The book I’m currently reading is titled appropriately…
Endurance.
This book is the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s incredible journey leading 27 men through one adversity after another, as they tried to cross the Antarctic continent over land from west to east. Their ship was named The Endurance and was left in the frozen water where they struggled mightily to drag their remaining 3 whaling boats, all their provisions and themselves toward open water and the chance for rescue. The big dream was a distant memory. All their energy was now focused on survival. Their individual and collective endurance is a story worth studying, learning, and applying to you and your teams. It just is.
Once they reached Elephant Island, a miracle unto itself, Sir Ernest would decide that 22 would be left behind to wait for rescue, while 5 would embark on an 800 mile trip across an unknown ocean to an Island that was 25 miles wide. This would be their only hope for survival. Slim to none. AND, slims out of town.
Here’s an amazing observation about human nature when it’s under survival stress like this one. This rant will focus on one of the “positives” that came from this adversity. Here it is. I see this every day lived out in the places where you work. Actually, I see what is normal and what everybody tells me doesn’t exist with “their team.” Funny, huh. Here it is. Do NOT miss this.
The greatest benefit to being stuck on an island, in the dead of winter with nothing to eat but meat and no way to ever get dry and warm was simply this, according to the men and the diaries they kept while they were there. The benefit was that their team had become a “classless society” where everybody was equal and free to “speak the truth” regardless of the persons former “station in life.” There was NO elephant in the room on Elephant island…
In other words, the benefit was simply this. The truth was being told to Frank Wild.
Frank was the man in charge. The head of the system. Shackleton had left him in charge. The team was sharing the truth in anger a ton, and tasting the truth in LOVE little by little. They experienced lots of conflict but it was so constant and out in the open that it never “built up.”
Remember, your team will not “naturally” tell you the truth. And, most leaders will erupt in ANGER when someone cares enough to try.
How do you create an environment where the truth in LOVE reigns?
Why don’t you mine for more conflict with your team?
Why do you assume that you are surrounded by truth tellers?
Why do you think that your ANGRY outbursts are forgotten by those you “tuned up?”
Why?
BUILT TO LEAD 