Meeting Jamling Tenzing in Nasscom HR Summit 2010

Conquering the Mt Everest in the realms of thought itself is very inspiring. If we spend a few moments hallucinating about the presence of Mt Everest then we can realize how insignificant we are infront of the mighty Everest. Yet few people conquer it through their spirit-‘the human spirit’. The human spirit is common to all of us yet only few realize it. One such man is Jamling Tenzing, son of legendary climber Tenzing Norway.

Jamling Tenzing’s presentation was themed as ‘Touching my father’s soul’. He passionately spoke on why he had a single minded focus on climbing the Mt Everest and why it meant so much to him. His childhood hero was always his father and he wanted to climb the Mt Everest the way his father did. In 1996, he climbed the Mt Everest which was later documented in the IMAX film, Everest. This journey helped him to understand himself, his father & his community (Sherpa) better.

His quest to climb the Everest was full of challenges like staying away from the family in the hope of meeting them once again to loosing friends who died on the way to climb the Mt Everest.

Like in any other team, a mountain expedition also has team members with designated roles. The leader paves the strategy to climb the mountain whereas the Sherpa provides strong support in carrying the food, goods and other essentials. Jamling Tenzing acted as the member who bridged the relationship between the leaders and the ‘sherpas’ as he himself is a Sherpa who was educated in America. HR’s role in business is also similar; he acts as a bridge between the business leaders and the associates. He is expected to be a business as well as people champion who can translate the language of business into a language which is best understood by the people.

In business also, the HR team is often confronted with huge challenges yet they are met with the right direction, team support, planning, courage & passion.

Another important life lesson learned from his presentation was that “In mountaineering, climbing up is optional but getting down is mandatory”.

Similarly, in life or business also we make the choice of being the best but we must be ready to face failures courageously too. If we cannot recognize failure and know how to deal with it then we will never know how to react when failure again strikes us in life.

He also mentioned how climbers are increasingly realizing that it’s important to respect nature and keep the surroundings clean while venturing into mountain expeditions.

Hence, it’s not only the end which matters but also the means. HR is the conscious keeper of the organization and must always adhere to ethics in its pursuit to achieve business success.

Jamling also stressed that human beings must be passion driven and not ego driven in their pursuits. He cited examples of how many rich businessmen wanted to satisfy their ego to climb the Mt Everest by risking the lives of many sherpas.

It was delightful to know that Jamling had great plans of teaching mountaineering to Indian kids in order to infuse in them the idea of sportsmanship. He has been doing a lot of work for the Sherpa community and wants to continue the good work.

Even HR has a community to take care of that transcends the associates and their families.

He concluded his presentation with his father’s quote: “Be a leader, Be a guide…Be great and make others great”.

PS: He was kind enough to autograph on my name batch :-)