In Antarctica everything changes – your home, work, diet, exercise, environment, rules and relationships. You live through months of darkness, the temperature hovers around minus 35 degrees and you’re stuck inside with no escape from your workplace or staff… There’s no way in, and no way out.
So how do you pull together a team of very different people (with competing priorities) and get them moving in the same direction in such difficult circumstances?
Antarctic Expedition Leader, Rachael Robertson, led a team of 120 expeditioners at Davis Station. At the end of summer, most of them go home, and a small group of 18 people remain behind to maintain the station. This team includes scientists, engineers, trades people, IT support and more.
In this session, Rachael will reveal how she kept her team inspired and productive through Antarctica’s long, dark winter. She explains why respect trumps harmony and how she built a productive and supportive culture with a very diverse group of complete strangers.
To build an inclusive team culture with trust and accountability at its core, Rachael had to build their skills and provide the environment for people to speak up respectfully and professionally. In this session, Rachael will share the tools she used to:
Using humour and real life examples, Rachael shares her insights from a year on the ice - where she managed everything from a search-and-rescue following a plane crash, to resolving a peaceful settlement to the Bacon War.
Rachael has written two bestselling books, Leading on the Edge – a personal account of the year-long expedition, and Respect trumps Harmony, which provides the insight, case studies and research that validates her unique approach to building productive and effective organisations and cultures.