In this episode of Learning from the Edge, Jeremy and Jaime are joined by Paul Taylor — 26 years in the British Army across Northern Ireland, the Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan, later an expedition guide, and now International Operations Manager at REACT Disaster Response. Paul's turning point came in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake, working alongside a small international team of climbers, medics and local Sherpas to reach people cut off by landslides. It confirmed something he'd suspected for years: the best teams don't rely on individual brilliance. They rely on collective competence — small bands of determined people, doing more together than any one of them could alone.

This conversation is about what that actually looks like in practice — not as a slogan, but as a set of hard-won disciplines for leading when the ground, sometimes literally, keeps shifting.

What we cover:

• Why Paul selects for character over skills, every time — and how pressure reveals who someone really is
• Cognitive diversity versus tick-box diversity: why the goal is different perspectives, not just different faces
• Situational leadership — knowing when to be directive (the "leadership moment") and when to open things up democratically
• Building psychological safety deliberately: where you stand, how you sit, how you slow down to listen
• "Absence of the normal, presence of the abnormal" — reading unfamiliar environments fast
• Selfless commitment, and the discipline required to sustain it without burning your team out
• Daily reflection in the field: task, team, and the deceptively simple question "how are we feeling?"
• Removing friction and ego so honest feedback actually flows
• Paul's four essentials for any senior leader: emotional intelligence, a unifying goal, attitude and effort, and a sense of humour

On the horizon:
Paul heads to Sweden this week for a 300km sea-kayak crossing of the Baltic with friends. We're hoping to get him back to go deeper into REACT's training and selection methods.

One thing to take away:
Leave your ego at the door. If it's about you rather than the team or the goal, it isn't helping.

Paul closes with a request rather than a lesson: spare a thought for humanitarians right now — deployed in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and elsewhere, compelled by nothing more than an imperative to address human suffering wherever they find it. If you're moved to, REACT welcomes support.

Links:

• REACT Disaster Response: react.org.uk
• Learning from the Edge: learningfromtheedge.com
• In partnership with Dartmoor Search & Rescue Team

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/

Learning from the Edge | learningfromtheedge.com
In partnership with Dartmoor Search & Rescue Team

John Peck is a former army officer and Metropolitan Police Commander who has spent decades leading in some of the most demanding environments imaginable — from inner-city London at its most volatile, to unclimbed Himalayan peaks, the Sahara, the North Pole and the Atlantic. In 2004 he became the oldest British person to row the Atlantic unsupported. For the past 30 years, through his consultancy Tiger Teams, he's worked with senior leaders and organisations to build teams that perform when it matters most.

Thematic description:
John and Jez — who met at a conference in 2007 and went on to run youth leadership programmes together tackling gun and knife crime in inner-city London — dig into what actually makes a team perform under pressure. They cover why parachuting someone in at the last minute nearly always backfires, why John opens his book with the word "care," and why he believes human connection isn't a leadership nicety but runs through everything "like a stick of rock."

Topics covered:

• How John and Jez met, and the youth leadership work that followed
• Why bringing in a new team member at the last minute damages team cohesion — even highly capable people
• Building authenticity: why you "can't talk rubbish" once a team is under real pressure
• Turning anxiety into risk — the value of naming what you're actually afraid of
• The strategy/skills/mindset triangle for performing under pressure
• Grit, and why it beats qualifications and experience
• The slow work of building connection vs. the fast stretch of a challenge
• Care as the foundation of team performance, and the return-on-investment problem nobody likes discussing
• Advice for anyone considering an outdoor/expedition-based intervention with their team

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 expedition, search and rescue, and crisis backgrounds.

One thing:
If you move someone into a team at the last minute, don't be surprised when the team stops feeling like a team. Cohesion is built, not assigned.

Links:
Restless — https://www.amazon.co.uk/Restless-John-Peck/dp/B0GR5HZK8L
The Seven Seas to Success — https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Add-Adventure-Your-Life-ebook/dp/B0BMM6TRMK
Tiger Teams — https://tigerteams.co.uk
John's website — http://www.john-peck.com
LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-peck-0587125/

Learning from the Edge | learningfromtheedge.com
In partnership with Dartmoor Search & Rescue Team