I was terrified of heights... until my daughter led me
A few years ago my family and I drove down to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky for a camping trip, and somewhere along the way my wife informed me, as often happens in our household, that we would be taking a small side excursion. We were going to do a little light rappelling at a place called Horse Cave.
She told me this in advance because she knows something about me that has been true since long before we were married. I am afraid of heights. So she softened the news the way you soften news for someone you love. She said it was probably a little "kiddie" cliff, maybe ten feet, because our kids were young at the time and the kids were going to do it too. You lean back, you drop, it is over.
And then she added the detail that closed the deal. It ended in a pizza buffet. If you want to make almost anything okay with me, tell me it ends in a pizza buffet.
When we arrived, they started strapping gear on us. Helmets. Pads. Something that looked suspiciously like body armor. I remember thinking that this was an enormous amount of equipment for a ten foot kiddie cliff, and that we appeared to be preparing for a Navy SEAL raid rather than an afternoon of family recreation. That was when I received two pieces of information I did not previously have:
The first was that it was not a ten foot cliff. It was an eighty four foot sheer rock face that empties out into another one hundred and twenty seven foot drop into Horse Cave.
The second piece of information held my salvation. Our guide mentioned that a lightning storm was moving into the area, and that if it arrived faster than expected, not everyone in our group was going to get to go over the cliff.
I developed a strategy immediately. I was going to become the most polite rappeller in the history of Horse Cave. As we walked out toward the edge, I held the door for people. I gestured others ahead of me. I said no, please, you go first, no, really, after you. There were twenty five people in our group, and I made sure that every single one of them was in front of me. I wanted that experience desperately, and I wanted it for them so much more.
Standing there at the back of the line, I felt quite good about myself. I had almost certainly avoided going over the cliff, and I had managed to look like a generous man while doing it.
Then I looked up toward the front of the line, and there was my daughter Ava, eyes wide, practically licking her chops, unable to wait to go over that edge. The guide walked over, put his hand on her helmet, and said something about this brave young lady who wanted to go first. Then he added that a child could not lead. We needed an adult to go first.
And Ava turned and looked straight at me.
Something flipped in me in that moment. My hand shot into the air and I heard myself say that I would go. I made my way over to what I have since come to call the precipice of death, they hitched me in, and I leaned back over an eighty four foot drop with my heart somewhere in my throat.
I have spent years thinking about why that happened.
Why was I terrified to do something one moment and doing that very thing the next? Here is what I have come to understand, and here is why it matters far beyond a rock face in Kentucky.
Courage Is Not The Absence Of Fear, It Is The Presence Of Something You Value More
I didn't stop being afraid of heights on that cliff. I am afraid of heights today. Nothing about my internal wiring changed between the back of the line and the edge of the rock. What changed was that something I valued more than my own comfort entered the frame, and my fear was suddenly outweighed rather than eliminated.
This matters because most people wait to feel ready before they act. They assume that the fear must resolve first, that confidence arrives and then courage follows. It works the other way around. The fear stays exactly where it is, and you go anyway because something on the other side of it matters more than the discomfort of the crossing.
Avoidance Frequently Disguises Itself As Generosity
The most uncomfortable part of that story is not the cliff. It is how good I felt standing at the back of the line. I wasn't hiding, I was being gracious. I was letting others go first. I had taken an act of pure self protection and dressed it in the costume of selflessness, and I had fooled myself so completely that I was congratulating myself while I did it.
This happens constantly in organizations. The manager who doesn't deliver the hard feedback tells himself he is being kind. The leader who will not make the call says she is gathering more input. The team member who avoids the difficult conversation calls it respecting other people’s time. Watch for the moment when your virtue and your convenience point in precisely the same direction. That alignment is worth examining honestly, because it is usually the tell.
Somebody Is Always At The Front Of The Line, Watching You
I did not go over that cliff because I summoned something noble inside. I went because my daughter turned around and looked at me, and in that instant the gap between what I say I believe and what I was actually doing became visible to someone whose opinion of me matters more than my own.
Every leader has people at the front of the line. They are watching how you handle the thing you have been avoiding. They are calibrating their own willingness to your example, and they are learning what is actually permissible here rather than what the values statement claims. Your team will not exceed the courage you model for them. They will match it and then round down.
Leadership Calls Out What Is Already There
Ava did not give me courage. She did not install anything in me that I was lacking. What she did was call out of me something that was already inside, something I was working very hard to ignore, and she did it simply by turning around and looking.
That is the actual work. You are not manufacturing bravery in people who have none. You are creating the moment in which the thing they already possess becomes impossible to keep hidden. Sometimes that means asking the question that no one else will ask. Sometimes it means putting your hand on someone’s helmet and telling them out loud what you see in them. Sometimes it just means turning around and looking at them, and letting them decide who they want to be while you watch.
Everyone got over the cliff that day, by the way. The lightning storm arrived, and it turned out to be no threat at all. The pizza buffet was magnificent.
Here is the question I want to leave with you:
Where are you standing at the back of the line right now, telling yourself that you are being generous while you wait for the storm to save you?
Somebody up there is going to turn around and look at you eventually. The person they need you to be is already in you.
It has been standing at the back of the line this entire time.
Have a great week!
Humanizing Work in the Age of AI (The Infinite Lever)
P.S. I have a new workshop and keynote about how to ensure we protect the human element of our work in the age of AI. It's about how to establish principles for using new tools while deploying what makes human creativity invaluable. If you think that topic would be a fit for your organization or event, feel free to reach out through toddhenry.com/contact.
