Crucible Experiences: Life's Tests

I first came across the term "crucible experience" when I was reading a book by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, "Geeks and Geezers." I thought about it again recently when I was interviewing a candidate and asked him what his crucible experiences were. Just as I asked him, I began to also think about my own crucible experiences. More on that later. First, let us understand what a crucible experience is.

We probably encountered the word "crucible" in chemistry classes in college. A crucible is a vessel used for high temperature chemical reactions. It is made of material that does not melt easily. Bennis and Thomas elaborate: "The American Heritage Dictionary defines a crucible as �a place, time or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperature.� Blending these three definitions, we use "crucible" to refer to an intense, meaningful and often transformational experience."

That is the context for a "crucible experience",  something which transforms us, and shakes and shapes our lives. We have all gone through these experiences in our life � some of these experiences last a short time, others much longer. Either way, they help change us in some way. More often than not, these are intense and deeply personal experiences, which we would rather not talk about. Even thinking about these experiences makes us want to purge them from our memories. But whatever happens, they leave an indelible mark on us for the rest of our life.

Crucible experiences have a way of testing us. They bring out aspects of our personality that we did not know existed. We can think of them in other words (for example, adversity). In each case, they help build our character � be it as an individual or in the workplace. These events can be voluntary � for example, a difficult and dangerious trek we decided to take. At other times, they just happen � leaving us rushing to react. It is also at times like these that we realise whom we are really close to. All in all, the crucible experiences are character-building. While we are going through these experiences, we may wonder why is it happening to us. But later (sometimes much, much later), when we reflect back, we realise that there was definitely some good that came out of it.

Each of our lives is the sum of our experiences. As Albert Einstein said, �The only source of knowledge is experience.� Add to that Benjamin Disraeli�s quote, �There is no education like adversity.� Take them together and you can think of crucible experiences as life�s step functions: each taking us to a new, higher level, as long as we are willing to learn.

Tomorrow: Leaders Learn


Crucible Experiences: Leaders Learn

Carol Hymowitz wrote about �pivotal situations� in the lives of leaders in the Wall Street Journal (August 27, 2002):

Leadership advice is easy to find these days: workshops, conferences and private coaching sessions, often for a hefty price, on how to make the leap from executive to leader.

Yet those who have proved their ability to inspire rarely say they were guided by formal instruction. Instead, they point to life experiences that were pivotal in helping them recognize a capacity to make things happen and to get others behind them.

Many of these people show some qualities of young children: curiosity, boundless energy to put into practice what they learn, and a willingness to pick themselves up and keep going when they fall.

Warren Bennis, founding chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California, and Robert Thomas, senior research fellow of Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change in Cambridge, Mass., believe all leaders have undergone at least one crucible experience that unleashed their abilities and taught them who they were.

The two professors studied 43 leaders -- half of them 70 or older and half 35 and younger -- for their book "Geeks and Geezers". Their transformational experiences varied from being mentored, to climbing a mountain, to losing an election, but ultimately proved more important than the person's education, intelligence or birth order.

"Sometimes it is an event, sometimes it is a relationship ... sometimes joyous, sometimes tragic ... but it's always a powerful process of learning and adaption," they write. "It is both an opportunity and a test."

Bob Rich Jr., president and CEO of Rich Products, a Buffalo maker of food products, says his crucible experience came right after he graduated from college, when his father gave him the chance to launch a subsidiary of the family-run company in Canada. "I was 22 years old and at the age when I was convinced that my father knew very little," he recalls ruefully. "But I soon found out otherwise. Here I was thrown into the breach with a million-dollar budget and responsibility for building a new plant, and I knew nothing."

He began seeking his father's advice, and soon discovered he was a wise business adviser. "We became very close through that process," he says.

The experience also taught him to be more tolerant and respectful of others and not to make glib assumptions. Placed so early in his career in a leadership role, he has always sought the counsel of employees throughout his company, he says.

In the context of leadership, Robert Thomas writes that �crucible� refers to �an experiential dimension in the lives of all the leaders we interviewed: an intense, transformational experience that set them on the road to where they are now. For these leaders, the crucible served as a sort of ordeal or test. Surviving the test was an entry or initiation into the life of leadership�True leaders create meaning out of difficult events or relationships, while others may be defeated or even devastated by them. Leaders come out of these experiences with something useful�even a plan of action. Through the crucible, they acquire new insights, new skills and new qualities of mind or character that make it possible to leap to a new, higher level.�

Tomorrow: Four Types

Crucible Experiences: Four Types

Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas write that �the heart of the leadership crucible: the ability to extract wisdom from experience.� Based on their interviews with leaders, they identified four major types of crucibles:

Mentoring Relationships: Mentors have long exerted dramatic influence on those they mentor, of course, particularly on young people. But two critical elements appeared in virtually every mentoring relationship described in our interviews. First, prot�g�s attracted mentors; there was something compelling about them that made them approachable and interesting. Second, mentors were recruitable; they were open to caring for a particular prot�g� and willing to share valuable insight without any expectations of reward for their efforts.

Enforced Reflection: This crucible has at its core an opportunity for both exploration and reflection. College has the potential to be such a crucible, particularly as it affords a young person the time and space to explore other possible selves and lifestyles. The same can be said for more regimented settings that emphasize introspection, like yoga retreats, martial arts training and seminaries.

Insertion Into Foreign Territory: Most people find themselves operating in foreign, sometimes hostile, territory at some point in their lives. However, the leaders we interviewed demonstrated a remarkable capacity not only to survive those tough experiences but to extract profound insights from them. Others might be overwhelmed by the newness, the confusion, the deluge of sensations encountered in foreign territory. But these leaders embraced the disorientation and wove it into their own experiential tapestry. More important, they continued to seek out new foreign territories, whether a new geography, culture, business, organizational role or idea.

Disruption and Loss: Personal loss, particularly of an associate, has the capacity to destabilize. The loss of a parent (particularly when it requires a person to take on family responsibility or live independently at an early age), loss of a sibling or close friend (which often occurs during war-time), bankruptcy, or failure in an important assignment or undertaking (including a run for public office) can stimulate a search for greater understanding of self, of relationships and of larger webs of affiliation. All these events carry the potential to catalyze a search for meaning and develop a far keener ability to extract insights from experience.

For Mahatma Gandhi, the crucible experience was his stay in South Africa. For Nelson Mandela, it was the many long years he spent in prison. For John Kerry, it was the Vietnam War. As I think back on my life, there are at least three experiences which I can think helped change me. One was a brief incident at school, the second was my first semester at IIT, and the third was a two-year period of business failure after my return to India in 1992. Each incident, in its own way, made an impact. While time can diminish memories of the period, it cannot take away the reality of the occurrence. In the next two columns, I will share my experiences and how these events made a difference to me. Perhaps, you too can think about yours.