Firstly let me apologise for the delay in sending this month's article. We’ve just returned from 89 Degrees -The North Pole Leadership Challenge. This project consisted of taking a group of executives on a walk/ski over the last degree from 89 to 90 degrees to the North Pole. In this we sought to bring together the spirit and passion of exploration and adventure with the discipline and practice of leadership. Over the next few months Leadership Matters will reflect on some of the powerful lessons learnt on this trip, and hearing from some guest contributors.

The Polar ice cap is literally a floating mass and confronts travellers with numerous obstacles. These include ice ridges, where the ice has come together having previously separated and forced broken ice up onto the surface. This creates what feels like mountainous ice fields of rubble over which you have to climb pulling your sledge. In addition there are open leads where the ice separates during the warmer season leaving gaps ranging from a few inches to miles of open sea that are not crossable. In addition to that were heavy winds, white outs, and obviously the cold.

Led by three excellent polar explorers (Alan Chambers MBE, Charlie Paton, and Ann Daniels) we landed on the ice in a Russian Antenov 2 jet (an experience all of its own!) and began to walk. The distance as the crow flies was around forty-five nautical miles. But as we were soon to discover, due to the unique challenges of the Arctic, we were to end up walking nearer to a hundred miles over the next eight days.

I think the first lesson that came to mind was summed up by one of the participants, Charles Dunstone, founder of the Carphone Warehouse, who quite early on in the trip said, ‘The living is actually harder than the walking.’ What he meant was that the challenge of pitching camp, melting many kilograms of ice, trying to cook dry food over gas cookers with freezing cold hands, using equipment that was constantly freezing, lilos deflating, and worst of all, some people snoring very loudly presented us with significant challenges. All the normative comforts of home were gone and we began to struggle together just to live day by day.

I had planned all this wonderful leadership content to reflect upon on the ice in groups in the evening but it became apparent after the first day that just surviving and getting through each day was going to be challenging enough.

This provided the first reflection for us as leaders. I think Charles spoke for many of us within leadership roles as so often we do find the ‘living harder than the leading.’ It is not the upfront leading, the strategy, the speaking, the fancy business class trips, PR stuff etc. that is hard – in fact these are some of the reasons why we do what we do. Rather, it is the living that we find hard. Creating sustainable lifestyles is a challenge; eating habits, drinking habits, exercise (or lack of exercise) habits can all be difficult. Managing interpersonal relationships, fulfilling family responsibilities, and creating any kind of fulfilling work/life balance are further challenges of life that many of us find harder than the actual leading. Certainly for many of us on the frozen wastes of the polar ice cap this was so.

So how did we get through it? Well, it wasn’t rocket science but some well-worn lessons for leaders.

• ‘It’s all about the admin’ This became a mantra for us and certainly made life work. Good planning and process were essential.
• We worked as a team. Who we really are as people shows very quickly on the ice and the less ‘team oriented’ struggled somewhat.
• However, through some candid feedback from peers and the owning of personal responsibility the teams pulled together very well and worked for each other, serving each other often in quite inspiring ways.
• Finally, we laughed a lot, and I mean a lot – Somebody suggested that you could make a great reality TV show out of our experience entitled ‘I’m an Idiot, Get me out of Here!’ This was essential as it forced us not to take the situation, or ourselves, too seriously and helped us when we were struggling with cold, tiredness or intense frustration.

As I mentioned, none of the above is particularly profound, however for those of us who have participated in this remarkable challenge they became essential survival tactics that helped create the success we were aiming for. We made it!

Phil Wall
CEO