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Go with the Flow
Go with the FlowWHERE would you rather be? Office bound and waiting for lunchtime, or camping in the Arctic, waiting for a polar bear to decide whether to make you his dinner?1 Going out on the ice proved an easy decision for Charlotte Eddington, 27, the head of energy and sustainability at CB Richard Ellis, a global property consultancy. After six months’ hard training, 
dragging sledges weighted with sand around
Richmond Park, Charlotte and a companion
became the youngest all-female team to complete
the 350-mile Polar Race, from Canada to the
North Pole, in April.2 But then nothing really prepares you for temperatures as low as minus 70°C (-94°F), including wind chill, and ice rubble the size of small houses. “It is very hard. You can’t wait to get home and have some nice food,” Charlotte says. “We weren’t aiming for a position in the race but the more we went through, the more [id:86563] we got.” The team came third, reaching the finish after 17 days, 4hrs and 35mins. 3 Back at her desk after five weeks on paid leave, Charlotte has been given a new perspective on managing her team. “On the ice, teamwork is about survival,” she says. The pair had to check each other’s faces for frost nip, for example. “If you don’t look after each other, you’re not looking after yourself,” she says. And when faced with a large polar bear rummaging for food and seemingly undeterred by their banger gun, the pair stood together and advanced towards the hungry animal making as much noise as possible. Another polar bear clawed a hole in their tent while they were sleeping but was soon scared away. 4 “You see problems from a different perspective and you have a lot of drive. Now, if I go to the gym, it’s not enough to go for a half-hour run, I really have to push myself. It’s similar with work as well.” She puts the same dedication and power into motivating her team. She says that enthusing others is the best way to get people pulling together. “After you have been out there and faced the worst and come through it with a smile on your face, you bring that into your job. We didn’t have a cross word in the Arctic. You see people in the office getting annoyed about something and you think, ‘there must be a way around it’. In the Arctic you have to solve your problems and you have to be prepared for every eventuality.” The Times, 2007 | |