Turn One: Learning to lead self.
Turn Two: Learning to lead an organization and others.
Turn Three: Learning to lead toward future value, succession, and legacy.
Leaders who learn and lead in a Third Turn found a way to flourish in their Second Turn after they accepted the C-suite role.
A crucible is a ceramic or porcelain container within which other materials are smelted--a process where the material is subjected to high temperatures and pressures. The word crucible represents a severe test that shapes a person, breaking or making them.
A crucible comes with a leadership role.
Other such pressures could be listed. The weakest leaders are destroyed by them, washing out and ultimately trying to avoid leadership roles in the future. Weak leaders wrongly believe these pressures should not come their way and avoid or deny their reality. Finding denial impossible, weak leaders may try to crush others before they are crushed.
Leaders made by the crucible, and made strong by it, are those looking for a different measure of their well-being.
More than anything, leaders who are made by the crucible know that life is a crucible for everyone. Life itself is the most significant pressure that breaks or makes any person. Everyone in the organization is pressed hard in some way. A leader's crucible is uniquely intense, but how do we grade excruciation? It is all hard. A leader is confronted with what others face in addition to their struggles because they are a public figure, which might make the leadership experience unique. It does not, however, make the leader more special.
Knowing this difference contributes to one's ability to be made rather than broken by the crucible.