Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antartic Explorer

Author: Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell, Alexandra Shackleton
List Price: $15.00
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ISBN: 0142002364
Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) (September, 2002)
Sales Rank: 9,911
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 2 out of 5
Great leader, not so great leadership book
Ernest Shackleton accomplished arguably superhuman things. He was good at selecting, cajoling and inspiring men. How he brought his crew back alive from such a frozen, forbidding world, is one of the amazing miracles of the past two hundred years.
Yet a close, hard look suggests that the leadership lessons to be learned are limited for most readers. The authors try too hard to take each Shackleton episode or act as a lesson tobe learned and applied yet these lessons are not as clear as the authors might want to suggest nor are the lessons necessarily generalizeable to modern life or commerce. After reading the entire book, little remains to explain Shackleton's theory or practice of leadership, just a lot of anecdotes and incidents. Shackleton and his leadership remain inscrutable.
An amazing story, yes. An amazing leadership book, I think not.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Shackleton's Way
If you want an in depth analysis of Shackleton or any other leader, go take a course, read the volumes of books on the subject, invest the effort elsewhere. Don't expect to have an in-depth analysis effectively accomplished in 200 pages.

If you want a light, entertaining, interesting read of an incredible story, touching on various leadership points, then you will find this book worthwhile.

If you are looking for a bit of spark to investigate Shackleton a bit more, then you will find this book worthwhile.

Shackleton was a very capable leader of expeditions... not a Saint. If you are looking for a look into his personal life and any shortcomings in it, you won't find it in this book... but then again, I don't think it's called Shackleton's Family Way: A Critical Account of His Family Life.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Great Leader, Great Leadership Traits
By now, most are familiar with the trials and adventures of the Irish, Antarctic explorer's failed attempt at reaching the South Pole. But what authors Morrell and Capparell focus on is Shakelton's leadership traits and skills in crisis management. Strength, endurance, flexibility, caring, fairness, patience, self-sacrifice, loyalty, duty, determination -- all take on an indelible meaning in the context of the unimaginable obstacles Shakelton and his crew faced ...and survived!

Each chapter not only reads like a part of a reveting adventure story but is summarized with a list of leadership skills followed by a contemporary story of an individual who was inspired and demonstrated those meaningful traits of character.

"Shakelton's Way" should be required reading for anyone with the responsibility of a handful of individuals much less a corporation-full. One wonders how different the outcome might have been had Shakelton been at the helm of Enron, WorldCom or Arthur Andersen.

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