When I think of crisis I think of the story of Louie Zamperini as told by Laura Hillenbrand in her book, Unbroken. While on a rescue mission, Louie’s B-24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The three survivors (Zamperini and his crewmates, pilot Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara) end up in a life raft with minimal food, trying to make landfall. One night, in an act of panic, Mac ate all of the chocolate bars (approximately 6) as the other men slept. Mac’s actions put the other two at significant risk. Louie and Phil were discouraged by Mac’s actions, but they didn’t throw him overboard.
Later, the three men are spotted by an enemy fighter pilot, who strafes the small raft – puncturing the boat. Hillenbrand writes:
Phil’s raft had been slashed in two…. [T]he ruined raft… didn’t sink, but it was obviously far beyond repair…. Each time one of the men moved, air sighed out of the chambers and the… raft sat lower and lower in the water. The sharks whipped around it, surely excited by the bullets, and the sight and smell of men in the water, and the sinking raft,
As the men sat together, exhausted and in shock, a shark lunged up over a wall of the raft, mouth open, trying to drag a man into the ocean. Someone grabbed an oar and hit the shark, and it slid off. Then another shark jumped on, and, after it, another…. As they turned and swung and the sharks flopped up, air was forced out of the bullet holes, and the raft sank deeper. Soon, part of the raft was completely submerged.
If the men didn’t get air into the raft immediately, the sharks would take them…. The men hooked [a pump] up to one of the two valves and took turns pumping as hard as they could. Air flowed into the chamber and seeped out through the bullet holes, but the men found that if they pumped very quickly, just enough air passed through the raft to lift it up in the water and keep it mostly inflated. The sharks kept coming, and the men kept beating them away….
Louie began patching… As Louie worked, keeping his eyes on the patches, the sharks kept snapping at him…. Hour after hour, the men worked, rotating the duties, clumsy with fatigue. The pumping was an enormous exertion for the diminished men…. All three men were indispensable. Had there been only two, they couldn’t have pumped, patched, and repelled the sharks. For the first time on the raft, Mac was truly helpful. He was barely strong enough to pull the pump handle a few times in a row, but with the oar he kept every shark away.
I think of those three men, struggling to survive in the boat. Surely, if Louie and Phil had thrown Mac overboard for eating all of their food, they wouldn’t have survived the sinking raft and attacking sharks. Mac had the opportunity to act during this crisis, and his heroic efforts saved the lives of the men. Mac was necessary to avert disaster.
While we’re in crisis situations, stress levels rise and it’s easy to find fault with one another. Encouragement is more important than criticism when the team is truly up against it. Are you inspiring the troops, or busy trying to throw them overboard when the going gets tough?
Adam Dibble
"Don't throw me out of the boat!" leadershipYES 2/24/2016
and make sure to read:
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Random House. 2010.
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