Conquering Heights, Redefining Failure, and Inspiring Leadership

This morning, I stopped at my friend's house to bid farewell to Lucy Westlake (see picture), who is embarking on a daring expedition to conquer K2 in Pakistan. Lucy is an extraordinary mountaineer, boasting an impressive array of accomplishments.

She holds the title of the youngest North American Woman to summit Mt. Everest, has been honored with the prestigious Billie Jean King 2022 Youth Leadership Award, and, alongside her father Rodney, they set the record as the youngest father-daughter duo to reach the highest peaks in all 50 U.S. states.?

Having known Lucy the vast majority of her life, I featured her as the centerpiece of the "Rethink Failure" lesson on Day 3 of my book, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge: 35 Action Steps to Become the Leader You Were Meant to Be. Today, I want to share that very lesson with you in the hopes of inspiring you to redefine failure and continuously strive to become the best version of yourself.?

As Lucy and her team embark on this incredible journey, my prayers and well wishes accompany them, fervently hoping for a safe and swift return.

Here's the excerpt from The Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Five-Week Leadership Challenge:

Day 3: Rethink Failure

Lucy Westlake is impressive. She’s an amazing runner, triathlete, and mountain climber. Outside Magazine called her, “The Grittiest 13-Year-Old Mountain Climber We Know.” Lucy also has a genuinely good heart and is committed to making a positive mark on the world, and by all indications, she is well on her way to building an incredible legacy.

I have had the chance to share a few stages with Lucy. Together we have talked about leadership, facing challenges, and overcoming failure. At first blush, people might be surprised that a teenage girl and a 50-year-old business professor, writer, and speaker are able to capture the attention of several hundred sales leaders, but it works.

Why?

Because we are all dealing with the same thing. We all set goals, we all work hard to accomplish them, and we all know what it feels like to win and what if feels like to fail.

What Lucy has figured out at a young age is how to keep failure in perspective.

How?

A couple of years ago, Lucy and her dad set out to climb Denali in Alaska. Her aim was to make it to the top and claim the record as the youngest female to conquer the highest point in each of the 50 United States of America. Denali is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 meters) above sea level. It’s a challenge.

After 20 days on the mountain, they descended. Weather made reaching the summit impossible. As a result, Lucy “failed” in a couple of ways:

1. She didn’t summit Denali.
2. She didn’t become the youngest female in history to reach the highest point of all 50 states.

?As you might imagine, Lucy was disappointed in the outcome. You would be, too. She had invested a ton of time, energy, emotion, and effort into reaching her goal. Every other climb had gone flawlessly. She reached every summit without fail.

But what she learned from failing is a victory.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what Lucy once told me when I asked her about what she learned from Mt. Denali.

“It took a lot of grit just to get up to the camp that we reached on Denali. It was one of the hardest things that I had ever done,” she said. “It also took a lot of grit to accept that we didn’t make it to the top. It was really disappointing, but I feel if I gave up then, I didn’t accomplish what I could. I love mountain climbing by itself, but also I love the things that mountain climbing allows me to do. My gift of climbing mountains has the ability to inspire others to do what they want to do.”

Here are three things we can all learn from Lucy’s ability to fail gracefully:

1. Trust in Others

Imagine for a moment that you are Lucy’s dad, Rodney. You’re her climbing partner and the two of you are working your way up a snow-covered mountain. At one point, the terrain gets a bit more technical and you decide to rope up for safety. You attached one end of a rope to her and the other end to you. If she starts to fall, she trusts you to catch her. If you start to fall, you must trust her to catch you.

No doubt, you are doing the math. Rodney has a significant weight advantage over his teenage daughter. What makes up for the mathematical delta? He has confidence in her and her abilities. He has watched her try, fail, try again, and succeed since she started hiking mountains at age seven. He knows that each successive failure and victory has made her stronger. In the early days of her hiking career, if he had chastised her failures rather than coached her through them, she would undoubtedly see failure in a very different light. It would not have been something to learn from but something to be judged about. In turn, she would have played small, avoided risks, and likely quit trying altogether.

The same is true for you as a leader. You have to realize that how you react to failure matters. Failure is inevitable, your reaction is not.

2.??Determination to Achieve Greatness

There is a long list of unknown poets, musicians, and other dreamers who gave up on achieving greatness at the first sign of failure. Instead of standing at the summit of their own success, they settled for something less. They decided that good was good enough.

Lucy could certainly do this. She already holds the title for the youngest female to reach the highest point in the lower 48 states. That’s pretty darn good, but she is determined to do more. She is determined to achieve greatness.

As a leader, you will experience failure and disappointment. That’s expected when you try new things and strive to be great at something. However, how you process that failure and how you develop others to deal with it is often the difference between settling and soaring.

3. Resilience in the Face of Failure

When we get knocked down, some of us have a difficult time getting back up and trying again. Not only do we lose the drive to summit the mountain that beat us, but we decide that we are no longer a climber at all.

The poet puts down his pen.

The musician sets down her instrument.

The leader gives up.

The challenge is that you build resiliency when you don’t need it. You invest in your mind, body, spirit, and relationships every day knowing that those investments will pay huge dividends in the future. They will give you a deep well of resiliency to draw from when failure comes. And, it will come.

Lucy didn’t stop after Denali. She continues to climb mountains, and has summited Russia’s Mt. Elbrus (the highest point in Europe) and Argentina’s Mt. Aconcagua (the highest point in South America). I have no doubt that Lucy will climb Mt. Denali and any other mountain she sets out to conquer in life. Her determination and resiliency will see to that. She has also inspired others. Since we started presenting together, I have summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, the highest point Africa.?

You will learn more about my Mt. Kilimanjaro hike and what it taught me on day seven. In the meantime, let’s explore your relationship failure and how you process it.?

Today’s Thought

If you want to accomplish something that you have never accomplished before, you will face setbacks and failure. It comes with the territory. Great leaders learn from failures and continue to move forward. Failure is inevitable. Your response to is your choice.

Today’s Questions

1. Have past failures increased or diminished your determination for greatness?
2. What dreams have you given up on and settled for something less?
3. Have you been knocked down in the past and managed to get back up and try again?
4. How deep is your well of resiliency?
5. What are you doing right now to invest in your mind, relationships, body, and spirit?

Today’s Challenge

Think about a recent failure that you’ve experienced. Identify one thing you can learn from that failure to help you to become a better leader.

End excerpt.

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Make it a great day!

Patrick

P.S. I'll be sure to share an update on Lucy's journey!

#leadership #leader #success #inspiration