A Brief Look At Sir Winston Churchill
The time for a leader to show his or her true worth is when they are faced with their greatest adversity. To me there are few better at this feat than Winston Churchill. For a leader to be followed they must lead. One of my favorite quotes about leadership is “A leader without followers is a man taking a walk” (Unknown). This uncredited quote is highly propagated and gets to the heart of leadership. Sir Winston Churchill was a British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice once from 1940 to 1945 and then again from 1951 to 1955. He widely regarded as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century; Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister of Great Britain during its most harrowing hour, WWII. He was known as a fiery speaker and an emotional man but he was able to motivate a nation to stand and fight when all was seemingly lost. His quotes about leadership are endless and his message of perseverance saved a nation. Winston Churchill was a great leader because he was able to make people follow him through to victory.
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Perhaps the greatest aspect of Mr.
Churchill was not his leadership during the crisis of the German air attack on England, but the path that led him to his leadership style (Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948). Winston Churchill was born to a very wealthy family and was thought to be on the fast track to greatness. Indeed he was promoted quickly to the rank of First Lord of the Admiralty. During his tenure as the First Lord of the Admiralty he planned and instituted a disastrous attack on Gallipoli during WWI. This led to his forced departure from government. However, that did not stop him from getting back up and regaining his position and surpassing it to lead his nation to victory some twenty years
later.
Churchill had the fortune and the curse to be born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was a wealthy American woman. It was a blessing due to the family connections afforded to him, but it was a curse because he was passed off to nannies and then onto military school and spent almost no time with his parents (Jenkins, 2001). Churchill was rarely visited by his mother and never his father when he was sent away to school. His relationship with his father was also strained and they barely spoke to one another. His father died on 24 January 1895, aged 45. Instead of letting this consume him Churchill decided that he should not waste the time afforded to him.
Churchill left military school in 1893 and he applied to attend the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He attempted the Military exams three times. He failed miserably on the first two attempts and barely gained a passing grade on the third attempt. He even applied for the cavalry rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and he was not required to be proficient in as many courses (Jenkins, 2001). What he lacked in test scores he made up for in perseverance and he went on to graduate high in the cavalry course in 1894. This ranking would have allowed him to then transfer to any infantry regiment that we wished but instead he decided to stay with the cavalry and was commissioned as a Cornet, the lowest ranking commissioned officer rank in the cavalry (Jenkins, 2001). He did this because he would have had to be an enlisted man in the infantry and an officer had more room to grow in the world. It also paid more and Churchill reportedly did not like to maintain a budget. This love of spending also led to his interest in war correspondence. By volunteering to be a military correspondent as a Cornet he would accomplish two goals, the first being more money, and the second being to ensure he was a participant in active military campaigns. This action allowed him to be promoted quickly through the ranks of the cavalry and his writings brought him the attention that he could use later in life for his political ambitions. He made great use of any opportunity to be assigned to those posts. He also wrote for several newspapers and wrote his own books about his time in the service for extra money.
After his military service he began his political career. He earned several lower level cabinet positions and small political offices until he was selected as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, and continued in the post into the First World War. While serving in this position, he demonstrated his first real strength in long term and visionary planning. Churchill was intrigued by many of the new inventions like airplanes and automatic weapons. He endeavored to outfit the Royal Navy with the most modern weaponry available. He also saw the need to replace the coal fired ships of the day with the newer oil fired boiler ships which were more efficient and had greater operating distances. He began to replace all coal fired ships and retrofit any that could be reasonably done. To ensure the governments support of this plan he conducted many studies on the benefits of oil (Churchill, 1948). He then sent a delegation to the Middle East where he convinced the English government to eventually invest in its own oil company to secure an oil reserve for the next quarter of a century (Jenkins, 2001).
In 1915, Churchill was dealt his first major defeat. He was perhaps the loudest voice to push forward with the ill-fated Dardanelles Campaign, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign. The plan was ill advised from the beginning. The campaign was supposed to land troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula with the eventual goal of out maneuvering the trench warfare going on in France at the time and allow allied forces to capture Constantinople effectively ending the war. However, through faulty intelligence, bad planning, inadequate training and poor equipment the eight month long campaign failed to gain any meaningful ground and ended with the loss of almost 250,000 allied troops. Churchill shouldered the largest share of the blame for the campaign and the British Government demoted him to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Jenkins, 2001). For several months Churchill served in this role but finally on November 15, 1915 he resigned from the government.
In 1923 Churchill again was part of the political scene when he rejoined the Conservative Party as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This role, essentially the secretary of treasury, did not fit Churchill very well. As part of a bad political decision he pushed to return England to the Gold Standard. This bad decision resulted in unemployment, deflation, and the General Strike of 1926 (Churchill, 1948). He announced his decision in 1924 after consultation with several economists. All directed him that this would be a bad idea and would result in widespread deflation. Churchill instead listened to public opinion that was generally in favor of the idea and thought to be a sound economic decision by Churchill and other non-economic advisors (Clarke, 1996). Churchill would later regard this as the single greatest mistake of his life, even more so than Gallipoli. Ironically the return to the Gold Standard depressed industries especially the shipping and coal industries which were already struggling due to the cross over from coal to oil fired boilers, which Churchill had been involved in before the war.
During the 1930’s Churchill was again out of political office and used this time to hone his political aspirations. He spent most of his time warning about the imminent rise of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany. His distrust of Adolph Hitler was well known. He also began campaigning to have England pursue rearmament since England’s supplies had been so depleted and outdated since due to the First World War. His insistence proved to be both ominous and accurate. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty (Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948).
Upon the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on May 10, 1940 Churchill became Prime Minister. Now Winston Churchill was in his element. While many people in England both public and political were calling for a pre-war entry peace with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, Churchill stood alone in his resolve to defend his country. Churchill refused to even consider a peace treaty. Saying “"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin” (Jenkins, 2001). Churchill knew that Hitler was not to be trusted and so he prepared his country to not only survive but to fight. Churchill’s belief in the need to re-arm England was now proven true as well, and Churchill pushed all factories in the country to build tanks, ships, and planes at an incredible pace. By refusing an armistice with Germany, Churchill kept the spirit of the country alive. He also laid the ground work for the island to be a base for the invasion of Europe. Thanks in large part to Churchill’s forethought Britain was able to become the jumping off point for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Allied air-strikes against Germany, and a last line of defense against the war machine that threatened to overwhelm the globe.
In order to ensure adherence to his policies and procedures Churchill did a radical thing. When he was criticized for not having a single person solely responsible for the course of wartime actions he created, and then took the additional title and responsibility of Minister of Defense. This made him the most powerful wartime prime minister ever in British history. This radical move eventually changed the course of the war and history. Winston Churchill saved the nation and the world through leadership and inspiration. Amidst all of the chaos he stood resolute and strong. H.R. Knickerbocker wrote in 1941:
"The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him. Not at all, the last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked twenty years younger than before the war began ... His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people" (Knickerbocker, 1941).
Churchill's speeches during the war were legendary and a powerful inspiration to the embattled land. His first speech as prime minister was the now famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech. At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", which gave the nickname “The Few” for the RAF fighter pilots who won the Battle of Britain.
Churchill also knew to thank those that helped him to attain victory. On Victory in Europe Day, Churchill told a huge crowd in Whitehall: "This is your victory." The people shouted: "No, it is yours", and Churchill then led them in the singing of "Land of Hope and Glory". However, ever the pragmatist, that evening he made another broadcast to the nation asserting the defeat of Japan in the coming months. Again keeping his country focused on the true goal at hand (Churchill, 1948). Peace across the globe.
After the Conservative Party lost the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the Labor Government. He then won the 1951 election, again becoming Prime Minister. He officially retired from political life in 1955. Upon his death in 1965 he was laid to rest as the world watched the passing of a great man.
The lessons of Sir Winston Churchill are as important today as they were during the Battle of Britain. Leadership is not a question of always making the right decision. Leadership is the act of managing the many aspects of a situation with clarity. Knowing what you know and more importantly knowing what you do not know. Churchill made a few huge mistakes early in his career. The tragedy in Gallipoli and the debacle of the switching back to the pre-war gold standard would alone be enough to characterize most people for their entire life, not Winston Churchill. When historians now write about the mistakes made by him they are overshadowed by greater events. This transformation of the past is due in large part to his ability to correct the mistakes that he made. If you look at the two decisions that really tarnish his legacy they have one thing in common, stubbornness. Even great leaders like Churchill can be subject to errors like escalation of commitment bias. If he had looked into the situation in Gallipoli with a subjective eye a few months earlier and had seen that the plan was not going to work he could have saved countless lives. If he would have taken the opportunity to listen to his economic advisors about the pre-war Gold Standard then an economic catastrophe could have been avoided. Being sure of one’s decision is key to success, but that surety cannot be allowed to subjugate critical thinking and rational problem solving.
Winston Churchill has made some of the most memorable speeches in history. When one listens to the crackly audio of Winston Churchill saying:
“we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. (Churchill, We Shall Fight on the Beaches, 2014)” the calm of Winston Churchill in the face of devastation is evident. Churchill could remain calm because he addressed the most essential characteristics of management. He planned his life from the beginning to become a great leader. He organized the country through manipulation and strong guidance. He led the country with absolute resolve and faith inspiring others to great heights. He controlled every aspect of his environment by strength of will and determination. Great leaders of the past like Abraham Lincoln who showed poise and resolve in the fight to abolish slavery even in the face of civil war, and leaders of today like Steve Jobs, and Indra Nooyi (Forbes, 2014) who remain strong in the face of adversity understand the true meaning of leadership. Abraham Lincoln had to fight for equality, Winston Churchill had to fight to survive, Steve Jobs had to fight for his dream, and Indra Nooyi had to fight for her vision. Regardless of the situation that a leader is in, one piece of advice from Winston Churchill will help them stay the course, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” (Churchill, 1948).
Perhaps the greatest aspect of Mr.
Churchill was not his leadership during the crisis of the German air attack on England, but the path that led him to his leadership style (Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948). Winston Churchill was born to a very wealthy family and was thought to be on the fast track to greatness. Indeed he was promoted quickly to the rank of First Lord of the Admiralty. During his tenure as the First Lord of the Admiralty he planned and instituted a disastrous attack on Gallipoli during WWI. This led to his forced departure from government. However, that did not stop him from getting back up and regaining his position and surpassing it to lead his nation to victory some twenty years
later.
Churchill had the fortune and the curse to be born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jennie Jerome, was a wealthy American woman. It was a blessing due to the family connections afforded to him, but it was a curse because he was passed off to nannies and then onto military school and spent almost no time with his parents (Jenkins, 2001). Churchill was rarely visited by his mother and never his father when he was sent away to school. His relationship with his father was also strained and they barely spoke to one another. His father died on 24 January 1895, aged 45. Instead of letting this consume him Churchill decided that he should not waste the time afforded to him.
Churchill left military school in 1893 and he applied to attend the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He attempted the Military exams three times. He failed miserably on the first two attempts and barely gained a passing grade on the third attempt. He even applied for the cavalry rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and he was not required to be proficient in as many courses (Jenkins, 2001). What he lacked in test scores he made up for in perseverance and he went on to graduate high in the cavalry course in 1894. This ranking would have allowed him to then transfer to any infantry regiment that we wished but instead he decided to stay with the cavalry and was commissioned as a Cornet, the lowest ranking commissioned officer rank in the cavalry (Jenkins, 2001). He did this because he would have had to be an enlisted man in the infantry and an officer had more room to grow in the world. It also paid more and Churchill reportedly did not like to maintain a budget. This love of spending also led to his interest in war correspondence. By volunteering to be a military correspondent as a Cornet he would accomplish two goals, the first being more money, and the second being to ensure he was a participant in active military campaigns. This action allowed him to be promoted quickly through the ranks of the cavalry and his writings brought him the attention that he could use later in life for his political ambitions. He made great use of any opportunity to be assigned to those posts. He also wrote for several newspapers and wrote his own books about his time in the service for extra money.
After his military service he began his political career. He earned several lower level cabinet positions and small political offices until he was selected as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, and continued in the post into the First World War. While serving in this position, he demonstrated his first real strength in long term and visionary planning. Churchill was intrigued by many of the new inventions like airplanes and automatic weapons. He endeavored to outfit the Royal Navy with the most modern weaponry available. He also saw the need to replace the coal fired ships of the day with the newer oil fired boiler ships which were more efficient and had greater operating distances. He began to replace all coal fired ships and retrofit any that could be reasonably done. To ensure the governments support of this plan he conducted many studies on the benefits of oil (Churchill, 1948). He then sent a delegation to the Middle East where he convinced the English government to eventually invest in its own oil company to secure an oil reserve for the next quarter of a century (Jenkins, 2001).
In 1915, Churchill was dealt his first major defeat. He was perhaps the loudest voice to push forward with the ill-fated Dardanelles Campaign, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign. The plan was ill advised from the beginning. The campaign was supposed to land troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula with the eventual goal of out maneuvering the trench warfare going on in France at the time and allow allied forces to capture Constantinople effectively ending the war. However, through faulty intelligence, bad planning, inadequate training and poor equipment the eight month long campaign failed to gain any meaningful ground and ended with the loss of almost 250,000 allied troops. Churchill shouldered the largest share of the blame for the campaign and the British Government demoted him to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Jenkins, 2001). For several months Churchill served in this role but finally on November 15, 1915 he resigned from the government.
In 1923 Churchill again was part of the political scene when he rejoined the Conservative Party as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This role, essentially the secretary of treasury, did not fit Churchill very well. As part of a bad political decision he pushed to return England to the Gold Standard. This bad decision resulted in unemployment, deflation, and the General Strike of 1926 (Churchill, 1948). He announced his decision in 1924 after consultation with several economists. All directed him that this would be a bad idea and would result in widespread deflation. Churchill instead listened to public opinion that was generally in favor of the idea and thought to be a sound economic decision by Churchill and other non-economic advisors (Clarke, 1996). Churchill would later regard this as the single greatest mistake of his life, even more so than Gallipoli. Ironically the return to the Gold Standard depressed industries especially the shipping and coal industries which were already struggling due to the cross over from coal to oil fired boilers, which Churchill had been involved in before the war.
During the 1930’s Churchill was again out of political office and used this time to hone his political aspirations. He spent most of his time warning about the imminent rise of Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany. His distrust of Adolph Hitler was well known. He also began campaigning to have England pursue rearmament since England’s supplies had been so depleted and outdated since due to the First World War. His insistence proved to be both ominous and accurate. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty (Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948).
Upon the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on May 10, 1940 Churchill became Prime Minister. Now Winston Churchill was in his element. While many people in England both public and political were calling for a pre-war entry peace with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, Churchill stood alone in his resolve to defend his country. Churchill refused to even consider a peace treaty. Saying “"I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin” (Jenkins, 2001). Churchill knew that Hitler was not to be trusted and so he prepared his country to not only survive but to fight. Churchill’s belief in the need to re-arm England was now proven true as well, and Churchill pushed all factories in the country to build tanks, ships, and planes at an incredible pace. By refusing an armistice with Germany, Churchill kept the spirit of the country alive. He also laid the ground work for the island to be a base for the invasion of Europe. Thanks in large part to Churchill’s forethought Britain was able to become the jumping off point for the D-Day invasion of Normandy, Allied air-strikes against Germany, and a last line of defense against the war machine that threatened to overwhelm the globe.
In order to ensure adherence to his policies and procedures Churchill did a radical thing. When he was criticized for not having a single person solely responsible for the course of wartime actions he created, and then took the additional title and responsibility of Minister of Defense. This made him the most powerful wartime prime minister ever in British history. This radical move eventually changed the course of the war and history. Winston Churchill saved the nation and the world through leadership and inspiration. Amidst all of the chaos he stood resolute and strong. H.R. Knickerbocker wrote in 1941:
"The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him. Not at all, the last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked twenty years younger than before the war began ... His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people" (Knickerbocker, 1941).
Churchill's speeches during the war were legendary and a powerful inspiration to the embattled land. His first speech as prime minister was the now famous "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech. At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few", which gave the nickname “The Few” for the RAF fighter pilots who won the Battle of Britain.
Churchill also knew to thank those that helped him to attain victory. On Victory in Europe Day, Churchill told a huge crowd in Whitehall: "This is your victory." The people shouted: "No, it is yours", and Churchill then led them in the singing of "Land of Hope and Glory". However, ever the pragmatist, that evening he made another broadcast to the nation asserting the defeat of Japan in the coming months. Again keeping his country focused on the true goal at hand (Churchill, 1948). Peace across the globe.
After the Conservative Party lost the 1945 election, he became Leader of the Opposition to the Labor Government. He then won the 1951 election, again becoming Prime Minister. He officially retired from political life in 1955. Upon his death in 1965 he was laid to rest as the world watched the passing of a great man.
The lessons of Sir Winston Churchill are as important today as they were during the Battle of Britain. Leadership is not a question of always making the right decision. Leadership is the act of managing the many aspects of a situation with clarity. Knowing what you know and more importantly knowing what you do not know. Churchill made a few huge mistakes early in his career. The tragedy in Gallipoli and the debacle of the switching back to the pre-war gold standard would alone be enough to characterize most people for their entire life, not Winston Churchill. When historians now write about the mistakes made by him they are overshadowed by greater events. This transformation of the past is due in large part to his ability to correct the mistakes that he made. If you look at the two decisions that really tarnish his legacy they have one thing in common, stubbornness. Even great leaders like Churchill can be subject to errors like escalation of commitment bias. If he had looked into the situation in Gallipoli with a subjective eye a few months earlier and had seen that the plan was not going to work he could have saved countless lives. If he would have taken the opportunity to listen to his economic advisors about the pre-war Gold Standard then an economic catastrophe could have been avoided. Being sure of one’s decision is key to success, but that surety cannot be allowed to subjugate critical thinking and rational problem solving.
Winston Churchill has made some of the most memorable speeches in history. When one listens to the crackly audio of Winston Churchill saying:
“we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. (Churchill, We Shall Fight on the Beaches, 2014)” the calm of Winston Churchill in the face of devastation is evident. Churchill could remain calm because he addressed the most essential characteristics of management. He planned his life from the beginning to become a great leader. He organized the country through manipulation and strong guidance. He led the country with absolute resolve and faith inspiring others to great heights. He controlled every aspect of his environment by strength of will and determination. Great leaders of the past like Abraham Lincoln who showed poise and resolve in the fight to abolish slavery even in the face of civil war, and leaders of today like Steve Jobs, and Indra Nooyi (Forbes, 2014) who remain strong in the face of adversity understand the true meaning of leadership. Abraham Lincoln had to fight for equality, Winston Churchill had to fight to survive, Steve Jobs had to fight for his dream, and Indra Nooyi had to fight for her vision. Regardless of the situation that a leader is in, one piece of advice from Winston Churchill will help them stay the course, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” (Churchill, 1948).