Sarah Fenwick can boast one of the strangest and quickest assignments of most people’s coaching careers – supporting a polar expedition. She reveals the huge pressures – and the lessons learned by all.
“It’s awful, the worst day of our lives”, and a tearful, “If it wasn’t for Tarka I’d quit.” These were the opening comments of a satellite phone call I received from the top of the world’s third largest ice cap. They were to lead to the most intense and challenging seven minutes of my coaching career.
The call came about because it was my job to provide coaching support to Tarka L’Herpiniere and Katie-Jane Cooper in the lead up to and during their Rivers of Ice expedition.
Their challenge was to be the first to make a fully unsupported (human power only and no food caches) north to south crossing of the largely unexplored Southern Patagonian Ice Cap.
Tarka has many years’ expedition experience, while Katie left behind a modelling career to join him, after they had met on expeditions four years ago.
One of their ongoing goals was to discover how resilient, resourceful, determined and flexible they can be. For many reasons and on many levels this was to be the most extreme and challenging expedition for them, especially as they rated their chances of success at less than 40 per cent.
My challenges as coach included having less than a month to work with them before they left; coaching them as individuals, as a team and as a couple; locating research on teams functioning in extreme environments and providing support on a satellite phone whose calls were restricted to five to 10 minutes’ duration, often with poor reception.
Tarka and Katie knew the Rivers of Ice expedition was physically and mentally high risk. To develop their self- and each-other awareness of how they might (dys)-function and put themselves and the expedition at risk, we assessed their “bright” and “dark” side personality styles using the Hogan Development Survey and Hogan Personality Inventory.
Coaching focused on how best to manage themselves and each other to maximise their ability to function effectively as individuals, a team and couple. Given the short communication times we would have, we identified and practised useful tools and techniques.
Coaching helped them manage themselves, each other and significant others in the build-up to departure. Topics included managing own and others’ expectations and fears, stress, what-ifs and last-minute changes.
Key moments
So what were the stand-out moments of the expedition – both for Tarka and Katie and for myself?
Day 7 – Katie: “It’s physically OK but mentally horrible. I’m miserable… if only we had visibility and could talk it would be so much better.”
Coaching: Tarka is only just ahead of Katie but her gregarious personality is struggling with the perceived isolation due to the strong winds and poor visibility. Coaching involves reviewing techniques such as distraction and setting mini goals/rewards.
Day 12 – Tarka: After days of zero visibility he loses his temper because the weather is making or breaking the expedition and “you have the pressure of everybody watching and wanting us to succeed”.
Coaching: We control the controllables and refocus energy and the perceptions of others.
Day 12 – Katie: “Why am I doing this? What’s the point? It’s boredom, monotonous, miserable, wet and cold.”
Coaching: We target goals, refocus on why she/they are doing it, on memorable moments and the support she’d like from Tarka. We also review her positive mantra.
Day 15 – Katie: “Last night I reached the biggest low on the trip and burst into tears.” She reports a mild panic attack.
Coaching: The poor phone signal only allows us time to review using deep abdominal breathing to manage the anxiety.
Day 18 – Tarka: “It’s awful, the worst day of our lives.” He reports being extremely frustrated.
Coaching: This is around how he can manage his frustration with the uncontrollable weather, such as giving it a personality and giving himself permission to vent his frustrations (just not on Katie!).
Day 18 – Katie: (tearfully) “If it wasn’t for Tarka I’d quit.”
Coaching: One of the most intense and challenging seven minutes I’ve had in my coaching career. We refocus Katie on the reasons she is there, what success means to her and review her strengths. Seven minutes later she says: “Just talking I feel so much better… I won’t quit.”
Day 26 – Tarka’s frustration builds again. Hunger, cold and fatigue are beginning to get to them and the weather has closed in. They are at the start of the most technically challenging point – an 8km stretch of crevasses, seracs and ice cliffs that requires good visibility and absolute mental and physical readiness.
Coaching: We focus on how they can make the best use of their strengths for tackling this section.
Day 31 – Tarka: “All gone very wrong.” Katie: “This morning I was terrified and today we are fighting for our lives and the end doesn’t matter any more.” They are in a survival situation. Their tent has been shredded and crushed in a storm (60 knot winds and more than 4m of snowfall in 48 hours).
Coaching: This brief session focuses on dealing with survival decisions, what-if scenarios and leveraging Tarka’s strength to remain calm and rational in stressful situations.
The outcome
Tarka and Katie travelled across the ice cap for 30 days. They made good progress towards their goal in challenging conditions, yet they were still within their physical capabilities. And they were the fastest to the Fella Reichert Cerro Mayo section (which was 75 per cent of the distance), at which point their tent was destroyed and they made the decision that descending the Spegazzini Glacier was their best exit strategy.
Reflections on the coaching
Tarka: “I think the coaching worked brilliantly.”
He also suggests that for future expeditions he would like all team members to be both “bright” and “dark” side personality profiled as he thought this really contributed to team effectiveness.
Katie: “I truly believe the bits we did together made a difference… the work we did together certainly helped me.”
She reported that on the expedition: “I became a different person”, which was helped by the coaching and by practising the techniques. Katie summed up her experiences: “I was absolutely thrilled with how I coped and I didn’t feel like a hindrance to Tarka.”
And my own coaching reflections? At the outset I was concerned about how I would coach effectively in short bursts. However, this was helped by focusing on really getting to know them before they left the UK. I was fortunate in that they made this easy by both being incredibly open and honest. So when they phoned during the expedition we quickly got to the point.
Rather than GROW it was RGOW. At times it was difficult not to be distracted by concerns about the quality and length of connection (several calls took place in a gale).
After the Day 31 call I found myself particularly stressed by their ‘survival’ situation. It rekindled memories of my own helicopter evacuation from a mountain with serious back injuries. I sought supervision around this which highlighted: a) my very strong empathy; and b) I was frustrated at not being able to provide a solution (though it wasn’t my role and it was out of my control).
Overall, this has been a fascinating project to be involved in and I am delighted that I’ll be working with Katie and Tarka on future expeditions. I am already exploring applying these learnings and experiences in my work as a business and executive coach.
Katie and Tarka’s motivation to achieve this is still strong and they have announced they will make another attempt next year “fitter, fatter and faster”. They are currently looking for a title sponsor.
Further info and references
- Sarah Fenwick is a business/executive coach and chartered sport psychologist. www.sarah-fenwick.com; sarah@sarah-fenwick.com and 07974 829955
- For more on the coaching work during the expedition see: www.rivers-of-ice.com/updates/psychological/assessment
- Apart from articles on the psychological effects in the type of environment faced by Tarka and Katie, I also owe thanks to Paula Brown of Qinetiq who shared Qinetiq’s learnings from working with the Race to the South Pole Team (James Cracknell, Ed Fogle and Ben Coats).
- See “Out of the dark”
Learning points
- Knowing “bright” and “dark” sides is key to maximising strengths and managing potentially dysfunctional behaviours in stressful situations.
- An appreciation of the potential physical, environmental and psychological stressors builds the client’s confidence and added value in the coach.
- With short lead-in times, openness and honesty from the start are key to a successful relationship.
- Coaching can achieve results in 10 minutes (once a good relationship is established) and requires the utmost focus on the part of the coach.
- It is important to recognise and work with the similarities and differences (motivations, goals, personalities and so on) between individuals, the team and the couple.
- Identify and practise tools and techniques before the expedition so that clients are familiar with them and know which ones work best before they need them.
- Work through what-if scenarios in advance to facilitate decision-making at critical times.
- Reflection and supervision are crucial to becoming a great coach.
Volume 5, Issue 1