Don't Step on the Rope!: Reflections on Leadership, Relationships and Teamwork

by Walter C. Wright

What makes a good team? What makes a good team leader? How can I develop my team? If you’re looking for answers to these questions, you’ll find the answers in this book. Through thirty years of climbing expeditions with friends, Walter Wright has learned a lot about mountaineering, about his team mates, and about working on and leading a team. He shares with us the tales of expeditions (successful and not so successful) and the lessons he and his team have learned from those experiences.

Genres: Leadership

154 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

Reviews

[Stephanie Lobdell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhaustingly redundant

[Mark Oppenlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Walter Wright is a frequent speaker on the subject of relational leadership and, at the time this book was written, he was the Executive Director of the DePree Leadership Center at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. He is also a long-time hiker and mountaineer and in this book, he explores the topic of work-place teams using the image of a mountaineering rope team.

Having read quite a few books on leadership, I found this one to be neither the best nor the worst of the lot. Wright covers a lot of the basics of what it means to be an effective team including ideas such as interdependence, communication, culture-forming stories and shared or rotating leadership. The examples and anecdotes from his own years hiking and climbing in the mountains are entertaining and illustrate his ideas nicely.

I was a little disappointed that Wright didn't give a clearer definition of what a "team" is from the beginning. He states that a team is more than just a work group or a collection of people assigned to a project, but fails to succinctly say what a team is. Perhaps the whole book is meant to be his answer to that question; I don't know.

One thing that is clear is that Wright sees a great deal of intimacy in the team relationship, with team members having a deep investment in each other's lives and maintaining connections that extend beyond the workplace. I confess that such language always makes me uncomfortable. Although I believe that teams that are also close friends probably are highly effective, my natural tendency is to shy away from such relationships. I have found that being friends with the people with whom I work often causes more pain and conflict than it does efficiency. But that's my experience; your mileage may vary.

Overall, this is a quick and entertaining read on leadership and teams. There were no earth-shattering new discoveries for me, but it covers a lot of important and salient points. If you're in a leadership role and also enjoy the outdoors, the metaphor of the mountaineering rope team might be useful to you in your work.