Assignment

Leading Teams

Climbing Mt. Everest

Learning Objectives:

• To work with a small group of students to better understand how to build, participate in, and lead teams more effectively.

• To better understand how teams can improve the way that they make collective decisions.

• To better understand how cognitive biases impair decision making.

• To better understand how teams can solve problems and make decisions more effectively in situations when members have different information and opposing interests.

• To better understand how different leadership approaches can affect team performance in situations with time and competitive pressures.

• To better understand how teams and their leaders deal with trade-offs between short-term task completion and longer-term effectiveness.

Assignment

You may work in a group of up to four students for this assignment or you may do the assignment on your own. Assume that you are a group of four guides that will be leading an expedition team of eight participants on an Everest expedition. In addition, you will be accompanied by 55 Sherpas and 120 yaks. Though each of you is passionate about the upcoming climb you have a varying degree of experience at this. After viewing the film Everest and listening to a description summarizing the Everest experience answer the following questions.

Questions

Answer all questions thoroughly, in well-developed responses.

1. You are most fortunate to have an extensive list of potential participants from around the world. Establish the criteria for selection.

2. One of your main motivators for acting as a guide is to cover your own costs for this expedition with money to spare to help offset your training and equipment expenses. How much would you charge each of the participants? How did you decide on this number? Develop a specific budget of costs.

3. What are some of the problems/challenges the team might encounter during their quest to reach the summit?

4. What factors would help you decide whether or not to go on each day?

5. Would the team stay together or separate at any time?

6. What types of decisions will need to be addressed? Who/how will decisions be made?

7. List the team goals you wish to achieve then identify several of the goals of the individual members and guides might have.

8. What are some of the consequences of errors in decision making or communication?

9. How do cognitive issues affect your decisions in situations?

10. How would different leadership approaches affect the team performance in situations with time and competitive pressures?