As a pioneer of “free solo” climbing—a controversial discipline in which cliff faces are scaled without safety ropes and failure results in death—Honnold, 35, knows how to perform under pressure. His free-solo ascent of the 3,000-foot El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park, was captured in a 2018 Oscar-winning documentary. “Preparation,” he says, “is what stops the fear.”
A version of this article appeared in the May–June 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.
