Leadership development – from
the peak perspective

By guest blogger Alex Villareal, Odisea Consultores, Mexico

Having climbed 5 of the 7 highest summits including Everest, Alex Villarreal is a sought-after speaker who connects people to their leadership potential and facilitates TetraMap as a leadership competency.  Alex draws on the parallels between climbing Everest and leadership lessons.

It is the climber who creates the sense of its challenge and greatness. If fear takes over, it can fatally inhibit the climber. To succeed, the climber must have hope and believe there is a bright future, a route to get there, and access to the resources needed.

Alex Villarreal

Similarly, great leaders combine courage, knowledge, compassion, and vision to meet the challenges their organisations face. To reach peak performance, leaders support their teams to develop autonomy, mastery, a common understanding of purpose, and a connection to personal passion.

Every day I use my Everest experience to teach how to overcome mental obstacles and override any default reactions that may hinder a strategic direction. Below are core leadership competencies which when carefully developed over time will lead to your greatest personal and team achievements.

Success and failure is a less powerful conversation compared to choice and responsibility

Alex Villarreal

• Courage to develop autonomy

Adventure comes when you make a choice and the end result is not yet a given. You must devote time, effort and energy to find out how your adventure will unfold. When you practice this over and over, only then are you in control and taking ownership and responsibility. You’ll know where you are and how you are progressing towards your mission or goals. Success and failure is a less powerful conversation compared to choice and responsibility.

• Knowledge to develop mastery

One of the worst struggles in life, both personal and organisational, is when you are trying to accomplish something that you have not yet developed the skills for, resources, or someone to mentor and guide you. Learning takes time and there are no shortcuts. Embracing conversations where people can freely ask, share and build collective knowledge and skills is a leadership skill.

• Compassion to support a common purpose

We all have a hero inside. We all want to become a hero for someone else and for humanity. We play this hero role in different places like at home, being a father, a mother or spouse. To connect our product and services with a greater purpose and to share the story with clarity allows us to play out our hero role with conviction. Most importantly and before crafting our story for others, we must ask ourselves sincerely what is the value we can bring to the world?

• Vision to connect team members to their passion

We ‘play’ better and longer the ‘games’ we love and are competent at. As leaders, we must allow our team members to connect their challenges, goals, and tasks to their own strengths and passions. Then we will see team players who are devoted to their own creative style and who ‘play’ their best.

We realise we are doing a great job as leaders when our teams are taking actions that are conducive to the whole team and delivering results.  We see team players improving over time; faster, simpler, better, with a sense of contribution to building a better world, and lastly but importantly you will see it in their eyes!

A great mountain, like Everest, is a pile of rock and ice, nothing less and nothing more. It’s you and I who make sense of it.

Alex Villarreal