From the outside looking in, Tracy J. Edmonds’ life couldn’t have been sweeter: a high-profile executive job with a Fortune 30 company at which she excelled. But on the inside, where she discovered it really counts, her career had come at a high cost because of a self-imposed crucible: not being her authentic self.
Visionaries who are also mavericks, who prefer to conquer what needs to be conquered as a solo expedition, often find themselves foiled by crucibles that could have been overcome had they taken a team approach.
He was born with Poland’s Syndrome, a rare disease that left his right hand malformed and his muscle development non-existent. But Johannes Atlas was also born to parents who, as he puts it, “refused to baby him.”
Bringing a vision to reality is not easy. You might have a vision for a new business you want to start. You might want to take your department at your company to the next level. Or you might have a nonprofit you want to start that you just know will help people that so need to be helped. But once you have such a vision, what do you do with it?
What do you do as a thought leader when crucible experiences force you to face that you’re a “practice struggler”? That’s the situation Kaley Klemp faced when she and her husband, Nate, hit a patch in their marriage so rocky they wondered if it might be the end.
From the tragic beginnings of being orphaned then abused by his guardian uncle, to his adulthood as a crack addict who fathered seven children by five woman, Marvin Charles was an unhappy story just waiting on a sad ending.
It’s no secret we live in a divided world, especially in the U.S. But disagreeing over issues and how best to solve the crucibles we face in our world and communities does not mean those who think differently than us are the enemy or evil.
We live in a very divided world. In fact some would say that our times are as divided as they have been in years, even decades. Here in the U.S. we have recently had a divisive election that led those unhappy with the result to storm the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
Ruza Markovic had dreamt of and studied for a career in journalism — when war intervened to change the trajectory of her life. While her family had emigrated to the U.S. from their native Yugoslavia when she was just 4, Markovic didn’t think twice when she was asked to return to her homeland in the early ’90s as a communications liaison to the teetering government while political unrest and then war-ravaged the Balkans.
Leadership is not, in Daniel Harkavy’s eyes, a complex equation. Its essential elements are the decisions you make and the influence you cultivate. But putting that into practice, especially after a crucible, can certainly be challenging.
