The first Singaporean women to reach the summit of Everest used a framework that defines effective teams.

There were no Olympic medals up for grabs when Sim Yi Hui and Jane Lee, the co-founders of the Singapore Women’s Everest team set out to recruit team members to climb the world’s tallest mountain in 2004. “When we first formed the team my goal was just to climb the mountain.  It was really a pure passion to want to climb”, Sim Yi Hui told me on stage at the recent FT Family Business Forum Asia.

Little did she know at the time but her goal would get a lot bigger. Once the newspapers caught wind of Yi Hui’s dream, she and her team members became the “Singapore Women’s Everest Climbing team”, the first group of Singaporean women to attempt to reach the summit of the mountain. The nation was watching and expectations were rising.

To cope with the enormity of their mission, the team developed a highly fluid, yet effective way of operating, which was crucial to their success. It comprised of four key practices which are widely considered to define team effectiveness; the GRPI framework (Goals, Roles and Responsibilities, Process and Procedures and Interpersonal Relationships), from Richard Beckhard’s 1972 study, “Optimising Team Building Efforts”.

The GRPI model focuses the leader and team first and foremost on concrete goals. In 2007 Noel Tichy, an American management expert, found that 80 percent of team conflicts were the result of unclear goals. Agreeing on shared goals is therefore the highest priority. The next most important factors are roles and responsibilities, processes and procedures and relationships.

Shared goals

Yi Hui’s team was very clear about its goal right from the beginning, which was a humble one considering the scale of its ambition. The six women from the equator knew that the freezing climb would push them to their limits so their main aim was to put just one team member on the summit. They were all prepared that they might not be the one to plant the flag.

They also set expectations; each team member had to commit four years to the endeavour. This meant putting off big life decisions such as getting married, which one of them duly did.

They also pledged to go together. When funds were lacking, meaning only two of them could go, they delayed the climb, which was originally scheduled for 2008, for another year to gather more sponsors.

The Singapore team’s shared goal also aided shared decision-making. “There were a lot of times when we disagreed with decisions made and also because of different personalities, but we will always go back to the goal, which is that we want to get up the mountain safely and come down.  If you put that goal as the overarching thing to look at, then it makes decision-making a lot easier,” she added.

Clear roles

Yi Hui was joined by a mixed bag of team members; from a Major in the Singapore Armed Forces, to a pharmaceutical sales rep, all of whom were different ages.

Yi Hui and Jane weren’t the oldest (Jane was actually the youngest), nor the most experienced or even the most physically ready. Unconventional in most places, especially so in Asia, but their team made all decisions together and leveraged each other’s skills from the beginning.

For example, Joanne Soo became the team mentor because of her background running her own outdoor adventure training company. A veteran leader of trekking and mountaineering expeditions, having led teams to Mount Damavand in Iran and Mouth Halla and DeChongBong in Korea, it was a natural role.

The team quickly discovered that Peh Gee, the Singapore Army Major, was strongest in communications and ensuring order, so she was assigned to look after all equipment, especially communications kit like satellite phones and cameras.

Plucky processes  

“We realised that in such a stressful environment you need to have certain fixed processes, and the daily debrief was one of them.  So, every day we will always gather in the tent to talk about what happened in the course of the day and if there are certain things we needed to sort out we would be able to discuss and make any decisions based on the discussions.”

Such clear processes and group decision-making meant the team had to make one very difficult decision in the interest of achieving the goal. Yi Hui was diagnosed with costochondritis (an inflammation of the sternum) during the climb, which gave her an increasing amount of chest pain the higher she pushed up the mountain. Fearing she wouldn’t make it and become a burden to her teammates, she made the hard decision to return to camp and let the others push to the top, which they duly did. In the end, five of them made it to the summit, far surpassing the original goal anyway.

Relationships matter

How members of a team interact with each other is critical to mutual trust and respect. The leader’s style also influences   the interaction of the whole group. Yi Hui as a co-leader was also called the “merry-maker” for her good humoured approach to difficult situations and Jane was a driven and tenacious go-getter, who the team saw as a natural leader. Both of them, however, instilled very open communication in the team and together, imbued it with a mixed sense of seriousness and fun. Their team was not defined by a typical hierarchy.

While hierarchy is said to improve a team, it can also undermine it. In research conducted by my colleague Roderick Swaab which looked at 5,104 group expeditions to the Himalayas over the past 100 years, he found that hierarchically-oriented teams climbing Everest had a higher chance of reaching the summit, but such teams had more climbers die on the way up. The less hierarchical ones had a lower chance of success, but a higher chance of coming back alive. One of his paper’s key pieces of advice is to ensure that teams have a safe environment to speak out, which defined the less hierarchical teams, something Yi Hui’s team did very well.

The closeness of the team endured victory too. “The most touching moment was when my teammate, she reached the summit and the first thing she said, it was not, ‘Oh, I am at the top,’ or, ‘I have made it.’  The first thing she said to me was, ‘Yi Hui, this is for you.’”

The importance of having a shared goal was central to the team’s success. Leaving someone behind, even one of the team leaders, was not something the team took lightly, but it was necessary for the overarching goal, which was not only for one of them to reach the summit, but for all of them to come home safely.

Randel Carlock is a Senior Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise and the Berghmans Lhoist Chaired Professor in Entrepreneurial Leadership at INSEAD. He was the first academic director of the Wendel Centre for Family Enterprise and is the director of The Family Enterprise Challenge, an Executive Education programme for family business leaders.

BORN: 2009

INDUCTED: 2014

CATEGORY: ADVENTURERS & EXPLORERS

JANE LEE, SIM YIHUI, JOANNE SOO, LEE PEH GEE, LEE LI HUI, ESTHER TAN

It was five years in the making. In May 2009, after more than 1,700 days of rigorous training and practice climbs, the Singapore Women’s Everest Team made it to the top of the world. Three members of the team – Lee Li Hui (born 1981), Esther Tan (1982), Jane Lee (1984) – made it to the Everest summit in the early hours of 20 May. Two days later, Joanne Soo (1970) and Lee Peh Gee (1976), also summited. The sixth team member, Sim Yihui (1982), had to turn back because of persistent chest pains.

Jane and Yihui were undergraduates at the National University of Singapore in 2004 when they set out to form Singapore’s first all-woman mountaineering team. Thirty women responded to their recruitment drive. After interviews and physical tests, 19 were left. Over the next five years of training, 13 dropped out. The six that remained had diverse backgrounds and experiences but shared the aim of challenging their personal assumptions and boundaries. In May 2009 they showed that the world’s highest mountain was not an insurmountable challenge.

The women of the Singapore Women’s Everest Team were Her World magazine’s “Young Woman Achievers” in 2009.

“The ability to manage fear does not mean the absence of fear. Fear can be a stumbling block or another action driver. Fear has a place in my heart, for to live without fear is to live without a challenge.”
– Joanne Soo

“We’re only around on this planet for 80 years or so. I can’t sit around being afraid I may die from climbing a mountain. I don’t want to become an armchair mountaineer and, at 60, tell myself “Gee, I could have done that.”
– Jane Lee

“It’s not the half-an-hour on the summit that changes you, but the five years of growth that enables you to stand on top of the mountain for half an hour.”
– Lee Peh Gee

“Being in an all-women’s team has its advantages. We were sensitive and open with each other, and communicated a lot with one another during expeditions. … As women, we tend to sympathise and empathise with each other, and issues of pride and ego were never at the forefront of our relationships.”
– Sim Yihui

“In seeing this dream of ours come to fruition, I have also redefined the threshold of impossibility for myself.”
– Lee Li Hui

“The journey towards Everest also kicked me out of my comfort zone, every single day… It pushed me to think beyond just the usual.”
– Esther Tan

TEDxSingapore is an ideas community in Singapore passionate about ideas and TED, founded in April 2009 and numbering over 5,000 peopletoday. 100% Community created +free to join, visit us and get inspired at www.TEDxSingapore.sg

About TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

– being alive
– summiting and surviving everest
– God drawing me close
– guoyong
– still having a job after everest
– the love of my family, my parents, their food
– sunsets
– being reminded that peace can only be found in God
– our new place
– sisters
– marriage
– friends
– more time on my hands, without having to train 6 times a week anymore
– mountain biking
– coming back to a cg after many years
– being able to share the everest experience with others
– getting baptised finally
– God’s presence and His word, which comforted me in distress
– all the little bits of marriage and wedding stuff that pieced together
– my room
– my teammates
– kim boon
– my sherpa, jamling, who saved my life

I was telling Esther today that 2009 would be one of the most significant year in the course of our lives for a while to come. Think most of us can agree on that. It is when a five year wait has come to an end. It’s like biking on a trail with no side paths for five years and suddenly the scenery changes. the trail changes. Everything is no longer as predictable. Options open up.  Then where will you go. which path shall you take. Choosing one means you never see where the others bring you. Refusing to choose means you stay put and stop moving ahead.

The more I age, the more I think that options only serve to confuse you and put you on guard. I buy more stuff in a shop with less options, less variety. I get overwhelmed by variety and I end up abandoning all options. Or rather, with variety, I tend to look for the unique piece or the one that sticks out distinctively. When in a circumstance of less options, i might have easily choosen any other mediocre item. Of course, this has only been tested wrt shopping especially shopping in Bangkok two weeks ago. Haven’t given much thought to whether it extrapolates to other more crucial aspects of life.

Age. GY tells Esther Everest has aged us five years due to the sheer extremes the body is put thru.There I was thinking that exercise makes us younger, more youthful etc.

Skiing last week in a white out reminds me of the miserable base camp days when there’s no sun. It also confirmed that down is still my best friend. I will acquire a down vest one day.

I also discovered that soaking in 41.5 degrees is more enjoyable after dipping in 19 degrees. And that 19 degrees is less intimidating when you are wholly immersed in it.Hokkaido really has impressive crabs. Everest base camp food talk has finally materialized. Crabs so huge they touch your neighbours at the table.

Curly is also the new straight with regards to post intensive training hairstyles.

And the Indon ‘tai tai’ life for a few weeks post expedition where I made the realization that the dream life for most gals to find a rich husband is a fallacy. It’s hardly the dream life unless your pooches and shopping malls are you best friends. Or the salons and manicurists are your pals. It’s so lonely and adventure is better sought with a group of pals. Give me mountain biking anytime with sweat, dirt and post exercise feast.

Although paragliding was fun especially the instant you get lifted off the ground, and white water rafting was the weekend getaway trip and Bandung ignited an interest in snake skin.

The more I write the more I remember.

2009 marks the end of a two year business. The path of an entrepreneur, I have come to realise, is lonely and limiting when you past the initial learning curve. The path of a successful partnership follows that of our team – common vision.

Trailblazer remains fun and with my parents at genting with us, we now have fantastic photos and the genting amusement park continues to amuse.I had a list of stuff I want to do for a while. 2 of which were learn guitar and motor. Post expedition, I have also done both and am still trying to master them.

Now I am contemplating a dog after the christmas in KL.

Wow. when you list them down like that, it makes it seems like a really eventful year. I nearly forgot about the triathlons in PD and Desaru and also the swimming. Then there’s the ride up Fraser’s hill in the rain!!! and witnessing a carbon bike built from scratch.

and I am overwhelmed. Didn’t set out to type a long post.

MEET THE NATAS SINGAPORE WOMEN’S EVEREST TEAM
Joanne Soo, 39, runs Ace Adventure, an adventure company; Lee Li Hui, 28, is a financial consultant; Sim Yi Hui (co-team leader), 27, is an experimental education officer; Jane Lee (team leader), 26, runs Wild Atlas Expeditions, a niche adventure company; Esther Tan, 28, is a copywriter and Lee Peh Gee, 32, is a major in the Singapore Army.

Q: How have your lives changed after Everest?
Jane Lee: Quite a bit. Many people say reaching Everest marks the end, but honestly, it’s just the beginning. It has shown us what’s possible in the world. When I got home after the climb in May last year, I felt this crazy, consuming desire to go back to the mountains and just be out there.

It became clear to me that I wanted to continue climbing and being outdoors for the rest of my life. So when my work contract as a student development officer ended in February this year, I didn’t extend it. Instead, I started my own business called Wild Atlas Expeditions, which organises niche adventure expeditions, such as women-only trips.

Lee Li Hui: You know, we didn’t make any long-term plans for five years simply because we didn’t know if we would survive Everest. So I came back feeling lost and sad—there was nothing else to look forward to. I spent many nights just watching television at home and feeling like I was wasting my life away.

After Everest, I realised that I needed to find value and passion in the work that I do. I was in pharmaceutical sales because it gave me flexibility and the money was all right. I was actually interested in doing something else for the last few years but I had never dared to do anything about it. But four months after returning from Everest, I made the career switch and am now working as a financial consultant. I guess I realised that I didn’t want to just do any job anymore.

Esther Tan: Well, things have been quite different for me. I got married in May this year. My boyfriend had proposed a month before the expedition but I hadn’t wanted to give my answer then. It would have been irresponsible. I was going on a dangerous trip—who knew if anything bad would happen? It was only after I reached the summit that I wrote “yes I do” in the snow, snapped a picture of it and gave it to him when I returned home.

Q: Has conquering Everest made you feel invincible?
Esther: Well, the experience has made the biggest of problems not so intimidating to us anymore. Everest is a big mountain and we’re small Asian girls, but we made it to the top. So now, we don’t really sweat the small stuff anymore. I work in advertising and in my company, the pressure is great, there are deadlines to meet and things that need to be launched. It’s very easy to get stressed or emotional, but I don’t. After all, I’ve faced life and death on Everest. If an advertisement doesn’t get sent out by tonight, no one’s going to die. It’s put things into perspective for me.

Joanne Soo: Doing well on Everest has given me that extra boost of confidence to start a mountaineering school within my existing adventure company, Ace Adventures. Running a business isn’t easy, but if I don’t give it a shot, I will never know if I can succeed.

Li Hui: I think Everest has shown me that when you have a goal, you must put in hard work to achieve it. We were climbing stairs on Friday nights when other people were partying with their friends. That showed me that if I wanted something bad enough, I must be willing to make some sacrifices. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be pleasant, and it may even be downright boring. But you must believe that you’ll get there.

Sim Yi Hui: My experience was quite different from the rest. I didn’t get to the summit because I had to grapple with chest pains. To be honest, I was really excited for the team and couldn’t sleep all night when they were going for the summit, but wished I really was there too. But then, I realised that I wasn’t willing to risk everything just to get to the top.

Initially I thought “die die” I had to go but it’s quite different when you’re in the situation. I was actually able to cope better than I thought and come to terms with everything. Of course I was disappointed, but I think I’m stronger now as I’ve learnt not to be so fixated on results. My philosophy is to do what you can and be prepared to fail even though you’ve done your best.

Lee Peh Gee: I still feel the same anxiety, same self-doubts and fears whenever I choose to venture into something unknown or uncertain. But, I have also learnt to see that there are often ways to approach and overcome obstacles, and there is also wisdom when we choose not to continue if it is not in our time and space to have it.

Q: Do you feel pressured to set a new goal that will surpass Everest?
Esther: Everest was just one of our life goals, not the ultimate goal. It may be the highest mountain but there are other challenges like staying happily married. These are the kind of everyday goals that seem very ordinary, but are actually not easy to fulfill.

Q: Whose lives have you touched so far because of Everest?
Esther: When we gave a talk at Boys’ Town Singapore, the boys bombarded us with questions for one-and-a-half hours because they were just so interested. The teacher was telling us that they usually get restless after 15 minutes. That was really encouraging!

Joanne: One day when I was rock climbing, I bumped into a good friend who’s a climbing coach at Outram Secondary School. He asked me to give his students a pep talk as they were preparing for a climbing competition and I did. I told them that you can’t control others but you can control yourself. If you’re not disciplined enough to train, no one else can help you. The students were so inspired by my words they put in a lot of effort for the competition and won their first National Schools Climbing Championship. That made me feel really good. It showed me we’re doing the right thing by sharing our journey.

Peh Gee: Joanne’s story reminds me of one person who told me that she became motivated to run 5km after hearing me share my story. I don’t actually know whether she eventually did it, but the mere fact she had shared that she was motivated by what we did, well, that’s good enough for me.

Q: Has the experience made you look at other aspects of your lives differently?
Li Hui: It made us realise who’s important to us. It weeded out the friends who didn’t stand by us because we didn’t have time for them and we became closer to the pool of friends who were there for us. And our families, we know that they were there for us and dealt with the long hours when we weren’t at home and didn’t have time for them. Realising all these things has made me want to try to be a better friend and better daughter. Now is the time to be there for them.

Yi Hui: I agree, though I didn’t have to do a lot of weeding in the first place. For me, it was mainly about the relationship with my family. I became closer to them. For instance, my mum didn’t approve of me doing this in the first place, but she supported me. That has made me determined to be more filial and I help out more with the housework now to make up for lost time. My family is still number one, and so are my close friends.

Jane: You know, there’s something Li Hui said earlier that I wholeheartedly agree with. She said it’s important to find value in what you do with your life. Everest made me realise that some things I did in my previous job were senseless, like I would spend an entire day spacing my documents according to a specific format. To me, that’s ridiculous. Why should I waste hours of my time spacing my words? It made me feel very disgruntled. On Everest, everything we did had meaning and immediate consequences. Like, the number of packs of Oreo cookies I carried in my backpack made a difference. Carrying more meant I had more to eat but it also meant extra weight to lug around. I guess Everest has placed a lot of things in perspective.

Li Hui: Oh! I also don’t like bumming around and hanging out in malls anymore. I used to not mind having coffee with friends… Maybe I’m growing old, but I don’t like jostling with the crowd and looking for things to buy. I’d rather spend my time doing something fulfilling or at least physically active with like-minded people. Actually, Esther and I formed a mountain biking group, and we meet up every Saturday to try out new stunts. It’s different from what friendship used to be like for me. It used to mean hanging out over coffee and things like that. Now it’s about egging each other on to improve our biking skills and fuelling each other’s interests. I like that.

Q: What’s next in the pipeline as a team?
Jane: We’re writing a book about our experiences, but we didn’t want to have a typical climbing book, with just one voice documenting everything in chronological order. But writing the book is harder than we thought because all of us are writing it and we’re doing it thematically. We’ll have themes like “fear” and each of us will be interpreting the themes the way we see them.

Q: Lastly, what would you want written on your tombstones?
Yi Hui: I want it to read, “She made me laugh”. I want people to remember me for having a connection with them.

Esther: I’m torn between a few things. One is that “She made a difference in my life”. One is that “She loved God”. There’s a bigger journey for me…

Yi Hui: Actually, I think it’s not so much what we do but rather about how we live our lives.

Jane: That’s true. I want to be remembered for leading a life that was completely my own. Not in the sense that it was selfish or self-seeking but that my life went the direction that I wanted it to go. It’s very easy to get diverted into a path that seems more appropriate or safe or that people say you should follow even though it may not be what you really want to do. It’s not about whether you eventually get there, but it’s about the process of having tried to stay to a path that’s true for yourself. HW

i’m not experiencing an explosive kind of joy, or having exclamation marks hanging over my head… it’s more of a deep-seated happiness that comes with a peace and restedness in my heart, one which may not shout, but i believe will speak for a long time to come.

and i feel really blessed with that.

“…whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” phillipians 4:8

From the acclimatization climbs to the actual summit push, our sherpas have been with us, climbing, toiling, cheering us on. We would like to recognize them for their efforts which made a tremendous difference in our Everest expedition. To us, they are the true heroes behind the mountain. Here, we would like to mention by name, the sherpas who were with us on the final summit push, and thank them for their relentless help and support:

Panuru Sherpa (Lihui’s sherpa guide)
Jamling Bhorte (Esther’s sherpa guide)
Kami Sherpa (Jane’s sherpa guide)
Dawa Tenzing (Joanne’s sherpa guide)
Dawa Nuru (Peh Gee’s sherpa guide)