On expeditions where teams face danger on a daily basis, climbers literally put their lives in their climbing partners’ hands, so you better choose your team wisely. Recruiting mistakes can be costly. We’re not talking about the difference between winning or losing market share—we’re talking about life and death.
In extreme environments when everyone is feeling stress, there is no employee handbook you can reference to figure out how to deal with difficult people. Dr. Phil is not going to show up to counsel you on the proper way to handle people who aren’t working well with others or are more concerned with themselves than they are with meeting team goals. That’s why you must choose your partners wisely, be it in business, life, or sport.
I knew there was a lot at stake when I first started recruiting members for the first American Women’s Everest Expedition in 2002. I also knew I needed help, because at the time I just didn’t know that many female climbers who would be both interested in and qualified for an Everest climb. I contacted everyone whom I had ever climbed with in the past and asked them to reach out to their networks in order to help me compile a list of names and climbing résumés. Naturally, I was immediately drawn to the women who had the beefiest climbing bios—women who had climbed the most mountains, the highest mountains, the toughest mountains. But I realized very quickly that it wouldn’t do me any good to be high up on a mountain with the world’s most elite climbers if they didn’t care about the rest of the team. I also realized that I didn’t want to be up there with people who were just fun and cool and easy to get along with if they lacked the necessary skills to survive and succeed in that environment. When you’re taking on a big mountain, you have to find people who are the perfect mix of skill, experience, and desire. And not just the desire to climb, but the desire to be team players.
I wasn’t looking for women who just wanted to scale Everest—I needed athletes on the team who would embrace the experience of climbing with other women and who would be proud to wear the American flag on their jackets. And then there was the question, Would I trust this person with my life? If the answer was “yes,” then I had to ask myself, Is this someone with whom I would want to spend two months in a tent?
Our sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, set some other requirements for team members that knocked some fabulous women out of the running, but their recruiting guidelines made perfect sense to me. The team members had to be American, they had to be women (after all, it was the first American Women’s Everest Expedition), and they could not be professional climbers. Ford didn’t want the team to be comprised of professionals, because they were creating a PR campaign focused on sending a message about pushing your limits, challenging yourself, and getting outside of your comfort zone—which meant doing something that required you to stretch. Of course, climbing big mountains can be a stretch for professional climbers and full-time mountain guides, but it’s something they get paid to do frequently. That was why Ford decided they wanted the team to be “regular women” who were strong mountaineers but who didn’t do it for a living. Ford dubbed the project “Team No Boundaries,” which went along with the “No Boundaries” ad campaign for their SUVs back in 2002. They wanted people to look at our team and say, “Hey, if those ladies are climbing Everest, then maybe I can [fill in the blank].”
There wasn’t enough time or money to interview prospective teammates in person, so I had to decide who would make the final cut based solely on phone interviews (we didn’t have Skype back then). But the process proved to be easier than I anticipated. It usually didn’t take me more than a few minutes of conversation to know if I wanted the person on the other end of the line to join the team. It wasn’t hard to tell which of them were going to be good team members and which might not be as good a fit. Some women asked questions like, “How much are we getting paid?” or “Are we flying first class?” “Nothing” and “No” were the answers to those questions. I worried that these women wouldn’t be the best fit for our team, because they seemed more interested in money and perks than in the opportunity to be part of something really special—something that would happen only once in a lifetime. But other women asked questions like “What can I do to help? Can I help raise funds for the trip?” or “Even if I am not selected to be a part of the team, can I pay my own way to base camp and cheer you on from there? Can I design a website for you? What can I do to be part of this team if I am not given a spot on the actual climb?”
This was precisely the kind of upbeat response I wanted to hear. You’re in! Alfred Edmond Jr., the senior vice president and editor at large of Black Enterprise, once shared some advice with me on the subject of recruiting talent: “Screen for aptitude, then hire for attitude.” Looking back on my recruiting process in 2002, I realize I was doing just that. I had pooled names of all the candidates who had the skills to climb a monstrous mountain, and then made my choice based on who had the best attitude.
Joining me in Nepal for the first American Women’s Everest Expedition were Jody Thompson, Kim Clark, Lynn Prebble, and Midge Cross. Jody, Kim, and Lynn were from Colorado, and Midge was from central Washington. All were talented outdoor athletes. We ranged in age from thirty-five to fifty-eight. Our backgrounds were completely different, but the one thing we all had in common was a passion for climbing mountains. And while none of us were professional climbers, the five of us had more than one hundred years of cumulative climbing experience between us. Interestingly, all but one of us had overcome some type of health challenge. I have had a few heart surgeries and suffer from Raynaud’s disease, Midge has diabetes and is a breast cancer survivor, Lynn has osteoporosis and exercise-induced asthma, and Jody had developed HELLP syndrome, a life-threatening condition that occurs during pregnancy, and nearly died in childbirth. Her son Hans had to be delivered three months early and weighed a mere 1.5 pounds.
Accepting a spot on the team meant Jody would be leaving Hans, then eleven months old, for eight weeks while she was in Nepal. She later said that it was one of the hardest decisions she ever had to make. The fact that she had a supportive husband, Mark, who said, “Go! I’ll figure out how we’ll manage back at home,” is what pushed her over the fence. Mark, an attorney and also an avid climber, realized this was an incredible opportunity for Jody and didn’t want her to miss out on the experience. (This is an example of someone who chose her life partner wisely.)
Ford brought our entire team together for the first time during a photo shoot in Breckenridge, Colorado, about a month before we left for Nepal. It was great to have the opportunity to finally meet everyone. Ford also sent out its PR team from Hill+Knowlton to spend a few days with us in order to manage the photo shoot and help us prepare for our upcoming media tour.
The Hill+Knowlton folks filled us in on what would be expected of us during our scheduled television appearances, which would take place in New York the week before we headed off to Everest. They helped us prepare by going over messaging and conducting mock interviews so we would be ready when we were actually live on camera. Talk about getting out of your comfort zone. We were probably more nervous about our upcoming television appearances than we were about the climb. We also spent a good portion of the weekend posing for photos for the PR campaign. We even staged a ladder crossing to look like the Khumbu Icefall. And of course we took photos with the then-new 2003 Ford Expedition, which, you should know, is the only full-size SUV with independent rear suspension and optional third-row power fold seats—or at least it was at the time. (Hey, gotta plug the sponsor!)
During those two days in Colorado the team seemed to have good chemistry, so that was reassuring. We got to know one another, and we spent a lot of time talking and laughing and sharing our excitement and our fears about the challenges that lay ahead for us in Nepal. But we were in a comfortable environment with all the amenities we were used to at home (running water, toilets, showers, good food, and a thermostat to control the indoor temperature). How would this team fare on the highest mountain in the world in some of the most extreme circumstances that human beings ever face? How would we do when it became painful and uncomfortable and our bodies were being pushed to their limits? People can put up with just about anything for two days. But we were looking at two months together. With all the uncontrollable factors you have to deal with on a big mountain, the last thing you want to have working against you is team dynamics.
So how’d it work out? Well, let me say this: If I had to pull together another team of women, I would pick the exact same ladies (plus a few others I have climbed with in recent years). Every woman on that team was truly thankful for the opportunity to be there and behaved accordingly. They got a free trip to Everest, courtesy of Ford, and they were incredibly grateful for that. I don’t think there was a single day when someone didn’t mention how lucky they felt just to be on the mountain.
From the very beginning this group felt like a team. Even before we got to base camp we talked about the expectations we needed to meet—for one another and for our sponsor. We approached everything from a team perspective. We climbed together, obviously, but even during the downtime on our rest days we spent time strategizing about how we were going to approach the various challenges that were awaiting us higher up on the mountain. At one point we even made a pact that on summit day, if one person needed to turn around before we reached the top, the entire team would turn around with her. We wanted to send a strong message about solidarity and the bond among us and that this was more important than the top of a mountain. Climbing is often known as a selfish sport, and we wanted to shatter that myth.
We actually ended up scrapping that plan, because despite our best intentions, that type of strategy could have been detrimental. We were afraid that it might cause someone to push herself further than she should—past her limits to the point where it could be dangerous—because she didn’t want to be the one who made the whole team turn around. That’s how people die on Everest—they push themselves so hard to get to the top, and then they have nothing left to get themselves back down. We didn’t want that to happen to anyone on our team. So in a sense, changing our mind was another expression of our bond.
There was not one time during the expedition when we didn’t get along, which is actually very unusual. When you’re with people 24/7 in isolated, extreme environments, it’s completely normal for people to grate on one another’s nerves and for tension to arise among team members. But not on this trip. Everest climbers who read this may roll their eyes—Aw, c’mon!—but I am telling the truth here. There was virtually no conflict among our team members. I kept waiting for things to go south. It never happened. There were no divas. There were no selfish climbers. Now, that’s not to say that there wasn’t conflict with others—those outside of our immediate team. With a big expedition there are a lot of folks involved in addition to the climbing team (logistics managers, base camp managers, communications managers, guides, etc.). Conflict is, of course, a predictable component of group dynamics, and it can actually be healthy.
Conflict becomes dangerous only when it is unresolved. That’s when it can be destructive. When you’re in an extreme, isolated environment and people start behaving badly, you can’t threaten others by telling them that they’ll be written up and a note will be put in their permanent file. You have to find ways to minimize people’s crappy behavior as well as the impact of that behavior—and you have to do it right away. That means bringing the conflict out into the open, where you have a shot at resolving it. Communication is key. It’s essential to make sure that each team member knows that he or she is valued and that his or her opinion matters.
When I speak to various organizations about leadership and recount the details of the expedition—including my admiration for my team—I am often asked what made that team of women so great. I always used to respond with, “I don’t know—there was just this magic chemistry among the five of us.” I would tell people that the women were all very easy to get along with, low-maintenance, appreciative of the opportunity, and incredibly considerate of one another and of the other folks involved with the expedition. I kept telling people, “I just got really lucky with the team.”
It wasn’t until October 2012, more than ten years after the expedition, that I realized why it was that our team was so special. I was at Duke University for our annual board meeting of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics. Coach K (full name: Mike Krzyzewski) has been the head men’s basketball coach at Duke for more than three decades. He had recently come back from winning gold as the head coach of the United States men’s national basketball team at the Olympic games in London. Over breakfast that morning he shared with us his process of choosing the players for the US team. He said that one of the things he looks for in players is ego. He wants them to have it, and plenty of it. I thought, Huh??? You want ego? Doesn’t that go against everything I’ve ever read or have been taught about the kinds of people who make good team members?
Coach K went on to explain that when you are trying to put together a high-performing team, you want people who are good and who know they’re good—because that gives them the confidence to know they can win. Coach K calls it performance ego. Of course his team included Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James—three of the best players the game has ever seen. They had every right to have big egos. After all, stats don’t lie. Coach K said he absolutely hates the phrase “Leave your ego at the door.” He wants his players to exude confidence and to be who they are; he does not want them to rein it in. “I don’t want LeBron James to walk into a room and be a wuss,” he told us. (Actually, I don’t think Coach needs to worry about that.)
Having a strong ego doesn’t mean you’re disrespectful of others, because you can bet that Coach K wouldn’t put up with that. He has a list of standards that he expects from all of his players, college or pro:
Coach went on to tell us about the second type of ego he wants and needs in his players—and that’s team ego. He wanted everyone playing for him to feel extreme pride in being part of Team USA, and they did. For everyone involved it was about the opportunity to represent their country on the court. It was about national pride, not individual pride. It was an opportunity to be part of something truly unique that would bring together the best in the sport from all over the world. No one got paid to play on the US basketball team. They played for two months in the summer, then rejoined their NBA teams in September for training camp prior to the regular season, which started in October. So during the summer they were away from loved ones, they were risking injury, they were not getting paid, and they were doing it for the team—the chance to be a part of something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Climbing is a sport that is also filled with big egos. Prior to listening to Coach K, I used to think a big ego was a bad thing, but I was confusing ego with arrogance. Coach K’s ideas about egos made perfect sense to me. If you’re going to put together a team to take on a big mountain, you want people who have what it takes and who know they have what it takes. You want them to think they’re great at what they do. You don’t ever want to climb the Hillary Step (one of the most technically demanding parts of the route) behind someone who, at 28,740 feet, is thinking, I don’t really know if I have what it takes to do this. People who hesitate on the route cause bottlenecks, and this is a serious issue up in the death zone. Anything that slows down climbers is dangerous, because it increases the chances that something will go wrong. Climbers need to keep moving in order to generate enough body heat and energy to keep their extremities and organs alive. You can suffer hypothermia, frostbite, or maybe something worse from standing around in the cold on an exposed section of the route. You can even run out of supplemental oxygen. When that happens, people can die.
You want people on your team who look at the toughest parts of the route and just know they can crush it. (I’m talking justified confidence; self-delusion is a whole different story.) You don’t have to actually enjoy all the hard parts (there were plenty of spots on Everest that I didn’t like), but you have to be good enough to get past them and you have to have confidence in your abilities to do so.
After thinking about Coach’s words, I realized that what made our team great wasn’t luck or some kind of crazy magic (as I had been telling people for ten years)—it was simply a matter of ego. Those women had performance ego; more important, they had team ego. They were grateful to be a part of the first American Women’s Everest Expedition. They were constantly thanking me for giving them the opportunity to take part. They kept talking about how indebted they felt to Ford for funding the trip and making it possible for us. They realized that they were part of something really special. Like the US Olympic basketball team, we weren’t getting paid for our efforts (we were actually taking a financial hit because we were each forgoing two months’ salary). We were going to be away from loved ones for a long time (sixty days), and then, as soon as we returned, we had to go back to our old jobs and hit the ground running. (I was at my desk at 6:00 the morning after I returned from Nepal.)
But that unique sense of team ego eclipsed the concerns about any of those things because we were hugely proud to be on that mountain as a team of American women. Sending a message about pushing your limits and getting outside of your comfort zone resonated with us, and that further strengthened our bond. It helps to believe that your purpose and mission are meaningful. And while our Everest team did not make it to the summit in 2002—we missed it by just a couple hundred feet due to a storm—it was the biggest honor of my life to have had the opportunity to be part of that expedition. It wasn’t about the summit. It was about the team.
Fast-forward to my 2010 Everest climb, which was a completely different type of experience in terms of team dynamics. I joined a group of eight other mountaineers, none of whom I knew. Our expedition was organized by Alpine Ascents International, an expedition company based in Seattle.
The owner of the company, Todd Burleson, has completed the Seven Summits twice and has led eight expeditions to Everest. He also received the David A. Sowles Memorial Award from the American Alpine Club for his heroic efforts to rescue other climbers on Everest in 1996. But beyond Todd’s accomplishments as a climber, I’ve always been impressed with his commitment to providing the best possible service when it comes to organizing expeditions.
Alpine Ascents has a reputation as one of the best in the business. There are plenty of nightmare stories about logistics providers who cut corners everywhere they can, use shoddy gear, and make promises about what they will provide for an expedition, only to break them once they pocket your money. I have learned this the hard way on various mountains in the past. I have known Todd for years and trust him implicitly. Alpine Ascents was responsible for all the expedition logistics—getting our permits in order, getting our equipment to base camp, and hiring and organizing the Sherpa team, guides, and base camp staff, and they did an exceptional job.
I met the other people I would be climbing with for the first time at the Hotel Yak and Yeti in Kathmandu. The group ranged in age from twenty-one to sixty-five. While the demographics of the team were diverse, everyone had a strong climbing background. We were all there to accomplish the same thing—scale Mount Everest and come back alive—and while we were all climbing the mountain together at the same time, we did not always function as a team. But this was to be expected, because we weren’t there as a team.
Well, what is a team, then? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says a team is “a number of persons associated together in work or activity.” I vehemently disagree. Just because you have a group of people doing the same thing at the same time—even if you have the same goal (like climbing a big peak)—it doesn’t make you a team. It just makes you a group of people doing something at the same time. A group is only a team when every member of the group cares as much about helping the other members as they care about helping themselves.
While I definitely felt that every member of my 2002 team was working to help everyone else, I didn’t feel that way about everyone I climbed with in 2010. That’s not to say that I didn’t like these people—I really did like them (well, most of them). There were some amazing climbers who were polite and considerate and helpful and selfless. Some of them were indeed phenomenal teammates with whom I stay in touch; I’d climb with them again anytime. But we were all there as individuals who wanted to climb the mountain for our own individual reasons.
We shared a base camp and guides and Sherpas and group gear, but we were all making our own decisions with regard to the climb. For example, each person could decide when he or she wanted to move up to the higher camps or when to retreat to lower elevations. And, of course, everyone had every right to focus on their individual needs, given that they didn’t come there as part of a team. This was not unique to our group by any means—it is pretty much how most expeditions work. But it was an adjustment for me, because attempting to climb Everest as part of a group was different from taking on the mountain with an already-established team. An excerpt from my expedition journal illustrates this:
May 10, 2010. The team dynamics are proving to be as interesting and challenging as the mountain. After seven nights at Camp 2 and one night at Camp 3 (24,000 feet), I can tell you that the team that will finish this climb together will look very different than the team that started out together. A failed attempt on the Lhotse Face was what really started things on a bit of a downward spiral. We spent several nights at Camp 2 acclimatizing, and then at 5:00 a.m. on May 3rd we made our way up the steep face of hard blue ice. It was the most demanding part of the route and the toughest terrain we had encountered so far. About six hours into it we got hit with some pretty brutal weather and we had to abandon our attempt and return to Camp 2. We were only about 600 feet away from the Camp 3 tents when we turned, but the gusts of wind were so strong there was no way we could continue to move upward. It was incredibly demoralizing to be that far into the ascent to Camp 3 and have to turn back.
By the time we reached the safety of our tents back at Camp 2, the team was exhausted both mentally and physically. The weather was supposed to remain poor for the next two days—and we had already been delayed by weather for a few days at the beginning of this rotation, so rather than wait another two days and then make another attempt at reaching Camp 3, several people decided it would be better to go back down to base camp, where our bodies could recover at a lower altitude. The problem was that several other people decided the best thing to do would be to wait another two days and go fight our way back up that face that had just shut us down. There was discussing, there was reasoning, there was arguing, there was pissed-offedness. In the end, five of the climbers decided to pack up and go down to base camp the next morning, and four decided to stay up at Camp 2 and give that damn Lhotse Face another whirl. I stayed. I climbed. For nine hours I fought my way up that Lhotse Face and made it to Camp 3 along with Jackie, Victoria, and Jerry. Alpine Ascents guides Vern and Michael (Jackie’s private guide) came up, too—and naturally our awesome Sirdar, Lakpa, was with us every step of the way.
Of course, I threw up in my tent vestibule that night (excellent)—but you don’t get any extra points for that, as puking isn’t all that unusual at nearly 24,000 feet. I was miserable all night, but I am so glad that I stayed with the group that went up to Camp 3. Climbing that Lhotse Face was a good confidence builder. Plus, those who did not go up with us are at a big disadvantage from an acclimatization standpoint, because now they will have to make a summit attempt after only having slept as high as Camp 2. Funny thing is that I did actually think about going back down to base camp with the others who abandoned the attempt, but my kneecap was so badly bruised from the day before (injured during our failed attempt on the Lhotse Face when I slammed it into the ice on a vertical pitch) that I didn’t think I could get down, so that helped make up my mind to stay, take a rest day at Camp 2, and then try it again. Luck was with me this time.
We will sleep at base camp tonight and then head back down valley in order to let our bodies recover at a lower altitude. Yeah, we want to go lower than base camp to breathe some of that thicker air. Maybe my appetite will even come back. Oh, and FYI—of the five guys who came down from Camp 2 after giving up on climbing Lhotse to get to Camp 3, only two of them are still here at base camp. The other three were not feeling well and took a helicopter (dangerous at that altitude and $$$$!!!!) all the way back to Kathmandu, where they are relaxing at the Hyatt (perhaps the fanciest hotel in town) and are deciding whether or not they will continue on this expedition. I really hope that they do.
Thinking about them hanging out at a luxury hotel when the rest of us are here at base camp makes me realize that we are in different places not just physically, but also psychologically. Waking up and ordering room service, playing tennis, and sipping mai tais by the pool is quite a departure from base camp life. I hope the thick air and easy living helps them get healthy quickly so they can rejoin the climb. It would be a shame for anyone to quit this far into the expedition, although I know that illness is tough to recover from at high altitude, and each individual has to look out for their own best interests and do what feels right to them.
During one of the most critical parts of the climb, people scattered and divided into three groups. Some moved up to Camp 3, some retreated to base camp, and some chartered a helicopter to take them all the way back to the Hyatt in Kathmandu with a plan to come back to the mountain and rejoin the expedition after some R&R at sea level.
Everyone had a right to do what they did. There was nothing wrong with people deciding to go their separate ways. Again, this is how the majority of expeditions operate on Everest. It is what participants expect, and it’s what most of them want. No one had any moral obligation to make decisions or take action based on what others wanted to do. It just happened to be very different from my previous experience, where we all climbed together as a team. I definitely missed that sense of team ego that we had back in 2002, when we locked arms from day one.
The feeling that our group was disconnected definitely hit me the hardest at the very end of the trip, when everyone was preparing to leave base camp for our journeys home. Our base camp manager came around to each of our tents and asked us about our plans to get back to Kathmandu. I was sort of confused at first when she asked the question, because I assumed everyone in our group was hiking out together—a trek that would take just a couple of days. (The trek out is much shorter than the usual ten-day trek in because everyone is acclimatized, and you’re heading downhill into the thicker air, anyway.) She informed me that some people were opting to take a helicopter straight back to Kathmandu instead of making the trek back to Lukla and then flying to Kathmandu from there. I didn’t realize that this was an exit strategy that many (probably most) climbers opt for after their expeditions. The helicopter ride is an attractive way out of the Khumbu for exhausted climbers who are anxious to get home to loved ones. I asked which climbers had reserved seats on the helicopter. She said, “So far… all of them.”
A helicopter costs a few thousand dollars. The plan was that everyone who wanted to fly out would chip in and split the cost. I understood the rationale for wanting to leave on a helicopter—everyone wanted to get home as quickly as possible. People had families and kids and business to take care of. The expedition was over. They had mentally finished the climb, even if they were still on the mountain. Their work was done.
But getting on a helicopter and flying away from base camp didn’t feel right to me. For one thing, it felt too abrupt. I wasn’t psychologically ready to detach myself from the mountain. For all of its dangers, Everest was still a place I loved; a peak that had taught me so much—one with which I felt a deep connection. I wanted to try to draw things out and savor every last moment—even if it meant delaying access to a flush toilet. And, more important, I wanted to hike out with the people who had been so incredibly helpful for the past two months. If the base camp staff and Sherpas and guides had to walk out (and they did, given the price tag of a helicopter ride), then I wanted to walk out with them. I knew the reality was that I would probably never see most of them again, which depressed me. The posttrip blues were already sinking in, and the trip wasn’t even over yet. Skipping the helicopter and spending a few days walking out instead was a way to put off the inevitable—the end of the trip and the sad good-byes.
Although I wasn’t joining the other climbers for the helicopter ride back to Kathmandu, I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could before they all departed. Our assistant base camp manager, Joe Kluberton, and I joined them the next morning for their trek down to Gorak Shep, a tiny village about two hours down valley from base camp, where the helicopter would pick them up. I waited with everyone there until the helicopter arrived, all of their gear was loaded, and they were ready to take off.
A big round of hugs followed as we said our last farewells. I was nervous for them, because takeoffs and landings are tricky at high altitude (Gorak Shep is nearly 17,000 feet). Flying in the Himalayas requires some serious piloting skills. According to the Aviation Safety Network’s database, close to seven hundred people have died in plane crashes in Nepal. As my friends took off, I held my breath and waited until they were completely out of sight before I let it out again, because everyone knows that if you hold your breath, it lessens the likelihood that anything bad can happen. After the helicopter vanished into the sky I let out a heavy sigh. They would be okay. So would I.
I spent the next couple of days hiking out with Joe and the rest of our base camp staff, guides, and some of our Sherpas. We got back to Kathmandu and celebrated our return to civilization in proper fashion—with a big fat steak dinner and a few rounds of cocktails. We met up with other teams that evening and hit the town in a big way. If I had to do it all over again I would choose to leave the expedition in the exact same fashion (but perhaps with fewer tequila shots during the farewell dinner).
When I got back to the States, I wasn’t quite myself. I was feeling really blue and had trouble sleeping and didn’t want to be social. I wasn’t sure what was troubling me, really. I had just spent the entire spring on Mount Everest, and I had made some great friends. It was an awesome trip. The staff, guides, and Sherpas more than delivered—they could not have been any better at their jobs.
It took me several weeks to pinpoint what was wrong. I finally realized that although the expedition was a fantastic experience, I missed feeling that sense of team ego that we had felt in 2002. But of course, this expedition wasn’t set up to be a team climb. It was set up so that whoever wanted to take a shot at getting up that big hill could do so in whatever style they were comfortable with. I was fortunate to have been with a group of (mostly) fabulous people during the two months we were on that mountain in the spring of 2010. I was impressed with the way many of them helped out when times got tough (and some went above and beyond the call of duty, for sure). But the reality was that most of them were there to accomplish something on their own.
There is a unique and extraordinary magic that comes with working your tail off and accomplishing something as a team. During our 2010 expedition, some of us worked together as a team—and that was amazing and enjoyable, and I am so grateful to those who did. But the group as a whole did not have that overall sense of team ego, and as a result I felt sort of empty when I got home.
Coach K nailed it that morning during our meeting when he said, “If you try to win alone and you’re successful, you’re going to jump up to celebrate alone. No one will share the moment with you. If you win as a team, you’ll all jump up together.”
I realize that telling you to encourage your people to have strong egos is a contrarian approach when it comes to forming a cohesive, high-performing team. But it worked for my 2002 Everest team, and it can work for you. Don’t take it from me; take it from Coach K, who happens to be the winningest Division I men’s college basketball coach in history. And oh, by the way… in addition to his unparalleled success as a college coach, he has coached sixty-three games for the USA men’s national basketball team. His record? 62–1. He lost only one game—to Greece in 2006 during the semifinals of the World Championship. He said it was the worst loss he has ever endured as a coach. I remember watching that game on television. It still haunts me every time I eat feta cheese.