At 29,029 feet above mean sea level, Mount Everest is not only the highest peak in the world. It is also the ultimate symbol of challenge and achievement. To have to climb Mount Everest is to have a seemingly impossible task on your hands. And to be atop the Everest is to experience that unique, top-of-the-world feeling.
Everyone knows that the first people to climb Mount Everest were Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. But not everyone knows that it wasn’t their first shot at scaling the world’s highest peak.
The story goes that after a failed attempt some years earlier, Hillary found himself back at the base camp, wondering if he’d ever make it to the top. And then suddenly, he stepped out into the sun and, looking up at Mount Everest, he screamed, ‘I will come again and conquer you! Because as a mountain, you can’t grow. But as a human, I can!’
Maybe Hillary wasn’t really screaming at Mount Everest. Perhaps he was just sending out a message to the world at large. A reminder that we can all keep getting better. We all keep growing. And we can all overcome life’s challenges and climb all those mountains we set our sights on.
The book you now hold in your hands is born out of that belief: we can all become better. We can all grow. There’s a leader inside each of us—waiting to be unleashed, waiting to climb that mountain!
Leadership is not just about the head of the organization or the captain of the team. It’s about you and me and all of us. Everyone is a leader. It just so happens that some people lead teams, and some lead companies or countries. But we all lead a life. Our own. And make no mistake. How good that life is depends on the leader. On you. There is greatness inside each of us. All you need to do is reach for it. And unleash it.
The Secret of Leadership is a collection of stories in four sections. We first take a look at the leader within and draw simple lessons on the making of a leader. We then take a peek into the leader’s mindset. How they think. What they believe. In section three, we look at what ordinary people do to rise to their full potential and achieve extraordinary things. What they do. And the way they do it. And finally, in section four, we look at what it takes to work with people and lead teams; how regular folks inspire themselves and those they work with, helping them discover strengths they did not know they possessed.
You could think of this book as a salad bar. There is no mandated sequence in which you need to read the stories. You can dip in and pick a story that catches your fancy. And you might even find yourself reading and rereading a story that you think is just the one for you. And like a salad bar, one thing is assured: everything being served here is good for you!
In my earlier book, The Habit of Winning (also published by Penguin), I had posed the question, ‘If two people want to climb a mountain, what’s the most important thing they need?’ Is it equipment? Or training? Favourable weather conditions? Teamwork? Luck? The answer of course is that while they needed all of these for sure, the most important thing they really needed was the mountain itself. In our lives, we all need a mountain to climb. A goal that drives us to action.
And great leaders know that. They make sure they have a clear goal—a mountain they wish to climb.
In fact, the stories surrounding Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Everest encapsulate several of the themes that recur throughout The Secret of Leadership.
First, you need a goal. Hillary had that goal, that dream, that mountain. Next, your grades in school or your natural talents—or lack of them—are poor predictors of eventual success. As a child, he got average marks in school. As a gangling teenager, his limbs were almost uncoordinated. And yet none of that stopped him from doing what no man had done before. He backed himself to succeed. He persevered. He did not let failure deter him. It only strengthened his resolve. That’s what true leadership is all about. Like he said, ‘You don’t really conquer a mountain. You only conquer yourself.’
Hillary recognized that no matter what the challenge, you can’t get there alone. And so he partnered with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay who helped him achieve his goal. And that’s not all. Hillary always maintained, ‘We climbed Mount Everest’, without mentioning which of them was the first to reach the summit. Norgay later divulged that Hillary was indeed the first to get to the top—but the leader in Hillary was never one to appropriate the credit.
Interestingly, there is no photo that shows Hillary atop the peak. He took a picture of Norgay on the summit, but when Norgay offered to return the favour, he declined. There are other photos, though, that capture the view from the top. Leaders learn to turn the spotlight away from themselves and on the people around them! For a leader, it’s always about ‘them’—not ‘me’.
Several years later when a team aiming to climb Mount Everest left a mountaineer colleague to die so they could continue with their journey to the top, Hillary was scathing in his criticism of their decision. He slammed the attitude of wanting to climb to the top at all costs! Good leaders learn not to sacrifice their teammates at the altar of their personal ambitions.
And what did Hillary do after climbing Mount Everest? Once you get to the top, what’s next? Hillary didn’t just sit back and relax. He returned several times to the region and climbed ten other peaks. Later, he was also part of a team that reached the South Pole. And some thirty years after scaling the Everest, he flew a twin-engine plane to the North Pole. Wow! New challenges, new mountains to climb, all the time. Standing still is seldom the preferred option. Climbing down can be humbling and, for some, even humiliating. Which is why leaders learn to constantly set new goals and seek fresh challenges.
Hillary was a hero for the Sherpas of Nepal. Not just for his Everest achievement—but for what he did after climbing it. He set up the Himalayan Trust to build schools and hospitals in remote areas to help the Sherpas lead better lives. He gave of himself. And he made a difference to the lives of other people. And ultimately, that’s what leadership is all about. Making a difference. To ourselves, and to the people we work with.
Think of this book as a mountaineer’s knapsack. It has all the essentials you need to survive and get to the top. And instead of axes and headlamps and boots and harnesses, what you will find in here are stories. Stories to help you in your journey to conquer the mountains in your life. Stories that will inspire you, guide you and help you persevere even when inclement weather and the tough terrain make climbing the mountain seem like Mission Impossible.
As Sir Edmund Hillary showed, we can all do it. Everyone is a leader. We can all climb the mountain. You just need to believe in yourself and tell yourself you can do it. You need to take action and persevere in the face of adversity. And you need to learn to unleash the power of the people you work with, who can help you climb mountains you could never, never have climbed on your own.
Get set, then, for a sixty-story expedition. Take that first step. Your own Mount Everest beckons. Success is calling. Are you ready?
Come. You lead the way.