S2 Ep2 | 21 Days on the Southern Ocean

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In what could possibly be the longest conference, 21 days at sea on the Southern Ocean, Samantha does her best to make you feel at home here. In a “being-there” moment, you will be brought into the room to consider terms like your “Personal Strategy Map,” your “LSI” type and discover how to cope with all this intensity--through “Peer Coaching.”

Read along, or click one of the buttons above to listen along the journey to Antarctica and back with 90 other women on this incredible expedition

International Women’s Day on the Southern Ocean [0:00]

Greg Mortimer: Good morning, possums. It's ten to seven, and we’ve just had a beautiful sunrise. We’re sitting at the outside edge of the mysterious volcano of Deception Island, and breakfast is on at 7 o’clock. At 8 o’clock we plan to go through the narrow entrance into the caldera of Deception Island.

And congratulations, it’s International Women Day today.

Greg: My name is Greg Mortimer, and ostensibly, I’m the Expedition Leader on a voyage of Homeward Bound, 80 magnificent women in Antarctica, and right at the moment, we’re sitting in the belly of a volcano called Deception Island, which is at the northern fringes of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Sam: Have you actually kept track of how many times you’ve been to Antarctica?

Greg: No. No, I haven’t bothered. I’ve lost count, every season since, every summer since 1991...and each of those seasons I’ve gone generally on 3 to 6 separate voyages. So that’s a lot. Haha!

Sam: I’ve described this before as the world’s longest, most intense conference.

With whales frolicking, penguins moulting, icebergs floating by, and glaciers melting off in the distance.

And yes, that’s a totally privileged sentence to form.

I want to put that right up front.

This experience doesn’t come cheap, and it doesn’t come easy.

The women on this ship are all highly educated. Most have their PhDs, or are working on them….and they’ve either paid, fundraised, or been sponsored by their employers, a lot of money to be here.

And all of these factors, and the entitlements and birthrights that go along with higher education and capital, are the Achilles Heel of this organization, of Homeward Bound, as it grows.

Sound familiar?

I’m gonna beat you to the chase and say that what’s happening everywhere, all over the world, is also happening inside this group, just on a different scale.

If you already listened to Season One, then you were there for the first voyage - at least virtually, just like me. But a quick refresher...

It all started in 2016, with the world’s largest all-female, all-scientist leadership expedition to Antarctica.

The long-term goal of this group is to bring together a massive group of women-identifying people, who all work in STEMM, that’s Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine, to have a shared leadership experience.

So far, 4 different groups have been to Antarctica, which is just over 400 participants. But of course, the pandemic postponed the fifth journey….and now, all future expeditions are still in pencil on the calendar as the world muddles through the pandemic.

This story follows the second expedition in 2018.

And If I’m going to do a good job of sharing how this experience changed me. Why this was an emotional odyssey to the end of the world...

Then I’m going to need to put you in the room with me.

Greg Mortimer on land in Antarctica - photo credit Oli Sansom

Podcasting Audio Verite from the ship [3:24]

*rumblings*

Sam: This is what the room sounded like when it was empty…. I had to get up at 5 in the morning to find the room with no one in it… and what you might notice is that it’s not very quiet.

*engine sounds*

The whole ship is powered by a loud diesel engine…

Which you kind of stop hearing while you’re there and around it all the time….and when you go to edit sound around it, you curse it.

In the last episode, I explained how I want to tell this story using what I’m calling Audio Verite, which is another way of saying that I want to let the tape roll when I can. Rather than continually breaking the moment to explain what’s going on

This is a tradition that comes from the documentary film world - a world I’ve spent a lot of time in. Some also call it Direct Cinema, and others call it Cinema Verite, and it means that the job of the storyteller is to let you “see” for yourself. And I like it for two reasons.

First, it honours the experience that I had on the ship, where I just showed up and found myself in the middle of an unfolding narrative, which I later pieced together in the edit room.

And second, because I think it empowers the listener to dive in and be part of something, rather than just being told *how* to follow along. And it jives with my core value of authenticity.

Now, of course, this concept comes from film, and it’s all much easier to do when you have a visual to work with. Putting you in the room with only your ears isn’t always possible, so I’m going to need to break to give you some more context….and sometimes I’ll have some bigger ideas that I want to share, which I’ll pull together in a sort of short essay - kinda like now.

Basically, I guess I’m saying that if you listen, it will make sense….and as for the parts that don’t, let your imagination go. There’s no right way to “see” this or even to “hear” it.

I started this episode with how our day started, every day.

Dr. Sylvia Struck - photo credit Oli Sansom

The world’s longest conference [5:30]

Greg: Good Morning, Possums.

Sam: After breakfast, we all spilled into the common room, which is about 50 feet long by 25 feet wide, lined with windows that lead out to the deck of the ship.

There are built-in couches arranged in square geometric patterns and upholstered with blue vinyl and a bar at the far end.

Between the couches is a middle aisle, which is about 8 feet wide, and it’s lined with brass railings that I learned are actually functional.

For all the 80 women, plus the 10 Faculty to fit in this room at the same time, some would be standing, some would be lounging, and sometimes lying down with their eyes closed to prevent seasickness when the seas were rough.

Next to the bar was a self-serve drink station, with water that tasted increasingly unappetizing as the trip wore on and a coffee urn constantly brewing.

Moving on to the teaching component. As I said, this was in some ways the world’s longest conference….21 days at sea.

There were 7 Faculty members, plus Greg Mortimer, the Expedition Leader. There was also one photographer, one person on logistics, and one podcaster, yours truly.

Add to that the expedition crew that came with the ship, plus the Captain and his crew, and the staff who cleaned, cooked, maintained the ship, and the ship’s Doctor.

The total capacity is 120 people, all of us on this small ship that once trailed the waters around Cuba as a spy ship during the cold war era, and she’s called the MV Ushuaia.

Justine Shaw: So I’ve got 30 minutes, and I’m going to keep to time. This is a photo of me in my early days when I studied these amazing mega herbs that only appear on three islands in the world. They are an evolutionary phenomenon, and that’s what I did my PhD on. That species is pleurophyllum speciosum, a subspecies that only occurs on the sub-Antarctic, so it’s a daisy.

Today, I’m going to drop you into the “conference” portion and let you experience some of what that learning looked like.

This first lecture is being given by Dr. Justine Shaw. She’s a Faculty member and one of the co-founders of Homeward Bound.

And this is the lecture I like to call Antarctica 101.

Pleurophyllum Speciosum, the subspecies Dr. Justine Shaw mentioned above - taken by Samantha Hodder

Antarctica 101 [7:10]

Justine: Antarctica, that’s where we’re going today.

No one owns Antarctica.

There’s no government. There are no cities and no permanent residents.

90% of the world’s ice is in Antarctica

70% of the Earth’s freshwater is held by Antarctica.

And Antarctica makes up 10% of the global landmass. So it’s incredibly important.

We’ll talk a little bit more about ocean systems, but the world’s weather is defined by Antarctica, so it’s incredibly important in a global context.

So what we have instead of a government is the Antarctic Treaty, which is a system of governance where the whole goal of Antarctica as a reserve that’s dedicated to peace and science, and remember that 1951 and it was really 7 countries that kicked off the Antarctic treaty.

The amazing thing about the Antarctic Treaty is that it was born on the back of World War II, 1951, and in the era of the Cold War, and Russia and America were holding hands during the signing.

So it's always been wonderful, external, not really caught up in global politics. That’s the history of the Treaty.

Sam: The next lecture is from Professor Mary-Anne Lea...and like Justine, she’s also faculty and also a co-founder. MA, as we all called her, is a polar marine ecologist, and today we’re getting a primer on the Antarctic Ocean Systems.

MA: The lowest ebb of the sea ice in the Antarctic is in April-May, and in May, it starts to grow again. All these areas we’ve been visiting lately will be encased in ice and inaccessible to a lot of these species we are seeing here in the summer.

The poles are the heartbeat of the planet, in terms of their contributions to the atmospheric processes and also the turning over of the ocean, the oxygenation of the ocean, the drawdown of carbon, which I’m sure we have a lot of specialists in the room.

Without these seasonal fluxes in sea ice extent, we would have greatly altered atmospheric conditions and oceanic processes.

Now just to quickly go through the main physical features, many of which we’ve already passed when we went through the Drake [Passage], the subtropical, sub-Antarctic and polar fronts, and the Antarctic Divergence is much closer to the Coast.

Then the key habitats that we have in marine space are the Fast Ice, which is that ice that’s connected to the continent that Weddell Seals and Emperor Penguins like to breed on.

The Pack Ice, which is that ice that comes and goes seasonally and grows out from the continent as the region cools.

The Marginal Ice Zone is that area on the edge of the ice. I had a lot of questions today while we were on Paulet about where the Adelies go when they aren’t in Paulet, and in the winter, they are moving around in this Marginal Ice Zone, which is rich in krill, which means they can haul out when they need a break as well.

Dr Justine Shaw with Prof Mary-Anne Lead - photo credit Oli Sansom

The Women’s leadership Conference at sea [11:10]

Sam: And then there’s the inside portion which is led by different faculty members: The scientists, the coaches, the facilitators, the psychologist and as the trip progressed, also some participants led, sharing their expertise.

And when I say the inside portion, I mean both inside the ship AND inside of ourselves.

I mentioned before that this program hangs on four pillars: Women, Leadership, Science and the State of our Planet, and each of these streams has different amounts of time allocated to them, in terms of how much time we spend on content on each of them, on the ship.

But what does that actually look like?

Think of it as an MBA if it were framed as a 21-day retreat, with a strong focus on the self.

Everyone is examining how to be a better leader, how to be better to each other, how to be better to the planet in the midst of a collapsing ecosystem.

We were a group of women who are more or less split down the middle between data-driven scientists and storytelling dreamers. And, since we’re all shoved together in close quarters, the emphasis is on: getting along.

And getting better at whatever we need bettering with.

Ultimately, this was a leadership journey, which meant that the bulk of the content for this program was based on learning more about - ourselves.

Right. So how do you do that?

As far as I can tell, you learn how to put everything you’ve got into one big box and go from there.

And the box we used was called LSI, the LifeStyles Inventory, which is a metric, a tool, and an audit of how you act and react like a professional. And it’s meant to improve you and your interactions.

After answering a long battery of questions, your LSI type is drawn on a circumpolar map and colour-coded, which is why you’ll hear the phrase “staying in the blue” a few times in this story.

‘The Blue’ means a calm and metered approach, NOT about being depressed and glued to your couch.

Fabian: You know I can spend 5-10 minutes with you, and I will know a string of things about who you are, what matters to you, how you operate. I will get a good insight pretty quickly, as will Kerryn and Marshall and LA about what your psychological pinch points will be, what you’ll find difficult.

Sam: This is Fabian Dattner. You met her in the first episode. And this recording was from the beginning of the journey when she gave her introduction to the LSI. The tool at the centre of this program, and now we’re learning why.

Fabian: We’re not perfect, but we’re doing the best that we can in order to facilitate an outcome for you.

And there’s only one reason we can do this, and that’s because we know this stuff like the back of our hands. We live in a time where diagnostics have become gimmicky. And we give people tools without them ever really understanding what they’ve been given. We give people things, and we say, “You’re a this, or you’re a that.”

So we walk away with the feeling with a perception that they’ve been boxed. Has anyone had that experience? Hands up high. So that is so far from the truth of a good diagnostic it’s breathtaking.

You box it because it’s easy when you’re learning. And you will all know that from the studies that you have done. Your first period of time is an intense approach to studying content.

Then the content shifts from something you study to something you know to something you have insight about.

So we want you to understand why we chose LSI and that by the end of the journey, you will understand the gift you have been given, and it is a monumental gift.

Sam: Is your head spinning yet? Because I can tell you that mine was.

This was only the first couple of days, we weren’t even on the ship yet, and the intensity meter was already going up.

Sarah Anderson, Visibility Faculty Lead - Photo credit Oli Sansom

Finding the right female role models [15:19]

Kit Jackson: Ultimately, you want to think about: What Is the Outcome? Where do you want to get to? Then what are you going to do? What are your priorities to deliver that outcome?

Sam: This is Kit Jackson. She’s another lead facilitator for Homeward Bound who heads up the strategy piece.

Kit: This is YOUR personal strategy map. It’s not your husband’s, partners’, kids, grandparents, parents, boss’....anybody else who knows me and their dog’s …. Strategy Map. It is YOUR personal strategy map, so start with YOU.

Sam: The tool she’s introducing to us here is called the Personal Strategy Map - which the name of it, and the approach she pioneered based on the Kaplan Norton Strategy Map.

The concept is that it’s split into three components: Your self, your relationships, and your work.

Notice these are three categories - it’s not all smushed together. That was my first lesson.

Kit: So the methodology has evolved to realizing that actually there’s a story. There’s a story that needs to be told. We need to understand the story of the strategy. We are storytellers. And we need to understand the cause and effect. It’s not just about identifying ‘the what’.

We need to understand ‘the why’ and ‘the how’ as well.

And what the Strategy Map structure does is put it on one page and it tells a story. This is where you have a strategy document which is typically a big white file that sits on the shelf and unused. This is where you can tell the story of your strategy and use this architecture to manage your strategy.
So it’s quite straight forward really. How hard is that?

Sarah Anderson: We want to start to think about what are the characteristics of those role models around visibility that made you want to emulate those characteristics.

Sam: Here’s Sarah Anderson. She was faculty lead on the ship for Visibility, which is one of the pillars of this course.

Sarah would define Visibility as a tool to build influence and impact without vanity. So, maybe more about being seen for the values you hold rather than the work you’ve done.

Today Sarah wanted to talk about who we model our work on,

But in this space, a bunch of women who work in STEMM, it’s still tricky to talk about female role models.

Sarah Anderson: So, Who in the groups got to talking about some of those visibility role models?

Sam: We’ll hear from Justine again, who jumped in here to challenge the concept of actually finding them with a story of her own.

Justine: So Sare, could we also ask another question? Could we ask this: Who actually struggled to find a visibility role model?

Hahaha, lots of hands

Sarah: Do you have a sense of why that was a struggle?

Justine: Because I was looking for a woman, and I was focusing on who is a female, visible role model, and I don’t have any in terms of where I’m tracking to. So when I thought about men, I had one come to mind easily, who’s a perfect role model.

And it's not that I want to be the next Barack Obama, but in my career, at my stage, of where I want to go, there are no women who are doing it as visibility, as well, as he is.

Sarah: Interesting...I think that’s a very valid point to make.

Sam: So maybe you’re getting a bit of sense of what it was like to be in this room...it was great, but it was also…intense...and it was a lot to take in every day, and then wake up the next day, and do it all over again.

Kerryn: So this morning, we’re going to help you, to get a sense of….what is the space that you do need to create right here, right now?

Sam: We had a tool for that as well...It was called Peer Coaching, and this is Kerryn Miller, faculty member and onboard psychologist, to introduce the concept.

Kerryn: To really build that strong board of directors amongst yourselves. And, what is it going to take for you to do that and show up in that way? Right here and right now. Because it starts right here and right now for you in your learning journey.

I don’t know if you’ve heard the notion of a “Critical Friend,” has anyone ever heard of that? What’s the context that you’ve heard that?

Dr. Beth Christie out on the ice in Antarctica - photo credit Oli Sansom

Beth Christie: On expeditions, when I’m with a group, and as we travel together, we usually work with a critical friend as well so that we can check in with each other. So we know what each other’s labels are. We’ve had that conversation. So I’ll know just by being around that person, how they are, and when they’re feeling low. When to step in and when to sit back as well.

Kerryn: Thank you. And you know people often confuse this word critically. I use this a lot in the work that we do with leaders. And this sometimes it rubs, this word “critical.”

Just to be really clear, this notion of tension or challenge, it’s not about being reactive, or defensive, or any of the ways in which we can make people feel diminished. And so you’ve all talked about how important support is, and how you’re going to enable and listen and share and build trust and so on.

This notion of tension, or challenge, is really important when you are stepping up to that role of Critical Friend.

Sam: Most of this learning was done on the ship. Most days, it was really great. Some days put me to sleep.

But what brought it all together, what balanced out these very long days, was when we could go ashore and walk around.

*Vacuum cleaner*

Sam: First, we had to vacuum -

Juz: So pockets, velcro, corners and bottoms of backpacks and camera….If you’ve got your over pants.

Sam: Our clothes, not the ship. Gotcha!

Conservation of Antarctica is taken very seriously - and any of these tiny seeds could become the next zebra muscles of Antarctica.

Next, we put on our assigned boots.

*Boot cleaning*

Sam: The boots are rubber so we can wash them - before and after going on land - and after seeing how much penguin poop is out there, not a bad idea.

*Zodiac sound and landing*

Sam: But I’m going to save this journey for the next episode.