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Running head: SHACKLETON: THE LEADER

Shackleton: The Leader
Chris Pilkington
Chapman University
Foundations of Organizational Leadership
OLCU 600
Dr. James Liberty
Dec 16, 2006

Shackleton: The Leader For some, Ernest Shackleton’s pursuit of being the first to cross the Antarctic on foot was a complete failure, as he never made it to Antarctica. However, for those who study leadership his failure was nothing short of extraordinary. Trapped for almost two years on the ice floes of the Antarctic without proper rations, the group watched their ship crushed by those same floes, and without the modern day artic expeditionary gear, Shackleton kept the hope of reaching land alive in all of his men. What were the leadership skills, traits, abilities, or style that allowed Shackleton to hold this group of 27 men together for just under two years? Arguably, Shackleton was a transformational leader using many of the other types of leadership, such as the skills approach, the trait theory, and the path-goal theory as written by Northouse. Although I consider Shackleton a transformational leader, arguments based around a skills approach type of leadership for Shackleton are possible. According to Northouse a skills type of approach to leadership “imply what leaders can accomplish whereas traits imply who leaders are” (Northouse, 2004, 36). Northouse goes on to give the three-management skills necessary at different levels of an organization as technical, human, and conceptual. Shackleton proved he had the technical skills by being on two separate Antarctic expeditions. Even though both of the expeditions failed in one sense, upon his return from the first expedition “Shackleton arrived home as a hero who had gone farther south than anyone before” (Alexander, 1998, 6). Shackleton did not make it to the South Pole on his second

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