Mt.

Everest SimulationPersonal Reflection

Table of Contents

1.0

Introduction to Mount Everest team and Leadership simulation..............................................2

2.0

Our Team Process Efficacy...........................................................................................................3

2.1

The role of the leader.....................................................................................................................3

2.2

Psychological Safety.......................................................................................................................5

2.3

Group Thinking..............................................................................................................................7

3.0

Conclusions....................................................................................................................................8

4.0

Reference.......................................................................................................................................9

LUKMON SUMOLA

1.0 Introduction to Mount Everest team and Leadership simulation

Climbing Mount Everest is a dangerous undertaking, a Herculean task fraught with difficulties,
danger, complexities and volatile weather conditions. Disaster can strike without warning,
leaving the most competent and experienced professional high altitude mountain climber
gasping for breath, and desperately fighting to stay alive. Death is not uncommon to
mountaineers who ascend Mt. Everest, a simple mistake, faulty judgments, miscommunication,
wrong decisions or complacency can lead to disastrous consequences. Indeed, climbing Mt.
Everest cannot be accomplished alone, individuals need to work together as a team, cooperate
and collaborate with one another, and rely on one another's capabilities to ascend the mountain
summit successfully.
Everest leadership and team multimedia simulation is an attempt to help the participants
experience and understand team dynamics and leadership. It requires participants to work as a
unit, a cohesive entity, collaborating and communicating essential information in order to make
effective decisions that will benefit individuals and the group in achieving their goals. The
interactive simulation presents the participants with series of complex and difficult decisionmaking situations, mimicking real life scenarios facing many organisations.
Our team embarks on a six day ascent of Mt. Everest with the goal of climbing to the top
together. Though we are aware of individual divergent goals, we insist on sharing necessary
information as the simulation provides different information to each participant. The group
consists of five participants - Physician, Photographer, Marathoner, Environmentalist and
Leader, including an observer. Each participant has a role-specific decision to make at every
stage of the simulation. Before the team proceeds to the next round, at each stage the physician
will collect information about health status, the marathoner communicates weather condition
information, and the team leader decides how many canisters each should receive in camp IV
before climbing.
At the end of the simulation, the team ended up achieving 54% of its goals, performed woefully
on three of the challenges medical, weather, and oxygen tank allocation, scoring only one
point. The photographer decided to stay in camp three while the rest of the team marched on to
camp four, at this point the marathoner was rescued due to severe altitude sickness from lack of
oxygen, and only the team leader made it to the summit while the rest of the team finished in
camp IV. Being an observer, I noticed that none of the team members communicated their

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hiking speed to their teammates, probably due to ignorance or purposely to boost individual
chances of achieving personal goals.
My role as an observer is to examine the team interaction as they ascended Mt. Everest
establishing team dynamics, paying particular attention to information sharing, leadership,
conflict and decision-making. Therefore, this essay aims to discuss and critically examine our
team's effectiveness as regards to the role of our leader, psychological safety, and group
thinking.

2.0 Our Team Process Efficacy

There are varieties of interactive factors that need to interlock successfully for a team to conquer
Mt. Everest, just as in any organisation, these interactive factors determine the failure or success
of a company. Leadership style and behaviour play critical roles, so does the team decision
making process, and the ability of the group to work confidently together as a team contributes
to the individual quota of expertise toward a common goal. Our team made a concrete plan from
the outset on how to assault the Mt. Everest simulation and shared vital information held by
individual members. As I held onto my phone handset, I could hear the team chatting in a
relaxed manner despite knowing there was a mammoth task ahead. I sensed high energy, a
friendly atmosphere, a strong relationship among the team members, a team camaraderie and
connection which are essential elements affiliated to highly effective teams.
The team leader of our expedition exhibited democratic leadership style and behaviour.
Undoubtedly, she empowered team members to make decisions and foster open communication
which created a highly positive and motivated climate. However, as a leader sometime you need
to make decisive decision, equally matched with precise action, with little time for team
deliberation. In actual fact, a leader must master the art of improvisation to succeed in climbing
Mt. Everest, just like in a business, a well-designed business strategy can easily become
obsolete. From my standpoint, I questioned our leader's swift decision-making ability based on
the leadership style she exhibited. For example, she utilised a consensus decision-making
process which is not necessarily bad but is not particularly suitable for a split second decisionmaking situation synonymous to climbing Mt. Everest because weather and route conditions
determine how the team should proceed.

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2.1 The role of the leader

The leadership plays a significant role in the team success or failure of climbing to the top of Mt.
Everest, it is the same in a business, the top management are the brains that drive the business to
safety or disaster. Our team leader is the most experienced high-altitude mountaineer in the team,
with an impressive resume in reaching the summit of Mt. Everest 5 times, more than 15 years
climbing in the Himalayas, and she has achieved all the 8,000 metre peaks in the world. Without
doubt there is no better person to guide the team, but her judgement and decision-making created
doubt in my mind raising more questions than answers. Then I asked myself, does being an
experienced high-altitude mountaineer make you a better leader? Regrettably, not all successful
high-altitude climbers could be called a good leader. For example, the 1996 Mt Everest climbing
tragedy which resulted in the deaths of the two most skilful and experienced high-altitude
mountaineers, losing three members of their expedition during their descent. This taught us a
great leadership and decision making lesson. While there were many possible causes attributed
to this tragedy, it is clear to me that lack of team coordination and leadership styles are among
the critical elements that ignite this type of disaster.
The team leader's role is to give the team a direction, inspire, motivate, and guide the team
members toward achieving personal and team goals. Based on the team conversation, though
there was a sense of togetherness and sounds of enthusiasm, the team had low trust. Bear in
mind that the team members barely know each other, and none of the team members will want to
be taken advantage of given the opportunity. Moreover, there is an element of risk involved for
individuals putting effort towards team goals when there is no assurance that your team members
will reciprocate. This raises the question of trust in a team setting, see section 2.2.
Our leader encourages participation and empowers the team member to become a part of the
decision-making process, which enables her to draw upon the experience and expertise of the
team in order to achieve superior results. I noticed that despite the team leader's presence during
team discussion, in a different round of the simulation a more dominant person in the team often
takes charge of the discussion, yet the leader still maintains control of the team. Obviously, the
team leader exhibits typical characteristics of democratic leadership style and behaviour. This
approach creates a sense of responsibility in the team members who have a vested interest in
achieving the team goals at the expense of their personal goals.
For example, the marathoner would have avoided being rescued when he was critically ill in
camp 3 to camp 4, and as a result earned 3 points though forfeiting the endorsement contract
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deals. His sense of responsibility, a never give up mentality, high levels of commitment , and
willingness to make personal sacrifice for the team over personal goals took control of him. He
made an attempt to reach the summit with the team leader but ended up being rescued and
earned the lowest points below the team average. Sometimes democratic leadership style can
potentially enhance team effectiveness under certain circumstances, while an autocratic style
may facilitate effectiveness under a different set of circumstances. I was expecting the team
leader to exercise her leadership authority at this point to stop the marathoner from climbing
further, but that was not the case in this instance.
When a leader knows where he/she wants to go, makes the priority clear to the team, shares
necessary information and lets them know what the values are, this can be an important step in
getting there. The role of the expedition leader is to coordinate and develop the people, motivate
them when their morale is down, resolve conflict, inspire them to great height and expand
communication channels with the team. Our team leader has the experience and necessary skill
sets but lacks effective leadership abilities in some instances, but demonstrates leadership
capabilities at other times. For example, the physician was left in camp 1 while all the team
members were in camp 2, and the leader reached the top of Mt. Everest alone. Although the
entire team saw nothing wrong in these, they didnt discuss the implications of leaving the
physician behind, nor did they challenge the team leader. Should a member of the team have
fallen ill, who was going to administer medicine? This raises the question of: What is the
implication of psychological safety on the team's effectiveness? See section 2.2.
A leader is responsible for the team safety, and sometimes it is necessary to make a self-sacrifice
to show commitment to the team and to demonstrate that he/she considered the team's welfare to
be more important than a personal goal. It is not uncommon for some companys CEO to make a
personal sacrifice when a company faces an economic downturn to demonstrate their sense of
commitment. For example, The Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata took a self-imposed 50% salary cut
for five months due to Nintendos current economic slump before he asked his employees to
accept pay cuts and reduced working hours. Our team leader exhibited lack of commitment and
collective interest, and displayed incompetence by not dealing swiftly with the uncertainty posed
by the climbing of Mt. Everest. In my view, I did not feel that our team performed effectively
well together, the team effectiveness average response of 3.70 reflected this compared to other
teams, although it was higher than average.

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2.2 Psychological Safety

Edmondson (1999) defined team psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for
interpersonal risk taking. It describes a team environment characterised by interpersonal trust
and mutual respect for one another in which team members are comfortable being themselves. I
did sense some element of low trust among our team members during the team discussion before
they started the Mt. Everest leadership and team simulation, but I have no doubt in my mind that
the team members have mutual respect for one another. However, low trust can be attributed to
the fact that the team members barely knew each other, and notably when there is low trust or
lack of trust, team members might feel uncomfortable to openly share personal information.
The work of many organisational researchers have noted the importance of trust (Edmondson,
1999). Knowing that in a team where no trust or low trust reigns supreme, suspicion,
disagreement and conflicts sometimes overshadow cooperation, collaboration and results. This
open door for individual selfish agendas at the expense of the team goals therefore affects team
dynamics and hinders team productivity. Reflecting a scenario during the simulation, at round 3,
camp 3, the environmentalist had an asthma attack but did not receive an inhaler from the
medical kit, none of the team members were able to help her. It was at this stage of the
simulation a healthy cameraman decided that there was no point for him to ascend further simply
because he had achieved all his goals. Certainly, for trust to exist there must be element of
interdependency and risk. The cameraman felt that there was no point deploying more effort
towards team goals. Edmondson (1999) reminds us that for a team's psychological safety to be a
group-level idea, it must represent the team rather than individual members, and all the team
members must have common perception of it.
Similarity of belief among the team members and a sense of security promotes psychological
safety. When a group shares common beliefs and assumptions they can easily collaborate and
coordinate efforts to effect the team performance. In such a team climate, the team members will
not believe that the team will rebuke, marginalise, reprimand, or discipline any of the team
members that make mistakes, speak up or challenge the prevailing beliefs. Therefore,
psychological safety facilitates information sharing, open communication, and builds
relationships among the team members. It discourages conflict and unjustified resentment that
could hamper team efforts. For example, our Mt. Everest expeditions leader encouraged open
communication, engagement, dissenting views and allowed a team member to assume
leadership, but lack of familiarity and low trust diminished psychological safety. I could not
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recall when the team members disagreed with each other or with the leader in any of the
instances in which they had to make a difficult decision, there was always consensus and a
complete voice of consent. Presumably, I could attribute this to low psychological safety, while
at the same time it was difficult to tell from my vantage point. You cannot easily read body
language, personal conversation, and individual interactions by clinging to your phone handset
since the whole team discussion was through conference phone.
The fact is that, our team members had no time to develop a trust relationship with each other,
we were not familiar with each other in the class. Though there was mutual respect among the
team members, I could not absolutely reach a conclusion assumed by Roberto (2003) that the
benefits of speaking up by team members are likely to be given more weight. If there is respect
and trust, there will be a willingness to discuss incompetency, mistakes or errors made by a team
member since it will not be held against the perpetrator. Under a team setting, I could logically
reach this conclusion but it is quite difficult to logically say this was true from my position
during the group Mt. Everest simulation.

2.3 Group Thinking

Decision-making is everyday reality of our life either as an individual or as a group which results
in action and consequence. Sound decision- making is the essential bedrock of ascending Mt.
Everest successfully, and the basis of any business success. The team members or the leaders
ability to consistently make appropriate decisions can potentially reduce a tragedy synonymous
to a Mt. Everest expedition, and any business progression. Reaching a group decision is a
complex and complicated undertaking due to the individual personalities and differences of the
group members. The Mt. Everest simulation participated in by our team was an attempt to
understand effective team decision-making in extremely difficult situations when individual
team members have different information and competing goals. In this setting, there are many
positive and negative dynamic forces I noticed that influenced the team's decision-making
though they were not necessary tacit to the team members. One noticeable point is what is
referred to as a group thinking.
Groupthink has been defined in the work of many authors in the field of management. Irving
Janis the leading proponent of the theory described it as an excessive form of concurrenceseeking among members of high prestige, tightly knit policy-making groups. It describes desire
for conformity by a group, in a manner that cohesiveness undermines creativity or individual
responsibility in an effort to reach unanimous agreement. Groupthink is considered to threaten
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the success of a team based on the team members' tendency to easily reach consensus without
critically analysing and deliberating on the alternative courses of action. According to Manz &
Neck (1995) there are two main ingredients for groupthink; cohesiveness and conformity. From
my discussion so far, without an iota of doubt in my mind, our Mt. Everest simulation team
exhibited high team cohesion, and a tendency to echo agreement and acceptance of the group
decisions without query. Although, the same team applied a consensus decision-making process,
very often the opinions of the dominant figure during team deliberation were unanimously
accepted by the team.
The team exhibited a strong bond, team camaraderie, friendly atmosphere, and a sense of
relationship affiliated to Groupthink. This environment negatively impacted the group decisionmaking process and hence led to dysfunctional decisions, though not obviously to team
members. In the sense that, the team members hardly disagreed or showed signs of being
offended, conflict and dissent seemed taboo, implicitly avoided by all the team members. This
led to a breakdown in critical thinking and analysis among team members. Edmondson (1999)
tells us that group cohesiveness can reduce willingness to disagree and challenge each other's
views. Arguably, without groupthink it will be difficult for a team to reach a consensus on
extreme conflict or difficult situations synonymous to climbing of Mt. Everest, as no time is
permitted for team deliberation in such a situation. Though, I am not foolish to assume that the
team unity is based on friendship as it surfaces but on a members pursuit to climb to the top of
Mt. Everest simulation, and achieve individual and team goals.
Groupthink inhibits positive dissent. Constructive criticism is healthy in a team climate, it is an
improvement mechanism if the rationale is without personal gain or ulterior motive. Conflict
seems a negative word without positive elements, conversely, it can be used as an innovative
mechanism to generate ideas and foster creativity among team members. The environment the
decision take place in influences individual contributions positively or negatively. For example,
our Mt. Everest expeditions team leader encouraged participation, inclusion and empowered the
team members to contribute to the decision-making process. When a team leader adopts
autocratic leadership style, it is possible the team develops a symptom of groupthink known as
self-censoring. A situation whereby a team member censors their own thoughts and opinion to
unanimously accept a team decision despite the fact that they disagree with the decision. Lack of
self-esteem, fear of being reprimanded, insufficient knowledge, scorn or shared laziness can
prevent a team member from contributing his own thoughts or confiding in other team members.
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3.0 Conclusion
The team leader's role is to give the team a direction, inspire, motivate, and guide the team
members toward achieving personal and team goals. The leader has a critical role to play when a
team ascends to the top of Mt. Everest, leadership decision-making ability might be the
difference between success and tragedy. The leader is tasked to get the team from where they are
now to where they have never been. On Mt. Everest, disaster can strike without any warning,
and render the most capable person dead within a blink of an eye, so the leaders ability to
master the art of improvisation is a sine qua non for climbing Mt. Everest successfully.
Logically, not all skilful and experienced high-altitude mountaineers could be considered a good
leader. Leadership is the art of influencing others to achieve a goal. A leader nurtures, coaches,
and commits to the team cause.
Psychological safety describes a team environment characterised by interpersonal trust and
mutual respect in which the group members are comfortable of being themselves (Edmondson
1999). Individual team members' sense of belonging plays a significant role in the way they feel
and perceive the cross-function Mt. Everest simulation team. In a team climate where people feel
free and are encouraged to speak up without fear of being reprimanded or scorned by the leader
or the team members, innovative ideas to progress tend to grow. Most of the highly effective
team demonstrate shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, in such a team
self-censoring disappear giving room for a highly confident team climate.
The concept of groupthink is based on the idea of a cohesive group that becomes so concerned
about group unity that they fail to critically and realistically assess their decisions and
assumption that bring about those decisions. Undoubtedly, our Mt. Everest expeditions team
suffered from groupthink, due to lack of familiarity and insufficient knowledge of the Mt.
Everest simulation that led to implicit fear among individual team members to speak up.
However, the team deployed group consensus decision-making which is particularly useful when
all team members have vast knowledge of the subject. When knowledge is lacking, a team
member that has extensive knowledge dominates the team proceedings, and can make
unchallenged unanimity decisions.
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4.0Reference
Edmondson, A. (1999) Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work
teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Edmondson, A., Bohmer, R., & Pisano, G. (2001) Speeding up team learning. Harvard business
review, 79(9), 125-134.
Hart, P. (1991) Irving L. Janis' Victims of Groupthink. Political Psychology, Vol. 12, No. 2:
viewed at http://www.jstor.org/stable/3791464; on 23rd of October, 2014.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/mortality-on-mount-everest/360927/
viewed on 23rd of October, 2014.
Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2003). Fair process: Managing in the knowledge
economy. Harvard Business Review, 81(1), 127-136.
Manz, C. C., & Neck, C. P. (1995). Teamthink: beyond the groupthink syndrome in selfmanaging work teams. Journal of Managerial Psychology,10(1), 7-15.
Roberto, M. A. (2003). Lessons from Everest: The Interaction of Cognitive Bias, Psychological
Safety, and System Complexity. California Management Review Vol 45. No.1
Stasser, G., Vaughan, S. I., & Stewart, D. D. (2000). Pooling unshared information: The benefits
of knowing how access to information is distributed among group members. Organizational
Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 82(1), 102-116.

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