Mountaineering and emergency nursing have more in common than one may think. They both require a commitment to servant leadership to build strong teams that can succeed amid the risk and uncertainty ingrained in both environments, according to renowned mountaineer and physician assistant Jeff Evans, who kicked off Emergency Nursing 2025 with his thrilling and awe-inspiring stories of scaling some of the world’s tallest peaks.
Mountaineer Jeff Evans discussed how servant leaders foster the success of others first before themselves.
Evans encouraged attendees to embrace their inner sherpa, referring to the elite guides known for their strength, endurance and expertise in mountaineering expeditions. Sherpas are the epitome of servant leaders, Evans said: “They’re selfless, they’re committed, they’re trustworthy. They’re just out there looking to optimize the experience of the people around them.”
Servant leadership is the foundation of every successful emergency department, according to Evans. It focuses on fostering growth, well-being and success of individual team members as well as collectively as teams. Servant leadership leads to engagement, productivity and compassion.
“We want to be a part of something that’s bigger than us, where everyone around them wants to lift them up,” he said. “It becomes infectious. That’s truly what servant leadership looks like.”
“Truly effective hard-charging teams are the ones that have some iteration of this sherpa leadership at its core, at its bed rock,” Evans added. “Because when that is the baseline of a team, a team member, teammate, then all the other mission-critical characteristics sort of spring up to the top.”
Evans regaled attendees with his adventures climbing soaring peaks and challenging terrain with his friend, Erik Weihenmayer, who is blind. Evans credits their climbing successes to the pillars of servant leadership that he learned from sherpas, including trust, communication and sacrifice.
Evans developed trust with Weihenmayer over several years during their expeditions. That includes jumping with him off a 40-foot cliff into a river. When the time came for both of them to climb Mount Everest, trust was a key component of their mountaineering strategy. For example, Weihenmayer trusted Evans to guide him safely over several deep and dangerous crevasses that entailed walking over ladders and even jumping across some of the crevasses.
“Trust is this amazing, beautiful, nuanced behavior that can’t be asked for,” Evans said. “It has to be earned, and it’s earned over time through a shared struggle.”
As Evans, Weihenmayer and the rest of the team climbed Mount Everest over two months, they had to work together and re-evaluate where each person should be located on the climbing rope to ensure the right amount of slack and pull. That is the kind of assessment that is needed to build strong teams, so the team is playing to each member’s strengths, according to Evans.
“You have to check in with the people around you,” Evans said. “Sometimes it even requires moving personnel from one rope team to the next. Moving over here, shifting over here, making sure to optimize each rope team for its particular skill sets in that moment of that day.”
When the team neared the top of the summit, Evans was tired and worn out. He continued to dig and chop snow and ice from the terrain to pave a way for Weihenmayer to reach the top. Evans ultimately decided he could not go any further even though he wanted to reach the summit together with Weihenmayer as they had always done in their previous adventures. Nevertheless, Evans encouraged Weihenmayer to continue on without him.
“We hugged and we cried, and our tears froze to our cheeks. And I watched as my best friend, who happens to be blind, started to walk across to the top of the mountain. I was not sad. I was not disappointed,” Evans explained. “Matter of fact, my heart was completely full.”
While Evans eventually reached the summit a few hours later, he said that particular moment of sacrifice and adversity reinforced to him that servant leadership is about the journey rather than the destination.
“I learned an immense amount about all of these characteristics that I’ve talked to you about: about Sherpa leadership, about commitment, about sacrifice, about communication and trust and managing adversity,” he said “I learned all of that, but I didn’t learn any of it in those 20 minutes I was on top of that mountain because life does not take place on the top of the mountain in those summits. Life takes place on the flanks of the mountain.”