True Leaders
By Ilias Mamalis — Agile Coach
I’m always excited to see mountaineers conquer the world’s highest peaks such as Everest and K2. Marvellous views, high adrenaline and people overcoming themselves while facing their own gods and demons. Make no mistake, the conditions are extreme, however people still have the obsession and perseverance for high altitudes. But what makes these expeditions successful in reality ?
The Sherpa Story
At the Everest Base Camp of 5,500m altitude, the rescue team receives a distress call from a female Indian climber at over 8.600m in the “death zone’’ pleading for her life. Most helicopters can’t fly above 6.400m since the air is so thin. The choice they are now faced up against is beyond human logic:
if you say no……. people will die,
saying yes………… you could die….
The rescue team goes to bring her down from 8.600meters . After climbing for 16 hours, in their own fatigue state, they find her in an extremely bad situation. She has very bad frostbites, extremely low oxygen levels, is confused, and she is listening Indian music on the radio. Next to her is a Sherpa who is standing for hours trying to encourage her to stay awake and calm. Every time that she tries to give up, he motivates her and asks her to think about her daughter.
The rescue team manages to get her down to Camp2 where she gets some fluids, oxygen and heat to initiate body recuperation. After a few hours she came around and started talking about the incident.
“Eight hours in the snow , me and my Sherpa took care of me, when I was trying to sleep he gave me strength, he told me to remember my daughter, he saved my life.“
She calls him “MY” and she also proudly admits that he “SAVED” her life. But of course she does. Try to picture it. Someone is lying down helpless on Everest’s death zone for 8 hours and there is a person altruistically doing his best to keep his fellow alive by putting his life in high risk. Any moment at this altitude can be fatal for him also.
The Sherpa is still standing next to her keeping her hand, he is quite touched at this moment. People are giving props to him but he is standing humble, looking down and tearing from his happiness that is still alive. He doesn’t seek personal glory. He is not just a hero, he is a true leader. A true leader is someone who brings the best in people to get things done, especially in difficult situations.
So, the answer to the original question now seems obvious. Great leaders lay on backstage and serve the teams but we see only who reaches the summit.
If you manage your people in your team to call you “MY”, if you struggle to “SAVE” their career, if you help them to overcome personal and professional problems “sacrificing” your own and “cry with their success” I guess that you are already a true leader.
The Sherpa are an ethnic group originally from Tibet and now residing across Nepal ,India and Tibet.
They are the greatest climbers in the world.
Just a trick to remember them:
S- self awareness / safety
H- humble / honest
E- empathy /emotionally intelligent
R- responsible / resilient / respectful
P- Proactive / protect / patient /people
A- accountable
And guess who comprised the rescue team? :) SHERPA :)
That’s the type of leader one would aspire to be. Our ‘expeditions’ are successful because of collaboration and teamwork. That’s the kind of leadership that has been driving us forward from the beginning; servant leadership. Our Ubuntu inspired culture of collaboration and mutual support within Agile Actors is based on foundational principles set by our leaders who practice servant leadership every day setting the example for leadership throughout our organization. Together we remain resilient and together we persevere.
