Alison Levine knows what adversity looks like. More than that, she knows what it feels like and how it can hurt.
A climber faces some of the most difficult and extreme physical adversities of any athlete—competing with high altitudes, sore muscles, unrelenting fatigue, and unpredictable weather.
So, when I hear Alison say that a person cannot control the environment but only his or her reaction to it, I know I am hearing leadership advice from someone who has been there, someone who has faced some of the most extreme environmental circumstances imaginable.
Many of the leadership lessons Alison articulates in this book are lessons that resonate with me in the work I do with my basketball teams at Duke and with USA Basketball.
I love the way she talks about past experiences—that, whether they be failures or successes, they are essentially irrelevant in the moment. She would say that “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done on a past expedition; all that matters is how you are performing on the mountain now.” In my work as a basketball coach, I call that concept “Next Play.” Previous plays, games, or seasons must not carry into the current moment. Certainly past mistakes and successes can inform the way a person decides to practice and prepare and get better, but, in the moment, when you are on the mountain, the last expedition just doesn’t carry any meaning anymore.
I also really appreciate the way she discusses leadership in sports as compared with leadership in today’s business world. In both, there are crucial moments when on-the-spot decisions must be made in reaction to the circumstances you face. I agree with Alison that this is perhaps one of the most important lessons that business leaders can learn from sports leaders, and vice versa.
The way you react to something in the moment will depend heavily on the way in which you prepare to face challenges. Alison will tell you to practice things like sleep deprivation, something my family will tell you is common for me during the basketball season, and certainly, in Alison’s adventures, it is a crucial obstacle to overcome. Perhaps sleep deprivation is not a common challenge in your sport, business, or lifestyle, but Alison’s point about practice and preparation is vital to anyone’s success.
Practice, though, can only be a simulation. You will never be able to replicate exactly what it feels like to be cold and exhausted and still two hundred feet from the peak of a mountain or to have the basketball in your hands down by one point with seconds on the clock. But you can sure try. And one who wants to be ultimately prepared to make it to the top or to sink a game-winning shot will need to do whatever he or she can to make practice feel as real as possible.
Alison and I also share a fondness for teammates with egos, and I love the way she describes the performance egos and the team ego of her American Women’s Everest Expedition team. Ego has become a negative word; many see it as being synonymous with arrogance.
To Alison and me, ego is a good thing, and I always want to surround myself and populate my teams with individuals who have strong, healthy egos. Then, I want all of those people, myself included, to buy into what we are doing together in order to form a collective ego that is greater than any individual ego could ever be. Who we are as a team trumps who any of us are as individuals.
A mountain climb is the consummate metaphor for enduring and, ultimately, achieving. Fighting an “uphill battle” doesn’t get any more literal than that. Alison has climbed the highest peaks on every continent. She has endured issues with her health that brought about challenges to her future as an athlete. She has accomplished feats of physical and mental strength that only a handful of human beings have ever even attempted.
So, when she talks about facing challenges and breaking through the barriers of one’s perceived limitations, I tend to listen.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it makes me feel proud that Alison has taken Duke banners to the top of many of the world’s highest peaks. But, frankly, more than that, I am proud to know her, to have talked about leadership and teamwork with her, and to have had the honor of contributing to this terrific book about leadership from one of the toughest leaders I know.
—Mike Krzyzewski, 2013
Head Coach—Duke University Men’s Basketball
and U.S. National Olympic Team