• Sustaining Peak Performance
• Selecting the Team
• Boosting and Maintaining Motivation
• Striving Towards the Goal
• Problem Solving
• Seeing with Fresh Eyes
• Achieving Diversity
Tahir Shah is regarded as one of the leading explorers of his generation. His work is characterized by the endurance of extreme hardship, whether it be in the Amazon jungle, the Sahara desert or a journey through the inhospitable landscape of the Himalayas. He is an expert at team selection, management, and motivation, and has lectured to seminars of country heads from Procter and Gamble and other international corporations.
In additional to the challenges of the hardest expeditions imaginable, Tahir Shah has endured other extraordinary hardships. These include sixteen days in the solitary confinement of a Pakistani torture jail, after being arrested with his film crew in the summer of 2005, while travelling to Afghanistan.
Shah on Leadership and Exploration:
“There are two qualities I look for in anyone I hire. The first is enthusiasm. I don’t care if someone can’t climb with ropes, scuba dive or do celestial navigation. I can teach them that skill. I’m searching for the base character – the person who’ll be ready and willing to continue upriver when he’s got dengue fever and no skin on his toes.
“The second quality I search for is the ability to solve problems. Some people are naturally good at understanding a situation, and working out how to flip misfortune into success.
“The search for good people never stops. I’m looking for them all the time. I look at the waiter who brings the pizza to my table, or the cab driver who drives me across town. I ask probing questions, hoping to see what drives the person. But most of all, I search for an abounding energy.
“I have come to learn that business requires many of the same qualities that a well organised expedition necessities. You need people who will work well as a team, and you need someone at the top whose leadership will make the difference.”
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