Let’s play a quick game. Imagine your company is going on a polar expedition (yes, it’s strange, but stay with it). You’re hiring a leader. You have two résumés.
Candidate A has nailed the North Pole, South Pole, Northeast Passage, and Northwest Passage. In three of those, he was the first to do it. Total pro.
Candidate B set off for Antarctica four times. Three of those as the man in charge. Every one of those trips ended in chaos, crisis, or catastrophe.
So who would you hire?
Of course, the logical answer is Candidate A. But strangely, we often end up celebrating (and rewarding) people like Candidate B.
Both of these men existed. Candidate A was Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the most successful polar explorer of all time. Candidate B was Ernest Shackleton, the disaster-prone Anglo-Irish adventurer who, despite his failures, is widely celebrated in leadership seminars, corporate PowerPoints, and LinkedIn shout-outs.
Even more baffling? There are 26 books that focus on Shackleton’s leadership. Guess how many there are about Amundsen? Only four. And two of them were written by Dr Martin Gutmann, the historian behind this very insight.
So why are we drawn to Shackleton? Because of something Gutmann calls the action fallacy.
The Leadership Trap We All Fall Into
The action fallacy is simple. We confuse activity with effectiveness. Drama with value. Noise with leadership.
To illustrate this, imagine two swimmers. One dives into a dangerous river without checking the currents. He nearly drowns but kicks and flails until he somehow makes it back. We applaud him. “Wow! What a fighter!”
Now picture another swimmer. She’s studied the river for years. She knows exactly when to enter, how to turn, and lets the current do the work. She glides across effortlessly. We barely notice her. “Looks easy,” we say.
Shackleton is the first swimmer. He sailed into danger unprepared, ignored local advice, and nearly killed everyone. Sure, he pulled off a miraculous rescue. But only after creating the crisis.
Amundsen is the second swimmer. His leadership was precise. His planning was meticulous. His success was quiet. He avoided disaster altogether.
Naturally, most of us cheer for the drama. We love a comeback story. But if you’re running a business, ask yourself this: do you want the person who barely survives the fire they lit themselves? Or the one who stops it from happening in the first place?
What This Means for Leadership in the Workplace
This isn’t just about history. These same flawed ideas about leadership are alive and well in offices today.
We celebrate people who speak often, even if they say nothing. We admire confidence, even when it’s covering up incompetence. And we respect busyness, no matter how unproductive it is.
As a result, we promote the loudest. We reward the most visible. And we overlook the people who are actually doing the work that matters.
This hurts businesses. Leadership that quietly aligns people, prevents chaos, and moves the needle is undervalued. Worse, we create a toxic cycle by promoting crisis-hungry managers who think drama equals success.
According to leadership expert Keith Grint, we’re rewarding crisis managers and ignoring those who run things so well there’s no crisis in the first place. Therefore, others learn to create drama just to prove their worth.
Read: Radical Transparency and Algorithms Might Be the Best Business Decision You’ll Ever Make.
Time to Rethink What Good Leadership Looks Like
So how do we fix it? First, we need to stop glorifying the captains of chaos. Yes, crises happen. But many are either self-inflicted or wildly exaggerated.
Second, we must start celebrating what Harvard’s Professor Raffaella Sadun calls boring management (or boring leadership).
That’s right: boring.
Because effective leadership often hides behind calm meetings, smooth execution, and teams that just get the job done. These leaders:
- Build clear, repeatable systems
- Prevent problems before they happen
- Create cultures of trust and accountability
And they don’t care if you notice. They’re not chasing applause. They’re chasing results.
The Real Heroes Are Behind the Scenes
Think of the best leaders you’ve worked with. Chances are, they weren’t shouting in meetings or saving the day at the last second. More likely, they quietly made things run so well you barely noticed them.
So next time your team succeeds, ask yourself: who was the real driver behind that result? Was it the loud voice in the room? Or the quiet planner who actually built the system that worked?
When the ice starts closing in around your business, who do you want at the helm? The one yelling for dynamite? Or the one who never got stuck in the ice in the first place?
It’s time to reward the Amundsens, not the Shackleton wannabes.
Because boring leadership matters.
