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RelationTrips
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Personal, Practical Advice for Every Traveler
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Building Leadership and Teamwork in the
Himalaya
Mountain-climbing is
more than a metaphor for these Wharton-schooled executives:
Conquering anxieties of the workplace, they achieve the seemingly
impossible
I. Mythology
II. Motives
III. Power-Walkers vs. Photo-Freaks
IV.Venture Startups
V. Leadership Lessons
By Michael Useem and Edwin Bernbaum
The
air is thin and the tea is tepid at the Himalayan village of Chukhung,
nestled at 15,584 feet among an array of the world’s greatest
mountains. We’ve been climbing since 3 a.m., roused from our slumber by
our head Sherpa, Ang Jangbu, a Mount Everest veteran.
The objective today: a peak more than 2,000 vertical feet above the
village whose views, says our guidebook, are “staggering.” The early
morning sun
is warming the air and lighting the summits. We’re pumped.
Michael
Useem, professor of management and director of the Center for
Leadership
and Change Management at Wharton, is author of The Leadership
Moment:
Nine True Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All
(1998).
Edwin Bernbaum, senior Fellow at The Mountain Institute and Research
Associate at the University of California at Berkeley, is author
of Sacred Mountains of the World (1998) and a frequent lecturer
on mountains,
creativity and leadership
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We are
reaching the high point of our two-week “WEMBA Leadership Trek to Mt.
Everest.” The night before we had slept fitfully near the hamlet of
Dingboche, at 14,270 feet the highest permanent settlement of the
region, its treeless plateau already placing us at an elevation near
the crest of the Swiss Alps. The
day before, our team of 19 trekkers had been jarred by a potentially
serious
case of altitude sickness. But now we’re feeling fit, and one of the
world’s
great panoramas beckons above.
We have organized this trek in the Himalayas’ famous Khumbu region to
stretch our imagination and expand our working concepts of leadership
and teamwork.
One of us — Mike Useem — has been teaching the WEMBA (Wharton Executive
MBA) leadership course during the past several years, and the other —
Ed Bernbaum
— has been researching the role of mountain metaphors in leadership and
organizing
treks through India, Nepal and Tibet for many years. Together, we’ve
sought
to create a unique learning experience for WEMBA graduates who are
looking
to deepen their mastery of personal and team leadership.
The Himalayas offer a unique environment for continuing personal
development. Mountain climbers, like the mountains they climb, hold a
central place in our culture's mythology, a paradigm for how
individuals striving to reach a goal can achieve what others label
impossible. But reaching a summit is usually far more than personal
achievement, for it almost always depends
on collective effort, with the contribution of each required for the
success of all.
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