El Cap and Overnight Success

A week ago from the time of this writing, my family and I were standing in Yosemite National Park at the base of El Capitan, the granite monolith that rises roughly 3000 feet above the valley floor. The face of the rock is sheer, mostly vertical — and wholly daunting…just to gaze at, let alone to climb.

As we stood there, intimidated, infatuated, my son said, “How crazy that he did that.”

He: Alex Honnold
That: free soloed the entirety of El Capitan

A little more than nine years ago, on 3 June 2017, Honnold scaled El Cap by himself, with just a chalk bag on his belt, no safety gear, no ropes attached: a free solo climb. He was the first person to do this and remains the only person to do this.

Many have called Honnold’s free solo of El Capitan the greatest athletic achievement in human history (a position difficult to dispute when one stands at the base of the rock). And thanks to a documentary film about Honnold’s triumph, with the tidy title Free Solo, the 3 hours and 56 minutes he spent ascending El Cap made him an “overnight success” to those outside the climbing world.

People who did previously know about Alex Honnold nor perhaps about El Capitan — but who did have Netflix — suddenly (overnight) knew a little something about rock climbing, about Honnold, about one the more notable landmarks in our nation. And armed with such knowledge, said people began saying things like:

“Dude’s insane.”

“Dude’s incredible.”

“Talk about a death wish — one slip and splat.”

“There’s not enough money in the world to get me to try that.”

All fair comments, by the way.

And all focused on what Honnold did on 6/3/17, not on what he did for preceding decades to make that day possible. That is, all focused on the destination, not the journey. Because…well, that’s typically what we do in this culture (unfortunately). We’re too distracted, too myopic, too needy-for-the-next-rush to appropriately appreciate the transformative power of rise, grind, and repeat — in anonymity and for perpetuity.

Instead, we wish upon a star. We want overnight success to be a real thing…because, if it is, we might likewise “achieve” such success ourselves someday (er, some night).

But if you want amazing results without requisite effort, if you want a quick fix or quick fame, if you want to bypass that rise-grind-and-repeat road…then (alas) you’re not ready to lead.

Leading is a calling, to be sure. And also a craft. Do you view yourself as a craftsman? A craftswoman?

You should.

Author Jon Gordon tells us why:

“…there’s no such thing as an overnight success. The way to success is the way of the craftsman, where you work really hard for years. You show up every day. You do the work. You see yourself as an artists dedicated to your craft with the desire to get better every day. You put your heart and soul into your work as you strive for excellence. You desire to create perfection, knowing you’ll never truly achieve it but hoping to get close to it. You try new things. You fail. You improve. You grow. You face countless challenges and tons of rejection that makes you doubt yourself and cause you to want to quit. But you don’t. You keep working hard, stay positive, and persevere through it all with resilience, determination, and a lot of hope and faith. Then you make it! Everyone wants to work with you. And the world says, ‘Where have you been?’ And you say, ‘I’ve been here all along, and hopefully getting better day by day. To the world, you are an overnight success. To you, the journey continues.”

And Alex Honnold corroborates:

“I think the film Free Solo does a great job of showing how much preparation and training went into the ascent, so, hopefully, that will help with the common misperception that I just wandered up to a huge rock and decided to climb it. For me, at least, free soloing is very much an expression of mastery, both of the climb and of myself. I try to make sure the uncertainty is actually quite low — that’s the point of all the training and preparation. So even though the climb might be very high stakes, it feels like a sure thing for me because I’m so well prepared for it.”

At some point in your leadership journey, you’ll face your own El Capitan…and will have to climb by yourself, sans safety gear. No ropes, just chalk. Whether you’ll successfully ascend will not depend on how you feel in the moment but rather on what you’ve done in all the prior moments to prepare.

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El Cap and Overnight Success was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.