As a wegbereiter of “free solo” climbing—a controversial discipline in which cliff pages are scaled without safety wire and failing results in death—Honnold, 35, knows how to perform under pressure. His free-solo climb of the 3,000-foot El Capitan, in Yosemite National Parked, was locked in a 2018 Oscar-winning documentary. “Preparation,” he says, “is what stops the fear.”
A release of this article appeared inside the May–June 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.