Leadership and Teamwork

Simulation Overview

In this leadership and teamwork based simulation, participants explore group dynamics and leadership in the context of climbing Mount Everest. Each round of the simulation, lets players decide how to effectively distribute supplies and information needed for the ascent — decisions that affect speed, health, and ultimately the team’s success in summiting the mountain. Version 3 of the simulation retains the same key experiences and learning objectives while featuring major improvements for the participants and the facilitator. This simulation is played synchronously with teams of 5. It can be played asynchronously between multiple teams.

Time Requirement

• Introduction - 30 minutes
• Game Play - 1 hour to 1.5 hours
• Debrief - 45 minutes to 1 hour

The Story

Participants play one of five team members attempting to summit Mount Everest in this collaborative, multi-player simulation. During each round of play, team members analyze information on weather, health conditions, supplies, goals, or hiking speed, and determine how much of that information to communicate to their teammates. Failure to accurately communicate and analyze information has consequences on team performance.

During the 6 simulated days of hiking the mountain, the teams face various challenges individually. They also face three hidden challenges as a team and have to collaborate to figure out how to overcome these challenges.

Learning Focus

• Teams can explore influences on collective decision-making — including team dynamics, opposing interests, & cognitive biases.
• The simulation also focuses on analyzing different leadership approaches, & team responses.
• The game helps understand the effective strategies for building, participating in, & leading teams more effectively.

Topics Covered

• Leadership, Team Building, & Strategy Forming
• Communication & Organizational Behavior
• Group Dynamics & Group Decision-Making

See it in Action

This simulation is WCAG Compliant for the participants.

Each simulation comes with a Teaching Guidebook for the facilitator along with 1:1 facilitator training and free trials.

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This simulation is by Prof. Michael Roberto, Prof. Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School Publishing, and Forio