While completing these readings on the life and leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton, it was necessary to compare and contrast his leadership style and abilities to my own. Shackleton was very skilled at being personable and a kindred soul with all of his men. His unwavering love and support for them was clear by his actions during their ordeal. This eventually won him such praise and respect that, several years later when planning his next expedition, many of the men signed on with him again even though they had still not been paid from the Endurance voyage. This level of loyalty cannot be bought or forced, only earned. I believe that my primary job as a supervisor and leader is to take care of my people. Saying this and living it in the decisions I make within my organization is not always the popular thing to do. I have been criticized for putting the men before the mission, or for not thinking of the organization before the employees. While I agree there must be a balance, my methods have succeeded in many ways. My men are extremely loyal to me. They feel a sense of community within our group and will fight to defend each other from outside attack or ridicule. They also will come to my defense if a person from outside our group speaks negatively concerning my leadership style. My troops recognize my dedication to them. I see in them today that they are motivated not simply by personal factors, they are motivated because they want the group to succeed. This shift in mindset has taken time and effort, however I do believe it is worth the effort. My shortcoming is often that I am too rushed to jump to their defense at the expense of organizational needs. Like Shackleton, I put so much effort into my men that I suffer as a result. One area of improvement I discovered for myself is how Shackleton handled failure. When a decision proved incorrect or ineffective, he immediately set off on a new course of action. Shackleton planned for the worst and always had contingency plans ready and previously drilled into his men so that when the time came to take a new course of action, everyone already knew their role and what to do. Many leaders, myself included for a time, would see this perhaps as doubting one’s own decision. Now I realize that this method is necessary when taking risks to obtain those small victories. Not always will the plan succeed. Not always will the decisions of a leader prove correct. A leader is not measured on the success of their decisions; they are evaluated on how they react to their failures. Shackleton made many poor decisions during his ill-fated voyage. In the world of aviation accident investigations, the NTSB and FAA teach pilots about the Error Chain. This model explains the human causal factors in accidents and shows how continued poor decision making begin to build a series of links in a chain. The breaking of any such link in the chain, it is said, would have changed the outcome of the
