The Hardest Mile? Lessons in Business Leadership from the Mahoosuc Notch.

I’m crawling through a damp tunnel on my hands and knees swearing away to myself like a sailor whose shore leave has just been cancelled. The weight of the giant boulders surrounding me is pressing in, making the tunnel feel even narrower than it already is. I don’t really like enclosed spaces, and while this isn’t a long crawl, it’s more than long enough for me. My hands and knees scrape along the stone as I push my backpack ahead of me, and somewhere deep below, I can hear the rumble of water, cascading through an underground cavern. ?This is the Mahoosuc Notch.

It's been two and a half days since I started my crossing of the 31 miles that make up the Mahoosuc Traverse and I still have another brutal day left ahead of me to reach the end of this section. Spanning the border between New Hampshire and Maine the Traverse is all tough, technical hiking, but the part of it I'm in right now, The Mahoosuc Notch, even more so. Thru-hikers refer to this as the hardest single mile of the 2,196 miles that make up the whole of the Appalachian Trail.

I’m now two hours into making my way through this hardest single mile and it will still take me another 45 minutes to reach the end of it. Yes, it’s seriously that hard.

You might be thinking that Hodge is the worst hiker in the world if his pace is only around a third of a mile an hour.? Truthfully, however, I’m thoroughly enjoying this. My pace is around what I had anticipated and rather than worrying about that, I’m concentrating on my safety and the overall physical environment around me. The feel of the rocks on my shoes and hands, the likelihood of a chosen route through the next section of rocks being navigable, and on the aches and strains in my muscles as I reach, stretch, and fight my way across this formidable section.

As I write about this experience, we are fast approaching another Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States- my favorite holiday and one which embodies the spirit of gratitude. On this single mile of the trail, I was leaning heavily into my gratitude, as I continue to develop that mental toughness muscle that allowed me to transition from distractive emotions to empowering intent.

If you want to find out what makes the Mahoosuc Notch so difficult, if I ended up agreeing that it was the hardest mile, and the leadership lessons I took from this exceptional experience then read on.

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The Notch

We can be heroes.

The Mahoosuc Notch is one of the most anticipated and iconic parts of the Appalachian Trail. Descriptions of it run from technical to daunting, but almost all call it the hardest mile. For northbound thru-hikers, it acts as a gateway to the final section of the adventure. The White Mountains of New Hampshire are now behind you and only Maine is left to conquer. Get yourself through this notch and it’s all downhill from there. Except that’s not actually true, as Maine brings plenty of uphill challenges and tough terrain, as the trail winds across those last 280 miles north to Katahdin.

The Mahoosuc Notch itself is buried into a deep ravine with steep brutal walls rising up to an unobtainable vantage point. If you could look down from up there, you would see a solid jungle gym of large boulders strewn along it’s floor for exactly one mile.

I’m standing in front of another one of these barricades of rocks, which rises up 20-40 feet into the clear blue sky, blocking the rest of my view and providing only this challenge directly in front of me to master. At each set of rocks- for the last 2 hours- I’ve had to decide how to get up, over, around, or under them. The normal Appalachian trail markers, the white blazes, only appear a few times to direct you into narrow passages under some giant rocks. It’s like a massive puzzle with the correct answer being custom built for each individual hiker.

Crawling through several stretches of narrow tunnels below giant rocks, pushed me way outside of my comfort zone. As a crawled along, I was thinking about this great quote my son had told me about from David Bowie, the British music legend, about being out of your comfort zone. In a trailer for the HBO documentary ‘The Last Five Years’ he said, “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.” I was definitively out of my depth in the tunnels.

This is, perhaps, an excellent leadership lesson here. When you push yourself further, when you feel you are in over your head, or under the rock in my case, it really does have a way of expanding your horizons.

As with most leadership lessons, this goes both for yourself and for the people you are leading. Developing the ability to push anyone out of their comfortable zone and make them feel mostly good about it, is a skill well worth working on. This also requires being able to grant trust to someone. The simple act of asking someone to do something new, or difficult implies that you trust they have the skills and ability to accomplish the task.

“You’ve got this” might be some of the most powerful words you can ever say to anyone, regardless if you say them out loud or imply them by your actions.

Do the Hard Things

Choose the Moon.

I knew this mile would be tough and I knew I had to be realistic about my pace and my skills. Thru-hikers tend to talk about taking 90 minutes or so to get through the Notch, so I doubled that time and used that as my planning point. ?I knew it was going to be hard and accepted that fact because, after all, isn’t doing hard things the point of this?

If leadership is anything, it is this. The ability to clearly define audacious goals, hard things, and then inspire those around us to accomplish the goal. Sometimes, like with the Notch, it was just me. I was the one who needed to dig deep and commit to it, to put myself in a place where I knew this was a challenge that I could not postpone and one I needed to conquer.

As a leader, you need to be able to inspire both yourself and those around you to achieve these hard things. This is always accomplished with a combination of words and actions.

One of the most inspiring leadership speeches ever given clearly illustrates this connection. On September 12th, 1962, President Kennedy (JFK) addressed an audience of around 40,000 in the football stadium at Rice University in Houston, Texas. In the speech, JFK sets out his reason for why the USA needed to go to the moon, focusing on the very fact that it is a hard thing to do.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win and the others, too.”

Ted Sorenson wrote this speech for JFK and it is filled with powerful imagery every bit as relevant today as it was in 1962. It’s well worth going back and reading the full text of the speech or watching video of JFK delivering lines such as the following:? “We meet at a college noted for knowledge, in a city noted for progress, in a State noted for strength, and we stand in need of all three, for we meet in an hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.” ?

One year after this speech, on the 22nd of November 1963, JFK was assassinated in Dallas. Neil Armstrong took humankind’s first step on the moon on July 21st, 1969.

Just Be You

Won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up.

Is the Mahoosuc Notch the hardest mile on that Appalachian Trail? For me, the answer is a clear NO. I have had plenty of harder miles on this journey. The mile right before I chose to finish hiking a section in Connecticut is one that sticks out. I struggled with my decision and while it was the physical aspects that put me in the situation, it was the mental aspects that I struggled with the most. The first mile I got back on the trail after my mum passed away was my most emotional mile. ?That mile getting to the top of Mt. Lafayette in horrible weather conditions was the most physically demanding. All of these were harder than the Mahoosuc Notch for me and all for different reasons. Mental, emotional, physical.

We really shouldn’t let others define what hard is for us.? The Mahoosuc Notch was certainly the slowest mile for me, but other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Perhaps it was the perfect weather conditions, or the fact that I had spent a few weeks in the White Mountains and was prepared for ‘hard.’ Either way, it brought home to me that one person’s definition of hard is not another person’s.

This led me to thinking about what being seen as a leader actually is and how we can sometimes feel that someone else’s definition of that is the one we have to aspire to. But is that true or are we letting someone else define it for us? Can you be a great leader just by being the real you, the authentic self?

I would argue forcefully that you can. Certainly, the skills, traits, and personality that you bring are going to form the shape of your leadership, but you don’t need to fit someone else’s stereotype in order to lead.

This plays out most often in gender bias towards leadership. Women tend to be ascribed communal characteristics such as ‘nurturing’ and ‘kind’ and as a result are stereotypically seen as less capable of leadership than men who are ascribed agentic traits such as ‘ambitious’ and ‘self-confident.’ This is even more true when the leadership role in question is itself described in masculine terms.

Leadership is not about a set of traits, it’s not about being seen as hard pushing or forceful, rather it’s about the outcome. Can you coalesce, inspire, and guide people around a common mission? Just as there are many ways to hike the Appalachian Trail, as captured in the saying ‘hike your own hike,’ so there are many ways to be a successful leader.? This is true for you and for those leaders that you have in your orbit.

In fact, perhaps one of the defining characteristics of a great leader might just be that you already know that ‘being your authentic self’ is what makes you successful in this role.

It’s Done when it’s Done

Be where your feet are.

Coming out of the Mahoosuc Notch is a wonderful feeling. “I did it. I completed the hardest mile. I can do anything,” and the very next thing I did was to trip over a small rock and end up sitting in a mud puddle. Argh.

This is the way on the Appalachian Trail. If you let go of your concentration for even one second, then the smallest rock can trip you up. The smallest piece of moss on a rock can have you hoping you’re not going to break your leg as you fall, and that missed blaze can have you hiking 30 mins in the wrong direction. I have managed to do all of these on my hiking multiple times and in each case, it was a lack of concentration that was the fault.

Thankfully, there was no one around to see me sheepishly get up from the mud and dust myself down. But it was a great reminder that I wasn’t done and still had plenty more hiking to do that day.

From a leadership perspective, the ability to be present in the moment is a critical skill. By present, I mean - are you truly engaged and paying attention on the thing in front of you? To quote a famous Zen saying, “Chop wood, carry water.” I actually really like the simplicity of this saying. If a Buddhist monk were to invent this saying today it might be something like “Walk, don’t text,” but that might just be me channeling my inner grievances.

If you research ‘being present’ you will find a lot of conversation around mindfulness, meditation, yoga, well-being, etc., but for the purposes of this conversation, it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Simply, “Are you paying attention?” Ironically, the complexity of the mindfulness movement seems to have over complicated this concept even as it bombards us with messages about simplicity.

Not only do we need to be able to learn how to be present for every meeting, every call, and every personal interaction, but we also need to keep the focus on long term initiatives too. It’s too easy to lose that intensity and focus as we move deeper into a project, but doesn’t the end of a plan require just as much commitment as the start??

It’s not always easy to be present especially when we are pulled in multiple different directions. However, with minimal effort, you can learn how to recognize when you are not present and make good choices about what to do.? There is a quote often used by sports coaches, “Be where your feet are.” It was difficult to track down who originated this quote, but certainly extraordinary coaches from Pat Summitt to Nick Sabin have used this principle as a bedrock of their coaching. Don’t be thinking about the next shot, next drive, or next tackle. Stay focused on the one that is now.

Similarly, if you are on a call, but are responding to emails, instant messaging a couple of colleagues, and checking the weather for the game this weekend, then you are clearly not present- even if you think you are. There is a really interesting scientific study from the University of Utah that shows that people who think they are good at multi-tasking are, in fact, the ones who are least likely to be any good at it. Yes I'm talking to you.

Ask yourself the question, “Do I need to be on this call or in this meeting?” because if you do, then it’s worth giving it your full attention.? And if you don’t, then go do something else with your time.

If I find myself distracted and not fully present in a meeting, then I will ask someone to give me a minute, finish what I need to do and then announce, “Right, I’m all yours.” It’s a great way of telling yourself and the other person that you are now present and hopefully you now can avoid tripping over that small rock.

Stay Humble People

Really, stay humble.

What hikers neglect to tell you about the Mahoosuc Notch is that once you finish it, you are not done. Not even close. Immediately following your exit, there is a brutal, almost vertical, climb up a stone mountain face called the Mahoosuc Arm. 1,617 feet of tough rock face climb, even tougher considering you just came out of the Notch.

When you get to the top of that, then you are faced with pine bogs. These are deep bogs that will suck you down and hold you prisoner if you take a misstep and fail to navigate the wooden planks that sit submerged under the muddy surface water. Time after time, you have to find the plank with your poles, step exactly where you know it to be, and then repeat. It’s exhausting work.

What the Arm and the pine bogs reminded me is that just because I had completed the Mahoosuc Notch, it didn’t mean I couldn’t still be humbled by what the trail had to throw at me. Tripping over that little rock at the base of the Arm was a great example of this. So, too, were all the other times that the trail has humbled me any time I thought I was the boss of it.?

Talking of bosses, I used to have one that would weave the following saying into every all-hands meeting, “There are two kinds of people, those who are humble, and those who will be.” The trail has certainly re-enforced that perspective for me. It would be really difficult to go into the Mahoosuc Traverse and just assume that you’re such a great hiker it’s not going to challenge you. Rather those who respect the fact that it’s going to be challenging, and plan accordingly, are going to rewarded with the experience. If you don't the trail will find a way to humble you.

The famed “hardest mile on the Appalachian trail” turned out to be the slowest mile for me and that’s how I’ll remember it. One that helped to keep me humble, and respectful, and grateful for what the trail has given me and is yet to show me.

Recently, I was in my home Country of Wales and came across a Welsh saying which I think embodies this spirit of humility and gratitude from a leadership perspective. “Bid Ben, Bid Bont.” This translates to something like “If you aspire to being a leader, you must be a bridge.” It seems to me that being a bridge is indeed something you can only do with humility, being present in the moment, and with a healthy dose of gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving.

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If you would like more information on why I hike, please visit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (CFF) at?www.cff.org.

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If you feel inspired enough to make a donation to the CFF, you can do so at the following link, and know that your donation will make a significant difference:? DONATE

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