Resilient Leadership lessons from Endurance Expedition by Ernest Shackleton.

Shackleton was a leader who was made not born and he was made in very large part by two previous expeditions he had made to Antarctica under two different sets of circumstances.

The first was at the early turn of the 19th century – 1901-1904. He under the command of Robert Falcon Scott, a well-known British naval commander, he, and several other men traveled to the Antarctic continent in an attempt to be the first team of men to discover the south pole. That voyage taught Shackleton a lot about what weak leadership looked like. Scott was week, he was indecisive, he was insecure, he wanted his men to like him more than he wanted to achieve his mission, which included, very importantly, the safety of his men. But Shackleton learned a lot about what great leadership was not, reminding all of us that we can learn from other individuals as we make ourselves into good leaders partly by negative example.

The second voyage that very much affected the making of Ernest Shackleton was a voyage that he himself captained. It was an amazing journey in which Shackleton and his small team got close to the pole, the closest that any group had ever gotten, 97 miles north, when Shackleton realized that his men were too weak to complete the trip to the south pole and get back safely and so he turned away, a wrenching decision, and as he said later to his wife “better a live donkey than a dead lion”. So, there he learned the critical importance for looking out for the safety of his men and of looking ahead from what would it cost him and his men even though they get to the south pole if they never got back.

Shackleton’s most famous expedition, and the one we are going to concentrate now is the Endurance Expedition which begin in August 1914. When the team left London for the Antarctic Continent. On their way, Shackleton and his men sail into an island for their last outpost, it’s called South Georgia, deep in the south Atlantic. The wailers and sailors there warn him that the ice bergs are unusually far north this year and that if he and his men sail south, they may face danger and hazards as a result of a sea that is literally ridden with ice floes.

Shackleton makes a decision almost immediately to sail on despite the risk. By January 1915, they can see the Antarctic coast. It’s about 80 miles away and then ice forms around the ship, big bergs form around the ship and lock together like a vise. The Endurance and its 28 inhabitants are absolutely stuck and suddenly everything is very different. And the mission, walk across the Antarctic continent, is now up for grabs and last but not least, its summer, the days are long and the men who were supposed to be setting up base camp and getting ready for this astounding expedition, are confronted with endless time and all that might mean.

It is not uncommon for people to question Shackleton’s decision to continue on from South Georgia Island. Indeed, the fact that Shackleton pressed ahead despite the warnings about ice from local mariners – who had both experience in the region and current knowledge of conditions – stands out. It is perhaps, less surprising when you consider the overall context of the expedition.

Shackleton’s Strategy

It’s interesting to note that he focused a huge amount of his attention as the leader on affecting the engagement, the outlook, and the cohesion of his team. He immediately set about putting together a whole host of activities and in some cases precedents for his men to follow in now these very changed circumstances, in which it looked like the mission of the expedition was now called into question or may be even over.

First, he ordered that every man come together for an hour after dinner in the state room to socialize, talk, play games, compare notes, engage in theatricals. They were going to come together, and they were going to enjoy each other’s company and they were not going to be off alone in their bunks, thinking about how miserable the situation was.

One day he decided to have a waltzing contest on the ice, and he was the lead-off dancer. And there was a wonderful afternoon of rating the waltzing skills of his men. He had dog races across the ice, he was constantly thinking about how to keep his men engage, focus on the positive and working together.

Some of this was an attempt that wouldn’t have been lost on his men, to keep the hours - now long days because we’re in the middle of the southern hemisphere summer - keep the days filled, keep the men from having too much time on their hands. But most of it was about something even more important. It was about what Shackleton referred to during the expedition as creating mental medicine, cohesion, things he could do or order his men to do that would make them that would make them feel like they were doing productive, enjoyable upward-looking things with their time and abilities. And he used that image over, and over, and over as a critical resource in leading and managing the 27 men that were his team. The real point is that mental medicine managing the energy and the outlook and the engagement and particularly the cohesion of your team is at least as valuable and perhaps more valuable, than any other resource that a leader has.

In Shackleton’s case it was more valuable than the food supply, it was more important to his team survival and success than the temperatures on the ice and then the oncoming spectre of the Antarctic winter. How could we know that about our own leadership today? We know that because when we stop to consider what happens if the leader does not pay careful, consistent attention to the energy of his men, of his women, of his team, it is inevitable that a downward spiral sets in.

On we, which could easily have become the weather front over these men in these circumstances can become boredom. Boredom can become disbelief and despair. Despair and descension can easily then, in high stakes situations, become death.

Loss of the Endurance

Let’s picture Ernest Shackleton. The ship is stuck in the ice.

Outwardly, we can see that his confident, sanguine, interested in each man, intensely engaged in the work of managing his team’s energy

Inwardly, he is increasingly concerned of the ship’s survival amid the ice floes. Because what’s happening beginning in our summer, the winter now in the southern hemisphere, say June 1915, is that vise, those big icebergs, in which the ship is stuck, are slowly beginning to crush the ship. The men are still living on the ship, but they can hear the timber starting to be strain. By August 1915, the ship is visibly foundering because the ice has it so tightly locked that it’s now at about a 50-degree angle with the flat surface of the ice.

Shackleton is now making plans to have the men abandon the ship and at the same time winter is arriving. The days are getting darker, temperatures are plummeting, and the ship keeps getting buffeted by that vise. Shackleton tells a couple of confidants in midwinter that “what the ice gets, the ice keeps” meaning that if the ship is damaged further, they will have to abandon it and it will eventually be claimed by the sea and by the ice. He’s worried and his paces the ice trying to think about, not the original mission how are we going to walk across the continent, but how, if we lose the ship, and it looks increasingly likely that they will, how will my men survive? How will I lead them to survival? And most important in that context, how will I help them believe they can survive.

His men don’t see that course of the day. He’s confident, he’s doing the daily things, he’s managing and leading all the time but he’s nervous.

The men abandon the ship in September 1915. They put up tents, they take the lifeboats, they grab all the resources food stores that they can from the now-cracking, very damaged ship. And the ship is left, mast broken there as the men begin to make a kind of crude camp. They live there for two months and in November 1915, one day, Shackleton says, “she’s going boys” and the men watch as, in nine hours, the endurance slides through the ice and the ice closes over. There is literally no line on the horizon for anyone, including Ernest Shackleton to see.

That night in his diary he writes, “the endurance sank today. I cannot write about it.”

Changing his strategy

The ship is no more. Shackleton and crew are on the ice floe with little more than three lifeboats, the dogs and essential equipment from the ship. Shackleton insisted, however, on saving a crew member’s banjo, seeing it as a valuable tool for making mental medicine. As if not more, important now than before the ship went down.

In the wake of the endurance sliding through the ice and disappearing from the view. Shackleton has a critical realization that he holds to for a great length of time. And that is, that his mission and the mission of his team has fundamentally changed and what that means is that he must change his leadership.

He must grow into the leader capable of dealing now with this much worse crisis. He writes in his diary that, “a man must shape himself to a new mark the minute the old one goes around”.

Think about what he is saying, he’s saying, the finish line has changed, the goalposts are different. I’ve got to raise my game and develop the kind of leadership that is required to meet these new increasing challenges. Shackleton also understands - very much in relation to this what all leaders come to know, which is that - in order to do that, he has to keep meeting with himself about how he’s going to do this. Because of one thing is very, very obvious to him, and that is I may not know as the leader, exactly how we’re going to steer toward the new mission. Shackleton want his men to survive but he doesn’t know step-by-step, exactly how he’s going to do that. And the turbulence and volatility of his circumstances make that almost impossible. So what does that mean for his meeting with himself, for his making of himself into a new even stronger, more resilient, more capable leader?

It means that he has to be committed to the idea, to the notion that his leadership and management would involve constant adaptation, suppleness, improvisation, flexibility. He will maintain his abiding deep commitment to the mission, I will get them home alive. But how he does that moment by moment, day by day in the short run in the longer run will have a lot of flexibility and adaptability.

The second thing that he understands, critical to accomplish his mission that, I will bring them home alive, he has to convince the crew, individually and collectively, they can do that. And that they under his guidance, under his orders, under his leadership are going to do that. He has to maintain the credibility of his mission with his men. At the same time, he’s juggling like all leaders, a number of balls in air at all times. He has to continue to manage the energy of the men and that means something very interesting, as it does to all teams in the context of turbulence, that means he also has to manage the people that are potentially disruptors, potentially great doubters, potentially capable of spreading doubt and dissention and negativity. And Shackleton takes up this challenge with great commitment and great execution and what he does at its simplest most fundamental level is back to the old adage, “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

So, Shackleton does something right away after the ship goes down. He brings all the men he thinks, four of them, that are doubting Thomas’s, disruptors, dissenters into his tent so they will share his tent with them. He takes very special care to keep them on board. He keeps a close eye on them because what he does not want, what he cannot have, and all leaders understand this with a big mission, he cannot have those doubters, those disruptors spreading the negativity and doubt and dissension that they themselves feel.

So, managing group and individual energy has an additional piece to it. You have to make sure that the enemies of the change, of the mission, of the great achievement are managed so that they do not in anyway, take the mission off course.

Three practices were essential to Shackleton’s success as a leader.

1. He continuously met with himself, assessing, and reassessing his approach to the changing mission.
2. He showed a relentless commitment to his primary objective – the safe return of his team – while being entirely flexible about how to achieve it.
3. He maintained his team’s belief in the mission by managing both collective and individual energy.

Caring for the team.

This is a fascinating story of leadership and crisis and there are at least 4 leadership lessons we can take away.

First, Ernest Shackleton was simply brilliant at toggling seamlessly between day-to-day management and leading the mission. What do we mean by that? We mean that he could easily at one minutebe dealing with daily tasks, kill seals to feed the men, adjust the duty roster, at the same time he can easily quickly move to, what do we need to do today, tomorrow, next week to get the men home safely. So, he moved easily between daily management and the larger mission and what was needed to accomplish it.

Second, Shackleton was exemplary in assuming full responsibility for both the situation that he and his men found themselves in. and for continually trying with every adaptable tool he could find to improve that situation. So, he owned that, his men knew he owned that and that was partly why they trusted him and believed in him as he tried to instill their sense of will to do what they knew they must.

Third Shackleton had the discipline—and this is very important for leaders today – to continuously and relentlessly face forward. He made mistakes like all of us, but Shackleton never got stuck in endlessly replaying the tape of past errors. Instead, he learned quickly from what hadn’t worked, and then force himself and his men to look to the future. So that relentless forward-facing posture was really important as a leadership lesson.

And forth, and maybe just the most important, is that he was absolutely visionary in the humanity in which he exercised his leadership. He knew the power of orders and line, and chains of command. But he really mostly led and managed through the spirit of caring for each of his individual men. He understood that literally, the feeding and watering of them and the emotional support and respect for each of those men and his men as a group was absolutely at the core of everything he did as a leader. And so, his men knew that he had that. That he was caring for them and they mattered to him and that was also critical for their being able to find the will to basically, make the impossible possible here.

This story, which is so very very interesting, so compelling in our time, is really just one facet of a very rich history that contains all kinds of great ideas for here and now. And each of us trying to lead ourselves, and our teams, and our people in an ever-changing world.