High Altitude Leadership by Warner and Schmincke – Book Review and Favorite Ideas
“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
- Tacitus, Roman Philosopher
I recently finished High Altitude Leadership, What the World’s Most Forbidding Peaks Teach Us About Success. Written by accomplished mountain-climber Chris Warner and equally-accomplished leadership consultant Don Schmincke, the book is a tale of two stories and their relationship to each other: mountain climbing and leadership development.
How is this book different from other leadership books?
As we learned in the Mark Stevens interview series on Dot Connector, you should look at the world around you through a “prism” that you really find helpful. With the surplus of books on leadership, I find myself grouping these books into one of 3 categories:
- Books that do a “Meta analysis” of other research on leadership
- Books that strongly challenge conventional thinking
- Books that use a prism that is interesting or familiar to me
High Altitude Leadership falls into the third category, using the prism of mountain climbing to explore leadership. The authors do a fantastic job of creating something that is both a “page turner” (Warner’s mountain-climbing stories will take your breath away), and “relevant” at the same time (Schmincke’s insights are practical and immediately useful).
What is the core theme of the book?
In the book, Warner and Schmincke introduce the concept of a “high altitude leader,” someone who can recognize and survive 8 dangers that challenge them: Fear, Selfishness, Tool Seduction, Arrogance, Lone Heroism, Cowardice, Comfort, and Gravity. Each fear is detailed in a mountaineering story by Warner and real-world business examples from Schmincke.
The book is a fast read, and a good reminder of the common dangers that apply to any business situation, from start-ups through Fortune 100 companies. Below are my favorite ideas from the book, with my comments in brackets [].
Arrogance, a Danger to High Altitude Leadership
We convinced ourselves that the climb (of Mount Everest) would take 36 hours, top to bottom. We were horribly wrong and our over-confidence almost killed us. The route proved more difficult than we imagined. On the second day we ran out of food. On the third day we ran out of fuel (so we couldn’t melt snow for water). We summited on the fourth day…on the fifth day (approximately 120 hours later) we were back at basecamp…nine of my fingers were frostbitten, the flesh had frozen.
Insights on Arrogance:
- Arrogance infects organizations who aren’t eternally vigilant.
- Humility heals arrogance. [Try to practice humility daily!]
- [Here's a to-do item for you to combat arrogance...] Shift meetings from focusing on status to sharing and solving problems
Questions to Use [Try these in your next meeting!]:
- Even though we are performing well, what’s not working or can be improved in your team?
- What is your greatest personal challenge or concern we should be talking about today?
- Where in your area are you having the most problems?
Cowardice, a Danger to High Altitude Leadership
A tired Italian (climber) on our team decided to quit and crawled into one of the Korean (climber’s) tents…back at base camp, the Italian wrote authoritatively about the climb, the snow conditions, and the decision to turn around…for some reason, he omitted the part about his quitting and crawling into someone else’s tent for a nap.
Insights on Cowardice:
- High Altitude Leaders instill bravery by turning cowardice into bold action and growth.
- Fun is a by-product, not a goal. [Give brave challenges to people, and help them find ways to make the journey fun!]
- People want the truth, no matter how good, bad, or ugly. [Don't instill cowardice by dodging the truth. Become known for being truthful.]
Common Themes in Companies with Cowardice:
- Your plan sucks: If your current plan doesn’t show your team how to win, say so [and change it!].
- Your team is weak: Ineffectual leaders breed weak teams. Who looks weak? How is their attitude? Do you have a system in place…to recognize internal dangers?
- You’re too absorbed by operations: Weak teams pull their leaders into operations [limiting the leader's ability to determine direction and boost morale].
- Your meetings are useless: Fix your meetings. Your team is probably complaining about them already. Stop having meetings where only information is transferred and start having meetings where problems are surfaced and worked on.
- Your people are apathetic: Once management creates an apathetic culture, it’s a slippery slope down to the lowest levels of performance.
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments…that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways.”
- M. Scott Peck
Other Lessons from High Altitude Leadership
- Perseverance does not mean continuing on in the face of impossible obstacles, but having the capacity to retreat, rethink, and return. [Remember those 3 "R's": retreat, rethink, and return. Practice saying "let's take a step back and look at this situation in a different way."]
- In leadership, as in climbing, the higher you go, the greater the challenges become.
- Rest rarely comes to those seeking the next level of performance. Perseverance jump-starts the climb when all momentum seems lost.
A final point of advice from the authors
- If you do anything next after reading this book, create your own personal “Compelling Saga” that inspires you to become a High Altitude Leader. You can’t infect others with passion unless you’re infected yourself. What story captures your epic journey? What’s significant left for you to do in life?
Next Steps
- Buy the book, High Altitude Leadership
- Download the High Altitude Leadership Team Assessment Tool
Posted in: Leadership Books
This looks like a definite buy for me. I have been looking for a good leadership book that didn’t sound like all the rest. Good Post!
Mark – thanks for the comment! I definitely would check this book out. Currently, I’m reading The Leadership Code and Your Management Sucks, so hopefully I’ll have more insights for you and other readers soon.