The Best Leadership Model for Uncertain Times Is 110 Years Old

In January 2013 I found myself on board Australis at King George Island, Antarctica, talking to Tim Jarvis AM and his expedition crew — including Barry (Baz) Gray of Her Majesty's Navy. Tim and his courageous, if slightly mad, team were preparing for the Shackleton Epic: a re-enactment of Shackleton's legendary 1915-16 rescue mission. I was there in a support role — and between whale watching, dodging icebergs and exploring the Antarctic wilderness, I spent time understanding the leadership qualities that had enabled Shackleton to succeed against odds that should have been insurmountable.

Here is what I found. And here is why it matters more right now than at any point since Shackleton pulled it off.

The man and the mission

In 1914, Shackleton sailed for Antarctica to attempt the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He never got there. Over two years, he led a crew of 27 through a harrowing ordeal — marooned on Elephant Island, eventually sailing 800 miles across the world's most hostile ocean in an open boat. Everyone survived. His crew called him "the greatest leader who ever came on God's earth, bar none."

Shackleton has been on every leadership reading list for thirty years. That doesn't make him any less relevant.

What Shackleton actually did

Margot Morrell's Shackleton's Way distilled his leadership into four practices. They formed the backbone of the programme I ran for our support crew on the Australis, and I have been applying versions of them in boardrooms and executive teams ever since.

He led by example, never by instruction. Shackleton never asked his men to do something he wasn't willing to do himself. He kept a light touch on the leadership reins until he genuinely needed to draw a firm line — and when he did, nobody questioned it, because they had seen him live the standard first.

He built culture deliberately, not accidentally. The culture he created was built on responsibility, hard work, fairness and optimism. He understood something most organisations still struggle with: high levels of team engagement and motivation are a product of a healthy culture, not the source of it. You cannot survey your way to engagement. You have to build the conditions that produce it.

He maintained realistic optimism. No matter how bleak the outlook, Shackleton created a positive working environment. He celebrated wins large and small, and played to people's strengths, mixing and matching his crew depending on what each moment required.

He connected with his people genuinely. He built real bonds of trust, getting to know each man personally. At critical moments, he got everyone together so they all heard the same message from the same person. Not a memo. The boss, in the room.

Three lessons from the people who re-lived it

Talking through the expedition with Tim and Baz ahead of their departure, they identified three lessons from Shackleton's approach that translated most directly into their own preparation.

The first was the primacy of role-based over rank-based leadership. Shackleton deferred to whoever knew the current terrain best — the navigator when navigating, the mountaineer when on the mountain. This is why he had selected his crew for complementary capabilities rather than uniform profiles.

The second was the value of deliberate capability building. Baz described a structured Teach/Coach/Mentor programme for Royal Marines instructors that produced teaching styles better matched to individual temperament, and recruits who could be supported through difficulty rather than failed outright. Pass rates improved measurably. The underlying principle — that leadership development is a craft that can be taught, not a talent that either exists or doesn't — has stayed with me.

The third was preparation for the foreseeable. The crew drilled their abandon-ship procedure in Antarctic survival suits until the response was instinctive. When conditions deteriorated, they did not have to think. They executed. The time to prepare for the crisis is before it arrives, when you still have the luxury of treating it as a drill.

Why this matters specifically right now

The organisation navigating AI adoption well looks remarkably like Shackleton's crew. Expertise matters more than rank. The person who knows the terrain best leads that section of the journey — and right now, that person is often not the most senior person in the room. Senior leaders set direction and culture, then get out of the way of the people who actually understand what the technology can and cannot do. It sounds obvious. In most of the organisations I work with, it remains genuinely radical.

Shackleton managed this instinctively, a century before anyone used the phrase situational leadership. The question is not whether his model still applies. The question is whether you are willing to apply it.

Frank Hurley, the expedition photographer, summed up what it felt like to follow him: "I always found him rising to his best and inspiring confidence when things were at their blackest."

Still the best single sentence I know about what real leadership looks like under pressure. True in the Southern Ocean in 1916. True in the boardroom in 2025.