The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
– Henry Newbolt
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England’s far, and honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
“Play up! Play up! And play the game!”
Mateship, while not exclusive to Australia, is part of the fabric of Australian military leadership. Newbolt’s poem describes a military unit at the darkest hour of a battle. The thing that gets them through is not some lofty ideal, it’s not a flag or a notion of queen and country. It’s the person standing next to you, the ‘voice of a schoolboy’ that rallies the ranks and tells you that they have your back and that – together – we will get through this.
The funny thing about mateship is that it’s most powerfully forged, most powerfully tested, and most powerfully proven through shared hardship.
2020-2021 created many complex and challenging circumstances for businesses globally. Mettle Global continue to advise on crisis and risk management, strategic planning and leadership, offering solutions to uncommon problems.
As a team we are also exploring ways of developing a younger generation of leaders who are entering the working world amid a global pandemic.
Mettle’s vision is to prepare current and future leaders for the current and future volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments.
Despite all the challenges and adversity, July was an exciting month for Mettle Global with the release of The Resilience Shield, a book co-authored with Dr Dan Pronk and Mettle Senior Partner, Tim Curtis.
The Resilience Shield exists because life is hard. Research shows that a key component of resilience is our interactions with other human beings. Through our interactions and friendships, we nourish and strengthen our own Resilience Shield. The support of friends, family and significant others should never be underestimated. We encourage you to explore how the Resilience Shield model can help you to improve your individual and collective resilience.
