The Power of Others by Michael Bond

Author:Michael Bond [Bond, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Psychology, Ethics, Psychology, Popular Science, Human Behaviour, Non-Fiction, Self-Help, Social Psychology & Interactions
ISBN: 9781780746531
Google: 1ZqcAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1780746539
Barnesnoble: 1780746539
Goodreads: 22402254
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2015-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

For students of behaviour, explorers are a compelling breed, specifically because they wrestle constantly with one of the great challenges of human nature. They are by necessity highly driven, obsessive and single-minded in quest of their goal, whether it be a pole or a summit, a world record or a personal best. They want to be the first, the fastest or the most outrageous. Yet they can rarely achieve these things on their own, such are the extremes in which they operate. They must play teammate as well as maverick, and know when to play which. It’s a game we all play in daily life, though on the polar ice or in a mountain blizzard it is a game of life and death. Little surprise that tensions and disagreements are commonplace on expeditions, and that unity is often threatened by rivalry and infighting.

One of the best-known cases of team dynamics gone awry occurred in 1985 on the In the Footsteps of Scott expedition to the South Pole. That Antarctic winter, a group led by Robert Swan (and which included Mike Stroud) camped at Cape Evans, just down the beach from Robert Falcon Scott’s wooden hut. Later, some of them followed Scott’s route to the pole. The official diaries of the trip give distinctly different accounts of their experiences. Take these two entries, both recorded on 9 April 1985:8

Gareth Wood: ‘I find it difficult living in the hut at times. It feels like I’m the only one with any cleanliness or organization. The clean tea-towel is used as an all-purpose rag, then screwed up in a ball and deposited on the shelf. Am I the only one who uses the towel rail?’

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