From the beginning of time, leaders have always emerged instinctively, their response defined by the challenge.
Helping Leaders Thrive In Chaos
The leader draws strength and renewal from chaos: it is the source of meaning, purpose and creativity.
LEADERSHIP DNA
Science records that a million years ago, mankind sailed regularly across the eight nautical miles of the Strait of Gibraltar, guided by Spain's 830m Sierra de Ojen, visible from Morocco's 839m Jebel Musa.
And 850,000 years ago seafarers also regularly voyaged to Flores Island, and 500,000 years ago to the island of Crete.
Such voyages needed leaders who could dream of possibilities and inspire and organise others to achieve success.
Leadership and seafaring are buried deep in our DNA.
Today, expedition thinking keeps that DNA alive.
LEADERSHIP REALITY
Arctic Explorer's programs are inspired by expeditions, where Mankind's inner nature becomes visible through leadership.
We help prepare individuals and organisations for the harsh reality of leadership roles in a new world of rapidly escalating challenges such as the multiple impacts on communities of climate crisis.
No, this is not one of the million porridge-bland, feel-good, so-called leadership programs that are in reality just same-as management hustles designed by people without leadership experience.
The Arctic Explorer program is based entirely on real life leadership challenges from the annals of exploration. We believe this program will change your understanding of leadership, and short of actually placing you in the field, on expedition, will probably be the toughest leadership development program you have ever encountered.
We aim to help you discover your innate leadership strengths, understand your people as they face challenges, and find the courage to boldly lead in society wherever you're needed.
It's not easy and it's not for everyone. It suits those who are inspired by a strong sense of Higher Purpose, guided by Intuition and Discernment, tempered by Sense-Making and powered by Courage and Personal Agency.
The value our programs offer is that they increase the full spectrum of climate readiness of every individual and organisation, which underscores that we are all in this together, on one Earth.
WHAT WE DO
We enable leaders to thrive in chaos.
Our unique immersive workshops are designed to give you the closest experience possible to actually leading your team through a raw, real-life wilderness leadership challenge.
Our workshops recreate actual events, presented to you in 360 degree detail, and are based on first-hand experience. Everything you will face in the workshop has already been faced by others on a remote expedition. Your biggest challenge might be that there could be more than one effective way to respond. As leader, you must choose the best way out while under great pressure, acting with courage, and knowing that in real life people could die.
Each workshop offers you extremely valuable insights that cannot be acquired in any other way, helping you become a natural leader that everyone will turn to for support, especially in the face of emerging global climate challenges which increasingly confront governments, businesses and societies worldwide.
WORKSHOP LEADER
Workshops are run in person by Earle de Blonville, founder of the Arctic Explorer Immersive Workshop program and leader of the expeditions on which these workshops are based.
This guarantees the whole workshop experience is totally authentic in every detail and you get a completely realistic challenge scenario to engage with, as well as unique insights to help shape your own leadership awareness. And Earle will be on hand to answer your personal questions plus provide personal coaching as part of the workshop experience.
Earle is not only an insightful leader of expeditions and major events, but is a pioneering developer of executive education programs, a C-Suite leadership coach and corporate consultant, and a Doctoral researcher examining new approaches to leadership development for times of high uncertainty, drawing on 50 years of work by Harvard research psychologists and his own 50 years of adventure. Read about his remarkable experiences below.
HOW WE DO IT
We give you the unique opportunity to experience what it's really like to lead a team in a life and death wilderness emergency.
What you will learn about yourself and others during this workshop will impact your life, career and working relationships. Whatever leadership training you already have will be amplified in its value.
You will learn about yourself by doing, experientially, and about other people from how you observe their reactions to challenge and the range of meanings that they make for themselves.
Our methodology is called 'Immersive Learning'. Its authenticity is what makes it so totally different to the bewildering array of management-focussed 'leadership' programs on offer. Because we only deal in 100% reality, and not comfortable hypotheticals and fashionable academic theories, you will probably find our programs tough and challenging.
Because being confronted with complex reality opens our emotions, triggers our survival brain and awakens our sense of higher purpose like nothing else can, you will discover why this approach works so well for you after the workshop.
The workshop program is complex, comprehensive and enriching. And most importantly, it is delivered in person by the explorer who led the actual events the workshop is based on.
The key issue is that there is no right or wrong, no competition, no point scoring, but just a process of personal awakening followed by a strong sense of readiness to serve.
IS THIS FOR YOU?
You may never have been in a leadership role before. But don't worry, around the world, ordinary everyday people just like you, with no prior experience, are unexpectedly confronted by leadership situations where they discover they can make good choices without doubting themselves.
The fact is that leadership can't be taught on a curriculum basis, but can only be learned in the crucible of life, through experience. And that's how we approach it - by starting with an unforgettable experience.
You may think leadership is only for people younger or older than you. But the fact is that leadership knows no barriers of age, or culture, or status, and does not even depend on being able-bodied.
You may wonder if women can lead. The fact is that leadership has never been gender specific. Throughout history there have been great female leaders. Leadership is an attitude, and a signal of responsible maturity.
You may not be wanting to train for a specific leadership role, but for your self-development. That's great, because the fact is that leadership is not a job or a profession. It is a readiness to serve, based on deep knowledge of self and others, and that's what we aim to give you.
You may think because you have never been on expedition before that you might not understand a field leadership situation well enough to participate. But not so fast. What your clear fresh eyes are telling you may be the exact solution that more experienced people have failed to see.
WHAT YOU GET
In short, we aim to give you confidence in your own judgement, intuition, and leadership.
Through the direct experience our workshops give you, the visceral and psychological dimensions of taking leadership and making decisions under great pressure will develop your ability to take leadership anywhere, any time, with almost any team. You will be ready.
By working through real-life raw leadership challenges, you will develop a unique way of sensing where you need to take your team in critical situations and instinctively know what personal, emotional and psychological challenges that each member faces at that moment of unique crisis.
What you can expect is to develop your readiness and willingness to be the leader who is recognised and called into action.
SAVAGE COAST is raw leadership in action. This book offers an almost unrivalled look inside the reality of complex leadership decision-making when almost everything conspires against the expedition’s success, or even its survival. In this story of ongoing crises there are non-stop insights and valuable lessons for those who can expect to be engaged in tomorrow's global front-line climate crisis leadership.
Here is the leader’s inside story of Australia’s 1985-86 historic first Arctic expedition, to an uncharted coast in early winter. It’s an epic of what happens to a $3 million voyage to the end of the world where all your plans are blown away by a winter hurricane and all that’s left is slow starvation in a soaked sleeping bag on a wave-battered coastal rock, with no possibility of rescue or of your bodies ever being discovered, except by hungry polar bears.
Reviews - "Timeless insights into the hidden depths of leadership” -Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Bt, OBE, FRGS, world’s greatest living explorer
“Fully captures the reality of leadership.” - Dr Iain McCormack, Polar Leadership Psychologist
“Deep insights into complexity and unpredictability.” - Sir Gustav Nossal, Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne
“Reveals that leadership cannot be taught, no leader is infallible and there is no single recipe for success.” - Richard Gilmore, Executive Director: EarthWatch Trust