Organizational Leadership: Reading Week 1 - Into Thin Air

Assignment:

Participants will read it from the perspective of leadership: how it was/was not demonstrated and by whom, good and exemplary aspects of leadership as well as poor aspects, aspects of leadership that are culture-specific, and lessons on leadership learned from this tragedy. Each participant will be required to post a short (300-500 words) analysis of the leadership experiences described in the book

Answer:

There are many leaders present in this book, and the addition of short stories of other climbers also adds compelling leadership examples (but far too many for a 500 word response!) To this end, I have focused on the leadership of the two people most frequently described in the book –Rob Hall (head guide for the author’s team) and the author himself, Jon Krakauer.

Rob Hall’s leadership stands out to me in a two passages from the book. In the first, Krakauer demonstrates Hall’s belief in cooperation to create long term partnerships with the efforts he spearheaded to remove garbage from the base camps (p. 64). This demonstrates a commitment not only to supporting the longevity of the larger group (including the authorities) but also a willingness to work with and for competitor. In another passage, just before the final leg of the ascent, Krakauer relates Hall’s response to another climber’s failure to reach the summit. Hall is ‘considerably more impressed’ that the climber turned around close to the summit without reaching it because he knew that he couldn’t make it safely (p.153). Krakauer goes on immediately to say that Hall himself was determined to summit and felt a great deal of pressure due to the lack of respect afforded him by such giants as Sir Edmund Hillary. I think this paints a very interesting picture of leadership; here is a man who is acutely aware of the consequences of failure but, while it has made him highly empathetic to the failures of others, he remains able to make appropriate decisions despite the emotional response. Especially ironic, given that he eventually ignored his own rules about turn-around times so as not to deny Hansen a second time.

There are many aspects of Jon Krakauer’s leadership that are worth discussing even though he was in a decidedly non-leading role throughout the expedition. I found it very interesting that the incident between Krakauer and Harris (where Harris insisted that the tanks were empty) remained a strong and difficult memory for Krakauer – a ‘haunting’ memory of ‘abdicated responsibility’ (p. 196). This, to me, speaks of the depth of responsibility felt by the members of the group. The leader was not responsible for the safety of the group – every member was responsible for everyone else. It speaks to a level of cohesion and cooperation that most groups would hope to achieve.

On the whole, I found the main ‘lesson learned’ in the book was to ‘trust your intuition.’ The author seems to constantly be repeating the warning signs, relative lack of experience/ knowledge, and lack of group cohesion that he felt was necessary to the task at hand. His message in terms of leadership in other situations seems to me to focus on the big picture of how everyone involved in a project fits together with their available resources – not just on the mechanical details that piecemeal a group endeavour.