The leadership challenge

Courage to Lead: Leadership Lessons from Kilimanjaro, by Daphna Horowitz

IN AUGUST 2012 Daphna Horowitz, the author of Courage to Lead: Leadership Lessons from Kilimanjaro, undertook a life-changing journey. Together with 18 other women, she climbed Kilimanjaro to raise money for a charity that empowers disadvantaged women.

That sounded less impressive until I read book and discovered what climbing the tallest peak on the African continent entails - breathlessness, exhaustion and pain. This report is a remarkably vivid and engaging account.

Ms Horowitz uses this life-changing experience to unpack a set of 24 leadership lessons.

From all my reading and thinking, I have concluded that the only thing leaders have in common is that they have nothing in common. As such, I do not read books that teach the “seven lesson of great leaders” and the like.

Early in the book, we are informed that this book is not about leadership theories or celebrity leaders. Rather it exposes ideas and insights, many of which will undoubtedly challenge everyone differently. Ideas and insights enrich and are both necessary and welcome.

If you think of yourself as a driven individual rather than a leader, do not let the title distract you. Everyone will derive much benefit from this book.

The book describes aspects of the goal of summiting Kilimanjaro from a very personal viewpoint. It includes learnings from the journey and then challenges the reader with some personal work.

A foundation point is that work and personal life should not be separated, and more importantly, cannot be separated. This separation is becoming more pronounced as society evolves, and the nature of our work becomes more closely connected to our character and personality. As such, getting deeply involved with any self-development material will be a valuable aid on one’s personal journey.

For leaders, the summit of Kilimanjaro is a metaphor for the goal every leader needs. Leadership in every context requires clarity of purpose, and small purposes do not excite, challenge or motivate.

All leaders are tempted to quit when plodding on seems overwhelmingly hard. Big goals can become overwhelming, and it is then that having a team of supporters, fellow travellers and friends who understand your commitment becomes a necessity. The successful keep going regardless.

The questions that flow from this challenge are: “Why are you doing this? Would you do it again?” There is power in being able to answer the former coherently and forcefully, even if your answer to the second is a firm: “Never again!”

"It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the pope about it. Then I wake up and remember that I am the pope,” recalls Pope John Paul XXIII.  

People are called to lead in many different contexts, at business, home, and among peers. It is the acceptance of the leadership challenge that differentiates the people who are crew from those who are passengers.

Leadership inevitably involves challenges to one’s intellect, personal standards and courage. In every leadership situation, we face hard choices and hard decisions. The hardest part of these decisions is the courage to do what we know we should.

Finding one’s authentic self, a crucial element of this book, is the bedrock of courage. When you know your truth, the courage to do what needs to be done is that much easier. Finding one’s authentic self is a life-long journey.

Kilimanjaro is also an effective metaphor for the largest obstacle standing in a person’s way. The issues we all face are presented in bold form as we follow Ms Horowitz in her conquest. The mountain is quiet, seductive and calming, and is a counterpoint to the way so many of us live our lives.

“Many of us wear our businesses as a badge of honour.” The mountain urges asking the question:"Why?"

Surviving the climb requires a time to rest; a time to gather strength, physical and emotional. Rest is a salient message to business people and professionals today, who feel required to be athletes running a non-stop marathon.  

The goal one has needs to be lightly planned. Without planning, nothing can be achieved, but plans are often scuttled in unimaginable ways, as we all experience. The Kilimanjaro expedition was scheduled for a time of year when there is no rain. The season was a deliberate choice to make the experience better. It did rain.

After her return home “I chose to stop, reflect and take time to derive meaning from my experience”, Ms Horowitz explains. Too often, we set goals, achieve them or fail, and never ponder the experience. There are two problems with that: important milestones fade from memory and their lessons are never learned.

What this books teaches, if nothing else, is the value of reflection. However, the book teaches much, much more.

Readability:     Light --+-- Serious
Insights:        High -+--- Low
Practical:        High --+-- Low

 - Fin24

*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.