Lead Like a Guide: How World-Class Mountain Guides Inspire Us to Be Better Leaders

Discover the leadership strengths of world-class mountain guides and see how developing and applying these principles can help you reach for the highest summits in work―and in life.

This intriguing approach to business and personal success introduces six leadership strengths of world-class mountain guides: demonstrating social intelligence; adopting a flexible leadership style; empowering others; facilitating the development of trust; managing risk in an environment of uncertainty; and seeing the big picture. The premise is that these same strengths provide a valuable model in the workplace and other networks, whether one is already in a leadership position or aspiring to get there.

The result of more than a decade of research combined with the author's personal experience, the book explains how mountain guides coach people to reach for their highest goals in the most challenging environments, often enabling them to far exceed what they imagined possible. The same principles can be applied in business and elsewhere. To set readers on the right path, the author explains six strengths of guides, incorporating interviews and quotes from guides and expedition participants to illustrate leadership lessons and show how they can be successfully used off the slopes. The book also provides a checklist of action steps readers can follow to foster skill development.

• Teaches key leadership lessons gained from a decade spent traveling with world-class mountain guides and more than 200 top business school participants

• Shares insights drawn from challenging experiences that will be inspiring and meaningful to readers

• Includes contributions from participants who tell, in their own words, how they applied lessons learned in organizations from American Express to Microsoft to a Silicon Valley startup

• Provides action steps for readers drawn from current research in the fields of management and positive psychology