#29 – Queen Elizabeth II: A Paragon of Leadership
A special Issue celebrating a life dedicated to leadership
There can only be one topic to write about this week, in light of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
Readers overseas will forgive me, hopefully, for writing again about this remarkable exemplar of strong leadership.
A death at the age of 96 can hardly be regarded as tragic. But for most of us in the UK we have known no other head of state for our entire lives, and Queen Elizabeth has been an immovable fixture for us.
I’d like to devote this short issue to a reflection on the Queen’s remarkable leadership style and what can be learnt from it.
Next week I will return to business as usual and start on a new topic, that of leadership through crisis.
As always, please comment and contribute to the debate by posting direct on Practical Counsel. Also, please write in with your unique people issues to me (practicalcounsel@substack.com) - I unequivocally undertake never to reveal your identity and will change key details of your situation so as to preserve your confidentiality and anonymity (unless you don’t want this). I also undertake to write to you personally with my own thoughts and comments on your situation and am always happy to follow up with a call on Zoom or similar.
Queen Elizabeth II: 21st April 1926 to 8th September 2022
A life dedicated to leadership
“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service”.
With these words Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, dedicated her life to service, on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday in 1947.
It has indeed been a life devoted to public service. Her father, King George VI, died unexpectedly less than five years after this declaration and the Princess found herself, at the age of 25, Queen Elizabeth, Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, Queen also of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many other countries.
She was born in an Imperial Age, to a father who ruled as King Emperor and died having witnessed the dismantling of the British Empire, the entry of the United Kingdom in 1973 into the European Economic Community and its departure in 2020 from the European Union. She saw 15 Prime Ministers serve under her, inviting her fifteenth Prime Minister, Liz Truss, to form a new Government just two days before she died.
She would not have become Queen herself but for her uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicating due to the ‘impossibility’ of a British monarch marrying a divorcée. And in her lifetime she saw her own son, now King Charles III, both divorce and subsequently marry a divorcée, without himself having to relinquish his right to succeed his mother. Indeed, it was his mother who expressed the fervent wish that Charles’ second wife would in due course become Queen Consort, as has now happened.
Millions of words have already been written since the Queen died yesterday. Aside for reasons of sentimentality, why do I think it important for Practical Counsel to mark her death? Are there in fact universal lessons that can be drawn from the Queen’s life and her leadership style?
I believe there are, and lessons that are as applicable to in-house leaders as to leaders in other spheres of public and political life.
Here are five lessons that I suggest can be drawn from a life dedicated to leadership.
First, the Queen was the exemplar par excellence of leadership through role-modelling. She didn’t speak about her leadership, indeed she gave not one interview in the seventy years she served as monarch. She typically only spoke at any length a couple of times a year – once in her Christmas broadcast, once when she opened Parliament. When she opened Parliament she was a mere mouthpiece, reciting her Government’s plans for putting forward new legislation, in a speech written for her by that Government. Her Christmas broadcast was more personal, but it too was relatively generic, and she spoke more often about faith than about leadership.
She demonstrated leadership through being and doing – not spouting platitudes about the value of public service, but demonstrating an unwavering commitment to public service through seventy years of relentless public service, working as a public servant right up until her death.
Second – and this is linked – she instinctively understood how to lead through her personal presence. Personally slight – she was around 5 feet 3 inches (1.63 metres) in height – she nevertheless exuded leadership and commanded respect.
News reports in the wake of her death have commented on how many young people have been visiting Buckingham Palace to pay their respects. Her ability to lead – and to command respect – cut across the generations and transcended the political divisions that otherwise polarise our society.
Leaders in all fields of life can learn so much about ‘presence’ from reflecting on the way she held herself, with a mixture of dignity and humility. She somehow managed to radiate integrity and a commitment to cherished values – without emoting or ever indulging in anything remotely approaching virtue-signalling.
Third, she was a master of the art of minimal communication – of influencing with the smallest of gestures, and the lightest of communication.
A couple of examples.
In 2014, ahead of the Scottish independence referendum, the Queen told a well-wisher outside the Church close to her Scottish estate at Balmoral: “I hope people will think very carefully about the future”. Given the Queen’s extremely careful use of language this was understood as a plea for voters in Scotland to think very carefully about devolving from the United Kingdom – and these words were felt to have had an important influence on the outcome of the referendum.
Similarly in 1961 the Queen’s visit to Ghana – and specifically her dancing with the Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah – was felt to have been highly significant in terms of keeping the Commonwealth together, at a time when its future success was by no means assured.
Naysayers might claim that it requires limited skill to achieve these results, but the reality is that it requires a remarkable deftness of touch to achieve such results through the exercise of light-touch communication. The Queen instinctively understood how to use ‘soft power’ long before the concept of soft power was popularised.
Fourth, while she was robust in the upholding of her personal values, this does not mean that she was unable to adapt to changing times. A successful leader can not be inflexible – but equally few successful leaders lack a core of cherished personal values.
Arguably the Queen’s adherence to a set of pretty conservative values resulted in her eldest son (now King Charles III) entering into a highly unsuitable – and ultimately disastrous – marriage. No-one will ever know whether the Queen harboured personal regrets but it was noticeable how her attitude towards Camilla softened in later years, to the point where she expressed a personal wish that she would in due course become Queen Consort.
That ability to adapt to changing times – and to remain open to change – was further exemplified by the welcome she extended to Meghan Markle – herself a divorcée - when she married Prince Harry. And it would appear that she was one of the voices who, behind the scenes, was minded to dampen the controversy surrounding Prince Harry’s departure as a working Royal, rather than to stoke it.
Fifth, she understood the importance of attending to detail and getting that detail spot on. Her late husband – albeit having remarkable qualities of his own – was well-known for his gaffes and, on occasion, saying the wrong thing. Her son and heir has had his share of errors of judgement as Prince of Wales.
In seventy years as monarch the Queen almost never put a foot wrong. Her decision to withdraw from public view in the immediate wake of Diana’s death was criticised, but almost certainly due to a desire to shield her grandsons’ in light of their mother’s tragic death. It is hard to think of another occasion when her conduct was widely criticised.
A track record like this does not happen accidentally. It results from a laser-sharp focus on detail, coupled with good judgement and a large dose of common-sense. As a leader, there is no substitute for that attention to detail and all leaders – including senior in-house leaders should take note.
Five lessons that I personally draw from the Queen’s remarkable life of devoted public service.
A life of public service and leadership that will hopefully continue to inspire generations of future leaders.
And now …….
Contribute to the debate and write in with your comments and observations. Also write to Jonathan with any other people issues you face as an in-house lawyer.
Jonathan can be reached by email at practicalcounsel@substack.com
A note for you picky lawyers; and a plea for tolerance
I am a British lawyer by background and went to both school and University in the UK. So my English is British English. I have taken a conscious decision to write this newsletter in British English, but to try to avoid phrases that aren’t common outside the UK. Sometimes, though, I’ll use a phrase that isn’t commonly used outside the UK, without realising that it is a Britishism. I also endeavour to use the vernacular spellings of my contributors (e.g. to use US spellings for a US contributor), but won’t always get this right.
My plea is for you to tolerate the British spellings and grammar and the occasional Britishism. And to focus on the substance of the newsletter rather than the occasional (to you) annoying turn of phrase, bit of grammar or unorthodox spelling, or the occasional inconsistency in spelling as between, for example, UK and US ‘standard’ spellings.
Thank you and best wishes,
Jonathan Middleburgh