Queen Elizabeth and Churchill: How a 25-Year-Old Won His Loyalty

In February 1952 a 25-year-old woman became Head of State and began weekly audiences with Winston Churchill. He was 77. He had led the country through the war. He had known five monarchs. Nobody expected the young Queen to hold her own.

Every Tuesday afternoon she received him at Buckingham Palace. Within months, according to those closest to him, Churchill had fallen under her spell. He felt her immense sense of duty early, and he came to look forward to those Tuesday meetings more than almost any other engagement in his week.

Queen Elizabeth and Churchill is the story of how authority is earned without rank, by a young woman in a world of powerful older men. It is also the foundation of the inclusive leadership she practised for 70 years. This article is about both.

The youngest person in every room

When the Queen came to the throne she was meeting foreign dignitaries, presidents and prime ministers who had decades on her. She was a young woman in politics and royalty, two of the most male-dominated spheres on earth.

She did not try to out-talk them. She out-prepared them. She read the red boxes. She knew the brief. She asked precise questions and remembered the answers. Churchill, who had expected to guide a nervous girl, found himself reporting to a monarch who had read the Cabinet papers more carefully than some of his Cabinet.

Fifteen prime ministers followed him, of both parties, and every one of them said something similar. The audiences were the one place they could speak freely to someone who had seen it all before and would never repeat a word. She built that trust one Tuesday at a time.

The coronation decision

One of her first bold moves was against Churchill himself. He advised her not to televise the coronation in 1953. She listened, respected him, and did it anyway. Twenty-seven million people watched.

That is inclusive leadership in its first form: opening an institution to people who had always been kept outside it. The coronation had been for the powerful. She made it for everyone with a television.

The Commonwealth

For 70 years the Queen was Head of the Commonwealth, a free association of nations that grew from 8 members at her accession to 56 at her death. She held it together as an association of equals through the dismantling of the empire it had grown from, through wars and coups and the withdrawal and return of members.

She did it by turning up. Commonwealth tours in every decade. Young leaders in 2017 astonished by how much she knew about each of their countries. When asked who was the most remarkable person she had ever met, she answered without hesitation: Nelson Mandela.

In her later years the family leaned visibly into diversity and inclusion, celebrating contributions from people of every race, gender and background. She had been building towards it since 1952.

Why it worked

Authority earned through preparation and respect outlasts authority conferred by rank.

The Queen never once used her position to win an argument with a prime minister. Constitutionally she could not, and temperamentally she did not want to. She used her briefing, her memory, and the consistency of turning up every Tuesday for 70 years. That is why fifteen prime ministers trusted her: not because she was the Queen, but because she was always prepared and never indiscreet.

The same mechanism built the Commonwealth. She did not hold it together with power. She had none. She held it together by knowing every member, showing up in every decade, and treating the smallest nation with the same attention as the largest.

What you do on Monday

Give the most junior person in the room the first word. In your next meeting. Then listen the way the Queen listened to Churchill: fully briefed, fully present, and not trying to win.

If you are the youngest or newest in the room, out-prepare it. Do not try to match the experience. Match the homework. Read what they have not read. Remember what they have forgotten.

Build one Tuesday. A fixed, recurring, protected conversation with someone whose trust you need. Same time every week. The Queen's authority with fifteen prime ministers came from a single hour a week, kept without fail.

From the book

This is Chapter 9 of The Job Well Done: The Queen's Way to Successful Leadership. The full chapter covers the Queen's relationships with her prime ministers, her leadership of the Commonwealth, how she overcame age and gender barriers, and the practice of empowering people rather than commanding them.

Read all nine principles on the Queen Elizabeth leadership pillar page, or get the book.

Back to the start: Staying on Course: Queen Elizabeth's sense of duty