Leading the way to the pinnacle
Mount Everest was in the headlines again this spring when 10 climbers died, including Chinese national Wang-yi Fa, triggering memories of 1996, the deadliest year on the peak.
That year, on May 10, there were several expeditions making summit bids for Everest when a freak storm struck in the late afternoon and pounded the mountain. The cold temperatures and unrelenting winds hit the area known as the 'death zone' - from Camp IV to the Hillary Step - stopping climbers from getting down and rescuers from getting up.
Two guided climbing groups with paying clients, Mountain Madness and Adventure Consultants, were caught on the mountain and five people died. The dead included Rob Hall, the safety-conscious leader of the Adventure Consultants team, and Scott Fischer, the charismatic leader of the Mountain Madness team. Also on the mountain that day was an experienced team of mountaineers who were making an IMAX movie. David Breashears and his co-leaders had decided that an ascent would be too risky, so they had retreated with their filming equipment to the lower altitudes of Camp II to wait out the weather.
As any experienced mountaineer will tell you, ascending Mount Everest demands skill, planning, a strong team and some luck. Technical skills like climbing expertise and planning for the right amount of oxygen can all be measured against the experience of other climbers who have succeeded or failed in their attempts to conquer Everest. Unfortunately, the most important and difficult factor to measure is the human skills needed for building and leading a team that can meet the challenges of each climbing situation. Business teams face the same challenge. Despite having the right technical skills and sound plans, successful performance is often dependent on the human dimension of how the team works together to overcome the bad luck of unforeseen challenges or to exploit the good luck presented by new opportunities.
The story of the three 1996 climbing teams has been well documented in newspaper and magazine articles and books, including Into Thin Air and The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest, and films such as Breashears' IMAX Everest and Storm Over Everest. There are even two business school case studies, Harvard Business School's, 'Mount Everest - 1996', and INSEAD's 'Tragedy on Everest'. All of these document that the three leaders displayed professionalism in their technical preparation but differed in how their teams were organised and led - a difference that became a significant advantage for the IMAX team when the life-threatening storm hit the mountain.
A helpful model for comparing and contrasting differences in the leadership of teams is GRPI: goals, roles, process and interpersonal. Many companies, including General Electric, use it to standardise team leadership and performance. GRPI teaches us that, while the technical side of management is important, the real differentiator is how leaders shape and direct the team's social interactions, especially in complex and high-stakes situations.