Climbing mountains is not a sport; it is a lifestyle. I am convinced of this because I am a rock climber myself. The peaks I have scaled are tiny compared to Mt. Everest.
I have climbed no higher than a few thousand feet, never above the 26,000 feet mark that hails the beginning of the death zone. And lasting a few days at most, in such wild places as West Virginia, my climbing trips hardly merit being called expeditions. Yet I have had many epic and insightful adventures leading teams of students on these smaller-scale pursuits. They have provided me with a rich backdrop for reflection on leadership. When I saw the title “High-Altitude Leadership,” I knew I had to read it.“An expedition is a journey of physical, emotional, and intellectual brutality that kicks the crap out of you and in which the opportunity for things going wrong is built into the formula. [] Seeking high altitude leadership also promises to kick the crap out of you,” the authors tell us in the introduction. This book is a collaboration between mountaineer, entrepreneur, and owner of Earth Treks, Chris Warner, and climber, author, and founder of The SAGA Leadership Institute, Don Schmincke. The two men share experiences in the areas of climbing and entrepreneurship, and after meeting on a climbing expedition, they discover that “the dynamics of mountaineering provide tailor-made metaphors for business challenges.” Warner and Schmincke team up to eventually deliver this transdisciplinary book about business leadership intensified by working in the death zone. They define high altitude leaders as “those who lead themselves and their teams to produce peak performance in the face of extreme challenges by overcoming the dangers not foreseen or addressed by current, pop leadership theory.”
The key lessons of this book derive from “the dangers.” There are eight; and they are each exposed in separate chapters that include case studies, survival tips and key learnings. Warner and Schmincke start from the obvious truth that “dangers threaten every leader at some point in their journey.” The significance of these eight dangers of leading is that they magnify as leaders climb higher, either up the mountain or up the corporate ladder. A leader who deals with these key dangers effectively practices high altitude leadership. The eight dangers which high altitude leaders must face are: fear of death, selfishness, tool seduction, arrogance, lone heroism, cowardice, comfort, and gravity.
Fear of death causes a leader’s mind to freeze up. When that happens, the leader is unable to take decisive action. Death is the ultimate danger to mountaineers. In the business world, death is not (usually) physical. Rather, it occurs with the demise of a great idea, a plan, a career. Or it means company bankruptcy. Fear of death can be conquered; the way to do so is by embracing it. The acceptance of death, as one possible outcome of a leadership action, frees and empowers a leader for innovation, decisiveness and action.
Selfishness is the egocentric leader behavior that can politically poison a team. Think withholding information, playing favorites, or protecting sacred cow projects. Warner and Schmincke discuss the dangerous, unproductive, dysfunctional (DUD) conditions that exist in companies as a result of selfish behavior. They tell leaders to purge selfishness from themselves and from their team. This is a tall order. The recommended strategy for filling it is by creating passion in followers through the telling a compelling saga. The saga unifies, because it provides the team with something worth fighting for, to “die” for. And thus it increases productivity.
Tool seduction addresses the question, “are you using your tools, or are they using you?” This chapter exposes the high failure rate of implementing management fads, usually when tools replace the deeper work of adaptation to change. Leaders who successfully avert tool seduction can put their energies into planning for the unknown, and continuously adapt to changing conditions.
Arrogance is apparent when leaders have so high an opinion of themselves that it will kill them. They fall into the metaphorical crevasse; or they get backstabbed by their followers. “Arrogant leaders ignore warnings on mountains and in boardrooms.” They endanger themselves and their teams. The cure for a leader that is infected by arrogance is humility. But can an arrogant leader truly learn to become humble? Warner and Schmincke think so, and provide some strategies. Humility makes it possible to admit to mistakes and failures, to learn from them, and to commit to a path of continuous improvement.
Lone heroism is in evidence when a leader uses the mantra: “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Lone heroism causes weak teams, low accountability, misaligned direction, demoralization, and hostages; and the resulting damage can be extensive. The remedy for lone heroism is partnership. Warner and Schmincke assert, “There are no more messianic leaders. The few who came before aren’t interested in working for your corporation. You’ll have to settle for creating powerful partnerships.”
Cowardice encapsulates a leader’s risk-avoidance behavior. Cowardice propels leaders to seek safety instead of peak performance. The counterforce to cowardice is bravery. Warner and Schmincke believe bravery can be instilled by shame, but comment that shaming people is no longer politically correct. They deride current managerial practices because they coddle followers and do not get the job done. High latitude leaders tell the truth and walk the talk.
Comfort leads to stagnation, and vice versa. Yet “great achievements sometimes require enduring extreme discomfort.” Thus Warner and Schmincke caution, “Don’t lead if you lack the willingness to be uncomfortable.” Their high altitude leaders are not seduced by the status quo. Rather, they inspire their teams to move onward and upward even when that path is downright unpleasant. This requires perseverance, combined with a good sense for when to retreat, rethink, and return to face the challenge another day.
Gravity is the last of the dangers; it has the capacity to kill a leader who did everything right. Gravity simply exists. Just like bad luck. It is a metaphor for environmental variables a leader cannot control. The only countermeasure for gravity is good luck. While a leader can sometimes get lucky by chance, luck can also be created through several proven techniques. A leader can maximize chance opportunities by being open to new experiences, or by following a gut instinct. Another method is to visualize a positive outcome.
In the final chapter of their book, Warner and Schmincke dare any aspiring high altitude leaders to ask themselves: “When have I laid it all on the line to make my dream come true?” They encourage the reader to consider the final lesson, “that high altitude leaders don’t seek to conquer the great goals; these are the results of their conquering themselves.”
The strength of this book is in the combination of mountaineering sagas told by Warner, with observations of corporate America recounted by Schmincke. Death is the key to making the book such a seductively good read. The stories told by Warner are sensationally dramatic case studies of decision-making in high altitude climbing teams. They are compelling not only because they are educational, but because they are vivid, engrossing accounts of his personal experiences of leadership and followership under the highest of stakes. I gobbled them up with morbid fascination. The examples woven in by Schmincke are expositions of similarly extreme corporate environments that he encountered in his consulting practice. I am less familiar with his arena, and thought the business examples were less powerful than the mountaineering ones. Yet the lessons that the authors derive form this amalgamation resonate well with me, perhaps because many of them are familiar from the leadership literature. By examining them from the extreme perspective of high altitude leadership, the authors make such well-known leadership and management themes as passion, failure, adaptive change, continuous improvement, and perseverance, fresh and relevant once again. The taste of adventure they gave me, combined with their direct, tell-it-as-it-is writing style, had me finish this book in record time. I came away from it not as much with new knowledge or skill, but with a feeling – a sense of being invigorated and ready to take on new leadership challenges. After all, climbing is not a sport; it is a lifestyle, and so is leadership.
Credits: The image of Chris Warner and Don Schmincke’s book jacket was downloaded from http://highaltitudeleadership.com/.
Christine L. Dvonch edited the manuscript for English.
Note: This manuscript has been submitted to Integral Leadership Review. The article appeared here: Integral Leadership Review, Volume IX, No.5
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