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- Leadership lessons from an Arctic explorer
“By endurance we conquer” - Shackleton family motto
Ernest Shackleton, an explorer during the “Heroic age of Antarctic Exploration” is most famous for failure. Or perhaps, it’s more fair to say he’s most famous for saving the lives of his team after failing.
Any leader most remembered by history for the way they handled failure is worth further study.
Shackleton had 5 keys to being an explorer, each will make you a better leader.
Optimism
Patience
Endurance
Idealism
Courage
(In order of importance)
Optimism
It always struck me that Shackleton’s most important character trait for success was optimism. I agree as I’ve never met a pessimist who was able to effectively inspire their team to be successful.
As leaders, ours is not the optimism of closing our eyes and hoping things will get better. Rather, it is an active belief in our team that regardless of the cards we are dealt we have the capacity to succeed. Anything less will be seen as little more than complaining, and a leader who finds themselves complaining has already lost.
Often, optimism takes courage (more on that later). It’s easy to be a pessimist, look for any number of reasons why you will fail, why a task is too challenging, and obstacle insurmountable. As a leader, your job is to take the opposite tact and instill in those you lead an irrefutable belief in their own capabilities to rise to the present moment.
Leave pessimism to those small minded people who would rather criticize from the stands. Yours is a leadership that believes in the people you lead and elevates them to succeed regardless of the task at hand.
Patience
As we’ve discussed previously, consistency > intensity. Any leader worth their salt has the fortitude to commit to a course of action, make clear the standards for their team, and maintain the discipline to do the work particularly when they don’t feel like it.
As Einstein said, “compounding is the eight wonder of the world”. While almost a platitude at this point, I firmly believe every leader needs to understand and live the mantra that, “you overestimate what you can accomplish in a week, but underestimate what you can accomplish in a year.”
Being a great leader is about committing to serve those you lead over the long run. The best leaders I’ve ever learned from are patient as they work to embody an outward countenance of no high, highs and no low, lows. They lean into their patience to remain level headed when those around them are anything but. This is what it means to lead.
Consistent commitment to the standards needed to be successful and the patience to let those standards and strategies bare fruit over time.
Endurance
Shackleton embraced his family motto so much so that he named the ship for his most famous, failed expedition Endurance.
Endurance itself is a differentiator, particularly in an age where it has never been easier to be distracted. Great leaders remain committed to the craft of leadership day in and day out, particularly when they don’t feel like it.
It is this consistency, this compounding of thoughtful experience that allows leaders to become the best version of themselves and ultimately turn those they lead into their best selves.
There will be hard days, you will fail, it never always gets worse. Keep going.
Idealism
In a similar vain to optimism, idealism initially struck me as out of place when I first reviewed this list. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the genius of Shackleton’s point here.
Fundamentally, being a leader is about inspiring those around you to realize the best of themselves as you build a culture where your team is empowered and motivated to perform their best. The best way to do this is to have the idealism which inspires both them and you to consistently push to be better, strive for more.
If you don’t believe you can as a leader, your team certainly won’t. As one of my favorite authors Steven Pressfield said, “things always seem absurd at the beginning.” As a leader, it is your job to get your team to believe, even when at times it feels absurd to do so.
Courage
Courage comes in many forms, not just physical. All great leaders have the courage to own their mistakes and the mistakes of their team.
More than this, it is the courage to be convicted and have an opinion. The more senior you get, the less helpful it is to sit on the sidelines and wait for others to commit. This is the antithesis of what it means to be a leader.
Have an opinion, if things aren’t going the way they should, others aren’t acting the way they should, say something.
When asked a question, don’t waiver. Give a direct answer, support that answer with facts and your experience. Drop the qualifiers and say what you believe. So often, I see new or otherwise strong leaders doubt themselves and dilute the efficacy of their leadership by couching their opinion in so many qualifiers that their point is lost.
If someone asks for your opinion don’t start your answer with, “I’m sure you’ve already thought of this, but”. When asked a question don’t undermine yourself before you give an answer.
Deliver a direct, balanced, honest opinion and then shut your mouth. Handle the objections that are raised one at a time, don’t proactively attempt to cover every possibility under the sun.
Believe in yourself, it is impossible for others to follow you if you don’t.
P.S. If you want to learn more about the full story of Shackleton’s most famous expedition give this book a read.