MARK JENKINS
After coaching many mountaineers and world-class athletes, like adventure racers, mountain bikers and Olympic athletes - after pushing the boundaries of what could be done through storytelling on stage, I wanted more - more engagement, more interaction, more depth, more drama, more vulnerability, more connections. Before I knew what Experiential Learning or Narrative Learning Environments were, through TeamEverest I was committed to putting audiences in the dilemmas, contradictions, paradoxes and the tough situations that these people of action faced. No sitting back comfortably on the sidelines. Really meeting each other with the difficult questions - in the safe environment of a universal metaphor and true-to-life story. When I began doing this 30 years ago I discovered that most of us had been through similar challenges in our work and personal lives and could relate to what was happening in these epic stories - on the way to the Poles or on the Mountain. It was, in fact, a universal experience and it is in the sharing that we can learn from each other and are seen and appreciated for who we are.
TeamEverest engages us in one of those fundamental human metaphors - it introduces us to a mountain of contradictions and through the experience it teaches us who we are under all our disguises... and that a team can accomplish far more than a group of individuals. After nearly 25 years and many versions of TeamEverest this still seems true to me.