The Brink

How Great Leadership is Invented

Mark Hunter

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781630471187
• eBook ISBN: 9781630471194
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

"The author lays bare his own triumphs and failures while breaking down that elusive edge that turns great leaders into influencers." —Brad Szollose, award-winning author of Liquid Leadership
The Brink is a method for generating leadership in an individual leader and on a team. It is based on the simple assertion that leadership is created in the face of some great challenge or obstacle to overcome, rather than in a vacuum or in comfortable places with no adversity. The Brink model uses climbing a mountain as an analogy throughout for creating that big challenge or goal, and then demonstrates how to create a team to climb it with and outlines the way to create leadership in everyone involved in the process. This metaphor transfers to virtually any leadership position one holds and is organized into a clear list of ingredients essential to leadership.
"As an adventurer, I resonated with the climbing stories and analogies in The Brink. However, the concepts and strategies are valid and powerful for anyone looking to improve as a leader in business and life. A great read!" —Heather Hansen O'Neill, author of Find Your Fire at Forty

CHAPTER 1

PICK A MOUNTAIN

MAKE IT BIG

As I mentioned in the Introduction, not all mountains are measured in feet or meters. For the purposes of leadership, the metaphor of a mountain as an endeavor is useful in that it describes something big with which to challenge ourselves—typically something big enough that we cannot readily see all the components of it at the outset. This makes us test the edges of what we think is possible. These edges are where change and leadership happen, and where new possibilities live.

Most of the time, we live in the realm of experience that includes what we relate to as reasonable, and this habit has us playing in the same old comfortable sandbox over and over. The mountain you want to pick in the brink model is the unreasonable, uncomfortable one: Run a marathon over a 5K. Stay when it feels better to leave. Take the CrossFit class instead of the treadmill. Ask the hottest girl in the bar for her number rather than sitting with your friends for the rest of the night. Write the book rather than reading someone else’s. Choose the stairs each day rather than the escalator. Move through your despair rather than avoiding it. Own your illness instead of being victimized by it. Pick something bigger than you have before, and do it on purpose—with a purpose in mind.

The brink rests firmly on the notion that leadership can be created by intentionally putting an individual or team up to something quite challenging, thus encouraging the growth and development of the individuals and the team to have the qualities and tools needed to climb to the top. To be clear, this requires something specific from the leader and each team member: intentionality.

HOW TO PICK YOUR MOUNTAIN

Chris Warner, author of High Altitude Leadership and CEO of Earth Treks, has led expeditions to the peaks of Mt. Everest and K2, the highest and second-highest mountains on earth. He’s famous for saying, “Don’t reach the peak and miss the point.” Everest lost its magic for Warner once hundreds of people per day were able to pay to be dragged to the top. It no longer held the magic, the challenge, and the draw of the unknown for him. So he went after K2 specifically because it was the path less taken.

I’ve heard Warner speak about his experiences with life and death on the sides of the most dangerous mountains on earth, and I came away crystal clear about a few things: First, he sought the mountains he chose specifically for their degree of mystery and uncharted routes, because they were less known. Second, talking about the mountain from the comfort of a chair means very little. It’s the very experience of doubt, impossibility, discomfort, and struggle with the mountain itself that creates the space for leadership to develop and expand. Finally, he discovered a tipping point in his personal development when he began to choose this greater path of discomfort, leadership, and pioneering discovery in all aspects of life. He sought it out. From that foundational choice point, he became committed to it on such a fundamental level that it actually drove what he was looking for and ultimately what he would find.

Pick your mountain on purpose. Choose your mountain in service of the leadership that you are committed to in the first place. It should reflect your intention, purpose, and leadership goals, in service of the team if there is one. Without the mountain, leadership has little footing on which to stand its ground. The brink requires an endeavor that creates or can express the leader’s calling, and the size of the endeavor tends to dictate the size of the calling.

From there, the process of leadership development becomes about setting yourself and/or your team up to live into the greatness on which the target is set. That’s the fundamental mechanism that makes leadership accessible: creating a big game to live into, or in this case, lead into. Too often leadership is conjured in a vacuum with the same old familiar challenges, circumstances, and contexts that have existed all along. Attempting to lead from inside our comfort zone has gotten us here—to the results we have already produced—but will not get us to the next level. In fact, it has us far more focused on creating comfort than on leadership, vision, or mission.

CIRCUMSTANCES

Einstein said, “You cannot create the solution to a problem from the same set of circumstances that created it in the first place.” This suggests that one change the “circumstances.” In the brink model, however, circumstances are like weather; they are constantly changing and will not stop or go away. Your job as a leader is to normalize this and produce the result in the face of it, the same way you go to work whether it’s raining out or sunny. The key to this part of the brink is your choosing leadership in the face of circumstances, rather than relying on the circumstances to change first.

The gift in the mountain and the circumstances that will arise from here is that you get to raise the stakes, increase the gradient, and up the challenge as you see appropriate. This challenge will cause you and your team to step into new, uncharted territory and call forth your innate response to adversity. So stop trying to change your circumstances and get to leading in the face of them instead.

Bet you didn’t think we’d start off by challenging Einstein, did you? But that’s exactly what leadership takes. Nothing is sacred. To lead as you’ve only dreamed of leading, you must play bigger than you ever have before.

Gay Hendricks, who wrote about the upper limit problem, talks about finding a “beacon.” Once identified, a beacon can be used to guide us toward our mountain and help us override our upper limit problem. It enables us to stop the upper limit from outlining precisely how good we think we can have it and how big we think we can make our wins and successes. An example of a beacon is a mission or vision that is big enough and important enough to us to call us forth again and again through adversity and setbacks. It’s something bigger than ourselves that we are so invested in creating that we will generate resilience as needed in service of it, and do what it takes to overcome obstacles in our path.

We can use our awareness of the beacon to put ourselves on the brink intentionally, with a clear vision of what is at the summit of our mountain. The beacon can also help us generate awareness and come to terms with the moment that will occur at some point along the climb when we inevitably encounter our upper limit. That awareness gives us the ability not to be stopped by it but instead recognize it as we approach it and prepare to climb through it.

On the brink, you get to throw yourself against and into something worthy of both your greatness and your fear. From there you not only get to see the view from the top, but you also get to see the parts of you that are newly discovered and unleashed along the way. You get to uncover the possibilities you have buried, give permission to the places to which you have not allowed access, forgive the unforgivable, and play on the border of the impossible. The time to stop waiting to get started is fully yours to decide. Your leadership and the things you choose to put yourself up to—or not—are inextricably linked to making this clear and powerful decision.

HOW A LEADER DEALS WITH FEAR

Idrisa, my Tanzanian climbing guide on the mountain, taught me powerful lessons about leadership and the role of fear. I was a 29-year-old wearing tech gear, climbing boots, and five layers of synthetic moisture-wicking clothes. He was a 19-year-old wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a light jacket to go with his sneakers. As we climbed through my nausea, pain, exhaustion, and distraction, he stayed focused, coaching me along the way to take one step at a time and stop looking at the top. He always smiled (which was at times maddening and at other times the only thing keeping me upright) through all the challenges we faced along the way. He even helped carry some of my gear at some points. (I had chosen to skip hiring a porter as well, so I was carrying 50 pounds of my own gear.)

Idrisa was poised and courageous in the face of the weather we encountered and the unconscious climber suffering from lethal high altitude sickness whom we saw being rushed down the mountain in a wheelbarrow by his guides in an attempt to save his life. We never learned whether that climber lived or died.

Idrisa tackled countless other challenges on the side of that mountain with grace—including being responsible for both our survival and success. I asked him if he was afraid at one point, and he said to me, “Yes. It is not smart to be on this mountain and not be afraid. It deserves our fear. Fear is why we climb it. Fear is also what makes it possible to climb it and stay alive at the same time.”

This contrasts with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famously saying, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear is not something to be avoided; fear is a necessary ally if we let it inform us to take right action instead of letting it goad us into taking no action.

Courage is action taken in the presence of fear, not in the absence of it. Leaders know this and move forward with their fear present rather than trying to eliminate it. Idrisa was a leader at 19 years old, wearing sneakers at 19,000 ft. He had no formal leadership training, just a mission, a vision, and a serious mountain to climb. Leaders don’t always look like leaders, but on the sides of the mountains they climb, they are unmistakable.

VISION AND MISSION

The most successful leaders on the brink have a vision that is clear and a mission they are undertaking decisively in service of that vision. An effective vision is at the same time concise, contextually expansive, and immediately enticing to the team and to others considering joining the team. What I mean by “contextually expansive” is that it expands the filter through which we see both the mountain we have chosen and the possibility of successfully climbing it. The vision is the glue that holds a team together through all challenging circumstances that will arise. The vision supplies the answer to the question, “Why are we climbing this mountain?”

For example, all the members of the team at NASA that first put a man on the moon were crystal clear that the answer to that question for them was “Get a man landed on the moon and then back home safely, by the end of the decade.” That clarity of vision and answer to the question “What for?” carried them through delays, setbacks, failures, the challenges of Projects Mercury and Gemini, and ultimately to Project Apollo. Apollo 11 successfully completed the mission on July 20, 1969.

The mission needs to be impactful and specific; it describes the endeavor that the team works toward. The mission is our proverbial mountain in the brink model and answers the question, “What are we doing in service of our vision?” It needs to be both reflective of the vision and inspiring to its participants. The mission must align with the principles and intentions of the team, and include everyone involved.

The other vital characteristic of a successful mission is that there must be full subscription across the board. Both the mission and the team can suffer dire consequences if the team lacks full commitment. In climbing real mountains, that consequence can be death. In business and other goals, lack of commitment can mean problems that put the team and future of the organization in jeopardy.

Balancing vision with mission is often tricky for leaders and can become a quagmire if not handled deftly. The brink model requires that leaders clearly outline the vision and mission for both themselves and the team before taking on the mission and climbing the mountain. Here, leaders also take responsibility for engaging themselves and the team in how the vision and mission serve them personally. In addition, leaders must maintain their commitment through the storms, setbacks, disagreements, and lulls in action that will inevitably occur. Leadership requires a deep understanding that enrollment in a mission and vision is an ongoing process, like nurturing a seed that has been planted. Teams need to know that their leaders remain enrolled in the mission and vision regardless of the circumstances with which they are faced.

Leaders on the brink are aware that people do not initially follow a vision or a mission; they follow a leader into that vision and mission. Leaders on the brink need to fully understand that they are the direct connection between those they lead and the vision that they hold. Leaders provide the initial road map to the opportunity of the brink. The vision simply gives platform to leadership and direction to the leaders’ velocity. Since they are the force that people follow at first, leaders must be willing to consistently present themselves as such.

A vision is simply an idea that is big and projected into the tangible future. One can argue that an idea doesn’t even exist until and unless a leader chooses to own and champion it. The vision a leader embodies will be the reason the community or team becomes committed in the first place—it’s the rallying point for the energy of the members.

NEW PROBLEMS—A PATH TO LEADERSHIP

Leaders on the brink generate new problems. They stretch into new areas and risk the unknown; this inevitably presents them with new obstacles or circumstances they have not seen before. But this process of generating and overcoming new problems creates growth. We only grow when we step out of the familiar and play in new unknown areas. Being outside our comfort zone creates new experiences and challenges, and forces us to adapt in order to thrive. This is also a fundamental part of the brink. In our NASA example of putting a man on the moon and bringing him back safely within the decade, that new problem they faced actually created the new discoveries and possibilities that ultimately made it happen. The unfamiliarity of the challenge itself generated the required creativity and ingenuity to meet it.

Isn’t the world full of enough problems without creating new ones? Well, on the brink, the problems a leader creates are not really “problems,” in the same way that the extra mile you add to your run isn’t a problem. It’s a stretch, a place to sharpen our edge, an opportunity. Leaders look for these places. They revel in new problems. They do this by becoming experts at both looking for and identifying gaps. This is precisely what the engineers and designers at NASA did that had them be successful in the face of their new problem.

GAPS

A gap is simply the space between where we are today and where we want to be. This is often the space that most people identify as their problem. As a coach, I regularly work with very successful people and teams who create powerful declarations and big goals, and then instantly begin to describe what a problem it is that they have not yet met those goals!

It’s both interesting and important to note that this is a fundamental reason for many of the issues in leadership we deal with today both in the business and social spheres. The basic belief that where we are is wrong simply because we have goals for something greater that we have not yet achieved creates self-victimization. This belief can generate greed, stress, fear, integrity breakdowns, and quitting before getting started. More specifically, it stops leaders from looking to create new problems and has them playing to avoid gaps instead.

Ironically, human beings naturally look for gaps to close, challenges to overcome, and problems to solve. We create gaps for many reasons; this is quite natural. The nature of the gap will depend on the individual. Lea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Content
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Pick a Mountain
• Chapter 2 Know the Answer to “What For?”
• Chapter 3 Choose Everything
• Chapter 4 Practice
• Chapter 5 Collaborate
• Chapter 6 Take Ownership
• Chapter 7 Trust
• Chapter 8 Welcome Fear and Adversity
• Chapter 9 Create Integrity
• Chapter 10 Be Unstoppable
• Summary
• About the Author