Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Leadership is all about character, determination, consideration, vision, and fidelity. Under horrible circumstances, leaders usually become much better or worse. Even the harsh Captain Bligh found himself fulfilling a hero's role as a leader after the mutiny. Sir Ernest Shackleton was a fine man who became even finer under pressure.

If you don't know the story, let me outline a few details. During World War I, Sir Ernest led a small expedition to Antarctica from England in an attempt to cross that continent through the South Pole. The pole itself had already been reached by Amundsen and Scott. En route to land, the expedition's ship, Endurance, became locked in the pack ice. The crew drifted with the ice for over 10 months before the ship was crushed by the ice. Pulling lifeboats over the ice, the men reached open sea more than five months later. They reached a small island, Elephant Island, where most of the men remained while Sir Ernest and a few men made an 800 mile three week sea voyage to their starting point, South Georgia Island. Arriving there, they faced a horrible trek over almost impassable terrain to get to the settlement. Sir Ernest immediately left to rescue the men left behind on Elephant Island. All those on board the Endurance survived.

Throughout this rescue, Sir Ernest proved himself to be resourceful, flexible, considerate, and indomitable.

Shackleton's Way recounts Sir Ernest's life, and summarizes key points about his leadership style. Each chapter ends with a commentary by someone who learned from Sir Ernest's experiences to be a better leader.

As a leadership book, Shackleton's Way has a number of weaknesses. First, leadership and management are not separated. The bulk of the points made in the book relate more to management than to leadership. I think the book would have worked better if it had narrowed down to leadership, rather than including management. Sir Ernest seemed to be a fairly ordinary manager, while being an outstanding leader. With the two messages combined, the lessons are diluted.

Second, Sir Ernest is treated with kid gloves in the book. That may no be warranted in all cases. For example, if he had abandoned the expedition before the Endurance became stuck in the pack ice, all of the suffering would have been avoided. Clearly, he may well have made some errors in judgment that led to the crisis.

Third, most people can tell you what they would like leaders to do. The same people find it very difficult to do those things, even under good conditions. Under horrible conditions (as occurred here), the average person becomes a below-average leader. What were the things that Shackleton did in his mind to maintain the self-discipline to be a good leader? The book provides little insight into that critical point.

Fourth, the key lessons are not elaborated on nearly enough. Flexibility is critical, for example, because leaders often misperceive the real situation, or find that their forecasts are wrong. An effective leader then must be looking for improved information, and be thinking about what actions could be taken should circumstances shift or be shown to be different than perceived. A whole book could be written about the significance of this point. Very little more attention is paid to this critical element than is to the idea of being optimistic, as a way to keep the mind and spirit resourceful.

Fifth, the end of chapter examples of others being inspired by Sir Ernest are often pretty trivial and disconnected. This was particularly true about the Jim Cramer, Eric Miller, and Mike Dale. If all of these sections had been left out, the book would have been stronger. Or alternatively, leadership experts could have spoken about examples that they thought supported Sir Ernest's principles.

As a result, Shackleton's Way ends up being too simple to be a good adventure saga or a good leadership book. To me, it seemed like a book that was aimed at young teenagers rather than at adults. If you want to read about Sir Ernest as an explorer, you will probably prefer Sir Ernest's own books. As to leadership books, there are many fine ones. You could read any of the best leadership books (such as Managing Change), and then draw your own lessons from what Sir Ernest wrote.

What qualities of leadership would you like to see in those who lead you? In this time of national trial in the United States, what lessons from Sir Ernest should be applied by political leaders?