In 1914, a great leader began a great expedition, unbeknownst to him that instead of being known as great explorers, they would be known as some of the greatest survivors. This man was Sir Ernest Shackelton and he was determined to be the first to cross the Antarctic. Little did he know, his biggest challenge would end up being his ability to lead his team to survival. He also had no idea that their tale of strength, determination, and courage to survive would influence people well into the 21st century, and the book detailing their stories would be used as a model of leadership. As our group read this book, it was evident that Shackleton was a truly motivated and successful leader as we have come to understand one to be. His ability to successfully lead a team played a significant role in their survival.
In 1915, while amidst their expedition, the ship, Endurance, become lodged in a pack of ice. They tried to wait it out, through a winter of darkness, and even though the Endurance was drifting northward, the ice was too much for the Endurance to withstand. The ice broke the Endurance in half, forcing the dogs and crew off the ship. They would end up spending months trying to find land.
The Endurance party looked death in the face several times yet beating the odds, they survived. While some of their success can be contributed to luck and experience, Shakleton’s leadership is credited with being the factor that saved their lives. Below are the leadership traits that Shackleton exhibited throughout their journey.
Strong Decision Maker
We see initial leadership within Shackleton in his ability to make decisions. With a voyage like this, the decisions made would determine the likelihood of success. From the purchase ...
... middle of paper ...
...nly able to think about themselves not about what is best for the team. Shackleton was able to disregard selfish thoughts and with a little luck, good leadership, and strategic thinking his team was led to rescue.
Works Cited
Avolio, B. J. (2007, Jan 1). Promoting more Integrative Strategies for Leadership Theory Building. American Psychologist, pp. 25-33.
Crosby, B. B. (2005). Leadership for the Common Good. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kellerman, B. (2004). Bad Leadership: What it is, How it Happens, Why it Matters. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Press.
Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (2001). Leadership: Do traits Matter? Academy of Management Executive,5,, 48-60.
Lansing, A. (1999). Endurance: shakelton's incredible voyage. New York: Basic Books.
Lipman-Blumen, J. (2005). The Allure of Toxic Leaders. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
In the story, A Long Walk to Waters, written by Linda Sue Park, the readers are introduced to many different individuals that were able to survive challenging environments. Those individuals used those factors, perseverance, cooperation, and independence. Those factors have allowed individuals to make it past through the harsh environments throughout their journey. Perseverance shows how those individuals kept on going without giving up. Meanwhile, cooperation represents how struggling individuals are able to work together in order to achieve their goal. Last but not least independence shows how individuals can conquer a hurdle by him or herself.
What is a key attribute of a strong leader? Would he be strong, bold, courageous, fearless? Magellan, a portuguese captain during the fifteen hundreds crossed the world through the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Ferdinand Magellan did not deserve defense. He would treat his crewmen unfairly, put himself first, and was distracted from his goal. (Document A, B, C, D, E)
One important skill that a leader should have is risk, which Hazel and Lewis both experienced. Hazel and Lewis each took their followers into lands that were unfamiliar to them. Neither of them knew what they were going to encounter, but had they not taken a chance, they never would have found what they were looking for. Hazel had to jeopardize his life for the future of his rabbits when he tried to free the rabbits of Nuthanger Farm, when he lured the dog away from the farm so that it would attack General Woundwort, and many other times. Lewis gambled his life and the lives of his crew for the United States when he explored western North America. The explorers experienced not only bad weather but also attacks from Indians. Although taking these risks was very dangerous, had they not be taken western North America may have never been discovered, and all of the rabbits on Watership Down would have died at Sandleford.
...e leadership characteristic that popped out at me was how Cap. John Goodwin was his resilience to overcome all the horrific parts of this deployment and still stayed with it and worked his hardest with no breaks until he was forced to go on that leave to rest and then as soon as he heard something bad had happened, he stopped everything he was doing and got back to his men as quickly as he could it showed how much he cared, he also listened to his men and what they needed and tried helping them all the time. One thing he did not do a good job of was letting Kunk get to him and knock his confidence down and taking care of his own health so he could be awake and alert as company commander each and every day. His soldiers mentioned how weak, and tired and malnourished he looked from being next to the radio 24/7 which should never happen when you are calling the shots.
...ew to the path of being trapped by the ice, he excelled at his decision making. He didn’t believe that one should look back at past mistakes and waste time on regrets, indeed, “Shackleton never wasted time or energy lamenting things that had passed or that he couldn’t change (Morell, pp. 145).” As Shackleton himself said, “A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground (Morell, pp. 145).” This ability to shift quickly and react to new circumstances served him and his crew members well and allowed all of them to save themselves from their icy trap. As Dennis Perkins says in his book, Leading at the Edge, in reference to the last leg of Shackleton’s expedition, “Their heroic journey across South Georgia Island had saved their shipmates. It remains a tribute to unremitting effort—and to the tenacious creativity at The Edge (pp. 148).”
It’s easy to be the one in charge; to be a leader, is the hardest skill to master. Shackleton’s actions of selflessness, obsessiveness and planning ability, demonstrates he was in a rare class of ‘leaders’. The ideals of leadership was one area which Shackleton had mastered; accomplishing one’s ambitions was an area in which Shackleton was never able to master. Although completing ambitions can be an exciting story, sometimes failures are a far superior story. “We knew you’d come back”–quoted an unidentified sailor–was the highest compliment ever paid to Sir Ernest Shackleton–an exemplary leader.
After the first two expeditions failed due to unknown circumstances, in “April 2000: The Third Expedition,” a new crew o...
The saga of the Endurance has relevant lessons for today?s leaders concerning the vital nature of team unity and interdependence, risk taking, optimism, and selfless leadership. Shackleton, known as ?The Boss? to his men, was at all times responsible for fostering and developing these dynamics, and thus provides an example of the remarkable achievements that are possible in even the direst of situations. The expedition failed in its attempt to be the first to transverse the Antarctic, yet the ultimate success is judged by the safe return of all the crewmembers.
Nasht’s depiction of Frank Hurley’s journey into Antarctica raises the importance of discovering new ideas and values which shape his journey as an “odyssey”, a classical allusion to Homer’s epic poem, His journey of discovery challenges many assumptions and questions Hurley’s society had sought represented by epic film music and indirect interviews to portray the feeling of excitement and adventure, portraying an assumption that discovery can lead to new experiences and new worlds. Nasht’s juxtaposition of Hurley’s dramatic archival footage to the modern recreation of the journey evokes a sense of excitement and a change in beliefs, where previously people didn’t know what adventure felt like. Images of large and grand icebergs signify a new sense of discovery in an uncharted world which becomes important to those on the ship, Endurance knowing that they are risking their lives to experience the nature of the world that no one has even sought and being the first to answer the challengers of discovering and exploring new worlds and experiences. The clever synthesis from shifts of Elephant Island to Hurley’s daughters provokes a sense of discovering something personal, as “the places he explored left a mark on him and his photography”, where Hurley’s daughters rediscover their father’s experiences. The daughters are overwhelmed by the desolation of the ice and space, which becomes significant for them, as they relive the memories and the experience of their father when he journeyed to
Mlls, D. Q. (2005). Leadership How to Lead, How to Live. Boston: Harvad Business School Press.
Discoveries can embody experiences of uncovering the unknown for the first time, which can often broaden and question the knowledge that we already own, as well as challenge the values we possess. In Simon Nasht’s documentary “Frank Hurley: The Man Who Made History (2004),” Hurley captures images on expeditions such as the Douglas Mawson and the Ernest Shackleton which allowed him to illustrate the beauty of nature as well as to display the harsh reality he faced when trying to capture these images. On the other hand, Robert Frost’s poem, “Road Not Taken” (1920) is metaphorical for the decisions individuals are faced with
In 1913 Ernest Shackleton published in The Times newspaper an announcement in order to recruit fifty-five sailors for the Endurance expedition, which received five thousand nominations. The aim of the expedition was to reach the South Pole with two boats departing from Antarctica with two boats would travel the journey continent. El danger involved, and the ship that ran aground Shackleton was traveling between two ice for two months and ended up crack, leaving twenty crew to their fate in the inhospitable Elephant island, where nobody would save.
In Endurance Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, Alfred Lansing recounts the tale of one of the greatest successes of the Twentieth Century. Ironically, Lansing's detailed account of the 1915 Trans-Antarctic Expedition illuminates the stark reality that Sir Ernest Shackleton's expedition did not fulfill its goal. In fact, the expedition never even set foot upon the continent that they had intended to cross. The outstanding success of that motley crew of adventurers was in their ability to endure the harsh Antarctic climate. Despite having their ship crushed by an ice cap, spending the dark Antarctic winter hopelessly alone, suffering through a stormy voyage in an open dingy, and stumbling blindly across an uncharted island, Shackleton and his men persisted in their quest to survive. Truly, Shackleton set an outstanding example of never giving up.
What Shakespeare might call the fatal flaw of Fischer’s expedition seemed to be a collective lack of humility amongst his team, stemming of course from the top with Fischer himself, the “face” of the organization. Fischer was an ambitious man who was desperate to earn the respect of his peers, and came across as nothing short of overconfident when he was quoted in Krakauer's Into Thin Air as saying, "Experience is overrated. […] We've got the big E figured out, we've got it totally wired. […] (W)e've built a yellow brick road to the summit." (pp. 85-86) Even Fischer's experienced guide, Anatoli Boukreev, was not immune from pride, opting to make the climb without the use of supplemental oxygen, a decision that was not only completely unnecessary, but arguably ended up costing the lives of members of his team at the summit. Indeed, as Krakauer noted, there was a palpable lack of a team dynamic, a result of the Attraction-Selection-Attrition Theory; the team felt more like a bunch of individuals, all "in it for himself or herself." (Krakauer, p. 213) In a life or death situation, having a strong team dynamic is more important than ever. But Fischer was more interested in the parts, than the whole. As part of Fischer's ambition, he had made an effort to recruit high-profile clients, including a New York socialite who wrote for Allure magazine, and Krakauer himself, who could lend the expedition some heavy publicity, but brought very little by way of experience when it came to summiting a mountain as extreme as Everest.
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.