10th November 2008

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Adventurer Mark Pollock with senior lecturer John E Thompson

Intrepid adventurer Mark Pollock - who hopes to be the first blind man to reach the South Pole - participated in a University of Ulster masterclass to help perfect his leadership skills in advance of his Antarctic challenge.

In December, ten years after going completely blind, Mark and team mates Simon O'Donnell and Noel Hanna will set off on the first leg of the gruelling South Pole Race.  

As part of his preparations to lead the team, Mark joined students on the MSc in Business Management at Jordanstown for a three day masterclass organised as part of the Leadership and Business module.  

The South Pole Race will be the first competitive race to the South Pole since Scott and Amundsen’s historic race almost 100 years ago.  

After almost two weeks of intensive polar training in Antarctica to get acclimatised to the sub-polar temperatures, Mark and his team will set off on the 1000 km race across the Antarctic Plateau in an attempt to get to the South Pole.    

"Our first challenge is to get to the starting line – fit, strong and mentally up for the race. The next challenge will be to compete in this epic 1,000 kilometre race. This will mean man-hauling 90kg of our food and fuel on sledges for up to 16 hours each day in temperatures as low as - 50C,” says Mark.

"We will have to fight sleep deprivation, hunger and cold and battle with polar shock for around 50 days to finish the race and plant our flag at the South Pole.  This is not about blindness - it’s about getting to the South Pole.”

Senior Lecturer John E Thompson who delivers the module says the masterclass was a two way learning process, with both Mark and the students learning from each other.  

"As well as helping the students learn, Mark learned a lot about his own ability as a leader. Although he had already met a personal objective - which was to lead himself after he lost his sight - Mark wanted to improve his leadership of others. Specifically, he wanted to improve his skill of ‘individualised consideration’, which is the ability to recognise and meet individual needs in order to promote the team.  
 
"The lessons from Neuro-Linguistic Programming gave him a better understanding of people especially the use of rapport and meta-programmes and Mark learned that he needs to be flexible in his style of leadership and learn to recognise his strengths and identify well formed outcomes.   

"Mark shared his own leadership journey, from leading himself to leading others. He concentrated on what we are in a position to control: taking personal responsibility for our actions, facing facts, focusing on making it happen, making committed decisions and communicating with the formal and informal team. It was the start of Mark’s leadership journey and he had met another personal objective of learning better how to lead others.” 

Mark Pollock’s story of how he rebuilt his life after unexpectedly losing his sight when he was just 22 years old is truly inspirational.

In 1998 his life was turned upside down when he went blind. At the time, he was a final year student at Trinity College Dublin, an international rower with a bright future ahead of him as a competitive sportsman and a fantastic job lined up in London.  

Never one to shy away from a challenge, Mark has since rebuilt his life and in the past ten years has far exceeded his previous achievements. Within six months of going blind he was back at work and, two years later, he completed a Masters Degree in Business Studies. He won medals while rowing for Northern Ireland at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, completed six marathons in one week in China's Gobi Desert and raced in the North Pole marathon, the world’s most extreme. 

John E Thompson, says he was delighted that Mark, who is now an internationally renowned motivational speaker, was able to share his story with the MSc Students at Jordanstown. 

"We took a number of lessons from Mark’s participation in the programme, not least, that even someone like Mark who has already achieved incredible things can keep on learning.  

"Mark’s participation affirms that Ulster’s Leadership programmes are indeed world class and at the forefront of business leadership development.”

For further information, please contact:

Trina Porter
Telephone: 028 71675511
Email: Trina Porter