University of Leeds continues to shape approach to mountains approach

With more than a decade operating at the highest levels of global mountaineering, Cool has led expeditions on Everest and other major peaks where preparation, judgement, and teamwork are non-negotiable.

He has spent extensive time above 8,000 metres, working in conditions where leadership errors carry immediate consequences and decisions must be made with incomplete information.

Now recognised internationally as a high performance speaker, Cool translates lessons from the world’s most dangerous environments into practical insight for business leaders.

His work focuses on trust, decision discipline, team dynamics, and the ability to adapt when conditions change unexpectedly, themes that resonate with organisations operating under sustained pressure.

In this exclusive interview with the High Performance Speakers Agency, Kenton Cool reflects on leadership under pressure, learning from failure, and what it truly takes to perform when the stakes are at their highest.

Question 1. What did falling short of the summit on Laila Peak teach you about success, failure, and reflection?

Kenton Cool: “I mean, Pakistan was super interesting. We got to within maybe 100–120 metres of the top. And it’s one of those clichés: we learn more from failure than we do from success.

“I think, in its simplest form, when things go absolutely swimmingly, like most of my Everest ascents have done, we don’t necessarily pick apart what happened and why it happened. Whereas Pakistan this time, there was a period of decompression.

“It took us, what, four or five days to get back from the mountain. And during that period, everybody that was part of the team, so Dory, my number one climbing sherpa, the client, Richard, you know, myself, we were looking at what went right and what could we do to improve the overall experience next time.

“And the really interesting thing with climbing, mountaineering, is how do we define success? Yes, we didn’t get to the top, but all of us said it’s one of the most enjoyable adventures that we’d ever taken part in. So, you know, was it a failure? Quite possibly not. I mean, it depends on how we define success.

“But the fact that we picked it apart, that’s where the juice in the learnings lie. And if we had just strolled to the top, I don’t think we would have reflected in quite the same way.”

Question 2. When decisions carry life-or-death consequences, how do you prioritise what truly matters in the moment?

Kenton Cool: “Well, climbing big mountains, I mean, if we use Everest as the example here, as soon as we leave the top camp, we’re already at 8,000 metres. There is no helicopter rescue. So we have to be totally responsible for all the decisions and the actions that come thereafter.

“So everything’s got to be on point there. The margins for error on Everest, on summit day, are so, so small. And unlike almost every other industry, if we get it wrong on Everest, somebody’s going to come away either with frostbite at best or possibly death.

“So I try to employ a system that we call binary thinking, and we try to strip away the noise. I’m generally focused on just five or six things: the physical and mental state of the team, not just the clients but the Sherpa team and myself included; what the weather conditions are like, both overhead and underfoot climbing conditions; how much oxygen we have available and what the flow rates are looking like, and how much we have in reserve; and what the time is. Everything else is irrelevant.

“And I think when it comes to that really important, as you said, life-or-death, but we could use the term time-critical decisions, where everything has to be done quickly and efficiently, we need to strip away the noise, strip away the fluff, everything that’s on our periphery. We need to double down and focus on what is actually important.

“The other thing we need to be very conscious of is our decision-making has to be logical rather than emotionally driven, and that in itself is absolutely essential.

“We have this fantastic little short video from CNN of a hiccup high on the mountain and how we dealt with it. It’s all filmed and it’s beautiful. It’s such a great case study to look at and to be able to pick apart what happened in the moment. That is a fabulous learning tool that we have in our back pocket.

“But in life-or-death situations, it’s got to be logically driven, and you’ve got to be focused on what is actually important. Real-time information that’s being fed into the decision-making process, that is key.”

Question 3. In high-stakes environments, what principles guide your approach to leadership and decision-making?

Kenton Cool: “Well, leadership is a huge topic. I do think that leadership is sort of top down, but the overriding principle I believe in leadership is trust.

“There has to be an investment from all stakeholders. In my world, it’s the clients, it’s the Sherpa team, it’s the leadership team. We’ve got to have that trust relationship between all those stakeholders because if we do make time-critical decisions, there isn’t time necessarily to deliberate over, well, if we do X, what’s going to happen, what direction is it going to lead us into?

“So critical leadership is built on that trust, and that takes time. Once you build that trust, you have to rigorously defend it. Of course, we’re going to make mistakes. There are times that we’re going to make the wrong decision, but I forget who the philosopher was, you know, the wrong decision is better than indecision when things are time-critical and stressful.

“Leadership often finds us up against it in terms of time. So we need trust within the stakeholders, but we also need trust within ourselves, that self-confidence to make those often far-reaching decisions.

“Then it needs to be accepted by the stakeholders, and we need to move in that direction. But we also need to have the trust in ourselves and the confidence within the team to pivot if we need to.”

Question 4. What do you want audiences to reflect on or change after hearing you speak?

Kenton Cool: “When we deliver our keynotes, our deliveries, our workshops, ideally what we want to do is we want at least a number of the audience to walk away soul-searching about their own presence on an everyday basis within that organisation.

“We want to elevate their investment. We want to elevate their performance so that every single day they are bringing the best version of themselves to their desk or to their organisation.

“But more than that, we want to try to instil a winning culture, because we can’t just turn up at work every day and be the best version of ourselves every single day. It’s just an impossibility.

“That’s where culture comes into things, because if we have a collaborative culture, a culture that is, to an extent, nurturing, a culture which is a collective, then if we go in and we’re not having the best day, our colleagues can understand that, realise it, and help elevate what it is that we’re doing.

“Ultimately, what we try to do is instil peak performance, high performance, in the teams that we talk to. We use the analogies of building high-performing teams in dangerous environments.

“That’s what I’m known for. And if we can overlay that to organisations, then certainly I walk away from the stage feeling that I’ve done my job. And if we do it properly, then the organisation, we hope, will see an uplift in high performance.”

This exclusive interview with Kenton Cool was conducted by Tabish Ali of the Motivational Speakers Agency.