How often do we equate tackling a giant task at work with climbing a mountain? The skills needed to rise to the top are surprisingly similar, whether they are applied in the office, or in an extreme environment.
Alison Levine is one of the few women to have completed the Adventurers Grand Slam – climbing and reaching the top of highest mountain peaks in the world, known as the Seven Summits, as well as skiing across the North and South Pole. The author of On The Edge: Leadership Lessons Learned from Mount Everest and Other Extreme Environments, Levine believes that survival techniques learned through extreme adventure also apply to climbing the ladder in business.
She has worked on Wall Street, at the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs and in politics as deputy finance director for Arnold Schwarzenegger, during the film star’s successful bid to become Governor of California. She currently runs her own consulting business and for the past decade Levine has travelled the world as a keynote speaker, lecturing about leadership.
“Whether you’re on a mountain in the Himalayas, whether you’re in the middle of Antarctica on a polar expedition or whether you’re in an office environment, every single person involved has to empower themselves to think and act like a leader because that’s the only way that the expedition or the team is going to be successful,” she said.
(Credits: Video produced and edited by Peter Bowes. Additional stills and video courtesy: Jake Norton, Lakpa Rita, Eric Philips, Brad Jackson and Alison Levine.)