yBC.tv's video: Alan Chambers: The power of leading from the back

Self-leadership is something that I've learnt through the military, through the different roles I had in the military, where you are trusted, really trusted with, not just your job and your role and your responsibility, but the responsibility of a few hundred people. If you can create that in a small environment, smaller team where people police their own performance, when they police their own decision making, but have that courage to make a decision, the leaders go to let that happen it just takes a lot of pressure off the leader, especially in adversity. I think leading from the back, which is something I adopted, on the way to the North Pole, it gave every team member an opportunity to lead, to be at the front, to feel proud, to have no one else in front of them whatsoever apart from the ice and the snow, so they had to navigate, they had to select their route, look at the obstacles, check the time, watch the team and think about everyone else and not just themselves, which is quite draining. So then when that person gets tired, we would change it around, we would do an hour at the front, so I either had four leaders in a team, who I was happy and comfortable that they could make the right decisions, or I became a fourth team member and that was a really interesting thing that we did, and I do it on every trip now. There's a thing about leading from the front where, you get a second wind of energy, and I can't explain it, somebody probably will who's a lot more cleverer than me, but you get this immense pride, and you get a little bit of energy, so for me it was about maintaining that energy at the front of the group, the minute you finish leading and the pressure's off you, you get to the back, you get tired. And you're going at the same pace as everyone else. But you just feel drained a little bit, so it was about maintaining that energy and also I think, you know you're asking people to spend sixty days pushing a project, and they can't just think they're there to enable the leader to get to the North Pole. It has to be a group effort. So leading from the back became incredibly powerful for me. Alan Chambers, MBE, Extreme Adventurer Interview via Harvey Thorneycroft http://harveythorneycroft.co.uk/