Business leaders today have embraced Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as a model of good leadership, especially leadership during a crisis. More than 80 years after his death, they see themselves as having to face many of the same tasks he did: bringing together workers of diverse backgrounds and talents, keeping everyone focused on a goal, putting down challengers, helping those falling behind, battling boredom and fatigue, working with limited resources, and in general bringing order to a chaotic environment.

Shackleton built his success on camaraderie, loyalty, responsibility, determination and, especially, optimism. He trained himself in leadership and became so brilliant at strategy that he was able to lead his men relatively unscathed out of the failure of his British Trans-Antarctic Expedition -- a harrowing ordeal that lasted nearly two years (1914-1916).

Like another famously dubbed "successful failure," the Apollo 13 space mission, the survival effort has been remembered as being a far greater accomplishment than the goal that originally was set. "People like Shackleton and myself are individuals who can take on challenges -- challenges that might include the unexpected," says Capt. James Lovell, mission commander.

The Endurance, the expedition ship named for the Shackleton family motto: "By Endurance We Conquer," set sail from England Aug. 1, 1914, with the goal of taking Shackleton and his crew of 27 to the shores of the Antarctic, where a team led by Sir Ernest would cross the continent on foot -- a mind-boggling 1,800 miles across the frozen desert from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. But the crew never reached Antarctica. Just one day's sail from the shore of the continent, the ship got frozen solid in the ice.

For more than 10 months, the sea's currents dragged the ship counterclockwise until it could no longer withstand the pressures of the ice. The men abandoned ship on Oct. 27, 1915, and watched in horror one month later as the ship was crushed and pulled to the bottom of the sea. There they were -- 28 men stranded on ice floes 1,200 miles from the nearest outpost of civilization with nothing but three lifeboats and whatever provisions they could rescue from the ship. There was no communication with the outside world.

No reasonable person would have felt anything but utter despair, or have had any hope of survival. Yet every single man would make it back home and, except for a few lost frostbitten toes on the youngest crewman, all were in remarkably good shape. When one of the men, First Officer Lionel Greenstreet, was asked by a researcher some 60 years after his rescue how the men survived such an ordeal, he answered in one word: "Shackleton."

Sir Ernest Shackleton had many attributes of the natural-born leader. He was handsome, charming and had a commanding voice that held a trace of his Irish roots. He showed everyone a genuine interest in what they had to say and was always ready with a verse, song or amazing tale of adventure. He was, after all, a world-famous explorer wined and dined by heads of state and knighted for a courageous voyage that led to the discovery of the magnetic South Pole.

But he also was well-read and a lifelong student of leadership strategy. By the time of his most-famous expedition, Sir Shackleton was 40 years old and had more than two decades' experience on the seas. His experiences as an apprentice merchant marine in his late teens and later, as part of early expeditions to the South Pole, taught him the price paid for petty, uncaring and disorganized leadership. Bad leaders have an unhappy, unproductive and disloyal staff, making hard work even harder, limiting chances of success, and making it impossible to achieve beyond expectations. It's better, he reasoned, to lighten your burden and the burdens of others with a positive attitude and helpful gestures. "Optimism is true moral courage," he said.

Shackleton became a keen reader of men and had no qualms about giving his crewmen what they needed to survive. When the ship was stuck in the ice, he gave up his own bed for the crew's biggest complainer, who was suffering from sciatica. "What sacrifices would I not make for such a leader as this," said motor expert Thomas Orde-Lees.

Shackleton loved his crew, even if he didn't love all its members. For him, taking a journey with a lively crew was just as important as reaching a goal. "There are lots of good things in the world, but I'm not sure that comradeship is not the best of them all," he said.

In hiring the Endurance crew, the Boss, as his men came to call him, sought team players -- those who wouldn't complain about doing any sort of job. His first hire was for the critical No. 2 position. Shackleton picked Frank Wild. He was clever, but he wasn't an ideas man and never claimed to be. Instead, he had qualities Shackleton valued: He was experienced, cheerful, trustworthy and loyal. Shackleton had worked with Wild on the Nimrod, and when things got tough, it was Wild, not Shackleton's second-in-command at the time, who was at his side to the end. Wild could take direction from the Boss and apply it with flair.

Together the two men hired the rest of the crew. They began with a core of "old dogs" who had experience and could establish a serious, professional atmosphere. Shackleton felt the older workers were able to do the toughest jobs, and had a calming effect on the younger men, who were hardy and enthusiastic but who tended to panic in a crisis and were too quick to resign themselves to a bad situation. Mostly, the explorer wanted a band of optimists. "Loyalty comes easier to a cheerful person than to one who carries a heavy countenance," he told Leonard Hussey, a meteorologist on the Endurance.

As good as the Boss was at picking men for his crew, his real talent was in shaping the man. He could get above-average work from even the most average worker. The key to his success was constant communication and organization.

The first thing he did when he went aboard the Endurance was to establish order. He drew up a detailed routine for the men that included personal tasks, such as laundry; ship duties, such as watchman; and entertainment, including weekend slide shows. "Certainly a good deal of our cheerfulness is due to the order and routine which Sir E. establishes where he settles down," Capt. Frank Worsley wrote.

The Boss's next task was to build a spirit of camaraderie and bonds among the men and between him and his crew. Every man had to know every job, and he devised a method of work rotation whereby men doing various tasks would be paired with different colleagues -- fostering friendships as well as perfecting teamwork. It wasn't unusual to see a scientist steering the ship or scrubbing a floor, or a seaman helping with an experiment.

The Boss made the individual feel valued by giving him challenging work. He did his best to see that the men were well matched to their duties and could find some pleasure in them. He knew his men well and knew their strengths and weaknesses. He set reasonable expectations from each depending on their abilities. No one was ever singled out or embarrassed for his failings. "He led; he did not drive," one of his men said of him.

After the men had to abandon ship, Shackleton became the sole leader, stripping away middlemen. He took full charge, explained the dire situation to the men and offered a plan of action. He assured them they would all make it to safety if they stuck together, worked hard, kept focused on the future and remained optimistic.

His plan was to get as close to land as possible by walking across the ice and by just riding the moving floes, then rowing the lifeboats to terra firma when the ice became weak. Shackleton never let his men look back and bemoan their fate. But it was a brutal six months on the floes. The men endured temperatures so cold they could hear the water freeze, yet were constantly soaked by melted ice. Shackleton let everyone participate in getting out of the mess. This lifted them psychologically and let them expend pent-up energies. Shackleton also made sure he kept the games, jokes, competitions and stories going to keep the men light-hearted.

Soon, their unstable ground began to break up, and they had to jump into their lifeboats and head for land. After waiting so long, they ended up on Elephant Island (they called it Hell of an Island), a horrible spit of land covered with penguin guano and constantly rattled by storms. When Shackleton knew the crewmen were at the ends of their ropes, he took five of them and the best lifeboat and headed for South Georgia Island -- their last point of departure on their way to the Antarctic -- where there was a whaling station. Their 800-mile trip across a frozen, tumultuous sea is one of the most harrowing sea adventures ever recorded. When the six finally reach the island after nearly being killed by a hurricane, they found they were on the opposite side from the whaling station. They didn't dare try to take their small boat to the other side. Three men stayed with the boat (the two pessimists, Shackleton noted, were in the worst shape) while the Boss, Tom Crean and Capt. Worsley made a remarkable march across the uncharted icy interior of the island in just 36 hours.

More than any other source, Shackleton took strength from his men. "If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to," he said, "you've got to keep going."