The Greatest Leader In History?

You may be aware that recently, modern-day Antarctic explorers have discovered the sunken remains of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic ship called the Endurance.

It was from an expedition in 1915. If you have not heard of this, I cannot encourage you enough to go and read up on this.

There is a book called?Endurance?written by Alfred Lansing in 1959 with a new edition released in 2015. The book is detailing in chronicling Shackleton’s Adventures and his Antarctic expedition.

It is a fascinating book, especially if you are interested in history and in exploration. These men had nowhere near the technological advances that we have today to do these types of things.

Let me give you a little bit of background.

Ernest Shackleton, British Explorer, had a great desire to see the uncharted world and get to the actual South Pole.

Something within him dwelled that, and we see that in ourselves.

Something is calling you to be a leader.

Shackleton had to go out and convince people through his own merit that this was a valid thing worth investing in. Then behind that, he had to convince 27 other crew members, all the way from his navigator to the medical officer to the boatswain.

There was no guarantee of success and actually a great risk of never seeing their families again.

It took several months from England to South America and then they had to do the resupplies and wait for the weather.

They finally made it to Antarctica, but here is where the true story begins.

Their ship got stuck firmly in an ice shelf. There was nothing they could do about it.

There was no proper land around them. They couldn’t walk to get anywhere.

He led them through that and that’s when it became an organizational effort. He took those 27 people day to day through one of the most extreme environments on the planet.

Then they were eventually able to get to Elephant Island, but nobody came to rescue them there. They had to take these little whaleboats and sail all the way up to the tip of South America to these whaling stations.

Shackleton was able to organize these whalers and these communities that were essentially cut off from the world to go down and rescue this scientific expedition from Elephant Island.

Shackleton made it happen. He did not lose, whether by famine, by cold or by accident, a single member of his crew.

27 different men. All made it back alive.

The mettle of a person that is required to bring 27 people back from such an extreme situation as being stranded and shipwrecked in the Antarctic is amazing.

The qualities that it would take for a person to achieve that are certainly steadfastness, conviction, clarity of expectation, the ability to communicate clearly with his people and the ability to connect with his guys despite the military-type hierarchy present on a ship.

It was also important to be able to go past that because underlings will only follow so far. That respect for rank only goes so far until it’s tested beyond normal human conditions to endure.

There has to be something that creates more than “I’m going to follow you just because you’re my captain”.

“I’m going to follow you because I believe in you.”

“I’m going to follow you because I believe you are the best person to do that.”

So I want to encourage you.

If you’re facing your own Shackleton’s expedition, to where it feels that your ship is going down, or you’re watching your ship go down and you’ve got people around you that are relying on you as the leader or the business owner to get you on the right direction:

Look at yourself?and look at those qualities that it takes.

You have to be confident in yourself. You need clarity of conviction. You have to be able to communicate your expectations to your people.

You have to provide that hope that they can cling to and you have to inspire them. That’s ultimately what it comes down to.

You have to be able to inspire your people around you to want to be there, to want to do the work, to want to invest themselves and their energy and resources into your business or whatever that may be.

Which of the qualities demonstrated by Shackleton do you see the most in yourself? Share in the comments an example of that in your life.

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