was ernest shackleton a good leader essay

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Leadership Lessons From the Shackleton Expedition

By Nancy F. Koehn

• Dec. 24, 2011

A HUNDRED years ago this month, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four teammates became the first men to reach the South Pole , arriving in triumph five weeks ahead of Robert Falcon Scott. The Amundsen crew would return safely to its base, but, heartbreakingly, Scott and his four British companions died on the return journey.

The race to the pole has long attracted leadership experts, who like to contrast the Amundsen focus on efficiency and innovation with Scott’s more deliberate dedication to scientific pursuit.

But another polar explorer — Ernest Shackleton — faced harsh conditions in a way that speaks more directly to our time. The Shackleton expedition, from 1914 to 1916, is a compelling story of leadership when disaster strikes again and again.

Consider just a handful of recent events: the financial crisis of 2008; the gulf oil spill of 2010; and the Japanese nuclear disaster, the debt-ceiling debacle and euro crisis this year. Constant turbulence seems to be the new normal, and effective leadership is crucial in containing it.

Real leaders, wrote the novelist David Foster Wallace, are people who “help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”

Shackleton exemplified this kind of leadership for almost two years on the ice. What can we learn from his actions?

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Five Elements of Shackleton’s Leadership

I want to introduce you to an amazing leader. I have never met him and neither have you. He died in 1922. His most amazing accomplishment happened 100 years ago. This leader is Sir Ernest Shackleton. He led 27 men on a journey to be the first to cross Antarctica. He failed. Why do we care about a leader whose expedition failed? Because what happened instead was incredible.

On his third Antarctic expedition, Sir Ernest Shackleton led the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition for Britain, which departed England in 1914. The plan was to sail his ship, the Endurance,  to Argentina, then on to Antarctica, then walk across the continent where another crew would pick them up. Sounds simple. To put things in context keep in mind there were no radios, no weather reports, no Gore-Tex or snowmobiles, no lightweight nylon/down North Face jackets. The mission was lofty. But, Shackleton had the experience, an excellent crew, and the best 1914 gear he could get.

After leaving Argentina, the ship stopped at a whaling station on South Georgia Island. There they learned that the Weddell Sea, the most dangerous sea in the world, was jammed with ice, the worst in recorded history. Some of the whalers encouraged Shackleton to wait until next year. Shackleton spent a month at the whaling station hoping the situation would improve. Unfortunately, it didn’t. On December 5, 1914 Shackleton finally proceeded down to Antarctica. As you might have predicted, only six weeks later their ship was stuck in ice. One crew member described it as “frozen, like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.”

The crew made heroic efforts to free the ship. They tried to cut through the ice, but hours and hours of work was never enough. They were over 1,000 miles from any other humans and no one knew their predicament. They finally settled in for a long winter. They could only hope the spring would bring warmer temperatures and free their ship. For 10 months they waited. The cold, the ice, and the food supply were all concerns and the men began hunting seals and penguins to supplement their diet. However, Shackleton’s biggest concern was demoralization of the crew. He was intentional to keep the men’s spirits high. He encouraged singing, games, and skits in the evenings. He listened to them and had an “open-door policy” long before that phrase was coined. He had all the men cross-train in various roles to increase their stimulation and their competence. Surprisingly, during the 10 months their ship was stuck in the ice, the men were content. One man wrote in his journal after a particular celebration that it was “one of the happiest day of my life.”

Then, on October 24, 1915, things got much worse. The ice shifted and started to crush the ship. It was soon pitched to the side and men had to move off the ship onto the ice. They started unloading the ship preparing for the worst. Three weeks later the ship sunk and the 28 men were stuck on an ice flow in Antarctica with nothing but three small lifeboats and a pile of gear. No one knew where they were and back in England they were presumed to be dead.

Shackleton’s journey was amazing. The early 1900’s was the age of polar expeditions. It was common for men to die during the journey. Shackleton would not accept death. He used a systems approach to create a strong team that could handle the difficult situations they faced. It may have been my own experience with expeditions as an Outward Bound instructor and a sea kayak guide that first sparked my interest in Shackleton’s story. I now give keynotes and workshops on his leadership style, most recently for the  National Conference for State Legislators . Here are the leadership lessons share in the keynote.

• Model and Inspire Optimism: Shackleton believed in his mission and in his team. His optimism was contagious. He intentionally made decisions to inspire optimism in his crew. He was enthusiastic, clear in his vision. He encouraged singing, games, fun antics, and other merriment during the expedition.
• Develop a Clear, Shared Purpose: Everyone who joined the Antarctic Expedition understood the purpose. They were selected, in part, for their interest and excitement in that purpose. Many times teams form and their purpose is somewhat vague or each team member has a different idea of that purpose. Clarity around purpose has been shown, time and again, to be the most important factor to impact a team’s success.
• Build Unity and Commitment Within the Team: Shackleton valued hard-work and loyalty above all else. Yet, he didn’t expect this automatically; he intentionally fostered it. The team’s well-being was his top priority, higher than his mission. He knew without the team, they could never reach their goal. He got to know each team member personally and understood their strengths and their style. He made sure team members could come to his with concerns and had an “open-door policy” long before the term was coined.
• Create a Plan, an Alternate Plan, and Be Flexible: After the team left Patience Camp they traveled in three life boats searching for land, which they hadn’t seen in 15 months . During the 15 day journey, Shackleton changed the plan four times. The change was always because new information emerged and he had to adjust in order to meet the end goal. He avoided getting emotionally attached to a particular plan, no matter how much time he had spent devising it.
• Make the Tough Decisions: Shackleton continually made difficult decisions throughout the expedition. He would have been terribly unpopular among the crew had he not build relationships and loyalty. He always made decisions with their best interest in mind. For instance, when the ship arrived in Argentina after crossing the Atlantic, the cook got drunk and disorderly one night. He was fired. Shackleton did find him a new job on a ship heading to England though. Shackleton knew that man was not a good fit for his team. He then hired a new cook who proved to be an excellent addition.

Shackleton was heralded by his team as being “the greatest leader on Earth.” Wow. To implement just one element of his leadership will be valuable. Looking at this list what is one thing, even if small, that you could do this week to better lead your team?

I hope you will find inspiration, as I did, from this amazing leader.

If you want to read more about Shackleton, I recommend the books Endurance and Shackleton’s Way . You might also enjoy this episode about Shackleton on the Deliberate Creative Podcast .

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The Stunning Survival Story of Ernest Shackleton and His Endurance Crew

By: Kieran Mulvaney

Updated: May 2, 2024 | Original: October 21, 2020

All year, the ship had been trapped, ice pushing and pinching the hull, the wood howling in protest. Finally, on October 27, 1915, a new wave of pressure rippled across the ice, lifting the ship’s stern and tearing off its rudder and its keel. Freezing water began to rush in.

“She’s going, boys,” came the cry. “It’s time to get off.”

From the moment Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the British expedition ship, HMS Endurance had become immobilized in Antarctica's ice 10 months earlier, they had been preparing for this moment. Now, those on board removed their last remaining belongings from the ship and set up camp on the ice. Twenty-five days later, what remained of the wreck convulsed once more, and the Endurance disappeared beneath the ice.

Incredibly, all 27 men under Shackleton's command would survive the grueling Antarctic expedition, but their ship remained sunk and lost to history—until 106 years later. 

On March 9, 2022, a team of scientists and adventurers announced they had  finally located what remained of the Endurance at the bottom of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. The team made the discovery using submersibles and undersea drones and released stunning photos of the long-lost wooden ship where it had lodged in the seabed nearly 10,000 feet deep in clear and icy waters. 

Endurance Is Locked in by Ice

Endurance had left South Georgia for Antarctica on December 5, 1914, carrying 27 men (plus one stowaway, who became the ship’s steward), 69 dogs, and a tomcat erroneously dubbed Mrs. Chippy. The goal of expedition leader Shackleton, who had twice fallen short—once agonizingly so—of reaching the South Pole, was to establish a base on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea coast. 

From there a small party, including himself, would set out on the first crossing of the continent, ultimately arriving at the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, where another group would be waiting for them, having laid depots of food and fuel along the way.

Two days after leaving South Georgia, Endurance entered the pack ice—the barrier of thick sea ice that stands guard around the Antarctic continent. For several weeks, the ship poked and prodded its way through leads in the ice, gingerly making its way south; but on January 18, a northerly gale pressed the pack hard against the land and pushed the floes tight against each other. Suddenly, there was no way forward, nor any way back. Endurance was beset—in the words of one of the crew, Thomas Orde-Lees, “frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar.”

They had been within a day’s sailing of their landing place; now the drift of the ice was slowly pushing them farther away with each passing day. There was nothing else to do but to establish a routine and wait out the winter.

Shackleton wrote Alexander Macklin, one of the ship’s surgeons, “did not rage at all, or show outwardly the slightest sign of disappointment; he told us simply and calmly that we must winter in the Pack; explained its dangers and possibilities; never lost his optimism and prepared for winter.”

In private, however, he revealed greater foreboding, quietly expressing to the ship’s captain, Frank Worsley, one winter’s night that, “The ship can’t live in this, Skipper … It may be a few months, and it may be only a question of weeks or even days … but what the ice gets, the ice keeps.”

Survival on an Ice Floe

In the time that passed between abandoning Endurance and watching the ice swallow it up completely, the crew salvaged as many provisions as they could, while sacrificing anything and everything that added weight or would consume valuable resources— including bibles, books, clothing, tools and keepsakes. Some of the younger dogs, too small to pull their weight, were shot, as was, to the chagrin of many, the unfortunate Mrs. Chippy.

The initial plan was to march across the ice toward land, but that was abandoned after the men managed just seven and a half miles in seven days. “There was no alternative,” wrote Shackleton, “but to camp once more on the floe and to possess our souls with what patience we could till conditions should appear more favorable for a renewal of the attempt to escape.” Slowly and steadily, the ice drifted farther to the north; and, on April 7, 1916, the snow-capped peaks of Clarence and Elephant Islands came into view, flooding them with hope.

“The floe has been a good friend to us,” wrote Shackleton in his diary, “but it is reaching the end of its journey, and is liable at any time now to break up.” 

On April 9, it did just that, splitting beneath them with an almighty crack. Shackleton gave the order to break camp and launch the boats, and all at once, they were finally free of the ice that had alternately bedeviled and supported them. 

Now they had a new foe to contend with: the open ocean. It threw freezing spray in their faces and tossed frigid water over them, and it batted the boats from side to side and brought brave men to the fetal position as they battled the elements and seasickness.

Through it all, Captain Worsley navigated through the spray and the squalls, until after six days at sea, Clarence and Elephant Islands appeared just 30 miles ahead. The men were exhausted. Worsley had by that stage not slept for 80 hours. And while some were crippled by seasickness, others were wracked with dysentery. Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command, wrote that “at least half the party were insane.” Yet they rowed resolutely toward their goal, and on April 15, they clambered ashore on Elephant Island.

Marooned on Elephant Island

It was the first time they had been on dry land since leaving South Georgia 497 days previously. But their ordeal was far from over. The likelihood of anybody coming across them was vanishingly small, and so after nine days of recuperation and preparation, Shackleton, Worsley and four others set out in one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, to seek help from a whaling station on South Georgia, more than 800 miles away. 

For 16 days, they battled monstrous swells and angry winds, baling water out of the boat and beating ice off the sails. “The boat tossed interminably on the big waves under grey, threatening skies,” recorded Shackleton. “Every surge of the sea was an enemy to be watched and circumvented.” Even as they were within touching distance of their goal, the elements hurled their worst at them: “The wind simply shrieked as it tore the tops off the waves,” Shackleton wrote. “Down into valleys, up to tossing heights, straining until her seams opened, swung our little boat.”

The next day, the wind eased off and they made it ashore. Help was almost at hand; but this, too, was not the end. The storms had pushed the James Caird off course, and they had landed on the other side of the island from the whaling station. And so Shackleton, Worsley and Tom Crean set off to reach it by foot—climbing over mountains and sliding down glaciers, forging a path that no human being had ever forged before, until, after 36 hours of desperate hiking, they staggered into the station at Stromness.

'My Name Is Shackleton'

There was no conceivable circumstance under which three strangers could possibly appear from nowhere at the whaling station, and certainly not from the direction of the mountains. And yet here they were: their hair and beards stringy and matted, their faces blackened with soot from blubber stoves and creased from nearly two years of stress and privation.

And old Norwegian whaler recorded the scene when the three men stood before the station manager Thoralf Sørlle:

“Manager say: ‘Who the hell are you?’ And the terrible bearded man in the center of the three say very quietly: ‘My name is Shackleton.’ Me – I turn away and weep.”

Rescue Mission to Elephant Island

Once the other three members of the James Caird had been retrieved, attention turned to rescuing the 22 men remaining on Elephant Island. Yet, after all that had gone before, this final task in many ways proved to be the most trying and time-consuming of all. The first ship on which Shackleton set out ran dangerously low on fuel while trying to navigate the pack ice, and was forced to turn back to the Falkland Islands. The government of Uruguay proffered a vessel that came within 100 miles of Elephant Island before being beaten back by the ice.

Each morning on Elephant Island, Frank Wild, whom Shackleton had left in charge, issued the call for everyone to “Lash up and stow” their belongings. “The Boss may come today!” he declared daily. His companions grew increasingly dispirited and doubtful. “Eagerly on the lookout for the relief ship,” recorded Macklin on August 16, 1916. “Some of the party have quite given up hope of her coming.” Orde-Lees was clearly one of them. “There is no good in deceiving ourselves any longer,” he wrote.

But Shackleton procured a third ship, the Yelcho, from Chile; and finally, on August 30, 1916, the saga of the Endurance and its crew came to an end. The men on the island were settling down to a lunch of boiled seal’s backbone when they spied the Yelcho just off the coast. It had been 128 days since the James Caird had left; within an hour of the Yelcho appearing, all ashore had broken camp and left Elephant Island behind. Twenty months after setting out for the Antarctic, every one of the Endurance crew was alive and safe.

While Shackleton's crew miraculously made it back to England, his ship did not. For more than a century, the Endurance remained among history's most elusive shipwrecks. But in 2022, an international team of marine archaeologists, explorers and scientists located the Endurance at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, approximately four miles south of the position originally recorded when Endurance sank. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said John Shears , the leader of Endurance22, the expedition team that used submersibles and drones to locate the wooden ship.

Photos released from the Endurance22 expedition revealed the sunken, three-masted ship in mesmerizing detail, including an image of its stern where its name "ENDURANCE" was visible above a five-pointed star.

Shackleton's Early Death

Ernest Shackleton never did reach the South Pole or crossed Antarctica. He launched one more expedition to the Antarctic, but the Endurance veterans who rejoined him noticed he appeared weaker, more diffident, drained of the spirit that had kept them alive. On January 5, 1922, with the ship at South Georgia, he had a heart attack in his bunk and died. He was just 47.

With his death, Wild took the ship to Antarctica; but it proved unequal to the task, and after a month spent futilely attempting to penetrate the pack, he set a course for Elephant Island. From the safety of the deck, he and his comrades peered through binoculars at the beach where so many of them had lived in fear and hope. 

“Once more I see the old faces & hear the old voices—old friends scattered everywhere,” wrote Macklin. “But to express all I feel is impossible.”

And with that, they turned north one last time and went home.

Alexander, Caroline,  The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition  ( Alfred A. Knopf , 1998) Heacox, Kim,  Shackleton: The Antarctic Challenge ( National Geographic Society, 1999) Huntford, Roland,  Shackleton ( Hodder & Stoughton, 1985) Lansing, Alfred,  Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage ( Perseus Books , 1986) Shackleton, Ernest,  South  ( Macmillan , 1920) Worsley, F.A.,  Shackleton’s Boat Journey ( Hodder & Stoughton, 1940)

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The two sides of ernest shackleton – hero and failure.

Michael Smith is a journalist and expert in polar exploration. His latest book ,"Shackleton – By Endurance We Conquer ," has just been published by Oneworld Publications, and is available wherever books are sold. 

Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Polar explorer whose famous Endurance expedition sailed into the ice exactly 100 years ago this month, is a writer’s dream. He was a charismatic man of enormous courage whose exploits in the Antarctic defy belief and yet he was also a complex character full of paradoxes.

My book is the first comprehensive account of his life to be written in 30 years, and what drew me to the story is that there were, in effect, two Shackletons. On the ice, he was a heroic, pioneering and inspirational explorer whose incredible adventures paved the way to the South Pole for Amundsen and Scott. However, on dry land, Shackleton was a restless, unfulfilled character who struggled with domesticity and the challenges of holding down a job and leading a normal married life.

However, at home he was a failure, his chaotic private life involving string of affairs and a series of failed business ventures. He left behind a trail of debts and nurtured a child-like longing to search for buried treasure, as though a unearthing a pot of gold would solve all his money worries. El Dorado, though, always remained beyond his grasp.

Shackleton first went to the ice in 1901, forcing his way onto Scott’s Discovery expedition because he became friendly with the enterprise’s principal sponsor. In 1907, he led his own expedition to Antarctica on what became his greatest feat of exploration. Despite unbearable hardships and poor provisioning, Shackleton’s party of four men discovered the route to the South Pole later followed by Amundsen and Scott.

Shackleton led his weak and starving men to within 97 miles (geographic) of the Pole and was brave enough to turn back within sight of his goal because he did not have enough food to get back to base camp. A few extra pounds of provisions would have carried him to the South Pole but Shackleton put the lives of his men first and blithely told his wife, “I thought you would prefer a live donkey to a dead lion.”

His greatest adventure, which began in December 1914, saw Shackleton’s expedition ship Endurance crushed by the ice and the 28-man party cling to life on an ice floe for 16 months. Shackleton left 22 men on the bleak Elephant Island and sailed the small open boat James Caird to South Georgia to fetch rescue. Not a man was lost.

Shackleton’s genius for leadership was the crucial difference in the struggle for survival. He never took unnecessary risks or asked his men to do anything he would not do himself. His unwavering optimism inspired his men to believe they would survive and chimed with Napoleon’s remark, “A leader is a dealer in hope.” Today American business schools teach Shackleton’s leadership style to budding entrepreneurs.

As though choreographed, Shackleton died in January 1922 at South Georgia on the edge of the Antarctic wilderness. He was preparing for another voyage into the ice where his restless soul at least found peace.

Shackleton loved poetry and there was a poetic postscript to his life. Upon being told that her husband had died in South Georgia, his wife cabled his comrades with the simple instruction: “Bury him where he was happiest.”

He lies to this day in South Georgia overlooked by towering mountains and glaciers.

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Ernest Shackleton

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• Historic UK - Sir Ernest Shackleton and Endurance
• Cool Antarctica - Biography of Ernest Henry Shackleton
• Dictionary of Irish Biography - Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton
• HistoryNet - Ernest Shackleton's Expedition to the Antarctic
• Official Site of Sir Ernest Shackleton
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• Ernest Henry Shackleton - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
• Ernest Shackleton - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Who was Ernest Shackleton?

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Anglo-Irish explorer of Antarctica who attempted to reach the South Pole .

Where did Ernest Shackleton attend school?

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton attended Dulwich College from 1887 until 1890.

What is Ernest Shackleton best known for?

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton is best known as a polar explorer who was associated with four expeditions exploring Antarctica , particularly the Trans-Antarctic ( Endurance ) Expedition (1914–16) that he led, which, although unsuccessful, became famous as a tale of remarkable perseverance and survival.

Where was Ernest Shackleton buried?

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was buried on the island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic Ocean .

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Ernest Shackleton (born February 15, 1874, Kilkea, County Kildare , Ireland—died January 5, 1922, Grytviken, South Georgia) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who attempted to reach the South Pole .

Educated at Dulwich College (1887–90), Shackleton entered the mercantile marine service in 1890 and became a sublieutenant in the Royal Naval Reserve in 1901. He joined Capt. Robert Falcon Scott’s British National Antarctic ( Discovery ) Expedition (1901–04) as third lieutenant and took part, with Scott and Edward Wilson, in the sledge journey over the Ross Ice Shelf when latitude 82°16′33″ S was reached. His health suffered, and he was removed from duty and sent home on the supply ship Morning in March 1903.

In January 1908 he returned to Antarctica as leader of the British Antarctic ( Nimrod ) Expedition (1907–09). The expedition, prevented by ice from reaching the intended base site in Edward VII Peninsula, wintered on Ross Island , McMurdo Sound . A sledging party, led by Shackleton, reached within 97 nautical miles (112 statute miles or 180 km) of the South Pole, and another, under T.W. Edgeworth David, reached the area of the south magnetic pole . Victoria Land plateau was claimed for the British crown, and the expedition was responsible for the first ascent of Mount Erebus. The sledging party returned to the base camp in late February 1909, but they discovered that the Nimrod had set sail some two days earlier. Shackleton and his party set fire to the camp to signal the ship, which received the signal and returned to the camp a few days later, successfully retrieving them. On his return to England, Shackleton was knighted and was made a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order .

In August 1914 the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–16) left England under Shackleton’s leadership. He planned to cross Antarctica from a base on the Weddell Sea to McMurdo Sound, via the South Pole, but the expedition ship Endurance was trapped in ice off the Caird coast and drifted for 10 months before being crushed in the pack ice . The members of the expedition then drifted on ice floes for another five months and finally escaped in boats to Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands , where they subsisted on seal meat, penguins , and their dogs . Shackleton and five others sailed 800 miles (1,300 km) to South Georgia in a whale boat, a 16-day journey across a stretch of dangerous ocean, before landing on the southern side of South Georgia. Shackleton and his small crew then made the first crossing of the island to seek aid. Four months later, after leading four separate relief expeditions , Shackleton succeeded in rescuing his crew from Elephant Island. Throughout the ordeal, not one of Shackleton’s crew of the Endurance died. A supporting party, the Ross Sea party led by A.E. Mackintosh, sailed in the Aurora and laid depots as far as latitude 83°30′ S for the use of the Trans-Antarctic party; three of this party died on the return journey.

Shackleton served in the British army during World War I and served as a military advisor in the multinational North Russia Expeditionary Force during the Russian Civil War . He attempted a fourth Antarctic expedition, called the Shackleton-Rowett Antarctic Expedition, aboard the Quest in 1921, which had the goal of circumnavigating the continent. Shackleton died at Grytviken, South Georgia, however, at the outset of the journey. His exertions in raising funds to finance his expeditions and the immense strain of the expeditions themselves were believed to have worn out his strength.

Shackleton’s publications were The Heart of the Antarctic (1909) and South (1919), the latter an account of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.

Leading in Trying Times: The Case of Ernest Shackleton

"the greatest leader that ever came on god’s earth.".

Posted January 6, 2011

Ernest Shackleton

Leaders matter, most would agree, and organizational scholars have long tried to capture what good leadership entails. By one estimate, more than 200 definitions of leadership have been offered in the literature, and their only common denominator is that leaders have followers! Okay - I guess I am not a leader, unless the occasional readers of my essays here count.

Be that as it may, perhaps those who try to understand leadership should not approach it in terms of abstract definitions but simply in terms of really good examples of leadership and what they can teach us.

In this spirit, I sketch what I know about Sir Ernest Shackleton, the British explorer who attempted to be the first to lead a crew of men across the Antarctic. In November, 1915, their ship -- appropriately named Endurance -- sank, leaving the entire 27-man crew stranded on ice floes and small lifeboats. The mission was a failure in that these men did not cross Antarctica as intended. However, it was also an incredible success, because over a two-year period, Shackleton was able to keep all of his men alive and get them all home, prompting one of his men to describe Shackleton as "the greatest leader that ever came on God's earth, bar none."

Shackleton's story illustrates many important ideas about leading in trying -- indeed dangerous -- times. Here I focus on several details consistent with findings in positive psychology.

• He had unshakeable optimism , communicated by word and by deed, that he and his men would survive and be rescued.

• He shared hardships with his men, even when his position might have allowed him not to do so. For example, he assigned himself to a tent with the most cantankerous crew member, a fact not lost on anyone else (except perhaps his tent mate). After telling his men that they needed to leave behind personal articles to lighten their load, he took out the Bible personally given to him by Queen Alexandra and placed it on the snow. Then he walked away.

• Shackleton established a loose hierarchy among his men, which allowed them to draw strength not just from him but from one another. All of the men -- including the scientists who were part of the crew -- were expected to perform mundane chores.

• He was able to be both a friend and a leader of the members of his crew, who addressed him simply as Boss, a term conveying their affection and familiarity as well as acknowledging his authority.

• Shackleton also possessed ample social intelligence , understanding what made his crew members tick as individuals and tailoring his interactions accordingly. One crew member responded best to flattery, for example, and Shackleton flattered him. Another responded best when reminded of the legal agreement he had signed when becoming a crew member, and Shackleton underscored this agreement to him whenever necessary. In my own research with contemporary US Army officers, in which they were asked to describe the strengths of character which they used as leaders in dangerous contexts, social intelligence was among the most frequently mentioned.

• A final point, which I have not yet emphasized, is that Shackleton possessed incredible technical skills honed over decades of exploration which he was able to use in leading his crew and helping them to survive. He knew what he was doing, and his men knew this as well. As important as the psychosocial skills I have been discussing might be, leading in trying times is not just about charisma , optimism, and resilience . It is also about technical skills and practical experience. Otherwise, great football coaches would be great generals, or vice versa.

If any of you are leaders, you might take this example to heart.

Browning, B. W. (2007). Leadership in desperate times: An analysis of "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" through the lens of leadership theory. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 9, 183-198.

Lansing, A. (2002). Endurance: Shackleton's incredible voyage. New York: Carroll & Graf.

Christopher Peterson was professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

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Real Leaders: Ernest Shackleton Leads a Harrowing Expedition

What a famously disastrous polar mission can teach us about effective leadership.

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In 1915, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship became trapped in ice, north of Antarctica. For the next two years, he kept his crew of 27 men alive on a drifting ice cap, then led them in their escape. How Shackleton did that has become one of the most famous leadership case studies. In the first episode of a four-part special series on leadership, HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius and Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn analyze Shackleton’s leadership during the struggle to survive. They discover lessons in building a team, learning from bad bosses, and cultivating empathy.

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ADI IGNATIUS: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Adi Ignatius. This is “Real Leaders,” a special series that examines the lives of some of the world’s most compelling and effective leaders, past and present and offers lessons to all of us today.

NANCY KOEHN: Wanted, men for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success.

ADI IGNATIUS: Legend has it that that’s the job ad Ernest Shackleton used to recruit the crew for his expedition to Antarctica in 1914. If you know this story you know that Shackleton and his crew never set foot on that continent. Instead their ship got trapped in ice. But it’s what happened when their original mission failed that has made Shackleton’s remarkable story of survival, one of the most famous case studies in leadership history. I’m Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review and I’m joined by historian and Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn. Nancy’s case study about Ernest Shackleton is a classic and her book, Forged in Crisis , is a great account of Shackleton’s story. Nancy welcome.

NANCY KOEHN: Thank you Adi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

ADI IGNATIUS: We’re starting this series with Ernest Shackleton, one of the great explorers in the age of polar exploration in the early 20th Century. To set the context in the U.S., Teddy Roosevelt is President. Ford Motor Company has just produced its first car and the race to discover the South Pole is on. So, to understand the context even more, Nancy, is this kind of the equivalent of the Space Race of the 1960s?

NANCY KOEHN: Absolutely. It’s a great analogy. It was a time when nations and patriotism were duking it out at some level in an international race, along exploration lines.

ADI IGNATIUS: So Shackleton’s first expedition to Antarctica takes place in 1902. So, Nancy, what happened in that?

NANCY KOEHN: So his first expedition which happens in the very first few years of the 20th Century, is an expedition under the command of a Naval Officer named Robert Falcon Scott. They’re trying to be the first to the Pole and that expedition goes terribly awry and Scott is forced to turn around and go back and they almost die on the way back for a number of reasons, primarily the most important of which is the temperatures and food supplies.

ADI IGNATIUS: OK. So this fails, but Shackleton wants more. He goes back.

NANCY KOEHN: He wants more. When Scott publishes an account of the expedition that’s scathing toward Shackleton, that gets his dander up and he immediately begins planning for his own expedition. Having learned a lot of things from Scott that he thinks he won’t do.

ADI IGNATIUS: OK. So here’s lesson number one. What do you do when you have a bad boss? I mean, to what extent does he learn lessons from an initial foray gone badly?

NANCY KOEHN: Extremely important lessons. One, make your decisions and stick with them. That’s something Scott has a lot of trouble with. And a lot of those decisions in leadership involve displeasing or not making everyone happy. That’s a second related lesson. Third lesson: make sure you have adequate food supplies and transport that you can depend on. He wasn’t a very good process engineer and planner. And so Shackleton learns from that and says I’m going to be very good about that. I’m never going to be in charge of an expedition that runs short on food supplies. Again, almost in intentional opposition to Scott. So what’s important I think here for our time and for all of us that have worked for bad bosses or people we don’t agree with or people we feel frustrated by is what can I learn from this person about how I will not act as a manager and a leader.

ADI IGNATIUS: So Shackleton leads his own expedition to the South Pole in 1907. That fails to reach the South Pole. So, 1914 he returns to Antarctica for his third mission and this is the one that becomes so famous. So it’s interesting to think about Shackleton almost as an entrepreneur. He takes on some of the tasks that are at once both profound, but also mundane. Hiring a team, raising money. I think particularly the way in which he built his team is remarkable and weird and instructive.

NANCY KOEHN: That is exactly, that’s a great set of descriptives. So Shackleton didn’t use this language, but here’s what he did and I’ll say a word about how. He hired for attitude and trained for skill. That’s the essence of what he did. So, less about what have you got on your resume that makes you look like you’d be a good polar scientist, or a good polar navigator and more about what’s your attitude and how, what has that attitude affect your ability to deal with these very high-risk situations? So the way he gets to attitude in the hiring process is he asks people to do things like sing a song. Do a dance. He tries to get at their underlying default kind of character, am I pessimistic, am I optimistic? How do I deal with different kinds of situations?

ADI IGNATIUS: So was he hiring people who pleased him, or do you think he really was thinking at that high level about these attributes?

NANCY KOEHN: Absolutely the latter. Absolutely thinking about what have I got here? What have I got in this scientist? What have I got in this doctor? What have I got in this enlisted man? What kind of attitudes do I have? How are they suited to the environment that I know well in Antarctica? He’s knows it, he’s been there with good and bad and less good results. And very importantly, not just what attitudes, what collection of attitudes do I have, but how do they fit together? He was a brilliant kind of conductor if you will, of teams. Because teams aren’t just kind of set of resumes you’ve got. They’re the people and their attitudes and their experience, and how they work together. So he was very careful about choosing his ensemble.

ADI IGNATIUS: When I interview people should I have them tell me a joke and sing a little song and just get a sense of their ability to respond to a weird request?

NANCY KOEHN: Absolutely. That’s exactly what he’s doing. That’s a very good way of characterizing it. You can also ask them, you know, when you hire people about what was their most confusing? What was their most, what was their greatest moment of self-doubt? Shackleton got that kind of thing as well. And he understood it long before we were writing about it here at places like the Harvard Business School.

ADI IGNATIUS: So by now Shackleton has his team for the Endurance mission assembled. Now what happens first?

NANCY KOEHN: So he sets off in August 1914 almost exactly at the time that World War I breaks out. And he has to ask the Assistant Lord of the Navy, Winston Churchill if he can go ahead and go or if they need the ship and the men for military service, and Churchill says, “Proceed.”  And Shackleton hightails it out of Dodge and gets himself down, first to South America to take on supplies and then they head south and east to a small whaling station, this is their last outpost before they get to Antarctica, the continent. And the whalers say to Shackleton, “The icebergs are very far north this year and you’re going to have trouble getting through the jigsaw puzzle ice going down there.”

ADI IGNATIUS: Remember we’re heading south.

NANCY KOEHN: We’re heading south. And Shackleton waits a month, waiting for the ice to kind of clear and it doesn’t, and he sets off. He was arguably reckless, or a little bit cavalier. Maybe a little bit more than a little, but he heads south. They make their way through these, and there’s astounding pictures of this, through this jigsaw puzzle of ice to the coast of Antarctica. And in January. So they left in August. In January, late January, just as they see the coast of Antarctica, but as they’re still 80 miles away, icebergs lock the ship in a vice. Tons and tons and tons of ice locking it in place. No one knows where they are. The radio doesn’t work. After a month or so it’s really clear that they’re not going to break free of the ice. They have to wait for it to melt, and if the ship survives being held in a vice that long, there’s very, if it survives they may get back to the coast, but he thinks increasingly as the days becomes weeks and the weeks become months into 1915, that their expedition is over. So very interesting leadership moment. I can’t get to my original goal. What in the heck do I do? And that is a very interesting pivot moment for Shackleton.

ADI IGNATIUS: We’re talking months and months locked in the ice, freezing temperature, no light at times. I mean it’s sort of unfathomable. It doesn’t even kind of register in today’s terms.

ADI IGNATIUS: It doesn’t. So the ship is locked in January of 1915. They will live on the ice for almost two years. About 20 months all told. Most of that time they will be living in tents because the ship sinks. The ice crushes the ship and sinks it in November, 10 months after they’re first stuck. The ship is battered into pieces and the men live for the rest of the time in tents with lifeboats on the ice. So it’s a tremendously long, as you said, unfathomable period that they are living in this high stakes situation. But he now has another issue, and this is really important for leaders today. How do you manage the energy of yourself and your team when the stakes suddenly get high, the volatility, your uncertainty increases, and there’s suddenly a new worst case scenario that people can keep on running as a movie in their heads. That, all those things are his enemies. Right? If his men start doubting that they will survive, if they start fighting among themselves, if their anxiety becomes its own actor on the stage, other things can kill them than just the temperature and food supplies. So what is so interesting about Shackleton in this moment is how he quickly pivots into I gotta manage their energy. I gotta create stability for them. I gotta give them the sense that they can do harder, better things together and under my command than they could do on their own. And that is what he proceeds to do.

ADI IGNATIUS: Coming up after the break we will learn exactly how Shackleton did that.

ADI IGNATIUS: Welcome back to “Real Leaders,” a special series of the HBR IdeaCast . I’m Adi Ignatius with Nancy Koehn.

NANCY KOEHN: Hey there.

ADI IGNATIUS: All right, let’s get back to the story. So Ernest Shackleton and his crew of 27 men are stranded on an ice floe near Antarctica with no idea when or how or if they will ever be able to get home. What I want to know is how in the world does Shackleton keep his crew motivated for all this time?

NANCY KOEHN: He shows up every day in terms of his mission. So we are rarely taught as leaders, managers, parents, teachers that how you get through your day, how a leader shows up, what your body language is, are you looking at your phone as you sit down in a meeting immediately with everyone around you. If you’re doing that everyone else will be doing that. Shackleton understands that. He looks confident. He carries himself carefully. We know from his diaries that he was nervous. He didn’t always know the answer, but he is not showing up with his team saying, “Hey guys, I didn’t sleep well. Can anyone help me get right with this anxiety?”  He never does that. He has someone, his first mate Frank Wild, that he can talk to, but he is consistently showing up as a man who cares about his men and who believes that they together will get home safely. That’s the first thing. Really important lesson today as volatility, pace of change increases. Second thing he does is he understands something that all parents come to understand, which is that routine is incredibly important to creating stability and confidence and belief in self for human beings. So he has, all the way through this story, has the men on routines. On the ship, and then when the ship goes down, is crushed by the ice in November of 1915, he has a routine for the men on the ice. He has a duty roster. Everyone has a job every day. Everyone is responsible for walking three miles around the ice so they get their exercise. They don’t have Fitbits, but he knows that exercise is good for the men. He tells them its mental medicine, is what he called it. There was forced socialization, so no one was allowed to retreat their cabins when they were on the ship after dinner, on in the case of their tents, no one was allowed to be alone in their tent after dinner. They mixed. There were games. There were presentations. There were plays. So this idea that routine and camaraderie prevents doubt and disillusionment and it’s relative despair and then discord among the team, he understands very well and he acts to prevent that. And the third thing I think that he does that’s incredibly important, just as important as these other two things, is he has this great sense of empathy. So when he sees a man’s, for example, energy flagging and this happened a number of times, over the course of the time that they were stranded, he will order up hot milk for everyone. But he does it for everyone so that the man who he sees flagging isn’t embarrassed, isn’t called out, isn’t singled out. He does it, and the idea is energy, food, feeding and watering is something that bolsters your spirits. Gives you more confidence. Can help you combat doubt or despair, or ennui. And so he does that all the time. These small things that without making a person embarrassed, give them more confidence, give them more strength, give them more resilience.

ADI IGNATIUS: So a few points. One, you’re certainly making the case that it’s good to hire people who can sing a song and dance a jig if you have a year of nights to somehow spend together, but also delivering hot milk to everyone when there’s one person who’s flagging. I think it avoids the embarrassment. I guess it also avoids signaling to somebody that we’re worried that you’re circling the drain.

NANCY KOEHN: Exactly. Exactly. There’s a moment when the men are so miserable and he’s so worried about as he called it, morale, that he says, order up double rations for four days. Needed to improve morale. And like the men’s diaries, most of them kept diaries, say things like, “feeling much better. Full as a tick.”  So he understands in this empathic intuitive way that my most important resource is my men’s self-belief and their belief in their group ability to get home safely.

ADI IGNATIUS: So Shackleton clearly has this enormous reservoir empathy. To what extent is that just his personality and to what extent is that calculated?

NANCY KOEHN: I think most of what he does is calculated. Once he’s on the ice and the ship goes down, and the mission of walking across the Antarctica is over, everything he does in this very high-stakes situation, when he’s talking about keeping his men alive, is calculated. That’s what’s so interesting. And I mean calculation with a great deal of admiration and pragmatism when I say that. This is someone who says, “I have to keep them alive. I’m going to be very thoughtful and serious about what I do and very aware.”  And so, it’s calculated empathy that he’s using and he’s very careful to think about how he distributes it, so no one feels left out and it’s done in the interest of what he sees now as the, you know, as an extremely important goal. I’m responsible for these people. I must bring them home alive.

ADI IGNATIUS: And is that goal, that mission selfless or selfish?

NANCY KOEHN: I think it’s got parts of both if you will. I mean he really cares about bringing them home alive. It is he in a sense rising into how service to others can make us our best selves, make us our strongest. Unlock and unleash our superpowers. So there’s that piece. But this is a man who’s been thirsting for fame and glory for all his life in some sense, or since he first decided to join the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. So there’s an element of not I. I’m not going to be the man who sees 27 men and myself die on the ice. So there’s a real self-interested piece too. But I think the most important piece is what he discovers inside himself, which is, “I owe it to these men. I owe it to my command to bring them home alive.”  And I think that is primarily what powers him through his own moments of doubt.

ADI IGNATIUS: It’s this incredible flexibility of realizing OK, the mission going to the South Pole. This is long over, but we’re not retreating with our tail between our legs. And by the way, this is the hardest thing in the world to try to get us all back, but this is the greatest mission of my life.

NANCY KOEHN: Exactly. Exactly. And the ability to say, the flexibility, the adaptability, the ability to say that’s no longer our mission. I’m turning to the future, the new mission, and I’m not going to look back on stalling. So what he doesn’t do with his men or himself is keep saying, “how did this happen? This is terrible.”  Let’s do a court and a tribunal to uncover why this thing didn’t work and why we got stuck. He doesn’t do any of that. And that’s so important for leaders in a transforming organization or a very volatile time. Howard Schultz came to my HBS classroom. He was then CEO of Starbucks, to talk about the company’s transformation and his own kind of really difficult moment when the company was about to go under in 2007 and 2008. And someone asked him about what he did with the mistakes that he made and what they were. And he said, “that’s a great question. I tried to learn quickly from them, but I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of looking backward for very long, or very often. We had too much work to do. I had to face forward.”  So that’s a really important lesson as well. I think for lots of high achieving, highly controlling, highly successful people.

ADI IGNATIUS: But what about owning them? I mean we, I think we demand that our leaders own their mistakes. You know it was Shackleton, he disregarded advice, like maybe you shouldn’t go so far south because of the ice floes. So I guess like today we would say well you have to own it. I’m not sure he did that. It seems like more he —

NANCY KOEHN: He didn’t own it publicly. There was no, you know, it’s my fault, or I take responsibility. There was no Johnson & Johnson kind of moment with Jim Burke the CEO –

ADI IGNATIUS: The Tylenol moment.

NANCY KOEHN: Right. This is our problem. We own it. We’ll make it right. And yet, he owned it completely. I can’t help, but think some of the resilience and the determination, and the extraordinary improvisation of this story, which just gets more and more and more and more difficult for almost two years. Some of that that he harnessed or accessed and honed it himself was partly about the guilt that he felt that under my watch with my decision making, we got into this place. I think that was part of the story too. I think Howard Schultz would tell you that was part of his motivation for using all his powers, and he worked incredibly hard to save Starbucks, because he felt responsible. So that piece, he did own it. He didn’t own it publicly, but he didn’t have the luxury because he had to keep the men’s faith in him, and a public admission, a public confession, at that moment in the naval hierarchy of early 20th Century, British seaman and scientists would not have worked.

ADI IGNATIUS: Better to just hand out some warm milk.

NANCY KOEHN: Hand out warm milk and show the men that you are, you are on it.

ADI IGNATIUS: I guess what’s remarkable is that the group didn’t turn on him. It’s hard to imagine, I don’t know a parallel situation. A company, let’s say, that isn’t succeeding, it isn’t producing for month after month after month and just trying to survive and at some point people saying, “This isn’t working. Let’s try plan B.”

ADI IGNATIUS: They do, and there’s one moment, one real moment when mutiny becomes a possibility. And Shackleton quells it. One of the important things he does is say, in violation of Maritime Law, to the troublemaker, the person who wants to mutiny, he says, “Look, I know the ship went down and my Maritime Law you’re not allowed to be paid. I don’t have to pay you from the moment the ship goes down.”  He says, “I’m going to pay you out of my own pocket. You’ll get paid when we pull in to the, you know, into London on the Thames.”  So that quells a lot. That does a lot to appease the doubting Thomas’s because it says something about what he cares for and what he’s willing to do for his men. But in any event, here’s the secret sauce on the mutiny. Years after this expedition the BBC went back in the early 30s and interviewed, the radio interviewed all the survivors. And they asked them, “How did you do this?”  And all of them, all the men, two or one said, “the boss,” which was their nickname for Shackleton, “made us believe that we could each do it.”  So there was something incredibly sustaining about that definition of leaders from David Foster Wallace, that leaders help us do things. Better, more important things. Harder, better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own, that Shackleton tapped into which each of those men. That 20 years after this happened they would say, “he, his faith in me made me believe I could do it. And that was the most important thing.”

ADI IGNATIUS: And what do we know about how he did that? I mean part of it was his own posture and continence, but how did he connect with the people that they believed that about themselves?

NANCY KOEHN: A combination, I think of again, frequent Town Hall meetings with the group. That he talked to them as a group every other day or so about what was happening, what he thought was happening, weather, navigate, longitude, latitude. Partly as important through this individual one on one stuff. Now he had 27 men, so it was a lot easier to do than if you’re in a company of 100s or thousands of people. But he made a point with each person on a regular basis to connect with them, in a very intimate way. Sometimes he talked about poetry. Sometimes we talked about stamp collecting. Sometimes we just talked about the seal meat that cook just made. But that combination of we can do this. I got your back, and “Oh, Chris, or oh, Randolph, or [Thomas] Orde-Lees, we got it right.”  So that was incredibly important. The personal and the large-scale leadership that he evidenced over and over again. And, as you just said. He’s showing up. They believe, he believes. And that was incredibly important.

ADI IGNATIUS: That to me is one of the biggest takeaways for anytime that, you know, there’re plenty of people who rise to the top, get the top job and then they’re not present. They can’t sustain it. And really that’s a great contrast that Shackleton was present. He was a leader every single day, whether it was giving orders or more kind of soft power things, but just being present. You don’t walk into the office and sit at your computer and —

NANCY KOEHN: Shut your door.

ADI IGNATIUS: Shut your door.

NANCY KOEHN: Absolutely. And I think the personal piece is important as well. It was personal. I think all great leaders have a big element of what they do that’s very personal to them. It’s part of who they are. And it’s part of their identity and that’s part of what fuels them.

ADI IGNATIUS: The rest of the story is like something out of an adventure movie. Shackleton and his crew drift on the ice for almost two years. Finally, they spot an island in the distance. They have three lifeboats that they’d taken off the ship before it sank. So they decide to set off and try to sail to that island.

NANCY KOEHN: And it is a hellacious journey. The seas are really rough. The boats risk getting lost from each other, so they have to anchor them together. The men get terrible diarrhea. Shackleton worries by the end of the third day that some of his men are going to die en route.

ADI IGNATIUS: But they make it to Elephant Island. They’re on dry land again. But they’re not going to be rescued there. Way too remote. So Shackleton decides to make an even more dangerous journey by boat. To head back to the whaling station where they had warned Shackleton about the ice being too thick. This is South Georgia Island. It is 800 miles away. So Shackleton and five men head out in a lifeboat that they have sort of converted into sailboat. Everybody else stays behind on Elephant Island.

NANCY KOEHN: And this is as dreadful as the open boat journey was to get to Elephant Island. This is worse. They’re going to try and traverse these incredibly difficult seas. Seas that even the most experienced mariner would tell you are almost impossible to sail through. At one point, close to the end of the journey a huge storm erupts in that part of the South Atlantic. It’s such a big storm that it sinks a ship with over 500 people on it in nearby waters, although the expedition doesn’t know that. So they’re going to face these huge weather obstacles. Everything seems stacked against their success. But somehow, they make it to South Georgia Island. The other side of the island from the whaling station and because the boat is damaged they can’t sail around. They have to dock there.

ADI IGNATIUS: So they make it. I mean these guys never get to do the victory dance. They have to walk across the entire island. It’s uncharted territory. Mountains, rough terrain, but they do finally get to the whaling station. But even now it’s not exactly story over.

NANCY KOEHN: No, it’s not. Shackleton now has to get a ship capable of getting back across those 800 miles of difficult ocean to pick up the 22 remaining men on Elephant Island. He gets a boat pretty quickly after they arrive at South Georgia, but the boat goes only a certain distance before again, those terrible icebergs threaten to grab it and lock it in the ice, so he has to turn back. That happens not once, not twice, but thrice in the coming months. So May becomes June. June becomes July. July becomes August, and Shackleton still doesn’t have a boat. He is worried. He is going grey. He is starting to drink. On August 31st, 1916, in a Chilean tugboat he finally makes it. And the men who see the ship on the island come pouring out of this little overturned lifeboat, in which they were having lunch. That is what they were living in. And he starts counting them as the run to the shore, and he sees that all 22 are alive. And the man with, him Tom Crean, one of the crew members who stayed with him, said the years just fell off his face and he looked so incredibly happy.

ADI IGNATIUS: So they all make it.

NANCY KOEHN: They all make it. They all make it home, where they are met by a world completely different than the one they left. You know, millions have been killed. Because the war’s still going on. It’s 1916. Tragically two of the men on the expedition die within months of getting home on the battlefields of Europe. And the war ends and Shackleton is heavily in debt from the expedition, and he travels to America and gets on the speaking circuit, where he has some acclaim and interest by virtue of the story. And then comes back to England and starts hatching plans to go again. Of all the interesting pieces of the story, this part is just as interesting. I think we’ll go again. You know it was such a great experience this last time.

ADI IGNATIUS: That was so fun.

NANCY KOEHN: We had such a success. It was so enjoyable, let’s go again. And beginning in 1920, he puts the call out to his old crew, and they’re scattered. They’re in four corners. Some of them are in Asia and whatnot. One’s in Russia. And he puts the call out and says, you know, “My lads, let’s go again.”  And amazingly about 12 come right back to London to join the boss. I mean talk about the power of leadership and individual lives. Like, the boss calls, we’re there.

ADI IGNATIUS: Amazing. So what point then does, so you said Shackleton wrote a book and it was something. But at a certain point his story really becomes a big deal. That people realized that this was an expedition that failed miserably and yet is one of the greatest examples of leadership that we know. And how does that happen?

NANCY KOEHN: So, beginning in the 1980s, there’s this kind of ground swell of interest, not just in England but around the world, in Shackleton. There’s Shackleton societies. There are Shackleton conventions. There have been a spate of movies, documentaries, books, cases. I mean this is by far and away the most — I’m a Historian. People don’t buy Harvard Business School cases to sell you history. But of all the cases I’ve ever written in a long time at the school, this is the most popular. He’s incredibly interesting to people today and I think a lot of it has to do with who he became in a very turbulent situation. The way he made himself better in very dire circumstances and how that self-making. Right? Great leaders are made, not born. How that self-making affected all these other people. Those are tremendously important issues today. And he, in the stark white surroundings of that story in Antarctica, teaches us, you know, with great clarity their importance and how they can be used and accessed.

ADI IGNATIUS: I don’t want to blow by that. Great leaders are made, not born. And I know you believe that and I know you —

NANCY KOEHN: I don’t believe it. I know it because I’ve been studying it for 25 years. [LAUGHTER]

ADI IGNATIUS: On our next episode of “Real Leaders,” Nancy Koehn and I will be talking about the writer and environmentalist, Rachel Carson.

NANCY KOEHN: Many of us know her as someone who really helped create the modern environment and movement by writing an incredibly important book that was published in the early 60s called Silent Spring . But something that’s less well-known is that she was a complete introvert. She preferred walking along Maine coastlines to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C. And yet, her influence, her impact are as great as those of some of our greatest and most influential Presidents.

ADI IGNATIUS: This episode was produced by Anne Saini and edited by Curt Nickisch. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt, and Adam Buchholz is our audio product manager. I’m Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review. Thanks for listening to “Real Leaders,” a special series of the HBR IdeaCast .

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Ernest Shackleton

(1874-1922)

Who Was Ernest Shackleton?

Sir Ernest Shackleton was an explorer who in 1901 joined an expedition to the Antarctic. He was sent home early due to bad health. Devoted to creating a legacy, he led the Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Disaster struck when his ship, the Endurance , was crushed by ice. He and his crew drifted on sheets of ice for months until they reached Elephant Island. Shackleton eventually rescued his crew, all of whom survived the ordeal. He later died while setting out on another Antarctic expedition.

Early Career

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born on February 15, 1874, in County Kildare, Ireland, to Anglo-Irish parents. The second of 10 children and oldest son, he was raised in London, where his family moved when Shackleton was a young boy.

Despite the urging of his father that he follow in his footsteps and go to medical school, the 16-year-old Shackleton joined the merchant navy, achieving the rank of first mate by the age of 18, and becoming a certified master mariner six years later.

Those early years in the merchant navy saw Shackleton travel extensively. In 1901, he joined noted British naval officer and explorer Robert Falcon Scott on a difficult trek to the South Pole that placed the two men, plus one other, closer to the pole than anyone else previously. The trip, however, ended poorly for Shackleton, who fell seriously ill and had to return home.

Upon his return to England, Shackleton pursued a career in journalism. Later he was tapped to be the secretary to the Scottish Geographical Society. He also made an unsuccessful attempt at becoming a member of Parliament.

The 'Endurance'

Shackleton's South Pole expedition with Scott sparked within the young explorer an obsession to reach the Antarctic. In 1907, he made another attempt at achieving his goal, but again he fell short, coming within 97 miles of the pole before brutal conditions forced him to turn back.

In 1911, Shackleton's dream of becoming the first person to set foot on the South Pole was shattered, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the earth's most southerly point. The achievement forced Shackleton to set his sights on a new mark: crossing Antarctica via the South Pole.

On August 1, 1914, the same day Germany declared war on Russia, Shackleton departed London on the ship Endurance for his third trip to the South Pole. By late fall, the crew had reached South Georgia, an island in the southern Atlantic. On December 5, the team departed the island, the last time Shackleton and his men would touch land for an astonishing 497 days.

In January 1915, the Endurance became trapped in ice, ultimately forcing Shackleton and his men to vacate the ship and set up camp on the floating ice. After the ship sank later that year, Shackleton embarked on an escape in April 1916, in which he and his men crowded into three small boats and made their way to Elephant Island, off the southern tip of Cape Horn.

Seven hard days on the water culminated in the team reaching their destination, but there was still little hope in getting rescued on the uninhabited island, which, because of its location, sat far outside normal shipping lanes.

Seeing that his men were on the precipice of disaster, Shackleton led a team of five others out on the water again. They boarded a 22-foot lifeboat and navigated their way toward South Georgia. Sixteen days after setting out, the crew reached the island, where Shackleton trekked to a whaling station to organize a rescue effort.

On August 25, 1916, Shackleton returned to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew members. Astonishingly, not a single member of his 28-men team died during the nearly two years they were stranded.

More than a century later, Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, was finally located . On March 9, 2022, a team of scientists and adventurers released stunning images of the three-masted, wooden ship where it had lodged 10,000 feet deep at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

Later Years and Death

In 1919, Shackleton published South , his detailed account of the journey and its miraculous ending. Shackleton, however, was not through with expeditions. In late 1921 he set off on a fourth mission to the South Pole. His goal was to circumnavigate the Antarctic. But on January 5, 1922, Shackleton suffered a heart attack on his ship and died. He was buried in South Georgia.

Reverence for Shackleton's heroism and leadership didn't immediately follow. But over the last half-century, as his story became the subject of more historical research, the account of the Endurance and how Shackleton averted total disaster has elevated his standing and made him a principal figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Proof of this came in September 2011, when a biscuit Shackleton had given to a starving traveler on one of his early expeditions sold at auction for nearly $2,000.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Ernest Henry Shackleton
• Birth Year: 1874
• Birth date: February 15, 1874
• Birth City: Kilkea, County Kildare
• Birth Country: Ireland
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton was an Irish-born British explorer who was a principal figure of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
• Astrological Sign: Aquarius
• Death Year: 1922
• Death date: January 5, 1922
• Death State: Georgia
• Death City: Grytviken

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Ernest Shackleton Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/history-culture/ernest-shackleton
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 30, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

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Survival against all odds: The incredible journey of Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Shackleton was one of the most celebrated figures in the history of polar exploration. During his life, he led three major expeditions to the Antarctic: each were extraordinary feats of endurance and survival.

His first expedition, aboard the ship Discovery, gave him the third for adventure. However, it was the ill-fated Endurance expedition that truly cemented Shackleton's place in history.

When his ship was crushed by pack ice, Shackleton and his crew were stranded in one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth.

Yet, under Shackleton's leadership, all of his men survived, enduring unimaginable hardships until their eventual rescue.

Ernest Henry Shackleton was born on February 15, 1874, in Kilkea, County Kildare, Ireland, to Henry Shackleton, a farmer, and Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan.

He was the second of ten children in his family. When Shackleton was ten years old, his family moved to London, England, seeking better opportunities.

Shackleton's schooling began at Fir Lodge Preparatory School in Dulwich, London, where he showed a keen interest in literature and history.

However, he was not particularly fond of the structured education system. His real passion lay in adventure and exploration, which was evident even in his early years.

At the age of 13, Shackleton entered Dulwich College, a public school in London.

He had some academic struggles, but he excelled in practical subjects and showed a particular aptitude for geography, a subject that would later play a significant role in his life.

The start of his career at sea

Ernest Shackleton's career at sea began in earnest when he joined the North Western Shipping Company at the age of 16.

He spent the next decade learning the ropes of seafaring, working on various types of vessels and gradually climbing the ranks.

By the time he was 24, Shackleton had qualified as a master mariner, capable of commanding a British ship anywhere in the world.

Shackleton's first encounter with the Antarctic came in 1901 when he joined the National Antarctic Expedition, also known as the Discovery Expedition, led by Robert Falcon Scott.

This expedition was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage sixty years prior.

Shackleton himself served as third officer on the ship Discovery and was also in charge of provisions.

The expedition made significant geographical and scientific discoveries but was also marked by hardships, including a difficult winter in the ice.

Unfortunately, Shackleton's health suffered, and he was sent home early on a relief ship in 1903.

The Nimrod Expedition (1907-1909)

After his early return from the Discovery Expedition, Ernest Shackleton was eager to return to the Antarctic.

His opportunity came in 1907 when he led the British Antarctic Expedition, better known as the Nimrod Expedition.

This expedition aimed to reach both the geographical South Pole and the South Magnetic Pole.

The Nimrod Expedition set sail from Lyttelton, New Zealand, on January 1, 1908, with a team of scientists and adventurers.

Shackleton's leadership style was markedly different from that of his predecessor, Robert Falcon Scott.

He prioritized the welfare of his men and was known for his ability to maintain morale under challenging circumstances.

The expedition made several significant achievements. Shackleton and three of his men, Frank Wild, Eric Marshall, and Jameson Adams, set a new record by reaching the farthest South latitude, coming within 97 geographical miles of the South Pole.

This was the closest that anyone had come to the South Pole at that time. The journey saw the men struggle with dwindling food supplies and extreme weather conditions, but Shackleton's leadership ensured the team's safe return.

Another party from the expedition, led by Edgeworth David, successfully located the South Magnetic Pole.

The team also climbed Mount Erebus, the second-highest volcano in Antarctica.

The Nimrod Expedition returned to a hero's welcome in the UK. Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII for his achievements, and his team members were also awarded medals.

The ill-fated Endurance Expedition (1914-1917)

The Endurance Expedition, officially known as the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, is perhaps the most famous of Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic adventures.

It began in 1914 with the ambitious aim of making the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent.

The Endurance set sail from Plymouth, England, in August 1914, just as World War I was breaking out.

Despite the global conflict, Shackleton proceeded with his plans, leading a crew of 27 men on what would become a nearly two-year ordeal in the Antarctic wilderness.

In January 1915, the Endurance became trapped in the pack ice of the Weddell Sea.

Despite their best efforts, Shackleton and his crew were unable to free the ship.

They were forced to winter on the ice, hoping that the spring thaw would release their ship.

However, in November 1915, the pressure finally crushed the Endurance, forcing the men to abandon ship and set up camp on the ice.

Shackleton's leadership during this period was exemplary. He kept his crew focused and motivated, organizing activities to keep morale high.

When the ice floe they were camping on began to break up, Shackleton ordered the lifeboats launched and the men rowed to the desolate Elephant Island.

He selected five men to accompany him, and in one of the lifeboats, the James Caird, they embarked on an 800-mile journey across the treacherous Southern Ocean to South Georgia.

After a harrowing 16-day journey, Shackleton and his men reached South Georgia.

However, they landed on the uninhabited side of the island and had to cross over rugged mountains to reach the whaling station at Stromness.

This feat was another incredible achievement, considering they had no proper mountaineering equipment.

Shackleton eventually organized a rescue mission, and all of his men stranded on Elephant Island were saved. 

The Quest Expedition and Death (1921-1922)

Despite the hardships endured during the Endurance Expedition, Ernest Shackleton's spirit of adventure remained undimmed.

In 1921, he embarked on what would be his final expedition, known as the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition or the Quest Expedition.

The expedition was financed by John Quiller Rowett, a friend from Shackleton's school days, and its aim was to carry out a program of scientific and geographical exploration in the Antarctic.

The expedition ship, the Quest, was a small, old sealer and was not ideally suited for polar conditions.

Nevertheless, Shackleton and his crew, which included several veterans from the Endurance Expedition, set sail from London in September 1921.

The expedition had a broad program of exploration and research, with plans to explore Enderby Land and the coastal areas of Antarctica.

However, Shackleton would not live to see the completion of the expedition. On January 5, 1922, the Quest arrived at South Georgia, the same island that had been the destination of Shackleton's desperate rescue mission during the Endurance Expedition.

That night, Shackleton suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 47 years old.

Shackleton's death marked the end of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His body was initially to be sent back to England for burial, but at the request of his wife, Emily Shackleton, he was buried on South Georgia.

His grave at the Grytviken whaling station has since become a place of pilgrimage for those inspired by his life and achievements.

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Was Ernest Shackelton a Good Leader?

Hilary Murray Scott C. Hammond Management 3800 8 June 2016 Was Ernest Shackleton a Good Leader? The story of Ernest Shackleton is one that defies all odds. The fated quest of the Endurance and its crew is a lesson of perseverance, intuition, social skill, and adaptability. Shackleton’s integrity was challenged before the Endurance even left port in England with the start of World War I. The captain was willing to sacrifice men and ship for the war effort after months of preparation and planning. He was a man that was searching for greatness, while keeping things simple and calm. At the core of this born leader’s personality was optimism and with generosity combined with sympathy for the crew, he made everyone feel like they were …show more content…

He knew how close his crew members were to these animals but had to give the men their best chance at survival. Giving them not what they wanted, but what they needed. As the crew rowed towards Deception Island, being completely overwhelmed, some of the men broke down and wept. Shackleton changed his course and headed to the closer Elephant Island. He cared deeply for his men and their emotional state and knew that bitter tears were poison for the morale of the crew. The last and most important characteristic of Shackleton’s leadership qualities was his ability to instill hope and optimism in a situation that was really very bleak. Imagine being stuck in an endless expanse of pack ice, having your only mode of transportation getting smashed to bits, being hundreds of miles from civilization and thousands of miles from home. Imagine slowly starving. With not enough food or water to go around so you have to shoot your companion dogs and march to an area in the ice where you can put your boats in the freezing water and row over waves and weather for days just to find yourself on an island with little resources. Now imagine your leader leaving in search of rescue and not returning for several months. What kept these men going in such dire circumstances? Hope. “Hope is an essential and renewable resource that is generated through positive interaction with others. We cannot survive without it. Hope is the fuel generated by our

Mental Endurance in Endurance Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

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In order to endure, one must get along with himself to prevent the self-pity that cripples the human organism, and he must also cooperate with his peers unless he wants to abandon any help he might have received from the resourceful human community around him. There it is then, Shackleton's indefatigable trait, the positive attitude that permits people to explode through obstacles by the means of cooperation of mind, body, and peers.

Showing Characteristics In Shipwreck At The Bottom Of The World

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Who Was Kamehameha An Effective Leader?

Effective Leader Essay Hawaii used to be ruled by multiple chiefs. One of the chiefs, also called ali’i, had a son named Kamehameha and received a prophecy that Kamehameha would kill all the ali’i ruling the different Hawaiian kingdoms. His parents sent him away for his safety and later he was adopted by his uncle, Kalaniopu’u. Kamehameha trained under Kekuhaupi’o and eventually took over the islands.

Onward Matt Character Traits

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Was Abraham Lincoln The Stronger President?

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Why Is Calvin Coolidge A Good Leader

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Sir Ernest Shackleton´s Survival in the Antarctic Essay example

To be an obsessive person, one must have a certain subject constantly on one’s mind or routines must be followed correctly and/or on time. The benefit for the Endurance’s crew to have an obsessive man as Shackleton was that he was ready for the unexpected, and his crew’s safety was the utmost important topic for him. With Shackleton’s obsessive nature, he made a very specific routine for the men to follow; at exactly 9:00 am, breakfast was served, at 1:00 pm, lunch was served, at 4:00 pm, tea was served, and at 6:00 pm, dinner was served. Between the meals, the men did chores such as, cleaning the ship and melting ice for drinking water. Such a precise and stringent following of a routine gave the men purpose and managed to keep the men from going stir crazy. The crew’s safety was on Shackleton’s mind from the moment everyone abandoned the Endurance. Shackleton stopped all unnecessary activities that posed a risk to crew safety; for example, he stopped Macklin and Greenstreet from paddling on an ice floe like children on a raft. Shackleton also commenced unpredicted safety drills for cracking of their ice floe–which could happen at any moment. Shackleton often didn’t sleep due to the fact that he worried about all the dangerous and potentially fatal situations that he and his crew

Was Ernest Shackleton A Good Leader?

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The Characteristics Of President Franklin Roosevelt An Effective Leader

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Leadership Case Study of Ernest Shackleton Essay

The topic of this leadership case study is Ernest Shackleton. This paper will identify the development of Shackleton's leadership skills, provide examples and reflections of his abilities, and relate how he played an essential role in one of history's greatest survival stories. This study of Shackleton's leadership is set loosely within the framework of the five practices of exemplary leadership set forth in The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, and will focus on the benefits produced by his management of team morale and unity (13).

Overview of Ernest Shackleton's Theory of Leadership

Shackleton also demonstrated that he was a pragmatic leader, capable of determining a vision and then executing that vision. In a sense, the vision was simple to get everybody home alive. Even that however was a big step, because many leaders would have simply accepted the idea that some sacrifices would have to be made. Shackleton instead determined that his vision would be something that the entire crew could buy into, and that with this buy-in he would be able to undertake the necessary tactical steps to ensure success. This can be seen for example with the trip to Elephant Island. This was risky, because of the conditions and also the fact that Elephant Island has no resources. However, there were a number of tough choices to be made from the point when the Endurance became stuck in the ice, and Shackleton made those choices. He never wavered from the fact that his

Leadership In Crisis Shackleton

In what context should the Endurance expedition be analyzed? As a scientific endeavor? An entrepreneurial venture? An exercise in imperial opportunity? By what criteria should the expedition be evaluated? Given your answer to the preceding question, was it a success or a failure?

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• Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

LEADERSHIP: Was Ernest Shackleton a Good Leader?

Table of Contents

Introduction

Leadership is one of the integral functions of any organization. Organizations must bring good leaders on board to ensure that the company is efficiently run towards the attainment of its goals, and overall objectives. Good leadership entails having right leaders at the forefront. Good leaders ensure the whole crew is on the same page thus leading to overall success (Ritchie & Hammond, 2005). The issue of leadership in organizations has become an essential aspect in modern day business world. No business enterprise would thrive in lousy administration due to the many risks associated. Notably, Leadership is an old concept that started even before the First World War. As such, close examination has been done on different leaders to find out if their leadership was one of a kind or poor. This essay will focus on the case of Ernest Shackleton, an explorer in 1901 that set for the South Pole with a team of 27 men aboard.  The paper Shackleton was a good leader (Browning, 2007).

Good leadership is about honesty

In modern global business, some leaders have failed to succeed because they are not honest. About the trait theory of leadership, the approach assumes that good leaders must bear good qualities that can make them better suited for leadership. The theory focuses on the different personal characteristics of leaders with the view of identifying successful and unsuccessful leaders. From Ernest Shackleton`s expedition, it can be argued that the man born positive attributes that are linked to a good and successful leader. In the start of his mission, the man was brutally honest with his followers. His expedition to the Antarctic continent never promised a safe return. He wanted to bring men aboard who understood how risky their voyage would be. In his advertisement, he described his journey would be hazardous, dangerous, with little pay and poor weather (Browning, 2007).

Good leaders influence

Good leaders are influencers. They are capable of getting a massive following from the team they lead. As influencers, they ensure that their followers are focused on the primary goal. According to the great man theory, good leaders bear characteristics that are not found in other individuals. When he developed an advertisement seeking men for his exploring mission, so many men turned up evidence that demonstrates his great influencing skills thus a good leader. Moreover, during their adventure, different tasks needed to be done. He could influence his followers to perform jobs out of their profession but first leading as an example. He expected the team to share chores and duties, regardless of rank or seniority. For instance, the team would hunt for penguins so that penguin feathers could be used as fuel. His team worked as a group. Even though some members were not supportive, Ernest Shackleton would solve such problems amicably (Koehn, 2014).

Good leaders inspire

Ernest Shackleton is an example of a good leader. His exploration mission was one with the many pitfalls, but he did not let the challenges to overpower his crew. His problems are similar to those that put leaders at a fix in the current global business. He even offered his team pays to ensure they remain focused towards their endeavor.

Good leaders exhibit supreme resilience

In light of Ernest Shackleton’s, journey to traverse the Antarctic continent, the man faced a considerable challenge at the start of his journey. Along the way, their ship became trapped in the ice a situation that almost made his dream unreachable. Their surging optimism together with his team of 27 men was virtually crushing into a defeat. However, Ernest Shackleton demonstrated resiliency and courage. They were hopeful that if they waited for the ice to melt in the spring, they would be able to continue with their journey.  In that case, Ernest Shackleton demonstrated excellent leadership. Good leaders do not give up nor quit until they strike (Koehn, 2014). 

Good leaders focus on team`s objective

However much Ernest Shackleton voyage towards the South Pole together with his crew can be attributed to successful leadership, the opposite is true. Good leaders are driven by an overall team`s objective and not their interests. Ernest Shackleton seems to have been driven by his fame. He wanted to be the first man to have reached the Antarctic continent. As such, it is evident he was after his glory. Ernest was aware of how difficult the mission would be but later went ahead to lure men into the adventure. Good leaders are driven by the desire to achieve as a group and not as an individual. About the behavioral theory of leadership, the behaviors and actions of Shackleton were a pull down to their adventure. The behavioral theory approaches leaders from their visible actions. As such, Shackleton`s event of killing three dogs demonstrated his lack of emotional intelligence especially during a difficult time. The dogs had nothing to do with the problematic voyage (Perkins, 2012).

Good leaders use team resources appropriately

Good leaders do not use resources of an organization in the wrong way. Organizational leaders should be the caretakers of their company. As such, every resource however insignificant is put under their jurisdiction. They should put such resources to ensure the success of the organization`s goals and objectives. Shackleton, however, did not observe the excellent use of resources in the team. Timber that constructed the ship had been used as fuel while part of the ship`s boiler was converted into a stove. Such happenings left them with no ship to sail the remaining section of the journey (Perkins, 2012).

Good leaders are democratic

A good leader listens to the opinions of his team or followers. Surprisingly members of the organization sometimes may provide the best solution to a crisis, and therefore their ideas should not land on deaf ears. Leaders should demonstrate democratic leadership where every member’s ideas are welcome. After Shackleton destroyed their sailing ship, a new way to sail was needed.  The crew’s carpenter had suggested that they build a sloop out of the wreckage of the vessel but their leader, Ernest Shackleton failed to heed to this idea. As a result, the carpenter rebelled and refused to continue working. The standoff between Shackleton and the carpenter is evidence that he had failed to enhance democratic leadership (Koehn, 2014).

In conclusion, Ernest Shackleton`s expedition is one that defies all odds. Traits, attributes an behavior of a leader are core to determining if a leader is good or not. Much of Ernest Shackleton`s expedition was associated with good qualities of a leader. Though some of his actions in the course of navigation never add up to attributes of a good leader, modern-day leaders have something to learn from him.

• Browning, B. W. (2007). Leadership in desperate times: An analysis of endurance: Shackleton’s incredible voyage through the lens of leadership theory. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 9(2), 183-198.
• Harland, L., Harrison, W., Jones, J. R., & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2005). Leadership behaviors and subordinate resilience.  Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies ,  11 (2), 2-14.
• Historical-Oracle (2014). Documentary on the Endurance.
• Koehn, N. (2014). Ernest Shackleton : exploring leadership. Newbury, New Hampshire: New Word City.
• Perkins, D., Holtman, M. & Murphy, J. (2012). Leading at the edge : leadership lessons from the extraordinary saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition. New York: American Management Association.
• Ritchie, J. B., & Hammond, S. C. (2005). We (still) need a world of scholar-leaders: 25 years of reframing education.  Journal of Management Inquiry ,  14 (1), 6-12.
• Behaviorism
• Cognitive Psychology
• Communication

Ernest Shackleton's Leadership

Whether it’s thousands of feet up on everest, or down in the waters of Antarctica, there are going to be conflicts that people need to face in order to accomplish their goals. It could be the adventure itself, your thoughts in your mind, or even just another person who you dislike. As a leader, you need to stay smart and keep your team motivated. Sir Ernest Shackleton , the leader of the Antarctic expedition, was to take 28 men on one ship called the Endurance, and travel across Antarctica. After his ship sunk from being trapped in ice for so long, the problems increased but Shackleton managed to take charge and get everyone out alive. Rob Hall is the leader of the Adventure Consultants, a climbing team whose goal was to make it to the top of everest and down. Competing with other teams like Scott Fisher and Ian Woodall, Rob’s expedition had more of a competition factor. Being the leaders of each expedition, Shackleton and Rob both had very different challenges, but their leadership skills were similar in the fact that they both had to be …show more content…

One of these is strength. Mentally and physically, if you do not show that you are strong your team will want to leave you. Another one is trust. They need to trust that you will make decisions that will benefit everyone and not just yourself. On the other hand you need to trust that they will do what you say and follow your directions. Respect is a huge part of leading too. While under intense circumstances you need to respect your team and act like you are not any more important than them and they will naturally gain respect for you. There are so many more characteristics that help describe leaders and it all comes down to how you handle conflict. Although the two expeditions had unexpected obstacles on their trips, both Sir Ernest Shackleton and Rob Hall handled their situations in a very mature and appropriate

National Honor Society Leadership

There are many qualities that good leaders must possess in order to be able to maintain a group united and working together, whether it is a sports or any academic team or club. For example; football/volleyball, U.I.L/ National Honor Society, or even Spanish/Interact club. Leaders must be willing to pass on a positive influence and know when to take charge. They must begin to be role models to those they associate with on a daily basis.

Four Pillars Of The National Honor Society

A good leader needs to know how to handle certain situations and if they don’t then they need to know how to use the tools and people around them to get the task done efficiently and effectively. When serving you need to know how to handle any situation thrown at you while also being able to listen to those put in charge of

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Few men in the world demonstrate the ability to lead individuals to follow them while leaving a legacy that is emulated throughout history. Christopher Columbus did just that, facing challenges throughout his attempts to voyage across the ocean, he inspired people to follow him and changed the world forever. Providing influence, direction, and purpose, ADP 6-22 (2012) are all key pillars of army leadership that Christopher Columbus displayed throughout his life. His leadership qualities influenced me not only in my military career but my personal life as well. It is not always easy to take the path less traveled, to keep going when others doubt you, and have the fortitude to trust your instincts.

Ernest Shackleton Case Study

Ernest Shackleton was an achievement-oriented explorer who set a goal that was not feasible during his time because technology was not as developed as it is today. His goal was to cross the Antarctic by using the South Pole (Sir Ernest…). However, he failed at his attempt because of the freezing temperatures of the winter months. Although he did not achieve his goal, his leadership was one the main reasons his team was able to survive the wreck of their ship. Without his confidence and determination, the team would have lost hope.

Into Thin Air By Jon Krakauer

Rob Hall, the most experienced and achieved guide on the expedition promises to lead an abundance of amateur climbers to the summit. Though he knows Everest more than anyone else, he makes decisions that lead the reader to think his main motive of the trip was the high profit he was earning. Hall has the audacity to say, "with so many incompetent people on the mountain […] it's pretty unlikely that [they'll] get through this season without something bad happening up high". However, he resumes to allow struggling climbers to attempt to reach the summit rather than directing them to turn around. His most confounding decision is letting Doug Hansen attempt to reach the summit, even when it becomes too late to safely descend.

Keck Geology Project Analysis

My time in 4-H, working, volunteering, and my first semester of college have provided me with leadership opportunities and experiences that were often challenging. In order to cope with these challenges, I had to develop skills that would allow me to move forward. The first of which is the ability to work well on a team. This skill is one that I’ve had to practice in many environments such as completing a group project, playing softball, working in food service, and volunteering as a camp counselor.

Color Guard Captain Qualities

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Who Is Shackleton's Endurance

In the book, Endurance by Alfred Lansing, Shackleton and 27 other men are on a sailboat to cross the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. They run into ice trouble and the boat crashes leaving them with all they could take and the three escape boats, the Caird, the Docker, and the Wills. They travel to Elephant Island where from there Wild, one of Shackleton’s second hand men, and 21 other 0men stay on the island living off animals they could catch or kill. Shackleton and 5 men sail for South Georgia Island and arrive the men on Elephant Island are rescued and not a single man dies on the voyage. The men are constantly faced with bad situations that only the personality as a group made it possible for them to overcome it.

Coach Herman Boone's Leadership In Remember The Titans

The desire to win in leadership sets a context where true beneficial aspects and lessons are learnt and taught. The lessons cover ethical principles and aspects of responsibility, respect, caring, fairness, and trustworthiness. These styles are based on the film Remember the Titans.’ The backdrop in the film presents itself in football and racism which are the aspects that clash with the leadership styles. Coach Herman Boone’s leadership styles manifest themselves based on his upbringing which provides a tough exterior.

Malcolm X: The Leadership Qualities Of Malcom X

What makes a leader? I believe a leader to be intelligent ,tough, and has the determination to achieve a goal. Having certain skills will have an impact on you being a trustable leader. Being selfless and caring are also characteristics. Malcolm X his birth name Malcolm Little is a fine a example of a leader and has most of these leadership qualities.

Shackleton's Five Practices Of Exemplary Leadership

Shackleton's greatest leadership trait was is his power to Enable Others to Act. “It would be, I considered, so much better for the men to feel that they were progressing—even if the progress was slow—towards land and safety, than simply to sit down and wait for the tardy north-westerly drift to take us from the cruel waste of ice. ”(Ernest Shackleton, 1919) Lastly a leader who cares for and serves those who they lead such as Shackleton did can not help but encourage their hearts and generating everlasting

Leading By Example: A Leadership Analysis

For a person to be a good leader he or she must be willing to listen to their team because the smallest of ideas or opinions could make a lot of difference. The team will therefore feel a sense of importance to their common cause and things will go well because they feel appreciated and useful. Only in a situation where good leadership prevails, where one leads by example can huge benefit and success be

Importance Of Chain Of Command

He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent" (McCarther 2015).  A leader should lead from the front and also have the ability to think quickly on their feet and take care of their Soldiers.  Have faith and trust that the leadership is doing their best to keep everything in

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One of the most important characteristics of a good leader is that they must be actually prepared to lead under any circumstance. This sounds like something that should go without saying, but it is surprising just how many people who are in a leadership role are not prepared to take an active role in leading their team. A good leader does not sit back and observe what is going

More about Ernest Shackleton's Leadership

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• Ernest Shackleton
• Farthest South
• Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration

The Four Values that Made Ernest Shackleton a Great Leader

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The Four Values that Made Ernest Shackleton a Great Leader

While I'm not sure I would follow Ernest Shackleton into the Antarctic for his 1914 expedition, I am sure I would follow a leader like Shackleton into an adventure during present day. The reasoning boils down to the technology advances we have made in the 21st century, but that is a story for a different time. If a leader like Shackleton appeared, there would be four values that would manifest in said leader to be like Shackleton.

The first value is the leader would set a personal example with visible and memorable symbols and behaviors. When a leader is a good example that is visible to others, the people he or she has to lead will have something to look up to and strive for. One of the best ways Shackleton exemplified this trait was his service attitude after losing his ship, the Endurance. Instead of having the cook wake up early to make hot milk, Shackleton took it upon himself to wake up early every morning to serve hot milk to his men in their tents. This showed to his men that even the leader is doing his part to help everyone survive.

The second value important for a leader would be the ability to have optimism and self- confidence while facing difficult events, but at the same time, be able to stay grounded in reality. This was a significant value in Shackleton that helped save lives during the two-year expedition. Shackleton showed his ability to call things like they are when deciding to stop all attempts to free the Endurance and to instead buckle down and spend the winter in the ice pack.

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Reinforcing the team message of unity and minimizing the status differences while encouraging mutual respect will be critical in helping the group work together to accomplish a common goal. During this time in history, race relations were not like they are today. Shackleton realized the crew's chance of survival relied heavily on everyone working together. This is best showed in Shackleton when he would call for warm milk for everyone when he noticed one sailor who seemed colder or worse off than the rest.

The fourth and final value of a good leader would be the ability to find something to celebrate and something to laugh about. One great example is when the men held competitive dog-sled races and football games. The dogs also helped keep the men's minds off of their terrible predicament and helped pass the time.

Overall, if a person like Shackleton appeared and offered me a spot in his upcoming expedition, I would take the chance and follow this leader. However, it is important to realize people change when faced with hardships and obstacles. Sometimes, a common follower can stand up and take charge if the pre-determined leader is failing in his task of leading his men. The only true way to discover if someone has the leadership qualities like Shackleton is to actually follow them blindly into the expedition, expecting the worst. This would be a big risk to take, which is also one of the values held by Shackleton. If there was some possible way to be one hundred percent sure this leader would act like Shackleton, then yes, I would follow the new leader into an adventure.

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What made Shackleton a great leader?

Some people are born to lead. Sir Ernest Shackleton was a born leader. Author Michael Smith looks at the qualities that made The Boss so charismatic.

Shackleton was blessed with a natural grasp of people management. For a man who never attended anything remotely like today’s business management schools, Shackleton’s instinctive style of leadership was remarkably effective. Yet today, management schools are teaching Shackleton’s methods to inspire entrepreneurs of the future.

Quite simply, he understood his men, their strengths and weaknesses and what motivated them. He also had an uncanny knack of sensing danger and invariably minimised risk. Perhaps his greatest quality was that he put the welfare of his men above everything else.

While Shackleton is often seen as a buccaneering throwback to Elizabethan adventurers like Drake or Raleigh, the opposite is the case. Shackleton was a cautious leader and a man who would never ask his men to do anything he would not do himself. He was also good at improvisation, a man not afraid to throw away the rulebook or abandon plans if they were not working. He was a man for a tight spot.

Sir Raymond Priestley, the acclaimed scientist who served on Antarctic expeditions with both Scott and Shackleton, once wrote: “For scientific leadership, give me Scott. For swift and efficient travel, Amundsen. But when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”

Early examples of Shackleton’s leadership came during the historic Nimrod expedition in 1907-09 when his four-man party – Shackleton, Wild, Adams and Marshall – endured incredible hardship to march within 97 miles of the South Pole. It was an epic journey that discovered the vital route to the Pole and paved the way for Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen to reach the goal only two years later.

While Shackleton had enough food to stagger to the Pole, he did not have enough to get back. Exhausted, bitterly cold and starving, he took the decision to turn back in sight of his objective because he was not prepared to risk the lives of his three colleagues. When fame and glory beckoned, Shackleton put their safety first. On returning home, his wife Emily asked Shackleton why he had turned back with the Pole in sight, he simply said: “I thought you would prefer a live donkey to a dead lion.”

Beau Riffenburgh, the polar historian, wrote that Shackleton diverged from the popular Victorian fascination of worshipping the hero as a martyr who died for his cause. Shackleton, said Riffenburgh, wanted fame and fortune but he wanted to be alive to appreciate them.

Shackleton’s skills as a leader were best demonstrated during the 'Endurance' expedition, when his management was crucial in saving the lives of the 28-strong party after the ship was crushed by ice. He was an inspiration who instilled a belief that the marooned men would survive and get home. It was a simple message that Shackleton frequently reinforced to ensure the men never lost sight of the goal – safety and survival.

Although a handful of the castaways were hardened polar types with experience on the ice, most of the men were novices and totally ill-prepared for the ordeal. Many were ordinary seamen employed to bring Endurance to the Antarctic coast or young scientists on field-trips. One was an artist and another had stowed away. To avoid any troublesome build-up of cliques or running conflicts, he insisted the men did not spend longer than a week sharing a tent with the same man.

Shackleton instinctively understood the importance of teamwork and threw a protective cloak around his men. All were treated equally and he took particular care of anyone struggling to cope. He made each person feel as though they were as important as the next and there were no favourites.

Scientists shared the same chores with sailors and sailors helped take scientific readings. When the winter clothing was distributed, Shackleton ensured the crew were supplied before the officers and during one horrendous boat journey he gave his mittens to a desperate colleague.

He was intensely loyal to his men and expected full support in return. On occasions he could be vindictive when his leadership was questioned. Shackleton refused to approve the Polar Medal to four men on Endurance because of perceived disloyalty. But Shackleton also had the foresight to recognise that idleness and long periods of contemplating their fate would be toxic. Pessimism was never allowed to take root.

While there were inevitably some dissenters, discipline was imposed with a light touch and Shackleton understood the difference between a barked order and a measured command. The men called him the 'Boss'.

Normal duties were continued – from collecting scientific specimens to seal hunting – and the ship’s routine enforced. Meals were taken at the same time each day and the men were generally well fed because, as Shackleton knew, men with a full stomach are less likely to complain than a hungry man.

After dinner singsongs and party games were arranged, birthdays were celebrated and the group once staged a full-scale 11-a-side football match on the ice.

Although Shackleton was personally concerned about the desperate plight, he never let it show – any anxiety was well concealed to ensure that the despair did not spread. Leaders can be the difference between life and death in the polar wilderness. The best example is that of the Karluk expedition to the Arctic in 1913, which took place shortly before the Endurance sailed. Under Shackleton’s assured leadership, all 28 men on Endurance survived a terrible ordeal. By contrast, the leader of Karluk abandoned his men when the ship became trapped in the ice and 11 people died.

Thanks to an ongoing collaboration between The Royal Geographical Society (with International Bureau of Geographers) and Salto Ulbeek Publishers, the first ever  collection of limited edition platinum palladium prints of Frank Hurley's photographs from Shackleton's ‘Endurance’ expedition is now available to purchase .

Michael Smith is an author-journalist and authority on the history of polar exploration.   www.micksmith.co.uk