High Altitude Leadership

CHRIS WARNER is a climber, educator, entrepreneur, and an Emmy-nominated filmmaker. He has led more than 150 international mountaineering expeditions (from K2 to Kilimanjaro). Chris has been teaching leadership and group development for more than twenty-five years. In 1990 Chris founded Earth Treks, whose chain of climbing centers serve over 100,000 customers a year. DON SCHMINCKE is a dynamic keynote speaker and mad-scientist turned provocative management sage. From CNN to the Wall Street Journal, his use of anthropology and evolutionary genetics to remedy the high failure rates of management theories established him as a consultant renegade and leading global authority. In 1990 Don founded The SAGA Leadership Institute. Each year over one thousand CEOs find his work refreshingly irreverent and revolutionary for bottom-line impact.

"Fear, selfishness and arrogance - these are just some of the dangers that can threaten a climber's life, and in the high-threat world of global commerce and global security, they can destroy a country's or organization's future. Peak performance is about digging deeper to overcome the barriers of our own making. As Chris and Don assert, we have to dig deeper in order to climb higher."--Ralph Heath, Executive Vice President, Aeronautics, Lockheed Martin Corporation "At last, something new has been written about leadership. The authors skillfully bridge the crosswalk between what is required of leaders in life and death situations scaling the world's highest peaks and the more mundane, but sometimes no less scary, halls of corporate America"--Cathy A. Trower, Ph.D. Research Director, Co-Principal Investigator Collaborative On Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) Harvard University, Graduate School of Education."Chris Warner is living proof that courage and intellect provide a powerful leadership combination. He and Don Schmincke serve as outstanding guides for exploring what it takes to lead an organization into difficult and uncharted terrain. If you're an executive who searches for the occasional inspirational gut-check, this book is a must for your shelf."--David Callahan, executive editor, SmartCEO Magazine

• Preface xiAcknowledgments xviiIntroduction xxiii1 Danger #1: Fear of Death 32 Danger #2: Selfishness 253 Danger #3: Tool Seduction 494 Danger #4: Arrogance 735 Danger #5: Lone Heroism 1056 Danger #6: Cowardice 1257 Danger #7: Comfort 1378 Danger #8: Gravity 1679 Danger #9: The Journey Begins 183Resources 205Notes 207