In Forged in Crisis, Nancy Koehn focuses on five quite different leaders who exemplify the power of courage in turbulent times: Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson.

These are among her comments about Shackleton:

Although heroic in many ways, “With the advantage of historical hindsight, however, we also know that, at times, he doubted he could actually achieve his mission. This is where Shackleton’s story becomes even more interesting, because the explorer never let his men know their leader was afraid. A century after the Endurance expedition, we can take impirtant insights from Shackleton’s consistent emotional control, and how impirtant this was to saving his men.” He saved all of them.

“One aspect of [his leadership and management] was the responsibility that Shackleton assumed fort his crew once the ship was locked in the ice…He was prepared  from the onset of the crisis to take full responsibility for the outcome of the enterprise.

“A second aspect of Shackleton’s authority was his consistent ability to move forward…It takes reserves of emotional, awareness and discipline for leaders to balance attention on the path ahead with knowledge gleaned from the past. Shackleton cultivated both as he struggled to bring his men to safety.

“Another important attribute of his leadership was the way he managed his crew’s energy…During the fifteen months after the sh imp became locked in pack ice, Shackleton kept a sharp eye on his men, working to discern the present well-being of each and then responding as needed.”

“The final aspect of Shackleton’s leadership that demands our attention today is the humanity with which he exercised his authority…Perhaps the most powerful view of this leader’s unmistakable humanity is that in the face of mistakes he made in rushing south in 1914, of ongoing financial problems,  and of the narcissistic quest for fame that drove him to Anartica the first three times — in the face of these and other faults — he proved capable, indeed he made himself capable, of doing an extraordinary thing.”

From Chapter Nine, Pages 73-78

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Nancy Koehn is an author and a business historian at Harvard Business School in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is the James E. Robison Professor of Business Administration, and was a Visiting Scholar during 2011–2013. She is also a member of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in the Economics Department. Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times was published by Scribner (2017).

I also highly recommend Caroline Alexander’s The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition published by Knopf (1998), and Alfred Lansing’s Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage, published by Basic Books (2015).