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Volume 15, Number 5: Faculty Focus
May 2009

Listen to a 5-minute interview with Professor Denis Shackel on leadership   Listen (4.6MB)   Subscribe

Ivey Professor Denis Shackel experienced a tremendous near-death experience and personal loss while mountain climbing in 1997. His brother-in-law tragically lost his balance and fell a fourteen hundred foot, hundred-mile-an-hour plummet to his death at the foot of the glacier. Denis spent the night alone in minus 30 degree weather.

He chose to share the true account of his mountaintop experience through his new book, Five Seconds at a Time. In its own right, it is a story of courage and love but the book also delves into the lessons he learned from his experience on the mountain. Five Seconds at a Time goes beyond the stand alone account of adventure, survival and inspiration and unveils the principles that enabled him to survive the longest night of his life. Ashleigh Nimigan started by asking him how a technique that saved his life can also be used by leaders to achieve success.

A.  All leaders have challenges in life. Everybody has challenges. One of the big lessons I learned on the mountain is now the title of my book, 5 Seconds at a Time, so just taking things one step at a time. So that certainly has direct relevance for any leader. In my office at home, I have a little saying on the wall that serves as a constant reminder that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. So one step at a time is what saved my life and what I would recommend every leader have as a general principle. I would supplement this by the principle, “as long as the next step is addressing a priority.”

Q.  At a time like this, with the economic crisis, what can we do to survive when things get tough? What should our leaders be doing?

A.  I heard on CBC just a couple of days ago that there are still 62% (I think they said) of people they surveyed across Canada still had the belief that the recession will not only turn around within the year and quickly disappear, but that they are remaining optimistic. And that’s really my answer to your question, in encouraging leaders. Not only to hang in there with optimism, but my own personal bias is the belief in the self-fulfilling prophecy. And although others may not say it, I think, part of the huge problem at the moment is that people are making a big fuss about the crisis, the crisis, the crisis, and if you keep talking like that and focusing on that then it becomes a crisis and we become what we think.

Q.  What are some habits of successful leaders?

A.  The importance of faith. Faith that the future will be manageable and that we can cope and be successful. Even this very morning with my MBA students I asked them to think of ideal leaders, managers and parents and when they looked at the characteristics of successful leaders, and classified them by whether they referred to skills, knowledge or attitude, 95% of the characteristics that they said a leader must have were attitudinal.

Vision, we all know that without vision the leader is nothing and without vision people perish.

Correction. I was fascinated to hear from findings that NASA published that the rocket that was the first to land on the moon, 97% of the time the rocket was out in space it needed correction. Had it not had the feedback from the computers down on earth and had those sophisticated computers not just corrected the path it was shooting on, chances are, it would have never made it. For a leader, in order to accomplish a goal, regardless of its size, then the leader has to be flexible, adaptable, and have constant feedback –whether it’s from customers or team members –in order to make slight changes in order to accomplish whatever goal they’re aiming at.

Q.  How much of a person’s effectiveness as a leader is determined by the degree to which they are aware of their values, listen to their inner voice, and have the self discipline to make their actions congruent with both the voice and values?

A.  I would say about 99.9%! You’re touching on the key buttons.

Being aware of your values is fundamental. My bias is that leadership comes from within and we have to know clearly the principles, the values that are important to us, and then have the courage to be true to them that’s what I mean by integrity.

Nobody really wants to be managed. I don’t think anybody wants to be managed. I think the only person to manage is ourselves, that’s self-discipline. And then only when we have self-discipline can we have a hope of influencing and leading others. Others want to be led, not managed.

That was Denis Shackel, Professor of Management Communications at the Richard Ivey School of Business.

A complete account of Denis’ mountaintop experience and the leadership lessons he’s learned can be found in his new book, Five Seconds at a Time (released by HarperCollins later this year).