Managing People and Organisations

The Everest group simulation is web-based program that uses the theme of an expedition group and their mission in climbing Mount Everest. The simulation is designed to give students like myself hands on experience of leadership and group dynamics. This report is a reflection on my experience of working in a group environment, the issues we faced, our development as a team and why we got the final results that we did. We were required to perform the Everest simulation twice and reflect on our performance in both, what we did differently and what implications that had. Through the reflection process I was able to draw links between our actions and theory such as our group development, planning processes as well as the different mediums of communication used and how this influenced our decisions and information sharing.

Our Everest team experience began when I first found out who was in my group over blackboard, not having had many management tutorials I couldn’t put names to faces. Originally I was part of a six person group with many unique personalities from a variety of backgrounds and races, in our first management tutorial 5 out of the 6 members attended and we got to know each other, everyone seemed to get along well with no sort of major conflict in personalities. We exchanged information on our roles in the simulation, out of the five members whom I had met, we had the Team leader, physician, photographer, observer and environmentalist (me) present, we exchanged phone numbers and Facebook accounts in order to keep in touch and easily prepare a time for the first simulation. As the first simulation deadline approached our group grew worried as the 6th member, the Marathoner had not turned up to a single tutorial. After consulting with our tutor we tried our best to contact him through use of UNSW email but failed to get a response. As the remaining members we were eager to get the first simulation out of the way and we organized a time to complete the...