Everest Simulation Summary

“What factors contributed to your team’s performance, cohesion, and learning?”
Summary
The Everest Simulation is designed with the key factors relating to teamwork in mind. Things like effective communication; specific information sharing, process orientation and conflict management play a major role in determining the success of a team. Our team consisted of Ellena Berg who was the Team Leader, Gary Leduc the team’s Physician, AiPing Lee the Environmentalist, Ushita Shah the professional Photographer and myself the Marathoner. Before we got started everyone was very clear about their individual goals and the one common goal of avoiding rescue. As we got started with the simulation the Photographer was very clear in mentioning her goals about staying one extra day at camp 1 and camp 2 after which the Environmentalist mentioned that it was important for her to stay one extra day at camp 4. Then we each shared our unique goals with the team. Within a few minutes it was clear to me that we lacked direction that had to come from the leader and thus began the storming in the group, I immediately assumed
My personal goals were to avoid rescue & frostbite, and reaching the summit. I was successful at avoiding frostbite but due to our failed attempt at the oxygen challenge, the distribution of the oxygen canisters was wrong and I ended up getting less oxygen than required. So I ended up being rescued and failed to make it to the summit. Even though I had failed at my personal goals, I had always wanted the team’s success more than achieving my personal goals. I had been proactive throughout the simulation and shared almost all of the unique information I held, with the exception of one time that I might have overlooked some details due to time pressure. I felt quite cohesive to work with the team although my learning was negatively impacted in terms of my personal goal