One of the case study on leadership is on Polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

It’s an interesting story, of how a journey to explore and walk across the continent of antartica, became a journey to survive. He needed to manage his team’s energy to ensure that they survive the perilous journey.

You can read more about this Case Study here:

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/shackleton-an-entrepreneur-of-survival
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/business/leadership-lessons-from-the-shackleton-expedition.html

It’s a story full of leadership and management lessons. The 3 practices esstial to Shackleton’s success as a leader:

1. He continuously assess and reasses his approach to the changing mission. This allows him to reflect and see the best approach to achieve the mission’s objective.
   
2. He showed relentless commitment to his primary objective – the safe return of his tem – while being entirely flexible about how to achieve it. This allows him to find the best way on how to achieve the objective, rather than stick to one method only.
   
3. He maintained his team’s belief in the mission by managing both collective and individual energy. By having good team’s energy, they are able to work together to achieve the missions, and avoid giving up on the objectives.

Shackleton also practiced “keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer”. He identified the team members who may be threat to keeping up the team’s energy to stay in the same tent as him, so that he can manage them closely. This shows that you have to manage the enemies of change so that they do not take the mission off course.

A lot of leadership and management lessons can be learned through this Case Study.