At CREW Boston's Annual Meeting & June Luncheon on Thursday, June 13th at the Mandarin Oriental, we heard from Alison Levine, author of the
New York Times Bestseller, “On the Edge” and Team Captain for the first American women’s Everest expedition in 2002. Alison spoke at the CREW Network National Convention and we were excited to bring her pieces of leadership advice to our Boston Chapter.
Here are some thoughts that came from her Mount Everest experience:
Advice on Teams:
- You want a team that has performance ego and team ego. Performance ego is needed so that they have the confidence and skills to complete a challenge. For team ego, you want a person who is proud to be part of the team, not the individual
- Every single person on your team is in a leadership position. Each person has a responsibility to move towards one goal.
- Give your team the freedom to fail, but they must learn not to make the same mistakes again
Advice on Goals:
- People think progress has to be one direction, but to make progress, sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards
- Backing up is not the same as backing down
- Fear is ok, complacency is what will kill you. Fear provides that adrenalin, that push you need. It’s ok to have fear if it doesn’t paralyze you.
Advice on Making Decisions:
- If you want to survive take action based on the situation. Planning is good but sometimes you need to take action on what is happening at that moment
- You cannot control the environment, we can only control our reaction
- A single person’s bad decision can bring down an entire team. So think about how your decision will affect the team in the end
We thank Alison for sharing her amazing experience and we wish her the best success in her next venture, creating a documentary on the first female sherpa to climb Mount Everest, Pasang Lhamu Sherpa.
Finally, during our June luncheon, we announced our next CREW President, Jill Sharif of First American Title and we thanked Barbar Oddo of Lincoln Property Company for all her hard work this past year. Tracey Hartford has been elected to the Board of Directors, Karen Hurd as CREW Network Delegate and Laura Gregoriadis as CREW President-Elect.