Chapter 5 starts with this impressive quote, "We are one-we live or die together." This quote clearly illustrates Shackleton's core concept of not willing to split the party. It is an undeniable fact that Shackleton and his crew ended their expedition with success because of their teamwork. In fact, Shackleton learned from his early expedition experience with Scott that cooperation is the key, though Scott repeated the same mistake on his journey to the North Pole. The way Shackleton selected a group is interesting yet highly reasonable; he placed much value on individuals who had the capacity to work together, in addition to respetive abilities. This reminded me of a baseball team which has tried to make a "dream team" by gathering the leading players from all over the world: best hitters, pitchers, base-stealers, etc. The expected result of thie group was to be the best team ever. However, this combination diminished the abilities of individual players due to lacking cooperation and teamwork.
Another example that I came up with is a cram school where I work at. My boss always reminds teachers, including me, about the importance of keeping everyone informed, involved, and thinking about solutions. This is one of the "Team Messages" from this chapter. Since my cram school has a style of teaching students individually, multiple teachers can be teaching a particular student especially if he or she is taught more than one subject. My boss always tells us to share any information we have among other teachers and staffs, and he claims this is they key to the acceptance to the first choice school.
Chapter 6 is also about teamwork, but more in details. In this chapter, further description of how bad Scott was as a leader is given; his characteristics are described as "absentmindedness, impatience, insecurity, irrationality, recklessness, instinct to evade, agnosticism" and so on. I really wonder how he could have all these kinds of negative qualities while Shackleton was impeccable. As this chapter says, mutual respect and courtesy are significant for a team to function well. Once individuals start to prioritize themselves over the others, that is a sign of team corruption.
Hi Kenta,
返信削除I too share your concern about how Scott is demonized by Perkins. He seems to be trying to build up Shackleton by tearing down Scott.