Mount Everest Case study review

(a) What is your evaluation of the leadership style of Hall and Fisher? Hall and Fischer followed authoritarian leadership styles where everything that had to be brought in action was their choices and decisions and not of the followers. They were over confident, “It has worked 39 times so far, pal, and a few of the blokes who summited with me were nearly as pathetic as you.” Hall said this while in a conversation with all the hikers (Ballington, 2014). They made sure that all the decisions made by them are accepted by everyone without any doubt or question. They both had such an influence on hikers that they were forced to think that nothing will go wrong if they follow them. While the descent, every hiker could see that Fischer’s health is worsening and he is tired already but nobody uttered a word because they weren’t supposed to doubt his abilities and capabilities. Hall and Fischer forced climbers to move even when they were sick and evidently would have died with so much of exertion and climatic conditions. They never settled for a turnaround time even after a lot of messes that had happened there. Due to their style of leadership even the team got split or it never had an existence it were just few individuals who were hiking together. They lacked coordination, trust and cooperativeness. This leadership style didn’t bring any prosperity rather it made the situation shoddier and dragged everyone to a crucial situation. Not just that, there was loss of life due to the inflexibility that Hall and Fischer possessed. They didn’t call off the expedition even after obvious signs of it being fatal are because they wanted to maintain the reputation, make money out of this and also make a world record.

Consequently, both Hall and Fischer also had to lose their lives because of dogged and bullishness and no communication with their clients. (b) Identify three cognitive biases that characterized the decision making of Hall and Fischer and describe the decisions and the biases. Cognitive bias refers to propensity to diverge oneself from obvious rational decisions to something which might fetch them something they want. In simpler words, it is putting wants above needs. Their stubbornness was evident since the beginning. They were being bossy and bragged about their skills and abilities. They didn’t take the obvious decisions which a rational person would have in those critical situations they rather cared about their reputation, fame and money. 1. Dictatorial Behavior- They made clear this to everyone that they will not take “NO” for an answer and what they say, should be followed by one and all. They pushed people even when they had no energy left, took hasty decisions and thought about themselves and materials. All they could see was the Mt. Everest fetching them money and fame. Their bossy behavior was a satisfaction to their ego. Hall while instructing the clients said, “My word will be absolute law, beyond appeal.” Instead of being bossy they should have been cooperative and should have coordinated with everyone present there as unity was the foremost requirement of the climb. But their personal bias made them settle for irrational decision (Armstrong, 2012).

2. Overconfidence – Hall had got signals that weather is not good and might be really harmful if they continue with the expedition but he ignored the indications and kept moving forward. He didn’t do the right judgment because of the former events that he had been in. His overconfidence made him bias and refrained from taking a better decision. 3. Not leading by example- Fischer was known to follow “Two o’clock” rule while expediting but himself broke it. He got biased and he knew the rightful decision is the stop the summit but he rather took risk just in greed.