has not always been easy for Warwick Fairfax. That’s a statement many in his native Australia never would have associated with the fifth-generation heir to arguably the country’s most influential media empire. But then he launched a multi-billion-dollar takeover of the company that failed spectacularly — leaving him with regrets, self-doubt and uncertainty about his future. More than 30 years after the takeover fell apart, the founder of Crucible Leadership and host of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE will speak in detail for the first time about what motivated his bid to assume control of the company and why he thinks it wasn’t successful in a book from Morgan James Publishing due to be released early next year. On this episode of the podcast, Fairfax discusses with co-host Gary Schneeberger why he initially didn’t want to write a book at all, why he changed his mind and what readers can expect when it hits stores. “It’s a collection of stories and parables about life and leadership — about me and my family, history’s greatest leaders and biblical and inspirational figures,” he explains. “If writing about my story can help people and give them hope, it’s worth going through the pain.”
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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
Gary S:
Welcome everybody to this episode of Beyond The Crucible. I’m Gary Schneeberger, the cohost of the podcast and the Communications Director for Crucible Leadership. And you have clicked play. Hopefully you clicked subscribe to a podcast that deals in crucible experiences, those events in life that can be extraordinarily painful. You know them when you experience them. They’re failures, they’re setbacks. There are things that maybe happen to you. There are things that maybe you do some things that bring those things on yourself, but the organizing characteristic that they all have is that your life is changed after them. The trajectory of your life can be shifted because of them and we talk about these experiences on Beyond The Crucible, not so that we can feel sorry for ourselves or wallow in them, but so that we can learn from them, so we can apply the lessons of them to live a life of significance, to point ourselves on a path to a life of significance.
Gary S:
And the host of the show and the architect, the creator of Crucible Leadership, the man who authored this idea of going from crucible to a life of significance is here with me now. And it’s Warwick Fairfax. Warwick, welcome.
Warwick F:
Great to be here, Gary, and very much looking forward to this.
Gary S:
Yes, this one is going to be a special one, listeners, because, and I will admit I have a flair for the dramatic and I’m also an old newspaper guy, so I love the idea of breaking news. I love being the first one to report news to you. So we have some news that we’re going to break here on Beyond The Crucible today about Warwick and about Crucible Leadership that is extraordinarily exciting. It’s both good news for Crucible Leadership and good news for Warwick. And Warwick, with that buildup, with that setup, tell the listeners just what the news is that we’re breaking today.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. Well, Crucible Leadership and I have a book publishing deal with Morgan James Publishing, which I am super excited about. It’s been a long journey, but this is a huge milestone for me and for Crucible Leadership.
Gary S:
Yeah. I mean, let’s stop here and make sure the listener heard that. There is a book now coming, authored by Warwick about Crucible Leadership. And we’ll talk here in detail about just what that book’s going to contain. Because I’ll let you in on a secret, I’ve read the manuscript and it’s good stuff. And when that comes out next year you will, listener, really understand some aspects of both Warwick’s story and Crucible Leadership that haven’t quite been elucidated in the way that there’ll be elucidated in the book. And I want to say one more thing before I turn it back over to Warwick and we start talking about the book, but he mentioned that the publisher that he signed with for this book is Morgan James Publishing. And I just want to read what their corporate motto is, so that you have an idea of the kind of book this will be, the kind of story this will tell, the kind of hope, I think, this will engender for you who read it.
Gary S:
This is Morgan James’s corporate promise, their corporate slogan. “To educate, encourage, inspire, and entertain.” And having read Warwick’s book, I can tell you it does all four of those things. So Warwick, how did this all begin? What made you decide to write a book in the first place?
Warwick F:
Well, the funny thing, Gary, is for many years writing a book about my story is the last thing that I wanted to do. I had no interest in writing a book. So you might ask, “Well, why is that?” So as listeners would know, I grew up in a 150-year-old family business started by my great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax, that grew to be this huge company with newspapers, TV stations, newsprint mills, magazines. It had thousands of employees and so it was a lot of pressure. A lot of expectations on me. I prepared my whole life to go into it. Certainly seen by my parents as the next generation. So I went to Oxford like my dad and some other relatives, worked on Wall Street, got an MBA at Harvard Business School. And in early ’87, my dad died. He was in his late eighties. There was turmoil within the company and, I guess, a different vision. The company wasn’t being well run, at least as far as I and my parents thought, so I launched this $2.25 billion takeover.
Gary S:
That is, listeners, I’d like to say to Warwick, that is billion with a B.
Warwick F:
Absolutely.
Gary S:
That is billion with a B.
Warwick F:
I’m afraid so. And so right from the beginning, things went wrong. Other family members sold out. There was the October ’87 stock market crash. And within three years the company went under. Australia suffered a big recession in late 1990. And so my dream of restoring the company, the ideals of the founder and have it being well-run was ended. And so the question some people would ask over the years, “Well, Warwick, why don’t you write your story?” The story of what at time was one of the biggest takeovers in Australian corporate history, of a organization that had the Australian equivalent to the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. Iconic names, iconic mastheads. And that was the last thing I wanted to do because it was so painful. I mean, I am a person of faith.
Warwick F:
I, in my naivety, felt like maybe this was something that God wanted to resurrect in the image of the founder, who was also a person of great faith, which was a bit naive at the time and simplistic. And it was just… It caused friction with other family members. I didn’t do it, at least consciously, against other family members even though there was friction between some and my dad over the decades, but it was so painful that it’s like, “Why would I want to write a book about something that was so painful?”
Warwick F:
And the other thing is when you mostly write these sort of books, it’s a tell-all book in which you’re meant to diss and basically say, “Well, look at these other family members and look what they did to my dad and they’re this and they’re that,” and name names. The last thing I want to do is cause more pain within my family and books that say, basically, I was right, they were wrong, whining books, or as we say in Australia, whinging, which is almost worse than whining, it’s just typically boring, untrue and self-serving. And so it’s like it was A. It was painful and B. writing a tell-all book to cause more pain, I mean, that’s just not what I’m about. So, forget it. I wanted to move on with my life, not relive something that was so painful.
Gary S:
Right. And that does sound, in one sense, like it would be an easy decision for you to make. “I don’t want to write this book because it’s going to be painful and I’m not going to throw people under the bus and I’m not going to blame other people for some missteps that I took.” But in one sense, it had to have been not easy, too, because it’s true that pretty much everybody in Australia wanted to hear your side of the story or at least wanted you to talk about your side of the story. This was big headline-dominating news about the takeover. You did not do a lot of interviews in the press at that time. So it’s still safe to say today, it was safe in the late eighties, early nineties, it’s safe today, your side of the story is not really known in Australia. Is that fair?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. Yeah. It was not known. And it’s funny, growing up in a media business you’d think I’d be a bit more open to talking to the media, but even at the time during the takeover years, those three years, I gave no interviews, which in hindsight was obviously a very significant if not colossal mistake. Not talking to the media, whatever you may think of them, is rarely the right strategy. Figure out how to handle it well, and obviously, Gary, you’ve had a lot of experience in media. Not talking, they’ll just write whatever they want to write. So I remember there was a equivalent to the New York Times Sunday Magazine, a competitive newspaper, and the headline in the sunday magazine, I guess it was Saturday, that was when the big paper came out, the headline was Warwick Fairfax, The Man Behind the Mask. And all these people were trying to guess at who Warwick Fairfax was.
Warwick F:
Some people that they interviewed saying, “Warwick’s the most secretive, enigmatic person I’ve ever known. I don’t know what he is thinking.” Well, it’s because I didn’t really talk about it. I never really gave interviews. I’ve given a couple in more recent years, but I really have not got into any level of detail about why I did the takeover or what I was thinking. I’ve just been very, very, extremely careful even when I’ve talked to the media.
Gary S:
Right. And that’s a great set up, Warwick, for what this book, which is going to be called, we believe, Crucible Leadership, same as the brand, the same as your life practice is called. But this is a good point to pivot on that question of, yeah, it’s been more than 30 years. People have not heard your side of the story. You didn’t want to write the book that people wanted you to write, yet you’ve now written a book and it’s going to be published. What changed? What changed in your vision for what the book could be? And what was the impetus for that change from you from that switch going from, “I don’t want to write a book,” to, “Hmm. Maybe I’ll write a book?”
Warwick F:
That’s an interesting question. Really, the answer is in 2008, the pastor of the church we go to in Maryland, it’s a large-ish nondenominational church, and my pastor was giving a message on the life of David. He was King Saul’s right-hand man, a very successful commander, and as often happens when you’re super successful, your boss tend to get jealous. Well, back in those days, jealous meant he’d try and kill you, which typically doesn’t happen in the corporate world. But when you’re a king back in the day, the rules were a bit different. And so he was running away, hiding in some cave and feeling pretty sorry for himself. So my pastor wanted to give a message of a righteous man falsely persecuted. I said, “Well, that’s not really me. I mean, I brought a lot of pain on myself, a lot of missteps, but fine. If you want me to give a seven, 10 minute talk about my story and what I feel like I learned, and because it’s a church, what I feel like God was teaching me, I will.”
Warwick F:
And I’m not Mr. Public Speaker. I’m more of a shy, retiring person, my personality, but I guess I must have given it in a vulnerable, authentic, “Here’s the story and what I went through.” What was amazing to me is weeks, months after, people would come up to me and say, “You know what, Warwick? What you had to say really helped me.” And I’m thinking, “How could that help anybody?” I mean, I don’t know too many former media moguls in the congregation. It’s just a cross section of just regular folks from different jobs, different walks of life, different problems, different challenges, just like any group of people have.
Warwick F:
But somehow, I guess, by me sharing my story, which is failure on really quite an epic scale, larger than most people will fail on, and just being authentic and vulnerable about it, somehow that resonated with people. And so that was the big shift because I thought if by writing about my story, it can help people, now it’s worth going through the pain. And it was painful writing about these episodes. That’s pain worth going through. So that seven, 10 minute speech in church in 2008, that was a significant shift in my thinking.
Gary S:
And to hear you explain that the way that you explained it right now, and I hope you hear this, listeners, we’ve had 10, 15 guests who’ve been on this podcast and they’ve said versions of the exact same thing that Warwick just said. “If talking about my pain, if reliving my crucible experience and how I bounced back from that, if that can help somebody, then I’ll do it.” So the very same thing that has led guests of Beyond The Crucible to come into our little studio and have a chat, or our virtual studio and have a chat with us, is the very thing that led you to realize that this is something you want to set, at the time when you started it maybe typewriter to paper, but certainly a computer to a whatever it is that happens inside a computer. To gigabytes. Computer to gigabytes. It made you realize that you could type this story out and it would have an impact.
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And so really, that began a journey and I mean, we’re now 2020. That’s 12 years. That’s a long time. I mean, it took a long time and there was some reasons for that, but certainly one significant reason and we’ll get into this more in a bit, but the core of the book is really my story. And so when you’re writing about some of the dumbest, stupidest decisions you’ve made and writing about them in exhaustive detail, explaining what you did and what you were thinking, what you were not thinking and what you should have been thinking, I couldn’t write for more than maybe a couple hours a day, max. And then I needed a breather to recover from the experience and to get my equilibrium back before I went into the lion’s den again. So that was certainly one significant reason why it took so long, but I was committed to doing it because I felt like by talking about this, it could help people.
Gary S:
Right. And so that’s one part of the book. Unpack a little bit about it because one of the things that’s fascinating to me about the book is that you’ve got, there’s a little bit of personal memoir in it about your story as you’ve talked about, but there’s far more than that in there as well. There are other perspectives that you bring to the table. So explain to the listener what you try to bring to the book in terms of the content, and then how you think that content will help with the subject of what this podcast is about, helping them move beyond their crucibles and become crucible leaders themselves.
Warwick F:
It’s funny and we’ll get to this probably in a bit, but the whole concept of Crucible Leadership, it came out of the book, but I didn’t, when I started writing it, I didn’t have that notion. So often one lesson learned is when you have this vision, it may not be fully formed, but just take a few steps. I wrote a blog a while back now, something like vision and the fog or something to that effect. You might not have the total picture. If you have a sense that this is right, this is what you need to do and the vision will become clearer and clearer as you keep going down the path. So at the time, and I’ve always loved leadership, I’ve been a student of leadership. I’ve loved history, I’ve read about history, about great figures in impossible situations, whether it’s Lincoln or Churchill doing amazing things.
Warwick F:
And so what I wanted to do is write my story, but I wanted to do it through the lens of leadership and lessons learned. And so it’s really a series of parables, a series of stories, and it’s organized around key leadership principles. So there’s chapters on vision, shared vision, how you get a group of people on the same page, how you implement it, character. Obviously there’s a chapter on crucibles, even a chapter on faith, by which obviously my faith in Christ is the most important thing in my life. But truly I talk about faith in a general sense. What governing system of beliefs is the anchor of who you are as a person and a leader, whatever that might be. It could be a religion or some other way of thought. And so I’ve got all these chapters on different leadership themes, but then in each chapter I talk about my family, certainly a key part of my story.
Warwick F:
And typically it’s like, “This is what I did. Don’t do what I did. Instead, do the opposite. Do something else.” And so you see my story, it’s all laid out there, but you’ll see it through different lens. It’s like watching a movie and by looking at different camera angles, the story appears a bit different. So I’m writing about my life. It’s really that way. If I’m talking about my vision or what character traits are important to me or how I try to get people on the same page with my vision, which was obviously largely unsuccessful because I was a bit clueless. So that’s one part of one strand. But then I talk about my dad, who greatly influenced me. And then the founder of the media company, John Fairfax, who as good a businessman, wonderful dad, wonderful husband, elder at his church, person of great faith. I mean, an amazing person. You’ve got the Fairfax family strand.
Gary S:
Right. And he was your great-great-grandfather, so the listeners know. Yeah.
Warwick F:
Exactly right. So 150 years ago, I was fifth generation. A long time ago, so that you’ve got the Fairfax family strand. Then you have an historical strand. I’ve mentioned I’ve loved history. The way my dad and I communicated in some ways was history. He loved history and we would talk about that. He’d tell me these amazing stories of great leaders faced with incredible, impossible situations. So you’ll have that strand. You’ll hear stories from Lincoln, Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt.
Gary S:
Walt Disney is one of my favorite parts of the book. One of my favorite parts of the book.
Warwick F:
Walt Disney, exactly. Walt Disney. Gandhi. Some English heroes because my dad and I loved English history. Lord Horatio Nelson and Duke of Wellington. A collection of leaders, but all looking at it through a leadership lens. And typically historians write about history, which is appropriate, but I’m looking at it through what can we learn today as leaders, be it in a big organization or small, from these great figures in testing times? So that’s another strand. And the third strand is really the biblical inspirational strand. And so there you’ll hear stories of biblical figures such as David, Ruth, Samuel, Daniel, Joseph, as well as inspirational figures like Gandhi.
Gary S:
And Jesus. I mean, you talk about Jesus. He had great leadership abilities.
Warwick F:
And Jesus. Absolutely. And Jesus. Yeah. People think about how can we lead with the character of Jesus, but Jesus has something to teach us about organizational principles and how the faith was able to grow over the first few hundred years to a remarkable degree. What were some of those key leadership characteristics? So with the biblical inspirational strand, it doesn’t really matter whether you believe in the Bible or not. These are historical figures and what can we learn from them? So it’s really, when I think of those three strands, you’ve got the Fairfax family strand, the historical strand, the biblical inspirational strand, the book is largely a collection of stories and parables. Because I often think the best way to learn is through stories. And that’s really what this is, a collection of stories all around leadership.
Gary S:
I’m going to steal. Here’s the first preview of what’s in the book, listener. I’m going to read a paragraph from the introduction to the book to summarize what Warwick just talked about, about what the book is and isn’t. What it isn’t is, as Warwick has intimated, it’s not, “Here are the seven tips of all the things I did right that you should follow and then you’ll be perfect and successful like me.” It’s not that kind of book. It’s not a seven tips book. It’s a book of stories, as he said. But this is what he wrote. This is what Warwick wrote in the introduction to the book. “Crucible Leadership isn’t a one size fits all formula, but an extremely personal journey. So don’t expect a how to manual because that’s not my approach. Instead, I leverage the learning power of story and insightful questions to help leaders transform past trials and hard-won insights into a new, exciting, enriching, an uncompromised present and future.” That’s pretty inspiring. That makes me want to go grab the book right now.
Warwick F:
Yeah, I mean, to me, as I think about what’s different about this book is a lot of people write “10 steps to losing weight in two weeks,” or “the five ways to get into the C suite and be CEO. Here’s the five year plan.” And I mean, that’s definitely an approach, but I often think life is not simple. I mean, it took me years to get over my crucible experience, which we’ve talked about in other podcasts and blogs and what have you. Life is rarely linear. Three steps forward, maybe two steps back. And so I think it’s often better to talk in stories and principles and then the reader can apply them to their life. “Okay, so how does that apply to me? And I might be going at a different pace than others.”
Warwick F:
And so the other thing that’s really different is many leadership books talk about, “I was a successful CEO. Learn from me.” Or, “I’ve interviewed the top 10 CEOs in the last 10 years. What can we learn from them?” And that can be useful. Learning from people who’ve succeeded, that can be helpful. But this is more looking at it from another perspective which is, “I made some incredibly stupid mistakes. Okay, I was young, but they were stupid nonetheless. What can we learn from those stupid mistakes as well as leaders from history and from my family?” And so very few people write books about, “I was an idiot. Read this book and don’t make the mistakes I did.” That’s just not a popular genre for maybe somewhat obvious reasons. Who wants to write that book? I didn’t.
Gary S:
Yeah. True. True.
Warwick F:
But the only reason I did-
Warwick F:
Yeah. It was because if it’s going to help people and it’s like, maybe what helps me a bit is just my faith. My perspective is, because I believe God loves me unconditionally, I’m okay with telling people I was an idiot and made some colossally bad mistakes with significant consequences, both monetarily and my family. I mean, I’m certainly very comfortable now. Don’t have as much money as I could have. Money isn’t really that important to me, but still reliving all this and telling the world about how stupid you are, the fact that my faith is a definite help there, but still I’m human. It’s difficult, but that’s just not a normal genre. “Look at me. I was stupid. Read my book.” It’s just, people don’t write those books.
Gary S:
Right. Again, having read the manuscript, I’ll say you’re a little self-deprecating when you say, “I was stupid.” You made mistakes as you’ve acknowledged on every episode of Beyond The Crucible, but you also learned some things. You also learned and applied some things about transparency, about character, about helping others, living life on purpose and having that purpose be motivated by helping other people. And that’s been who we tried to bring in as guests for Beyond The Crucible because of your example. So you’re a little bit hard on yourself, I think, when you want to end your description of your story as, “I was stupid. Follow me.” No, it was, “I made a mistake. I learned from those mistakes.” You learned when you gave that speech to your church that people were moved by that. And I think you’ve found that since we started the podcast with people writing to you, emailing you and saying, “Wow, what you’re talking about’s really helped me.” That’s your hope for this book as well, right?
Warwick F:
Absolutely. And I mean, that is a fair point. That is well said. I mean really Crucible Leadership and the podcast Beyond The Crucible, it really grew out of the book because as I realized, I grew up with about as much money and power as you could have. We were old money. I get in all the exclusive clubs and all, very well respected in the community and the country. But I realized money, power, status, it doesn’t make you happy. It’s really significance. As we say in Crucible Leadership, living a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others, that’s really the secret to happiness. And that’s really what we advocate, espouse here, and that’s what the guests we’ve had on the podcast have really talked about. I mean, they really found from their crucibles, which is typically very different than mine but still unbelievably painful, that what really helped bring them back, in part, was living a life of significance. And so that’s the core theme of the podcast, the book and everything we do at Crucible Leadership is living a life of significance.
Gary S:
One of the things, if you’re listening to this podcast in audio only, listener, you’re not seeing Warwick as he’s talking. I am, because we’re recording this for YouTube. And I just got to tell you, Warwick, it’s really fun for me to see the joy in your face as you talk about this experience, as you talk about this quest that you’ve been on in some sense for 12 years, since you started writing the book, but even going back further, more than 30 years since the takeover bid. And I can see in the way that you talk about it, that you’re pleased, again, not because you’re getting a book published so much as you are getting a book published that you believe will help people with the same kinds of emotions that you went through when you had your crucible experience.
Warwick F:
Absolutely, Gary. I mean, when I think about it, really living a life of significance, that is one of the keys to coming back from a painful crucible experience, almost irrespective of what that is. Yes, there’s some soul work admitting failures, reconciliation, just, I mean, whatever the things are that you feel called to do. Maybe you were in the wrong position like I was. You needed more of a Rupert Murdoch take no prisoners or at least some kind of hard charging, decisive, executive. I am more a reflective adviser. It was a terrible fit. That’s many lessons learned I talk about in the book.
Warwick F:
But probably the biggest one is, as I began to do things that were within my gifting and focus on serving others, I have been over the years on two nonprofit boards, my church board, and previously being on my kids’ school board, and now with Crucible Leadership, I’ve done a lot of executive coaching with my blogs, writing, podcasts. All these things in different endeavors in which I’m endeavoring to help other people, as that’s happened, healing has happened bit by bit, layer by layer. Yeah. There’s always a scar. In your bad moments, you always remember.
Warwick F:
It’s, “Oh my gosh, why did I do that?” But living a life of significance, it’s almost the, I hate to use buzzwords, but like the secret sauce. The magic potion, if you will. I mean, it doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t happen overnight, but in terms of making significant strides to getting over a really painful crucible experience, finding your life of significance is one of the key ways to moving forward and having a fulfilling, even joyful life.
Gary S:
We just had… As we’re recording this, we released a new episode of the podcast that’s available to all of you listeners with Cathleen Merkel. And one of the things that stuck out that Cathleen said in our interview with her was that you can be 80 or 90 and it’s not too late to live your life in the most contented way that you can. That’s her way of saying to live a life of significance. It’s never too late to begin that process of pointing your compass toward a life of significance and walking that out. And I think we’ve discovered that throughout what we’ve done so far, what we’re going to continue to do on Beyond The Crucible. But that’s the message of those stories that you talk about in your book, Beyond The Crucible.
Gary S:
It’s the story of your great-great-grandfather, John Fairfax. It’s the story of your father, Sir Warwick Fairfax. It’s your story. It’s the story of those historical and religious and inspirational figures you’re talking about. It’s never too late to turn what the world views as a failure, what maybe even you view as a failure, it’s never too late to turn that around, learn the lessons and point yourself towards significance.
Warwick F:
And that is so true because it’s easy to say, “Well, I’ve been thinking about writing a book since 2008. I could have started earlier, but obviously I didn’t because it was all too painful.” And it’s 30 years since the company went under. It left family control. It still exists as an entity, but it’s more than 30 years since I did the takeover. That’s a long time. But yet this is a dream come true to get a publishing deal with a company as well-respected and prestigious as Morgan James Publishing. But yeah, it is never too late. Doesn’t matter what age you are. You want to keep moving forward and living your life of significance to the best ability you can. So never say, “Oh, well, I’ve missed my time.” It doesn’t matter whether you’re 20, 30, 40, 50, 80, 90. It’s always easy to say, “Oh, it’s too late.” But it’s never too late. While we’re here, you always have that opportunity to live your best life in line with what you feel is your purpose.
Gary S:
Well, that is, I mean, that’s a very resonant point. And I think, as I like to say, there comes a time in every podcast when we have to land the plane. Maybe this time I’ll say we have to temporarily shelve the book. We’ll be back, listener. We’ll talk about this more often down the road. But before we go, Warwick, there’s a question and I haven’t previewed this question with you. I just want to get your reaction to this question. I want to see your reaction to this question when I ask you, and that’s this. “You’ve had books written about you and the takeover of Fairfax Media. Now you’re writing your own book. Now it’s going to be published. You’ve written your own book. Now it’s going to be published. Tell the listeners which one is more rewarding.”
Warwick F:
I tell you which one is more fun. It is not fun reading books about you. My least favorite book was written in the early nineties called The Man Who Couldn’t Wait. And the idea was if I’d only waited, I would’ve inherited enough shares to be in control of the company one day. And obviously, because there’s a grain of truth in that, that’s particularly painful, but yeah, reality is who knows? But certainly… And my book isn’t, “Look. So there. Here’s my story,” because I’m somewhat unsparing, but it’s a lot more rewarding to write a book about your story, than read other people’s versions and this isn’t it a “Look. So there. I told you so.” It’s quite the reverse, but yeah, it wasn’t easy, but yeah, it’s more fun to have a book. At least you’ve had a chance to express things your way rather than read some other book that’s, yeah, has a different agenda. Put it that way.
Gary S:
Right. And the time is right for this for you in the sense that you have put some tread on your tires since that experience with the takeover and you’ve learned some things. And I think, I mean, is it fair to say had this book been published even five years ago, perhaps that was premature for what you understand now about how to bounce back from crucible experiences? Is that fair, that this is the time, this is the best time for this?
Warwick F:
Yeah. I mean, as a person of faith, I always believe that things happen when they’re meant to happen. I mean, you try your best to move things forward and all that. But yeah, I think this is the time. Certainly in the nineties, I was too shell shocked. I mean, I couldn’t have written a book or even begun to write a book. I didn’t really have enough perspective. 2008, by then life had started turning around for me and I had more perspective. But yeah, I mean, now’s the time. Certainly a couple of decades ago it wouldn’t have been. I couldn’t have written it. I would not have been at all ready to share my story. I mean, it was just about years in which it’s like, “Gosh, if I write the story, what will people think? Will I hurt people’s feelings? And what about this? What about that?” I mean, it’s almost hard for me to remember all of the things I was so fearful of, even back in the 2000s around the time I was thinking of writing the book. So yeah, now is the time.
Gary S:
All right. At that we will close the book for now. For sure, listener, we will continue to talk about this publishing journey that Warwick’s on now that he’s got a contract for it, now that there’s a publisher that we’re working with very closely, he’s working with very closely, Morgan James Publishing. This will be out next year. As soon as we know when that’s going to be, we’ll keep you updated. We’ll make sure you know, so until that time comes that we’re together again on Beyond The Crucible to talk about Crucible Leadership. And the book is called, by the way, Crucible Leadership: Embrace Your Trials to Lead a Life of Significance. That’s the working title right now. So we’re still early in the process, but we’ll keep you updated as we go along things about the book. If you have any questions about the book, visit us at crucibleleadership.com.
Gary S:
There’s a contact form on there. You can email us and we’ll pass those along to Warwick so that he can answer any questions you might have about the book and his experience or about Crucible Leadership. If you enjoyed what you’ve heard on this podcast, if you’re excited about the book and you’re excited about further podcasts where we have guests or Warwick and I are just talking about aspects of Crucible Leadership, we do ask that you would subscribe to the podcast so that you, one, that makes sure you never miss an episode and two, that allows us to get this kind of hope and healing that Warwick was talking about in his own experience, the same thing that he talked about to his church all those years ago, 12 years ago now, it will allow us to get these podcasts into more hands and help more people move beyond their crucible.
Gary S:
So until the next time that we’re together, do remember that Crucible Leaderships are painful. We don’t doubt that. We know that. Warwick has talked about his here today, but they do not have to be the end of your story. In fact, they can be, if you learn the lessons of them, you apply those lessons and you move forward with purpose, they can be the best part of your story. A new chapter, the best new chapter, because it leads at the end of the journey to a life of significance.
A crisis is the ultimate test of your leadership and your character, in particular in your ability to maintain the cohesion of your team. A crisis can be a bit like a centrifuge, which tends to push people away, and dissipate team unity. Whether the team drifts apart or comes together is largely dependent on you, the leader.
We are currently in a health and economic crisis with the coronavirus in much of the world. Additionally, in the U.S. and now in other countries, there are widespread protests over the brutal treatment of an African American man, George Floyd, who was killed while being arrested by police. Concerns about racial injustice is an issue that permeates not just cities and states, but also organizations.
Crises can cause division, be it on racial or ethnic lines, political philosophy or just on what is the best course of action. Some people on your team may believe they know what should be done, often with different plans than you, or they may be fearful and believe that the situation is hopeless.
The job of a leader is to bring calm and to keep the team united and moving forward. Let’s not dwell on the past and how we got here, unless it is germane to figuring out how to proceed. Instead, let’s focus on what we should do next. How can we stay together during this crisis and find our way out of here?
A great example of a leader bringing his team together in a crisis is Ernest Shackleton the British leader of a polar expedition to Antarctica more than 100 years ago. In 1915 Shackleton’s ship was trapped in pack ice. By November of that year, the ice was crushing the ship and the ship sank. Shackleton’s original mission had been to cross Antarctica. His new mission was the survival of his team.
What made moving on from the original mission hard was that Shackleton had gotten his team in this life-threatening mess due to some poor decision-making. He decided to sail south for Antarctica when he was advised that the ice floes were particularly widespread at the time, and to proceed would be very risky. How did Shackleton get his team home? We unpack his remarkable story of overcoming seemingly insurmountable crucibles in an upcoming two-part Beyond the Crucible podcast with Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn, who wrote the book Forged in Crisis, in which Shackleton is one of the featured leaders.
In the current climate you are in, you might be struggling to keep your business afloat, or your restaurant open. Your crisis might not threaten your life or the life of your team as it did with Ernest Shackleton, but it might be very dire to you in different but very real ways.
How do you get your team through a crisis?
1. Take Responsibility
The crisis might be your fault or it may not be. You are the leader. You may feel calm or more likely you may feel terrified and out of your depth. While transparency is often a good thing, in this scenario you need to project calm and that there is a way out. You need to project the belief that survival for your organization and your team is not only possible, but that it will happen.
2. Maintain Inner Health
For you to be able to project the aura of calm, authoritative leadership, you have to do the inner work. In an earlier blog we spoke of how to maintain calm amid fear. We mentioned several tools, be it reflection (prayer or meditation for instance), a walk in nature, listening to music, spending time with loved ones. If you are fortunate enough to have mentors or trusted colleagues outside of your team, they can be a great source of encouragement.
3. Make a Positive Step Forward
Each day or at regular intervals, make one positive step forward. Each small win builds morale in the team. It makes the seemingly impossible, feel just a bit more possible. A series of small wins can add up to considerable progress. Like the flywheel, the more progress you make a bit at a time, can make the energy and enthusiasm of the team grow and can make the progress of the team grow.
4. Be the Engine of Hope
You have to believe! You have to make the team believe that survival and getting out of the mess you are in, is possible. Every day, you have to provide hope. You have to channel your inner Franklin Roosevelt or your inner Winston Churchill. During President Roosevelt’s inaugural address in 1933 in the depth of the Great Depression, he said that “the only thing we have to fear is… fear itself.” Prime Minister Churchill gave a speech to the British Parliament in June 1940, when Britain seemed to be virtually alone against the might of Nazi Germany that was preparing to invade Britain. In this speech, Churchill said, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
While few of us are facing crises at the levels Roosevelt or Churchill faced, and we might think we are not even close to being the kind of leader each of them was, look at what they did. At its heart, they gave their people, their teams, hope. That hope moved mountains. We need to be “dealers in hope,” as another famous leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, once said.
There are other important things you have to do to make a team successful in a crisis, that include good communication and ensuring that each team member knows their role. It is important to encourage the team daily, including conversations of hope and encouragement with each team member. You need to pay attention to team members that may be more difficult, be it because of skepticism about whether “survival” is possible or just because they may be difficult for some to get on with.
Always remember, in a crisis, team divisions are exacerbated. The management of the team, team communications, team member roles are definitely important. But the leadership of the team by you as the leader is paramount. Inspiring hope, even when you are filled with fear, and helping your team take one more step, are the keys to not just survival but to achieving success amidst almost certain defeat.
Reflection
Have you taken responsibility for the crisis you are in, and how are you moving beyond it?
What positive steps forward are you taking each day?
Are you the engine of hope for your team in the crisis, and if not, what ways can you show that not just survival but success is possible?
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/
