The biggest Lesson in Leadership (Is one of Survival):

Winter was closing in.

The currents began to grow fiercer, with the possibility of setting adrift the ice floe where the camp was located.

Lightless days were coming.

Provisions were progressively running down.

No radio contact.

In the middle of nowhere, no means to move.

They were alone, and nobody knew where they were.

But despite all the dangers imposed by the circumstances, the captain realized that there was a bigger one he was facing:

The morale of his men.

Any cracking due to resentment and negativity, would make them lose the drive to survive.

That would be a sure death for everyone.

So the only thing that occurred to him was paying attention to them.

Even more closely than to the inclement weather.

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Sir Ernest Shackleton, captain of the ship Endurance, had ordered disembarkation of his 27 men while trying to cross Antarctica; the ship was stuck in a floe and rendered useless.

The first thing he had to do was to ‘infect’ them with the right attitude; he himself was afraid, but he tried his best to hide all his fears and doubts.

The first morning on the iceberg, he got up first and prepared an extra amount of hot tea. As he served them, he noticed that they were watching him closely, as if searching for a clue about how to react under those circumstances.

What they saw was a confident captain, making jokes about the ice and the darkness they would face in the coming days.

No optimistic comments came out of his mouth, but he let his body language speak for him.

It was not the time to discuss the ideas to get out of there; It was too early for those who were just beginning to understand the seriousness of the situation.

-

Everyone was clear: they would have to spend the winter there.

5 months.

To maintain the spirits of his crew, Shackleton organized simple tasks every day, in which men could take turns.

Some hunted seals or penguins.

Others, recovered more provisions from the stranded ship.

Some more reinforced the camp.

At the end of each day, everyone gathered around the campfire feeling they had been useful for something. The captain did not stand still, but approached each and every one of them, initiating a brief conversation.

In this exchange, he paid special attention to the eyes, the voice, the gestures and the attitude of each of his men.

He spoke to them in their own ‘languages’: he talked about science, art, literature, politics depending on the tastes of each man.

That allowed him to make adjustments, as with the physicist on board that every day seemed more and more depressed, overwhelmed with the manual work; Shackleton made sure to relieve his burden discreetly, assigning tasks not as exhausting but just as important.

In a couple of weeks, he had recognized the weakest links in the chain.

-

Hurley, the Photographer, was diligent in his tasks but had a certain degree of arrogance; to keep him in tune with the others, the captain sat with him frequently to ask about his opinions. Thanking him for his collaboration, this made him feel important and served as an escape valve for his personality.

The Navigator was especially stubborn, so Shackleton spent more time talking with him than with the others. Thus, he identified each of the personalities, reconfiguring their duties and sleeping tents to ensure that those who might be in conflict were kept far from each other.

But winter continued without asking permission.

The mood of the men was reflected in their increasingly scarce conversations.

Shackleton had to go further: in their free time he organized sports competitions on the ice, improvised musical concerts, storytelling contests. The holidays were religiously celebrated with feasts, within their means.

Incredibly, despite the hopeless situation, the men seemed to be enjoying the challenges of living in the middle of the lonely ice.

But the iceberg where they were had become dangerously small, so they had to do something about it.

-

Shackleton organized all his men in the three lifeboats they had recovered from the Endurance; They had to get to the mainland at any cost.

Bypassing the relentless waters, they managed to reach Elephant Island.

The conditions there were much worse than those of the iceberg; they were much more exposed to the inclemencies of the sea and hunting was scarce.

The captain made a quick decision only hours after arriving.

He would leave with one of the boats and a handful of men to the Island of South Georgia, the inhabited place closest to his position.

It was 800 miles away.

17 days of impossible navigation, in a rowing boat.

The leader had to choose carefully the five men who would accompany him in such a feat; One of the ones he chose was a very peculiar option. McNeish, the carpenter on board was the oldest of them all. He was 57 years old and his temperament was the most difficult of all the crew.

The captain decided that he would come, only because he knew that if he stayed on Elephant Island he would shatter the morale of the group that remained there.

They sailed.

-

Surprisingly, 17 days later, they saw the silhouette of South Georgia Island.

At the gates of achieving their feat, they were swept away by a current when they were about to arrive.

Until that moment, Shackleton had remained impassive; during the first 10 months of travel in the Endurance and the other 5 months that had been stranded on the ice.

They were so close to achieving it that a bird fluttered over the boat. The captain lost all composure and got up, shouting profanities and trying to hit him with the oar.

His tantrum lasted fifteen seconds.

Suddenly, he closed his eyes, bit his tongue and remained silent. Standing, his silhouette aggressively cropped over the anguished ocean.

He had not maintained the morale of his men for 15 months to come to lose it here.

So he sat down again, and continued paddling with the others. He even made a joke about his outburst.

Silently, he swore to himself never to lose his calm again, no matter what happened.

-

Finally, they landed in South Georgia.

Another problem arose; The whaling station they had to reach was on the other side of the island.

26 miles on foot, by mountains and glaciers that nobody had ever crossed.

Shackleton started the journey immediately. In the end, he and just two of his men arrived at the station; hungry, destroyed by the inclement cold, barely wrapped in rags.

They were human shadows.

But they were alive.

-

The men who stayed on Elephant Island had to wait four more months until they were rescued.

The complete trial lasted 21 months.

Surprisingly and against all odds, all 28 crew members of the Endurance came back home, safe and sound.

It did not take long for word of the impressive leadership of Shackleton to spread; thanks to his mettle and responsibility, he saved his life and that of his men.

How did he do it?

When he found himself in such circumstances, he soon understood that the difference between life and death depended on only one thing:

The attitude of his men.

Any loss of hope, crack in their morale or breakdown of unity, would have made it impossible to make the right decisions under such circumstances.

Shackleton faced the most primitive condition of the human being:

A group in danger, each dependent on the others to survive.

Only by listening and carefully ‘reading’ all of them, was it possible to mold the morality of the group to adapt it according to the psychology and the behavior of each one.

Imagine doing that, while you keep total composure and absolute calmness, for months and months on the verge of death.

It was from that need for survival that our ancestors developed social skills to capture the emotions of others; to tune into their feelings and get them to cooperate.

It was the only alternative.

Shackleton experienced the sudden awakening of these faculties being in an extreme situation.

Would you need such a situation to develop them?

I hope not.

Meanwhile, knowing how to interpret the Body Language of others, being able to control yours, creating empathy with your collaborators, knowing how to decipher their personalities and making decisions based on all these factors, are necessary today more than ever for every leader.

At present, too much emphasis is placed on ‘managing’ and little on ‘leading’.

A big difference, both in the execution and in the results.

It would be a big mistake to have all these skills at your fingertips, and not start developing them today.

You need it for yourself and your company, so contact us to find out how about our training in Body Language, Emotional Intelligence and Persuasion.

Send us your message to: [email protected]

May your blade be sharper every day,

Jesús Enrique Rosas

Director — Knesix Institute