There is no “I” in ‘T-E-A-M-W-O-R-K’!

In 1935, the Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made his first trip to Mount Everest. For 15 years previously, climbers had been trying to conquer the world’s highest

peak.

The 1935 expedition had got as far as North Col, a flat area between Everest’s peaks. Just below this col the climbing party made a gruesome discovery. In a wind-shredded tent they found a skeleton sitting in an odd position, with one boot off and the laces of the other boot between its bony fingers.

The body was that of Maurice Wilson, an Englishman who had sneaked into Tibet without official permission. To preserve secrecy, he had hired only three porters. As they approached the North Col, the porters refused to go any further. Wilson decided to continue the climb alone. That decision cost Wilson his life. Since Wilson’s failed attempt, over 200 other climbers have also lost their lives too - over 150 of which remain on the mountain to this day.1

Only someone who has climbed a formidable mountain knows what it takes to make it to the top. Between 1920 and 1952, seven major expeditions failed to make it to the top of Everest. Tenzing Norgay was on six of these expeditions. Teammates joked that Tenzing had a third lung because of his capacity to carry heavy loads. But he learned that no one should underestimate the difficulty of the climb.

On one climb when conditions became difficult, Tenzing and his fellow Sherpas put on their crampons (climbing boot-spikes). George Frey, an experienced but overconfident mountaineer, decided not to wear crampons but slipped and fell 300 metres to his death. Tenzing wrote of careless climbers, “Like so many men before them – they had held a mountain too lightly and they paid the price.”2

In 1953, Tenzing embarked on his seventh expedition to Everest with a British team. By then, Tenzing was respected not only as a porter, but also as a fully-fledged teammate, an honour unusual at that time for a Sherpa.

Tenzing was responsible for hiring, organising and leading the team of porters for the journey. To get just two people to the summit, the team brought 10 high-altitude climbers, including New Zealander Edmund Hillary. Altogether the team would require almost 2.3 tonnes of equipment and food, delivered from Kathmandu on the backs of porters 290 kilometres up and down Himalayan ridges and over rivers crossed by narrow rope-and-plank bridges to the base camp. Tenzing hired over 200 people just to get the supplies to the mountain.

Another 40 Sherpas with extensive mountain experience carried supplies up the mountain. The best third of that team carried 340 kilograms of necessary equipment in 14 kilogram loads to higher camps. Only Tenzing and three other porters would have the strength and skill to go to camps near the summit.

For each level reached, a higher degree of teamwork was required. One set of men exhausted themselves just to get equipment up the mountain for the next group. Two-man teams worked their way up the mountain, finding a path, cutting steps, and securing ropes. By this stage they were exhausted but made the next leg of the climb possible. Of the teamwork involved, Tenzing remarked: “You do not climb a mountain like Everest by trying to race ahead on your own, or by competing with your comrades. You do it slowly and carefully, by unselfish teamwork. Certainly I wanted to reach the top myself; it was the thing I had dreamed of all my life. But if the lot fell to someone else I would take it like a man, and not a cry-baby. For that is the mountain way.”3

The team, using the “mountain way,” made it possible for two pairs to make an attempt at reaching the summit. The first team tried and failed, so the other team of got its chance. That team consisted of Tenzing and Edmund Hillary. Tenzing wrote of the first team: “They were worn-out, sick with exhaustion, and, of course, terribly disappointed that they had not reached the summit themselves. But still... they did everything they could to advise and help us. And I thought, Yes, that is how it is on a mountain. For where would Hillary and I have been without the others? Without the climbers who had made the route and the Sherpas who had carried the loads? ... It was only because of the work and sacrifice of all of them that we were now to have our chance at the top.”4

Tenzing and Hillary made the most of their chance. In late May, 1953, they accomplished a human first: they stood on the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak!

Could Tenzing and Hillary have made it to the top without a great team? NO. This lesson in leading teams is no less important for team leaders today: As the challenge ESCALATES, the need for teamwork ELEVATES!5

A smart team leader learns that people operate better as individuals if they consider themselves to be part of a well- functioning, supportive team. Teammates remain committed and loyal to their team if they adopt the attitude of mountain climbers – they always help each other. A great team is characterised by a great attitude – it may not come as a consequence of climbing Mount Everest but it goes something like: “I don’t care who gets the credit as long as WE achieve great goals TOGETHER!” Tenzing was not concerned who got the credit for conquering Everest.

Best wishes as you achieve great goals with your team in 2016!

Remember, there is no “I” in “T-E-A-M-W-O-R-K”! 

References

1   https://www.rock-climbing-for-life.com/mount-everest-deaths/

2   James R. Ullman, Man of Everest: The Autobiography of Tenzing (London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1955)

3   Ibid., 250.

4   Ibid., 255.

5   John C. Maxwell, The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001)