In 1914, 28 men embarked on a dangerous expedition to the South Pole. Led by experienced Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, the men faced more peril that they could have ever imagined. In the middle of Antarctica their ship sunk. No one on the planet knew their situation. Shackleton was determined to get all the men home alive. Defying all odds, he succeeded. His unconventional leadership approach saved the men and even 100 years later there is much we can learn from Shackleton. This episode shares Shackleton’s story and the leadership principles relevant to leading any team.
What You’ll Learn
- Hear the story of Shackleton’s incredible journey to the South Pole
- Learn Shackleton’s leadership principles and why they are relevant today
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Photo: Crew members cutting a path through the ice trying to make way for the ship
Photo: Launching the James Caird, the small lifeboat Shackleton and 5 men sailed to South Georgia Island, 800 miles across the Weddell Sea.
Resources
- Book: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing
- Book: Leading at the Edge by Dennis Perkins
- Book: Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from a Great Explorer by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell
- Blog Post: Five Elements of Shackleton’s Leadership
The Weekly Challenge
Transcript
Feel like reading instead of listening? Download the free transcript or read it below. Enjoy!
Transcript for Episode #067: The Leadership of Shackleton
Amy Climer: Welcome to The Deliberate Creative Podcast Episode 67. Today’s episode is about an amazing hero; a man who was a polar explorer over 100 years ago. His name is Sir Ernest Shackleton. I want to share with you his story because his leadership philosophies and the decisions he made are very relevant to leaders today. I am going to share with you the story of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which happened from 1914 to 1916. Shackleton showed incredible leadership and his leadership was really quite different for the time.
Let me put some things in context to start; from the late 1800s until World War I started in 1914, that time period is considered the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration. During that time, countries all over the world were sending teams to the Arctic and the Antarctic to explore, what are these regions like? We knew very little about them at the time. It was not until 1911 when the first person reached the South Pole.
Sir Ernest Shackleton, as a young man, he was very interested in becoming a sailor and working at sea, much to his father’s disappointment. This was not his family’s profession. I am not sure how he got this bug in his hair that he wanted to go be a sailor, but his father decided, Ernest Shackleton was a young boy, a teenager, that he would let him go for the summer and said, “Fine, okay, you can go work on a ship.” His dad was thinking that this would just get out of his head and he would see how much hard work it was, but what happened was Shackleton fell in love with it and it just increased his excitement.
But also during that time, he started to really pay attention to leadership and what leaders were doing and how their leadership impacted the people they were leading. His initial experiences were actually quite negative. He was working under leaders who were punitive and hierarchical and rude and disrespectful to the crew that they were supervising. And what Shackleton saw both in himself and his peers is that people would do what the leader asked, but that was it. They would not do any more. There was sense of loyalty. This idea of going above and beyond, oh no, they were not going to do it for this leader because the guy was a jerk.
He saw this happen in multiple situations with different leaders and he also saw some leaders who were more respectful to their crew and he saw the difference that that made in the crew and that made him very curious. As he got older, he obviously was put into leadership positions himself and he started to experiment. He started to play around with leadership in the sense of okay, let me see what happens if I do treat the people I am working with with respect. How do they respond? Those early experiences were very impactful in his later decisions and how he led the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
In 1909, Shackleton went down to Antarctica with a team with the intent to be the first person to reach the South Pole. He failed. He got 97 miles from the South Pole and he had to turn around due to exhaustion and risk of starvation of him and his crew. They turned back, they headed back home. When they got back home to England, he was knighted and he was now Sir Ernest Shackleton. I think that shows kind of what the idea of a hero was at the time. That here he was, he set out to make this goal and he did not even make it, yet he comes back and he is still knighted. I think to me that really shows the essence of this excitement that was happening in Europe and really all around the world around polar exploration. Then in 1911, another explorer ended up being the first to reach the South Pole.
Shackleton realized if he was going to head back to Antarctica, he had to have a bigger, bolder goal. So he proposed the idea of being the first to cross the entire continent. At that point, all the expeditions had gone to the South Pole and back or attempted to go to the South Pole and then return on the same route. He was proposing to cross the entire continent and come out on the other side. What he had to do to make this expedition a reality is very similar to what a leader would have to do today if they were starting a startup company. He had to raise money, he had to find men who would go on that journey with him, he had to hire the men, he had to pay them, he had to get excitement, he had to get sponsors, he had to get investors and he had to get permission and the blessing of his government, of England.
So he did. He did all of that and finally in August of 1914, he is ready to go. He has a ship, the ship is called Endurance and it was named after Shackleton’s family motto: By Endurance We Concur, which you will soon see is a very fitting motto because Shackleton exhibited incredible endurance throughout the whole thing. He and 26 men are all ready to go and he sends the 26 men on the Endurance down to Buenos Aires, Argentina where they are going to get some more supplies, get some sled dogs and then they will head on down to Antarctica. But Shackleton is not on the ship with them. He decides to hang back in England a little longer so he can get some more work done in preparation for the expedition. He then gets on a faster ship and meets them in Argentina.
That part of the journey did go as planned, at least as far as timing went, but one of the things that I do not think Shackleton anticipated is that when he met the men in Argentina, they were basically a hot mess. He was not on the ship with them to really help them get to know each other and work together. They have never worked together. A few of them maybe, but not all 26 of them. The captain of the ship was an excellent captain and loved working with Shackleton, but he did not love being the one in charge. He kind of shied away from that and consequently did not help create a tight team during the couple of months that they were at sea. Shackleton, as soon as he got to Argentina and realized what was going on, he set about to change that and he worked to get the men more disciplined, more structured, helping them get to know each other and learn to work together.
One night in Argentina, the cook goes out, he gets really drunk, he comes back as completely disorderly and obnoxious and Shackleton realizes, “I can’t take this guy to Antarctica. This is not a good fit.” So he fires him and he hired a new chef by the name of Green, which ended up being an excellent decision, yet he is also feeling a sense of responsibility because he just brought this man from England to Argentina and now he is just letting him go. So he found him a new job on another ship that was sailing back to England. I think some of these decisions like that that Shackleton makes shows this sense of integrity and this sense of responsibility towards his men. I have seen over and over in reading his story and the decision he makes that that responsibility towards the men is a big part of his philosophy.
So Shackleton and his 26 men are ready to go. They have been in Argentina a while, they have everything they need, so far all is going well. Their next stop is an Island between Argentina and Antarctica called South Georgia Island. There is a whaling station there and they are going to stop there to get some more information and maybe get some re-supplies and then keep on going. They land at South Georgia Island on November 5, 1914 and they get some very bad news. The most dangerous sea in the world is called the Weddell Sea. It is the sea between South Georgia Island and Antarctica and Shackleton needs to go at least 800 miles across the sea. The problem is that this particular year, the sea was full of ice and the whalers had never seen it this way. Never in recorded history had the sea been this full of ice at this time of year.
Keep in mind, especially if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, that November is spring in the Southern Hemisphere. So here it is spring going into summer and the sea is full of ice. So Shackleton decides he is just going to see what happens. He is going to wait it out for a little bit and see if the ice will clear as summer moves along. So they spend one month at the whaling station and on December 5, 1914, he decides we are going forward. If Shackleton made any mistake during this whole thing, that was it.
So they set out, although at this point it is no longer just 26 men. After they left Argentina and before they got to South Georgia Island, Shackleton found out that they had a stowaway. A couple of the men were involved in getting one of their friends on the ship and Shackleton was furious. As you can imagine, he has spent countless hours, years planning this down to the smallest detail and now he has an extra mouth to feed. Shackleton tells the men that if anything happens and we run out of food, you are going to be the first one we eat. It turns out that that did not happen and it ends up that the man was a great asset and pretty soon was fully integrated into the team and people had pretty much forgotten that he had originally been a stowaway. So that was a good thing.
They leave December 5, 1914. They head on down to Antarctica and despite the ice, things are actually going fairly well. They actually see land. They get one day sail from land and their plan is basically to reach land and then a smaller crew will head on out towards the South Pole and across the other side of the Antarctica where another crew will be meeting them with more supplies and another ship will be over there. Well, one day sail from land their ship gets stuck in ice. The men start trying to like physically cut through the ice and make a path for the ship. They are using these ice axes and spending hours, 12 to 18 hours a day trying to cut through the ice. Eventually, Shackleton realizes this is completely fruitless. This is not going to happen. And so he orders all the men to stop and there are some excellent photos of this that I will put in the shownotes for you to look at. You can get the shownotes at www.climerconsulting.com/067 . If you just go there, you could see some photos and I will also put some links to some other references if you want to learn more of this story because I am giving you the pretty bare details.
Anyway, things are not going well, the ship gets stuck in ice and one of the men later describes it in his journal as “The ship is frozen like an almond in the middle of a chocolate bar” which I think is an excellent visual. I love that image. So it is now about late January 1915 and the ship is stuck in ice and all they can see in all directions is ice. So Shackleton realizes there is not much else they can do except just hang out and wait and that is what they did for months. So they hang out in the ship and they were actually relatively comfortable. Despite the fact that they are in the middle of Antarctica and temperatures are getting down to below 30 degrees Fahrenheit, they are reasonably comfortable. They are living on the ship, they have enough fuel, they have enough food. Of course, this was an unexpected setback so they do not have rations for this much food, but they start hunting seals and penguins and they are able to supplement pretty well.
One of Shackleton’s biggest concerns was demoralization. He had seen in other expeditions both ones that he had been a part of and had heard about from other explorers, he had seen a psychological impact that the intensity of the experience and the intensity of the environment could have on crew members. There was one expedition where one of the men committed suicide, there was another expedition where two of the crew members completely rebelled and ended up murdering the leader. Shackleton was really worried about wanting to create this positive experience because he knew that was going to lead to good things and if people got depressed and frustrated and fell hopeless, that the whole thing was going to fall apart.
There were a number of different roles on the ship. There were crew members who had kind of some basic jobs of just keeping operations going on the ship, there were scientists there, there was an astronomer, there was a physicist. There was a photographer who took some amazing photos which I will put in the shownotes for you to see. So what he did is he started rotating all these jobs so that as the physicist was collecting data, he would have crew members go and assist the physicist. And then other times the physicist was in the kitchen working with the chef and at times the chef was working with the sled dogs and the photographer was helping on duties around the ship. He really tried to kind of remove this sense of hierarchy that was so prevalent, and probably still is today, that can be so prevalent on ships and in situations like that. He wanted the men to feel that regardless of their role, they all had an equal responsibility and equally important duties to do. He also wanted to cross-train them if needed. Why not have somebody help the physicist? Why put all the weight on them to do that job? So that was one of the things he did.
The other thing he did is he really set up celebrations; birthdays and holidays, all sorts of things. They had these celebrations and in the evenings they would do skits and read out loud to each other and sing songs together. When I was reading about this I thought, “Huh, this is a lot like summer camp.” In fact, one day, one of the crew members wrote in his journal after one of the celebrations that they had that it was the happiest day of my life. Wow! He is stuck in the middle of the Antarctic, surrounded by ice, they have not seen land, they have not even seen a rock or a piece of grass in months and he says it is the happiest day of my life. That is amazing.
Things are going bad, but they get worse. October 1915, spring is coming and they are thinking that what is going to happen is the ice is going to start melting and the ship will be freed and they can mosey on their way. But instead what happens is they are surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of miles of ice and the ice starts to move and it actually ends up pushing the ship over onto its side and eventually it starts to crash the ship. So on October 27, 1915, they had to evacuate the ship and they got as many supplies off the ship as they could, including three lifeboats. Those three lifeboats ended up being very critical.
So they moved off the ship, and this took a few days, and finally on November 21, 1915, the ice was moving the ship so much that the ship actually sunk. It literally disappeared into the ocean. They are now stuck in the middle of the Antarctic. It has been eleven months since anyone has seen them. No one on the planet knows what is happening. Shackleton realizes if they are going to get out of the situation, it is completely up to him. That he must keep up their morale, he must figure out how he is going to get them all back safely, and he must keep them all alive.
Shackleton tried numerous approaches to get them back. About 300 miles away, they knew that there was some supplies cache from a previous expedition, 300 miles over the ice and land. Let me just explain; this ice is not like a frozen pond. It is not like this really smooth beautiful piece of water that you can just easily walk across, no. It is like convoluted and messed up and there is fear of it cracking on them falling through, it is not smooth. Their first attempt is they load up all the lifeboats and they decide to try to pull the lifeboats with the sled dogs and with the humans and try to get to this cache of supplies. Well, in one day, they made it less than one mile. They managed to keep going for seven days and then Shackleton said, “No, this is ridiculous. We can’t do this.” It is now December 1915.
Then they decide maybe we just need to hang out. They figured that because of the ocean currents and the wind that if they sat on this piece of ice, they would start move north back towards the tower of Antarctica which is where they wanted to get to. They want to get to the sea so then they could, potentially, row back to land. They end up staying on this ice until April 9, 1916. Eventually, they realize they are not going in the direction they need to go so 15 months after they first lodge in the ice, they set out in lifeboats and this ended up being a grueling journey. One of the crew members described it like this in his journal, “Our first day in the water was one of the coldest and most dangerous of the expedition. The ice was running riot. It was a hard race to keep our boats in the open leads. We had many narrow escapes from being crushed when the large masses of the packed ice would come together.”
So they have these three boats and all their gear and they are trying to make it north to get to a piece of land. They are trying to get to Elephant Island, or so they think. While they were in these little boats, they were in there for 16 days, I believe, and they kept changing their destination because the winds kept changing and currents kept changing. They would be moving in one direction, they would be making some headway, and then they would get pushed back to a different direction. And so in the course of these two weeks, they ended up changing their destination four times. Shackleton made those decisions.
That was one of the things that I felt like Shackleton did well, as new information presented itself, they continually changed the direction they were going. In this case, I am talking about the physical direction, but I also just mean he changed his mind based on new information. One of the errors that I have seen leaders make is that they will set their sights on something and no matter what happens they keep going, even though they have enough information to realize it is not going to happen. We need to change our plans. For instance, Shackleton if the ship had sunk and he said, “Oh no, we are still continuing on to cross the Antarctic,” no that was not even a conversation. It is like now the purpose of this expedition is to get all these men home alive. Forget trying to cross the Antarctica. That is not even a question anymore.
They finally land on Elephant Island. I think of it like, “Oh, Elephant Island, it must have been like this beautiful amazing place.” Well, it was pretty if you look at some of the pictures, but it was also grueling. It was not an amazing place to be. It was this rocky piece of land, there is no vegetation, but they finally get there on April 16, so I guess it was seven days that they were in the life boats. April 9 to April 16 they were in the lifeboats and they get there on April 16 and it is the first time they have seen land in 16 months. They have not seen a rock in 16 months and the men just like fall out of their boats on the land.
But they quickly realize they cannot stay on this exact piece of land. It is unprotected, there is not enough actual land to stand on because it is like there is a little bit of land, several feet, and then it just goes off into a big cliff. So they send one of the boats to just do a little exploration right around the island and they went to a different point, which they ended up naming Point Wild after one of the men whose last name was Wild. They were there for a few days and Shackleton realizes, okay this is just a stopping point. We have to do something else. The men are not all physically capable, at this point, of going on and it does not really make sense to take all three lifeboats.
So what Shackleton decides to do is he takes six of them, himself and five men, and the biggest lifeboat, which was called the James Caird, and they decide they are going to cross the Weddell Sea and go back to South Georgia Island. Remember, earlier I said the Weddell Sea was the most dangerous sea in the world. Waves of up to 100 feet, easily, hurricane strength winds, but Shackleton could not see any other way. It is not like anyone was looking for them. No one was going to happen upon Elephant Island.
So Shackleton and five other men end up crossing the Weddell Sea to get to South Georgia Island and it is an unreal journey. After two weeks of being at sea, the water was contaminated by salt and the reindeer hair from their sleeping bags had gotten into the water. They could not swallow, which meant they could not eat, but they finally made it. On May 10th, they landed on South Georgia Island. It was the first time they saw plants in 17 months. But it did not go exactly as planned. Even though they got to the South Georgia Island, they were on the wrong side of the island so the whaling station is on the complete other side. This is a big island. It is not like they can just walk across it. In fact, no one had ever walked across the island.
They were in pretty bad shape, so they spent a few days resting and regaining their strength and finally on May 19th, Shackleton and two of the men left for the other side of the island. Because the sea was so rough, they decided they were going to have to walk across it. There are mountains, it is not a nice prairie, so they end up going over these 10,000ft peaks and it was Shackleton, Crean and Hussey were the three men. They set themselves out so they would have one minute of rest every 15 minutes. They start going, they head up, they get to the first peak and they realize they are on the wrong peak so they have to go back down, they go over, they go up the next peak, they realize there is no way down that one.
They repeat that process again and on the fourth time, they get to the top of the peak and of course now they are completely exhausted and there is really not a good way down. And it is also getting dark, it is getting very cold and Shackleton is really worried about the other two men and he decides, “Well, I think we should sled down.” Shackleton tended to be a pretty conservative guy when it came to taking physical risks. So the other two men were like, “What? You want to do what?” It was 2,500ft down, but he figured there is no other choice. If we climb down, we are not going to make it. And we do not have the physical strength to make it down and then across the rest of the island. So they took the risk and they had a rope so they coiled up the rope and they all sat on the rope toboggan style and off they went and they sledded down the mountain. And you probably can guess that it went well. It worked. They landed at the bottom and they were just like in this fit of laughter because they could not believe that they survived that.
They had more to go, so they kept going. Things were getting pretty bad and Shackleton realized that if he fell asleep, that they would all just fall asleep and die. That they would just freeze to death and die. So there was a moment were the other two men fell asleep and after five minutes, Shackleton woke them up and told them they had been asleep for 30 minutes and that they needed to keep going. So they did keep going and eventually they made it to the whaling station. They walked into the whaling station and they found the leader who Shackleton knew and Shackleton went up to him and said, “Hi, I’m Shackleton.” The whaler could not even imagine it. Tears welled up in his eyes. He could not believe that Shackleton was in front of him. Everybody had assumed Shackleton was dead along with his crew.
So Shackleton and the two men they got showers, they got fed. The whalers went around the other side of the island and picked up the other three men. So now six of the men were home safe, but the other men were still at Elephant Island waiting for rescue and this is where Shackleton almost lost it. It took him four months to get rescue for those men. Because what was going on, it is now 1916, World War I is in full effect and England says, “Wow, glad you made it back, but we don’t have any ships to spare for you.” And so he starts appealing to some South American countries and they are not able to spare any ships either. He makes a couple of attempts to get down there with some ships and the ice is too thick and the ships have to turn around.
Finally in August, he is able to get on a Chilean ship called the Yelcho and he is able to take it down to Elephant Island and he rescues the men. The ship pulls up and then he gets onto a lifeboat and rows up to the island and the men see him, they see this ship coming and they had a flagpole that they had made and they hoist up a jacket on the flagpole and it got stuck half way up and Shackleton thought that that meant someone had died. And the first thing he said as he saw them, he said, “How many?” And the response was, “We’re all here.” And he said, “Great, get on the lifeboat.” The men wanted Shackleton to get off and come see their camp, but he would not. He said, “No, we have to go,” and he got all the men safely to home.
Later, Shackleton wrote in a letter to his wife Emily, “My darling, we have done it. Not a life lost and we have been through hell.” I almost feel emotional when I think of this story and what he went through and the fact that he was so successful in getting these men back, it is unreal. I highly recommend you read the book. The book that I read was Endurance by Alfred Lansing. It was written in 1959. A great book. I have read it twice now and it is just so compelling. There are a couple other books that I have listed in the shownotes that talk about the leadership and kind of break that down.
Five elements of Shackleton’s leadership and why they are relevant today
I want to just break down what I see as the five elements of Shackleton’s leadership that I think are relevant to the work today that is happening in 2017.
Develop a clear shared purpose [31:50]
Shackleton was very clear about the purpose of the expedition. In fact, let me read to you the ad that he put in the paper recruiting men for the expedition. It said, “Men Wanted: For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter, cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. Ernest Shackleton, 4 Burlington Street.” He puts this in a paper in London, guess how many applicants he got. He got 5,000 applicants. Can you imagine? That is amazing.
Shackleton was very clear about the purpose of the expedition. He really developed this sense of shared purpose amongst the crew. It was not like hey, we are doing this because I want to. I want you involved if you want to do it. As he was interviewing some of the applicants, because, good grief, 5,000, that is a ton to go through, but he divided them into three piles and he took the most promising pile and he started interviewing them. He had to do really short interviews because they were so many people. He was a bit unusual in his approach and so one of the questions he asked, at least for some of the people, was can you sing? And one of the men who got hired, his response was something like, “Well, I mean, if you want me to carry a tune, I’m not the right person, but if you want me to jump in with a group and have fun singing, you bet.” And he got hired. Which brings me to leadership point number two;
Model and inspire optimism [33:37]
Shackleton was very aware of what would happen if his crew became pessimistic, frustrated, depressed. He had seen it and he had seen it not just in Antarctica, but even just out on ships in Europe and he knew that inspiring them with optimism was critical. So first of all, he role-modeled it and he then set up situations that would help encourage optimism. These celebrations I was talking about earlier, that kind of thing. The way I look at it is why would you follow a leader who is not optimistic? Who is going to follow a leader who says, “Well, I don’t think this is going to work, but I think you should come with me.” It is like, “No, have fun. I am going to go do something else.” So that optimism is critical. Of course that does not mean being Pollyanna and unrealistic, but being optimistic is important.
Build unity and commitment within the team [34:44]
I talked about how Shackleton had the men cross-training in different areas of their responsibilities, how he created shared experiences together so that they could get to know each other. One of the things that he did is he set up soccer games out on the ice and they had built some poles. I do not know what they used as a ball, but they were playing soccer. In fact, there is a photo that I will put in the shownotes for you to see. So building that unity and commitment within a team is critical.
Create a plan, have an alternate plan and then be flexible [35:19]
Shackleton always had a plan in mind and he always had an alternate plan. This becomes more clear as you read some of the minute details of the voyage and you see the nuances of the decisions he is making. But an example is that week-long journey they made in the small lifeboats. They set out to go to a certain location and it became apparent they were not going to make it so they change and they were constantly changing based on what made sense in the situation at the time. All of this was in alignment with that big shared purpose. Initially, their shared purpose was to cross the Antarctic, but then they had to change it because of what happened, their ship sunk. And then their new plan was to get everyone home safely. So Shackleton was always being flexible in making new plans. Which leads me to number five;
Make the tough decisions [36:15]
Shackleton made numerous difficult decisions. Probably one of the earlier decisions that was difficult that he had to make was firing the chef. I do not know how difficult of a decision that was for him because he was so focused on his purpose and so it actually might have been a really easy decision because he knew this guy is not going to work. We need somebody else. So in Argentina when he fired the chef and he hired Green, excellent decision.
Tougher than that, another decision he had to make was after the ship sunk and after they decided they were not going to be able to walk to the re-supply station, there was a point where Shackleton realized we cannot have these 67 sled dogs anymore. We cannot feed them. And so he actually ordered all the sled dogs to be shot. That was really hard, a really hard decision for him as well as many of the men, especially the men that were carrying for them and had become close to them. But all the men knew it was the right decision.
Making the tough decisions is something that I see leaders hesitate with, and understandably so, it is a big deal. But what I have seen sometimes is leaders not willing to actually make the decision. They know they have to make it and are trying to get more information and part of being a leader is making decisions without all the information. That is what leadership is about, I think, when you can make that tough decision and realize that I might need to change it later, but for right now, we have to move forward. We have to have a direction to go. Sometimes you cannot take it back. Sometimes you cannot change your mind. It just depends on the contexts and what is going on. Sometimes you can, it might require being a bit humble and telling everybody, “Hey, I messed up. We need to change this.” But I think if you are very clear of why you made the decision and why you need to change it, people will generally support you and go along with you, as long as it is in alignment with that clear shared purpose. So you can see how these five elements of leadership all connect.
Let me review the five really quick;
- Develop a shared clear purpose.
- Model and inspire optimism.
- Build unity and commitment within the team.
- Create a plan, have an alternate plan and be flexible.
- Make the tough decisions.
I hope this story of Shackleton gives you some ideas for your own leadership and gives you another role model to look at, someone to learn more about and to inspire you to be an amazing leader. I highly recommend reading the book Endurance by Alfred Lansing as well as two other books that I will put in the shownotes that are both excellent. They talk a bit more about his leadership and they break that down for you. But those are both in the shownotes for you. You can access the shownotes, again, at www.climerconsulting.com/067.
If you are new to this podcast, welcome. Thank you for listening. We are so glad you are here. If you like this podcast, please share it with your friends and colleagues, share with your team members, have a conversation about leadership. Oh and that reminds me, I have a freebie for you. I have a summary of the five different leadership principles from Shackleton. You can go to the show notes, you can download that absolutely free, share with your team members, have a brown bag lunch, talk about it. Bring it up at the next meeting. Have a conversation about Shackleton’s leadership and what are some of the things that you can glean and pull away from that.
The Weekly Challenge [40:14]
One of the things I do in every podcast episode is I end it with a weekly challenge. Here is my challenge for you; think about those five elements of leadership and pick one to focus on this week. Just really pay attention to the work that you are doing and when there times when you could infuse that into your work. Let’s say that you choose to model and inspire optimism. Are there moments where you can be more optimistic and model and inspire that with your teammates, with the people you work with, with your supervisor, with your boss? Or develop a clear shared purpose. Let’s say that you are a member of a team and you are not quite 100 percent sure what the purpose of the team is. Can you start asking some questions? Can you facilitate a conversation where the team can dig into that a little bit more and get some clarity around that?
So pick one of those leadership elements and think about how you can infuse that more into your own leadership. I would love to hear how it goes so if you are willing to share, you can go to the shownotes and you can add a comment on there. I read every comment and if you write something, I will respond to you. I love hearing from you all.
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Summary of Shackleton's Leadership Principles
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