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 ...
Jul 21, 2020•42 min
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 Ra...
Jul 14, 2020•53 min
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 clo...
Jul 07, 2020•47 min
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 solac...
Jun 30, 2020•43 min
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...
Jun 16, 2020•36 min
Growing up in Communist East Germany, Cathleen Merkel was taught her value came from doing what others expected of her, working hard, and not upsetting the established order of things. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and she grew from a girl into a woman with dreams and passions of living a free and successful life. There was just one problem: the goals she pursued professionally and personally dead-ended a couple of times and didn't really fulfill her even when they were going well. So she took a de...
Jun 09, 2020•55 min
Tommy Breedlove isn't one to make excuses. Yes, the physical and emotional violence he endured as a boy led him to become violent himself as a teen, landing him in jail for his 19th birthday. But when he was mentored by a fellow inmate and inspired to avoid another trip behind bars, he took responsibility for his recovery. He toiled at low-wage jobs by day and studied hard at night, landing a position at a prestigious financial services firm just three years later. And yet, while his career skyr...
Jun 02, 2020•56 min
Conflict and leadership frequently go hand-in-hand. Add to the mix a global pandemic that comes with stay-at-home orders, shuttered schools and remote working, and millions find themselves living day-to-day in a powder keg of anxiety and stress. How best to navigate this unprecedented confluence of circumstances to minimize its affect on your family relationships and your business's bottom line? Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax and podcast co-host Gary Sch...
May 19, 2020•50 min
For 11 harrowing years, Ed Kressy descended deeper and deeper into the madness of methamphetamine addiction. From believing the FBI was trying to pin the 9/11 attacks on him, to not bathing or brushing his teeth for months, to considering himself married to the voices in his head that tormented his thoughts, his grip on reality slipped away a little more each day. It was a far cry from the life he had known, he tells Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax: a col...
May 12, 2020•54 min
She never really had a chance to dream about what her life could be before a tragic car accident at 11 in her native Taiwan left Michelle Kuei with physical and emotional scars that plagued her for 30 years. When her body stopped growing after the crash, her mind started racing with how she would never be "normal." It wasn't just that friendships and romance were hard -- grocery shopping was near-impossible: she couldn't grab anything to put in her cart without first discarding her crutches, and...
May 05, 2020•53 min
Millions worldwide are dealing with fears of the "what if?" right now as the world struggles through the health and economic uncertainties of the coronavirus outbreak. These worries can be upsetting, depressing and even emotionally paralyzing; in fact, one scientific study has determined fear of the unknown can be more distressing than fear of serious injury or death. In this new episode of BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE, host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax offers several encouraging insig...
Apr 21, 2020•42 min
His father died when he was 9. Not long after, his mother's drug addiction forced him out of his home to live with his grandparents. Money was tight, school was not his strong suit, and by his late teens Trent Griffin-Braaf was running with the wrong crowd. By 19, he was serving 4-12 years in prison for selling drugs. But he tells Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax that when he had to attend his grandmother's funeral in shackles, unable to hug grieving loved...
Apr 14, 2020•54 min
As general manager of Major League Baseball's Cincinnati Reds, Brad Kullman was living his childhood dream of making a living, and life, in the game he loved. But after being passed over for permanent promotions and finally being let go, he moved past the devastation to realize he was free to pursue a passion that had become even more important to him: using the analytical tools he had pioneered as a pro sports scout and executive to help everyday men and women unlock the insights of their hardw...
Apr 07, 2020•39 min
If you've had a crucible experience, you are going to have to persevere through feelings of loss and fear, as well as additional setbacks, as you chart your course to a life of significance. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax shares stories from his family history (his great-great grandfather John Fairfax) and world history (Winston Churchill), while also discussing his own efforts to claw his way back emotionally and practically after losing $2.25 billion -...
Mar 24, 2020•40 min
Craig Perra admits he's the last person you'd expect to be a life coach. He was a corporate lawyer on the C-Suite track when his sexual and drug addictions left him at rock bottom in his career and his marriage, bringing him so low he attempted suicide. Then a mentor who had walked a similar path helped him overcome his demons through structured behavioral change that allowed him to understand the underlying causes of his destructive ways, create new, healthy habits ... and save his relationship...
Mar 17, 2020•45 min
Jim Daly was abandoned by his alcoholic father at 5, lost his mother to cancer four years later and had no one to turn to but his four older siblings when their stepfather emptied the family home and left them to fend for themselves on the day they buried their Mom. Before he had turned 10, he was living with a dysfunctional foster family and thinking it was all just part of the "normal" life all kids lived. But buoyed by a hopeful spirit, he embraced the structure his teenage years brought at s...
Mar 10, 2020•50 min
What do you hope your friends and loved ones remember about you after you're gone? What words would you like spoken in your eulogy? Written on your headstone? In this thoughtful and insightful new episode, Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax explores practical ways we can live today in a manner that leaves a legacy that outlives us well into tomorrow. The key, he and co-host Gary Schneeberger discuss, is pursuing your career and caring for your family with th...
Feb 25, 2020•34 min
Robert Krantz appeared in some of the top films of the '80s -- Back to the Future, anyone? -- but when he turned his attention and talents to writing, directing and starring in his own movies a decade later, his career and life began to unspool like a dropped film reel. His first production -- which he and his wife put so much money into they had to live with his mother -- had the makings of a hit but never took off because of a disastrous Hollywood screening. That professional setback was follo...
Feb 18, 2020•1 hr 11 min
Glenn Williams was living a life of success and significance in 2010 as a C-Suite executive with a global nonprofit doing life-changing work. But it all ended after his integrity was questioned by the CEO, leading Williams to resign and move his family back to his native Australia to figure out what was next for him at the halftime of his life. In this interview with BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host and Crucible Leadership founder Warwick Fairfax, Williams shares the lessons of his crucible experience a...
Feb 11, 2020•50 min
Few things are tougher when moving beyond a crucible experience than forgiving others, or even yourself, for the pain you've experienced from a failure or setback. Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax explains why it's essential to muster the character and courage to extend forgiveness -- or risk being emotionally and practically held back from pursuing a life of significance. How does forgiveness help you and those you forgive? Is it possible or even necessar...
Jan 28, 2020•28 min
She battled bulimia all through her teens and later survived an armed robbery and a miscarriage. But Margie Warrell refused to let these crucible experiences define her. She fought her way to a life of significance helping women in particular live authentic lives of unshakable bravery, not battling against external forces but against internal ones. In this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host (and fellow Aussie) Warwick Fairfax, Warrell describes how she has le...
Jan 21, 2020•46 min
Devastating crucible experiences robbed him of his lifelong dream to be a Top Gun Navy fighter pilot and bankrupted the multi-million-dollar business he created years later. Then, just when John Ramstead thought he had his life back on track, a freak horseback-riding accident left him with crushed ribs, broken bones in his neck, a punctured lung, and a torturous 23 surgeries during a a 20-month stay in a traumatic brain-injury hospital. In this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYO...
Jan 07, 2020•55 min
The start of a new year leads many of us to create New Year's Resolutions, but we'd be wiser, and happier, and help more people if we instead moved into 2020 crafting a vision rooted in our deepest values and passions. Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax explains that resolutions leave us feeling obligated, not motivated -- so they tend to last only a few weeks. A vision, though, can last a lifetime because it's a picture of our preferred reality: something w...
Dec 31, 2019•30 min
Mike Charbonnet was proud when his son, David, followed in his footsteps to join the Navy SEALs. But when a parachuting accident left David paralyzed, Mike says his son summoned courage more remarkable than anything either of them ever had to muster in the military. In this interview with Crucible Leadership founder and BEYOND THE CRUCIBLE host Warwick Fairfax, David recounts how his accident left him feeling like his dreams and goals had disappeared, sending him into a dark depression made wors...
Dec 17, 2019•58 min
True success in life, Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax explains, is not about the number of zeroes on your bank statement. It's about ensuring your life is aligned with your beliefs, values, and passions. A life of significance, he stresses, doesn’t have to be grand in scope. A life helping others, be it many or few is a life well-lived. For more information go to https://crucibleleadership.com...
Dec 03, 2019•23 min
Esther Fleece Allen overcame a traumatic childhood of abuse and abandonment to forge a successful career as a speaker and writer. But when the father she feared resurfaced to stalk her in her early 30s, she realized the successful life she had built was fashioned as a defense mechanism to avoid processing her pain. Only by learning to lament the crucible experiences of her upbringing and rejecting a lifetime of labels that limited her healing has she been able to begin living a life of true pers...
Nov 19, 2019•47 min
Forty-nine percent of U.S. business professionals say they've suffered "an experience so traumatic it fundamentally changed their lives." Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax explores the many forms these searing experiences can take and offers healing insights for not just surviving them, but thriving in the aftermath of them. Check him out at Harvard Business School Alumni Podcast as well at : https://www.alumni.hbs.edu/stories/Pages/story-bulletin.aspx?num=...
Nov 01, 2019•26 min
Most leaders don't talk about their failures. But Crucible Leadership founder and Beyond the Crucible host Warwick Fairfax has discovered learning, and sharing, the lessons of how he lost the family media dynasty can help others move past life's most shattering setbacks. The toughest part of his crucible moment, he explains, was not the number of zeroes in the price tag of the loss. It was the emotional devastation of feeling he had let down his parents, his ancestors, and even God. Discover how...
Oct 30, 2019•46 min
'Beyond the Crucible' host Warwick Fairfax shares the lessons he learned from losing a $2.25 billion bid to take over the 150-year-old family media dynasty he had be groomed to run since birth. From that "crucible moment," he discovered a new vision for his life, one rooted in helping others overcome painful setbacks in their lives. Sharing the stories of men and women who have bounced back from devastating hardship and failure to live a life of significance is a key focus of 'Beyond the Crucibl...
Oct 15, 2019•13 min
