Jon Rhodes is a psychologist who has spent close to two decades working across sport (including Olympic and Commonwealth athletes), polar and expedition teams, and corporate leadership. His current research focus is expedition psychology — working with polar explorers, mountaineering teams, and astronauts on performance under pressure. He's based at the University of Plymouth.

Thematic description:
Most leaders treat uncertainty like a fault in the system — something to fix, something to wait out. Jon's view, drawn from years of work with explorers and executives alike, is the opposite: the teams that thrive aren't the ones who eliminate uncertainty, they're the ones who've learned to move intelligently within it. In this first episode of Learning from the Edge, Jon and Jaime unpack what expedition psychology can teach organisations about leading when the path isn't obvious — and why the real skill isn't resilience, it's adaptability.

Topics covered:

• Jon's move from sports psychology into expedition and corporate work
• Why leadership is shifting from control to navigation
• Assessing team dynamics before you go — thinking preferences, communication styles, risk tolerance
• Role clarity and behavioural restructuring in high-stakes teams
• Why uncertainty is the new normal, and how the best teams build capability around it rather than waiting it out
• Scenario planning and future-thinking under pressure
• Presence: maintaining accurate attention in the moment, not just staying calm
• The OODA loop (Observe, Orientate, Decide, Act) as a framework for decision-making under pressure
• Cognitive diversity in teams, and why it's most valuable outside moments of immediate threat
• Vulnerability, trust, and what actually builds thriving teams
• Using tech — eye-tracking, drones, 360 cameras — to observe team dynamics
• Treating complexity as a condition to master, not a problem to solve

On the horizon:
Further episodes exploring the same core question — what leaders can learn from people who've led in genuinely tough conditions — with guests from military, disaster response, and mountain leadership backgrounds.

One thing:
Don't try to eliminate complexity — build a team that can move through it. That means diverse thinking styles, clear communication under stress, and leaders who are self-aware enough to know what they're not good at.

Sound bites:

• "Leadership now resembles navigation, not control."
• "Uncertainty is the new normal."
• "Vulnerability creates thriving teams."

Links:
University of Plymouth profile — https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/jon-rhodes
Royal Geographical Society — https://www.rgs.org/exploration/rgs-explore-weekend/speakers/jonathan-rhodes
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/rhodespsychology/

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