Sailing and Leadership Program

【Overseas】

In 1914, the Antarctic explorer Captain Shackleton and the polar expedition ship "Endurance" were trapped by ice when they were about to reach the South Pole. After 10 months of trying to escape, the Endurance was finally squeezed by the ice and sank. Shackleton decided to abandon ship with the expedition team and supplies.

Shackleton had only one wish: to bring the entire crew back alive.

Shackleton and his expedition team sailed three small boats. With their rich sailing experience and team understanding, they sailed for 16 days and 1,300 kilometers in extremely harsh weather in the polar regions. They found a whaling station on South Georgia Island and successfully called for help. All members of the expedition team miraculously survived, and no one died.

How did they do it?

The lifeboat Shackleton and his team used to survive, sail and find the island for help was the sailboat that the participants in this program learned to operate and sail together. It was called the "Whaler".

Whaler is a sailboat that must be operated by multiple people to sail. It challenges our imagination of "teamwork and leadership." If the understanding of team/leadership only stops at "dividing labor and doing one's own thing well", there is no way to sail it. We must think about the core of true leadership, such as communication, common goal orientation, problem solving, filling positions, planning and organization, so that we can sail this sailing ship together.

Now, let us return to the Strait of Malacca in the age of navigation and understand the different life styles of the "Ethnic Chinese" in another time and space context. Also think about your relationship with the ocean from a global perspective.

Taiwan is a ocean country, but in our culture and context, it seems that when discussing "Ethnic Chinese", it seems to be connected to the "inland". When talking about Ethnic Chinese identity, it seems that we must look to the north and the mainland. But is it possible that in another universe, the Ethnic Chinese are actually also a ocean nation?

That is actually not a parallel universe, it is Malaysia since the Age of Sail. In another completely different context, the Ethnic Chinese also have their own ocean character. It is not the distant Central Plains, but the ocean, which connects me to the land beneath my feet.

With a global perspective, we may not need to go to the Western to discuss ourselves, or we may not need to look at the inland of the Central Plains. Is there a possibility that we can discover another possibility of ourselves as long as we look south and towards the sea?