I climbed Mt. Everest in the Everest V3 group simulation. The simulation imitated the situation of working as a team to achieve the goal of climbing Mt. Everest. It is a team leadership simulation, with each team having a group of five people. Each person on the team had a distinct role as either Leader, Physician, Marathoner, Environmentalist or Photographer. I was the Marathoner.

The most compelling lesson learned that you took away from playing the Everest simulation is how to deal with unequal information, and asymmetric, even conflicting goals, as you work together as a team to successfully make key decisions. Going through the experience of this simulation we definitely experienced learning through doing. We recognized that everyone didn’t have the same information. We learned that we had to ask more questions to get the information that we didn’t have. We had to better listen to others, instead of talking more and pushing the information that we had onto others. We had to communicate better, and resolve the tensions and conflict that emerged because of multiple conflicting goals. We learned some strategies about how to deal with the rather challenging situation of climbing Everest V3, which perfectly simulated the communication and decision-making challenges we all face while working in teams. I learned much about the sharing of information, communication, and decision-making challenges that exist on a team, and how to successfully navigate them. 

Creating a psychologically safe environment is crucial for leaders because by doing this, they help people feel comfortable and build the shared belief that the team is part of a safe and open environment. To create this environment in the future, I am going to let the team see me understand. I think when people know you care enough to understand and consider their point of view they experience psychological safety. I can do this by using language like, “What I heard you say is _. Is that correct?” This shows people that the leader wants to understand their perspective.

I learnt that we should put more effort into developing adequate processes, wherever possible. This investment maximises performance and success rate of the team. The process that we developed as a team was a crucial part in our decision-making process. Vanessa was able to evaluate the situation each time, make sure everyone participates, and then come to a final decision with our input data.