The Referent Group

CRUCIBLES Podcast

Education EN ↓ 3 episodes

The CRUCIBLES Podcast (hosted by The Referent Group) explores leadership through stories of defining moments. A crucible experience, according to scholars Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas, is "a trial and a test — a point of deep self-reflection that forces us to question who we are and what matters to us." Each episode ventures into a moment or event that disrupted assumptions, tested identity, and forced reflection. The stories aren’t about winning or surviving. They’re about meaning, transformation, and the ways hardship reshapes how we see ourselves and the world.

Author

The Referent Group

Episodes

Growth Mindset: MLB Pitcher Jamie Moyer's Improbable Resilience 16.06.2026 1:13:11

In 1992, at 29 years old, Jamie Moyer was out of baseball. Released by his third MLB team in four years, unable to garner interest from even overseas clubs, Moyer faced a crossroads that would have ended most careers. Instead, he chose to rebuild — not just his pitching, but his entire approach to the game and to himself. What followed was one of the most remarkable second acts in sports history:...

Impossible Possible: Sandy Hook Elementary Teacher Kaitlin (Roig) DeBellis 01.06.2026 1:18:12

On December 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and took the lives of twenty children and six educators. Acting instinctively, Kaitlin (Roig) DeBellis made the "impossible, possible" to protect her first grade students by huddling them in a tiny bathroom. In the years since, she has carried the weight of that morning while finding the courage to reflect...

Selfless Service: Dave Magarity, Maggie Dixon, and the Army Women's Basketball Team 01.05.2026 1:21:21

In the fall of 2005, just weeks before the start of the season, Army West Point Women's Basketball hired 28-year-old Maggie Dixon as its head coach. By March of 2006, Coach Dixon had led the program — in thrilling fashion — to its first-ever Division I NCAA Tournament appearance. Three weeks after facing Pat Summitt, Candace Parker, and the University of Tennessee in the first round, tragedy struc...