Chris Hare
speaker
922 appearances
17 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Chris Hare’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
The team performance overall is so strong that we can just basically mask that and I can avoid an awkward conversation. The expedition world has taught me that you nip that in the bud as soon as you sense that, right? Whether it's with a particular plan or just understanding what's going on, you need to address that almost immediately.
Too many times in life, I've made so many mistakes, but too many times in life, I have a gut sense, like a gut inclination towards a particular direction, and it becomes vindicated months or even years later, even though I knew what I needed to do a year ago or months ago. Now in an expedition scenario, that's life or death, right?
So you don't, the pressure to make that type of decision is much more to a business decision where someone loses their livelihood or their income, which is still a big deal, but obviously not as big a deal as on an expedition. And I've seen a lot of leaders who just fail to understand that. And so they let low performers continue working in their organizations. But guess what?
The people you work with, if you've done a semi-decent job, are not stupid. They can see that this person has slack and is being let off. And it really affects the morale in particular of your top performers who say, what's the point? What's the point of me pushing towards this big vision that I've been sold on that I want to work towards?
If I don't have to put in the same effort and still be around. And it's the same thing on an expedition. The last thing you really want on expedition is someone who requires a lot of energy and a lot of support, but contributes very little. You have to be agnostic to the reasons for this, right? You can be very sympathetic with someone on an expedition who's having a really difficult time.
And at least on the expeditions I've organized with people that I haven't done expeditions with, they're always in generally well-supported areas. So if I need to evacuate someone or get them out, I don't need to be an ass about it. And if I'm allowed to say that, yeah, I can basically be sympathetic to them and help them get out the expedition without it affecting them or the team.
It's the same for a business. In fact, in many ways, a business is an expedition on easy method. If you need to let someone go tomorrow and you do it in a responsible way that gives them the support they deserve and need, you can make that decision without worrying about whether they'll find work again or whatever. You cannot do that in an expedition environment.
Yeah, okay. With regards to the first part of the question... I think I got very lucky. Anyone who's had any reasonable success in their life and relies on their own sheer will to explain that success, I think there's something they're not telling you. Although I greatly and deeply admire those types of people. That type of notion per se, I think it's actually quite cool.
That being said, for me, it first started at home, in particular with my parents, my mother and father. They had, going back to my analogy of mountains, they had particular goals and peaks that they wished I would summit. But those peaks were actually, they weren't even peaks. They were more like those North stars. They were values.
So my parents didn't tell me that they wanted me to have a particular career or to earn a certain amount of money or to go to a particular university. In fact, I can even remember that when I, I did very well in my application. I got into almost every university that I applied to. And I remember telling my mom and dad about it, so I remember calling them.
And I remember that my father, when he, when he heard about, for example, Harvard, which for your average Hong Kong is like a big deal, right? You're in Harvard. He was, he thought I was going to be studying in New York. They just had no idea about where these universities were. And in fact, had very little input in me applying to the US at all.
I had a university spot before I applied to the US in the Netherlands. which I was happy with and they were happy with too. But more importantly for my parents were values. In particular, start something, finish something that you start was a big one. Do the right thing ethically.
That was a big one for my father, who was my first board member at 24 hour race and was always the guiding pillar in terms of its moral and ethical framework, which as a young man in my late teens and early twenties, I could often forget about what a Well, what are we doing here? And are we doing it for the right reasons? So I had a really good network.
Even I remember one of my first non-familial mentors was a man called Paul Salnico, who started a very successful business here in Asia called The Executive Center. It's very high end service to office arrangement. And I remember talking to him about our goal, our mission, our vision of the 24-hour race, which he was an early board member of, was to be the end of slavery.
And he said, Chris, if you think that you can set this kind of mission, you don't understand human nature. Humans are always going to be exploiting each other to some degree. And you need to be thoughtful and mindful of this as you pursue your journey. I remember that hit me like a ton of bricks, right, at the age of 18 or 19. But he was absolutely right. I can't change human nature.
And there's always going to be people willing to exploit other people for a dollar. So at best, I can mitigate it. And I think that's a nice segue into meaning and purpose in life. I go back to that analogy I said earlier, could you spend your whole life fighting for something that you will dedicate every minute you have to and still fail?
And can you still have a smile on your face at that passing moment? I don't think that's a really easy question to answer. It really isn't. But judging your own life success based on comparisons, which are really easy to make in the digital age, because 100 years ago, you compared yourself to 50 neighbors. Today, you compare yourself to anyone who's online.
And I think that creates a lot of anxiety, by the way, for young people. Look, you as an individual will always have to tread a balance between what you want to be and what you need to be. You know, I want to be an astronaut. No, no joke. For a long time, my life goal, my ultimate expedition was to become the first man to circumnavigate the moon. It still is, by the way.
I don't know how likely it is, but it still is. It's still a big goal of mine. But what I need to be is a really good son to my parents. And what I need to be is a really good partner to my girlfriend. And what I need to be is an excellent chairman for the 24 hours.
And what I need to do is pay my electricity and gas bill, which would be really high because I've got into the sous vide cuisine recently. So I need to find constantly a balance between these two things.
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