How will you face your next leadership crucible?

We are likely to face one or more leadership crucibles in our lifetimes. These are times when we are severely tested. We may even be called to question who we are and what truly matters to us. These are pivotal moments with great potential.

Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas coined the phrase "crucibles of leadership" when they discovered the commonality of experience amongst top leaders while researching the influences on leadership motivations and aspirations 20 years ago. (Crucibles are the vessels medieval alchemists used when working to turn metals into gold.)

Bennis and Thomas distilled their research into four essential skills that great leaders possess:

• the ability to engage others in shared meaning
• a distinctive and compelling voice
• a sense of integrity
• adaptive capacity.

They also believed these skills enable people to find meaning in potentially debilitating experiences. However, I believe there's a more vital point. Thankfully, they caught it in their side notes.

It's a certain youthfulness and zest for life.

"All of our interview subjects described their crucibles as
opportunities for reinvention—for taking stock of their lives and
finding meaning in circumstances many people would see as daunting and
potentially incapacitating. In the extreme, this capacity for
reinvention comes to resemble eternal youth—a kind of vigor, openness,
and an enduring capacity for wonder that is the antithesis of
stereotyped old age." - Bennis and Thomas        

It is what we currently refer to as mindset and attitude.

"We borrowed a term from biology—“neoteny,” which, according to the
American Heritage Dictionary, means “retention of juvenile
characteristics in the adults of a species”—to describe this quality,
this delight in lifelong learning, which every leader we interviewed
displayed, regardless of age. To a person, they were full of energy,
curiosity, and confidence that the world is a place of wonders spread
before them like an endless feast. 
...
But it’s not only an affinity for physical activity that characterizes
neoteny—it’s an appetite for learning and self-development, a curiosity
and passion for life." - Bennis and Thomas        

It's not only a question of how we face adversity and challenge, but also how we choose to live and experience life, with all it's ups and downs.

How are you choosing to live and embrace life? Are you confident that no matter what happens, you can come through your crucibles stronger, wiser, more whole, more purposeful and/or more able to lead?

***

For the original 2002 Harvard Business Review article by Warren Bennis and Robert J. Thomas, see: https://hbr.org/2002/09/crucibles-of-leadership

For a recent Harvard Business Review article on the crucible of being laid off, in which I point to the potential on the other side, see this article by Susan Peppercorn, PCC : https://hbr.org/2023/01/managing-your-emotions-after-being-laid-off