It was an absolute joy to climb Snæfellsjökull, a 700,000-year-old stratovolcano with a glacier covering its summit. The mountain is one of the most famous sites of Iceland, primarily due to the novel Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) by Jules Verne, in which the protagonists find the entrance to a passage leading to the centre of the earth on Snæfellsjökull.

I would like to share a few points with you that I learned in this leadership expedition, organised by the Full-Time MBA Programme team.

1.    Leadership and followership go hand in hand. On the glacier, we were tied together and had to move in a row. I trusted the teammate in front of me (leader) and followed his footsteps. However, I watched carefully and chose a slightly different path just in case he did not take the right step. I also led and warned the one behind me (follower) about the potential dangers.

2.    The rope that connected us together was sometimes pulled by the leader and sometimes by the follower. There is a virtual rope that connects the team members in the business environment as well. Therefore, either the whole team succeed or fail. This highlights the role of each individual’s teamwork. We reached the summit as the first team and our secret was that we neither went too fast nor too slowly but at a steady pace.

3.    The last few hundred meters to the summit were the most challenging ones. It resembled the end of a business project that looked so close, though in reality, needed patience, hard work and mental toughness.

4.    Finally, in each climb we forget the pain but the joy of reaching the summit stays in our minds. This is the true feeling of success!