Although most of us don’t face life or death situations in the office, we do operate

in a volatile environment that demands strong leadership and quick decision-

making based on the best information we can gather in a short time. In this sense,
we might say that our work teams scale our own Everests every day.

Specifically, over the course of our journey, four essential principles emerged:
Leaders should be led by the group’s needs; inaction can sometimes be the most
difficult—but wisest—action; if your words don’t stick, you haven’t spoken; and
leading upwards can feel wrong when it’s right.

But Roberto’s article calls into account the decision-making abilities of

experienced trek leaders Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Drawing from behavioral
decision-making, Roberto concludes that the two leaders were operating under
some common cognitive biases that likely contributed to the Everest disaster.

These common and predictable cognitive biases impair judgement and the
choices that people make and are especially disastrous in leaders. I’ve
condensed some common cognitive biases that Roberto found in action on
Everest. If you want to be a truly powerful leader, take them time to learn
more about your decision-making -- you may even recognize a few of these
biases in yourself.

There really wasn't any co-leadership there among the other professionals, Andy
[Harris] and Mike [Groom]. They were under Rob's direction. And I think it's one of
the shortcomings of leadership if you don't put everybody in a position where they
can contribute and be supportive, yes, but also the dynamic of feedback, because so
many other people know things that you don't know. But Rob didn't do that. Rob did
control things, and that was his style. I think Mike had it right at the South Summit
when he expressed his concerns about going to the summit. But Rob didn't want to
hear it.

believe nobody would have died if we had turned around when we had agreed to.
And for that matter, I feel that if we had an effective plan for fixing the route and a
reasonable pace set, all or many or most would have reached the summit and lived,
and there would be no story today. But that didn't happen, and at the end of the
day, it's a failure of leadership. It's a story of failure, bad decisions and pressures of
the moment, pressures to succeed

I think what happened, Rob was overwhelmed at that moment by the pressures. I think
Rob knew it was the wrong thing to do, but he was going to figure out a way to get
through it. And I think that there's so many of those forces [that] were at work -- the
competitive pressures of the Fischer expedition, his own ambitions, the publicity, the
numbers of getting people to the top. I even think the fact that some people turned
around were forces that were working against Rob at that point, because he needed
people to get on top. And all those things combined together with ego and pride
suffocating his good judgment.

I think an important part of being a good leader and making good decisions is to have
felt failure. I think Rob probably never felt failure in his mind. And it didn't matter
whether Andy could handle the altitude or not, because Rob was just going to take
care of things. But I think humility is such an important quality in making decisions. It
wasn't just unfair to Andy; it was unfair to everybody because we were all dependent
upon the leadership here to make the right decisions on that day. And then when Andy
got into trouble, there wasn't anybody to help him. ...

I think at those moments on the Hillary Step holding Doug, Rob's thinking he's still
going to figure out a way to get down. He isn't thinking of failure at that point. If he
was thinking of failure, he would have asked his Sherpa who were still there with him
to help him down. He still figured out he had a way of getting out of a tight spot. He
had a history of getting out of tight spots. Rob was perhaps in a way cursed with the
lack of failure. Failure is such a good teacher in life. It brings humility, and that
humility wouldn't let you stand there at the Hillary Step with another climber on your
arm after 4:00. Humility would never allow that.

Rob was a leader who became a follower. He became a follower of Doug, and he
should have been leading Doug. And if he had lead early enough, I think nobody
would have died.

Leading a team requires more than just an ability to make decisions. To be a

strong leader, you need to possess an awareness of how people tick. What is
your team capable of, and what problematic behavior are they enacting? More
importantly, do you know when your decision-making and leadership abilities
might be compromised, so you can head catastrophe off at the pass?
Anyone who believes there is ever a guarantee to reach the summit is either delusional
or simply kidding themselves. Anyone who promotes such a guarantee is being
dishonest. The role of the guide and the guide service, in my opinion, is to provide the
best opportunity for the client to perform at their best and return safely. The summit
may be part of this process, but may not. If the client has been allowed to operate at
the best level they can at the time, they should not blame anyone but themselves if
they do not summit.

Clients who have no prior high-altitude experience are likely to take whatever
experience they do have and try to extrapolate it to higher and higher altitudes. This
often leads those with preconceived ideas of what they can do at new altitudes only to
become surprised and disappointed when they do not perform as they have in the past
at much lower altitudes. It is the guide's job to prepare the clients new to this high
altitude for the experience.

ne's primary responsibility is to take care of one's self and own group, and at
extreme altitude that is often all that a climber can handle. In addition, a basic
principle of triage in rescue situation is to not bother with people that are dead, but
rather spend all energies on rescuing those who are likely to survive. (The decision by
the Sherpas to take Makalu Gau down instead of Scott Fischer is a good example.)
It would have to be more of a community of people having an ethos that it's not so much
standing on top that matters, it's having a craft and having had an apprenticeship and
having done the hard work to gain the experience necessary to do something like climb
Everest in a safe and self-reliant manner.

You know, the mountain isn't such a dangerous place as people make it out to be. What's
dangerous is when ambition is not matched by experience.