MGMT1001

Assignment 2
Everest Report

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Executive Summary
The Everest Simulation is an online simulation that mirrors the dynamic team environment in an
organisation. This simulation aims to symbolise the integration and use of different strategies in
group structure, leadership and communication to effectively evaluate key learning experiences.
The simulation arbitrarily delegates roles to different members of the group, a leader,
environmentalist, photographer, marathoner, and observer, where individual and team goals and
responsibilities are thrust upon them depending on their role. The ability to fulfil each role and score
a high team performance through goal attainment is determined through the strength of a teams
collaborative and analytical process in decision making, allocating medical and oxygen supplies,
solving weather conditions and resolving conflict resolution in prioritising personal and team goals.
The Goals on Track (seen in Appendix) portrays our teams personal and goal achievement of 74% in
first simulation to a significant improvement to 94% in the second simulation. Thus the report
analyses the reasons of these results and reflects on individual insights and team experiences
directly linked to the key aspects of group structure, communication and leadership.

In the personal reflection of my experience through the lens of Groups & Teams, an analysis is
provided in regards to the group structure of goals and norms, effect of conflict, conformity and our
team learning process. Furthermore, these learning outcomes are supported by theories of
Mendzelas (1997) theories of group cohesion and productivity, Peterson & Harveys (2009) theory
of conflict resolution, the argument of Postmes & Speares (2001) theory of consensus norms and
value of information, McCaulys (1989) theory of group consensus and cohesion and Burke & C.Ss
(2006) strategy of effective team learning. My key findings include the prominent importance of
cohesion in team performance developed from a strong identity in group norms and goals, the effect
of this cohesion in conformity and groupthink, the unparallel relationship between group consensus
norms and value of unshared information, the ability of a group to facilitate cohesion through
discussion of conflict and our ability to improve significantly when errors are recognised. Aspects
that I would take into my next team experience include improvements that I would have made upon
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these findings is enforcing a group norm of disagreement to reduce conformity in conjunction with
the aspects that worked.

In the reflection of Communication, mediums of communication and their effect are compared. Key
aspects include the advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face compared to computer mediated
communication. It was found that face-to-face provided an enriching communication experience
with non-verbal cues as compared to computer mediated method. Furthermore, face-to-face was
more efficient. However, it was found that the effectiveness of each medium was not influenced due
to the cohesion of the group which could only be established through an initial experience of faceto-face creation of interpersonal relationships. Thus my learning outcome allowed me to realise and
choose face-to-face as the best form of communication which I would take into future experiences.

In leadership styles, the reflection of my democratic leadership style and participative and
supportive leadership alluding to the Path-Goal theory, enriched my understanding of why these
were effective in our team, as it promoted team members well being and participation.
Furthermore, I analyse my legitimate use of power and why coercive power was not enforced, to
promote team cohesion and the comfort of our team members. Thus, I learnt the amalgamation of
correct leadership in valuing members emotions and welfare in conjunction with the right
leadership style for our members internal locus of control elucidated our high team performance
from the ability to nourish team cohesion and unity.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary................................................................................................................................. 2
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 5
Group Structure & Conflict Resolution ................................................................................................... 6
Communication Mediums....................................................................................................................... 8
Leadership Styles .................................................................................................................................. 10
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 12
Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 13
A.

Group performance compared to class (Group 62) .................................................................. 13

B.

Goals on Track ........................................................................................................................... 13

C.

Team Contract........................................................................................................................... 15

List of References .................................................................................................................................. 18

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Introduction
Management is a process of dynamic change as organisations constantly strive to improve and learn.
In MGMT1001 students were randomly placed in groups of six to collaborate and complete the
Everest Simulation. This experience emulated a team in an organisation, where the amalgamation of
different strategies and values each team employed across key areas of understanding groups and
teams, communication and leadership would influence their outcome and team experience. Through
this reiterative process of developing the best strategies, interrelationships across these concepts
are established, and the positive and negative impacts of each aspect surfaces. Although conflicts
were inevitable, through collaboration, discussion and decision making, our group adapted and
overcame these teamwork challenges, resulting in a development of a cohesive group structure.
Furthermore, the right combination of communication mediums and leadership styles, and our
reflexive learning process elucidates our overall high group performance, improving significantly
from 74% to 94% in the second simulation.

This report aims to critically analyse and compares the experiences of our team both individually and
as a whole, employing theories and concepts in Understanding Groups & Teams, Communication
and Leadership for the intent of reflecting on successful practices and their reasons in conjunction
with improvements that could have aided our experience.

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Group Structure & Conflict Resolution

The analysis of our group structure is crucial in reflecting upon the result of our performance, where
our commitment to clear goals and formation of certain norms facilitated our group cohesion and
thus group productivity. Furthermore, our ability to cohesively solve conflicts improved this
facilitation of group unity. However, group cohesion assisted in the development of conformity and
groupthink
Before the meeting started, a group discussion was raised to create a team goal to achieve higher
than 80% in our team performance, thus establishing our objective to maximise team points rather
than individual. Consequently, through our unified commitment to these goals and strong group
identity, an effective team was formed which later would serve as an advantage to conflict
resolution and decision making. (Mendzela 1997 pp.67)
Immediately, task conflict was evident through the contrasting individual goals in the simulation and
it was apparent that not every member would achieve their personal goals. However, this conflict
provided beneficial elements of cohesion to the team through our ability to collaborate and
establish an overarching team goal (Peterson and Harvey 2009). The team effectively cooperated,
communicated and shared individual goals to compare each alternative in maximising points.
Consequently, all members effectively agreed upon a collective orientation, where members focused
on achieving the leaders main goal as it incurred the most points towards team performance, even
if it conflicted with some members individual objectives. Through the groups ability to efficiently
adapt to this conflict and provide input, member commitment was raised and the nourishment of
our team cohesion was highlighted due to the proactive creation of a shared goal that each member
was motivated to achieve.
The norm of our groups decision making process was established through group consensus. This
was manifested through our method of firstly analysing individual information, sharing this
information with the group, then discussing options for a supported group decision. Furthermore,
our commitment and loyalty in taking as much time needed to carefully analyse each alternative
underlined our unified commitment, strong group identity and our ongoing group cohesion
(Mendzela 1997). Additionally before the simulation started, I established a value of openness and
honesty by stating if an individuals health is deteriorating or they hold individual unshared
information, then they should not be afraid to bring this to the groups attention. Thus the value of
openness and group consensus established a trusting culture in our interpersonal relationship and
further influenced our team effectiveness (Burke 2006 as cited in Fransen 2011).
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Moreover, through each round, individuals were given shared information provided to every
group member and unshared information, given to certain individuals only. Postmes & Speares
(2001) argued that consensus norms valued shared information rather than unshared, negatively
affecting the quality of a decision. However, in our group experience, through our united
commitment in carefully analysing each decision, simultaneously with our value for openness and
honesty we appreciated unshared information even through our consensus norm. This was evident
in the oxygen tank allocations, where our group encouraged the effective sharing of all individual
information. As a result, the discussion of the Marathoners unshared information of needing more
oxygen than expected, allowed us to effectively make a quality decision. Thus, I learnt that it is not
only the group consensus norms that determines the value of shared or unshared information but
the integrated combination of other factors such as a trusting culture, unified goals and openness in
collaboration.
Although group cohesion provided strong interpersonal relationship, this created my personal
experience of conformity in a group decision. In our final decision of allocating oxygen tanks I felt the
extra tank should be allocated to Kevin (Environmentalist) as we had already over compensated for
Sneha (Marathoner). However, due to the strong group identity and cohesion, amalgamated with
my personality in lacking courage and confidence, I conformed to the decision and did not offer this
opinion, providing the illusion of a consensus (McCauly 1989 pp.260). My ability to conform was
further underlined through their increased effective persuasion by influencing my opinion
collectively rather than individually (Raven 1993, pp. 229), further highlighting the strong effect of
group cohesion and consensus. However, in our final round reaching the summit, we lost our
environmentalist due to lack of oxygen and I felt responsible to a degree. From this experience, I
learnt that deviated opinions may affect group cohesion but can encourage new perspectives and
furthermore reduced poor decision making (McCauly 1989). Thus, our group could have reduced the
likelihood of conformity and groupthink by establishing a norm for critical disagreement to
encourage new opinions and strengthen our decision making.
Nevertheless, in the second simulation, team learning was enabled through our ability to reflect and
understand our processes in our previous situation, allowing the recognition of a miscalculation in
oxygen allocation. Our ability to engage in these reflexive practices, evaluate and improve them
allowed us to promote team performance and efficiency through a collective understanding of our
errors (Argote & Olivera 1999 as cited in Burke & C.S 2006). Our adaptive learning in conjunction
with our aptitude to carry previous elements in our team effectiveness, including our united goal to

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improve, team cohesion and a trusting culture proves as a success with our final team performance
of 94% from 74%, being the only team in the class to improve our score. (See Appendix A).

Communication Mediums
Our primary medium for team discussion in the first simulation was face-to-face, whilst our medium
for the second simulation was using Skype.
From experience, I felt that the face-to-face approach was more effective due to our ability to attain
immediate attention and prompt communication through non verbal cues and display of emotions,
thus allowing an efficient completion of the simulation. This was highlighted in our ability to engage
in active listening in group discussions by allowing each member to discuss their opinions and shared
information to enable the interpretation of each others perspective. Communication richness was
further highlighted through the capability of perceiving non verbal cues such as eye contact and
body language to allow each listener to produce accurate and effective communication (Kang &
Watt, 2013). Furthermore, the importance of these nonverbal cues allows each speaker to feel the
acknowledgement of opinions from indications of active listening in eye contact and body language
such as nodding. Ultimately, the efficiency of communication in face to face allowed us to share
information and promptly complete our simulation within an hour.
In the second simulation, Harvards delay of resetting the second database impeded our ability to
perform the simulation face-to-face. Nevertheless, through our teams adaptive behaviour, we
turned to Facebook posts in our group as a medium to establish a new meeting time. Instantly, our
communication pace through this medium was evidently slower than face-to-face, taking over a day
to establish a new meeting time due to the lack of simultaneous online presence (Lebie et al. 1995 as
cited in Lantz. 2010). Consequently, Skype was utilised as our form of communication during
simulation. Due to the immediate communication in a call, the use of voice to voice was more
effective than text based chat as it overcame the inefficiency of waiting for replies. Furthermore, our
communication process was enriched due to the ability to hear verbal intonation to elucidate
message, contrasting to Facebook chat, where the tone of each message could not be clarified,
serving as an impediment in effectively interpreting the meaning.
However, I felt this was still inefficient due to communication hindrances that arose from absence of
non-verbal cues, resulting in the inefficient need to organise our interpretations (Lantz 2010). This
was apparent in my confusion in who was speaking to whom on Skype, whereas in face-to-face,
simple eye contact could indicate this, consequently obstructing our efficiency of sharing
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information and thus decision making. This is further supported by Adriansson and Hjelmquists
(1991) findings where decisions were more three times more rapidly face-to-face than when an
electronic medium was used (Lantz 2010). Simultaneously, the lack of body language cues hindered
the indication of attention to speakers, where I did not know if my message was delivered and
understood as usual face-to-face body language cues such as eye contact or subtle nods, signifying
understanding and active listening were missing, thus further underlining the deterioration of this
communication richness. However, we learnt to ameliorate these problems through the use of
constant feedback, where reassuring questions were asked to ensure effective understanding.
Furthermore, the barrier of communication due to information overload was experienced, due to
our teams need to collaborate incongruent information. In the previous experience of face-to-face,
my inability to constantly sustain new information through only verbal exchange overwhelmed my
rational process. However, the use of Skype in conjunction with the chat box proved as an advantage
as each member was able to paste disparate information relating to our decision making, thus
providing a centralised information bank. This provided us with the ability to effectively make
decisions and remedied our process outcome.
Although both face-to-face and Skype proves to have their own advantages and disadvantages, I
believe face-to-face was a better method used to improve group efficiency and communication
richness. This is further reinforced through our ability to complete the first simulation an hour faster
than the second simulation, despite our ability to learn from situational process errors.
Even though our online mode of communication did affect coordination and efficiency, it did not
affect our decision making process and process outcome. This is evident through our ability to gain a
higher team performance of 94% in our second round, despite our inefficient communication as
compared to the first round. From observation, I learnt that the order we experienced face-to-face
communication and online communication impacted our team effectiveness and thus process
outcomes, further supported by Lantz (2010). Our employment of face-to-face in the first simulation
allowed us to establish rapports, build trust and get off to a good start (Hambley et al. 2007 as
cited in Triana et al. 2011). This is evident through our aptitude to nourish the formation of
consensus norms in group decisions, create strong team cohesion and interpersonal relationships,
which we were able to bring into the second simulation despite the change of medium.
Contrastingly, if the online medium was used first, there could have been an inability to form team
cohesion and interpersonal relationship due to ineffective communication, thus resulting in a lower
team performance (Lantz 2010). Ultimately, this further supports my belief of face-to-face being

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more effective, where our ability to establish team cohesion and interpersonal relationships in
conjunction with our efficiency directed us towards a high team performance in both rounds.

Leadership Styles
As the leader of the group, I valued the use of a democratic style in decision making, involving all
members views and opinions in arriving to a consensus. I felt this strategy helped develop the
trusting culture and cohesiveness in our team, in being able to intake each others perspective which
consequently resulted in our high productivity throughout both simulations. There were only two
instances where I utilised legitimate power, firstly to ensure that moving into the next camp involved
the consensus and confirmation from each member, and secondly in the groups agreement
whereas if conflict arose and there was equal disparity on both sides , the final decision would be
determined by me. Both times highlighted my valued priority in group consensus and thus ensuring
cohesion. This was a valuable strategy evident in our ability to build interpersonal relationships and
a comfortable, trusting environment for our team. Furthermore, this strategy is supported by Raven
(1993, p.243) where emphasise of communality consequently maintained less distancing, less
distrust, greater cooperation, and de-escalation of conflict. Thus, the democratic style of group
inclusion was experienced to be the best approach, further reinforced through Ravens (1993 p.231)
agreement where full participation would be more effective than simply telling workers the
changes to be implemented.
However, in situations of conflict and disagreement, this may have been a disadvantage where a
directive leader in conjunction with coercive power could have created a stronger system for conflict
resolution. This was experienced in our second simulation, when Sneha was initially indecisive and
reluctant to join the rest of the group in employing Skype as the communication medium, delaying
the start of our simulation and evoking frustration. In this situation I could have utilised my
legitimate leadership tactics such as pressure and control in coercive power to force her to comply
with the group, and increase our efficiency. Although effective, I chose not employ this method to
due to the costs of my values in ensuring the comfort and wellbeing of each team member in
conjunction with maintaining interpersonal relationships. This is supported by Raven (1993 pp.242)
where this coercive power would have devalued Sneha and caused a loss of respect in my
leadership, consequently threatening our team solidity. Thus, in understanding the effects of
different powers, I have learnt that different powers have different effects. Furthermore, I have
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learnt the importance of democratic leadership in encouraging group participation and developing a
trusting culture of cohesion to generate higher productivity.
Moreover, I employed the leadership style of a supportive and participative leader. This was
manifested in my ability to show concern for followers by constantly asking the health status of each
member, in conjunction with assuring each individual that if any member suffered health problems
in the simulation, they should not be afraid to speak up, thus ensuring a trusting and comforting
environment. This supportive leadership is further reinforced through my value of each members
welfare as aforementioned. My participative leadership is evident in my utilisation of group
consensus for decision making and democratic leadership. This strategy was effective in providing
satisfaction for each member and facilitating productivity through their team participation and
involvement, reflected in our strong group identity and high performance. Moreover, as our team
agreed that each of us have an internal locus of control where we strongly believe we control our
own destiny, a satisfaction with the participatory management style was achieved (House, R.J.
1971). Thus, I believe that the amalgamation of the correct leadership dependent on our members
contingency factors propelled our ability to succeed and nourish our team development, reflected in
our high performance of 94% compared to other groups. (See Appendix A)

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Conclusion
Ultimately, our team experiences in the Everest Simulation lead to the reflective learning of
intertwining connections between a cohesive group structure, order of use in communication
mediums which affect group cohesion and leadership styles dependent on its members contingency
factors. These experiences nourished my understanding of how teams perform the best in a unified
and cohesive structure, accompanied by strong team goals and group norms to perform decision
making. Insightful understanding was further elucidated as the group cohesion facilitated
effectiveness in a team regardless of communication medium, however could only be easily
generated through face-to-face communication. Ultimately, the recognition of these elements and
our ability to adapt from mistakes enriched my understanding of core strategies and values that
influenced our high team performance.

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Appendix
A. Group performance compared to class (Group 62)

100
90
80
70
60
50

Climb 1

40

Climb 2

30
20
10
0
61

62

63

64

B. Goals on Track
i)

Round 1

Goals

Points

Reach Summit

Complete climb without needing to be rescued

All climbers reach summit

All climbers complete climb without needing to be rescued

All climbers stay together through Camp 4

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All climbers stay together through summit

Your Points for Personal Goals

15

Round 2: Medical Challenge Points

Round 3: Weather Challenge Points

Round 4: Oxygen Tank Allocation Points

Your Total Points

17/20

Percent of Your Goals Achieved

85%

Percent of Team Goals Achieved

74%

ii)

Round 2

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C. Team Contract
TEAM CONTRACT
Everest 2

Team Name: SKW

Name

Role

Contact

Kevin Zheng

Medic

Facebook

Wendy Li

Leader

Facebook

Shelia Zhong

Observer

Facebook

Sneha Vankadara

Environmentalist

Facebook

Wade Pedersen

Marathoner

Facebook

Scott Mays

Photographer

Facebook

Team Procedures
1. Day, time, and location of team members for Everest 2:
Monday, 29th May 2013 7:00pm, Face-to-face
Changed to Thursday, 2 May, 2013 10:30am, At home via a synchronous chat mediated software: Skype.

2. Preferred method of communication before and during Everest 2 (i.e., e-mail, mobile, chat
function, face-to-face in a specified location).

A. Before the climb

Synchronous chat mediated software: Skype or Facebook

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B. During the climb

Synchronous chat mediated software: Face-to-face
C. After the climb
Facebook
3. Team goal for Everest 2:

To collectively do better than Everest 1

To prevent anyone being rescued
To have everyone reach the summit

4. Decision-making policy (By consensus? By majority vote? By team leader?):

Consensus

Team Participation
1. How will we resolve conflict?

Through validated, reason and consensus

If group is split evenly in half, leader makes final decision

2. Strategies for encouraging/including ideas and debate from all team members :

Openly share all information, in order to successfully make the right choices to proceed

3. Strategies for achieving our goal:

Stating the team goals before the simulation to reinforce unified commitment
Carefully analysing each option and its effects
Learn from errors

4. Preferences for leadership (team leader only, shared leadership):

Shared Leadership

Personal Accountability
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1. Expected individual attendance, punctuality, and participation at Everest 2:

Expected everyone to attend on time and openly participate as this task requires all
members to collaborative.

2. What are the consequences for lack of engagement in Everest 2?

Any issues can be openly discussed however if any further issues arise, the tutor in charge
will be contacted.

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