What I learnt about being resilient by living in a hostile environment
Words by Sue Stockdale
Sue Stockdale was the first UK woman to ski to Magnetic North Pole - in this article, exclusive to Everybody Roar! She reveals how you can follow her lead and be more adventurous and resilient.
The Arctic environment is very similar to the business environment. The constantly changing landscape requires leaders to take rapid decisions, often with imperfect information.
People must work with limited resources which mean adapting and being flexible. Being resilient is a vital skill in both environments and here are five questions I reflect on when I begin to feel helpless or overwhelmed to regain a sense of perspective.
Where is your focus?
As we skied to the North Pole there was nothing to focus on, so we had trust that we were heading in the right direction and remind ourselves of our overall ambition. For us it was easy – the North Pole.
In business, it’s about knowing the strategic priorities for the business/ dept/ or team and then ensuring that all your activities are focused on them. Often, we get demotivated by too many distractions, and time spent on irrelevant activities at work.
What are you carrying?
When you must drag a sledge for a month weighing around 60kg, you think carefully about what’s inside it. Every item is carefully selected to be adaptable – socks become gloves, empty food bags become rubbish sacks, even the pages of a book can have other uses!
In business some companies got used to having huge sledges full of extraneous items that are slowing them down. Those that survive have ditched the excess weight and have identified what’s vital to keeping them alive and sustainable long term.
What are your strengths?
While reviewing your sledge, it’s also vital to review your people resources.
On a more recent expedition skiing across the Greenland Ice Cap, I only met my three companions a few days prior to starting out the journey. It took us several more days to uncover one another’s strengths.
For example, one was great at navigation but hopeless at fixing equipment. As we got more and more exhausted it would have been easy to criticise one another’s weaknesses. Instead, we decided to focus on strengths and make sure we used the best person for the task regardless of their role in the team.
What a difference that made to morale - we learned to let go of the expectation that you had to be good at everything which made for a far better working environment.
What is the worst that can happen?
The weather changes very fast in the Arctic which can mean the ice cracking in front of you, or temperatures rapidly dropping.
Sometimes we had to decide quickly about whether to change route, stop or carry on, and almost always with limited information.
In business it’s the same, because speed to market or competitive advantage is gained by acting more quickly than others. Being able to act on imperfect information requires acceptance of risk and sometimes getting it wrong.
The question we always asked was “what is the worst that can happen?” – and if we could accept the consequence, we would take the action. High performing companies have learned to act with limited information because they ask the tough questions, accept that mistakes will happen, then act, learn from this and move on.
What is the real issue to be addressed?
As the stress and exhaustion of skiing up to twelve hours a day began to take hold, the behaviour of team members changed. On one particularly tough day, after six hours of skiing in minus 40 degrees, my team-mate suggested that we should stop because I was looking tired.
I was incensed because I felt okay, but he would not admit it was him that was exhausted, not me. Everyone else knew what the real issue was and so we decided to stop.
Later inside the tent when he felt relaxed, he admitted he had not been entirely honest and that he was feeling vulnerable because he could not keep up.
Talking about what’s really going on whether on expedition or in business makes a huge difference. Many of my corporate coaching clients come along with issues about influencing, delegation or managing change and when they feel comfortable, I ask them the question – what’s the real issue?
I watch their face change because they intuitively know it’s something more fundamental to be addressed. Once we explore it, the changes transform their performance. So, make sure you create the environment in which employees feel able to open up and talk about the real issues.
Sue Stockdale is an, executive coach, polar explorer and author of EXPLORE: A Life of Adventure.