How Shackleton's Endurance Inspired a Senior Business Development Manager's Leadership Journey

Wow. Um, So let, let me give you a personal answer then. Uh, I figured out you're gonna be asking me a lot of stuff regarding job and, and professionally, so we might as well talk a little like on, on myself. It, it's been tough, right, this pandemic thing, you know, being incarcerated at home, not, not being able to talk to your friends, go out, and things like that. And I've learned a lot, uh, about. Resistance about endurance. Uh, in fact, I read a book that, that when I first, uh, started thinking about it that, that's called Endurance by, uh, that expedition, uh, for the south of the Shackleton. I read it. It's amazing. It's an amazing book for leadership as well. Uh, I, I love Shackleton now. It's, it's, it's my my hero, and I learned a lot, you know. I learned that. We can always push ourselves when we, when you, you think you are in the limits, you can, you can always push a little bit further. It's, it's it, you, of course, you, you have a price to pay. You have to watch out for, for your mental illness as well as body uh uh illness, but it's amazing how much we, we are able to endure, uh, if you, if you put your mind at it, if you, if you, if you. You know, keep on and do, do not give up and, and, you know, it's another day, it's another, the sun is shining over there. I cannot go out, but uh I'm blessed to have this, this, this and that, and, and that keeps me forward and I was always amazed, uh, I'm amazed that I'm alive here and now and with energy to talk to you, you know, we, I think we should, uh, we should be, be, uh, thankful for, for all that.

To tell, I, I began, I, I read in, in big chunks of things. So I was reading a lot about the people that went up Mount Everest and died because it's, it's been an issue, right, the commercial type of, yeah, crack hours, uh, yeah, I read, uh, in, in, into thin air, yeah, so I, that's how I read, uh, I get interested in one thing and. And I keep buying books about that theme until I, ah, OK, I had enough, then I move for, for another, another kind of, uh, thing. So I started off with Krakowers and Mont Everett, and then I got more interested in, in tragedies, you know, in, in leadership like that, in people doing, uh, intelligent things and sometimes not so much intelligent things. And get and get cute uh and then from for that was a transition from the Everest books that I read uh I also read one, of the expedition to to recover Malone's and the other guy's bodies because they're sit they're, they're that they're, they're there, they're sitting there and they, they have the discovery to try to find. Their bodies and try to recoup them. But anyway, uh, I made this transition from Everest to South Pole because I was looking in about, uh, things on leadership. Things that went well because the guy was a good leader and things that did not go that well because, you know, a bunch of people trying to lead stuff in when they shouldn't. OK.

Motivation. Team motivation. Uh, it's, it's amazing how he does it, you know, he, he, he, every day he keeps his team's morale up. Uh, even though, you know, they had to kill the dog, they had, you know, to eat the dog, so they, it, it's, they, they get trapped and they don't know where they are. They, they're kind of wandering in this mess of, uh, ice, and even though he was living all these sorts of misfortunes, he never complained. He, he never lets it out. He never, uh, put his, um. Fierce, outspoken like that in order to not to, to affect to be seen. So I think in a corporate world, you know, cor corporate world is tough. Uh, and sometimes what makes you different from a bunch of analysts or I don't know, engineers that you have, uh, is the ability to, to see how much of depression that you're suffering, you're gonna pass on and how much you're going to absorb because, you know, if you pass it on, it can even damage even more the, the, the, the um Your team's uh ability to deliver. So this is one thing that, that amazed me, the way that he kept on with his team, incentivating his team, although, you know, I'm pretty sure he knew all the dangers, all the bad stuff that he was facing of everything. He, he never let that. Uh, be, uh, something that would, uh, harm the thing from, from going on, from, from keeping on for another day or, you know, another try, all the next steps, uh, into trying to search for, for rescue.