“High Altitude Leadership” with Don Schmincke | Ep. 202
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About this Episode:
In this episode of The Transformative Leader Podcast, I’m happy to bring you a conversation with Don Schmincke about the leadership insights and unique perspective he has developed as a result of his very fascinating, diverse background. Part of that interesting background includes his education as a planetary physicist at MIT to being a researcher at Johns Hopkins to working with the military and training hundreds of CEO's on high performance, to mountain climbing, hence the title of this episode.
In this conversation, Don shares a great deal of his insight on leadership, including how to avoid some of the common pitfalls such as relying strictly on tools, failing to ask questions, and the dreaded "program of the month" syndrome, and much more. Beyond that, he also shares a great deal of perspective from his book High Altitude Leadership, which he co-authored with Emmy-nominated climber, Chris Warner.
When CEOs asked Donald Schmincke to research the high failure rates of M&A, strategic planning, culture change, and management theory, they didn't realize the primal, genetic triggers he'd unearth would grow their companies faster than traditional methods. What else would you expect from an MIT and Johns Hopkins researcher who was nearly arrested as a capitalist spy in the Soviet Bloc, got shot off an aircraft carrier, survived in the Kurdish capital as the Ayatollah held hostages in Tehran, and developed missile inertial guidance systems while his frat brothers took Vegas (later portrayed in the movie “21”)?
As a best-selling author, Don trains 700 CEOs annually, and can be found sharing his unique methods at keynote speeches or implementing them with clients. His scientific methods make him the thought-leader in applying genetics, evolution, and anthropology to strategic growth. The industry agrees, finding it a refreshing alternative to the trendy theories and "programs-of-the-month" that frustrate senior executives:
Among his many accomplishments, Don is acclaimed as a Top 10 speaker for the world’s largest CEO organization, the author of best-selling books The Code of the Executive and High Altitude Leadership published in over 14 languages, and he has been featured by CNN, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, MSNBC.com and more than 60 industry publications annually.
Today, Don flies 200K miles annually working with clients across every industry including healthcare, manufacturing, non-profits, distribution, technology, communications, finance, and insurance. He occasionally can be found at universities inflicting his unconventional techniques on innocent graduate students.
Guest Links:
Website: sagaleadership.com/
Book(s): High Altitude Leadership, Amazon author page
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/donschmincke/
Twitter: twitter.com/schmincke
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