Winston Churchill was one of the greatest failures in modern history. He received poor grades in school, failed twice at the entrance examinations to the British Royal Military College, crashed an airplane, was hit by a car in New York City, proposed to and was rejected by three women before getting married, and was responsible for roughly 250,000 casualties during WWI. Churchill’s failures as a politician prompted him even to change affiliation twice from Conservatives to Liberals and back to Conservatives. On the other hand, Churchill was an exceptional leader who stood firmly against the Nazi Germany, lead the Allied powers to victory in WWII, received the Nobel Prize in Literature, was a husband and father of five children, and lived until age 90.
Churchill early developed a sense of urgency to build his political career. He made many mistakes and only the belief in himself carried him over more than sixty years of failure. In his late fifties he was even “intensely disliked,” as he later referred to the political adversities of that time. Churchill said that “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
Winston Churchill developed three admirable leadership skills: goal setting, deliberate practice, and risk taking.
- Goal setting
Churchill had a clear goal since he was 14 years old — to save the Great Britain from enemy. He always believed that his destiny was in being of great usefulness to England. In his early twenties Churchill met his mentor and the chief role model, who helped him to dedicate his life to politics at the age of 25.
2. Deliberate practice
His plan to become a world-class leader was carried out through deliberate self-improvement. He had a speech impediment and was feeble at impromptu debate. The Conservative leader Lord Balfour sarcastically noted that Churchill carried “heavy but not very mobile guns.” While fighting in Sudan young Churchill began studying parliamentary debates. He examined the old parliament cases and journaled his opinion before and after reading them. He practiced public speaking and even took a comprehensive lecture tour across the eastern United States and Canada. Ongoing ability to self-improve helped Churchill become an outstanding speaker.
3. Risk taking
Churchill loved history and knew that personal courage would tremendously help his political career. A daring escape from a prison camp in South Africa brought him fame at the dawn of his career and a firm stance against the Nazi Germany helped him get elected. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” — these words carried Churchill through the years of hard dedicated failure that lead him to greatness. In the midst of chaos during WW2 Churchill was in his sixties when he became Prime Minister of England to the surprise of most politicians, including the Buckingham Palace.
Goal setting, deliberate practice, and risk-taking allowed Winston Churchill to self-improve as he continued to fail throughout his entire political career up until his final years. Churchill advised that “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” He admitted that he was shaped by his past failures as a politician before he finally became the leader he always imagined himself to be.