ON LEADERSHIP

Leadership is hardly a topic to be dealt with in a column for a blog or a magazine, because it has so many aspects, but it is too important to success in business to ignore it. It is also a near inexhaustible theme for writing, because the world offers so many examples of leadership that are worth studying, because they are inspirational and worth following.

In all of my attentiveness to samples of leadership that I have seen, heard or read about, one stands out as a model that is near impossible to replicate. Like a world record that may never be broken or Cal Ripken’s string of 2,632 consecutive baseball games played. Part of the improbability of surpassing my top pick of leadership lies in the fact that it happened almost a century ago and at the other end of the world. The principles of leadership, though, are unaffected by time and location and the model could be replicated given the same degree of determination, discipline and persistence exhibited by Ernest Shackleton in his ill-fated Antarctic expedition in 1914-1916.

The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s expedition on board the Endurance is too long and nuanced to be repeated here, but is worth reading. The authoritative book on the expedition, with exceptional pictures taken by Frank Hurley – one of the crew members – is written by Caroline Alexander under the title “The Endurance” and was published in 1999 by Knopf.

The reason why it should be studied by believers in the value of leadership is because it exemplifies leadership of the highest purity of purpose: When the expedition vessel Endurance got trapped in pack-ice in the Antarctic summer of 1914 and ultimately broke up nine months later– killing the expedition’s mission – Shackleton shifted his pursuit from being the first person to cross the Antarctic continent on foot to the single purpose of bringing every member of his 27 crew home to safety. He must have known that this was an odds-defying feat, if he could pull it off.

Having lost, with his ship, his shelter and most of his stores he had to improvise every move he made on his way to a safe return to civilization, which his team ultimately made in September of 1916. His major challenges were time (more than 2 years of hunger, disease, frostbite and deprivation), distance (thousands of miles of drifting and floating) and weather (two Antarctic winters).

After the break-up of the Endurance and having camped out on drift ice for six months, the crew made it - with two salvaged open life-boats - in 15 days to the uninhabited Elephant Island. It was now April 1916 with another winter approaching. On this barren, desolate island Shackleton left most of his team behind to try to reach in one of the open life boats -with 5 crew members and without proper navigational instruments - the nearest whaling station on South Georgia Island 650 nautical miles away. Risking the good chance of getting lost in the huge expanse of the Antarctic Ocean, which would have doomed every one of the 27 members of the expedition. He got there in 16 days through some of the worst weather and seas imaginable and was able to arrange a vessel to pick up the expedition members who were left behind on Elephant Island. Shackleton himself captained the vessel that picked up the castaways on August 30 of 1916.

The elements of Shackleton’s leadership are unmistakable from just the outline of this story. They come vividly to life if you read the blow by blow account of the expedition as written by Caroline Alexander:

•          To place the safety of the crew ahead of his personal ambition as an explorer
•          To acknowledge defeat when the Endurance was lost and timely switch the mission at hand
•          To never relinquish the responsibility for making the tough decisions
•          To never ask something from members of his team he was not willing to do himself
•          To maintain discipline among a team of 27 individuals, each with a different appreciation of the   situation they were in and constantly confronted with life-threatening conditions
•          To never lose faith and give up on his mission in spite of near insurmountable adversity
•          To completely succeed in the (revised) mission

What makes this showcase of leadership so exceptional – and most likely not to be surpassed – is that the mission was achieved without any of the comfort and technology available to modern day explorers.

Leadership is of all ages and knows no boundaries. It is a vital component of any human endeavor. You will have difficulty identifying any highly successful business enterprise, where the leadership component was missing.