He has been called
“the greatest leader that ever came on God’s earth, bar none,” yet he never
led a group larger than twenty-seven, he failed to reach nearly every goal he
ever set and, until recently, he had been little remembered after his death.
But once you learn the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his remarkable
Antarctic expedition of 1914 you’ll come to agree with the effusive praise of
those under his command. He is a model of great leadership and, in particular,
a master of guidance in crisis.
That’s because
Shackleton failed only at the improbable; he succeeded at the unimaginable. “I
love the fight and when things [are] easy, I hate it,” he once wrote to his
wife, Emily Dorman. He failed to reach the South Pole in 1902, when he was
part of a three-man Farthest South team on the Discovery expedition of
the great explorer Robert F. Scott. But the men turned back only after walking
their scurvy-ravaged bodies to within 460 miles of the Pole in a terrifying
cold experienced only by a handful of human beings at that time. Six years
later, commanding his own expedition aboard the Nimrod, Shackleton was
forced to stop a heartbreaking ninety-seven miles short of the Pole, but only
after realizing it would be certain death by starvation had his team
continued. He was forgiven that failure in light of the greatness of the
effort; he was knighted by King Edward VII and honored as a hero throughout
the world.
His
greatest failure was his 1914-1916 Endurance expedition. He lost his
ship before even touching Antarctica. But he reached a new pinnacle in
leadership when he successfully led all the members of his crew to safety
after a harrowing two-year fight for their lives.
Sir
Ernest set out at age forty on an independent voyage to make what he
considered the last great expedition left on earth: a 1,800-mile crossing of
the Antarctic on foot. The expedition ship, named the Endurance after
the Shackleton family motto “Fortitudine Vincimus,” “By Endurance We
Conquer,” set sail in August 1914 at the dawn of World War I and made its way
to Buenos Aires, South Georgia island, and eventually to the Antarctic Circle,
where it plowed through 1,000 miles of ice-encrusted waters. Just one day’s
sail from its destination in Vahsel Bay on the Antarctic coast, the ship got
stuck “like an almond in a chocolate bar” as it was later described, in the
polar ice of the Weddell Sea.
The men were
stranded on an ice floe more than 1,200 miles from the farthest outposts of
civilization. Whenever it seemed the situation couldn’t possibly get worse, it
did. The pack ice precariously dragged the ship north for ten months. Then,
the Endurance was crushed and the men were forced to camp on the ice.
They watched in horror one month later as their vessel sank to the bottom of
the sea. They were beyond the range of their radio and no one knew anything
had happened to them. All they had to rely on were three rickety lifeboats
salvaged from the ship. Shackleton allowed each crewmember to carry only a few
items necessary for survival. The first things tossed: gold coins and a Bible;
saved were personal diaries and a banjo.
When the weather was
its most brutal, the men endured temperatures that were so low they could hear
the water freeze. The bitter cold froze their garments solid and burned their
hands and feet. They slept in tents so flimsy they could see the moon through
them. They spent nearly four months in the frigid darkness of the long polar
night. When the Antarctic summer finally brought warmer temperatures and the
promise of some relief, the men awoke every morning in cold puddles of water
as their body heat melted the ice under them. They subsisted on a diet of
mostly penguin, seal, and sometimes dog, fare that left them feeling weak and
blubbery.
In the end, Shackleton took five men
and sailed 800 miles over tumultuous seas to reach the inhabited island of
South Georgia in the remote South Atlantic. When by some miracle they made
their destination, they found they had to cross a nearly impassable frozen
mountain range to reach civilization: a whaling station. The whalers, who had
seen so much in their own hard lives, were in awe of the invincibility of the
men, by then horribly ravaged by the elements. Immediately, Shackleton turned
around and led an effort to rescue the rest of the crew on Elephant Island.
Amazingly, every single one had survived.
Every chapter
in the book is followed by modern-day examples of leaders who admire
Shackleton and have put his strategy to use in the real world.
“Dr. Danzig
particularly admires what he identifies as Shackleton's thoughtfulness, in
every sense of the word: “In the emotional-commitment way and in the cognitive
way," he explains. "That is, he was thinking all the time.”
"If I hadn't
been schooled by Shackleton, I would have given up," Cramer says. "It was the
worst year I ever had. He got me through it because everybody, everybody tells
you to give up. But I came back in a style that was unbelievable and proved
the pessimists were wrong."
Anyone can
benefit from these lessons: a teacher, a parent, a leader of a community
organization, as well as the corporate manager. Shackleton’s wisdom is by no
means simple or obvious. Much of it is counterintuitive, especially for those
schooled in more conventional management tactics. Shackleton served tea in bed
to the ship’s crybaby, flattered the egomaniacs, and kept close to him the
most abrasive personalities. Often, he made great personal sacrifices.
Sometimes he led by not leading at all.
R. W.
Richards, a scientist on the Ross Sea party of the Endurance
expedition, said simply, “Shackleton, with all his faults, was a great man, or
should I say, a great leader of men.”
Shackleton made
his men want to follow him; he did not force them to do so. In the process, he
changed the way his crewmen saw themselves and the world. His work continued
to inspire them for as long as they lived, and to inspire others around the
world long after that. There is no greater tribute to a leader. His tools were
humor, generosity, intelligence, strength, and compassion.
That’s
Shackleton’s Way.
