Sir Ranulph Fiennes was named by The Guinness Book of Records as The World’s Greatest Living Explorer. For decades, he has led expeditions to the most remote regions of our planet and broken world records across the globe.
In our exclusive interview, we discuss the importance of risk-taking in leadership, coping with fear, and the parallels between expeditions and business.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Sir Ranulph Fiennes
How important is risk-taking to leadership?
Risk-taking is a form of flexibility. You plan to do the expedition with minimum risks.
In the case of exploration to break world records, which has been my business for 40 years, breaking records means doing it before anybody else. And pretty much every polar expedition we have gone for has had world polar experts trying to break that record and failing. Therefore, we know that we have got to think flexibly, and we know that we must avoid risks. Because any risk that you take adds to the chances of failure.
So, plan, look at the risks other people have taken and don't go for them. Avoid them. Skirt the risks. Don't try to work out a way of going over them. Minimal risk-taking is what we go for.
How do you define leadership?
I reckon that a definition of leadership is the ability to do what the aim consists of. Whether it is to go to the North Pole, or, to go before anybody else does, or, to go to the North Pole with scientists gathering information en route.
So that whatever ancillary aims are attached to the main aim, the leader is coping with every aspect of the expedition. And keeping the various people happy, as much as is possible. Not appearing to be too dictatorial, unless that leader has the confidence of being better than anybody else on that team at making a decision.
So if there was a crevasse field that got in the way, and you wake up in the morning, and you look out of the tent, and you see that the crevasse field is difficult, you know you are the best person in the world at knowing how to cross it, which is not a skill that helps you get a job anywhere in the world. But in this particular leadership situation you have the confidence to say, "we will cross the crevasse field on the left-hand side!"
If you know when you wake up that that crevasse field is going to be equally easy, wherever, you don't be dictatorial, you put it to everybody in the team; "which way should we cross this crevasse field?" knowing that whatever they come up with is going to be okay.
So, be a dictatorial leader when you have to be to affect the outcome due to your self-confidence.
How do you cope with fear?
When a person that is trying to do some accomplishment knows that they have got a fear, in my particular case climbing a big mountain when I know that I have vertigo. They have to try to find the world's expert climber, mountain guide, or whatever it is, and rely on them knowing that they have previously taken people with vertigo up dreadful mountains. Because they have developed a method of advising that vertigo victim how to get over their phobia during a difficult climb.
In the case of vertigo, it is very simple, you do not look down. And it helps if you have a guide who is up on the end of a rope either just above you or just below you, who sees that you are beginning to look down, and will scream at you.
But the worst of all is when your brain starts thinking down even though you are looking up and starts imagining the dark void below. Strange things like a bird flying around just below your feet and a 6000-foot drop makes you start thinking of that dreadful void. And once the vertigo rush comes on you it has effects like making you go weak, at a time when you are on little grips you don't want to be weak; you have to avoid that rush beginning to come.
On the Eiger, the north face of the Eiger; it was 3 days and nights that I had to control my brain, with the help of Kenton Cool, who has been up Everest 11 times, knowing my weakness and constantly watching it. Controlling my mind, basically. That was the key.
Find someone better than you; the best person at that particular project and listen to everything they say to guard you from your own weakness.
Is it possible to succeed without failing first?
People have succeeded, amazingly, without failures en route. Largely because of not just the skills they have developed to a fine art, higher than anyone before them, but also because of their luck quotient.
People don't like talking about luck because it takes away from their ability, but luck is vastly important.
Many of the failures we have had have been due to bad luck, although you can't say so because you are trying to get out of it. And many of our successes have been due to an amazing good luck.
How do you translate the parallels between expeditions and business?
When you try and translate expeditions into business parallels it is sometimes an artificial business. It should be obvious when you do a lecture on the expeditions.
How you raise the money for the expeditions; by persuading business that it was in their interest, they will get wonderful pictures of their logo in strange things., The fact that we raise huge sums of money, nearly £20million from the expeditions for the charities that we choose, helps because it means that the big business is actually involved in money raising as well as getting PR for themselves.
When it comes to saying the leadership, the problems with the team, how do you push that into the business, it is very obvious. I don't have to lecture and say that equals that. The people who are listening will see the problems we have had and the difficulty of mounting an expedition.
One expedition the wife and I planned; we worked every day for seven years, unpaid. Worked weekends in pubs to make a living, in order to follow one particular aim. That could have been a business aim. In our case it was to break a big world record, but it took an awful lot of time.
We needed £29million in the early 70's, and that ended up with 1900 sponsor companies. That is a lot of work and you need to pay them all back PR wise. But as you lecture on it, the business people listening will draw their own conclusions. You don't sit there like a school nanny.
What is the mindset of a winner?
Winners are people that a) had good luck on their side, b) not too much bad luck on their side, c) they do it slowly but surely because they are probably not born a natural winner in that particular field.
So, they gradually gain the confidence, and the ability, and the way of passing it on to the new people if they do need new people in their team.
One of the successes is keeping your team very small. If you're doing physical things it's better to have ten people who have got twenty legs that might be broken, rather than forty people who have got 80 legs that might be broken, if one broken leg will stop the entire project.
Have you achieved all of your goals?
Because our group really went for polar, rather than mountains, or oceans, or deserts, we developed, over 40 years, a greater skill than all our rivals, with one exception, which was the Norwegians.
They are extremely good. Possibly they have more ice and snow in their back gardens geographically than we do in the UK. Possibly they have a history of breaking world records above the Brits.
But we have gained many world polar records over 40 years that they have been going for, but we have beaten them to it, and the other way around as well. So, in that particular field I think we have done as well as we possibly could do.
How do you push through setbacks and failure?
To set back from failure you just try again.
When we tried to go up Everest and failed, on the Tibetan side of Everest - there are two sides to go up Everest, I just thought "well, I will try the other side", i.e., be flexible.
When I failed on that side also, I looked at the two failures and said, "what went wrong?".
A year later I tried again from the easiest side of the two, having learnt the lessons of failure previously. And on the third time I got to the top without any problem at all and wondered why it had been so difficult on the previous two times.
That parallel applies to other expeditions as well. First of all, before you set out you know why other people failed. The second time after a failure you know why other people and you failed. And the third time, if you don't do it then you’re never going to do it.
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